Except for Royce and Jeremy meeting several times to go over details for the development of Sandy’s Super Subs, not much happened for the next couple of weeks. That did not trouble Royce in the slightest, since he’d known from the beginning that the sub stores were going to take more time than everything else.

Christmas was in sight by now; all of the Pafco stores had plenty of seasonal, sometimes tacky holiday decorations, and the sale flyers and ads all had many holiday items on sale. Business was as brisk as it always was this time of year, and Royce made several visits to each location just to assure himself that things were going all right. Some of that was taking over Jeremy’s normal work, for Royce didn’t want to short his assistant on the time he needed to do the job on Sandy’s Super Subs right.

That was just fine with him. Given a choice, he preferred to be out in one of the stores, doing something hands-on and talking with the customers; he could learn an awful lot more that way than he could sitting behind a desk with Hazel serving as his buffer against the world. He often reflected that he had been at his happiest before his father got sick, then died and left his whole estate to him back in the days when he was managing the Willow Street store. He’d had a family then, at least what he’d thought of as a happy and loyal family; he had his daughter with him, and they had been close. It had been fun to enjoy watching her grow, to experience growing up through a different set of eyes.

He’d had no inkling, back in those days, of the tragedy and sorrow that lay not far in the future. He hadn’t known that the seeds of his bitterness had already sprouted and were growing under the placid surface. He still didn’t know the details and didn’t want to know them, but Maxine’s affair with Milt had been going on for a long time before he found out about it, and there was evidence that he was not her first fling. While he’d been a successful man in the years that followed, he had not been a happy one. It would have been nice to throw off the chains of anger that had been left behind, and he hoped deep down inside that balancing the scales a little would finally give him the opportunity to move on with his life.

When Royce returned to his office after spending a few hours at the Jasper Street store one day a few days before Christmas, he found a pink call-back slip on his desk. There was no name on it, but the number was familiar, so he sat down and called back.

The number proved to be from Paul at Meyerson Investigations. “I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to get back with you,” the detective said. “But we had a couple of cheating spouse cases come up that took up a lot of time, and I felt they had to come first.”

“Having been there, I couldn’t agree more.”

“I thought you would. Anyway, I have a report for you. It’s good news and bad news, depending on how you look at it. Would you like to drop by sometime so we can go over it?”

“Sure. I have an appointment here in a few minutes, but it shouldn’t take long. By then it’ll be lunchtime. Are you interested in doing lunch?”

“I’d like that, but just on general principles we probably ought to not discuss the results of the investigation in a restaurant. We can do that here, and then have lunch.”

“You talked me into it. I’ll be there somewhere on the far side of an hour.”

Paul was again alone in his office working on something on his computer when Royce arrived. As he walked in the detective put a picture of a pretty girl in a bikini on the screen, so there would be no hint of what he was really working on. “So how’s the holiday season treating you?” he asked.

“Pretty good, at least as far as the stores are concerned. There are going to be a lot of turkeys at Christmas banquets around town.”

“Yeah, it’s getting to be that time of year, isn’t it? I’m afraid the report I’m working on is going to louse up a couple of people’s Christmases, but that’s the way it happens sometime.”

“I know what you’re saying, since it happened to me, although not at Christmas. Personally my holidays have been a little bleak since then.”

“That happens, too,” the detective sighed. “Just as a hint, sooner or later you’re going to have to turn loose of it and get a life again.”

“If this thing works I expect I’ll feel like doing just that, but first things first. You said you had a report for me?”

“Yeah, a couple of them, but let me summarize. First, the Wilsons. In a nutshell, things are a little tight around them, but not unreasonably so. They don’t have a lot of ready cash, but they just opened a new store a few months ago and they’re a little extended. I mean, there’s no danger of their filing bankruptcy, but considering their equity position they’d be hard put to come up with a hundred thousand even if they sold all their stores.”

“Without actually looking at it, I suspect you’re about right.”

