Keep Calm and Candy On

by Wendy Meadows

  I shrug. “I wonder if he’ll have any luck with the others. I just wonder.”

  “They won’t sell,” he returns. “None of them will sell out…. will they?”

  “I really don’t know. We don’t know anything about their personal lives or their finances. One of them—or a lot of them—could be on the ropes financially. They might jump at the chance to sell their businesses at market value. We just don’t know.”

  “But what if most of them sell?” he asks. “What if you’re the only hold-out? What will happen then? He can’t build a strip mall unless everybody sells. It wouldn’t work to build a strip mall with one little candy store in the middle of it.”

  I turn away. “I don’t know, and right now, I have more important things to think about, like where in the storeroom I’m going to put all this candy. I’m sure we’ll hear more than we want to about the development soon enough.”

  I hoist the first box. My back already aches from lifting them onto the counter. I lug one box back to the storeroom and let it thump onto the concrete floor.

  I look around at all the cartons and canisters crowding the shelves. Night after night, I stand here and admire my stock and my store and congratulate myself on my achievements.

  Now the sight of them depressed me beyond belief. What’s the point of working so hard to build something if someone with a fat checkbook can come along and snatch it all out from under me? What do my accomplishments amount to in the end? They’re nothing more than a roadblock to building another cookie cutter strip mall.

  All at once, I feel old and exhausted and useless. I sink onto a tub of Jelly Bellys and let my head fall into my hands. What would I do—I mean, what would I really do—if all my neighbors sold out to this developer? Does my candy store really mean enough for me to wage all-out war against the big corporate giants? How long could I reasonably hold out before this Mark Sheridan character?

  The sound of excited talking drifts through the door. I ignore it until the pitch rises to a volume I can no longer tune out. I stick my head into the shop to find Zack in a heated debate with the same Mark Sheridan.

  I blink the surprise out of my eyes and hurry into the room. “Can I help you, Mr. Sheridan? I hope you’re not talking to my son about buying my store.”

  “Not at all!” His features radiate excitement and glee. “I wanted to order one of those trays of chocolates you have in the refrigerator case. It’s my mother’s birthday on Tuesday. I completely forgot until I got halfway down the street. Could I pick one up tomorrow morning? I’m driving down to Hartford to visit her. I could take it with me. She loves chocolate.”

  “All right.” I shake the confusion out of my head. I have to shift mental gears from resenting his offer to buy my store. Now I have to think of him as a normal customer. “If you come in tomorrow morning, you can buy one then.”

  He beams at me and leaves. I press my hand to my forehead. This whole situation just keeps getting weirder and weirder. I look up to find Zack scowling at me. “What?” I ask.

  “You’re not really going to sell him chocolates, are you?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” I ask. “His money is as good as anybody else’s, I guess.”

  Zack opens his mouth to argue back, but I turn my back on him and retreat to the storeroom. I don’t want to talk to anybody right now—certainly not about Mark Sheridan and his infamous strip mall. He’s a businessman. I might not agree with his methods. I might not even like him, but if I start banning everybody I disagree with from my store, I’m sunk.

  To my immense relief, I manage to spend most of the day in the storeroom unpacking the new inventory while Zack mans the counter. After that, I hide in my office doing paperwork.

  At about six o’clock that evening, Zack pokes his head through the door. “Everything’s all packed up, Mom. I’m going home. Just lock the door and turn off the lights when you leave.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” I call back. “I’ll be done soon.”

  I hear him walk away, and the store falls silent. I finish my work, lock the front door, and head down Main Street when I spot a cluster of people hanging around Simone Peretti’s antique shop. I can’t make out their faces in the dusk until I come up alongside them.

  I gasp. “Stacy! What’s going on out here?”

  I join Stacy Koontz from the Happy-Go-Lucky Café, Mr. Stewart from the dog grooming parlor, and Sabrina Harris from the bakery. They huddle together and talk in low voices.

