Back in November, the county had elected a crusader who believed the Moral Majority were a bunch of softies. He wanted law and order, and the way to achieve that was obvious, a healthy dose of good ol’ Christian family values.
The sheriff started with the usual crackdowns but eventually decided that “moral decay” was the real problem in society. He probably had bigger ambitions in the long run, like the State House, but his short-term goal was clear. He set his sights on the local Jezebel, a certain nudist camp owner.
Since he was the sheriff (and a man), he tried to bully Susan personally. He used bolt cutters on the gate and simply drove into camp. Then he confronted her in her own house. He threatened her with multiple citations, possible arrest, and even deportation. She laughed about the last one for a week.
Then he started making good on his threats. A deputy set up a speed trap where the camp road met the main one, and Susan received a ticket every time she left and again when she returned. She received a summons in the mail for a bunch of bogus parking tickets. She was cited more than a dozen times—for littering.
At that point she dispatched a small pack of lawyers to visit the county supervisor. “Only six,” she said with a straight face. They threatened the county with several very real lawsuits. The supervisor promised to resolve the situation.
The sheriff wasn’t about to be cowed by a woman, so he went after her businesses and the construction project. We received our first official visit in March. The inspector from codes enforcement wanted to see everything. Our crews sat idle for three days while the man found dozens of made-up infractions. The same thing happened a week later with the fire marshal. The tax assessor arrived a week after that.
Susan finally told Trip and me about the harassment she’d been dealing with. I personally wanted to kill the sheriff, but that was illegal. Dangerous too. He was the sheriff, after all. At least I was smart enough to figure it out, although I was fairly sure Rich would help if I asked. The sheriff was a disgrace, to men in general and public servants in particular. At the very least, I wanted to report him to the state government.
Susan convinced me not to do anything, official or otherwise. She’d dealt with his brand of harassment before. She said it would all blow over once he realized he couldn’t intimidate her.
Over the next few months, we fielded at least a dozen inspections and had to endure constant bureaucratic nitpicking. Trip and I handled most of it over the phone, but I still had to make several unscheduled visits to deal with some inspection or another.
Granville was so incensed that he raised a ruckus with his crony in the Building and Zoning office. They were messing with his legacy, after all. Besides, he hadn’t voted for the sheriff in the first place.
“Why, the man’s a scoundrel!”
I just called him an asshole.
The inspections dwindled and eventually stopped over the summer, and we thought the sheriff might have finally admitted defeat. Unfortunately, he’d simply gone away to lick his wounds and plot revenge. A prominent Baptist preacher joined forces with him, and they hatched a scheme to “strike down the harlot of Chester.” They went after her women.
In addition to the camp and her other business interests, Susan funded several nonprofit groups in the county. The largest one ran a women’s shelter, a job training center, and a day-care center. They all received visits from the health department, animal control, and anyone else the sheriff could think of.
The preacher railed that the women were being held hostage by a “coven of feminists.” They needed to be freed immediately and returned to their husbands or fathers.
At that point Susan took off the gloves and stopped playing nice. She hired security guards for the shelter and day-care center. She summoned a large pack of lawyers from Columbia, more than a dozen, plus private investigators. She called in favors, twisted arms, and used her political influence.
Once her lawyers and investigators had dug up enough dirt, she made a phone call to the governor. He ordered the state equivalent of the FBI to investigate the sheriff’s alleged ties to prostitution and money laundering. The private investigators turned over the evidence they’d found—the ties weren’t so alleged after all—and the actual FBI showed up.
In December they arrested the sheriff on a dozen state and federal charges. The evidence implicated the preacher as well. He was a regular visitor at the brothel, a ramshackle mobile home near the county line. He claimed he was “ministering to those poor women’s souls,” which earned some serious chuckles from everyone but the most pious and blindly credulous churchgoers.
The scandal ended several other careers as well. The fire marshal resigned under a cloud of suspicion, the tax assessor announced his early retirement, and the county council demanded the supervisor’s resignation. The news made the national headlines, although Susan kept a low profile throughout.
When the dust finally settled, the new county supervisor and the acting sheriff visited her in person to apologize.
“Let bygones be bygones. It’s a new day. We promise, Ms. MacLean—”
“Mrs. MacLean.”
“Yes, ma’am, Mrs. MacLean. Anything you say, ma’am. We’ve cleaned house. It’s a new day. Let bygones be bygones. Ma’am.”
Translation: Please don’t run us out of the county. Our families are here and we like our jobs.
I laughed for nearly a week when she told me that one.
“Out of curiosity,” I asked, “how much do you think you spent to get rid of him?”
“Sheriff Pharisee? Who knows. I may add it up one day… or I may not.”
She never told me if she did, but she considered it money well spent. She even gave all her managers a bonus for doing our jobs and weathering the harassment.
That included Trip and me. We hadn’t received a single legitimate fine or citation. Trip gave me all the credit, but Granville was the real reason. He was a narcissist and a windbag, a racist and a sexist, but he was a stickler for details.
I gave him my share of the bonus. It was a tidy little sum. And it was the only time he ever touched me other than to shake my hand. He grew misty-eyed and hugged me.
“Oh, my boy, my boy, you’re my proudest achievement.”
Even Beatrice looked happy. And she gave me a kiss on the cheek. I must have turned crimson, because she actually laughed.
“Serves you right,” she said in her soft contralto, “fo’ surprisin’ me that time.”
* * *
When we weren’t dealing with corrupt local officials, our lives went through the usual ups and downs, and time passed like it always does.
Trip and I graduated in the summer of 1986. He was eighth in the class, the only student in the top ten who wasn’t Joska’s, and the only one with a minor in another subject (Business). Rosemary was right behind him at ninth. And, to no one’s surprise but his own, Freddie graduated in the top twenty.
Gracie and I had competed for the top spot since our first year, but Christy changed everything. She was my muse and biggest critic. She saw the world from a different perspective. She asked weird questions, and the answers took me in new and creative directions. She made every single one of my designs better.
Gracie complained bitterly to Professor Joska—every quarter for two years—but he told her the same thing every time.
“Architecture is a collaborative business, Miss Fisher. Mr. Hughes does the work himself. The source of his inspiration doesn’t matter. In fact, you are free to collaborate for your own designs, as long as you do the work yourself.”
She was too much of a loner and never did. Joska even began to gripe about it during our fifth year. He only did it in private, and he seemed to regret it each time, but he was fed up with her too.