Things were slow around the Parker’s Corners store when Royce walked into the office to see Maria dealing with a stack of delivery invoices. It was good to see her again; it had been a week or two. “Buried under paperwork, I see,” he grinned.

“How come you didn’t tell me that being an assistant manager was going to get me so buried under this stuff?” she replied in what was clearly mock-irritation.

“Look on the bright side,” he said. “At least you get to deal with it sitting down, rather than getting sore feet.”

“There is that. I suppose I’ll get used to it sooner or later.”

“So how are you getting along with the assistant manager job?”

“Actually, not all that bad, although the paperwork is giving me something of a hassle. I suppose I’ll get used to it in time. How are things going with you?”

“About the same. I’ve been busy with some new projects, and they’re taking a lot of my time. I’ve been getting a little too focused on them.”

“Then I think you need a break,” she smiled. “I still would like for Ramona and I to have you over for dinner again sometime. We both really enjoyed it the last time you were there.”

“I enjoyed myself too, and I liked Ramona. How’s she getting along in school?”

“Just fine. It seems like that the more she’s there, the better she likes it. She’s asked about you several times, you know. Look, while I’d love to have you over to dinner, it’s not going to be this week since it’s my turn to take evenings. Maybe next week.”

“I’d like that,” he replied noncommittally. He liked Maria, and he wasn’t sure why. It may have been the fact that he’d been able to help her out back at the holidays and afterwards, and he could see that his help had made a big difference in her life. But she was usually bubbly and cheerful, and that was nice to be around, especially since he found himself occasionally getting into a foul mood when he contemplated what Maxine and Milt had done to him.

And it just might be that she was bringing some of his long-lost social interest in women back to the surface; it had been buried under his anger for a long time.

One of the things that he really liked about Maria was that she was a worker, and a hard one at that. She wasn’t some potted plant with no ambition, a woman who expected everything to be handed to her like Maxine had been. She intended to earn what she had, and that was good. It was clear that she had been through some hard times, the death of her first husband, and some awkward and poverty-stricken times afterward. It had been clear from the first time he’d talked with her that she’d made a mistake in getting involved with Hector, but at least she had realized it and hadn’t let it go so far that it was a new disaster for her.

All in all, he liked her, and enjoyed being with her, and would like to have some more of it.

Maybe she was right. Maybe he did need to take some time with her; it would be a break he really needed, even if it was only for an evening or two.

There were obvious problems in his getting much more involved with Maria than he was now. He had considered them before, and he had been a little leery as a result. The big thing was that she was an employee, although on a considerably different level. As long as it was just being friends, nothing romantic, then he probably was all right; it would not be the first time he’d had dinner with an employee, although it hadn’t happened often.

As far as that went, when he got right down to it, he owed her a dinner, rather than it being the other way around, and if Ramona were included in the deal there would be little room for anyone to complain. After all, having her as a sort of chaperone put a different spin on things, and might make it acceptable, at least once or twice.

But if things went beyond that, he might have to re-evaluate his thinking. There didn’t seem to be much danger of that, especially with Ramona involved, but again it was something he had to consider.

Did he think he would like to get involved with Maria? Was it a good idea? There were arguments on both sides of the issue. On the face of things, at least as far as he knew, she was bright, cheerful, conscientious, and a good worker who wanted to care for her daughter the best she could. She was pleasant to be around, and had few character flaws that he had been able to detect.

On the other hand, she was out of a lower-class background, so there were things that they didn’t have in common – but maybe not that much; he wasn’t exactly a member of the social elite himself, but was the self-made son of a self-made grocer. Both of them had been able to get lucky from time to time, make the right moves, and carefully guard their money.

His money was an issue, too. He did not consider himself to be rich, but well-off. While on paper he was worth a great deal of money, enough money that he could consider his expensive campaign against the Wilsons without worrying about the cost in the slightest, he was not one to throw his money around on frivolous things.

One of the things he had to consider with any woman he was dating was how she was going to react to the money he had. Maxine had always been something of a spendthrift, and had been able to spend whatever he made. Only the pre-nup, and his father not dying until after the divorce had kept her from spending a lot more of it, since he didn’t come into the bulk of his fortune and the ownership of the stores until then.

