Royce walked back into the Pafco Supermarkets headquarters a little before noon carrying a bag with a roast beef sub sandwich while softly whistling Blow the Man Down with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Wow, you seem happy,” Hazel said as he walked past her desk to his office.

“That went pretty well,” he smiled. “It’s far from over, but at least it’s a first step. Did you get hold of Jeremy?”

“Yes, I did. He’s still over at the Jasper Street store, but he thinks they should be wrapped up with the punch list by noon, so I expect he’ll be in after he grabs some lunch somewhere.”

“OK, good. Send him in when he gets here. I’m going to have a bite of lunch, and then try to get caught up on what I missed this morning. Have any problems come up?”

“No, it’s been pretty quiet for a Monday, especially one following a long weekend.”

He went back to his office and sat at his desk to unwrap the sandwich, which came from a Wilson’s Sub Shop. Considering what he was planning it had seemed like something of a risk to get a sub there, but it was a long chance that Milt would be around, and Royce wanted to at least try one of his subs.

It proved that it wasn’t a bad sub, not as bad as were sold prepackaged from some convenience stores, but it could have been a lot better, too. The beef was all right and the bread tasted good, but the cheese was bland and the lettuce a little wilted. The tomatoes were sliced a little thin for his taste, and the mayo seemed to be a little sour. All in all, it wasn’t a very good deal for the price. He only ate half the sub – it had been cut into parts – then wrapped the remainder back up and stuffed it into the little cube refrigerator behind his desk.

It was lunch, and more of a lunch than he was used to having, so he knew he’d have to be real careful about whatever tray meal he decided to stick into the microwave for supper. More importantly, he’d learned a great deal about what he needed to know, so the time and money had been well worth the investment. This held promise, he thought as he turned his attention to his computer screen and the daily reports.

Close to an hour and a half passed before Jeremy poked his head into the office. “Hazel said you wanted to see me, boss?”

“I did,” he smiled. “Close the door and sit down. I’ve got some thoughts I want to bounce off of you. How are things going on the punch list?”

“Pretty much wrapped up. There are a few things left, but they’re all piddly little things. There’s no reason the contractor can’t have them wrapped up by the middle of the week. We ought to be able to sign off on it then.”

“Good. It seems like it’s taken long enough, but they’re well ahead of schedule, so I guess we can’t complain very much. That means the whole renovation project is coming to the end.”

Four years before, Royce had bought four stores from a rival chain at close to distress sale prices. The chain had made some mistakes with the stores, among them not doing a good job keeping up with building maintenance, and it had turned around and bit them in the butt when the time came to sell out. On top of that, in spite of large, underutilized parking areas the stores were all too small; they all could do much better business if the floor space were expanded and the stores were remodeled. Pafco had made a low offer and had it accepted.

That meant that the newly purchased stores needed to be brought up to snuff. Upgrading them had been an ongoing project ever since the purchase, starting with the worst store and going on from there. Better selection, better customer service, better prices, and better facilities had turned each of the stores around in turn; although it would be a few more years before the expense was paid off, it was proving to have been well worth the effort.

While Royce liked to have a close touch on things, the renovations were too much for him to oversee all the details, but he didn’t have to reach out very far to put Jeremy to work on it.

Jeremy Wright was an interesting young man, and Royce liked him a lot; when he said he would do something it got done, and done quickly and competently. He was a tallish young man, just under six feet with dark hair; Royce thought that women would consider him handsome. He was unmarried, but Royce knew he’d had a couple of potential relationships go sour on him, so he’d decided to be careful about getting involved with someone.

When Jeremy had first come to town close to ten years before, he’d been a college student living close to the Parker’s Corners store; he’d had to work his way through college, and started as a bag boy there part time. He had been a superlative worker, and had received several promotions while getting his degree in business practices and construction management.

When he’d graduated, Royce had asked him what his plans were, and Jeremy had told him he needed to get a full-time job. “Would assistant manager at the Parker’s Corners store be suitable?” Royce had asked. “There are some other things coming up the road that might be more up your alley, but that would give you some experience with the practical end of management.”

Jeremy had accepted, and a little over a year later the four-store purchase and renovation had come along, so it was no big deal to put him into the position of day-to-day oversight of the projects. As always, he had done a superlative job, but now that the project had come to an end, what to do with him had become something of a problem.

