Three Lives (Mud Valley) - Chapter 42
Jealousy, murder and a town called Jury. A 40-year saga of life and the afterlife
To be released soon in digital formats as Mud Valley.
I plan to continue using the title Three Lives for the serialized format.
Start where you like. Here is the table of contents. Three Lives of Jury TOC
The calm surface shrouds the truth below. This is the beach in my hometown at Summerland, B.C. / Photo by Terry Fries
Chapter 42
“They’re my goddamned restaurants. What do you mean I can’t sell without Paul?”
Frustration and fury clouded Whit’s thinking. Unbelievable. Un-fucking believable.
He turned his back to Samay, resisting the urge to wrap his hands around his hairy fucking throat. Where does he get the nerve?
He swung back around, shaking, prepared to do, he didn’t know what.
Then he noticed a look. Samay shifted his eyes away, his lips quivered. He’s afraid, Whit thought.
He paused, inhaled deeply. Jesus, what am I doing? Samay is like my big brother.
He had ushered Samay downstairs to talk business, away from the other guests following their Easter Sunday supper.
The basement was in a half-torn-apart shambles because of ongoing renovations and furniture was piled in a heap to one side of the room along with an assortment of tools. The carpet was pulled up and Whit and Samay stood on bare and cold concrete. The cold felt damp to Whit through his socks. Samay wore shoes.
A few minutes ago, Erin, Sylvia, Whit, Lucy and the Singhs, sat around the dining room table telling stories of the old times, when Whit’s parents were alive and how they all pooled their efforts and worked side-by-side to get the pruning, spraying and harvest work accomplished. Every harvest, they co-ordinated labour to ensure the peaches, pears, and later the apples were picked and crated on time.
Most of the talk focused on Matt and Wanda because Easter was a day for families and remembering.
The Singhs, especially, rounded out the meal with reminisces as they sipped coffee and spun cheesecake tales about Whit. How he loved to bomb around the orchard in the little garden tractor until he crashed it into the family car when he was 12.
Lucy, too, didn’t escape the meal unheralded.
“This one was very memorable,” Alani said, wagging her finger across the table in Lucy’s direction. “Such a rebel, such a rebel you were. But Wanda and Matt, they showed you what’s what.”
People thumped the table and laughed at Lucy’s long war with social services and foster care homes before she arrived at the Almas.
“They were the best.” Lucy tipped her glass. “To Wanda and Matt, I owe you everything. I’d be a corpse by now if not for you. Cheers, everybody.”
They clacked glasses.
Soon after, dinner broke up and Whit steered Samay downstairs to tell him about his plan to sell the business.
Samay blinked, slowly, like an owl, turning Whit’s plan over in his mind.
“What does Paul say about it?” he said after an uncomfortable pause.
The question caught Whit off-guard. “I imagine he’ll be fine. Why? Are you worried about him keeping his job? I love Paul to death, but he’s a small investor, like what, two, three percent?
“More like five percent.”
“OK, so five percent, but he’ll make out fine. I don’t intend to cut him out, if he can meet the price he can buy a bigger stake, but even if he can’t, I’m sure we can convince the new buyers to keep him on.”
“The other investors and myself will have to talk with Paul about it.”
“Why? I don’t see that this has anything to do with Paul beyond the fact he is welcome to make an offer.”
“Paul may be a small investor, but we brought him in as as Chief Executive Officer. He runs the operation, Whit. You can’t sell without his say so.”
Whit erupted. “They’re my goddamned restaurants. What do you mean I can’t sell without Paul?” He turned away to avoid doing what he wanted to do, but the urge to grab Samay’s fucking neck was irresistible and he spun back to confront him. Then he saw the look on Samay’s face.
Whit shook his head, still angry, but this was Samay he was talking to. He tempered his voice and stabbed his index finger in Samay’s direction. “No, I run the operation. Paul is my guy. He works for me,” he said, all business.
“Whit, do you remember when we brought Paul along?” Samay said. “You came to me when you wanted to expand to four locations, do you remember that?”
Whit nodded.
“The investors, myself and three of my associates, do you remember that?”
“Why are you talking to me like I’m six years old? Get to the point.”
“You came to us because you had this idea to expand from one restaurant to four and because you were my very good friend, I wanted to support you.
“God dammit, Whit, I think of you as my little brother. You are from Jury, as we are. But the other investors did not want to put money in unless we had an experienced manager in place and that was why Paul came on board with his top-notch credentials.”
“I’m the one who brought him in, for Christ sake. It had nothing to do with the investors. I hired him.”
