CHAPTER FOUR
May and Owen arrived back at the Fairshore police department just a few minutes later. They parked outside and rushed inside. May felt very eager to learn the extent of these complaints. She needed to get a picture, not only of who was angriest, but also if anyone knew, or blamed, the architect personally.
They would also need to look into Danny’s personal life, of course, but given that Danny was single, and that he lived out of state, and that this had happened while he was working on the hotel premises, and given the amount of bad blood that locals had, she felt this was the most important first step.
“Here is the file. It hasn’t been easy, because I’ve had to work on this during the time when you’ve been doing courtroom security duty and managing the county jails.”
May nodded. That had taken a few hours, most days, working together with Sheriff Jack who was teaching her the ropes. She’d always wonder why Owen had seemed stressed when they’d headed out on patrol again.
Owen lifted the file, with some difficulty, off the shelf.
May stared at it. It was enormous! It looked as if almost everyone in Tamarack County had, at some stage, put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards, to let the police know what they thought of this unwanted hotel. And she saw that the hotel had also lodged numerous complaints with the police. How was that all working out? May wondered.
“It looks like a lot,” Owen agreed. “But many of them are from the same people. The red threats are in the front. They’re the most serious ones. You’ll see that people often complained directly to us, but they also threatened the hotel, and they then forwarded the complaints to us. The hotel did that all the time. Jolene got hold of my cell phone number and used to call and message me up to ten times a day. I did my best to help manage the situation, but there’s only so much we can do.”
“What did you do?”
Owen sighed. “I followed up on as many as possible. I issued warnings where complaints were regarded as threats, and visited residents, and also tried to liaise with the town planners regarding the complaints. The hotel got very nasty when it came to issues like noise and bad driving and dumping on their side. I was threatened with their lawyers a few times. They were definitely not working with the community, or prepared to resolve their own infractions.”
“That so?” May asked, frowning.
“I have another entire file showing what I’ve done and who I’ve seen. But I admit, I haven’t spoken to everyone. I tried to get through the red list at least, but there would often be more than twenty complaints in a day. But the interesting thing is that in the past couple of weeks, the complaints have reduced, and there haven’t been nearly as many.”
May quickly flipped to the red ones and started to read. Most of them were a variation on the same theme.
“I hate that hotel! It’s creating noise pollution!”
“I wish that hotel would fall down!”
“I am personally going to drive my truck into that hotel, because of all the traffic it’s creating.”
“The hotel is ruining the environment of this area. Someone should set fire to it.”
“I don’t want to see any buildings other than trees here.”
“The architect, Danny Charter, is nothing more than a criminal, and he should be shot for having gone ahead without all the right approvals in place.”
May thought that last comment was very interesting.
“Owen,” she said, “can you do a search through the complaints to see if anyone else has named the architect in their complaint? That’s the only one I’ve read so far that’s named him personally.”
“Yes, it’s the only one that I remember, too. The others were more general. It was all about ‘the hotel’ and no single individual.”
That represented a clear starting point to May.
The complaint to the police that the architect should be shot was from a local man named Freddy Featherstone, who lived a few miles north of Chestnut Hill.
The hotel had sent in complaints about Freddy, too. He’d called them at least once a day. He’d written emails. Demanded to know who the “key players” were and had then contacted them directly too.
And so the war had escalated.
“I have met with Freddy Featherstone twice so far and issued him an official police warning. And I even offered to meet with him and Jolene and try to mediate the situation, but they both said they were too busy,” Owen explained.
May shook her head.
“It sounds as if you did everything you could. There was clearly no desire on either of their sides to actually resolve this.” Until now, she thought.
“I guess we need to go and question Freddy again now,” Owen said. “I wonder if he’ll behave differently this time. He was very aggressive the previous times, just so you know.”
“That’s good to know. Let’s see if there’s any difference in his attitude now.”
*
It was the first time that May had been to Freddy Featherstone’s premises, although Owen drove the route with the ease of previous familiarity. She had visited Chestnut Hill many times, and they’d been called out to a few of the surrounding lodges and campsites for minor crimes, but so far this one had been off her radar.
“He’s a fisherman,” Owen explained, as they headed onto the main road circling the lake. “A professional fisherman, I mean. He fishes for bass. He runs a campsite where people can vacation.”
“Really?” May asked.
“Yes. He has a campground. He’s been doing it for the past ten years and he’s built up a loyal following of clients.”
“So why has he been angry about the hotel?”
“Because he says they are deliberately trying to make him go under,” Owen said.
“How’s that?” May asked.