Chapter 4

  Anais and I couldn’t have been in the store for more than five minutes before the mayor came puffing up to the counter.

  “Mister Mayor, what are you doing here, Cherie told us you were in meetings for the rest of the week. If you just wanted to buy your beloved a book, you could have just ordered it over the phone. I hope you are not playing hooky from a meeting, just because you are looking to get a little nookie from your wife. That would be highly unethical.”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” He was still breathing pretty hard, but he managed to get the words out. Then he held up the contract I had ripped into eight pieces it had been carefully taped back together.

  “That mayor is the contract I tore up.”

  “I’ll sue you for breach of contract Laura.”

  “Yes I suppose you probably will, and I won’t get my discounted property tax and Amy won’t get to be a judge. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to live with it. Of course it is a court and a jury and if I make a good enough case to the jury, I just might win. You should ask the town attorney what he thinks, I’m not a lawyer. Anais if there happened to be a jury member who didn’t like the mayor or perhaps the town government had rubbed them in the wrong way, by lets say jacking up their taxes. What are the odds that they would find in my favor?”

  “Laura, a good lawyer, never wants to go before a jury, that’s why deals are almost always made. You can never tell when one juror is just willing to stare down the other jurors, a silent filibuster if you will, until finally just to get out of the courthouse change their votes. So yes if I had to bet on this case, I’d bet on the mayor, he’d probably win. Unless he had withheld important information from you. Then of course, it wouldn’t be the lone crank juror, no if information was withheld, I’d say that you have a very good chance of winning. But even if you win, Amy wouldn’t have a chance to be a contest judge. You’d just get a property tax discount, plus trial fees plus pain and suffering, so you should countersue for four times the amount.”

  “Thank you Anais. So there you have it, mayor.”

  “But, I didn’t withhold any information.”

  “Yes, in fact you did, Mr Mayor. When Roberta toured the grounds this morning, I very nearly threw her off the property. She was rude, dismissive and bossy.”

  The mayor said, “That sounds like a case of pot calling the kettle black, Laura.”

  “But you didn’t let me finish, mayor. When I told her I’d throw her off my property for what she said. She apologized and confided in me that this contest was being actively sabotaged. I understand why she didn’t go to the police with this information. She knows as well as I do that they are incompetent dolts and couldn’t solve the case with months of time when she only has two days. So you decide to peddle her off onto me. Well I’m not having it, I'm wondering what else it is you aren’t telling me about this whole affair.”

  “Nothing, that’s all Laura, I swear.”

  “I hope you are an atheist, mayor. Because I hear that the christians think lying is a sin.”

  “You know very well that I am no atheist, Laura.”

  “Then why lie, I know very well that there is more that you haven’t told me about. So come clean.”

  “No, the sabotage was the only thing that I hadn’t mentioned and I only didn’t mention it because I thought it would have no bearing on whether you would accept the very generous property tax deduction.”

  “I’m no rapacious capitalist, mayor. Why don’t you go talk to my neighbors, they are and will probably just jump at the chance to help out the town for a generous tax deduction.”

  “Laura, this will also be good for your business have you even considered all the extra foot traffic this will generate. I know you care about your bookstore, this might be just the boost that the store needs.”

  “I won’t do business with a man that is lying to me. Why don’t you tell me why you even care if this TV show gets made in Lake Placid?”

  “Just think of all the tourists that this will draw in.”

  “Ha, it’s supposed to air on the Foodie Network. It’s not even a real TV station, it’s just online streaming. You are dreaming if you truly believe that this is going to draw in more than ten tourists a year.”

  “Roberta is a family friend and the county executive and I would do anything for her.”

  “She told me the county executive was a nit wit, I don’t think the woman has any great love for politicians. Why don’t you try and tell me the truth, mayor.”

  “If we can get one television production made here we might be able to get others. Albany has TV shows made there every year, New York city has movies and TV shows made all the time. It’s time Lake Placid got a piece of the pie.”

  “Alright, mayor, I know you are a politician and could stand here until election day lying, but just for once, why don’t you try telling me the truth.”

  “But I have been telling you the truth, Laura.”

  “LUCY.”

  Lucy had been restocking books, but trotted over when I called her.

  “Do you need something, Laura?”

  “Yes, Lucy, could you please do me a favor and run up and get my laptop. I need to write an essay to the gazette about how a mayor kept repeating a lie. I know he is a politician and is probably just emulating his idol dumpy Trumpy, but I think the people all have a right to know what he cost the town with his repeated lies, and if he had just negotiated in good honest faith, he might actually have benefited the town. Oh and that he wasted two days of my time while he was at it.”

