Trouble in a Big Box (A Kelly O'Connell Mystery) Read online

  “I…I wouldn’t want to have you as an enemy, sir,” Jim said, finally controlling himself.

  “Oh, I make a very good friend to people who treat me right.”

  I could not wait to tell Mike this story. We were having Otto Martin as a dinner guest soon—I’d see to it. And no hamburgers on the grill.

  We finally settled down to tactics. Jim said we could have a meeting of the association next week and have petitions ready to be signed. At the meeting he’d ask for volunteers to walk the blocks. Then he asked Christian what his stake in this dogfight was, and Christian said, “I close titles for a lot of sales in Fairmount, people who want to live in a neighborhood that’s kept its old charm. Build a shopping center, and it loses its appealing ambiance. Besides,” he added, “I live in Fairmount. I want my kids to grow up in this kind of a neighborhood, where they can play outside safely and where people know them. I don’t want an impersonal shopping center with its sales and crowds and parking lots.”

  “Fair enough,” Jim said. “Though the nature of the store—if that’s what he’s really selling—may be more acceptable to the neighborhood than a Target would be. That may hurt that argument.” He turned to me.

  “Kelly, I know your stake. And as of now, Mr. Martin, I certainly know yours. I can have my office draw up a petition, and I’ll look into zoning laws. I think we can nip this thing in the bud.”

  I reported that John Henry Jackson, chair of the landmark commission, told me not to worry and that I was meeting him the next day. Christian said we had the full support of the League of Neighborhood Associations, and he passed out copies of the proposal Tom would present to the zoning commission. He had been able to secure the documents from the commission because Tom Lattimore was required to present paperwork a week in advance of the meeting. I saw one familiar name among the investors and wracked my brain to think who he was. A lawyer, I thought, and a courthouse pal of John Henry Jackson named Robert Lawler. Odd. Maybe Jackson would make him see the error of being involved in a project like this. The others were not major players in the Fort Worth commercial real estate market, in spite of what Tom had said about the investors being men with money and power in Fort Worth. They may have been, as Christian suggested, oil and gas men from anywhere. But, why, I wondered, would oil and gas men want to invest in a grocery market? I filed that one familiar name away; in fact, I wrote it on a scrap of paper and tucked it under the blotter on my desk.

  The phone rang then, and even as I was signaling Keisha to ignore it, she got up and answered it. “No, she ain’t in. May I take a message?” Then, loudly and laboriously, she asked, “Tom Lattimore? Does she have your number, sir?” He apparently replied in the affirmative, for she said, “I’ll certainly ask her to call you as soon as she comes in.”

  Without a smile, she handed me a phone message slip. Then she addressed the group, “Mr. Price, I want to add my two cents. I got a stake too, and it goes beyond working for Kelly. I’m renting a small apartment in a big old Fairmount house. Mr. Otto, darlin’, I got a small kitchen, so you just come over some evening, and I’ll fix a dinner that’ll knock your socks off.”

  He smiled and said thank you.

  Keisha continued. “They’re not too many neighborhoods where a black woman like me could rent in an Anglo-owned house and live on friendly terms with white, black, and Hispanic neighbors. I love it. I love this neighborhood. It’s like no place else in the city, and we got to keep it.”

  Jim smiled. “We’ll ask you to testify for the city council if it comes to that,” he said.

  Christian asked if any of us recognized any of the investors’ names, and we all said no. I kept quiet about the one name I knew, though I’m sure Christian knew it too. We’d talk later.

  “That’s bad,” he said. “They’re not old Fort Worth, so they’re not going to give a fig about our neighborhoods.”

  “A fig?” Keisha asked and laughed aloud.

  Christian blushed. “Just a saying. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes sir, I surely do.”

  Jim looked at Keisha. “You and Mr. Martin make an eloquent case. It seems to me that this development goes against all zoning principles—it concentrates population in one specific area, it does not protect the rights of property owners or preserve a compatible neighborhood. I think we’re in good shape, but we need to do some work.”

  “Then there’s the battle over buildings on the national registry. They can’t just tear down those buildings.”

