McMansion Read online

  He was nicknamed “Evil Engineer” Edwards by the hardworking volunteers of the Newbury Open Space Conservancy. Rumor had it he was a drunk. But I never saw him drunk and he didn’t look drunk tonight. Tall, broad-shouldered, reasonably good looking, and well-dressed in a natty tweed jacket that said, “I’m not a lawyer, just a simple engineer,” he soon was wrapping the commissioners around his practiced finger and smoothly puncturing the complaints of the homeowners who rose trembling to speak in public for the first time since they failed Show and Tell in fourth grade.

  I attended P&Z hearings religiously. It behooved my business to keep up with the latest projects. And it behooved my spirit, if not my soul, to voice complaint when I thought a project begged to be complained about. Tonight I had a third reason: I wanted a close look at the dead Billy’s colleague. I’d seen Evil Engineer in action before, of course, but only from the perspective of a townsman obliged to protest pillage that masqueraded as homebuilding. Tonight I was hoping to learn something about their relationship that might prove useful to Ira Roth’s doubt campaign.

  Edwards was defending a project that everyone had hoped had died with Billy Tiller. But, as Fred Gleason had hinted this morning, the corporate entity Total Landscape—nicknamed Total Land Rape by the Conversancy wits—was moving ahead with it, Edwards reported. I recalled Jimmy Butler complaining that Billy was grabbing his balls from the grave.

  Chairman Rick Bowland—a volunteer, like all the board members, who gave up a ton of free time for the dubious pleasure of refereeing cat fights—inquired, “Who’s running Total Landscape now that Billy’s gone?”

  A lawyer recently moved to town introduced himself as Owen Woodward and said that he had been engaged to represent the company which was re-organizing management.

  Was the company financially capable of posting the road-building and fire-fighting tanks performance bonds the town required, Ted Barrett, a commissioner, asked.

  No problem, said Attorney Woodward. They had plenty of cash on hand, excellent credit, and “Mr. Tiller” had smoothed the transition with astute, even perspicacious estate planning. The lawyer bowed his head as if suggesting a moment of mournful appreciation, which no one seemed inclined to join.

  With those distractions out of the way, Evil Engineer Edwards resumed pitching Billy’s plan to build condo apartments in a neighborhood zoned for houses on two acres. It was a typical Billy Tiller move against a neighborhood of mostly smaller, older houses, inhabited by people who couldn’t afford a fight. (A similar proposal in one of Newbury’s estate sections would have pitted Total Landscape against litigators awaiting presidential nomination to the Supreme Court.)

  A good but not excellent case could be made defending the town’s half-century precedent of two-, three-, and four-acre zoning regulations—which my grandfather had written when he was first selectman. Not excellent because Billy’s people were proposing that some of the condos be reserved for the elderly, and some for low-income people, and some courts had ruled that towns had to support a variety of housing stock for a variety of types of people. So while the density question was one way to resist the intrusion, the best-case argument against Tiller Town Estate Houses was flooding.

  Fred Franklin, whose hayfield had been turned into a lake by Tiller Heights, a development contiguous to the proposed Tiller Town Estates Houses, asked about flood effects. E. Eddie Edwards claimed that wasn’t germane to this separate application. Fred Franklin, turning red in the face, said that it was seeing as how he had lost a tractor in quicksand while attempting to mow his fields, which had been high and dry before “some big city judge from Stamford” allowed Tiller Heights to flood him out. The Chairman asked Engineer Edwards to give assurances that diverting the same streams, again, wouldn’t cause more flooding. Eddie Edwards replied that he could not recall the circumstances without going back to his office to review his files.

  I stood up to say, “It’s only two years since you promised that project could survive a hundred-year flood. You built it last spring. Last summer joggers running past Fred’s hayfield had an opportunity to cross-train for the swim segment of a triathlon race. And now you’re submitting site plans to build right next to it. How much reviewing do you need?”

  “Good question,” growled Fred.

  Total Land Rape’s Attorney Woodward said, “The chair has not recognized Mr. Abbott.”