From what little he knew, she hadn’t changed much, but she appeared to be spending money like it was water on Petra’s wedding. It might be that Milt wasn’t very happy about that, not that Royce cared about it in the slightest – in fact, in the circumstances, the more, the better.

Over the years he had tried to be very careful about getting involved with such gold-diggers, women who were interested in him solely for his money. That had been part of why he hadn’t worked very hard at finding a replacement for Maxine.

But was Maria one of those? There was no way to tell at this point without further investigation. While she clearly would like to have access to more money – who wouldn’t? – it seemed like she had other goals in life as well, things like being a good mom to her daughter.

At the least, he could do some more investigation without getting in over his head.

“Tell you what,” he said. “After last time, I think I owe you a dinner. If you’ve got to work this week, that’s that. But next weekend, let me take you and Ramona out to dinner someplace we’ll all enjoy.”

“You’re on,” she smiled. “Just remember, she’s still a kid, so any burger chain place is a high-class restaurant to her.”

“I know how that works,” he laughed. “I had a daughter about her age once myself.”

What with everything going on including the plans to open the new stores and the normal details of managing Pafco Supermarkets, Royce was busy in that period. As a result, he didn’t pay attention to the fact that colleges were holding their graduations until it got to the end of the month. It was only then that he realized that he hadn’t been invited to Petra’s graduation, but when he did, it hit him hard.

He had spent somewhere over fifty thousand dollars on tuition and other things for his daughter’s college career, and now she hadn’t even bothered to invite him to her graduation! Not a word of thanks, not a note, not an announcement, nothing. It was as if he didn’t exist, or as if he counted for nothing. Once the revelation sank in, it bothered him.

If he had been a drinking man, which he wasn’t, he could have used a drink or two when that came to him. As it was, about all he could do was stew about it. After a nearly-sleepless night, he had to come to the conclusion that his daughter really didn’t care for him, or at least didn’t have the courtesy to acknowledge him, which amounted to the same thing.

In the course of the long night, it had become clear to him that he’d missed an opportunity. Well, more than one. Although he had longed for revenge against Milt and Maxine for years, literally going back to when he’d found the two in bed together, he had held off mostly because he didn’t want Petra to be caught in the crossfire; it would have made an already-difficult situation that much worse. But now this proved that his policy had been a mistake. He had wasted years of time and many thousands of dollars on Petra, and trying not to hurt her, and what had it given him?

Nothing, that’s what.

If he’d had his head screwed on, he should have started this war long ago. It would have been difficult back in the early days when his father was still alive, but after the divorce, followed by his father’s death, and the struggle to keep Pafco Supermarkets not only going but growing, he just hadn’t had the time or the resources to deal with it. That meant his revenge had to be put off to a time that would be more convenient.

He could look back now and see that he should have at least done something four years ago, rather than waiting this long. When she left to go to college she would have been safely out of the line of fire, and he could have done pretty much what he was doing now. The only advantage to holding off until now is that Milt and Maxine wouldn’t be expecting it.

Being ignored for Petra’s graduation had one effect on him: he wasn’t sure now if he cared if she got caught in the crossfire or not. In fact, she deserved to get at least a taste of it, if not more. If she was going to sell out to her mother and Milt, then she was going to deserve what she got.

By the time morning came, Milt had changed his plans a little. Not much; the main pieces were in place already, but the execution had some minor changes that would give him a measure of satisfaction. He had been much too mild and forgiving in the past, but now that would have to change.

By now Jeremy had a pretty good idea of why Royce wanted to dump on the Wilsons, although some details were a little vague in his mind. Those had to be personal, and he really didn’t want to know them anyway. Besides, for good and solid business reasons it was wise to not tip their hands to the competition before they were good and ready. It had been a little unclear in the beginning, but now the opening date for the stores was set, and they would make it easily, so the time had come to get some of the final details out of the way.

