Chapter 3

TUESDAY, JUNE 16

Chet caught up with me in the bakery at 07:22. I’d gone there for a coffee. Okay, and a pecan sticky bun. So? I’d jogged to work, and I owed it to the citizens of Coldwater County to keep my blood sugar at optimum levels to provide my tippy-top best service to them.

Chet looked at the sweet roll and said, “Again? Have you priced leather belts, lately?”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that my waist size is the same as it was when I was running Community Mental Health.”

“That was less than a year ago.”

“I’m starting to feel the chill of a hostile work environment.”

“You’re standing under an AC vent.”

“Anyway, you’re not allowed to harass me until eight o’clock.”

“Okay. Then come by my office when you want to hear Burt’s latest demand.”

“Aw, nuts, that’s not fair.”

“Who said life was fair?”

“Ah, the ageless wisdom of parental units. What’s next? ‘If everybody jumps off the bridge, are you going to jump off too?’”

Chet grinned. “My mother always said, ‘If everybody else goes to school naked.’ Just picturing it would distract me from whatever it was I’d been whining about.”

“Yeah, I like that better. Maybe if I have a kid.”

“I thought Greta...” At this juncture, we were walking back through the empty halls toward our offices in building three.

“Yeah, but Emily wants a kid. Me and Greta do, too.”

On April first, Emily, Greta, and I had instituted a family trust that now owned our house (Emily’s buy-in had paid off the mortgage), our vehicles, and our stocks and other securities, as well as holding a fifty thousand dollar cash account. We had also registered ourselves as a partnership with the Secretary of State’s office at the capital, in Kingston.

Greg, Emily’s legal husband, had allowed her to keep all the proceeds from the sale of their Leaufroide house. Now when he made his periodic visits to Leaufroide, he stayed with us.

“You know how that works, right, about having babies, I mean?” Chet asked.

“You bet we do. We’ve been saving UPC strips from baby-food containers for six months.” Then, reverting to work mode, I asked, “So, what asininity has Burt Rauch produced, now?”

“He wants us to take the full seven-point-five percent allowable admin fee from Margaret’s autism grant.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I whisper-yelled. “Has he been reading Ayn Rand or watching those head-up-the-ass libertarian fanatics on YouTube? Does he want to bring back child labor and debtor’s prisons, too?”

“Not this fiscal year, anyway. But the new year is only fourteen days away.”

“How does he justify it? Margaret does all the work on that contract. They pay to have their books audited for us. All we do is keep track of the money going to them and do a program audit once a quarter. Two-and-a-half percent covers that just about to the penny.”

“He didn’t justify it. He just said it was allowable under the grant.”

I walked with Chet down to his office. We sat at his round conference table, or, as I was thinking of it, breakfast table. I didn’t let my bad mood keep me from dunking a piece of the sticky bun in my coffee.

Swallowing the delicious morsel, I said, “Burt never reads our grants. The applications, maybe, but not the RFPs (request for proposals). I don’t recall anything about allowable percentages being on the application forms.”

“Maybe he’s decided to be more conscientious.”

“Yeah, right. Who’s Kool Aid have you been drinking?”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Starting July first, he wants the whole slice of the pie.”

“And where’s the money supposed to go?”

“Oh, I forgot that part. He’s upping the Center’s county administrative fee by point-three percent, which happens to be within twenty dollars of that additional five percent from Margaret’s grant.”

“Where’s a cast iron skillet when you really need one?”

“Do you tell Margaret or do I?” he asked

“Depends. What else are you going to say to her?”

“Good point. Maybe we should go over there and talk to her.”

Just then, his desk phone double-beeped. As I was sitting closer to his desk, I reached back and snagged the receiver and said, “County Health Center, this is Gary.”

“Oh, I thought I called Chet.” It was Greta.

“We’re in his office.”

“I’d tried to call you first, but you weren’t there, so I left a message.”

“So who do you want to talk to?”

“You’ll do.”

“I’m so pleased to be adequate. What’s up?”

“Margaret Deveaux is stopping by on the way to her office. She heard we were shutting down the bakery and wanted to see what sort of equipment we had. She might make us an offer.”