  I said, “The project that Engineer Edwards designed flooded just last August, normally a dry month. It can’t be that far from his memory, Mr. Chairman. Especially if he’s proposing to overturn existing zoning to cram a condo development right next to it.”

  E.E.E. cast a plaintive look at Chairman Bowland, who said, “Ben, I have not recognized you. Please sit down.”

  I said, “If a student at the middle school made excuses like Engineer Edwards for not doing his homework, that kid would be sent home with a note to its parents.”

  Chairman Bowland banged his gavel. “Ben—”

  I said, “Where he intends to send his next flood is certainly germane to this proposed adjacent development. Unless he’s offering to buy kayaks for the neighbors.”

  “Ben, either come to order or leave.”

  I left.

  Or tried to. But I was still storming up the aisle to a gratifying smattering of applause when the fire siren atop Town Hall snarled a bone-shaking bass note that soared to a soprano scream.

  Chapter Nine

  Four men and three women dropped notes, flood-plain drawings, and traffic-pattern maps and barreled out the door, down the hall, and across the parking lot, where the Newbury Volunteer Hook and Ladder Company One duty watch was raising the tall firehouse doors and cranking up the engines.

  Rick Bowland banged his gavel again. “Meeting adjourned until two weeks from tonight.” Those homeowners who hadn’t run off to fight the fire gathered up their papers, moving slowly as if unsure whether something good or bad had happened. Edwards and his new lawyer looked annoyed, and as Edwards caught up with me on the steps, he said, “You’re like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.”

  “Didn’t the Dutch Boy end up the hero?”

  Edwards looked at me. Or, rather, he looked through me, like an SUV driver pretending he doesn’t see the car that has the right of way. “As I understand it, the Dutch Boy developed gangrene in that finger. They didn’t amputate in time and he eventually lost his whole hand and died in the poor house.”

  He brushed past. Before I got to the sidewalk, Total Landscape’s new lawyer took my arm. “I want to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “About going around town raking up unpleasantness from the past that harms my clients’ business.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked innocently, while firmly removing his hand.

  “You know exactly what I mean, Mr. Abbott. You are harassing people about past encounters with Mr. Tiller.”

  I said, “First of all, I’m not harassing, I’m asking. Second, I’m working for the accused’s lawyer. Let’s keep in mind that the kid has a right to a defense.”

  “Might it not be wise to let the trial take its course without slinging mud?”

  “Wise?”

  “Wise,” he shot back. “Good for you.”

  “Are you threatening me?” I asked, stupidly. I was too surprised to react any other way.

  Woodward stepped closer and spoke in a low voice. “I’m telling you that there will be development in this town, like it or not. But if you work with us, rather than fighting us, we will work with you to help preserve space and minimize impact. And I am warning you that we will not work with someone who treats us like an enemy.”

  Maybe I was getting soft. But I actually paused to weigh the consequences of punching out an attorney in front of witnesses on Town Hall steps.

  He took my hesitation the wrong way and pressed what he seemed to think was an advantage. “Also, you ought to consider the consequences to your busi
ness were you to lose your real estate license as a result of actionable complaints to the many, various, and appropriate authorities in Hartford.”

  I looked at him in utter disbelief. It wasn’t as nasty as Andrew Sammis attempting to saw my face off. But it could sting. If they really went after me I would have to waste time and energy driving to Hartford to defend myself, and probably spend money on lawyers, too.

  “Or,” he said, “we might exercise our right to sue you. Have you ever been sued? By someone with deep pockets who keeps attorneys on retainer? It is a stomach-churning, sleep-destroying experience. It gets so you dread the mailbox and the telephone.”

  I stepped closer. “I am about to churn your stomach with a short left, which no one will see because my fist will travel only six inches to ram your gut into your spine.”

  He tried to back away. Friendly as a Rotarian, I encircled him in my right arm. “You must be new in town. Among our old Yankee customs, we do not threaten independent Realtors unless we’re prepared to duke it out with them.”

  “I should warn you that I am a retired Marine officer.”

  “Glad to hear it. I would not want it getting around town that I brutalized a man who couldn’t defend himself.”

  Woodward was cool enough to manufacture an expression that resembled a grin. “Hey, lighten up, Mr. Abbott.”

