Deadly Cost of Goods

by Margaret Evans

  “Who owns it?”

  “No idea,” Laura responded, unwilling to share Connor’s or Charlie’s thoughts about a trust until she had more information. “I can check with the county. Maybe the owner would be agreeable to our ideas.”

  “It might take a long time to clean it up.”

  “Sounds like we would have to pull together a committee, doesn’t it?”

  The two ladies laughed; Raging Ford had so many committees for a small town.

  Denny Eldridge, the current Pickens, stopped by their desks.

  “Find something funny?” he asked, with a grin.

  “No, we were just thinking of how many committees there are in this town,” Laura said.

  “We follow the federal government’s example,” he answered. “Only they have multiple subcommittees. Are you ready to look for veterans? I have them in a separate file. I’ll get you started and then I have a customer—a toddler. Hope we don’t make too much noise for you.”

  They spent the next thirty minutes copying past veterans’ military pictures onto their thumb drives, joining the numerous pictures of the Old Library. By the time they were finished, Denny returned to the office and asked them if they got everything they needed.

  Something fell out of his pocket.

  “Oh, Denny!” Jenna called out, reaching to the floor to pick up a small, stuffed animal. “You dropped this.”

  “Thanks,” he said, stuffing it back into one pocket and checking his other pocket, making sure a second stuffed animal was still under control and in his possession. “I have so many of these things around for the babies and little kids. Especially the ones who don’t bright lights in their eyes or having their pictures taken. The little animals distract them. They like the ones with the big eyes. Got a ton of them back there,” he said, hooking his thumb at the studio.

  “Well, I think we have everything we need, Jenna, right?” Laura asked, as they logged out of the systems and tucked thumb drives into their bags.

  They rose and thanked him again.

  “Hey, how did your lunch yesterday turn out?” Laura asked as they walked to the car.

  Jenna was silent before answering.

  “Let’s not talk about that, okay?”

  “Sorry,” Laura said.

  In Jenna’s car, Laura exhaled.

  “Okay, the photos are step one. Next one may not be so easy.”

  Jenna nodded.

  It would be a trip on Saturday, also at lunchtime, to Smedley & Smedley for death records of the veterans and which families might still be in the area. Not everything they would be looking through would be pleasant, but all of it would fill in a bunch of gaps.

  Laura was also thinking of something else, something she had just learned about Denny Eldridge: Photographers used toys to distract their youngest subjects, at least this one did. There were two or more other photographers in Raging Ford besides Pickens. As soon as Connor returned from his week in Minneapolis, she would have a long talk with him and it wouldn’t just be about the things that were weighing heavily on his mind or his white glove wager with Sven Mortensen.

  Chapter 16

  “You need to see this, Laura,” Jenna said, a serious look on her face. She held her smart phone over the counter for her friend to see.

  Saturday was a busy day in the shop but had slowed a bit near lunch time. Jenna was there to pick Laura up for their visit to the local mortuary to find names and pictures of Raging Ford military service veterans going back to the beginning of the town to include in the Memorial Day flyer and Heritage Days town booklet. On her way to Second Treasures, Jenna had received a text message from a friend with a link to a video on YouTube.

  Laura was now looking at the video showing her and Connor Fitzpatrick salsa-dancing at the recent Raging Ford High School prom where they had been chaperones. She kept pushing the triangle to replay it until Jenna put a hand over hers.

  “I think you and Connor should know this is out there. I rarely go online to see things like this and never to YouTube, but a friend of the family sent me the link.”

  Laura looked up from the video at her friend.

  “Can you send me the link? I’ll show Connor next time I see him. He won’t be happy. He tries so hard to stay out of social media.”

  “I’m sure lots of kids had their phones trained on you and Connor. I bet there are more videos than just this one.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it. I wonder if he knows once it’s out there, it’s out there forever,” Laura said.

  “He probably does. It will be there at least until people lose interest or something else more exciting replaces it.”

  “You mean like the dunk tank? I can’t imagine what will happen with that. I should never have asked him to participate in it.”

  “Laura, don’t go there. Everything will be fine, and people will share and laugh at the videos and then a few weeks later, they’ll forget they ever saw them.”

  In Jenna’s car, they briefly discussed the cost of the dunk tank and not any more consequences of YouTube or other online video sharing sites.

  “They’re going to charge us two hundred twenty-five dollars for the day which is twenty-five dollars more than they charge other customers who are closer to their party rental warehouse. We get to fill it up with water, drain it at the end of the day, and they will provide a helper so that we don’t harm any of the cops—that part’s free. Erica has the great idea to bring Max and Nicky along to help in pickup, setup, breakdown, and return trip.”

  “Sounds good. Now let’s think about what the ticket price should be,” Jenna suggested.

  “Harry Kovacs tells me the town council funds will cover the cost of the tank, and we know the school district will cover the water cost, plus there’s no real expense for the tickets because apparently, last year somebody goofed and we ended up with way more rolls of tickets than we needed. So we can sell the tickets at whatever we want.”

