The Real MacAw (11 page)

Not our yard. That was part of the stress. Our several acres were pocked with tiny, ramshackle sheds and outbuildings that would eventually have to be removed at great expense or repaired at even greater expense. Seeing Randall’s workmen beginning to prepare the roof of the future macaw shed for reshingling didn’t improve my mood, especially after one of them stared at the shed, shook his head and muttered, “Lipstick on a pig.”

And the landscaping consisted mostly of overgrown shrubbery that had been there when we bought the house, plus a few bare, weedy areas where we’d succeeded in hacking away moribund bushes but hadn’t yet filled the space with anything better. Rose Noire had started off with great plans for beautiful, maintenance-free plantings of deer-resistant native plants—which was why we’d hacked out the old bushes in the first place. But by the time we’d finished our first round of machete work, she was too immersed in her organic herb business to carry through with her plans.

Why couldn’t Mother turn her attention to the exterior of the house instead of nagging us to redecorate inside? Even the pool, which had been such a delight last summer, was a source of stress at the moment—when I looked at it, I didn’t see a relaxing haven or a convenient source of the exercise I needed to finish regaining my old shape. All I could think of was the need to fence it in before the twins began crawling.

But long-distance walks calmed me. Through Seth Early’s pasture across the road, to the top of the hill where, surrounded by his placid, friendly sheep I could sit on a familiar rock outcropping and gaze down at our house. The distance seemed to soften the edges and help me forget all the chores that swarmed into my mind up close. Or down to Caerphilly Creek, to listen to the water babble and check on the eagles’ nest.

Or when time was short, as it was now, I could walk just over the hill to commune with our llamas and gaze down on the edge of my parents’ farm. Dad was letting Rose Noire use the field next to our property for her herbs, and had leased the rest of the fields to an organic farmer who was raising buffalo, belted Galloway cows, and free-range chickens. My spirits always rose when I gazed across the gently waving fields of herbs and saw the majestic bison peacefully grazing, or ambling slowly toward the creek. And it was April already, which meant that any day now we’d start seeing the buffalo calves. And surely by now some of Rose Noire’s herbs would be beginning to bloom and perfume the hillside.

I reached the hilltop, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.

Then I opened my eyes, and instead of the majestic bison, I saw a pair of surveyors. One, wearing an orange safety vest and an orange hard hat, was holding up the stick while the other, in khaki with a white hard hat, was bending over and peering through the scope. The llamas, who were always fascinated by human activity, hovered nearby, two at each surveyor’s elbow. Not for the first time, I wondered if we could possibly train the llamas to deal with trespassers. Not to hurt them, of course, just to loom menacingly and spit at them a few times until they left the premises.

I strode toward the trespassers.

“What are you doing here?” I said, when I got close enough. I cringed when I realized how much like my mother I sounded. Then again, sounding like Mother had its uses. Both men snapped to attention.

“You must be Ms. Harrison from corporate,” Orange Hat said.

I wasn’t about to tell a direct lie, but it occurred to me that they might be more forthcoming if they thought I was this Ms. Harrison. So I did my best to look corporate.

“I said, what are you doing here?” Faint accent on the “here,” as if I had expected to find them somewhere else. And I tapped my foot in irritation. I didn’t have to fake the irritation—they were trespassing.

“We already finished surveying the condo site down by the river,” White Hat said. “We thought we’d get a head start on the golf course location.”

“Golf course location?”

“See that run-down old farmhouse up there?” White Hat was pointing at our house. “That’s the proposed clubhouse location.”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I wasn’t sure which made me angrier, the fact that they’d just applied the word “run-down” to the house we’d spent so much money renovating, or that some corporation thought they could tear it down to build a clubhouse.

And you couldn’t have a clubhouse without a golf course surrounding it, of course. I had no idea how large a golf course was, but I figured you’d probably need at least a hundred acres, and that meant they also had designs either on Mother and Dad’s farm behind us or Seth Early’s across the road. Maybe both. And I didn’t think either property owner would take kindly to the idea of turning those acres of rich, prime farmland into a golf course.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?”