“Mmmm?” Samay tilted his head and clicked his tongue. “That is not how I remember it, but nevertheless, Paul was installed as the investors’ eyes and ears. He is the CEO and CFO and he has full authority over organizational and financial matters. That is why he must speak to us — you, me and all the investors — about his recommendations on selling the business. I should think it is only a formality. I mean, why would he object?”
“That’s not the point. Those are my restaurants.”
“These terms are set out in the agreement you signed years ago. I don’t understand why it is such a problem. We simply ask Paul what he recommends and take it from there. He might buy out your ownership stake himself, maybe one of the other investors will buy your stake, or Paul may suggest we put it on the market as you want to do, but no matter, you get your money.”
Whit brushed invisible dust from the front of his pant legs.
“No, no, no.” He whispered as loud as he could without his voice carrying upstairs. “You’re telling me I am not in charge of my own restaurants? I agreed to Paul coming in as a consultant to help me take some extra time off, but that is as far as it goes. Now you’re telling me Paul has been running the business behind my back? What does that make me? I’m what? What am I to you, Samay? Am I some kind of joke?”
“Oh come on Whit. You’re like my little brother. Nothing has changed. You’re the founder, the creative genius and you do your thing. That is your strength. You don’t need be worried about corporate politics and legal stuff. You developed the original idea, the entire concept came from you. One hundred percent. Building a restaurant dedicated to Old World cooking prepared in Old World ways and keeping it honest and pure, that could only have come from you. You refused to sacrifice a thing for speed and convenience and that is why it has been a success. The success of the business is because of your vision.
“But nobody would invest, don’t you see? We love you, Whit, and your obsessive attention to detail. Those traits made the restaurant work but they don’t make you good at operations.”
Whit slouched against the unpainted drywall, anger remodelled into self-pity. “Wow. So what am I? A charity case?”
Samay blew through pursed lips. “I’m saying we wanted to support you, our friend. And we found a way we could comfortably do that.”
“So yes. Well, thanks for clearing that up. Here, take my balls too?” Whit grabbed his crotch.
“I think you’re focussing on the wrong things. I told you we loved your concept.”
“Don’t talk to me. I don’t want more of your shit.”
Samay sighed. More conversation was pointless. “You ran the downtown Vancouver location and you did pretty well. I don’t know what else to say.”
“I did pretty well,” Whit mimicked. “Hoo-fucking-ray for me.”
Samay threw up his arms up. Soothing Whit was impossible. He needed time to cool down.
“Look,” Samay said. “Do you want to sell or not? I can put things in motion tomorrow.”
“More than ever. Go ask Paul and get his highness’s permission.”
Samay shrugged. “I thought you knew. Everybody knew.”
Whit kicked his way through piled up junk and went into the next room, a laundry room, with shelves lined with old coffee containers, soaps and dryer sheets. Samay crept upstairs in the opposite direction to rejoin the party in the living room.
Whit slouched, felt his entire being sag. In seconds, he’d gone from inspirational entrepreneur to hometown washout. I’m a clown. I’m a fucking laughingstock, he thought. Do all his friends know? Sylvia? Erin?
He sat on the workbench and studied himself through this new lens. Slowly, a reality dawned.
He smacked his forehead and pulled his hair. Fuck, it’s true. It’s so completely true, he thought. I’m a fucking loser.
“Whit? Whit, are you down here?” It was Sylvia’s voice.
“Back here,” he called.
“What are you doing back here,” she said, entering the room. “Our guests are upstairs wondering what happened to you.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“Samay told me you asked him about selling. I’m so glad Whit. It’s getting to be too much bother for you. I want you with me at home. There’s so much we can do together.”
“He told you, did he? What did he say?”
“Only that you asked him about selling and he said he’d get on it first thing tomorrow.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“No, that was all.”
Of course, that would be all. Samay always held his cards close to his chest.
Whit wondered if he should tell Sylvia about Paul’s rapid rise to the top of the corporate ladder, but he couldn’t. It was too fresh.
Then again, she might already know. According to Samay, everybody knew.
He studied her.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Then anything to change the topic. “Did you tell them we’re going to Gold Rush to talk to the police tomorrow.”
“Um-humm.”
“What did they say to that?”
“Obviously, they were shocked at Frank’s letter and the confession. It’s weird enough to hear about serial killers when they’re strangers, but to think we actually knew one. Or at least you guys knew him. Wow.
“Samay made sense though. He said Jury has seen itself through a lot of trouble over the years and the town will get through this too.”
At least somebody will, Whit thought.
Check out bonus material, including back stories to the characters in the novel Three Lives of Jury at the link below.
The Underworld Vents also contains short stories of alternative/historical fiction with The Wagon People series.
Check out the new additions with the Tynoffer Common series, humorous flash fiction in bits of letters, bulletins and bureaucratic paranormal madness.