by L. E. Rico
Bailey rolls her eyes in frustration.
“James, he’s like one of those Hollywood gazillionaires. A hundred K is like pocket change for him,” she explains.
We’re all silent for a second.
Jameson jumps in. “How could you possibly know that?”
“His suit, for one thing,” our youngest sister informs us. “It wasn’t off the rack, I can tell you that much. Custom tailored all the way from the pants to the shirt. And his shoes? Hand-tooled Italian leather, I’d guess. Plus the Armani trench…” She pauses, doing the math in her head. “Yeah, he was wearing like ten grand. Damn…I should’ve sold him more stuff when he was at Campbell’s.”
Bailey shakes her head regretfully and takes a noisy sip through the straw of her coke.
“Uh, well, I guess it shouldn’t really matter. At least we know he’s got the cash if he loses the bet,” I offer, a little shocked by this new revelation. I shake my head as if that will make me snap out of it, and press on with the discussion. “Yeah, so, here’s the thing, we still have the option to sell to him at an excellent price. A price that’ll pay off the debt and leave us with a large chunk of cash, even after we put aside money for Bailey and Walker to get through college. Pops would’ve wanted that covered no matter what. Then we can split the rest after that goes into trust.”
“Are you saying you want to sell?” Walker asks me, her gray eyes slitted with suspicion.
“No, I’m not. What I am saying is that it’s a viable option. But what we really need to determine—right here, right now—is if we want to keep the pub, and if we do, do we have the bandwidth to run it ourselves. That has to be a unanimous decision, as far as I’m concerned.”
I look at James, who looks at Walker, who looks at Bailey, who looks at me.
“Well, we’ve been running it since Pops died in December,” Walker points out. “We could use more help, for sure, but I think we’ve been doing okay. So, yeah, I’m voting yes.”
“I’m in, too,” Jameson echoes right behind her.
“What about Prince Charming?” Walker sneers.
“Who, Win? Well, he ordered me to vote no. That alone makes me want to vote yes. But, more importantly, I think it’s what Mama and Pops would want,” James informs us with a firm nod.
My eyes move to Bailey, who’s again twirling her hair and popping her gum.
“Well, duh!” she finally proclaims with a roll of her eyes.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” I laugh and then sober up again. This is too important to joke about. “I’m willing to do whatever needs to be done to see us—to see the pub—succeed. So…I’m going to take a leave of absence from my job for the next six weeks so I can focus all of my energy on this…on raising the cash so we don’t have to sell.”
“Or,” Walker offers up, “we could try and run Bryan Pruitt’s butt out of town. That would solve all our problems, wouldn’t it? If this bet is legit, he’d have to buy the pub and give it back to us. And we’d have the bonus of him being gone.”
I don’t know why this idea hasn’t occurred to me. Or, maybe it has. In fact, I’m pretty sure it has, but I dismissed it so quickly that it barely registered in my consciousness.
“I don’t know, Walker,” I say quietly. “It just feels like…cheating to me. This isn’t about getting some stranger to bail us out on a technicality. Pops never would’ve wanted that. We save it, or we lose it. But whatever we do, we need to do it ourselves.”
The three of them seem to consider this for a long moment before coming to some silent consensus. Walker is the first one to move past the point.
“Okay, so then how do we go about finding a hundred-thousand bucks in five weeks?” she asks.
“I thought maybe we could brainstorm ways to attract more business into the pub. How can we win back some of the business we lost when that sports bar opened over in Hamilton? How can we appeal to a broader customer base?”
Blank stares. I try again.
“What is our customer base? Who do we serve, predominantly?”
“The blue-collar crowd,” Jameson pipes up. “We get a lot of the guys coming off a shift at the manufacturing plants.”
“We always have a full house for St. Paddy’s day,” Bailey points out.
“Okay, good. That’s good. We have to think out of the box. What can we do that we haven’t done before? That might attract a bigger crowd, a different crowd—without alienating our regulars, of course?”