“I have to point out that that’s a figure under good conditions. If their back was against the wall and they were forced to sell for what they could get as quickly as they could get it, the figure could be half that amount. Their house is the next thing to being under water since they refinanced to put the money toward the new store. They might get a few thousand out of it on a favorable sale, but again, in a forced sale they might wind up still owing money.”

That was music to Royce’s ears. It was about the position that he’d expected Milt and Maxine to be in, and that wasn’t even counting the cost of an expensive wedding in the near future. Maybe his plans were overdoing it, but he knew he’d rather overdo it than under-do it. “That’s a little worse than I expected, but not exceptionally worse.”

“Granted, I’m guessing a little bit, but I have a credit report from when they went to the bank to open their last store. It’s a little dated, but I doubt if it’s very far off.”

Royce started to reply, but remembered at the last instant the story he’d told the detective, that he was trying to find out if they had enough money to bother with a lawsuit. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said instead. “If I can keep the legal costs under control, then it might still be worth the effort. At least I know what ground I’m standing on.”

“You’ll have to understand that I don’t dare to release the actual agency reports to you, since some of this is a little under the table. But the report I’ll give you summarizes things in probably all the detail you’ll want anyway.”

“I’m sure that will be just fine. I appreciate your digging into this so thoroughly. This was more than I expected.”

“Good enough. Now, turning to the young Mr. Keller, I’m afraid the news is not very good.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He was, too.

“He comes from a family that lives about a hundred miles from the college,” Paul began. “His mother is a housewife who works part-time, and his father works for a huge industrial dairy as a manure salesman.”

“A what?”

“A manure salesman. At least that was how Tammy understood it. According to her, cows produce more manure than they do milk, and someone has to do something about it.”

“God, what a shitty job.”

“I’d say ‘no shit,’” Meyerson laughed, “but it’s more complicated than that. Manure is valuable fertilizer, and the job is to find places that will buy it. It’s not as simple as it sounds, since the buyers have to be qualified to apply the manure in an environmentally friendly fashion. It’s actually a pretty well-paid position, and it takes both knowledge and experience to do the job without screwing things up and having environmental agencies up in arms.”

“It takes all kinds, I guess.”

“It does indeed. But we’re getting away from the report. Young Mr. Keller is a college student of course, but according to Tammy he’s a young punk and it turns out he’s a player in the mattress Olympics. Before he started going with your daughter he got around campus quite a bit, and got something of a reputation for it. He’s kept his nose clean around her ever since, but when he gets off campus all bets are off. It can’t be confirmed, of course, but according to a source close to him he’s bragged about scoring with at least six girls since he’s been engaged to your daughter. At least one of them was over the Thanksgiving holiday.”

“Well, shit,” Royce shook his head. “I don’t suppose my daughter knows about this?”

“Tammy thinks not, but that’s just a guess. It wasn’t something I’d asked her to investigate, so she didn’t.”

“Shit,” Royce said again. “It sure sounds like my daughter is setting herself up for a rough time.”

“It sounds like it to me, too. Incidentally, I know as a father of a daughter you don’t want to hear this, but your daughter and the young Mr. Keller have been sexually active. At least they’ve admitted it to friends, so there’s little reason to doubt it.”

“Well, damn,” Royce sighed. “You’re right, it’s not something a father wants to hear about his daughter, but she is over twenty-one after all. Since she’s a college student I guess it’s not surprising, since I doubt college has changed much in that regard since I went to school. But still, it’s not something I’m glad to hear.”

“I’m right with you on that,” Paul replied sympathetically. “I don’t know for sure that my daughter has been sexually active, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least.”

“I wish I could be sure that my daughter knows that this Keller guy is running around on her,” Royce replied thoughtfully, now that the shock of the news was wearing off a little. “It might save her a lot of grief in the future. I mean, I wish I’d known a little more about my ex-wife’s sexual history before I made the mistake of marrying her, but that came too late to do me any good.”

