Chapter 18: Sixty-Two Million

The man with the surveyor's laser turned out to be a lawyer in a suit that cost more than my car.

By three o'clock he sat at the mahogany table with a rolled drawing in front of him.

His smile never reached his shoes.

Four board members sat across from him.

Ramsay sat at the foot of the table, no longer in the Chair.

I sat behind him against the wall, because the white-haired woman had told me that morning, "You are on the payroll until I say otherwise."

Birdie stood beside me with her arms folded.

The fifth board member sat next to the lawyer and did not look at any of us.

He was the one who had voted to remove Ramsay last Friday.

"Gentlemen, ladies," the lawyer said. "My client is prepared to make a generous offer."

He unrolled the drawing.

It showed Cardinal Ridge from above, drawn in clean blue lines, with the course I knew chopped into pieces.

The back nine had become streets.

On the ninth fairway, where an hour ago we had pulled down a burned wall, someone had drawn rows of small gray boxes.

"Eighty-four townhomes," the lawyer said. "The clubhouse and first nine survive as an amenity."

"Sixty-two million dollars for the Trust's sixty percent, and the insurer is paid in full at closing."

Nobody said anything.

Sixty-two million dollars sat in the room.

"Mr. Treasurer," the white-haired woman said to the man beside the lawyer, "did you bring this man here?"

"I brought a solution," the treasurer said. "We have a four hundred thousand dollar hole in the books. Sentiment is not an asset."

"It's also not a crime," I said.

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