* * *
The courtroom was packed when Abby and Quinn walked in and settled at one end of a row of the church-style bench seats, leaving Abby’s folded scooter beside their pew. They sat on the hard, uncomfortable bench holding hands, their fingers intertwined and both their palms sweating with anxiety.
They had arrived a half hour early because Abby had hoped to get some information by speaking informally with some of the city council members—one of whom was the town’s veterinarian, Mack McNeil. She had sent him a text earlier but hadn’t heard back.
But apparently, the town hall meeting and the day’s court docket were scheduled with little time to spare between the two, so Abby’s plan to mingle before the event wasn’t going to happen. A few well-dressed people came in quietly and sat in the rows of padded chairs that would normally be reserved for a trial jury. Probably they were city council members; she knew that for sure when Mack came in and sat in that partitioned-off area. He looked down surreptitiously at his cell phone and didn’t seem to notice that Abby and Quinn were sitting there. She started to text him again, when a text from Reva popped up onto the screen.
Abby texted back but didn’t share any of the drama. Hopefully, it would be over soon and she could avoid mentioning it at all.
The day’s docket wound down, and one by one, the ne’er-do-wells of Magnolia Bay shuffled up to the judge and repented their sins so the judge could pass judgment on them. Most walked away with a plan for supervised personal improvement; some were led through the back door of the courtroom on their way to incarceration.
Finally, the judge and the lawyers and their clients left the room. After that, a thin stream of townspeople who’d been waiting outside trickled in and started filling the church-pew seating. Quinn stiffened beside her, and she looked at him in surprise. “What?” she mouthed.
He shook his head and whispered back. “Nothing.”
Though the courtroom wasn’t the setting of an official court proceeding any longer, the place exuded a feeling of sanctity in which normal tones weren’t welcome except from the chosen few who stood behind the podium.
Her phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Mack:
Just saw your text. Does Reva know about this?
No, and I hope she never has to find out, so please don’t tell her. I don’t know what’s going on or why. Do you?
Just found out when I got here and saw the agenda. Don’t know any details.
Abby couldn’t tell whether Mack knew she was in the courtroom or not. He still hadn’t looked up.
A tall black woman wearing a beige dress and a multicolored silk scarf with matching earrings stepped up to the podium. She opened a leather-bound folder on the podium, adjusted the microphone, and leaned forward to speak into it.
“Good evening,” she began in a strong, confident voice. She introduced herself as Tammy Goodson, the president of the city council, before reading the agenda for the meeting. The controversy over Bayside Barn would be dead last on the agenda.
Plenty of time to work up a hefty case of extreme anxiety.
Abby barely heard most of what went on; people got up and talked, then sat down again. About an hour into the proceedings, she was biting her nails and halfway listening when a plastic-looking Ken-doll sort of guy in a Miami Vice suit with a collarless shirt got up and stood at the podium. He gave a speech about the city’s desperate need to bring in tourism dollars by developing unused marshland along the bay. Which of course, as a big-shot New Orleans contractor, he could oversee if the city would buy the land and then bankroll his operation. A snort of derision escaped Abby’s throat before she knew she had formed an opinion.
Someone from a hardwood seat in front of them stood and agreed with Miami Vice Ken-doll about the lucrative potential of bayside restaurants and bars and marinas.
Someone else got up and preached about the impact of waterfront development on the marshland ecosystem. A few people clapped, and Abby joined in.
Tammy took the podium and gave an eloquent speech about the history of Bayside Barn and its place in the community. She waved a sheaf of stapled-together papers and said that more than fifty people—fifty? Really?—had signed a petition to rescind the farm’s permission to keep farm animals within the Magnolia Bay city limits.
“For those of you who don’t know our procedure,” President Tammy said, “the petitioners have gathered more than the required minimum number of names to bring this matter before the city council for consideration. We won’t make a decision today. We will set that for next month’s meeting, or possibly the month after that, depending on how long it takes each of the concerned parties to present their case. In the interim, the notes from today’s meeting will be published online at MagnoliaBayCityCouncil.com, as well as in the Magnolia Bay news flyer that y’all all get. I would urge anyone who has an interest in this matter to spread the word and to gather any information you’d like the council to consider at the next meeting before we make our decision.”
Tammy handed the petition to the secretary and asked him to enter it into the meeting notes. Then, she asked whether anyone present here this afternoon wanted to comment on the subject.
Quinn grabbed Abby’s hand and squeezed, but before she could stand, Miami Vice Ken hopped up again and hogged the podium. When he said that that the presence of farm animals, with their offensive smells and sounds and potential health hazards, might keep investors from recognizing the lucrative potential of the adjacent waterfront property, she gasped. Maybe she’d been stupid, or just plain too riddled with anxiety to be listening effectively, but she’d only just now figured out that the land the guy was talking about was behind Bayside Barn.
He went on to say that he had heard from a reliable authority that the waterfront acreage would soon be up for sale. She felt Quinn stiffen beside her. Maybe he had just figured it out, too.