Jeremy knew it, too. “I’ve been wondering a little about what comes next, I’ve been hearing that you have another store purchase in the works.”

“Unfortunately, it’s still in the works, and may stay there for a while. It’s another four-store deal, but I don’t want two of the stores. It’d cost too much to just buy all four and close the ones I don’t want,” Royce replied. “Unfortunately the current owners understand that, so we haven’t been getting anywhere with negotiations for a while. In fact, the whole deal may fall through. I’ve given some thought to just building a competing store or two and it may come to that, but not yet. The market in that area is a little saturated, so I want to take a look at going in a different direction.”

“You’re saying something besides the grocery business, I take it.”

“Got it in one,” Royce smiled, and turned toward the refrigerator behind his desk. He pulled out the wrapped half-sub and slid it across the desk to his assistant. “What do you think of that?”

Jeremy unwrapped the sub and peeled it open to look at the inside of the sandwich. He gave it a sniff, then frowned, shook his head and said, “I’ve seen better subs. My old man would have flipped if I’d let one like this go out the door when I worked in his shop back in high school.”

“I should probably point out that it’s a couple hours old.”

“Yeah, well, even so, Dad owns a chain franchise, and he’d be real unhappy with this. I worked there after school and summers for four years, so I ought to know. I don’t want to even think about what the franchise representatives would have said if he’d seen this in Dad’s store.”

“You’re saying that it would be no trick to do a better job.”

“Not at all, at least if I had enough money to do it right.”

“Good enough. I want you to take a quick look at getting into the sub business. I have a list of five locations that are near existing sub shops, so I can tell you that there is business in the area. I’ve taken a look around each of the locations, and without doing too much research it looks like there are unused facilities nearby that would serve our purpose. Granted, we’ll have to take the clientele away from the existing businesses, but I think we can do that with better subs, better materials, better service, and nicer facilities. Along with that, of course, we can add aggressive promotion and pricing.”

“You realize that we’d probably lose some money operationally until we can capture a good share of the sub business in the area?”

“Yes, that’s a given, but it’s a case of survival of the fittest, and that’s one of the basic laws of business as much as it is of nature. I think if we can make a go of it, we can expand to other locations. We might as well get our feet wet first, and these locations look like the place to do it.”

“You know, just thinking about it, it seems like we could have some locations right in our stores. Maybe not all of them, but it doesn’t take a lot of room for a sub shop if we don’t have any seating.”

“That might be a step up the road, but let’s figure out what we’re doing first. I don’t want to operate under the Palmer name, and in fact I’m thinking that we need to be a little separate. I’m thinking in terms of a partially owned separate corporation, and frankly, Jeremy, I’m thinking you ought to have a piece of the action.” That would give Jeremy a little extra motivation, Royce thought, not that the kid lacked much in that department anyway. Besides, he deserved some reward for his efforts.

“Yeah, that could be interesting,” Jeremy smiled. “It’s always nice to get in on the ground floor of something.”

“My thinking exactly,” Royce grinned. “Now, all that said, I’d like you to sit down and come up with business and development plans to make this a reality.”

“It’s going to take some front money to get started. I can’t tell you how much right now, but some. About all I can say is that it would be a lot less than a brand new supermarket.”

“Again, my thinking exactly. I think the time has come to spread our wings, and this looks like a good place to do it. I don’t think there’s a need to gold plate everything in the store, but there will be enough money available to do the job and do it right.”

“That will make things a lot easier. Dad was down to just about his last dime when he opened his place, and it took him a long time to dig out.”

“That’s one of the advantages to having money,” Royce smiled. “Now, we want to keep this as quiet as we can for as long as we can, since there’s no point in letting the competition know there’s a new shark in the pool until they find out the hard way. That way they won’t have time to clean up their act ahead of time.”

“That strikes me as a good, sound strategy. What kind of time frame are we thinking about?”

“As soon as we can without rushing things. I’m thinking next spring, maybe in May, not later than early June.”

“That ought to be plenty of time so long as we don’t waste any along the way.”

“Good enough. Let’s put off setting up the new sub-corporation until after the first of the year, that’ll simplify things for the accountants and the tax man, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get started now. But I’d say it would be a good idea for you to get a look at the locations, and maybe we ought to start getting options on the properties involved as soon as we can.”