“I hate to say it, but this report is mostly secondhand, and some of it is based on innuendo and rumors. There is no documentary proof, and if you want to confront your daughter with it, you might need it to convince her.”

“Yes, especially as poor as the relations between us are. Do you think your daughter could come up with some solid evidence?”

“She might be able to, but it won’t be soon. Classes will be breaking in a few days, and there goes much chance for casual contact until after the first of the year. Besides, Keller seems to keep his pants zipped on campus, except around your daughter, of course.”

“Then get her on it. I realize it may take time, but there’s still almost six months before the wedding, so maybe there’s enough time.”

“I have to point out that if he keeps his activities far off campus, it’s going to be much harder for Tammy to keep track of him. It may take a major effort to get documentary evidence, and that could get expensive.”

“I don’t want to say that money is no object, but spend what you need to for now. Just keep me informed of the progress and the costs involved.”

The two of them went to lunch at a nearby chain restaurant after that, but Royce’s heart was not in the meal. While he and the detective talked lightly about the upcoming weekend’s college football games, his mind was far away.

He had suffered enough from the effects of having a cheating spouse, and now it looked like his daughter might wind up suffering from the same heartbreak. At the same time, it was her life, and she had her own mistakes to make. She had more or less kissed him off, so did he have any right to interfere with the whole sorry mess?

A few days later Petra pulled her car into the driveway of her mother and stepfather’s home. She was not really looking forward to the next few days, since her mother would probably want to spend a lot of time going over every last detail of the wedding for the umpteenth time. Having a big wedding was her mother’s idea and not hers; she would have been happy with a small, informal wedding just to get everything over with, but she’d lost that battle early on – about five seconds after her mother had been told of the engagement, in fact.

It still bothered her that her real father had been all but ignored in the wedding, and would have been totally ignored if she hadn’t taken things into her own hands. That may have been a mistake; she remembered him closing the door in her face, and realized that she had hurt him badly when she didn’t need to do it. At least there would still be almost six months until the wedding, and maybe he would get over it a little bit. If he couldn’t walk her down the aisle, at least she hoped he would be there with something of a smile on his face, but she didn’t want to bet that it would happen.

Being the child of divorced parents was no fun. Once upon a time she had loved being with her father, much more so than she did being with her mother. Then, things had gone to hell between her parents, and nothing had been the same since. Her father had grown cold and distant, at least partly because of the way her mother had treated him.

She had hoped to be a little closer to her father after the divorce, but it hadn’t worked out that way. She’d tried to keep things going, but after a while she had no choice but to just let things tail off. It probably hadn’t been the right thing to do, but it had just happened that way.

Still, she could remember those happy days of the distant past, when they had been a real family. She could remember the last Christmas together, when her father had given her a really nice bike and her own laptop. She remembered the hugs, the kisses, the sharing, even though it had been a long time ago and could never be recaptured.

More than once on her way home she’d given some consideration to sneaking away from her mother for a while, going to see her father, and apologizing to him – if he’d even listen to her, and there was no guarantee that he would. If she did, and she hadn’t settled on doing it, she knew that she would have to keep any hint of it from her mother or she would never hear the end of it. That was a good way to louse up what already was going to be a less than happy holiday time for her, mostly because she would have to put up with her mother anyway.

Fortunately it wouldn’t have to last for the whole break, and that was a happier prospect. The plan was that she and Barry would spend the first few days of the holiday at their own homes. Then, the day after Christmas he would drive to her home, and they would spend a few days with her parents. Of course, they would have to keep things above board, and pretty much limit themselves to innocent kisses and cuddling, but that would be tolerable since a couple days after that they planned to officially go to his parents.

What they hadn’t mentioned to either set of parents was that there was a large motel with a small indoor water park right along the way, and they planned to spend three or four days there over the New Year holiday. They had only had a couple of occasions to spend the night together, and those had been a little awkward, so the time together along the way seemed almost like a little bit of a pre-honeymoon, a taste of things to come.