  “Call me Ben. And now, if you will excuse me, there’s a fire I want to attend.”

  I ran into the street and flagged down Scooter MacKay, who was chasing the fire engines with a blue light strobing in his Range Rover’s windshield. I buckled in as he floored it, reached over, and freed his dinner napkin from his belt.

  “Where is it?”

  Scooter keeps scanners on his desk, sideboard, night table, lawn mower, and dashboard eavesdropping 24-7 on police and fire radios. “Harry’s Olds.”

  We knew, of course, that General Motors’ Oldsmobile division was out of business and that Harry Greenan had retired and sold the dealership to Dave Goldsmith, a refugee from the crowded Southern Fairfield County I-95 Gold Coast corridor who had arrived just in time for the boom in Chevy and Cadillac SUVs and Hummers. It was just that Harry had started selling Oldsmobiles there four decades before Scooter and I were born and the name stuck in our minds.

  “You know this new lawyer, Woodward?”

  “Met him at the Lions. He’s handling Billy’s stuff.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “More city than country, lawyer-wise. And now that you ask, more business guy than lawyer, though he mentioned he was affiliated with a big New York firm. Why?”

  “I saw him at the P&Z. Pushing Billy’s condo scam.”

  I found it hard to believe that Attorney Woodward and Total Landscape feared that Billy’s past threatened their future. So I chalked it up to the lawyerly instinct to head off any conceivable trouble before conception.

  Half a mile out of town, Scooter said, “Wow!”

  Wow, indeed. The fire cast an orange beacon brilliant as a lighthouse.

  Most Newbury fires are brush fires and quickly extinguished. House fires are rarer and tend to be clothes drier lint fires. While spreading horrific smoke damage when the homeowner’s laundry chute functions as a chimney between laundry room and bedroom, they aren’t that much fun to watch. And with development gobbling up the dairy farms, neither of us had seen a good barn fire since we were in high school. But Goldsmith’s Cadillac and Chevrolet looked well on its way to a highly enjoyable event, as tonight it was unlikely anybody was trapped inside. Just a good, rip-roaring fire any amateur pyromaniac would be stopping the car for.

  Trooper Moody was there ahead of us, stopping traffic to make way for the fire engines. Scooter parked on the shoulder and we walked quickly toward the flames. Trooper Moody was waving people off, but he let us pass—Scooter because he was Press, me because Ollie would not have minded at all if his least favorite real estate agent contracted second-degree burns.

  But immediately inside the fire department’s Day-Glo orange diamond warning signs and parking cones both of us were stopped by Jay Meadows, first assistant chief of Newbury Hook and Ladder, who was acting as incident commander. Jay greeted Scooter and me with a cheerful, “Stay back, you idiots.”

  “I gotta get pictures!” Scooter protested, waving his camera.

  Jay informed us that a burning car might blow up so maybe it would be a good idea to stop here now. And while we were at it, would we please get out of the way of the pumper that was backing away before an explosion forced a new round of bake sales to buy a replacement. Not to mention that they couldn’t spare any firefighters. For the first time ever, there was a shortage of volunteers as the town grew larger and more people worked far away. Nobody was panicking yet, though they had placed a modest sign in front of the firehouse—Volunteer Wanted. We Need One Good Man or Woman.

  I always felt vaguely unimportant at fires. The firefighters look double-wide in their rubber boots and fireproof garments, and Paul Bunyan tall. While wearing helmets, dragging hose, and carrying pike poles and portable extinguishers, they clearly deserved to be here, having devoted time and energy training for this.

  Scooter snapped a bunch of pictures and scribbled some notes. We couldn’t see exactly what was burning, but the flames were approaching a closely parked rank of Chevy Trackers, Blazers, Tahoes, Suburbans, and Avalanches. I said, “Write down Battleship Row.”

  “What for?”

  “They’re lined up like the battleships at Pearl Harbor. If one of them catches fire they’ll all blow up like the Japanese had bombed them.”

  Scooter stopped writing and gave me a pitying look. “My only readers who remember Pearl Harbor are on life support.”

  “What about the history teacher?”