“You know,” Jameson starts slowly, “when I was in nursing school, we used to go to a bar that had trivia quizzes once a week. It was hilarious—people took it so seriously! There were some little prizes and a drink special. Teams competed in finals and semi-finals. It was like a bowling league. I mentioned it to Pops once, but he didn’t seem too interested.”
“Oh, I like that!” Walker jumps in, and the rest of us are murmuring our agreement. “And don’t forget about darts. We could get a league going.”
“How about a chili cook-off?” Bailey throws in.
“Good, good, good,” I murmur and nod approvingly as I jot down all of the ideas. After an hour, my legal pad has several filled pages, and my sisters and I are clearly all feeling a little bit better about our decision.
“We can do this,” I say firmly. “We can keep this pub running.”
“Yes, I think we can,” James agrees. “But it’s not going to be easy. We have to figure out who’s going to do what.”
“Okay, well, here’s what I’ve been thinking,” I begin, leaning forward to grab a cookie off the plate in the middle of the table. “I’ll do the day-to-day general management. James, you can do the books. One of us can drop the receipts off to your house every morning. You can also handle inventory and payroll—anything that can be done from home with some finance software and a spreadsheet.”
“I think I could also swing at least one evening and one weekend shift when Win is home to watch Jackson,” she offers.
Walker snorts from across the table. “Yeah, I bet that’s gonna go over real well, James.”
Jameson shrugs, seemingly unconcerned. “I couldn’t care less. He doesn’t want to help out? Well, now he’s going to feel the repercussions of that. Big. Time.”
“And that includes leaving him with his son?” I laugh.
“Well, let’s just say little Jackson and I have been learning some special new words, and I’ve made a point of letting him play hide-and-go-seek with the TV remote,” she tells us, an impish grin crossing her fair-skinned face.
“Damn, I like this look on you, James,” Walker says approvingly. “Revenge suits you.”
This comment seems to stop Jameson cold.
“What? What did I say?” Walker demands.
“I, uh…” James starts and stops again, looking down at her hands in her lap for a few seconds before meeting our concerned gazes again. “I just never really thought of it that way—as revenge. That’s not what I intended. I mean, he’s my husband…”
Oh hell. I’ve got to intervene before she starts to unravel. Jameson may know what Win’s been up to, and Jameson may be fed-up with Win’s nasty attitude, but Jameson is not quite ready to publicly acknowledge the steady decay of her marriage. Or the decay of her love for Win, either.
I reach over and put a comforting hand on Jameson’s shoulder while glaring at Walker—who looks totally confused.
“No, of course not,” I assure her. “Walker didn’t mean it like that, James. We all know you’re just blowing off steam. Win’s being a pain in the butt, that’s all. It’s okay to give him a dose of his own medicine.”
Slowly, the horror and guilt seep from Jameson, replaced by a tiny smile and a hint of impishness.
“It is okay, isn’t it?” my sister agrees, her emerald eyes sparkling. “So, yeah, count me in for the books and a couple of shifts.”
“What about me?” Bailey asks. “What can I do?”
“Well, you can’t serve alcohol until you’re eighteen this
summer. But, in the meantime, it would be great if you’d pick up some server shifts when school and work permit. Maybe help in the kitchen…”
I hold my breath, waiting for the dramatic wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth. The whining and complaining that she hates to work with food or doesn’t want to serve people she knows or—
“Okay,” she says simply, totally blowing my internal checklist of histrionics.
“Okay?” I confirm suspiciously.
Bailey gives me her dazzling smile, courtesy of four years of braces.
“Yeah, Henny, I’ll do it. I want to do whatever I can to help. I’m not a little kid anymore. And I’ll give Mr. Campbell my notice. I’m surprised he didn’t lay me off right after Christmas. I think he felt sorry for me after…” She trails off, and we’re all silent because we know how that sentence ends.
After Pops died.
“No, Bailey, you’re not a little kid anymore. You’re a woman,” I murmur softly, reaching out to put a hand over her perfect pink manicure. “Thank you.”