  Jenna shook her head slightly.

  “I remember last year,” she said. “We had a small truckload of tickets. The mess-up was on the ticket supplier, and they ate the cost because they had printed sequential tickets for us and couldn’t use them anywhere else. We have three colors: red, green and blue.”

  “Okay, so what do you think is a fair price for customers to pay?”

  “For an opportunity to dunk Sven? At least twenty-five dollars a ticket.”

  Laura stared at her.

  “Has he really given out that many speeding tickets?”

  Jenna’s face crinkled into laughter.

  “No, he can just be scary-looking if you’re a kid and you know you ran a stop sign or were speeding, get pulled over, and see him walking up to your driver’s window in your rear view mirror. He’s twice their size.”

  “Last fall when I first visited the station and Connor gave me a tour of the new Comm Center, Sven was there. He took off his hat and I almost fell to the floor when I saw his bald head.”

  “Yes, we were all used to those shoulder-length, curly blond locks of his. I think he had to chop them off at the academy and later decided he looked meaner and scarier if he went down to the skin. He and Kelly went out a few times, but it didn’t last. She kept asking him to grow his hair long again. She might pay fifty dollars to dunk him.”

  Laura turned over a vision of Kelly and Sven in her mind, but no matter how she rotated it, they just didn’t go together. She didn’t want to know why they broke up and was thinking instead they never belonged together in the first place. But then, who knew with attraction or love? She and Connor weren’t that much alike, either.

  “Okay, the general admission tickets are sold at the entrance booth. Do we know how much they’re charging?”

  “Yes,” Jenna said, “fifty cents. But with an event like the dunk tank, we sell tickets at the actual booth. These tickets will cost more, and we will only sell and accept blue tickets. I think they should be five dollars each. One ticket per three balls to attempt th
e dunk.”

  “That makes sense. Has anyone ever priced the brass railings repairs?”

  “I believe the last estimate for the railings came in at something over ten thousand dollars. That was a couple of years ago. How much have you made from your shop fund-raisers?”

  Laura just shook her head. Despite her best efforts and everyone’s willingness to fork over the extra bucks for this good cause, the totals didn’t come near that amount.

  “I have amassed the huge sum of approximately one thousand, four hundred dollars and change.”

  Jenna looked surprised.

  “You sound frustrated. That’s a lot more than I thought you’d make. That means we have less to make at this event than I anticipated. That helps. Even if we don’t hit the ten thousand figure, we’ll use a local contractor and whatever money we have will work for a down payment. We’ll all keep pitching in until we get enough money and maybe we’ll even do another silent auction that’s on a smaller scale than the last one.”

  “Okay, so let’s say ten thousand is our goal—”

  “Let’s focus on eight as the milestone for this event,” Jenna said. “Add that to what you’ve already gotten from your fund-raisers, and we’re close to ten!”

  “That means we would have to sell eight thousand divided by five dollars which is…sixteen hundred tickets. Yikes, Jenna. Can we do that?”

  “Probably, with the combined elementary, middle, and high school populations in St. Louis County. We’re the biggest county in the state. Even if we don’t hit the goal, we should make plenty. I think we really have to advertise, though. So, what’s our advertising campaign going to look like?”

  “I don’t think we should start with ‘Dunk-a-Cop.’ “

  “You’re right,” Jenna laughed. “We’ll be subtler, like talking about the dunk tank, that it’s a fund-raiser, and then mention who the participants will be: several members of the elite Raging Ford peace officers. Maybe we can even ask a couple of the public swimming pool life guards and EMTs or firefighters to help us out. Then it won’t be totally about dunking our officers.”

  “Okay, but Connor made me promise that I understood if anything with the teens got out of control, he would hold me responsible and he might walk away.”

  “Don’t worry, Laura. Nothing will be out of control. And Connor would never do that to you. He knows how important this fund-raiser is. Now here we are at Smedley & Smedley. I got some family names from Harry before I picked you up. Let’s get those records of our veterans and names of families still in the area. We have less than an hour to do it.”

  * * *

  The staff meeting at Raging Ford Elementary School began and ended on the same note. All the stuff in the middle was as smooth and creamy as an Oreo cookie. But they were looking at budget cuts that would take place mid-year and some things had to go. The statement about the cuts were the first words spoken and the meeting ended after a vote on them.

  The representative from the school board was there, but Principal Brenda Christmas wasn’t afraid of him. Her programs were sacrosanct. The board would have to look elsewhere for their reductions, and she knew exactly where.

  “We were talking about the music program, sir. We already cut the free instrument program last year and negotiated discounts for parents to rent violins, flutes, cellos, and clarinets from the local music store. That helped. We have a slush fund for the parents whose children are talented but they can’t afford the instrument rental. That’s not going away. Period. Music is an important component of every student’s learning and social skills.”

  “Well, then, we have to cut some other things—”

  “Such as?” Christmas asked.

  Her staff remained silent. They had been through this before and learned that it was infinitely better to let their principal do the talking.