I’d counted well past ten and it hadn’t helped much, so I opened my eyes and glared at the two of them.

“Get off my property,” I said. I didn’t raise my voice, but something in my tone made the surveyors flinch, and all the llamas took a step or two back.

“Ma’am?”

“That run-down old farmhouse is my home, and this is my land, and I want you to get the hell off my property,” I said. “Go back and tell whoever sent you that they’re wasting your time and their money. There’s no way in hell we’re selling our land to build a golf course, and they have a lot of nerve sending someone to survey the land before even asking us if we were interested in selling.”

“But ma’am—” White Hat began.

“You are trespassing.” I spoke as loudly and distinctly as I could.

“Hey, Meg!”

It was Rob, approaching rather more rapidly than his usual pace, no doubt because he was being pulled along by Tinkerbell, the wolfhound. I frowned at the interruption. I turned back to the two surveyors and was irritated to see that they looked relieved. I glared at them until Rob drew near.

“Hey!” Rob said, a little out of breath. “What’s up?”

“You’re just in time, counselor,” I said.

Rob’s eyes bugged out at the word “counselor,” but he was smart enough not to say anything. Or maybe just too surprised to speak.

“These two gentlemen appear to be lost,” I went on. “They’re trying to survey some land where their employer is planning to build a golf course, and they wound up here by mistake. And they were just leaving.”

“Look, lady—” White Hat began.

“Because they really don’t want me to call the police and report them as trespassers,” I said. “Much less set my dog on them.”

I glanced at Tinkerbell, who was staring fixedly at them. Which probably meant one of them had some food in his pocket, or perhaps had wiped greasy hands on his work clothes at lunchtime—I’d already observed that Tinkerbell was a chowhound, not a watchdog. But the two of them didn’t know her. They both looked anxious, and one of them took a half step backward.

“Look, lady, we’re sorry.” White Hat again. I pegged him for the senior member of their team. “We thought you knew about the project. That’s what my boss said—that the mayor had informed the landowners whose property was affected, and we should go ahead and survey. But if that’s wrong, we can come back later.”

“Just how—” I began. And then I stopped. If the mayor was involved, then something sneaky was afoot.

I noticed that the llamas were creeping closer again. Apparently Tinkerbell’s presence didn’t bother them. Given her size, they probably just thought she was a new, rather odd-smelling llama.

“It’s called eminent domain,” Orange Hat said.

White Hat glared, as if he wished Orange Hat had kept quiet.

“I’ve heard of that,” Rob said.

We all looked at him. From the looks on the surveyors’ faces, they clearly didn’t think much of my attorney’s expertise.

“That’s nice,” I said. I wanted to add that I was relieved to know Dad hadn’t paid all that money to a law school that would let him graduate without taking a single class in property law, but I held my tongue. No use showing the enemy that we had dissension in our ranks.

“I meant I heard a rumor the mayor was thinking of using it,” Rob said. “I didn’t hear where,” he added quickly, with a glance at me.

“But eminent domain is the government seizing private property if it’s in the public interest, right?” I asked.

Rob and the surveyors all nodded.

“Just how do condos and a golf course serve the public interest?” I said. “I thought eminent domain was mostly used to build roads and dams and such.”

“Kelo v. City of New London,” Rob blurted out. He had a look of pleased surprise on his face, as if he wasn’t quite sure where the reference came from. “Went to the Supreme Court. They upheld taking someone’s property for redevelopment that would increase the city revenues.”

“Economic development,” White Hat said. “Lot of jurisdictions are using eminent domain for that these days. Sorry, ma’am. Can we get on with our work?”

“No,” I said. “Just because the mayor’s thinking about doing something doesn’t mean it’s done. For one thing, we’re not in town—we’re in the county, and the town and the county don’t always see eye to eye on everything.”

In fact, the town and county were almost sure to disagree when it came to the subject of development.

But the mayor knew that. If he had some kind of sneaky plan to get around the county voters’ longstanding passion for protecting the farmlands …

“My boss isn’t going to be happy about this,” one of the surveyors said. “Can I have him call you to discuss this?”

