No Parking

by Valentine Wheeler

  “Could we grab a drink, maybe?” she asked. “I’ve got something I have to talk to you about.”

  “Sure.” He slid into a booth, gesturing to the bench across from him. “I’m all ears for my future constituents. Have you finally decided to endorse me? You know a town institution like yours could do me some good.”

  She laughed. “We don’t endorse candidates. You know that.” She paused. “It’s about the parking lot and suite B, actually, not the bakery. I need information on the sale.”

  “The sale?” His gaze was curious. “What sale is that?”

  “When your dad bought suite B,” she said. “I’m trying to find a survey so I can get the city to enforce a customers-only parking policy.”

  “That was a long time ago, Marianne. You remember how rough that time was. That might take some time to find.” Something about the statement bothered Marianne, beyond the patronizing tone. He was four when his father bought the building, she recalled. He certainly didn’t have a memory of it.

  “I’d like to get a new survey done,” she continued, “but city hall doesn’t have a copy of the deed for the split on file. The only one I have is from the 1880s. If you had a copy of a recent survey, or even the deed, I would really appreciate a look.”

  “That’s a lot to ask for a parking dispute.”

  “It’s interfering with my business. And your tenant’s business too. Could you look?”

  Luke looked at his watch and sighed. “Marianne, I don’t have time for this right now. I’m in the middle of a campaign. Is this really the most important issue facing the town?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then you can come find me after I win,” he continued. “I’ll look into it then.” He slid out of the booth. “Nice to see you, Marianne.”

  As he strode out the door, Marianne stared after him. That had been quite the brush-off. She wondered what in the world he thought it was going to accomplish. She knew he didn’t want to look into the situation; that was for sure. If he had a deed, he would have said so; unlike her father, and to some extent her, Luke’s father and Luke himself were extremely tidy people. Her father joked once that half their realty empire was built on filing systems. He didn’t want her asking about suite B. He’d have been happy to search his files if he did, happy for a chance to have her owe him a favor.

  She followed him out more slowly, waving to Carol behind the bar as she went. Outside in the parking lot, Luke climbed into his BMW and pulled away.

  Marianne sent a silent apology to her father, who, despite being a veteran, had avoided conflict his whole life and desperately tried to make peace between the people he cared about. Sorry, Dad. I think this fight with Simon’s kid is going to be more trouble than I bargained for when I started looking into the parking lot.

  The walk back to Windmere Bakery took her down the busiest strip of Main Street, and she took the time slowly. The night was nicer than she’d expected, a mild wind blowing through the bare trees in the park across the street, and the streetlights cast a warm glow over the cobblestone sidewalks. They’d been redone a few years ago, restored to their turn of the century glory, and in the dark with the imitation gas lamps, she could have been walking along her grandfather’s Main Street. The breeze sent goose bumps down the nape of her neck and she pulled her coat closer around her.

  Ahead, the bakery in the distance looked exactly as it had for a hundred years, white-washed brick with narrow windows on the second floor and the Windmere Bakery sign in gold lettering sparkling in the light of the lamp that stuck out from the building just above it.

  None of this was good.

  Chapter Eleven

  Luke Leventi’s ads were everywhere, and they grated on Marianne even more after her encounter with him Monday night.

  She glared at the bus-stop bench a few days later as she sat at the red light at the corner of Tremont and Oak, wondering why a guy who controlled so much in town already felt the need to run for office and get even more wrapped up in the community for what seemed like little payoff. Maybe he was considering a run for president someday? Why else would he be wasting so much time and money on this campaign with all its ads and interviews? And where was he getting that money? He was wealthy, yes, but not wealthy enough to be buying market-wide airtime and this much physical advertising. Marianne had looked into advertising a few times for the bakery and each time had concluded word of mouth was much cheaper and much more effective. Besides, all the ads were by various PACs. What kind of candidate for a house primary had this many PACs? It didn’t make sense.