  “Sure, Laura.” Lucy went sprinting up the stairs to retrieve my laptop.

  “Laura, I don’t know what you think you are doing, but you can’t bully me. I’ll sue you and the gazette for libel.”

  “Mayor, you do know what libel means right? You went to college right? ‘Libel a statement published with the knowledge that it is false or with reckless disregard of the truth that injures a public person's reputation’ that’s what libel means. If I write the headline ‘Dolt of a Mayor loses million dollar gift to town by trying to cheat a struggling small business owner.’ Anais, what do you think my chances of losing that case is when I bring into court the person that was going to donate that money to the town, to tell her side of why it wasn’t donated.”

  “I’d say zero percent chance.”

  “Why thank you Anais, that is very encouraging. Mayor, would you like to give me your side of the story, I don’t want to be accused of not giving you a chance to respond.”

  “What do you want Laura?”

  “I want to be treated fairly, mayor. I don’t want to be lied to, I don’t want to be manipulated.”

  “You know that I could have the health department here to inspect your kitchen, later this afternoon.”

  “Yes and I’m sure that, Amy keeps a cleaner kitchen, then anyone in Lake Placid, and if the health department starts inspecting our private kitchen that serves no private food to the public is to be inspected, we’ll sue until the health department is forced to start inspecting all private kitchens in Lake Placid on a regular basis. If you threaten to raise my property taxes, again it’s off to court. The tax rolls are all public record. Just exactly what are your property taxes, mayor or the town attorneys, it’ll be interesting to look up and compare them to other similar sized homes. We could write a whole series of articles on that topic I’ll bet. Any other threats before you start with a carrot or would you like some tea and time to think real hard how to win me over to your side. Unless of course you really are worried about the state of Amy’s kitchen. Amy, the woman who worked in dispatch for the past thirty years. The woman who knows where all the bodies are buried. Who sat through every drunken nine one one call.”

  “Yes, could I please have some tea, and some of Amy’s cookies.”

  “Sure mayor, just go have a seat in the reading nook, we’ll be right back.”

  Anais and I went upstairs and made a pot of tea.

  “Do you think you pushed him too hard, Laura?”

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “He stood there and lied to us for twenty minutes so I was starting to get mad, so maybe I pushed him a little. That’s why I gave him a chance to sit down and cool off before I start pushing him again, Anais.”

  We came back with a tray loaded with cookies and a pot of tea and three cups. Anais set out the cups and I poured. We each picked up our cups and started to drink, then I told him what I wanted, about a third higher than what I actually wanted, so that I could be seen to be the bigger party and to agree to a compromise.

  “Let’s just cut to the chase, mayor, I’ll tell you what I want. I want the property taxes waived for the next three years. That is less than eighteen percent of the money that the town is getting from Roberta. Whether or not this show gets made. I won’t be held responsible if someone sabotages this. You and the police have been warned. Tell my cousin to get off his butt and find out who is trying to wreck it. Roberta made it sound like if you didn’t deliver neither would she.”

  “Fine, if you agree not to rip up the contract again."

  I couldn’t believe he didn’t push back on three years of no property taxes. I wondered if there was something else I didn’t know about. Well if there were, then we would deal with it. Anais wrote up another plain English contract and we both signed then after eating a final cookie, the mayor departed.

  “Thank you so much Anais, the writers are going to be thrilled.”

  “Well what about you?”

  “I’m thrilled for them too.”

  “No, are you saving money too?”

  “No, Bianca set it up that I don’t have to pay, because I was keeping the whole collective afloat for the last ten years and my aunt the previous forty.”

  “If you didn’t make any profit off of the store the past ten years why didn’t you just sell it to me ten years ago?”

  “It was my Aunt’s dream and I kind of inherited that dream, along with the house. Like Amy when she donated her house and moved in here. Her father helped build the house, she hates to see it leave the family. I’m going to get a little plaque made, that says ‘Amy’s House, owned by the Lake Placid Writer’s Collective. Then hopefully one hundred years from now when some writer walks into the house he’ll think of Amy and maybe be a little thankful that a woman he never knew, was helping to provide for him.”

  “Thank’s for letting me watch the mayor squirm.”