I said, “Hold on a sec. I’m gonna put this on speaker.”

I stood up, punched the speaker button, and put the receiver in the cradle.

“Go ahead, Miz Mazur. Please repeat that for Mister Weaver.”

And she did.

Twelve minutes later, the four of us were seated around Chet’s table.

I asked, “How did you find out about the bakery closing?”

Margaret Deveaux was an ample woman in her early forties. Rather than the intense demeanor that one might expect from anyone with a history of accomplishments such as she had attained, and with her showing no apparent intention of slowing down, she was a friendly, one might say matronly, woman who you just knew would give you a second helping of ice cream, as long as you were polite about asking. As far as I knew, there wasn’t anybody who didn’t like Margaret Deveaux, from the clients in her programs to our representatives in the state legislature.

“I must say, that was a bit odd,” she began, frowning behind her eyeglasses. “A woman called late yesterday to say that the Saint Louis Bakery and Deli was closing and you folks would be selling all the equipment and furnishings. She called while I was out. Actually, I was over here meeting with Lydia about a young man who had just moved to Foughbury with his elderly parents. The woman didn’t leave her name, either. I found the message when I checked my voice mail before I headed out, this morning.”

Chet had agreed that I could take the lead.

I said, “That’s not the only program change coming down the pike. Burt’s told us to take the entire seven-point-five percent admin fee out of the autism grant, beginning in July.”

I swear, I could feel a wave of heat.

“That cocksucker,” Deveaux snarled. With the scary look on her face and sudden stiffening of her posture, Chet, Greta, and I each pushed back an inch or two from the table. Have you ever seen a mother bear ... Better yet, just search on YouTube for “mama bear protecting her cubs.” You’ll get an idea of why we flinched.

I think the three of us knew right then and there that the increase in our administrative fee on the autism grant was DOA.

Greta said, “We’re in the same boat with the bakery. Our assistant DA has filed a lawsuit claiming that the smell of baking bread that reaches her office gives her anxiety or something. We found a gap in an exhaust duct and we fixed it, but Burt still says we have to close the bakery by the end of June.”

“How will you deal with the proposed autism budget cut?” Chet asked.

“Simple,” she said, her eyes still narrowed. “State Senator Larkin has a nephew with autism, the same boy who also happens to be Commissioner Cleary’s step-grandson. The youngster is in our program, and doing quite well. I think Burt Rauch has stepped into a bear trap.” But the way she said that made me want to slide down in bed and pull the covers over my head. I started to feel sorry for Burt.

However, what I said was, “We have no intention of closing the bakery.” Then I paused as they all looked at me. I held up my hands to keep Chet from firing off a barrage of questions. “Well, technically, we might close the Saint Louis Bakery and Deli. See, Burt’s been a bit vague about things.

“First, he’s telling us the floor space where the bakery is located is ours to use or not, as the rent’s already allocated to us in next year’s budget. At the same time, he told us to close the bakery by the end of the fiscal year, but he didn’t specify which fiscal year.” That got the expected skeptical looks. “Okay, that one’s a little weak,” I admitted

Chet said, “It doesn’t even rise to the definition of weak.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m taking the shotgun approach. So what I figure we can do is close the Saint Louis Bakery and Deli on June thirtieth, and open the Mount Austin Bakery and Deli on July first.”

But Chet couldn’t contain himself. “That’s a bushel of double talk that Burt will destroy within minutes of hearing about it. You, me, and Greta will be looking for work on July second.”

“Not me,” said Greta. “I’ll start looking on the first, right after I’m fired. You two can pick through my leavings.”

I said, “Hold on, hold on, it’s not just based on trying to play ‘Who’s On First’ with Burt. Margaret, here, gave me an idea.

“Down in the bakery, at this very moment, Denny’s right-hand man is Barney Austin, scion of the Austin dynasty.”

Deveaux scoffed, “There is no Austin dynasty. All that the family owns any more are the nut groves. Besides, Barney Austin has two cousins, sons of Judge Aus-- Ah, I see what you’re up to.”

