Chapter 1

I really hadn’t wanted to go to my high school’s Twenty Year Reunion. The few old friends I’d known from high school hadn’t cared about the nostalgia of it all either, and for the most part they had skipped both reunions that had been held so far.

I’d gone to the Tenth and found that really nothing much had changed. People are (and remain) fundamentally exactly who they are ... then and now. At both events, it was the same people hanging around in the same cliques. Another opportunity for the guys and gals that then, and now, needed to be with the ‘popular’ groups. An entire room full of people wanting to keep living in the past, that couldn’t be straight with each other for more than a minute at a time ... and though it’s all in the past, they just won’t leave it behind.

Honestly, out of the two hundred people there from my class, I couldn’t have pointed out five of them that I actually sort of ‘knew’, let alone would have been able to put a correct name on any of their mostly strange faces. No ... I’d never even put a toe into any of the fringes of the so-called popular groups back in the day. I hadn’t made even a token amount of emotional effort to try and fit in, let alone attempt to be popular, back in school. Probably because I was just too tired to do more than stay awake in class on most days. I’m sure everyone, teachers included, thought I was a stoner, zonked out every day, hardly ever saying a word, with my eyes just barely drooping open. Really it was just a chronic lack of sleep.

Drugs and razor sharp chef’s knives in a restaurant are a really bad combination.

By the time I turned sixteen, I was already working a 40-hour week, if not more, in my uncle’s restaurant, and every weekday school night I wasn’t getting to bed until midnight, or even later. So, no extracurricular activities for me: no sports; no drama club; nothing that would interfere with my after-school job, helping my uncle.

All work and damned little play did make Jerry, that is me, a rather dull boy! Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoyed working for my uncle, and I learned more in the back of his restaurant than I did at either college or later in culinary school! On the other hand, for me, high school was not the most wonderful time of my life and I hadn’t made many life-long friends or associations there.

Anyway, I hadn’t wanted to go to this reunion, but here I was. One of my few old school friends called me up that afternoon and said that he was going and wanted me along as his wingman. My friend John had been none too successful in life since school, but he had been fairly popular back in the day. He was one of the fringe sort who had mingled between the boundaries of at least a dozen social groups and could be counted upon to be a neutral intermediary between rival cliques. He had also been one of the few talented players on our abysmally bad school football team and had enjoyed mild success in college as well. Ever broke, but eternally optimistic, he was in the commercial window washing business nowadays and was hoping to use the reunion as a chance to network. Good luck to him, so I agreed to come along for the ride.

I spent an hour there nursing an insufficiently cold bottled beer and watched my friend work the room, pressing the flesh with new friends and old ones. John could have been a superb salesman, selling virtually anything to anyone, but he unfortunately had moral qualms about using his schmoozing powers for evil. I think he passed out over a hundred business cards and even managed to sign on three new clients for regular business, including Trevor Hamilton. He was from one of the ‘old-rich’ families in our city and I couldn’t stand the smug bastard back in our school days. Hell, what sixteen year old kid has the right to drive a Mercedes convertible?

Anyway, Trevor was the lead dog now running his family’s business, which was residential construction, and it was big time. Today, after just five minutes of friendly chatter, he’d thrown my friend John a rather nice and profitable bone, handling the final post construction cleanup for a new subdivision of 566 units about to come on the market. At a contract price of $200 per house, my friend was going strike it rich, or at least very comfortable for the next six months, so I was feeling charitable enough to join in and share a few drinks with them as they toasted and finalized the deal.

“This is my friend Jerry,” John said, introducing me to Trevor and his wife (not from our school). We shook and not surprisingly, my old semi-nemesis had no memory of me at all ... and I didn’t try to remind him. I never believed in holding grudges anyway.

“He’s the Executive Chef at Nicolo’s,” my friend added, and that accomplishment was enough to garner Trevor’s immediate interest and genuine appreciation.

“Great place!” His wife gasped, “Probably the best Italian restaurant in the city! It’s crazy getting weekend reservations there ... even for us!”

I just smiled and nodded and let them shake my hand all over again. Trevor’s trophy wife certainly was decorative enough that I could just smile and admire her cleavage happily for another half hour or two.

“Acting Exec, actually.” I added, “I’m really officially just their head Pâtissier... their Sous Chef of Pastry. They’ll be hiring a new Executive soon and after the new boss is settled in, then I’ll probably move on myself, to something or somewhere else. Some other new challenge.”

“Oh, so you’re kind of like their head baker then?” Trevor inquired, with interest. “Are you thinking about buying or opening up a place of your own now?”

“More or less ... and yes, I’m considering going independent,” I admitted, “to open something kind of like a classical Viennese bakery, with lots of pastries and chocolate work. Not so much wedding and birthday cake stuff, that doesn’t really interest me much.”

“Well, then you may be in luck!” He smiled, pulling out a folded up piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “I was going to post this up on the big advertisement bulletin board next to everyone’s business cards, right over by the door, but I’ll just give this to you now.”