  “My pleasure, I wish it was only this easy to get to Trump. Notice how he always threatens people but then he backs down. I’d love bartering with the orange idiot, when he finally came to understand that there is nothing that he owns that I want. He wouldn’t have a clue. ‘The Art of the Deal’ my butt. The two biggest embarrassments of Manhattan for the past thirty years have to be Epstein and Trump, two egomanics. I really wonder which of the two ruined more lives? But enough talking about the scum of the Earth, please come to the party Friday night as my guest. We may need your eyes, if someone truly is trying to sabotage the event you can bet your bottom dollar that August won’t have caught them by then.”

  That night at supper I sat down next to Bianca.

  “Bianca, I’m really sorry but I was forced to tear up my contract with the mayor, he was lying to me. So you’ll have to recalculate the dues again."

  “I hate having to recalculate when the price goes up.”

  “I didn’t say the price went up, no the price went down. I handed her the new contract.”

  “Wow, Laura, this is the best news ever, I was running some numbers to make the collective cheaper for all the permanent writers into the future. It might take me a week or two to get it together.”

  “Bianca, whatever works out best for the collective, I’m all for it.”

  ***

  Thursday the people who were renting and putting up the tent for the Bake Off, hadn’t shown by nine thirty in the morning. They were two hours late, that’s late even for me. I called Roberta to let her know, she was already in a panic because her twenty cases of champagne were stuck in an Albany warehouse. Supposedly the delivery company had an email from Roberta, canceling the delivery and their truck had already left for Canada. The earliest they could deliver now would be Saturday and it would be way more expensive. I told her I’d make a call and see if I could get someone to pick up the champagne.

  “Laura, if you can get someone to have it here by Friday night, tell them, I’ll pay what the delivery company wants to charge me to deliver it a day too late. How about a thousand dollars?”

  “Roberta, I’ll call you back, once I find someone who agrees to bring it.”

  Next I called Willow, I knew that Pappy and Phoebe were passing right by Albany, if they would agree to stop at the warehouse, they could have the thousand dollars.

  “Willow, has Phoebe been out selling books on Urge at all?”

  “Yeah she’s been out to three small towns, Coxsackie, Ravena and Catskill, she hasn’t made enough money to cover the price of the gas, yet. But, she just popped up out of the blue. No one expected to find a pop up bookstore. I told her not to worry, I think, once she establishes a regular route, and people find out what hours she’ll be there, then people will come. I’ve been thinking of creating a website that locks onto the GPS in her phone, then people could see just when she is arriving and a posted time for when she’ll be moving to the next sales location. But we have plenty of time for that, because the bus will be parked at your place for ten days. So I’ll try to work out a starting route and get permission from supermarkets, diners, somewhere she can park and open up for an hour before moving on. Albany has this square downtown that is filled with food trucks right by where all the state employees work. I think we could make a killing there. But anyway, we’ll work out the kinks. Pappy and Phoebe will pick-up the champagne, and should be at your store by noon tomorrow.”

  I thanked Willow and called back Roberta, I told her that our yippies were picking up the champagne. She told me that the tent company agreed to set up the tent, but they had doubled their fee. Someone was going to a lot of trouble to stop this Bake Off from happening. I called August, gave him the latest list of dirty tricks that had been deployed against the event. He said he would have someone right on it. I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

  The store was ready, Zoe was quite crafty so she made some sets of bookends to use on Urge, we had a couple of hundred books on cooking, baking and related subjects all booked and ready to be carried out to Urge, the minute she pulled onto the property. Lis, was coming in at noon on Friday to help load the extra stock into Urge. Amy had hired Lis and Lucy and Zoe. Lis and Lucy were to circulate amongst the guests with trays filled with pastries. Zoe and a girl friend of hers were to handle the champagne, because Lis and Lucy were under age. Amy was paying each of them five hundred dollars.

  ***

  About noon on Friday, Urge pulled into the lot, Lucy ran out to tell Phoebe just where to park. Then the cases of champagne were transferred from the bus to the store, while the boxes of baking related books were carried out to the bus. Pappy carried the suitcase that carried everything that Phoebe and he had brought from home. I was disappointed that Fred had been left with Willow. But Pappy said that Fred always ate what Pappy ate, so it wouldn’t be wise to have him running around the seven kitchens that had been delivered right after the tent was set up on Thursday. National Grid and a couple of electricians also appeared on Thursday to set up a power line from the street and working electrical sockets in each of the contestants' kitchens. The Lake Placid water department had set up special water lines for each of the kitchens, fully working sinks.