“Right,” I said. “We get Judge Austin to cut the ribbon opening up the Mount Austin Bakery and Deli, maybe give a little speech about civic duty or something, take an interest in its success.”

“I don’t know,” Chet said. “Even if that works, Burt will just find some other way to come at us, maybe something worse.”

Greta rejoined, “If he can think of something worse, he’ll do it anyway.”

I said, “It’s a delaying action. Burt’s trying to put us into some sort of crisis, god knows why. We need to figure out why the war of attrition, all of a sudden.”

Deveaux said, “So I guess you won’t be selling me any restaurant equipment.”

I asked, “What were you going to do with it, anyway?”

“You know that building, on the northeast corner of Third and State?”

“Where that empty restaurant space is?” Greta asked. “Emily and I wanted to open a tea shop there, but Gary wouldn’t let us.”

Deveaux said, “A tea shop? What a wonderful idea. I know at least four other women who would love to have a quiet place for a cuppa. Unfortunately, we’re probably the only five women in town with a penchant for high tea.”

“Now you sound like Gary,” Greta pouted.

“What about that building?” Chet asked.

“Developing Abilities owns it. It was left to us as a bequest. Our first idea was a soda fountain, but then we decided that teenagers would not be the ideal market to be served by men and women with Down syndrome or other problems. So we began to think of a shop modeled on the Saint Louis Bakery and Deli.

“We figured we really wouldn’t be competing with you and, over time, we thought we could build up a regular clientele of tolerant adults, maybe even some of the same veterans that come up here.”

Greta said, “Some of the chemically dependent people could use another venue. We’re open Friday and Saturday nights, but that leaves five other nights of the week.”

I said, “Just because we’re not selling, doesn’t mean you can’t offer to buy. I’m sure Burt would appreciate seeing that we’re making progress toward his goals. How about you send us a non-binding bid, contingent on something like...”

“A marketing survey,” Deveaux supplied. “I had a quick look-around when we bought our coffee. What do you think everything’s worth?”

That was a tough one. “I’ve a rough idea what it’s worth in resale dollars, but there’s a lot of anxiety and sweat in that bakery.”

Deveaux said, “Well, it’s all pretend anyway. Just give me a number.”

“Twenty-two five, including the display cases, service counters, tables and chairs, and the storage shelves in the pantry.”

“I didn’t see those.”

They’re the open, wire shelves that the state health inspector recommends. Four of them, six by four by two, five shelves for each.”

Greta asked, “What are you planning to call your place?”

“We hadn’t gotten that far.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “We’ll sell you the name, Saint Louis Bakery and Deli, for a thousand dollars.”

“Do you actually own that?”

“It’s a registered business name with the Community Maintenance Program the owner of record,” I explained.

She said, “I don’t know. That name only has a meaning up here, from the old seminary.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But it does have a wider cachet as a known rehabilitation program. Maybe you could call it Saint Louis Downtown. That might be a way to ease the locals into acceptance.”

She said, “I knew you were a smart-ass, but I didn’t realize you were such a bullshit artist.”

“That’s because you didn’t know my mother.”

It was not even 10:00 when Deveaux left but I felt like I’d already put in a full day. Chet told me that he and I would go out for lunch, that he didn’t want to see me until 11:45, and to close the door on my way out. I could take a hint.

I decided to see if Lydia Grossman was in her office, which was on the first floor of building three, just downstairs. Lydia was the Developmentally Disabled Habilitation Team manager. She and two bachelor-degreed staff provided case management to DDH clients, while the habilitation services were provided by Margaret Deveaux’s NPO (non-profit organization), Developing Abilities. Lydia also had the responsibility of managing the nearly quarter-million dollar contract we had with Developing Abilities (To be clear, that quarter million was only a part of Developing Abilities’ annual budget.), so her case management assignments were only about half what the others carried.

I found Lydia alone in the office. I stopped at her doorway and asked, “Got a minute?”

She said, “Yeah, c’mon in. I heard about the five percent bite Burt wants to take out of the autism contract. Can’t you get him committed to the state hospital or something?”