  Heavy machinery, shouting, and radios blaring drowned out whatever he answered. Flames lit the night, flickering shadows all the way to the tops of tall trees. More sirens descended as the Frenchtown unit responded. Jay Meadows switched on his bull horn. In a voice now sounding more anxious than cheerful he ordered his men and woman to fall back.

  Not a moment too soon. Flame raced up the hood of a Chevy Suburban, danced across its roof, and tumbled down its square backside like a waterfall. Two seconds later the SUV’s gas tank exploded with an earsplitting crack that threw fire and burning metal onto the Trackers, Blazers, Tahoes, Suburbans, and Avalanches lined up in a long, neat row.

  It looked for a moment like the high-end half of the business would escape, as Harry’s inheritor had parked the Cadillacs at a distance to denote exclusivity. But when the last Blazer blew up the explosion ignited the spare tire hanging off the back rack and sent it soaring across the divide and through the windshield of a Platinum Edition ESV Escalade. The ESV Escalade, burning fiercely, exploded a nearby SRX, and an EXT Cadillac pickup truck caught fire. And then the whole row ignited, one vehicle after another, like a luxurious Roman candle. Last to detonate were the Hummers, and soon it looked as if their prospective owners had, in a burst of vicarious patriotism, off-roaded to Iraq.

  Averaging seventy thousand bucks a pop, the explosions were not going to make the insurance underwriters happy. The good news was that fewer gas guzzlers would clog Newbury’s roads in the coming months. In fact, it was a wonderful fire for someone who hated gas guzzlers, too-bright lights in their rearview mirrors, and fat vehicles hogging the passing lane. An environmentalist’s dream—tarnished, to be sure, by a soupy black smoke of incinerated tires, paint, plastic, and insulation spewing into the night sky.

  Poor Dave Goldsmith looked stricken. Gas prices had gone down, recently; a temporary blip or not, no one knew, but there were plenty of people around with more money than brains and the damned things were selling again, which meant that General Motors was not likely to allocate hard-to-find vehicles to dealers who had been so careless as to let their stock catch on fire. I offered my condolences and he told me that he had borrowed way too much to exp
and his showroom on the basis of imminent sales of vehicles now up in smoke.

  Dave was so upset that he started wandering toward the fire. I’d sold him a huge old house and he had a slew of brothers, sisters, and in-laws planning to move to the area, too, so he was not the kind of customer I could afford to lose. Just in time, I grabbed his arm and jogged him firmly away. Another explosion boomed. A fender whizzed close overhead like a helicopter blade. The serious sound of such a large object parting the air and nearly scorching our hair sobered Dave quickly. “Geez-zus! Thanks, Ben.”

  “You okay?”

  “Sort of.” He gazed across the road at the smoldering wreckage that had been his livelihood. “Could have been a lot worse. If this happened during the day, somebody would have gotten killed.”

  I didn’t state the obvious, that if someone were around they’d have noticed the first car burning in time to put it out. Nor did I ask him whether in his experience as car dealer he had ever seen such a fire. He had enough on his mind. So I asked again if he was okay and when he assured me he wasn’t going to run back into the flames, I went looking for Jay Meadows and found him huddled with his lieutenants. I waited until he had sent them back to hose down the remains, and then asked, “How’d it start?”

  “Accelerant.”

  “Arson?”

  “It looks like an accelerant to me.”

  “Like gasoline?”

  “We’ll ask the fire marshal,” Jay replied.

  “Cars are full of gasoline,” I noted.

  “In their tanks.” Jay looked really pissed off. “Whoever did it could have killed my people. It’s not like some lamebrain starting a brush fire.”

  “If it was arson.”

  “See you later, Ben. I’m busy.”

  I wandered away. Scooter was busy interviewing firemen. Ollie was busy directing traffic. First Selectman Vicky McLachlan drove up with Tim and jumped out, chestnut curls flying. She didn’t see me as she hurried over to get a report from Jay Meadows. I debated walking home. But I really didn’t want to meet a driver with failing night vision on a dark road while I was wearing a dark jacket and trousers, so I waited at the edge of things to catch a ride with Scooter.