Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
The ground on Lot Seven was softer than I liked.
I crouched down and pressed two fingers into the soil near the northwest corner of the staked footprint and felt the give beneath the surface crust. I made a note on my tablet. Behind me I knew Renzo was walking the perimeter.
This was one of my favorite parts of a job—the early days at a site. The quiet of it. Nothing built, nothing committed, just raw ground and the drawings in my head and the chance to imagine them coming together.
Zoe would love this site and looking at my plans. She would be able to see how the two would evolve, just by looking at the drawings. I just knew she would.
"The grade change from the survey is off by about eighteen inches on the east side," Renzo called out.
"I know." I stood up and made another note.
"Which means the retaining wall on this elevation needs to come up."
"I know."
The view of the Smokey Mountains from here was breathtaking. This is exactly where the windows in the main hall would point. I couldn’t wait for Zoe to see the finished home.
A pause. "Adam."
"What?"
"I said the retaining wall needs to come up, which means we're probably looking at a revised drainage plan for this lot and we should loop in the civil engineer before the Harmon family signs off on the revised—"
"The revised foundation spec, yeah." I looked up from my tablet to find Renzo standing at the far stake, arms crossed, squinting at me.
"You weren't listening to a word I said."
"I was listening." I protested.
"You said 'I know' twice and then you trailed off somewhere around the phrase 'drainage plan.'"
I looked back down at my tablet. "I was thinking."
"About site drainage?"
"Exactly," I agreed.
Renzo walked toward me slowly, picking his way around a stack of grade stakes. He was grinning. I didn't like it.
"My sister called me last night," he said pleasantly.
I looked down at my tablet and typed in revised drainage plan.
"I had an interesting conversation with her."
"That’s nice." I continued to type.
"Fascinating, really. Very detailed. I’m pretty sure she and Zoe talked recently.”
That caught my attention. “They did?”
He stopped a few feet away, rocked back on his heels and nodded. “She told me what Zoe was wearing. Hell of a choice. I would have needed ice water at that expensive restaurant you took her to.”
I put my tablet under my arm. "Are we seriously doing this now?"
"Beautiful, over-the-knee boots, she told me. On a woman who, and I'm quoting directly, ‘looked like a poem that had grown legs.’" Renzo tilted his head. "Her words, not mine. Angelica has a flair for the dramatic."
I sighed. "She does."
"She also said there was a significant amount of porch time.”
I couldn’t stop my grin. “There was.”
Renzo pointed at me. "And there it is. You were thinking about the porch."
There was no point in denying it. I'd been standing at the jobsite for forty-five minutes and the truth was I'd thought about the porch for half the time we were there. I rubbed the back of my neck. "Let's try to focus."
"We are focused. The retaining wall needs to come up, we need to call the civil engineer, and you kissed Zoe Avery on her porch two nights ago and you've been useless ever since." He spread his hands. "All related issues."
"They're not remotely related issues."
"They both could affect the foundation," Renzo said gravely, then broke into the full grin of his, again.
I pointed at him. "Don't."
He held up both hands in surrender and we started walking the line toward Lot Eight. For a minute the only sounds were our boots and the wind off the hills and the sound of a hawk high above.
"She's good for you," Renzo said, not teasing now.
"You don't know that."
"I've known Angelica my whole life. She doesn't voluntarily spend time with people she doesn't think are worth it. She adores Zoe, and she likes you. Angelica thinks the two of you—"
"Are you going to be a meddler or are you going to be an architect today?"
He laughed. "I can do both. I'm multi-talented." He pulled his own tablet out from under his arm and glanced at it.
“Since you’re all up in my business, I want to run something past you. You have nieces and nephews, right?”
“They’re coming out my ears. Is this about James?”
I nodded. “James has some opinions.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “Like what?”
“After having spent the evening over at Angelica’s while Zoe and I went on our date, he thinks she should be my girlfriend.”
Renzo stopped. He turned to look at me. Something passed across his face, a kind of compressed, desperate quality, and then he lost the battle with himself and started laughing, and not quietly. The full deal—shoulders shaking, one hand pressed to his chest.
"It's not funny," I muttered.
He was having a hard time breathing. Served him right.
"Renzo. It's a real problem. He specifically said he wanted Angelica because she was pretty. His word. And then when I asked him about Zoe, he said—" I stopped.
Renzo wiped his eyes. "What did he say?"
"He said, I guess she could come." I looked at him. "With a sigh. The kid sighed about Zoe."
Renzo lost it again.
"James is four," I said.
"James is four and already has a type," Renzo wheezed. "Oh God. That kid."
"It's not funny. I don't know how to explain to him that Zoe and I are—" I gestured around at the open field.
