The Gentlemen's Hour

106

What spices were to the early Portuguese navigators, what gold was to the Spanish conquistadors, tobacco to Virginian plantation owners, and opium to Afghani warlords, real estate is to Southern California businesspeople.

Real estate—land, houses, and business parks—is the bottom-line source of wealth on the golden, coastal strip. It’s the basis for investment, lending, exchange, retail, money laundering, you name it.

So when eighteen expensive homes suddenly drop into a hole, the symbolic value is enormous.

The bottom, literally and metaphorically, falls out.

Someone is going to pay.

The question is, who?

Which, Boone thinks, is a very pertinent question when you want to know who had a motive for wanting Phil Schering in the past tense, because the late Phil was a soils engineer, not only a soils engineer but also an expert witness soils engineer, not only an expert witness soils engineer but also a very effective expert witness soils engineer who could potentially have a big say in determining . . .

. . . who pays.

Phil was billing an insurance company.