I sat in a guest chair. “Want to borrow my cast iron skillet?” Phil Amundsen had been murdered in the bakery by a blow from a twelve-inch cast iron skillet. I had been arrested for that homicide.

“I’ve something better. My husband was on the curling team in college. We have a granite stone at home that weighs just shy of forty-four pounds, since there’s a chip broken off. I figure that could make an impression.”

“Did you know Margaret came by this morning?”

“She stopped to say hi on her way out. She said someone told her the bakery equipment was for sale. Is it?”

“Not quite yet. I want to talk more about it at Management Team on Thursday.

“Let me ask about something. When Margaret was here yesterday, do you recall who else you might have encountered, walking past your office or anywhere else?”

“We didn’t meet in this office. The Js were in here (Js is pronounced Jays. More on them later.) working the phones and, since the bakery hadn’t closed yet, we went over there had some coffee and cookies. We left when they started mopping the floor and went up to the conference room in this building.”

“Anybody else in the bakery?”

“Besides Denny and the crew, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me think. Chet came by and picked up a small decorated cake. He looked embarrassed, so it must have been Lindsey’s birthday or their anniversary or something.”

“They didn’t meet until early July last year.”

“Then maybe the baby test strip showed negative.”

“Thanks for the image. Anyone else?”

“That data entry clerk from Admin, you know, the cute one, ah, Jenny, yeah, Jenny Raab. She bought something they put in a paper sack for her. She was wearing one of the skorts, you know, shorts that look like a skirt? Did you see Jenny yesterday? What’s nice about those things is that they can be short and ... what?”

“Do you earn points for embarrassing me? Is there some kind of contest going on?”

She chuckled. “Of course not. Besides, if there were, it would only count if there was someone else to witness and verify the score.”

“Great.”

“Unless, of course, someone were to take a picture of your red face” She lifted her phone and aimed it at me and she showed me the picture of my face. “Should have used the light,” she said.

“Do you mind? Did you see anyone else?”

“Yeah. Just when they started putting the chairs up on the tables, the wicked bitch of the west came in for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. Then she stood in the loading dock door to smoke, with all the smoke blowing back inside. Whats-his-name, uh, Barney asked her to close the door because of flies, but she ignored him.”

“Where was Denny?”

“I didn’t see him. Maybe he took a potty break, ‘cause he was there earlier. Anyway, I finally pointed out to her that the smoke blowing back inside was a violation of state law,” She gave me a look that was laughably contrived. She left without her pie.”

“Anyone else?”

“Just JJ and JJ. Margaret always says hi to all of us when she comes by. Saw Chet again when we went to use the conference room. He was in his office. No sign of the cake.”

She gave me an inquisitive look. “Now may I know why you’re asking?”

“A woman called Developing Abilities when Margaret was over here. Apparently the caller knew that Margaret was here, maybe, because she didn’t ask to speak to Margaret, just asked to leave her a message. The message was that the bakery was closing and the equipment was for sale. She didn’t leave her name.”

“So, who do you suspect? Jenny Raab? Can I help you question her?”

“I’m gaining some insight into why I sometimes seem to frustrate Chet.”

“That’s high praise from the reigning smart-ass. Thank you for the kind words. I heard about your encounter with Burt the other day, too. I would learn at your feet, sensei.”

“I’m feeling the urge to go to Chet and beg his forgiveness.”

Janine Josephson, “JJ,” and Jesse Josephson, “JJ,” a mid-twenties, married couple, came into the office and Lydia said, “Then now would be a good time to go begging, because we have a case audit to get through.”

“Okay, and thanks, sort of.”

“Mon plaisir, mon capitaine,” Lydia called, as I left her office.

I dredged the translation from my single year of college French, My pleasure, my captain. Sighing, I thought, once again, how I wished I’d taken a more useful language, like Spanish or Chinese, instead of the German I’d taken in high school and the college French. In those days, if I ever did take a European trip, I fancied England, France, Germany, and Switzerland were my most likely destinations. Nowadays, I’d have been more interested in Norway and Sweden, where, I’d been led to believe, many folks spoke English as a more useful second language. I suppose I should be grateful, then, for being able to speak that same useful English.