It was a commercial advertisement for a business for sale up in the Hill Country. A bakery café, called ‘Sweetie Cakes’. I wasn’t much impressed, at least initially, as I read over the notice. For starters, the current owner only wanted to sell 50% of their interest in the business. I wasn’t about to take anyone’s orders ... and if I wanted to run a private bakery, I wanted to be the one to make 100% of the decisions.

The location was optimal though, in a small Hill Country town of about ten thousand people, right in the heart of a region known for antiquing and travel tourism, within comfortable driving distance from several large metropolitan cities. I’d even driven through this area myself a few months ago, while contemplating such a location. Perhaps in conjunction with a bed and breakfast inn, or something such.

But not this one, I’d decided, and I started to shake my head and hand it back to Trevor.

“Keep it, give it to a baking friend or a colleague.” He said, with a twitch of disappoint evident upon his face. “I’m doing this as a favor to a friend ... well, it’s my ex-wife’s place actually, Adriana’s. She doesn’t really want to sell the place at all, but it’s all she’s got and she needs the money pretty badly.”

Now I was starting to remember why I really didn’t like Trevor, back in our school days. He was Adriana Marshall’s boyfriend throughout most of school, and I had lusted after her, mostly in absolute silence. For three years she sat right next to me in our home room, and I had quietly adored her, everything about her ... despite the fact that her family had even more money and political power than Trevor’s! She was really just another rich girl with a snobby attitude who sneered at boys like me, who had dirt or pasta sauce under our fingernails.

Damn, but she was the prettiest girl in the entire school ... and she knew it.

I (mostly) had the good sense to know that it would never work between us. She drove a classic Porsche 911 Targa convertible to school (when she wasn’t in Trevor’s Mercedes) and I rode a ten-speed bike and couldn’t afford a used car until college.

“So...” I muttered in some slight confusion, “you married Adriana sometime after high school then? You two were one of the big power couples, all throughout school, as I remember.” Lucky bastard.

“Yep, we married, two weeks after our high school graduation, but it didn’t work out real great afterwards,” He admitted, “and her family problems didn’t help us much either. You heard the stories on that? We were just out of college by then and maybe already drifting apart, but what happened to her family, especially her dad, made things pretty impossible. We then split up after about five years married together ... we just couldn’t work it out together anymore. We’re still sort of friendly though.” I’d forgotten all about her big family scandal, and it was big newspaper and TV headlines in our city for months!

Wow ... now I was starting to remember about her family problems ... and I nodded in genuine sympathy.

Irene, his new wife, clutched his hand tighter and they briefly hugged. This second marriage seemed to be more successful. It also looked like Trevor wasn’t quite the smug ass he had been back in his school days either.

Adriana’s family, had come from old, old Texas money, but that hadn’t stopped them from raking in new fresh cash by the bucketful. Mostly, according to the media and the FBI investigations, in pretty dodgy ways. Her father ran a very successful car dealership, another uncle was the County Judge, another uncle ran the county’s largest commercial construction company that held nearly every city contract, and yet another uncle was the County Sheriff during our high school and college years. Adriana never let anyone forget these facts ... and in a school full of young social snobs, her nose was pointed up in the air higher than anyone else’s.

Damn ... she was pretty then, though ... but she knew it, I mentally reminded myself yet again. I’d spent three years just wanting to build up the nerve to talk to her, but mostly I just gazed upon her, secretly, in bemused silence.

The crash came a few years after high school, right about when I was finishing up my Restaurant Management degree in college. All three of her uncles went to federal prison for long sentences for fraud, graft and embezzlement as the result of a lengthy FBI sting investigation into municipal contract kickbacks and dozens of other corruption charges. They were very, very guilty and the scandal was a media circus for most of that year.

This scandal must have completely ruined her socially and come as a very hard shock to her. Her father’s dealership emerged mostly unscathed from the legal scandals, but the old Marshall name was now just a popular joke in the city, and sales crashed. He filed for bankruptcy about a year or so later, I think. I was by then out-of-state and insanely busy handling my second year of Culinary School.

“So...” I pondered, as much to myself as to Trevor, “that bakery’s all she has left? That’s the end of her family fortune?”

“That’s it.” He confirmed, “The last of it all, and now even that’s going bust. The bankruptcy of the dealership cleaned her dad out almost entirely. Fortunately, a few of the smaller personal properties were safely in her mother’s name. Her mom gave the bakery in Hillside Lakes to Adriana and runs the local B&B. Nice place, actually ... and she wasn’t a bad sort of mother-in-law, either. Adriana’s father was innocent of all the price fixing and crooked contracts that his brothers were very guilty of, and he just kind of got caught at the very end holding a big bag of shit when the music stopped and all the chairs were pulled away. They really deserved better, all of them. I try and run a little business her way, when I can, but I just don’t have many business interests anywhere up in the hill country. I always was a city boy, but let me know if you find a place where I can build a world-class golf resort at!” He laughed.

“Ok...” I said, “I’ll give the property a hard look, but I can’t make any promises. Are you handling the sale?”

“Nope, just helping the local selling agent along. I did agree to help cover her seller’s commission though, just for old times’ sake. Even just those few thousand dollars that will be owed to her agent are going to make a real difference to her. Hell, her mom’s B&B’s might be up for sale too, if you can find someone to swing buying the pair.”