  I showed Pappy and Phoebe around the store then I showed them up to their room on the third floor. Then the three of us went down to the dining room, the writers were already seated, Amy and Monique started bringing lunch from the kitchen. Meanwhile I introduced everyone to Pappy and Phoebe, Phoebe ran over and hugged Amy the minute she saw her.

  Roberta and Bobby both arrived at about four. Roberta was dressed like she was going to a ball, not a champagne and pastry party that was to be held in the seven kitchen tent. Bobby was sedately dressed in a black pantsuit. She almost looked like one of the waitstaff. Roberta had sent black uniforms with crisp white shirts for all four of the servers. A small segment of the film crew arrived at around five. They were just going to get some shots to be cut into the episodes of the contest itself.

  The contestants would be driven in by limo from the Mirror Lake Inn, one of the best if not the highest rated Inn in the Adirondacks. It’s about a ten minute walk from here, but Roberta wanted shots of the contestants as they emerged from limos, also to be cut into the footage from the actual competition. As Roberta said it was way better to have too much footage, because there was no way to add more at a later time, without it looking fake. Then at that point all they could do would be to interview the bakers, which wasn’t as exciting as seeing them emerge from a limo.

  We closed the bookstore an hour early on Friday night so the waitstaff could get changed and Amy could bring all the pastries she worked so hard on this week down and arranged them on the counter. Everyone got dressed up, I particularly like Pappy’s tie-dye accented blue jeans pants and tie-dye t-shirt to match. Roberta was going to have a heart attack when she saw him. But despite all the obstacles we had done it. The cops of course haven’t caught the saboteur, but it would be a lot harder to make something go wrong, with a lot of eyeballs and video cameras all over the place.

  At six forty five Lucy and Lis carried large round trays of pastries to the tent, just waiting for the guests of honor, the contestants to appear. At seven the first limo pulled up and four of the bakers stepped out as dressed up as Roberta was herself. As soon as that limo pulled away the next limo pulled up and three more bakers emerged.Zoe had waited until just before seven to carry up a tray of chilled champagne. Then the mayor and his wife arrived, Anais slipped in behind them.

  I finally had her, Anais was late.

  “Anais you were late,” I said with glee.

  “No I wasn't. I arrived at exactly the same time as the first limo, when I saw that they were filming I waited until the second limo had departed and then waited an extra minute to be sure there was not going to be a third limo. I haven’t signed any waivers to be filmed and I certainly don’t want to be associated with any channel named the Foodie Network.”

  I was disappointed, I thought I finally had her.

  “Just remember to keep your eyes peeled, the saboteur may try to strike, although with this many people and the video camera’s we would have a much higher chance to catch them. Someone messed with the tent rental company and the wine delivery service as well. They couldn’t mess with the caterer because she was always surrounded by people.”

  But the party was going along fine, if the conversations seemed a little stilted maybe it was because they were all rivals for the same prize. It occurred to me that I didn’t know what the prize was. I loved the Great British Bake Off, because the only thing that the winner got was a trophy. They could never do that in America, the bigger the prize the more people will watch. Americans have this unfailing belief that money can solve any problem. Silicon valley tech bros are buying teenage blood in a belief that it will make them live longer. Money buying life’s blood. Tech vampires, more likely they have bats in their belfries. Is there any scientific evidence? One scientist said there is no evidence that it works, in fact it is dangerous and went on to point out that it is also gross. He didn’t have to point out that it’s gross to me, I already knew that part.

  Roberta seemed happy with the way it was going, and everyone was saying nice things about the pastries. Which they should have because they were awesome. I was careful to only have one glass of champagne, so that my wits were clear. But I had no such compulsion when it came to the pastries. For the money that Roberta was paying for the pastries, she probably could have had them flown in from Paris for less money, but they wouldn’t have tasted any better. I know that for a fact.

  Also her saboteur would likely have targeted them as well. For the first hour the DJ that Roberta had hired was playing lite classical pieces that made conversation easy. But then he switched to lite jazz. I’m not entirely sure why. Were they trying to encourage dancing? Would bakers be willing to dance with their foes? Are they foes, on the Great British Bake Off, the bakers are often seen helping each other out, when more than two hands are needed or if one has finished their bake and another is rushing to finish. Will Americans be as kind? I hope so, I really hope so.

  A livelier jazz tune started out and I thought at first that the pretty Chinese or maybe half Chinese young woman had started some kind of crazy solo dance. I mean we used to do the Twist and the Swim so I’m not about to criticize anyone’s dance moves. But I knew that she wasn’t dancing when she started shrieking.