  The light changed and she took the left onto Tremont and then the right onto Chestnut, pulling into the Wilshire Market Basket parking lot and into a spot just past the entrance. She needed something besides falafel and croissants in her apartment; there was only so much restaurant food she could eat before she needed to make herself a couple days’ worth of salads.

  Someone called her name as she stepped up on the curb, and she turned to see Michael Blake. He looked friendlier out of his police uniform and pushing a stroller. She waved as he wheeled over, dodging a festive broccoli display.

  “This is Brady Nicole Blake,” said Michael. “Brady, this is Marianne. Her coffee is the thing your mom missed most while she was pregnant.”

  “How old is she?” asked Marianne, smiling down at the tiny face gazing up at her. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Five weeks,” said Michael proudly. “This is her first trip to the grocery store. We need some diapers, and Mom needs some alone time. Doesn’t she, sweetie?”

  “I remember those days.” Marianne reached out and stroked a finger along a tiny closed fist poking out from the blankets. “I hope you’re giving Sally all the help she asks for.”

  Michael gave a very tired laugh. “Doing my best, Ms. Windmere. But you know how it is at the station.”

  “They don’t give you any leave? She’s your baby, too, you know.”

  “Oh, I know.” He grinned. “Everybody says she’s got my eyes already. But I only get two weeks, which I guess is better than most towns, so the Chief said I shouldn’t complain. I’ve been stretching them out best I can, couple days a week, but I finally ran out.”

  He pushed the carriage around the lettuce and Marianne followed, nodding sympathetically.

  “And you know how busy we get when the winter starts hitting,” he continued. “This is my one day off this week. The rest of it’s been spent dealing with people ready to murder their neighbors over parking space savers. I had to take somebody in on Tuesday for assault by lawn chair. And not to mention security at the election events—” He shook his head, grabbing a couple cans of beans from a shelf as Marianne played peekaboo with Brady, who hiccupped and drooled. “It’s going to be a busy winter.”

  “Sorry for adding to your load,” said Marianne. “You can imagine the complaints I get about that lot though.”

  “Oh, I know. They call us about it too. And it’s not going to get any better once the new coffee shop goes in.”

  Marianne froze. “New coffee shop? What are you talking about?”

  “The Dunkin’?” He looked up, confused, then his face fell. “I mean, no, nothing. I’m tired. I must have been confusing your parking lot with someone else’s.”

  “What Dunkin’, Mickey?”

  He half-smiled at the old nickname, but his eyes stayed worried. “Ms. Windmere—” He looked down at his baby, who shook her fists jerkily, barely missing punching herself in the face. His face softened. “I don’t know anything, okay? I shouldn’t tell you anything. It’s just that the Dunkin’ brass have been around town lately, meeting with Mr. Leventi and the folks from that startup. You know he’s campaigning on that whole ‘bring the city to Swanley’ nonsense. I guess this is the start.” He looked up. “Didn’t Kevin tell you? He filed all the permits with the City Council.”

  “Kevin’s retired, remember?”

  His face fell even further. “Right. I forgot. He wouldn’t know
anymore.” He turned his eyes to Marianne’s, pleadingly. “Please forget I said anything. I don’t think the chief would like me spreading Mr. Leventi’s business around, especially since they’re family. I’m exhausted; that’s all.”

  Marianne patted his arm consolingly. “This is why you guys need more family leave. I won’t say anything to the chief. I promise.”

  Michael looked somewhat reassured, though his eyes had that wild look of sleep-deprived panic she recalled from her own three children’s babyhoods. They have to start giving these guys more paternity leave. I don’t want a guy with this little sleep running around with a gun. Michael’s always been a nice kid, but no sleep combined with power and weapons is a recipe for disaster, especially in a town getting bigger and more complex by the day as Boston prices skyrocketed and folks moved west.

  “Give me a call sometime,” she said. “I’ll watch Brady for a few hours while the bakery’s closed. Let you two get some sleep.”

