Death's Half Acre Page 5

Other neighbors spoke of the dust and noise from a steady stream of dump trucks on a narrow dirt road. Then some of the new people from Grayson Village spoke of how they hadn’t moved to North Carolina to smell like New Jersey. “We don’t want our neighborhood to be known as the armpit of Colleton County, okay?”

  Another consultation of the commissioners, then Thad announced that Coburn’s application was denied because the easement was insufficient for dump truck traffic.

  When they moved on to an application to change the zoning for a lot down near Makely from agriculture/residential to commercial, we got up and left.

  As we walked out to the parking lot, I asked Daddy, “So how you like living in a place where its value’s based on how many rooftops they can count?”

  “Long as they keep giving us the agricultural assessment, I reckon I can stand it,” he said, climbing into his red pickup.

  I followed him back to the farm and when he pulled up to his back door and waved good night, I continued on down the lane past the smaller house where Maidie and Cletus Holt have lived for the past thirty or so years. Maidie keeps house for him and Cletus helps with the garden and yard work. About a half-mile farther on, the lane splits. The left one leads to Seth and Minnie’s, the other to the house I now shared with Dwight and Cal and Cal’s dog, Bandit, a mixed-breed terrier with a mask of dark hair across his eyes, which is how he got his name.

  It was not quite nine-thirty when I let myself in and found Dwight at the dining table with a glass of beer and stacks of manila file folders spread out in front of him. Bandit came down the hallway to make sure I wasn’t some stranger he needed to protect Dwight from, yawned widely, and trotted back to Cal’s room, where he sleeps at Cal’s feet.

  “Looks serious,” I said of Dwight’s folders.

  He gave me a weary smile. “We need at least two more patrol cars, three uniforms, and two detectives. Bo says he can only pry one car and two men out of the commissioners, so we’ve got to figure out how to deploy our people for maximum coverage.”

  “Oh, didn’t you hear?” I asked with phony brightness. “All this growth gives us such a large tax base that you can probably get five cars and ten more officers in another year or two. Of course, by that time, the population will have tripled so you’ll still be playing catch-up.”

  He leaned back in his chair and took a swallow from his half-empty glass. “Does this mean the stump dump passed?”

  “Actually, it didn’t,” I said although I immediately began to rant about how we were nothing but a bunch of rooftops these days. “God, listen to me! I’m turning into one of those cranky old ladies who yearn for how things used to be when the world was young.”

  “C’mere, old lady,” he said.

  I took a sip of his beer and sat down on his lap. His arms went around me but our lips had barely touched when the phone rang.

  Dwight sighed and let me up. “That’ll be Will. I told him you’d probably be back by now.”

  He was right. Will’s name and number were on the phone screen.

  “Hey, Will,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “How come you don’t ever leave your cell phone on?” my brother complained. “What’s the point of having one if you don’t use it?”

  “I use it,” I said. “But I use it at my own convenience, not everyone else’s. Did you want something or did you only call to bitch at me about my cell phone?”

  Will’s the oldest of my mother’s four children, and like my other ten brothers, he thinks he can still boss me around.

  “I was wondering if you’ve got some free time tomorrow?”

  “My lunch hour. Why?”

  “Remember Linsey Thomas?”

  “Of course I remember him.”

  “Remember how his cousin came up last summer and took everything out of the house he wanted and sold the rest of the contents to me?”

  “So?”

  “So I put most of the furnishings in my big fall auction back in September, but now I’m getting around to his books and papers and I found a bunch of files in a hassock and one of them has your name on it. Mostly clippings and stuff. You want to come over to the warehouse tomorrow and pick it up?”

  “Sure,” I said, waiting for the real reason for his call.

  “And there are some court records and stuff that maybe you could look through and tell me if I should toss them or turn them over to the historical center? Shouldn’t take you more than an hour. I’ll pick up some sandwiches or something.”