“Just tell me what you need, Hennessy,” Walker pipes up. Another totally unexpected reaction, this one from my perpetually disgruntled second sister.
“O–okay,” I stutter, once again shocked. I glance at Jameson, whose eyes are wide with disbelief. “You’re the best bartender I know. I’ll take any and all shifts you’re willing to work. In fact, if you’re agreeable, I’d like you to oversee the entire bar. The orders, the schedule, drink specials…”
Now it’s Walkers turn to look stunned. Her dark eyebrows knit in confusion. “Are you serious? You’d trust me to do all that?” she asks.
“Of course,” I say with an easy, confident smile. “I trust you, Walker. And I know that, after Pops, no one’s put in more time at the pub than you.”
She looks like she could be knocked over by a good stiff breeze.
“Close your mouth, or you’ll catch flies in there!” Bailey teases.
It’s a phrase that our mother used to use, and it stops us all in our tracks, even Bailey, who spoke it.
“To Mama and Pops,” I say, lifting my mug of coffee. “May they look down on us and guide us from heaven so we can keep their legacy alive.”
“To Mama and Pops!” they echo, raising their own cups. We clink over the middle of the table.
“And to the Whiskey Sisters…from cradle to grave,” Jameson says quietly, her eyes glittering with unshed tears.
“To the Whiskey Sisters,” we murmur, clinking a little more delicately this time around.
Somehow, I know we’re going to be just fine.
…
Two days and one extensive plan later, I’m working the lunch shift at the pub. But I’m having trouble concentrating. All morning, trucks have been coming and going, dropping things off at the office of the Mayhem Gazette across the street from the pub. It seems as if there’s a different one every time I glance out the front window. Office furniture. Computer equipment. And now a broadband internet company. All of this wouldn’t be nearly so interesting if King Colby, editor of the local paper, weren’t a man who would still be getting his news off a teletype if he could.
Well, as luck would have it, I need to pay King a visit, anyway, so I can scope out the situation while taking care of some business. I wait until the cable truck finally pulls away from his storefront before grabbing my coat and heading out the door.
The Mayhem Gazette is like any other small-town publication. It runs stories about local events, covers local sports, and reports on the occasional local news story. Before Craig’s List or Angie’s List, the good people of Mayhem, Minnesota, sold their cars, offered their services, and traded their wares in the pages of the Gazette.
Longtime newspaperman King Colby has been the paper’s one-man-show for the last decade, serving as its managing editor, reporter, and advertising agent. After retiring from the St. Paul Tribune and moving north, Colby soon discovered that he could leave the news, but the news would never leave him. Now he brings his special brand of grumpy curmudgeon to our newsstands every Monday, Wednesday, and Sunday, with special editions as needed.
He’s at his desk in the front of the office when I walk in. The desk that used to be for the receptionist, back when the paper could afford a receptionist.
“Hi, King.” I greet him with my sweetest smile and an intentional toss of my hair. “I’d like to place an ad in your next edition.”
He eyeballs me. “It’s been a while since I had any business from you O’Hallorans,” he grumbles.
“Yes, let’s see…I suppose that would have been my father’s obituary,” I reply, the smile still in place. He gets the idea, and I see his face soften.
“What can I do for you, then,” he asks, pulling out a form and a pen to take down my information.
“Oh, I think we’ll splurge on a half-page ad this time. May I?” I ask, reaching out for the paper and pen so I can write the copy myself. When I’m done, I hand it back to him, and he scratches his head.
“Pub quiz? What the hell’s that?”
“Oh, it’s a very popular way to bring extra business into a bar. Though, not likely a hundred-thousand-dollars-worth of business,” says a voice from within a side office. A moment after I place it, the well-styled head of Bryan Truitt pops around the doorway. “Well, hello, Hennessy.” He grins at me.
“W–what are you doing here?” I ask, sounding a little more accusatory than curious. I struggle to regain a calm tone. “When I didn’t see you for a few days, I thought you’d gone back to the west coast,” I offer as an explanation for my surprise.