  He brightened. “Really?”

  She nodded. “You watched my kid. I can watch yours.” She grinned. “I won’t even charge your exorbitant rates. Ten dollars an hour was pretty high back then, Mickey.”

  “Hey, that was for my CPR certification!” Laughing, Michael nodded. “I’ll take you up on that. Thanks, Ms. Windmere.”

  “Anytime, Mickey. You be good, all right?” She missed having babies around. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a cop in her debt either.

  His cocky grin reminded her too much of Kevin at that age. “I always am.”

  She waved him off as he headed toward the baby aisle, and she broke off back toward the produce.

  A Dunkin’ Donuts? In Swanley?

  Swanley had always been one of those odd towns that resisted chains. They didn’t have a Starbucks—the nearest one was over in Wilshire, and Marianne’s kids, when they were home, sometimes snuck her frappuccinos when the weather got too hot. And across the border in Milford sat a McDonald’s and a Chili’s, but when TGI Fridays had tried to open a location out in the old Swanley industrial area, there’d been a near-revolt. Would things be different now? That had been twenty years earlier, and most of the strongest resisters had died or moved away, replaced by young transplants from the city. Some of them might miss the convenience of Dunkin’. And the new blood had been largely a good thing for the town, diversifying a mostly white, mostly American-born town into something a little closer to the rest of the country. This wasn’t gentrification, as much as she’d like to call it that. This was growth. But had her business grown with the town, or was she stuck in the past like some of her grouchier neighbors? Was the bakery going to be left behind for coffee shops with apps and corporations behind them?

  Marianne had always had a preference for locally owned stores, especially given her own bakery’s history, but she didn’t necessarily have a problem with chains as long as they treated their communities and their workers well. A donut and coffee shop right next to hers, though, with the low prices that a huge chain like Dunkin’ could afford to sell at would not bode well for her business.

  Maybe it was only a rumor, she mused as she loaded her cart with eggs and butter. Maybe it was Mickey’s sleep deprivation-addled brain confusing things. Maybe she was catastrophizing. But then she remembered those men Rana had seen lurking around her shop, and the look on Luke Leventi’s face when he’d stopped by a few weeks earlier. It had been covetous, and it had been plotting. Replacing Rana’s store with a Dunkin’ Donuts would drive Marianne out of business, and he knew the building wouldn’t sell for as much as she’d need it to in order to buy a house. He’d offer her something far below the bakery’s value now, once he killed her business.

  How had her father gotten mixed up with that family? Why had he let them into their life? She knew he and Simon had grown up together, that their fathers and grandfathers had fought together, but still, hadn’t he had any inkling of what might happen?

  Chapter Twelve

  All of this was speculation, and in all of it, Marianne had forgotten a very important thing.

  She had a witness to the deal, if she was lucky.

  The morning rush had faded away, and Joe sat in his usual chair, drinking his coffee and reading the paper, and Marianne finished helping the last customer in line before squeezing out from behind the counter and bringing him a Danish. He looked up and smiled at her. “Hi, honey. What’re you trying to bribe out of me with this lovely confection?”

  Marianne laughed. “No bribe. Just wanted to ask you about a little of our history here.”

  He smiled, his dentures very white against his creased dark skin. “Well, you know I always want to talk history. That’s the job of old folks, you know. The future’s for the young, like you and Ezekiel.”

  “I’m fifty-eight, Joe; you know that. Hardly young.”

  “When you’re staring down the barrel of a century in a couple years, fifty-eight is plenty young. Now, as you’ve so gently reminded me, my time on Earth is not eternal. What did you want to talk about?”

  “Can you tell me about Simon Leventi and my dad? What made my dad turn half the building over to him?”

  Joe smiled and leaned back in his chair, fingers running over the old wood of the table before him. “Well, that was a while ago, but yes, I remember. Couldn’t forget it if I tried.”

  “Didn’t he know better than to do business with the Leventis?”