“You’re saying you want to go ahead on this?”

“Yes, unless some huge unforeseen roadblock comes up. Jeremy, I’m not going to be much less busy for the next few months than I am now, so you’re going to have to do the majority of the work involved. Keep me posted and coordinate with me on this. I’ll make the time for you if you need it. I might even be able to contribute another idea or two along the way.”

“Good, I’ll do some research and a little nosing around and have a progress report for you, oh, by the end of the week.”

“I don’t doubt that you’ll do a superior job,” Royce smiled. “Let’s make some subs.”

“Sure thing,” Jeremy grinned as he picked up the half sub from the corner of the desk, where he had set it down earlier. “I’m sure we can do better than this!”

“I’m sure we can, too.”

Royce watched Jeremy leave the office and head down the hall to his own. He’d had little doubt that his assistant would hop all over the idea. He was a young man with a promising future, after all. No doubt Jeremy would figure out pretty soon that Royce had something against the Wilsons, but he didn’t need to know the details, at least right now. Once the ball got rolling it would be hard to stop it.

Besides, it was a good idea, and Royce had been considering getting into something like this even before he’d made up his mind to take a chunk out of Maxine’s and Milt’s collective asses. His actual idea had been a little different, but it still might be something to investigate in the future. Yes, it would cost something to get going, but it would make a profit in the long run, especially if he and Jeremy decided to expand on to other locations at some point in the future.

He remembered the wisecrack he’d made to the attorney a few hours earlier. Papa duck was now awake and quacking.

It was a couple of days before Royce was able to meet with the private investigator, but that was all right since there wasn’t any real rush, at least just yet. He wanted to keep his real motives out of his own office at least for a while, mostly to keep office gossip and speculation to a minimum, so he met with the detective agency at their office in a small office building not far from Ashbury’s practice.

Meyerson Investigations was indeed a small operation; there wasn’t even a secretary or receptionist. Perhaps Royce had seen one too many detective dramas on TV, so he was a little surprised to find that the office was neat as a pin, and Paul Meyerson was hardly a grizzled Sam Spade with a cigar and a .38 in a shoulder holster. He was a somewhat taller man, well-groomed, and well-spoken, perhaps a little older than Royce was, and Royce soon learned that Meyerson had never been a police detective but had degrees in psychology and criminal justice.

After a minute or two of casual conversation, Meyerson got right down to business. “So what can we do for you today?” he asked.

“Well, to be truthful, a couple of things,” Royce responded. “The major thing is that I need a background investigation done on a couple of people, a married couple. I could probably find out what I need to find out by myself, but I’d really rather they didn’t know I was the one snooping around them.”

“Why do you want to investigate them?”

“I’ll be honest and say that I’m considering a major lawsuit against them, and it’s one where they would not be covered by insurance if they were to lose. Before I spend a lot of money on lawyers it strikes me as a good idea to know whether there’s enough blood to get from these turnips to make it worth the effort.” That was sort of a fib, Royce knew, since his intent was actually the opposite, but that was something that sounded like a better excuse than the truth.

“Actually, that should be pretty easy, and probably a lot of it can be done with an extensive computer search. We have access to websites and databases that aren’t open to the general public, and there’s a lot of information in them that some people would rather wasn’t available at all.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at all. Big Brother is watching, and all that.”

“That’s more true than you think. Sometimes a person can go through life and not draw much attention, but they still leave a trail if someone wants to look for it. Like I said, it should be easier and safer than staking out a house and trying to get evidence of a husband cheating on his wife or vice versa. That’s a big part of this business and it is not as much fun as it might be.”

“I can imagine. I went through a rather nasty divorce several years ago, and I wish I’d thought to pull in an investigator when I first started wondering what was going on. As it was, I walked in on them accidentally, and had to play catch-up the rest of the way. It was not exactly a lot of fun.”

“It hardly ever is,” Meyerson sighed. “Unfortunately, there’s more of that going around than most people believe. That and things like workman’s comp investigations are what keep me in business, so it’ll be nice to be able to do something easy and different.”