  Stacy turns to me. “Did that snake developer come to visit you today, Margaret? He tried to buy my café. Can you believe the nerve? I told him never to set foot on my property again. I told him if I see him again, I’ll have him arrested for criminal trespass.”

  “The price he offered me was shocking,” Mr. Stewart adds. “He claimed it was market value. Well, it might be market value for the building, but not for the business itself. I could sell my business for ten times that on the open market.”

  “Did you tell him that?” I ask.

  “Of course I told him that,” Mr. Stewart fires back. “I told him not to insult me with his peanuts. I told him he would never get his hands on my business until he came up with a fair price—I mean a truly fair price.”

  “Did he get mad?” I ask. “How did he react?”

  Mr. Stewart grinds his teeth. “That’s what made my blood boil more than anything. He didn’t get mad. He only smiled like my business was the biggest joke in history. He strolled on out the door as pretty as you please.”

  “He did the same thing to me,” Sabrina chimes in. “I told him to tally up all the hours I put into making this business a success and multiply it by thirty dollars. Then maybe he might come close to paying me what the business was worth.”

  I nod. “Good idea. He doesn’t seem to realize what these businesses mean to us. He seems to think he can wave a fat check under our noses and get us to turn our backs on our precious blood, sweat, and tears.”

  “It was hardly a fat check, either,” Mr. Stewart grumbles.

  At that moment, a stocky man comes out of the Toy Store at the end of town. He turns his back on us to lock up before walking away.

  Stacy lunges at him. “Patrick! Patrick Donohue! Come here!” She grabs his arm and tows him into the circle. “Did that Mark Sheridan try to buy your store? Did he offer you a pittance for it the way he did to us?”

  Patrick looks around at the faces waited for his answer. “He offered, and I accepted.”

  Stacy gasps. Her hand flies to her mouth in horror, and Mr. Stewart’s jaw drops. “You didn’t!”

  “I did,” Patrick returns, “and if you people have any brains at all, you’ll take his offer, too, and be grateful. That’s what I did, and I don’t regret it for an instant. I’m not likely to get any more for the place, and I don’t want to die behind the counter. Good night.”

  He turns to walk away, but Mr. Stewart dodges in front of him to block his way. “Hold it right there, Mr. Donohue. You might be walking away with a comfortable pay-off, but you still have to live in this town. You still have to face us on the street. How do you plan to do that after cutting us off at the knees?”

  Patrick shakes off his hand. “I’m not in business as a charity, Mr. Stewart. I’m in business to make money, just like Mark Sheridan. You can all see how successful he is. He didn’t get that way by selling Legos to children, and I won’t, either.”

  He strides off down the street and disappears into the falling night. The four of us watch him out of sight. No one says anything until Simone smacks her lips. “I didn’t think anyone could be so foolish as to fall for that.”

  “He’s only one of us,” I tell them all. “Sheridan can’t build a strip mall on a lot the size of the Toy Store. As long as the rest of us band together, he can’t do anything. Mark Sheridan might be successful, but success comes from the community. No one can survive without that.”

  3

  Zack rips off his apron strings. He peels it over his head an
d tosses the apron on the counter. “I’m going out for a walk, Mom. I’ll be back later.”

  I watch him walk to the door. “Uh…. okay, sweetie. I can handle things here.”

  “You better,” he clips over his shoulder. “If you want to sell chocolate to that cutthroat, you can do it when I’m not around. I won’t support his efforts.”

  Before I can reply, he barges out of the store and heads off toward the used bookstore across the street. I blink after him before I realize what he’s talking about. He’s mad at Mark Sheridan.

  Everyone in town is in a dither about the supposed strip mall, but I can’t help remembering our conversation last night. If one shopkeeper sells out, Mark will be just as helpless to carry out his plan as if no one did. He can’t build his strip mall unless all of us go along with it.