  As I hesitated, he said, “There’s a file on Daddy, too. Linsey started a story about you and him three or four years ago.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, but here’s what’s crazy. It’s like he thought you and Daddy had some sort of connection to G. Hooks Talbert before he started buying up the land for Grayson Village. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Very,” I said.

  Only three people knew about the devil’s bargain Daddy had made with Talbert: me, Talbert himself, and Daddy. How the hell could Linsey Thomas have heard about it? Or was it merely his instinct for taking a closer look at things that might not be what they seemed? I remember his asking me why our governor had appointed me instead of a conservative male Democrat closer to his own political leanings. I had shrugged and made a flip answer about the governor recognizing that the best man for the job was a liberal woman.

  After agreeing to meet him at his warehouse at noon, I hung up and Dwight raised a quizzical eyebrow. “What was that about?”

  “Will’s been going through Linsey Thomas’s papers and thought I might want a file he found about me—clippings and things of public record, but maybe I’ll start a scrapbook or something. Now where were we?”

  He grinned and patted his knee. “You were here.”

  “Right,” I said.

  (Ping!)

  CHAPTER 4

  . . . I was

  born in that house in the hedge, the dogyard

  outback, the mulestables, chickens running

  free, the hogpen homey with grunts and

  tail-twitches . . .

  —Fiddledeedee, by Shelby Stephenson

  Oyez, oyez, oyez!” intoned the bailiff in my courtroom next morning. “This honorable court for the County of Colleton is now open and sitting for the dispatch of its business. God save the state and this honorable court, the Honorable Judge Deborah Knott pleasant and presiding. Be seated.”

  He paused as if hearing his words on a playback track and looked up at me sheepishly. “I mean, Judge Deborah Knott present and presiding.”

  I laughed. “You saying I’m not pleasant, Mr. Overby?”

  “Not me, ma’am.” He cast a significant eye to the side bench where three attorneys waited for their cases to be called.

  Two of them had broad grins. The third, the one who was audibly snickering, was my own cousin Reid Stephenson.

  “A little decorum here, gentlemen,” I said with mock sternness.

  Today’s calendar listed the usual DWIs, the bad checks, the drunk-and-disorderlies, the shoplifters, and the brawlers. Usual to me, that is, and to the prosecutors and attorneys, and even to most of the defendants. But there are always some for whom this is a first-time event.

  About ninety minutes into our morning session, Kevin Foster pulled a shuck and said, “State versus Dorothy Arnfeldt and Monica Udell. Assault and battery.”

  Both looked to be middle-class white women, late forties. Both were charged with assault and battery, and even though both looked embarrassed to be there, both had facial expressions that proclaimed the righteousness of whatever actions had brought them to my courtroom.

  Although they were neighbors, this was clearly not kiss-and-make-up time for either of them. They sat at the defense table with their attorneys, George Francisco and my cousin Reid, between them.

  “How do you plead?” I asked.

  “Not guilty!” they chorused.

  The older attorney placed a calming hand on Mrs. Udell’s arm and ro
se to address me. “Your Honor, my client pleads guilty, but with extenuating circumstances.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Francisco,” I said and looked to the prosecution’s table and ADA Kevin Foster. “Call your first witness, Mr. Foster.”

  A uniformed patrol officer took the stand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. Referring to his notes, Officer Maynes described how he had responded to a call about a domestic disturbance on the outskirts of Cotton Grove in February in the late afternoon. Stripped of the formal officialese, he had arrived to find these two women slugging it out in the backyard of the Udell domicile. A dead and mangled chicken was being worried by a dog owned by Mrs. Arnfeldt, whose backyard butted up against that of Mrs. Udell.

  “As best I could make out, Your Honor, Mrs. Udell keeps a few chickens in her backyard. Mrs. Arnfeldt said that one of them flew over the hedge that separates the two yards and her terrier got hold of it and killed it. Mrs. Arnfeldt says the dog was in his own yard and she’s had trouble with Mrs. Udell’s chickens scratching in her flower gardens. Mrs. Udell says the dog was not fenced and came into her yard and killed her chicken. She got the little .22 rifle she keeps to kill snakes and squirrels and was going to shoot the dog when Mrs. Arnfeldt jumped her.”