“I’ll consider it,” I admitted, “just because Adriana was in my old home room and I’d hate to think that someone I sat down next to for three years was on the verge of living out on the street. And if she’s willing to be at all reasonable about making a deal. She did tend to be a bit prideful, back in the day.”

“More than a little.” Trevor admitted. We shared another drink and made small talk before my friend John made another circuit of the room, to frost his now ample cake with yet another new client or two. Damn, I wish I had his ability to schmooze and press the flesh!

I was crazy busy at work for the next two weeks until the owners finally stopped dithering and they at last hired a new Executive Chef. As promised, I received a special bonus for my dual-duty of running the restaurant over the last six months, and it adequately matched my expectations. In another month, right at Christmas, I’d also get my regular annual bonus as the head Pâtissier. Each was about a quarter of my annual salary, which was alone a bit above industry standard for an experienced head Pastry Chef. Together with my existing savings, I would have ample amount of ready funds to consider buying Adriana’s bakery café ... and maybe even the Bed and Breakfast inn too.

I’d been at this well-known restaurant for a full five years and while the owners had done right by me, it was time to move on, I’d decided. Either to a really big city top level head Pâtissier position under a famous Executive Chef, or else to open up a place entirely of my own. Or, I could do both perhaps, buying some existing place, fixing its problems and improving its menu and quality, and then leaving someone else to then manage and operate it for me so I could build on my career resume somewhere else. Perhaps having a half-owner already wasn’t quite the liability I first thought it might be?

The holiday season, between Christmas and New Year’s, was also our restaurant’s busiest time of the year. No walk-ins were available and all reservations were already booked solid for the entire month for dinner. I needed to be there every single day and I worked at least my usual sixty-plus hour work week. That’s par for the course in this business ... you get used to it or find another way to make a living! I could rest and recover in the slow dog month of January, and I did.

For starters, I called the local agent in Hillside Lakes just to see if the property was still on the market, and it was. Then, I inquired to see if the owner was still firm about only selling a half interest in the business, and that was still the case also. Firmly, the agent informed me. I asked her to email me the business financials for the last three years and also send over a comprehensive set of photos of the property, front of the house and back. Both collections were sent promptly, and neither was especially encouraging.

The photos of the front of the business from the street looked alright enough. Sweetie Cakes had been founded in the town way back in 1938 and appeared to be something of a local institution, right on the local main street downtown. Across the front door was another cheerful painted sign, ‘Stop and Smell the Flours’. Cute!

Inside, the front of the house looked old, perhaps even retro with much of the original layout from 1938. I could live with that, assuming that the seat leather could be replaced, the old chrome polished up, and some of the dim lighting modernized a little. I did like the original service counter bar. The service hardware behind it all looked dated, badly so. Probably sixties or seventies, and long overdue for replacement. I bet none of the coolers kept to a properly safe temperature either. I’d replace the entire lot of them, almost certainly.

The pictures from the back of the house, the kitchen and bakery production areas and the service line, were even less satisfactory. Damn, those Hobart floor mixers both looked old! The commercial baking ovens were a mishmash of brands and looked even older! Even from casual photos, I could tell that the general cleanliness was not up to my professional standards. Replacing everything back here was going to get expensive ... especially those Hobarts!

Checking the financials, I could see at a glance at least one reason why the place was losing money every single month – equipment maintenance fees! She was paying out more each month in repair bills than my restaurant was, and we were nearly ten times her size! Biting the bullet now and dumping nearly 100k into new equipment would cut this figure by 75% or more, and nearly bring the balance sheet back into the black by itself. The annual tax depreciation costs for the new capital hardware would help manage the rest!

It appeared that the financial situation was apparently not hopeless ... so, I phoned the selling agent back to arrange a time to view the property. I was taking all of the next week off for vacation anyway, so the timing was perfect for a short trip to the Hill Country. Out of amusement, I even booked an overnight reservation at Adriana’s mom’s B&B, the ‘Wake ‘n Bake’. Kind of a clever name too! Their specialty was breakfast pastries, apparently. The online website photos all looked nice enough and it seemed like a good place to visit in any case.

It took several hours to make the drive up into the hill country, and I arrived in Hillside Lakes in mid afternoon. I checked in at the B&B and let the friendly innkeeper, Janet, Adriana’s mother, slyly offer me her dinner recommendation, naturally at her daughter’s bakery café, Sweetie Cakes. It was quiet there and I had the place all to myself for most of the afternoon. The seller’s agent was scheduled to meet me there at six o’clock, but the dinner rush was mostly non-existent.

Inside, the service area wasn’t spacious, but there were four booths along the wall and six small square tables with chairs between them and the old fashioned service counter with stools. Next to the front window side of the service counter there were two refrigerated small glass display cabinets, the first with an assortment of about eight local baked items and the other displaying cakes. That seemed to be their main bakery focus really, birthday and wedding cakes. Items that I frankly had little or no interest in, but were probably a necessary evil for local sales. The rest of the bakery items were all behind the counter area. It’s hard to sell what customers can’t readily see.