  “That’s when we go to the Landmark Commission,” said Christian. “Kelly, you seem pretty sure of their support.”

  I nodded. “I’ll get back to you after I meet with John Henry.”

  As they left, we congratulated each other on an optimistic outlook and were quite cheerful. Otto Martin bowed again to both me and Keisha and then waddled off behind Christian, who had brought him. I suspected he didn’t own a car but would have easily walked from his shop to my office, a distance of over a mile.

  Keisha, I could tell, was flattered to have been part of the meeting and to have had her two cents worth heard. I could sense it, but you’d never have known it from her words.

  “You gonna call that jerk?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mr. Lattimore, as he so proudly calls himself. Can’t even say Tom Lattimore like most folks. Reminds me of Mrs. Jerry North—we used to think her own first name was something she was so ashamed of, she wouldn’t mention it.”

  Jo Ellen North had tried to kill me—after I found out her first name, but that’s not the reason—and I didn’t like being reminded of her.

  “Yes,” I said, waving the piece of paper. “I’ll call Mr. Lattimore.”

  Then Keisha turned all dreamy. “Do you think I could teach José to do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “You know. Bow over my hand like that.”

  I swallowed a giggle. “Go ahead and try. I don’t believe I’ll mention it to Mike.”

  I had to swallow hard again when I called Tom Lattimore. Even though it was lunchtime, he was in his office and answered his own phone. “Tom, Kelly returning your call.”

  “Kelly, I was just about to go to lunch. Care to join me? My treat.”

  “Oh, thanks, Tom. I was about to eat a sandwich at my desk”—my fingers were crossed which made that white lie okay— “What can I do for you?”

  “I just got the plans for the shopping center, and I wanted to spread them out, see what you thought.”

  Tempting. I would be fighting the development with everything I had and seeing the plans could only add fuel to my fire. “I’d like to see them,” I said and uncrossed my fingers—this was no lie. “Tell you what—let me go to that taco truck down the street, and get tacos for both of us. Spicy ground beef okay? We’ve got soft drinks in the office.”

  “Sounds great, although I may bring myself a beer. See you in twenty.”

  “If that means what I think it means, I’m going out for lunch,” Keisha said.

  “That’s a good idea,” I told her.

  I called Mike to make sure he could manage lunch—he was getting around much better these days. “Sure, I can make a ham sandwich as good as you, but what’s keeping you? I’ll miss you.”

  “Don’t tempt me, Mike Shandy. I have a business appointment, an important one. I’ll tell you about it tonight.”

  “It better not be that Lattimore fellow,” he said.

  “Go fix your sandwich and have a beer.” I scooted out the door, got the tacos, and hurried back to the office. Tom was waiting by the locked door.

  “Sorry. Took longer than I thought.”

  “No problem, Kelly. I’m just really anxious to show you these plans. They’re wonderful.”

  “Tom, you know I’m opposed to this. Why are you showing me the plans?”

  “To convert you to my side.”

  “And why is that important?”

  “Because you’re an important voice for this community.�
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  Contrary to traditional wisdom, Tom, flattery won’t get you anywhere.

  He couldn’t contain his excitement, so we spread the plans out on the desk that once belonged to my ex-husband and was now bare and empty—I liked it that way. Just as I feared, the grocery store sat at the center back of a very large parking lot—really huge. The parking lot was broken into areas by plantings—trees, bushes, pampas grass—anything to break up the bare concrete. Smaller stores, with head-in parking, ringed the lot in front of the grocery store. To the side of the store was a structure labeled “Storage.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, refrigerated storage. We’ll disguise it with landscaping.”

  “I don’t know any groceries that have adjacent cold storage facilities.”

  His enthusiasm made him seem boyish for a minute. “That’s what so great about this, Kelly. Everything will be really fresh.” He changed the subject. “See how neat the plantings are?”

  “Yeah, they’ve really tried, Tom. But it’s still a huge parking lot.”

  “Well, look at the stores on the side—we’ve got interest from a liquor store….”

  I wanted to shout. “Oh, swell!” but I kept my mouth firmly shut.