  The minute the board rep opened his notebook, Brenda interrupted him.

  “You can forget cutting a student teacher because class sizes are already too big. Everybody works, so we no longer have parent volunteers to help in the classrooms.”

  He looked up from his notebook in surprise.

  “Then it has to be—”

  “Nope. Not that, either.”

  “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “The stuffed animals for the kids.”

  “How did you—”

  “This is not my first rodeo, sir. Those animals have proven helpful for shy little ones and for kids with learning disabilities. It’s documented in dozens of research studies that it helps the kids to fit in better with their classmates and to feel better about themselves. It’s not being cut. And if you do cut it, I will send you an invoice for the animals I continue to buy. If you don’t pay the invoice out of your own pocket, sir, I may have to send you to collections which may or may not be reflected on your credit report.”

  He swallowed, turned a page, and glanced up at her before he spoke.

  “What are you willing to give me?”

  She gave him a big smile.

  “The second office copier/printer. The one that doesn’t work. You’re still paying rental on it and nobody is able to fix it, so it’s yours. You’ll save about a thousand dollars a month, including the toner we wouldn’t be using or the paper that jams in it all the time. Will that work?”

  He was speechless.

  “That’s more than I was asking to cut.”

  “Good. Then everything can stay the same and nobody is going to topple the status quo here at my school. Right? Can we have a vote on this? Ayes?”

  All hands went up, including the rep’s.

  “When can we pick up this printer?” he asked.

  “How fast can you get the business company we lease it from to come here and take it to its funeral? We could use the space.”

  After the school board rep left, the teachers remained quiet until they were sure he was in his car and gone. Then they cheered and clapped hands for their principal.

  Brenda stood before them and exchanged a glance with second grade teacher Heather Clendenen.

  “Nobody—but nobody—messes with my furry, little animals for our kids.”

  Chapter 17

  Saturday, as Second Treasures’ busiest day of the week, took no mercy this weekend. After lunch and the visit to Smedley & Smedley, Laura had to order more flags and sparkler hats, not to mention the red-white-and-blue fake tattoos and wax teeth. She had ordered what she considered tons, but what are tons when your whole town plus people from the next few nearby towns sweep in like a tropical storm called Patriotism?

  Jenna would be working on the journaling part of the Memorial Day flyers. She had worked late into the previous evening figuring out the layout and tonight she planned to work on which pictures, veteran names, and vets’ family names to include that had been gathered from the mortuary and the photography studio. Since Jenna was doing the actual write-ups, Laura would take a look at the draft on Monday and they could discuss any changes and get the flyer files over to the printer before they ran completely out of time.

  Laura walked through her workroom behind the shop for a few minutes, checking and counting before reopening after lunch. There should be enough stock of everything for the rest of the afternoon and much of Tuesday, which was not a very heavy traffic day. If her orders arrived anytime on Tuesday, she would be all set for the busy Wednesday crowd.

  So went the remainder of Laura’s Saturday afternoon…in a whirlwind. After the shop closed at four, she went online to identify any other photography studios in Raging Ford.

  * * *

  The second of three photography entities in town, Raging Ford Photography Studio, was located just a half-mile from Second Treasures as the loon flies which could sometimes be a lot speedier during migration than their clocked swimming rate. The studio handled all of the school student photographs for the town and could be recognized by the pale, bluish-gray swirls behind everyone’s head.

  The studio also
took all the newborn baby pictures at the Raging Ford Medical Center. These photographs were always presented in a packet to the new parents with one picture slipped inside a heavy white cardboard oval frame decorated with a tiny stork outlined in gold. Included in the packet was a full color brochure of all the sizes of photographs the parents could order to share online or with other family members or simply place in their infant’s baby book. And, of course, the bigger the order was, the better the price per printed photo.

  Today, the studio was awash with crying toddlers. No amount of squeaky toys, mini footballs, rocking chairs, riding horses, or jingling bicycle ringers worked. Not one of the kids wanted those bright lights in their eyes.

  Norman Burns, the owner and manager, pulled up in his car and could hear the racket before he came in the front door. His new employee, Virginia Mooney, who had quite an impressive array of studio experience, was apparently stumped by the behavior of the toddlers today.

  “Hey, Ginny!” Burns called. “There’s a box behind the green desk. Pull out some stuff from that.”

  She may not have been aware, as Burns was, that when one baby cries, they all start, and the rule remains for toddlers who are completely out of their element in a photography studio, especially with bright lights in their eyes.

  “Oh, these are cute!” she cried back. “Thanks!” And she dug into the box of soft, furry, little stuffed animals of various colors and types, none of them looking very authentic, but all of them cute, and brought forth an armful.

  As she passed them out, the children’s fears were soothed, and order was once again restored to the magical world of photography, bright lights, and small children.

  Burns winked at her as he strode toward his office.

  “Works every time.”

  When the phone rang in late afternoon, Burns picked it up himself and answered Laura’s questions.

  “We’ve been using toys and animals with little tots for years. As long as Pickens.”