“Well,” Royce laughed. “I suppose if you were able to pick up a hint or two that these people are playing around on each other, it might be interesting to know. If we could get them throwing rocks at each other they might not take the lawsuit I’m planning quite as seriously.”

“Do you think there’s any chance of that?”

“Could be,” Royce shrugged. “Let’s be honest. The woman is my ex-wife, and I know damn well that she has a history of fooling around. Her husband, well, I can’t say if he’s playing around on her, but my divorce started because he was playing with a married woman when he shouldn’t have been.”

“And given the chance, you wouldn’t mind jamming something like that down their collective throats.”

“How did you guess?” Royce smiled. “I honestly don’t need for things to go that far, though. I just need to get an idea of their financial status, whether they’re well off or if they’re struggling. That’s something you can’t figure out just by driving past their house.”

“You can sometimes get a general idea of it just by picking up on little signs,” the detective said. “But, in your case, those probably wouldn’t tell you what you need to know.”

“Probably not. It would be better to see at least a few numbers, instead of pure impressions.”

“Well, I can probably get the numbers for you. How much do you want to spend on this?”

“Enough to do the job but not overdo it. I have no idea of what your rate structure would be, but how about if I give you a thousand bucks and tell you to go as far as you can with it? After a look at what you have, if we think we need to go further, then I can spend more.”

“If this goes about like I think it will, I ought to be able to give you change back on that.”

They spent a few minutes talking about the details, such as the Wilsons’ address, their store locations, and other similar things; Meyerson said it was enough to get him started.

Before long the discussion wound down a little. “You said you had something else you needed us to look into,” the detective asked.

“Yes, and this might be a little harder. I just found out a few days ago that my daughter is engaged to a young man by the name of Barry Keller. All I know about him is that he goes to college with her, or at least went to college with her, and I’ve never met him. My daughter and I, well, we don’t get along very well even though I’ve given her a fair amount of financial support. I would like to know a little more about this young man, whether he’s trustworthy or not, his background, things like that.”

“You’re saying that if he turns out to be a jerk you’ll know to keep your wallet in your pocket.”

“Exactly.”

“I can do that. Again, a lot can be done online. I don’t want to sound like I’m blowing my own horn, but I wish more parents would take that degree of interest in the backgrounds of their children’s prospective mates. It could save a lot of tears in the long run. Where does your daughter go to college?”

Royce told him, and the detective broke out laughing. “Hell, this is going to be even easier. My idiot daughter goes there, I’ll just turn her loose on this young man.”

“Your idiot daughter?”

“She’s an idiot because she thinks she wants to take after her parents and get into this business. The heck of it is that she’s already been in it for a while, and frankly she’s done pretty well with it. She broke a tricky half-million dollar workman’s comp case when she was twelve, and naturally I had to give her a cut on the fee. Since then she’s had her mind made up.”

“I have to ask how she managed that. It sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Not a real big story. It was a typical workman’s comp case, where a guy claimed he was immobilized because of a work injury. He was pretty damn careful to look really laid up when I snooped around the neighborhood and I could never solidly catch him. Tammy heard me griping about it over the dinner table, so without asking ahead of time the next day she got on her bike, rode over to his neighborhood, caught him outside mowing his lawn with a push mower, and got photos and a video with her cell phone camera. He might have been suspicious of an adult, but he wasn’t suspicious of a twelve-year-old girl.”

“It wouldn’t occur to most anyone,” Royce smiled. “I presume you gave her hell for taking the risk?”

“Oh, yeah, not that it did any good. The check I had to give her sort of diluted it, so I figured I was going to have to go with the flow. We pulled the same trick several other times, although she was a little more supervised when she did it and usually had some way she could alert me if she ran into trouble. That was years ago and she can still doll herself up to look and act like a real jail-bait kid if she works at it, even though she’s had her own PI license for three years now. Unfortunately, she tends to be a little bit of a cowboy and sometimes takes risks and does things that might not be the smartest. I always have to worry about it since sometimes the things she does aren’t the safest ways she could be going about getting them done, and, well, she’s my daughter and I have to worry about her.”

“I know what you’re saying. I have a daughter too, and I worry about her whether we get along or not.”

“I know what you’re saying. I’ll get Tammy going on this and tell her to keep a real low profile, but it would surprise me if she doesn’t come through for you in spades.”

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