"That you're the touching kind of friends?" Renzo suggested helpfully. His shoulders were still shaking.
"I don't even know what we are."
"You stood on a porch for a very long time," Renzo reminded me. "My sister said so."
I started walking again because it gave me something to do. After a moment, Renzo fell in beside me, professional again, or at least attempting it.
"Here's what you do," he said. "You bring them both somewhere.
James sees you with Angelica, James sees you with Zoe, the world doesn't end.
Kids his age are concrete thinkers, yeah?
He's working off a category. Girlfriend means a girl he likes that Dad is nice to.
So show him you can be nice to both of them.
Put your arm around Zoe. It'll read as natural to him, especially if you're all relaxed about it. "
"And then when we get home?"
"Then you explain it." Renzo's voice was easier now. "You tell him you're friends with both women, but that Zoe is the kind of friend where you hold hands and put your arm around her. He'll get it. Kids understand more than we think when we're straight with them."
I thought about that. It was not the worst advice I'd ever received. "When did you get good at this?"
"I have seventeen siblings. You develop skills." He glanced at me. "Also I'd like to add, for the record, that my sister is a genuinely excellent human being who would make an incredible friend for you and James and nothing more than that, so you can rest easy."
"Good."
"She's also a big ole gossip, so I’ll know everything that’s going on in your life, so suck it up."
I was going to have to tell Zoe not to tell Angelica everything. Yeah, me telling Zoe who to talk to and what to say would go over great.
We reached Lot Eight, back to where we had started.
I pulled out the site drawings, rolling them out over the hood of my truck and weighting the corners with a rock and my coffee thermos.
Renzo came around and stood beside me. We stood shoulder to shoulder for a minute, looking at the drawing then looking at the lot, doing the back-and-forth of reconciling paper with ground that was the real work of a day like this.
"Okay," I said. "Lot Eight. The Planter house."
"Higher-end of the two," Renzo confirmed. "Five-bed, four-bath, the ones with the view corridor we're protecting on the south elevation."
I oriented myself. Found the ridge on the drawing, found it on the horizon, found the angle. "The view corridor's good. That's actually better than I expected." I traced the site with one finger, then walked off the line of the rear elevation, counting paces. Renzo walked parallel to me, tablet up.
I stopped.
Something was wrong.
I walked back, slower. Looked at my drawing. Looked at the ground. Walked it again.
"Renzo."
"Yeah."
"Where did the septic field get flagged?"
I heard him pull up something on his tablet. A pause. "Southeast corner. Forty feet off the rear foundation line, angled to clear the view corridor on—"
"Come here."
He came over. I pointed at the ground without saying anything else, and watched his face as he saw it.
There were flags in the ground. Orange survey flags, the kind the civil engineer used for the septic layout.
They were in the right general area. But they weren't forty feet off the rear line.
They were twenty, maybe twenty-five at the outside, and they were angled wrong—cutting directly across what would be the rear yard drainage swale.
"That's not right," Renzo said quietly.
"No."
"That puts the drain field inside the setback."
"Yep. And directly in the path of the swale." I crouched down, looking at the nearest flag. It was freshly placed. The ground around the wire was barely disturbed. "This wasn't here Wednesday."
Renzo crouched beside me. When he spoke, his voice had changed. "I was here Wednesday."
"I know."
"These flags were not here Wednesday."
We looked at each other.
"Who else has been on this lot?" I asked.
Renzo stood up slowly. "According to the site log? Nobody." He looked back at the flags, then at the tree line, then back at me. "The permit application for the Planter house goes in Monday."
I stood up. "If someone pulls those plans and the flagged field location doesn't match the submitted septic design—"
"They'll kill the permit," Renzo said. "Or trigger a full review. Which takes—"
"Weeks. Minimum." I looked at the flags again. Twenty-two feet. Wrong angle. Wrong location. Freshly placed. "This isn't a survey error."
Renzo's jaw was set. "No. It's not."
I pulled out my phone and started taking pictures. Methodically. Every flag from every angle, with the rear foundation stake in frame for reference. Renzo did the same on his tablet.
"We need to call Harvey," I said.
Renzo nodded. He was already dialing.
He put the phone to his ear and looked across the lot at the flags—those small, cheerful orange flags that someone had placed in the wrong ground, on purpose, in the dark, while nobody was watching.
It might not seem like a big deal, but a setback like this could be thousands of dollars in permitting, and legitimately twenty to thirty thousand dollars in lost time. It was too methodical to be done by some kid. This was done by someone who knew the business. Someone who was out to get us.
I pulled out my phone and called Code Drakos.