As the build-out and site development of the new stores continued, Jeremy found himself out of the office more and more. There was a lot to do at the sites, although he was mostly overseeing it. Now that they were only about a month from the stores opening, he was also deep in plans for advertising and promotion.

Although the new stores were a long way from being opened, or even revealed to the public, things had to be done to get ready for the roll out. Jeremy had a college friend who worked for an advertising agency downtown, so he was an obvious person to approach for developing an advertising campaign.

Under the circumstances, about the best that could be done would be to hit the advertising hard at the last minute, so they had to be ready for it. Jeremy had spent the morning approving the proposed print ad campaign, which would be in the big paper in town, although there were a couple of smaller shoppers nearby that would also get ads. There would be radio ads, and there would be four television spots shot early the following week for the sub chain, and one for the Hot Dog Hut. In addition, the three Pafco Supermarkets closest to the new stores would have their advertising flyers stuffed with a pre-print ad for Sandy’s Super Subs. It was about as close as Jeremy could manage to a media blitz for the relatively small part of the metropolitan area, so it would have to do.

Other things were coming along nicely. Staffing, which had once looked like it was going to be a problem, was now mostly resolved. Jeremy had been able to find several candidates for management of the stores among people who were already employed by Pafco; two of them had even worked for Wilson’s in the past, and two others had worked for other sub shops. Although he had promised that the pay would be even better for the managers than they had been making at Pafco, it remained to be seen if those people would be with the sub shops permanently.

Jeremy had also been able to arrange to hire several college students to fill out the line help. Of course, most of them would be going back to school in the fall, but once the stores were out in the open replacing them might not be as big a problem. If Wilson’s reacted the way he and Royce were hoping, there was a good chance that a lot of Wilson employees would be out of work by then, and they ought to be able to fill the openings with experienced staff.

It was getting on toward lunchtime, and Jeremy felt hungry. All of a sudden he got the idea to stop off at a Wilson’s a few blocks away. It might give him a little indication of whether they suspected anything was up, and he could check to see if the subs were as bad as they had been back around the first of the year. It might be a little bit of a risk, but he was sure that no one would recognize him as the enemy. It actually seemed a little thrilling to be something of a secret agent.

He found a parking space about half a block away from the Wilson’s he’d chosen to visit and walked into the store. It was a nice spring day, and since it was right around noon, it was busy. Jeremy wasn’t really hungry, so decided to order half a meatball sub, at least partly because it wouldn’t involve the mayo that he had found so disgusting on the last Wilson sub he tried.

Three people were working behind the counter, and as luck would have it, Milt Wilson was one of them, just like Royce and Jeremy pitching in around Pafco stores when things got busy. Although he recognized Milt from pictures, Jeremy was sure that Milt didn’t know him, so he could just act innocently.

It seemed that Wilson wasn’t having a good day. In fact, he was squabbling with the manager, a girl Jeremy didn’t recognize. “I’m sorry,” Milt told her as he sliced a bun. “There’s no way in the world I can let you have the first weekend of June off. Things are going crazy with the wedding right now, and to top it off I got nailed for jury duty. That means things are going to get flaky for a while.”

Milt, Jeremy thought, if you only knew how flaky they’re going to get . . .

“Can’t I even get half a day off?” the woman whined. “I haven’t seen her for years.”

“Oh, nuts,” Milt shrugged as he piled cold cuts on the bun he’d just sliced, “I’ll see if I can work out something. I know what it’s like to have family stuff pushing you around.” He turned to the customer and said, “What kind of cheese do you want on that?”

Milt finished the sub while another worker took Jeremy’s order. After he cashed the customer out, he told the manager, “Look, let me go back and look at the schedule to see what I can arrange. There might be some way we can shift things around for half a day.”

“I’d appreciate it, Milt,” she said. “I know you’re awful busy right now, but this is one of those things.”

After cashing the customer out, Milt disappeared toward the back of the store.

The kid building Jeremy’s meatball sub obviously wasn’t real experienced, and it took him a while to get it done. Jeremy was just getting up to the cash register when he heard the unmistakable sounds of someone being sick and blowing his guts.