But the guy had to be crazy. Abby didn’t imagine that soggy wasteland would be a viable place to build anything. Still, Miami Vice Ken continued to expound on the financial merits of a potential bayside development and urged the city council to get behind the idea with their existing capital and fund-raising capabilities. Finally, after not just one but two turns at the podium, the guy wound down and went back to his seat.
Abby started inching out of the pew to make her statement, but someone brushed past her from behind and gently pushed her back down with a hand on her shoulder. Abby recognized the tightly curled gray hair and rotund build of her favorite Bayside Barn volunteer. Edna!
Edna, the retired schoolteacher who volunteered at the farm, got behind the podium. She set a bright-orange clipboard on the podium and set a battered shoebox on top of it. Wearing a conservative blue jacket over a plain white blouse and a sensible, trim-fitting skirt, she unleashed her schoolteacher voice and her schoolteacher stare and her schoolteacher pointer finger.
She aimed her stare and her finger at the Miami Vice guy, shooting darts of angry energy that made him shrink back into his seat in the front row. “You must not be aware, sir, that Bayside Barn has nurtured and educated schoolchildren on the importance of animals and our relationships with them for the past twenty years!”
She shuffled through the shoebox and took out a stack of photographs. Walking up to the jury box, she gave Tammy a photo. “Here’s a picture of you, Tammy, in the eighth grade, hugging a goat.” She marched up to each of the city council members and handed out photographs, one by one, to the individuals in the photos. She had at least one photo for each person sitting in the padded chairs. “You’re too old to have visited the barn on a school field trip,” she said to one of the ladies. Abby winced at Edna’s blunt statement, but the lady didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her wrinkled old face softened when Edna added, “But this is a photo of your grandchild, isn’t it?”
The woman nodded. “Can I get a copy of this?”
“You kee
p it. In fact, all of y’all can keep any pictures of yourselves or someone you love. And when you look at them later, I hope you’ll remember how much these animals mean to the community.” After Edna had given a photo to each of the city council members, she turned to the crowd and handed out dozens more of kids interacting with the animals at the barn. “Look at this one.” She waved a yellowed Polaroid at a guy on the front row, and he took it from her.
“Look at that kid’s face,” Edna said, her voice loud and passionate. “Look at the joy in that smile.” The man passed the picture on while Edna kept talking. “You think with his torn shirt and dirty overalls he had everything he needed in life?”
“I knew this kid,” someone said.
“I can tell you that I knew that child, too, because I taught him. And I can tell you that he did not have what he needed. His daddy beat him, and his mama stayed drunk most of the time. He spent his school years in and out of foster care. When he lived with his parents, he came to school dirty and hungry every single day, and the other kids teased him about it.”
Tammy wiped a manicured fingertip under her eyes, and she wasn’t the only one affected by Edna’s speech. Plenty of people in the crowd were either sniffing back tears or smiling with reminiscence.
“To those animals at Bayside Barn, that poor, unloved kid was just as good as every other kid in his class. All he had to do to get love and acceptance in that place was to hang on to a pony’s neck and absorb the loving energy it had to give. And that little bit of love meant a whole lot to a kid who had nothing.”
She gave another photo to the guy on the front row. “Here he is, holding a baby pig.” That photo began to make the rounds. “And here he’s holding a bunny in his lap.”
“You know what that kid is doing now?” She put her knuckles on her hips, though she still held a fistful of photos in each hand. “He runs the veterinary medicine department at a major university. I called him this afternoon, and you know what he credits for his success?” She paused and looked over each and every person in the audience, letting her gaze linger on the real estate developer for a heartbeat before moving on.
“He says he learned respect for others—both animals and humans—by visiting Bayside Barn every year. Two of his older siblings who came up through school before we started the field trips to the barn are in prison now. He says he’d probably be there himself if it weren’t for the unconditional love those animals gave him every time his school class went to Bayside Barn.”
Edna paused for effect, smiling at the crowd, making eye contact with several people. “He still has a collection of the plastic Bayside Barn Buddies sheriff’s stars that they were giving out back then. He said he’ll be happy to write a letter or sign whatever he needs to sign, but I only found out about this thing earlier today when…” She nodded at Tammy, who nodded back. “Well, when I found out.”
So Edna had known even before Abby called. That made sense; Edna had only said, “Of course I’ll be there, honey. Don’t you worry.”
Edna gave a stack of photos to the folks in the front row of the hard-seat gallery. “Pass those around. Look at the joy on those children’s faces. Some of those kids didn’t ever get hugged at home, but they damn sure got hugged by the animals at the barn.”
She moved on to the second row and handed out more photos. “Some of those kids got everything they ever wanted given to them on a silver platter, but they never learned how to treat animals. Some of those kids had loving parents who taught them respect for other beings, but they weren’t accepted by their peers. All those kids, each and every one, needed what the animals at Bayside Barn gave them freely without asking for anything in return.”
She gave the remaining photos to the last two rows. “That’s what animals do for us. And most of the time, we need them more than they need us.”
Some of the photos had made the rounds, and Edna started gathering them up. Others were still being passed up and down the rows. The person next to Abby handed her a yellowed Polaroid of a kid’s beaming, gap-toothed smile while he sat on a shaggy pony that Reva’s husband Grayson held by a lead rope. Abby felt an unexpected rise of tears, and her throat clogged with emotion. She slipped the photo into her purse to give to Reva when she came back home.