  “The dead chicken was in Mrs. Udell’s yard?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And the dog was in her yard, too?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Were there any witnesses to the incident?”

  “Not to my knowledge. The 911 call came from the Arnfeldt house. I believe her daughter.”

  On the bench in the front row, a teenage girl in torn jeans and a long-sleeved orange top that showed off her navel ring gave an involuntary nod.

  “According to her statement, she saw the altercation from the window of her room on the second floor after it was already in progress.”

  Again the girl in the front row nodded.

  “When you arrived, what did you see?” Kevin asked.

  “As I came around the corner of the house, I saw Mrs. Udell give Mrs. Arnfeldt a shove, and their language had a lot of profanity. Both had lacerations on their faces and their clothes had dirt and grass and chicken manure on them.”

  “Your witness,” Kevin said to the nearer of the two attorneys.

  Despite his soft voice and courteous manners, George Francisco has the tanned and athletic build of an outdoorsman. He doesn’t like to argue criminal cases and I wasn’t quite sure why he had agreed to represent Monica Udell.

  “Tell me, Officer Maynes,” he said. “Is it against the law to own chickens in this county?”

  “No, sir. Not outside town limits. Some towns do have regulations, but—”

  “Does the Udell residence lie within the limits of Cotton Grove?”

  “No, sir. About a quarter-mile outside.”

  “And is there a leash law in the county?”

  “Some of the towns have them, but not unincorporated areas.”

  “Was the dog on a leash when you arrived?”

  “No, sir.”

  Francisco took an eight-by-ten photo from the folder before him and asked for permission to approach. I nodded.

  He showed the picture to me, to Reid and Mrs. Arnfeldt, and to Kevin Foster before handing it to Maynes. “Is this a picture you took of the dead chicken?”

  “Yessir. In fact, that’s the toe of my shoe in the corner here.”

  “Your Honor, I would ask that this picture be submitted into evidence as Exhibit A.”

  “So ordered,” I said.

  After looking at the picture, I thought I knew where Francisco was going with this one and I was surprised that Reid hadn’t caught it. But then Reid was town-raised and maybe a bit clueless about chickens.

  “Thank you, Officer. No further questions,” he said.

  “Mr. Stephenson?” I said with careful formality. Even though I have eleven older brothers, Reid is the closest I’ve ever come to having a younger one. When I first joined the law firm of Lee and Stephenson, his father, Brix Junior, was still practicing. As soon as Reid passed the bar exam, Brix Junior retired to Southern Pines, where he could play golf every day if he wanted, and left Reid to take his place. Reid’s a bright and competent attorney, but he does have trouble keeping his pants zipped, which irritates the hell out of John Claude Lee, his senior partner.

  As Dorothy Arnfeldt’s attorney, Reid smiled pleasantly at the officer and said, “This is not the first time you’ve been called to my client’s home, is it?”

  “No, sir. She’s filed complaints about the chickens . . . well, the first time it was about a rooster crowing early of a morning, and a week before this incident, she complained that the chickens were scratching up some flowers she’d just set out in her backyard.”

  “When you say ‘backyard,’ Deputy Maynes, exactly what do you mean?”

  The officer was puzzled. “You want me to describe them?”

  “Just the general size, please.”

  “Well, the Arnfeldt lot is like most of the new places they’re building. Maybe a quarter to a third of an acre.”

  “It’s part of Crescent Ridge subdivision?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where there’s a homeowner’s association?”

  The officer shook his head. “I wouldn’t know about that. Anyhow, Mrs. Udell’s place isn’t part of it. Crescent Ridge backs up on what’s left of the old Crandall farm. I’d say it’s about two acres.”

  “And are Mrs. Udell’s two acres fenced in?”