At least this would be the last holiday that she would have to put up with her mother. With any kind of luck, this time next year she and Barry would be far, far away, and all of the tensions this Christmas offered would be behind them, as well.

Maybe, she thought, when the time came that her mother wasn’t breathing down her neck, she might have the opportunity to fix things up with her father. The first child coming along might prove to be an opportunity. A grandchild might remove some of the tension and allow for some apologies, but that still seemed like it was a long way off, and there were plenty of other things to do first.

A couple of hundred miles away Barry was thinking about Petra, but his thoughts weren’t exactly the same. He still hadn’t become reconciled to marrying her, although it looked like it was going to happen unless he put a stop to it – and he wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. Petra was a lot of fun in bed and not bad to be around, but already she had become predictable, and not as much of a challenge as the hunt for action. That would only get worse after she had the wedding ring on her finger, and he wasn’t sure he liked the idea.

This next week, up until Christmas, might be getting toward his last chance to have some fun without her hanging onto him. He already knew that some of his friends were planning on having a big Christmas blast at Ted and Julie’s house, like they’d had at Thanksgiving. Vicky would almost be sure to be there again, and he wouldn’t mind tearing off another piece of that. On the other hand, there were other girls, and if Vicky hadn’t come along just when she had back a few weeks before, Barbie Blackburn had seemed like she was hot to trot for him if he had pushed it just a little. Vicky had been fun, but she was another line on the victory list now, while he’d never had a shot at Barbie.

Sure, Barbie was as dumb as a Dial-A-Ride driver and on the chubby side, but she was unknown territory so that made it worth the effort all by itself. She was not the kind of girl he would like to marry, and he pitied the poor dude that did finally wind up with her. When it came to getting married, Petra was a lot more appealing, which was why he’d asked her in the first place. She was a lot better looking, more interesting, and a lot more compatible for the long haul, and there was always the possibility that she might be able to talk her old man out of some real money, like buying a house, like Mike had suggested a couple of weeks back. If things didn’t work out with her, that would make for a nice fallback.

The real problem with marrying her was that it meant he would have to give up a lot of the thrill of the hunt, extending his victory list. Oh, there was no doubt that he might be able to work at it from time to time, especially if he got the right job where he would be able to spend some time away from his wife – that would make things a lot easier. But it couldn’t be depended on, so he figured he ought to get it while he still could.

Whether or not things worked out with Barbie – and he was pretty sure they would – the prospect of spending a few days alone with Petra without parents around and without classes hanging over their head seemed appealing. He was pretty sure that Petra was going to have a really dynamite bikini, and it would be fun to see her wearing it in the pool and on the water slides, and it would be even more fun to take it off of her and do what came naturally. He could stand for more of that.

Well, maybe he could manage it. It was less than three months until spring break rolled around, and it would be fun to head down to Florida and spend some time checking out the babes on the beach, and having all the beer he wanted and then some. He was old enough that there wouldn’t be all the hassles with being carded like he’d had a couple of years ago so he could do some serious partying. The heck of it was that if he wanted to do it Petra would want to go along, and there would go a lot of his freedom. It seemed like a foretaste of what was to come, and he resented it a little.

On the other hand, Petra would probably enjoy making the trip. It would seem like something special to her. Maybe, if things worked out right, he could get away from her for a few hours from time to time and use the free time effectively, like adding to his scoreboard. It might work, and if it didn’t work out he’d still score some points with her for taking her with him.

Of course, if he got really lucky, she’d manage to hook up with some other guy, and that would mean he would have some leverage to use if he wanted to hook up with some girl. It didn’t seem likely, but at least it could happen. And if it did . . .

It didn’t take much thinking to decide to give it a shot. He would be seeing her in a few days and they’d be together for a while, so he could put it to her in the right way and even let her think it was her idea as much as it was his.

It seemed like a good idea, and there were a lot of possibilities . . .

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