“Oh, now, Hennessy,” he says, tsking at me as he walks out to stand next to King. “You didn’t really think I’d give up so easily, did you? Or that I’d leave without saying good-bye…”
King is looking from him to me and then back again with some renewed curiosity.
“I’d hoped…” I mutter. “What are you doing here?”
Bryan puts a hand on King’s shoulder, and King looks as if he’s just smelled something bad.
“Just so happens that Mr. Colby here has a spare office, and I’m leasing it from him for a month.”
“A month?” I echo in dismay. “You’re going to be here…across the street from the pub…for a month?”
“Why don’t you come back and sit with me for a few minutes?” he offers, with a gesture toward the doorway he just exited.
I nod dumbly and follow him to a small, windowless office containing a desk, a few chairs, and a filing cabinet. This would have been the reporter’s office. Back when the Gazette could afford a reporter. Now, Bryan has taken over the space. His laptop is on the desk, a printer/fax/scanner combo is seated atop the file cabinet, and one whole wall is eclipsed behind a giant rolling corkboard. On it are tacked a large calendar, maps of various Midwestern states, and pictures of several buildings and land lots that I don’t recognize.
“What are you doing?” I ask as I stand in front of the wall, trying to make sense of the images I’m looking at. He comes to stand just behind me. He’s so close that I can smell his clean, soapy scent. It’s nice.
“This is an abandoned warehouse in Skye, Wisconsin. It’s been a dangerous eyesore for years now. One of my investors is interested in putting a supermarket there.”
“Oh, great,” I snort. “Foisting another commercial monstrosity onto another unsuspecting community?”
“You see this speck here?” he asks as he puts one hand on my left shoulder and reaches around me with his right arm so he can point to a spot on the map of Iowa.
“Yeah…” I try to concentrate on what he’s saying and not the warmth that’s radiating from where his hand touches my body.
“That’s the town of Skye. The nearest supermarket is here,” he explains as he drags his finger over a distance of several inches, bringing his chest into contact with my back. His very firm, muscular chest. I wonder if he works out…
Stop it!
“That’s about a forty-f
ive-minute drive in the summer, when roads are clear,” he’s saying, oblivious to my internal struggle. I hope. “In the winter, it can be a treacherous trip, taking well over two hours. Sure, there’s a tiny market right there in town, but nothing with the kind of selection that a population of that size requires.”
“Are you seriously trying to convince me that you do this for the good of the people?”
“What? No.” He laughs out loud. “I do it for cash, same as everyone else. But it’s not as if I just look for cheap properties and plop down mega malls in the middle of them—despite what you may think. As I’ve said before, I consider myself to be a kind of matchmaker. I find a town with a need. I pair it with an investor who can fill that need. Life is good, everybody wins, and all is right in the world,” he proclaims with a sweeping gesture of his arms.
I put my hands on my hips and narrow my eyes at him. “Yeah? And what about the people who own the tiny market?”
“Oh, sorry. Didn’t I mention that? The owners sold out to a gas station. There’ll be a convenience store there with even less of a selection—unless you think the town can survive on purple slushy drinks and wrinkled hot dogs.”
I ignore this last bit of information, still unwilling to concede his point.
“And what, exactly, makes you think that Mayhem needs some behemoth movie theater?”
“Hennessy, where’s the nearest theater?”
“Up in Turner.”
“How many miles from here?”
“About thirty.”
“Did you date much in high school?”
“What? I don’t see what business that is of yours…”
He quirks an amused eyebrow.
“Please, just humor me, will you?”
“Fine,” I mutter with some irritation. “I had my share of dates in high school.”
“Okay, so how often did you go to a movie on one of those dates?”
I shrug.
“I don’t know. Maybe once a month. Less often in winter,” I admit.
“Mmm-hmm,” he says, as if I’ve just answered my own question. “You see? It’s a hike, under the best of circumstances. And, let’s face it, in this part of the country, the ‘best of circumstances’ rarely occur six months out of the year.”