CHAPTER 5
Aiden
“Huh,” Renaldo says as we pull onto Main Street.
“It’s much worse,” I think aloud. I can’t hold in my disdain. It’s just…so green. Everywhere.
Green lights, green clovers, green ribbons and flags and how? Did they cut the red bits off of everything the town owns in the last few weeks?
Oh.
In some cases, they absolutely did. And repainted. The weird green sticks lining the streets, holding up ribbons and lights, clearly lived past lives as candy canes.
And the town sign. Wow.
“Is that paint?” Renaldo asks.
“Appears to be,” I say, marveling at the black slash through the literal name of the town on the main sign. It’s a large wooden frame above the street leading into the square. The place has been renamed Shamrock Falls for the foreseeable future. “That’s a bit desperate.”
“Aren’t they?” He asks me.
I slide my eyes to meet his in the rear-view and squint, “Yes, I suppose they are.”
Thanks to you, his big bushy unibrow says.
I’m saving the whole damn place, I try to yell back with my raised, well-tended eyebrows.
He snorts. I ignore him.
We’ve reworked many a dying town over the years. Must be getting too chummy with my staff if they’ve the need to snort and sigh this way. They can get right on over it.
Sure, this is the first holiday-themed town.
All the more reason it needs to get a thorough update.
“Coffee?” Renaldo asks with a smirk as we pass the bakery.
“Hilarious,” I huff. He overheard the exchange last time. Then murmured something about my being the first Vanderwell to ever be kicked out of an establishment under his breath. “Just show me the damage.”
We wind around past the Main Street shops and their precious gazebo, to the mountain road. We don’t have to travel up very far.
“Fantastic,” I mutter when I see it. Thousands of dollars worth of irrigation work and erosion control fencing, demolished. “How do these punks even know to do this?”
“ChatGPT,” Renaldo answers.
I grunt in disgust. He’s likely right. I’ve had angry townsfolk vandalize my projects before, of course.
But a few teens armed with spray paint does nothing to my timelines.
Removing the slit fencing triggers an irrigation code violation and actually screws the whole project to hell.
Legally, we cannot proceed until it’s fixed.
Which I’m sure some chatbot explained to the mayor’s son and his buddies.
Just more proof that AI will be the end of us all.
“We’ll have to set up a remote office here, yeah?” I say to my longtime bodyguard, and current driver, after he parks the town car and opens my door for me. He’s seen it all over the years.
“Looks like it,” he agrees.
I walk part of the property and get out my cell phone to make the necessary calls.
My shoes crunch on frozen mud while icy wind bites at my face.
I’m not used to brutal cold in March. I turn away from the dormant construction equipment—wankers also asked the bots how to cut the hydraulic lines on heavy machinery, apparently—and look down into the valley.
Juniper Falls truly looks like a postcard.
A postcard from a past era.
Reminds me of a family holiday we took to Bonneval-sur-Arc in the Alps when I was a boy.
Well, a holiday. Who knows if any other Vanderwells were actually there.
I don’t remember granddad or my parents.
But there was a snowy town, a nanny who tried to teach me to ski, and a shit-ton of French pastries. Good trip, overall.
But that was almost thirty years ago. And this is not France. These mountain towns don’t exist anymore unless someone comes in to develop them.
Which is exactly what I intend to do. A snowmobile brigade of pimply boys with wire cutters will not stop me. But they did slow me down a bit. I walk the grounds and touch base with my contacts in New York to get added security up here. We’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again.
As the sun begins to set, the town starts to shine in a blaze of green. It’s so still in the snow I can even hear faint music down there. Celtic, of course. It appears they’re making a valiant effort. Valiant but futile.
“Right. I want to go down and assess their first offensive,” I say as I stomp back to the car. Renaldo rolls his eyes, but he’s long since stopped saying his thoughts out loud. Not every endeavor is a war. Not all business is a battlefield. It’s not you versus the world.
He’s categorically wrong on all counts.
I do have local adversaries, as thousands of dollars worth of vandalism has just proven. Not to mention the bane of my family’s existence abroad, always chasing at my heels. I am indeed fighting alone, an army of one, as I prefer it. This Juniper Falls project will be yet another battle.
Good thing that I never, ever lose.