“No,” I said. “If he needs to discuss it with anyone, he can call my attorney.”

They both glanced over at Rob.

“Not me,” he said. “I’m just her brother. And not actively engaged in legal practice at the moment,” he added hastily.

I had pulled my notebook out of my pocket and was scanning the pages where I kept useful names and numbers—specifically the several pages of lawyers who were either members of the Hollingsworths, Mother’s vast extended family, or had gone to school with Mother, or were otherwise indebted to her. I found the name and number I was looking for and scribbled on a slip of paper.

“Here.” I handed him the paper, and was gratified to see his eyes widen. Yes, someone who worked for a property development company might well have heard of Cousin Festus Hollingsworth.

“And just who shall I say will be calling him?” I asked.

White Hat fished in several pockets before finding a battered business card, and he had to borrow my pen to cross out his own name and add that of his boss.

“I guess we’ll be going now,” he said.

Rob, Tinkerbell, and I watched as the two surveyors trooped back to an SUV parked far enough down the road that I’d never have seen it from our house. Maybe there wasn’t anything sinister in that. Maybe it was simply the most convenient spot to where they wanted to survey.

Then again …

Tinkerbell whined slightly as they went and strained a little at the leash, causing the surveyors to glance back nervously over their shoulders. The llamas were following them, and to my great delight, just before they reached the fence, Groucho, the largest of the llamas, nailed White Hat with a gob of smelly green llama spit. Maybe they weren’t such bad watch animals after all.

“Tinkerbell wouldn’t really have attacked them, you know,” Rob said when they were out of earshot.

“I didn’t say she would,” I said. “I said I’d sic my dog on them. You know Spike would jump at the chance.”

“Yeah.” He sighed, then patted Tinkerbell as if appreciating her more mellow temperament. I winced. I was resigned to the possibility that Rob might emerge from this whole adventure with a dog of his own, but did he have to pick the largest one possible?

“I think in Virginia these days you have to have blight,” he said.

I waited for some explanation that would make this remark comprehensible. Rob just beamed at me.

“What do you mean, ‘you have to have blight’?” I asked finally. “Because I’d really rather not if it’s all the same.”

“For eminent domain. I think the new law says that you can’t seize property for economic development unless it’s blighted.”

“Well, we should be fine, then,” I said. “Does our property look blighted?”

“No, no,” he said, a little too hastily. “It’s looking better all the time.”

Great. My own brother thought our house looked blighted. Who knew what someone with real standards would think?

I’d worry about that later.

“Did you need me for something?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. I sighed. I knew Rob well enough to translate. “Not really,” probably meant, “Yes, but I don’t want to admit it, so I’m going to make you drag it out of me with pliers.”

“Just spit it out,” I said. “You made points, helping with the surveyors. You’re in my good books right now. As long as you don’t make me play twenty questions.”

He visibly braced himself.

“Should I tell the chief that I’m not completely alibied for all of Thursday night?” he asked.

I closed my eyes and said nothing for a few moments, mainly because the only words that sprang to mind were ones I was trying to expunge from my vocabulary long before the boys began talking.

“Meg?”

“Yes.” I opened my eyes. “You should definitely tell the chief. Better for you to tell him than for him to find out from someone else. Just how did you happen not to have an alibi? I thought you were all together for hours.”

“We were,” he said. “Most of the time. But Clarence and I went to the shelter early, around nine thirty, so he could get the animals crated before Dad and Grandpa got there. And pretty soon we realized we didn’t have enough crates. There were like a dozen or so more animals than there were the day before. Clarence thinks maybe someone tipped off the Clay County Animal Shelter and they dumped most of their animals on us at the last minute.”

I winced. Neighboring Clay County’s budget crisis was even worse than ours, so it made sense, both that the animal lovers would leak news of the planned burglary and that Clay County would seize the chance to find new homes for their unwanted animals. But it would further expand the chief’s list of people who knew Parker might be in his truck Thursday night.