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were stacked high on flatbed trucks, and migrant farmworkers bent above the rows, harvesting a crop I didn’t recognize on sight, flying by as we were at sixty miles an hour. The road made a wide curve north. Oil rigs dotted the land and in one section, there was a small refinery that threw off an odor reminiscent of burning tires. In sections, I could see a line of stationary boxcars that must have stretched for a quarter of a mile.
    I looked past her through the driver’s-side window. Tucked in a stand of pines, a grand old stone-and-stucco house sat close to the road, abandoned to all appearances. The architecture had elements of English Tudor with a touch of Swiss chalet thrown in, the whole of it incongruous in the midst of tilled and untilled fields. The second story was half-timbered with three gables punctuating the roofline. “What the heck is that?”
    Daisy slowed. “That’s why we came this way. Tannie and her brother, Steve, inherited the house and three hundred acres of farmland, some of which they lease out.”
    Two massive stone chimneys bracketed the house on each end. The narrow third-story windows suggested rooms reserved for household servants. A magnificent oak had been planted at one corner of the house, probably ninety years before, and now overshadowed the entrance. Across the road, there was empty acreage.
    The yard was completely overgrown. Weeds had proliferated and once decorative shrubs were close to eight feet high, obscuring the ground-floor windows. Where there had been a gracious approach, defined by boxwoods on both sides of a wide brick path, the passage was now close to impenetrable. Someone was using a small tractor to clear the overgrowth near the road, piling it in a mound. The brush closer to the house would probably have to be hacked away by hand. Daunting, I thought.
    “Catch the back side,” she said as we passed.
    I shifted in my seat and glanced over my shoulder, looking at the house from another angle. A wide dirt-and-gravel lane, probably the original driveway, now doubled as a frontage road with a service road splitting off to the right. I was guessing that the service road intersected one of the old county roads that was rendered obsolete once New Cut Road went in.
    On the back side of the house, most of the third-story windows in the rear were missing, the frames and timbers charred black from a fire that had eaten half the roof. There was something painful in the sight and I could feel myself wince. “How’d that happen?”
    “Vagrants. This was a year ago. Now there’s a raging debate about what to do with the place.”
    “Why was the house built so close to the road?”
    “Actually, it wasn’t. The house used to sit dead center on the land, but then the new road was cut through. The grandparents must have needed cash, because they sold off a big chunk, maybe half of what they owned. The ink wasn’t dry on the check before negotiations were under way for a housing tract that never went in. Talk about local politics. Now Tannie’s in a quandary, trying to decide whether to restore the house or tear it down and build in a better location. Her brother thinks they should sell the property while they have the chance. Right now, the market’s good, but Steve’s one of those guys who’s always predicting doom and gloom, so they’ve been butting heads. She’ll have to buy him out if she decides to hang on. She’s hired a couple of guys to help her clear brush on her days off. The county’s been testy about the fire hazard, given last year’s burn.”
    “Does she want to farm the land?”
    “I doubt it. Maybe she plans to open a B-and-B. You’d have to ask her.”
    “Amazing.” I could feel the shift in my perception of Tannie Ottweiler. I’d pictured her barely making ends meet on a bartender’s salary, never guessing she was a land baroness. “I take it she’s thinking about moving up here.”
    “That’s her hope. She’s been driving up Thursdays