  “No, sir. Just her chicken yard,” he said.

  “How high is that fence?”

  “About five feet.”

  “And the hedges that separate the properties?”

  “Maybe four feet?”

  “Could a chicken fly over them?”

  “Objection,” said George. “Calls for a personal opinion.”

  “Sustained,” I said.

  “Your folks keep chickens when you were a boy?” Reid asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you ever see one of your chickens fly over a five-foot fence?”

  Maynes grinned. “Yessir!”

  “And what about roosters?”

  “Well, we kept one to service the hens and—”

  “No, I’m referring to their crowing habits. When do they start crowing?”

  “Soon as the sky lightens up of a morning.”

  “Are they loud?”

  “I could sleep through it myself,” said Maynes, who was clearly enjoying himself, “but it always woke my dad and he woke the rest of us.”

  “No further questions,” Reid said and sat down.

  “Redirect, Your Honor,” said George Francisco. “Officer Maynes, when you were in the Udell yard, did you see any roosters?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Thank you,” said Francisco, and he, too, sat down.

  “Further witnesses?” I asked.

  “No, ma’am. The prosecution rests.”

  I told Maynes that he could step down, then asked the defense table, “Who goes first?”

  Reid’s client rose and crossed to the witness stand. Dorothy Arnfeldt wore a tailored navy blue suit. The neckline of her white blouse had a narrow ruffle and showed a tiny bit of cleavage. Simple gold earrings and gold wedding band. She sat with her shoulders squared and her demeanor was respectful, but by no means intimidated. Although Arnfeldt was her married name, she appeared to be of Scandinavian descent herself: fair skin, thick silver-blond hair, strong nose and chin. Her accent was from “a little further up the road,” as my mechanic refers to states north of us, and indeed, after giving her name and address and swearing to speak truthfully, she told of moving down from Detroit when her husband was transferred last fall.

  She spoke of how pleasantly surprised they were to realize they could buy a new and bigger house with a bigger yard than they had been able to afford in Detroit. “Then I discovered that we were just a few feet away from a dirty
chicken house. And that the owner let them run wild through our yards, too. The lady next door warned me to watch where I put my feet when I walked back where the hedge is, but I stepped in a pile of chicken dirt and tracked it in on my new carpet before I realized, so I went over and very nicely asked her to keep her chickens in her own yard.”

  “And what was her response?” Reid asked.

  “She said she’d try, but that they were used to roaming around before any houses were built there.”

  “Did she keep the chickens penned?”

  “Not all the time. And once when she let them out, three flew straight over the hedge to where I’d had somebody dig a flower garden for me. That time, she said chickens were naturally drawn to freshly turned dirt and that her chickens were doing me a favor by eating all the cutworms in the soil. I told her I could do without the favor and that’s when I called to report it.”

  “What about the rooster?”

  “It didn’t crow only in the morning, it crowed all day long. And those hens! Every time they lay an egg, they tell the world about it. So, yes, I’ve complained about the noise.”

  “What about your dog?”

  “We have an invisible electric fence, so she stays in our own yard.”

  On the day of the altercation, she said that she heard her dog barking and looked out in time to see a chicken come flying over the hedge. The dog immediately pounced on it. “I rushed out to try to save it, but Pixie grabbed the chicken and squeezed through a gap in the hedge with it. When I got through, I saw Mrs. Udell come out of the house with a gun in her hands and she said a chicken-killing dog shouldn’t be allowed to live . . . well, that’s not precisely what she said, but I can’t repeat the kind of language she actually used. Anyhow—”

  “Wait a minute, Mrs. Arnfeldt,” Reid said. “Was your invisible fence turned off?”

  “It was on, but it’s not set very high. We don’t want to really hurt Pixie, just discourage her from straying. It’s strong enough that she never crosses it when she’s out there alone and unprovoked, but if something like a chicken flies into our yard and gets her all excited, then I guess she just charges right across it.”