Razing the Dead by Sheila Connolly Page B

her.
    â€œNothing I can’t handle.” He turned back to me. “I’ll trust your judgment about who to hire—I’m told you know your stuff. You ready to go?”
    â€œYes. Do you mind if Lissa comes with us? She should see the site, so she knows the context.”
    â€œSure, fine. Let’s go—I’m double-parked.”
    We went out the door. His nondescript sedan was parked directly in front of the steps. No fancy cars or chauffeurs for Mitchell Wakeman, apparently. Silly me, to have expected the trappings of wealth from a multimillionaire developer. I got in front, and Lissa slid into a seat in the back, and then we set off for Chester County.
    Wakeman drove efficiently and not overly aggressively, and with the low mid-afternoon traffic we made good time. We engaged in impersonal small talk on the way. I tried to probe discreetly about the man’s interest in local history, and he proved reasonably well informed, although not particularly reverent about the past that was still much in evidence around us.
    When we reached the suburbs, he said to me, “You live out this way?”
    â€œYes, I’ve lived in Bryn Mawr for a while now. I guess I like to keep my work and my life separate. I like to have a place to escape to. I like the contrast. Does that make sense to you?”
    â€œYeah, sure, I get that.”
    â€œYou live even farther out, don’t you?”
    He glanced briefly at me, as if surprised that I knew. “I do, for a lot of the same reasons. Nice country, west of the city. Open space.”
    â€œAnd you’re proposing to put a major development in the middle of it? Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude—I’m just trying to understand how you see this.”
    â€œI understand. I guess the bottom line is, I want to do it right. People are moving out that way, and they’re going to need housing. I want to show that it’s possible to create a community that has all the things people want, but without dropping it like a flying saucer in the middle of a place and wondering why the people who’ve lived there for years are pissed about it. I respect the history of the area, and the geography and the ecology.”
    â€œThat sounds admirable. Are there any other examples of that kind of development?”
    He tossed off a couple of names that meant nothing to me. “Thing is, it takes big money to put together the whole package, not just a bunch of houses and a couple of stores in the middle of nowhere. I’ve got the money, so I can make it happen. Does that sound crude to you?”
    Was he smiling? “No, just practical. And I see your point. Trying to do it piecemeal means you run the risk of the whole project losing steam, and then you’re left with a half-finished mess.”
    â€œExactly. Almost there.” I turned away from him to look out the window and check out where we were and realized we’d reached Paoli, on Route 30, a road I knew well, since it ran close to my house. Past the train station he turned off to the left. “Hey, you in the back—you’ve been quiet. Do you know where we are?” he asked as we drove along.
    Lissa spoke up promptly. “We just left what was once the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, which was the first incorporated major toll road in the country,” she said, just loudly enough to make herself heard. “We’re on the Paoli Pike, that leads to West Chester, which became the county seat in 1786. But we’re not going that far, are we?” I noted that she pronounced Paoli correctly: pay-o-lee. People who didn’t know the region and had only read the name often got it wrong.
    Wakeman looked pleased by her response. “Nope, we’re stopping just this side of it.”
    I watched the houses roll by, the space between them increasing the farther we went. I loved this time of year: everything was lush and green, which somehow made it