  “Then there’s a shoe store, a local beauty salon—that should please folks, a local business, a well-known clothing chain. We’ll get others.”

  “Except for the beauty salon, they’re all national chains. What happens to the independent store owners who now operate on that property, like Otto Martin and his clock shop?”

  “That old guy? Surely you can’t be worried about him. Everything in his shop is so dusty, I bet he hasn’t sold anything for a year. Besides he threatened me.”

  “Did you know he lives behind his store and has no other property? If you force him out, he’ll be homeless.” I looked for compassion; instead I got indignation.

  “Lives behind his store? There ought to be a law against that! I bet that’s grounds to take over his building.”

  “Tom, we’re through here. Take your tacos and your beer and eat lunch somewhere else. I’m not interested in a shopping center, and I like Otto Martin a lot.”

  “Kelly, you can’t be serious. Otto Martin threatened to kill me.”

  I was proud of my resolve. “Yeah, Tom, I’m very serious. And I told Otto not to say that aloud again.”

  He rolled up the plans, put a rubber band around them, said, “Keep your damn tacos,” and fled.

  I threw all the tacos, his and mine, in a wastebasket. I had no stomach for food.

  The morning’s meeting and Tom’s plans made me want to visit my neighborhood. I drove down Magnolia to see firsthand the stores that would be affected by the development. One of the blocks he proposed to tear down had a two-level sidewalk—about halfway down the block, you had to climb an old set of concrete steps with a rickety iron pipe railing. They didn’t build things like that anymore. I’d forgotten the beauty shop where they still back-combed hair and sprayed it stiff. A small irony: my company owned that building, and the beauty operator, a woman at least in her sixties with shoe-polish black hair, paid her rent faithfully the first of every month. Next door was the new yoga studio run by the young single mother—I had come to like Tanya. Was I supposed to put those two hard-working women out on the street? And one of the last old-fashioned shoe repair shops I knew about. I guess these days shoes are disposable: you just throw them out and buy a new pair.

  Then I wandered through the neighborhood, looking at the houses—some Craftsman in good repair, other four-square Craftsman homes with beautiful gardens reaching out to the curb, a few brick homes, still other frame houses that seemed to need propping up, and a few with plywood nailed over the windows and doors. I looked at street signs and drove by one of the two elementary schools, down side streets that twisted and turned, and finally by my mom’s house, now sporting a wonderful fall garden that she and Keisha had planted. We were getting there—many more houses in Fairmount were in good shape than not, but I felt in my bones that the shopping center would set back efforts to restore this glorious old neighborhood.

  I was headed back to the office before I saw Bella’s green Nova on my tail. So much for my faith in a fast conversion. Mike and Joe were right.

  I didn’t mention the tail to Keisha, but she looked out the window, saw the car, and said, “You hungry? I saw all those tacos in the trash. Bagged it and took it to the dumpster—don’t like spicy food smellin’ up my office.”

  I grinned, wanting to remind her that it was my office. “No, I’m not hungry. I have to get the girls soon. I’ll fix a good dinner tonight.”

  “Such as?”

  “The menu tonight is hamburger stroganoff, green beans, and salad,” I said righteously.

  “Lots of greens, that’s good. ‘Course that stroganoff has sour cream in it.”

  “Light sour cream.”

  Keisha laughed aloud. “Me? I’m fixin’ fried chicken and cornbread and greens for José and Otto Martin. Gonna’ be a southern feast. I get time I may make a chess pie.”

  “Otto Martin?”

  “Of course. That poor old man needs company. Then maybe we can talk him outta killin’ Tom Lattimore. Then again, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. That man almost needs killin’.” She turned back to her computer, cutting off the conversation.

  Chapter Eight

  “Mom,” Em said from the backseat as we drove home from school that afternoon, “you forgot again.”

  Oh, Lord. What now? “What did I forget, Em?”

  “Halloween. You always do.”

  She was right. Halloween always hit me like a brick had been thrown at me. “What do you want to be, Em?”

  A big sigh. “I don’t know. I’ve been a princess and a cat, and there’s nothing left.”