Even the thought of it made him feel a little queasy, so he kept his back turned until it sounded like the worst of it was over. For some reason, the sub now didn’t seem quite so appealing.

“Hey, Milt! Help!” he heard his manager call from out front. “A customer just turned green and barfed all over the floor! I’m going to need your help cleaning it up.”

“Oh, crap!” Milt replied as he got up and headed for the mop and bucket. “Not again! That’s the third time this week, and it happened a couple times over at River Street.”

In a minute Milt was out front mopping up the mess; he noticed that the store had pretty well cleared out of waiting customers, not that he blamed them a bit. “It’s got to be this flu that’s going around,” the manager shook her head.

“Could be,” Milt agreed, although he wasn’t sure how much since the customer was a seedy type who looked like he drank a little more than he ought to. “But whatever it is, I sure will be glad when it’s over with.”

All of a sudden he heard someone hacking behind him. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen someone get set off by someone else’s barfing. But this didn’t sound like barfing. He was concentrating on cleaning up the mess when he heard someone say, “Oh, shit!”

With that, he turned around, to see an older woman coughing, struggling to breathe and not managing it. Just then, a customer wearing a business suit went over to her. “Can you breathe OK?” Milt heard the guy say.

The woman shook her head – she was getting red in the face now – and the guy got behind her, put his arms around her and pulled at her chest, hard! While Milt had seen clips of how to do a Heimlich Maneuver, he’d never seen one done in the flesh. After two or three jerks, a big wad of half-chewed sub popped out of her mouth, followed by a lot of vomit and bile, but at least Milt could see that she was breathing now, breathing hard with several deep breaths. It looked like the worst was over except for the clean-up, until the woman sort of rolled her eyes, then collapsed into her seat.

The guy in the business suit was still with her. “Don’t know what happened,” he said. “She’s breathing, but she’s out of it. Someone call 911.”

“You sure?” Milt asked.

“Could be a heart attack, I don’t know,” he replied, bending down to take her hand. “She’s got a pulse so that might not be it, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Do it,” Milt said to the store manager before she noticed that she was talking to someone on the phone, reporting the incident. He also noticed that there were a lot fewer people in the store now, and several of those left were looking more than a little green. Well, crap, he thought. Hope she pulls through, but I really didn’t need this today!

Walt Benson was one of the customers who looked a little green. This was not exactly what I intended, the attorney thought. He hadn’t intended to be here at all, but he’d paid Hermie Wohlgamuth a hundred to go into the store, buy a sub, and then when everyone’s back was turned to put a little syrup of ipecac on it so he’d barf it back up. But Walt thought that Hermie wasn’t exactly the most reliable bum on the street, so it might not be a bad idea to make sure he did it, unlike a couple of others he’d had do the trick in the last week or so. Hermie had managed his part of it just fine.

Walt had no plans to start any kind of a lawsuit over Hermie barfing up the sub since it would be too easy to connect Hermie with him. Instead, he wanted to establish a record of people breaking out with the pukes in the Wilson stores and making complaints about it. With a little bit of luck and maybe the right word in the right ear, he might be able to get the health department to make a real serious inspection. The target date Palmer was talking about was still a ways in the future, but these things took time. This ought to have been a step in the right direction.

But then that old gal had really gotten sick. It probably didn’t have much to do with the sub, rather instead with the sight of Hermie barfing, but the end result was that an ambulance was being called – and in a case where he didn’t have anything to do with it; he didn’t even know the woman’s name. Now, that was something he might be able to pursue in the courts. He’d made an awful lot of money on piddly little damage suits like that over the years, mostly because insurance companies usually were willing to settle over small amounts rather than spending bigger amounts on potentially risky litigation.

He couldn’t actually physically follow the ambulance to wherever she was going to be taken, but he could damn sure find out where it was. Then, if she was amenable, she might be able to come out of it a few thousand ahead, and he would have thirty percent right off the top. From the looks of her, she could use the money anyway.

And then, what would the health department say about someone getting hauled out of Wilson’s after barfing up one of their subs? This could make life interesting . . .

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