  Even so, none of that bears in the slightest on me selling him chocolates for his mother’s birthday. Heck, I should be happy he’s giving me money for something other than my store. In a way, he’s working against himself by keeping me in business.

  I smile to myself over that and go back to spraying Windex on the windows. I wipe it down and observe the town beyond my crumpled newspaper rag. Mr. Stewart stands behind his workbench soaping down a Golden Retriever. Horace Bentley comes out of the used bookstore with a broom. He sweeps some cobwebs off his windows and nods to Zack when they meet on the sidewalk. Zack says something to him and they both go inside.

  I finish cleaning the windows. I cast a glance over my shoulder toward the street, but there’s still no sign of Mark. I get out the broom. I tend to a thousand little chores. A few other customers come in.

  Noon rolls around. Still no Mark. I search up and down the street. Nothing. During a lull between customers, I go back to my office and eat the sandwich I brought from home. When I come back at quarter after the hour, I meet Zack coming through the door.

  He cracks a grin. “Is he gone?”

  I don’t smile. “It’s really weird. He didn’t come.”

  Zack puts his apron on. “Good. I didn’t want you selling to him, anyway.”

  He goes back to work, but I can’t help looking around for the thousandth time. Where is Mark? Maybe his car broke down or something. Then again, he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who drives anything that could break down. He probably trades in his car every year for the latest, greatest model.

  I keep working until one-thirty in the afternoon, but he still doesn’t come. I strip off my apron. “I’m going to take the chocolates to his house.”

  Zack’s eyes pop. “What on earth would you do that for? He probably just forgot or something. Maybe he was too busy signing real estate deals. He’ll probably come in tomorrow.”

  I shake my head fishing the tray out of the fridge case. “I’ll just trot around to his house and drop them off. He was most insistent that he would pick them up today. They were for his mother’s birthday, and he was going to drive all the way to Hartford after he picked them up. It’s too late for that now. Something must have gone wrong. I’ll just take them around to his house. It’s the nice thing to do.”

  Zack rolled his eyes to Heaven. “Jesus, Mom! Since when do you do the nice thing to someone who’s trying to ruin this town? Put the chocolates back. You don’t need to make a sale that bad.”

  “It’s not about making a sale. It’s about community. I might not agree with what he’s doing, but he’s still a part of it. More importantly, I’m still a part of it. I’ll be back in two ticks.”

  I carry the tray in one hand and hurry down the sidewalk to the western neighborhood. I make my way to Sophie Freeman’s house. She’s long gone, but I still can’t think of it as anything besides Sophie’s house. I probably always will.

  I knock on the door. I stand there for five full minutes. I knock again, and again. No one comes. I sneak around to the flowerbed to peer through the window. The house appears normal enough. All the furniture in the sitting room stands in its usual places. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  I go back to the door. I knock. I fidget from one foot to the other and switch the tray to my other hand. More waiting. Nothing.

  On an impulse, I try the door latch. It clicks down and the door opens. I lean across the threshold and call into the house. “Mr. Sheridan!

  The place echoes with an eerie feeling. No one answers and a cold breeze hits me in the face from inside. It smells musty and unlived-in. So why is the door unlocked?

  I call again. “Is anybody home! Mr. Sheridan! It’s me, Margaret Nichols from the candy store. I brought those chocolates you wanted to give your mother for her birthday.”

  Still no answer. Something about the place creeps me out. A guy that rich wouldn’t leave his door unlocked when he wasn’t home. I gather my courage and step onto the carpet. I set the chocolate tray on the hall table and inch my way into the house.

  I can see from the entrance that no one’s in the sitting room or the parlor across the way. I see into the kitchen around the corner. From here, I can just make out immaculately clean countertops and tile floors.

  I wander farther into the house. The hall ends in a guest bedroom and bath to one side. Across the corridor, double doors open into a library lined with bookshelves to the ceiling. A fancy roll-top desk occupies one corner. It stands at an angle to the corner with a modern desk, cabinet, and computer station perpendicular to that. A dozen charger cables trail from the power socket in the wall. That must be Mark’s work desk.