  Such melodrama. I stifled a laugh, but Maggie jumped right in. “Em, I have my ballet clothes—I bet they’d just fit you now, even the shoes. You could be a ballerina in a tutu!”

  Em considered. “It’s pink, isn’t it?”

  “Yep, it’s pink. When we get home, pull it out so Em can try it on.”

  That afternoon the green car stayed behind us from the school to the house and then sped away. I didn’t mention it, but Maggie saw it. “I’m not walking Gus this afternoon. I’ll throw the ball for him in the yard.”

  “Okay. Just clean up any mess he makes.”

  Another sigh, this time from my oldest child. I made a mental note to buy a pooper-scooper.

  The girls greeted Mike, who was working at his computer on the dining room table. Each day he was getting around better, using the walker a little less, especially if I was nearby for him to balance on. He still hobbled, and he still went to therapy three times a week, but as he improved physically I could have drawn a chart of his emotional improvement.

  I gave him a kiss and asked how his work was going—he was back at work on his history of fallen policeman in Fort Worth.

  “Good. I’m up to 1900, but I’m thinking of going back and including peace officers of Tarrant County from the time of its incorporation.”

  Sounded deadly dull to me, but it would keep him occupied.

  “Conroy’s taking me to lunch tomorrow. That new burger place—what’s it called? Smashburger. He says just to visit but I suspect he has more on his mind.”

  “Good for you. I’m going to lunch with John Henry Jackson at the Fort Worth Club.” I waited for a reaction, but there was none.

  I sat down across the table, bursting to tell him about my meeting with Christian and Jim Price, my non-lunch with Tom Lattimore, and my curiosity about my lunch date the next day with John Henry Jackson. I knew he’d love the tale of me throwing the tacos in the trash and Keisha bagging them. I was just getting to the good part, where I told Tom to take his tacos and go when the girls came into the room.

  “What do you think, Mike?” Maggie asked. “Doesn’t she make a good ballerina?”

  Em twirled in sort of a
pirouette that Maggie must have just shown her.

  Mike beamed. “You’ll be great at ballet, Em. I didn’t know you want to take lessons.”

  Maggie gave him a withering look. “Not lessons. This is her Halloween costume. Mom’s gonna get her a sparkly mask.”

  News to me.

  Mike turned quiet and then looked at the girls. “Maggie, Em, I don’t think there will be any trick or treating this year. I can’t take you, and I don’t want your mom doing it.”

  Em began to pout but Maggie asked sensibly. “What about Keisha?”

  Mike pondered that. “I’d rather have a man take you.”

  Em said, “Joe!” while Maggie suggested, “Keisha’s new boyfriend, José.” I sat silently thinking that was a truly sexist remark that I didn’t expect from Mike. I suppose he was thinking in terms of physical strength, but the remark still grated on my feminist nerves a bit.

  “Let me talk to both of them,” I said, “and see what I can do. Maggie, you never told me what you want to be.”

  “I think I’ll just pick out a mask when we go to get one for Em.” Her world-weary tone implied that she was too old for a costume, and I didn’t tell her that adults had costume parties. “You girls go along. Maggie, Gus needs to go out, and Em, you put on play clothes and be very careful of Maggie’s ballet things. Hang the tutu up carefully. I’m talking to Mike.”

  “Can we listen?” It was Maggie, the ever curious.

  “No. It’s nothing that will interest you.”

  Mike repeated my words but added, “Your mom really stood up for herself this morning. I’m proud of her.”

  “Then I am too,” Em said and came over to give me a big kiss.

  “What did you do, Mom?” Maggie asked.

  “I didn’t let a man bully me into doing something I didn’t want to do. And I ended up throwing his lunch—and mine—in the wastebasket. Of course, Keisha emptied it. Said she didn’t like the smell of tacos in the office.”

  “You didn’t tell me that part,” Mike said, laughing. “Now tell me about your meeting this morning.”

  “Not much to it. Jim Price is going to call an association meeting and talk to the people at the League of Neighborhoods, and Christian is going to research zoning laws and the like. He had a copy of what Tom will present to the zoning commission. But, Mike, the most adorable man was there.”