  “Hah! At that time, they weren’t the Leventis, not as you know them.” He shook his head. “No, there was just Elias Leventi and his son, Simon, and they were your father’s neighbors growing up.”

  “So, they didn’t have money back then?”

  “Nobody had money back then, honey. Not in this town. Back then, we had the factory, and everybody worked there. If they were white, they might someday be a foreman or a manager. Everybody else just wanted to get by.”

  “So, how’d they get it? The wealth—the power—I mean. How’d they come to own half the town?”

  “Well, your daddy helped,” Joe sighed. “You’re bringing up a lot of old nonsense; you know that? All of this is in the past. Nothing to be done about it now.”

  “It’s already up, Joe. I got a call from the town that they’re going to be doing an audit on my property. And the health inspector showed up. All within a week of me asking to see the records on the building.”

  “You’ve always known how to stir up trouble. You’re like your great-grandpa that way.”

  “I am?”

  Joe tapped the table with gnarled brown fingers. “He always used to say he started the business with one pocketful of luck and another of dust. He had a way with words, your granddad’s daddy, Marvelle. The dust, he used to say, was all his family had left after the war and also what got kicked up when he started building his bakery in this one-horse town. People didn’t like it, see, because he hired whoever he wanted—gender, color, religion be damned. He wanted people who could work.” He grinned. “People didn’t like that, not in this old Puritan town. But he didn’t care one bit.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Marianne. “He was a good man?”

  “Oh, he had his flaws, for sure,” said Joe. “His wife would’ve told you all of them. So would his mistresses. But yes, he was better than most.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’ll try to tell you what I remember about the two of them, best I can. That’s all I can offer, Marianne. It was a long time ago, and the place was different then.”

  “So, tell me about it.”

  “You know Luke Leventi, of course, who owns half the town these days. And his father, Simon.”

  “Of course, I do.”

  “Well, Simon had a girlfriend back in the fifties. Said he was going to marry her too. Josie Barnes, her name was.”

  “Why have I never heard of her? Why didn’t they get married? This must have been before Luke’s mom.”

  “You’ve never heard of her because she died, Marianne.” Joe shook his head. “Tragic thing it was, too, her dying l
ike that.”

  Joe was really getting into storytelling mode now, the gleam in his eye driving out the caution of earlier. Marianne hoped she didn’t get any customers for a few minutes, because Joe was a man who needed to stretch out a good dramatic story as long as it took. “Like what?”

  “In the accident.” He leaned forward, pointing a finger at Marianne. “Your father was there. So was the old mayor.”

  “Mayor Bryce? He was there?” Bill Bryce had been mayor of Swanley most of Marianne’s life. She remembered him as a big, distant figure, looming large over city events. He still was, from his stately home on the north side of town. No one saw much of him, but he wrote steaming letters to the local papers and huge checks to his favored candidates for local and state elections. He had to be coming up on ninety now, a few years older than her dad would have been had he lived longer. Nearly Joe’s age.

  “Oh, yes, he and your father and Simon were great friends back then.”

  “That can’t be right.” Marianne’s father had hated the old mayor, had voted against him at every election, and cursed him every time something went wrong in the town even if there was no way the problem was his fault.

  “Just telling you what I know,” said Joe. “They were thick as thieves, those three, and Josie too. She and your father were the best of friends. People always wondered if your father had more than a friendly fondness for her.”

  “This was before my mom, right?”

  “Oh, yes. Your mother was the foreigner in town.”

  “Foreigner? She was born in Worcester.”

  Joe laughed. “Her parents weren’t born in America. That meant foreigner back then. By the time she got to Swanley in the last few years of high school, the groups were already cemented. You have to understand, in those times all those kids had been together since kindergarten. Bill Bryce and your daddy and Simon Leventi played baseball together in the lot behind the old schoolhouse while their fathers were away working on the railroads after the war, helping the country rebuild itself.”