  I pace into the room. I make it four feet and spot two bare, hairy white legs sticking out near an armchair. I halt, and my blood runs cold. Icy certainty seizes my heart. I already know what I’ll see if I take that next fateful step.

  What am I thinking, making pretenses at being a private investigator? How can I be one if I shrink from looking at a dead body?

  I force myself to put my foot out. I take the next inevitable step, and there he is. Mark Sheridan sits propped against the bookshelf wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. Thick, dark hair covers his pasty white skin. He doesn’t look so spectacular without his fancy suit and attaché case.

  My shoulders slouch, and I let out a long sigh. Another person dead. Just what West End needs. Maybe we’re all better off selling up and turning this town into a strip mall. If we’re all nothing but a bunch of murderers or a bunch of would-be murder victims, what kind of community do we really have?

  I stand there staring at him for a minute before I snap out of my shock. I pull out my phone and text David. You better come over to Mark Sheridan’s house at 43 Westminster Street. He’s dead in his library.

  I meander back out to the porch to wait for the police, but I can’t stop my mind running in circles. I already know a bunch of people who hated Mark and probably wanted to get rid of him. There’s just one problem. They’re all my friends and neighbors. Could one of them really be a killer?

  I flash back to yesterday evening with Stacy, Mr. Stewart, and Simone standing around grousing about Mark and his business practices. Any one of them could have killed him. They all stated their motives in no uncertain terms.

  I don’t want to think about it, but I can’t stop my brain from churning. I’ve put too much time and thought into solving thorny murder mysteries in the last six months. Now I can’t turn it off even when I’d like to.

  One thought gives me the heebie-jeebies. Mark Sheridan solicited me to sell my business, too. That makes me a suspect in this case. I’ll have to tell David. There’s a good chance he’ll want me as far away from this case as possible. Heck, he might even want to take me in for questioning.

  The notion makes my knees wobble. I lean against the porch railing. I’d like to sit down in the chair nearby, but that might not look so good when the police show up.

  David noses his cruiser into the curb. He eyes me from the lawn. “Why is it that you always seem to find these bodies?”

  I can’t look him in the eye. “Mark Sheridan was going to come into the candy store and
buy one of those chocolate trays. He planned to buy it this morning as a birthday present for his mother. Then he was going to drive down to Hartford this afternoon to give it to her. He didn’t show up, so I came over to drop it off.”

  He takes out his notebook and starts scribbling. “Why did you enter the house without permission?”

  “I knocked, but no one answered,” I tell him. “I must have been standing out here for ten minutes. When no one came, I tried the latch. It was open, so I called inside. When I realized the door was open but no one was home, I got a strange feeling like something was wrong, so I went inside.”

  “Did you touch anything—anything at all?”

  “Just the front door.” I didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. “You’ll find the chocolate on the hall table. He’s in the library….in his underwear.”

  David’s head shoots up. He inspects me with his detective face on. Then he nods and turns away. “All right. Stay here and I’ll go take a look.”

  I wait, but David doesn’t leave. He moves toward the door and looks back at me over his shoulder. “Well?”

  “Well what?” I ask.

  “Are you seriously telling me you plan to stand out here and do nothing while I examine the crime scene?”

  I shift from one foot to the other. I look around the neighborhood at all the houses. I look everywhere but at him. “Isn’t that your job?”

  “You’re supposed to be the big, bad PI, aren’t you?” he returns. “In all the time I’ve known you, you have never once stood by and let me examine a crime scene alone. You always insist on joining me and putting in your two cents worth.”

  I shrug. “I guess this time is different.”

  His jaw drops and his eyes fall out of their sockets. “What’s gotten into you, Margaret? This isn’t like you at all.”

  I wave my hand. How can I make him understand? “I thought you would want to do it without…. you know, without a……”