Edna went to the podium with the tap of her sensible low heels. “This time,” she said, sending her schoolteacher gaze around the room, “this time, the animals at Bayside Barn need us. They need us to stand up for them, even in the face of people who would offer us the moon to turn our backs on the lowly creatures of this world so they can tear up the environment and make money.” She nodded at the crowd, then let her gaze linger on Miami Vice Ken while her mouth drew up in a parsimonious frown. “Those developer folks have their petition, and we all know what they’re after.”
She gave the orange clipboard to the first person in the front row. A Bic pen dangled from a thick loop of braided embroidery thread. “I’m starting a petition right now to support the animals of Bayside Barn. This time, I hope we’ll have the courage to do what’s right.”
A hush fell over the room as people started passing around the petition. Most people signed, but some passed it along without looking.
Edna went back to her seat, winking at Abby as she walked past.
Tammy took over the podium. “If no one else has anything to say, we’ll adjourn this meeting.”
Abby sent a panicked look to Quinn. Should she try to follow Edna in speaking on behalf of Bayside Barn? Edna had done such a good job; maybe they should quit while they were ahead.
He gave a slight negative headshake.
And anyway, it was too late. While Abby sat there paralyzed with fear and indecision, President Tammy adjourned the meeting.
* * *
After the meeting, Quinn took Abby and Edna out to the town’s only Mexican restaurant to celebrate Edna’s moving presentation.
Quinn knew that Edna and Abby thought the first battle in this war had been won. But Quinn had seen his smarmy ex-business partner in action before. Jefferson Pearson didn’t care what anyone thought of him, and he didn’t play fair.
“Who was that guy who looked like a throwback from Miami Vice?” Abby asked.
Quinn didn’t answer her, but when he’d seen JP walk into the courtroom, he’d struggled with a knee-jerk feeling that he should run for cover and hide. Even though Quinn hadn’t known that JP had been padding costs and fudging estimates to get more money from their clients, he should’ve known. And some would say that as JP’s business partner, Quinn was just as guilty—he certainly felt that way. In any case, though no one ever pressed charges, word had gotten around well enough that the fledgling business had failed. Quinn was just lucky that JP had been the “face” of the business while Quinn had led the work crews. Lucky for him, he’d been forgettable enough that JP’s stink hadn’t stuck to him.
“He’s some real-estate developer from New Orleans,” Edna said. Quinn held his breath at first, half-fearing that Edna knew that he and JP had been business partners for a brief time.
Edna leaned closer to Abby. “I’ve heard that he inflates the prices of supplies, he doesn’t pay his workers, and he cheats his clients by invoicing for materials he uses elsewhere. He’s bad news. I hope the folks on city council know that, and if they don’t, I won’t mind educating them.”
Abby looked over at Quinn, and he could see the wheels turning in her mind. He wondered whether she remembered what he’d said when they first met, about his construction business partnership with a friend not working out.
“Edna,” Quinn said, “let me see what I can find out about his plans before we go off half-cocked. You’re right that he’s unethical, but he’s also very persuasive.”
“Wait.” Abby sat forward, her face lit with excitement and curiosity. “You know him?”
“We worked together for a brief time. But I really don’
t want to get into it until I know more about what he’s up to.” He knew he’d have to find a way to tell Abby the truth about his business relationship with JP, but not right here, not right now. “I hope you’ll both calm down a notch and let me look into this before you start blabbing to the city council about things you don’t understand.”
Abby drew herself up. “I don’t blab.”
Edna took another sip of her margarita and giggled under her breath. “I do.”
“Please don’t,” Quinn reiterated. “Not until I can get some concrete information to act on.”
And, he didn’t want JP to know that anyone with more than a bleeding-heart objection to the destruction of an old barn and a bayside marshland ecosystem was against him. JP would do anything on this or that side of the law to get his way. “I can ask around, maybe find out what he’s up to. We’ll do better if we don’t say anything until we know everything. So please, let’s focus on something we can do, like getting an avalanche of signatures and letters sent to the city council in favor of Bayside Barn.” At least it would keep Edna and Abby busy while he figured out what to do.
“Hear, hear!” Edna held her glass up for a toast. Flushed with the success of her speech—and her second frozen margarita—she fanned herself with the orange clipboard and laid out her battle plan. “We’ll get fifty signatures in no time.” She took another sip of her frosty top-shelf drink. “We’ll get a hundred. Two hundred! I’ll print up extra pages and we’ll all go ’round asking for signatures till we’ve asked everyone in Magnolia Bay.”
True, they were well on the way to getting fifty signatures. By the time everyone had filtered out of the courthouse, the petition on Edna’s orange clipboard held almost thirty, and she’d given out blank pages for people to take home to their relatives, friends, and neighbors, along with preaddressed, prestamped envelopes to mail the pages to the city council.
“And you know what else?” Edna added. “We should host an open house at the barn! Make it a big, citywide event. It’d be good PR for Bayside Barn, and we could get even more signatures that way.”
Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay Page 24