My suspicion as to the anonymous caller to Margaret Deveaux’s office naturally ran to Adrienne Babbitt. What was her game in all of this? Ultimate sour grapes? Full court pout? Maximum tantrum? Was her life so miserable she wanted other people to suffer, too? None of it made sense, unless I’d slipped into a parallel universe again, the way I had when Emily moved in with us.

That was a situation that felt like the sheerest leap of faith. It was the sort of thing that all conventional wisdom and contemporary morality insisted was unworkable. Yet, despite the uncertainties of our own emotional tolerances, it seemed to be working great.

Folks first thoughts, when learning of our formalized menage e trios, always seemed to go immediately to the sexual implications. And I’ll admit that those intimacies were worthy of consideration. But the real change, the overwhelmingly wonderful part of the experience, is that now there were three of us, instead of just two. Three of us to deal with the world and what life would throw at us. While three was a proportional increase of fifty percent, the event of it, the happening, felt much more exponential. Our possibilities just seemed to ... burgeon. Burgeon seems a good word for it.

Nor could I overlook my great good fortune in having encountered two others who had been willing to take that leap of faith with me. I was especially awestruck by Greta’s ability to turn her sadly negative base into the emotionally daring acceptance of a new paradigm. In fact, I think it was the intriguing potential of the new relationship which helped draw her out of the dregs of her father’s sexual abuse. Her bitterness seemed to melt away. To my amusement, while her tendency toward back-biting seemed to vanish overnight, her propensity toward sarcasm came to the fore.

Like my own harsh style of humor, I suspect Greta’s sarcasm was a defense against the sheer volume of intolerance, intransigence, and anti-intellectualism which so many of our fellow citizens seemed to produce. What I found truly daunting was that I was wholly certain that many of that ilk were equally sincere in seeing me and others like me as the obviously negative facets in our sociopolitical milieu. Ah, well, like the Buddha says, It takes all kinds.

I still had half an hour before my lunch appointment with Chet, so I headed over to Public Health, which shared building four with Mental Health. Public Health, which saw a lot more traffic, was on the first floor for the convenience of their clientele, with Mental Health occupying the upper floor.

Theresa (Terry) Sloan, MSN, PHN, the Public Health Team Manager, was with a couple of the nurses in an exam room with a woman and her baby, in some sort of discussion, so I sat down in the waiting room. There were a half dozen mothers and about twice that many kids, from babes-in-arms to three- or four-year olds. Most of the kids were in the corner play area, but a couple were with their mothers, already crying in anticipation of the injections they associated with visits here. Boy, did that bring back some memories.

Waiting for Terry was not a bother as I like watching kids. No, get your mind out of the gutter. My interest ran more to an appreciation of their brains.

Back in the day, I took an undergrad developmental psychology course, in other words, a survey of how the human mind developed. The instructor, an associate professor, was enthusiastically devoted to the subject of early childhood development. I came to understand that these big-eyed, bobble-headed, helpless bundles of strange odors were actually high performance learning systems.

I mean, think about it: without having the slightest inkling about human anatomy, or notions like balance, gravity, weight, testing, perspective, or other concepts we take for granted, and with, at best, a very rudimentary understanding of a few spoken words, they learn how to turn, sit, crawl, stand, walk, run, eat solid food, lift and move objects, eventually control their bladders, learn a language and how to speak it, and myriad finer skills. And yet, even while they usually have parent and family support, they accomplish all of this virtually on their own and in barely more than a couple of years. That’s friggin’ amazing.

That college course was almost enough to steer me toward a major in early childhood education, but in the end, social work won out. Still, I now look at babies and toddlers for the learning experts that they are, where practically every movement, every discovery, every sound, is being synthesized into a self-actuated human being. I mean, really, just wow!

Terry came out of the exam room and saw me sitting in the row of chairs with the mothers and kids and gave me that eyebrow lift that means, “What’s up?”

I stood and walked across the waiting room and said, “I’m on walkabout. It looked more fun in here than anywhere else. Besides, little kids fascinate me.”