“Wanted to see it after you repaired all the damage from the earthquake, which fortunately didn’t affect the landscaping too much.” She glanced down at the blueprints. “They’re still easier to read than something on a computer.”
Paul pointed to the center road. “You can see the homes that are finished are already landscaped. Crepe myrtles for summer, boxwoods, every kind of oak imaginable. Each home has a different palette, so to speak.”
“I noticed you haven’t put in Bradford pears or Leland cypress,” Harry replied.
“Love the Bradford pears,” Paul said. “Just love them, but they aren’t as sturdy as I would like, and if we use another type of pear, an older type, more work for the owner.”
She pointed to rows of trees lining each street. “Each street is different?”
Marshall answered, “We’re just firming up putting in the white dogwoods for this street. The first cross street will be pink dogwoods. Some streets will have conifers, others oaks, hickories, even persimmon. It will be beautiful, Harry. Distinctive.”
“No locusts?” Harry asked. “They bloom in the spring and smell divine.”
“Thorns,” Paul quickly replied. “We’ve narrowed this down to seasons and trees that can’t really hurt a child. Those locust thorns do damage. And we tried to avoid trees that have too many droppings, like black gum. Personally, I like black gum, but it creates more work for the maintenance crews.”
Harry looked at Marshall. “Maintenance crews?”
“Continental Estates will have a maintenance fee, a garbage collection fee. The monthly bills will be small, especially when the development is completely sold out, but this is the only way to ensure the elegant look. You can’t have one person who doesn’t trim the street tree in front of their house next to one who does. Just makes for bad feelings.”
“Guess it would.” Harry then asked, “How’s the endowed chair coming along?”
“Tim Jardine raised another million and a half.” Marshall broadly smiled. “The response has been strong.”
“Did Ginger ever see any of this?” Harry asked, indicating the development.
Marshall nodded to Harry. “He did. Paul and I drove him around, asked advice. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of another development on old land, some of it a land grant, but he knew it was unstoppable, so he accepted a historical look, if you will.”
“He even identified for me what was fashionable in gardening then,” said Paul. “There we had a lot of help from the Monticello people and Montpelier, too. A lot of help.” He put his hands in his pockets.
“A land grant?” said Harry. “I kind of remember Ginger, years ago when he gave us the tour, mentioning it, but, well, like I said, that was years ago.”
Ever eager to display his knowledge and his fidelity to his professor, Marshall said, “Continental Estates is on the Ashcombe land grant. A small piece of this is old Barracks land, Colonel Harvey’s land that was cut off from the hundreds of camp acres later by a grandson. But I can tell you I have thoroughly researched this chain of title.”
Harry’s face went white; she swayed a little.
Paul grabbed her elbow. “Harry, are you all right?”
Pulling herself back together, she hoarsely said, “Yes. Sorry. A little light-headed. Made me think of Frank Cresey,” she blurted out.
“Frank?” both men said in unison.
“He was obsessed with Ginger in a strange way. Read all of Ginger’s books, even after graduation. Would go to the library and read. Read anything about the Revolutionary War. Odd.”
“That is odd, but he had been a good history student. Ginger always paid him that compliment,” Paul agreed.
“What he was obsessed with was Olivia,” Marshall said. “Well, nothing can be done about it now, but Harry, it seems you, too, are focused on Ginger and his work.”
“Yes, I guess I am. I feel I have to find out why he was killed. So I come back again and again here to what fascinated him. It’s a little crazy. I’ll get over it.”
“Hope so.” Marshall smiled.
After thanking them for showing her the plans, she bid them goodbye, got herself and the animals in the station wagon, and took a deep breath to clear her head. Then she drove out.
She didn’t break the speed limit, although she wanted to. She drove straight to Susan’s, hopped out of the car, ran in the back door.
“Where you at?” she called.
“In the sunroom,” Susan called back.
“Get your purse. Come on.”
Susan walked out to Harry. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I figured out what Frank was talking about. You drive and I’ll call Cooper. Come on. Whatever you were doing can wait.”
Within minutes, Susan was driving. The cats and dog, alert, sat in the back. Harry had Cooper on her cellphone.
“Are you sure?” Cooper asked again.
“Yes. Chain of title. That’s what Frank meant. Susan and I are on our way to the county offices.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
—
In the wagon, under a conifer, windows down two inches, the animals fell asleep while inside the nearby building the three women leaned over the counter where land records are kept.
Given that Cooper was in uniform, cooperation was swift. But it would have been anyway.
The older lady behind the counter, Mildred Gianakos, laid out a large copy of an early map.
Pointing out the old roads, she said, “I think this is what you are asking. This is the Harvey land. It stayed in the family for generations. This is the Garth. All of this. Three thousand five hundred acres. Much of it in orchards.”
Harry tried to contain her excitement. “And you have the chain of title?”
“Copies. The original documents were fragile and irreplaceable, so way back, when they were photographed. They are all at Alderman Library, along with other early documents, climate controlled.”
Harry pointed to where she thought the original land-grant land was. “I thought this had been given by the king.”
Mildred went to her computer, pulled up information on original land grants. “Carter, m-m-m, that’s to the east.” She kept at it. “Why don’t you girls flip up the divider and stand behind me so you can see?”
They crowded around Mildred, quite handy with a computer, defying stereotypes about age.
“I had no idea there were that many land grants,” Susan said.
“The earliest ones were all east of here, around what is now Williamsburg, called Middle Plantation then; Jamestown, of course; and then once we reached the Fall Line, I mean, once colonists could live there, because it was a war zone between tribes, grants were given there, too. The Crown, depending on who wore it, gave the land grants as rewards, but also the recipient was expected to make the land productive. What the Old World craved was raw materials and exotic, exotic at the time, products from here.”
“Mildred, you sure know a lot,” Harry complimented her.
“Thank you, sweetie, but I had to learn. We get asked everything in here and lawyers are in and out like houseflies.” She giggled. “I didn’t say that.”
“Who else?” Cooper had been scribbling in her notebook.
“Historians. The late Professor McConnell could have worked my job, he knew so much. And over the last twenty years I would have to say that large home-building companies have been vigilant.”
Cooper’s antenna felt vibrations. “Like who?”
“Oh, Rinehart, Wade, Reese, even smaller ones. Some use the history as a calling card, but they do need to know where the boundaries are, you know, have there been disputes in the past, how were they settled? Plant a tree or build a fence two inches on the next man’s land and you could have a major problem. Hence, the lawyers in here.”
“I see.” Cooper hadn’t thought of that.