“You made poor Luigi come along?”
“I volunteered,” he said. “ I want to see American democracy in action."
“Probably, you won’t see much democracy,” I warned him. “Not much action, either. These County Council meetings are pretty much a sham. All the decisions were made during backdoor deals.”
“Is that not illegal?” Luigi asked.
“To paraphrase the county historian, welcome to North Carolina.”
We followed a group of protestors with homemade signs into the courthouse. The Council’s planning commission met on the second floor in one of the rooms adjacent to the courtroom. When we entered, the room was standing room only.
I counted fourteen rows of seats, twenty chairs per row. Every one of them was filled with a person holding a placard. Behind the chairs and alongside the rows, dozens more people stood. They had placards, too, stapled to yardsticks to make protest signs.
We found a place to stand on the back wall.
In front of the room, separated from the gallery by velvet rope were two tables. The one facing the audience seated the seven members of the Allegheny County Planning Commission, all of whom shared the same deer-in-the-headlights look.
Mom sat at the table facing the Commissioners, with her back to the crowd. Mom’s attorney sat at her right elbow. I recognized him by his rumpled suit.
A third person sat the other end at the table. He had slicked backed hair and wore a pinstriped dark suit with a crimson square tucked into the breast pocket of the jacket.
Even from the back, I knew it was Trey Landis.
He leaned over to speak a silver-haired man sleeping in a wheelchair. The man raised his head, nodded twice, and fell back asleep.
“Who’s that?” Cedar whispered.
“George Deems Landis himself,” I said. “I’m surprised they brought him out tonight. His health is pretty fragile.”
The gavel came down, and the meeting came to order. The first and only item on the agenda was the discussion of a planned community in the western area of town, a mixed-use neighborhood that would feature homes, shopping, nature trails, and a championship golf course called Autumn Hills.
Mom’s attorney leaned over to whisper something in her ear.
Landis waved at several people in the crowd, and their placards vanished. One look from the man, and the signs went down. It wasn’t even a threatening look. It was a smile, wide, with gleaming teeth that could be only gotten from a dentist’s chair.
On the surface, it was a friendly gesture, but the smile was a threat.
The chair of the commission was a portly man in a pink dress shirt. “I believe this proposal is pro forma. We discussed this in closed session, as you know. The county engineer’s read over the plans and—“
“Point of order,” Mom interrupted. “I believe you skipped a step on the agenda. You’re required to begin the meeting with public input.”
“Sorry, didn’t see you.” The portly man covered his eyes to shield the bright lights. “Is there anybody, ah, here who’d like to comment?”
The crowd burst out in laughter.
“I take that as a yes.”
More laughter.
Even Trey Landis smiled.
“I’ll go first,” Mom said, “since I’m already sitting at the table.”
The chair pulled at his collar. “State your name for the record, ma’am.”
“You know my name, Charlie. I treated your dog for mange last week.”
The crowd hooted.
“Let’s stick to the subject, Dr. Rivenbark,” Charlie the chair said. “We don’t need an unruly puppet show here.”
Ouch, I thought. Charlie had obviously read Mom’s comments in the newspaper.
“Have it your way, then. Dr. Mary Harriet Rivenbark, DVM. For the record, I represent the mob behind me. We are here to protest the illegal removal of bodies from graves in Tin City.”
The chair covered the microphone with a meaty paw. He and the other six commissioners whispered for almost a minute.
“After conferring with my colleagues,” the chair said, “we think you should take this up with the sheriff. It’s out of our purview.”
The crowd booed. They raised their placards and chanted. The commissioners looked decidedly more nervous, but I noticed Landis never stopped smiling.
“That’s not true,” Mom said. “The sheriff referred the case to you, since you approved the development plan for Autumn Hills development without asking the Allegheny County Historical Society to research the property. If you were anything other than a rubber stamp for developers, you would’ve known there’s a cemetery on the property.”
“I expected better from a doctor,” Charlie said. “Where do you get off calling us a rubber stamp?”
“Like my granny always said,” Mom said, “if you lie with dogs, you’re going to get fleas.”
The crowd broke into applause. Half of them stood and waved their placards like a football crowd cheering a touchdown.
“Order! Order!” Charlie pounded the gavel. “Get hold of yourselves before I have a deputy throw you all out. And Mary Harriet—“
“Dr. Rivenbark to you.”
“—I think you’ve wasted enough time tonight.”
Mom covered the mic and asked her attorney a question.
“May I have a word, please?” Landis unhooked the microphone from the stand so that he could walk closer to the crowd. “This is all a misunderstanding, and I think I can clear it up to everybody’s satisfaction. I can see why you good people are upset. What Dr. Rivenbark describes is indeed a disturbing scenario. Let me assure that the truth is a different matter. The development of the so-called Tin City property is one hundred percent legal. We have complied with every federal regulation, every state law, every local statute. You see, state law requires that when human remains are moved, the next of kin must be located. If the next of kin cannot be relocated, then the County Commission must approve of a move. However, that is unnecessary, because we purchased the property from the next of kin. Before we acquired it, we agreed to the interment of a small, family cemetery with the owner, Mr. Troy Blevins, whom I believe is a local music teacher. Mr. Blevins is in attendance tonight, along with his sister, Athena.”
The crowd murmured, and Blevins stood up. His hands shook. Mr. Blevins had conducted the band through dozens of concerts, marching shows, and festivals, but this was the first time I had ever seen him nervous.
“It’s, um, true what, um, Mr. Landis told you,” Blevins said. The graveyard is, um, our family cemetery. Our grandparents are buried there, along with our aunts and uncles. Athena and I, we’re the last of the Blevins family and so, well, y’all know how it is these days with the government taxing everything.”
The sister stood up. I got my first clear look at her face.
It was Dr. K.
“They’re brother and sister?” I whispered to Cedar.
“Looks like it.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dr. K began, “what my brother is trying to say is, as embarrassing as this is, we had no choice but to sell the property. The inheritance taxes on our parents’ home were more than we could afford on our teachers’ salaries. We were facing a tax auction until Mr. Landis heard about our problem. He gave us a fair price. More than a fair price, to be honest.”
“What’s that got to do with moving your kin?” one of the protesters called out. “You two are as bad as Landis.”
“The cemetery would have been moved no matter what!” Mr. Blevins snapped. “Except it would’ve been the government doing it! Our kin would’ve been buried in unmarked paupers’ graves!”
That doesn’t sound right, I thought. There were at least a hundred graves on the property, so it had to be more than the small family cemetery. North Carolina law was funky sometimes, but I didn’t think the government could move graves without the family’s permission.
The crowd deflated.
A collective shrug swept over the room, as if they had all simultaneously murmured, huh? Some wondered aloud how Mr. Blevins could allow his own family to be hauled out of the ground just so he could make a buck, but Landis had definitely turned the tide.