Death's Half Acre by Margaret Maron Read Free Book Online Page A

families in Mexico and Central America. No mention that most of the high-end new homes were occupied by white-collars who worked and shopped in Raleigh.
    No mention, that is, until the last speaker came to the microphone. She was a commercial developer who had moved here from Michigan and she was the most truthful person to speak for the raw hard realities of growth. She had statistics to bolster her contention that the more houses in Colleton County, the more commerce that would come.
    “When we do a flyover, all we’re doing is counting rooftops,” she said. “Doesn’t matter if those roofs are low-end starter houses or high-end mansions on two-acre lots. Every rooftop means at least three or four potential shoppers. The more growth, the more businesses you’re going to have here and the bigger your tax base to pay for the roads and schools and infrastructure.” She glanced at her watch and wound up her argument. “Rooftops, people. The more, the better. I was recently at a commercial trade show out in Las Vegas. When I told them I was a commercial developer in North Carolina, some of those business reps wanted to give me their cards. When I told them I was from Colleton County, they asked for my phone number. They know that this county is one of the twenty fastest-growing in the nation. You start limiting that growth and you’re not going to get your Wal-Marts, your McDonald’ses, or your Targets.”
    The whole courtroom burst into applause and yeah, most of them were in support of her optimistic, single-minded spin on how wonderful unfettered building could be, the rest of us were hoping that such a limitation would indeed slow the invasion of chain stores.
    Take that, NutriGood!
    After a brief consultation among the commissioners, Thad announced that because they were missing one of their members, they would take the planning board’s recommendation under advisement and table it until the next meeting. Half the audience left at that point, having made their feelings known.
    Next came the application of one Chester Coburn, who owned eight landlocked acres a half-mile to the west of us. His request to turn those eight acres into a stump dump had originally been approved by the planning board, but their chair was here tonight to point out that they had not realized that his only access to that land was through a thirty-foot wide “cart path” easement and not a fifty-foot easement as required for a real road.
    A stump dump is exactly what the name implies—a place where developers can rid themselves of the tree stumps that have been bulldozed up after they’ve clear-cut a tract of land.
    Coburn argued that a wider easement wouldn’t be necessary because his would be a puny little stump dump that would probably be open for only two or three years. He promised to follow all the regulations, cover the stumps with lots of dirt, and then grade the land so he could use it for something else. “I’m hoping to open a wholesale nursery and this will give me the seed money to build greenhouses,” he said.
    Minnie’s name was first on the speaker list for this item and it didn’t take her long to shoot it down. She merely reminded the commissioners of the stump dump over in neighboring Johnston County that had caught on fire by spontaneous combustion several months ago and was still smoldering despite all the efforts to put it out. “Yes, there are regulations to ensure this won’t happen here. Regulations cost nothing. But do we have enough paid inspectors to make sure this stump dump would meet those regulations? Do you know how much it’s cost Johnston to try to put out that fire? Do you know how much the dump’s neighbors have had to endure living downwind from the smell of burning, rotting wood?”
    In case they didn’t, she had facts and figures.
    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