_____
By the time we wind down the slippery streets to the heart of the town, the party is in full swing. I think. I wouldn’t call the streets packed but it’s the most people I’ve seen in this square at once, including the brief stay I had here during the holiday season.
“Hm,” Renaldo says, easily impressed.
“Foot traffic doesn’t automatically equate to sales,” I grunt, annoyed. “The whole town is out at once, sure, but are there any tourists and are they actually buying anything?”
It’s a rhetorical question but he answers anyway as he parks the car, “Let’s find out.”
In just a few steps we’re in the thick of it. Green tables with green wares, ale and appetizer samples and tchotchkes. So much of the signature color, plus cutesy gold pots and shamrocks and leprechauns…I am unwell.
That could be the smell, however. Whatever the grill has going…good God above, it’s ghastly.
“Excuse me, mister!” I just barely hear as a bombastic child smashes into my leg.
Renaldo walks ahead of me, scanning like the former-navy-seal security detail that he is.
Though he can’t seem to keep away unaccompanied children.
Or drunken locals. It’s barely dusk, this… event must have started early.
When we reach the end of the street I see what I suppose is the main attraction.
A large tent in front of the famed gazebo has a crowd gathered around it.
The gazebo itself has speakers but instead of a live band it’s just a teen girl armed with massive headphones and her cell phone.
I scan around for the jolly record store owner but don’t find him.
That’s admirable, I suppose. He and...any other store owners…should be in their shops, trying to turn this foot traffic into conversions at the register.
“Here you go, Mr. Aiden! Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” Another wayward child hands me a shamrock sugar cookie.
“This is enemy territory, any one of them might charge me. This could’ve been a bomb,” I hold the napkin up at Renaldo who may or may not be slacking at his job.
“It’s not,” he deadpans.
I look down at the tiny chartreuse clover covered in sugar. I can feel townie eyes on me, so I shouldn’t participate. I should pitch it in the trash, let everyone know resistance is pointless. I’m a driven, disciplined, focused person. Ruthlessly so. But if I’ve a weakness, it’s my sweet tooth.
So, screw it.
I shove the treat in my mouth.
And choke.
Ugh!
After a coughing fit that draws even more eyeballs my way. Renaldo hands me a thimble of water from a nearby table. He raises an eyebrow.
I shake myself out, “Bloody hell, maybe they were trying to kill me.”
I lift my chin, eager to move on. We resume walking down Main Street.
Behind the gazebo is a patch of grass I plan to convert into the guardhouse at the entrance of my sprawling parking lot. Currently, it holds the base of a small, temporary, questionable Ferris wheel. That thing cannot be up to any kind of code. I shudder when I near it.
The mayor’s son and a friend are managing the line for the ride.
The shorter kid lights up when he spots me. “Ah! Lady Bridger—”
Mayor Junior elbows him to cut him off, then bows ridiculously, “Would you like a ride, my Lord?”
I grimace at his ridiculous accent, “I’d rather a root canal, thank you.”
The boys snicker and mimic me, their British accents worsening.
“That is not how I sound,” I say, watching happy children file past me and onto the turning steel deathtrap.
“It was spot on if you ask me,” I hear a gravely voice reply. I turn to my right to find Maxine, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. Once again we’re standing toe to toe, posture and facial expression much the same. She goes on, “Uppity, doesn’t belong, sounds like he’s got a stick shoved so far up his—”
“So,” I cut her off, looking down my nose at her, ready to throw insults right back, “Is this all you’ve got, then? Have any of you made a single cent?”
“Harper said—”
I cut Maxine off again, on a roll, “Ah yes, Harper the mastermind with the eyes. Her first battle plan is a town square covered in tomorrow’s trash disguised as decor, smelling like a dog’s asshole, a pile of bolts that has lawsuit written all over it, an amateur disk jockey manning two-bit speakers, and world’s driest—what would we call those, cookies?
—no wonder this place is on it’s last legs if that’s the kind of product she slings at the,” I make air quotes, “bakery.”
Renaldo widens his eyes at me.
Maxine sags and looks past my arm.
I turn to look but I already know what I’ll see.
There she stands, the baker, frowning and red-faced with a large clover tucked behind her ear.
She’s holding a tray of tiny green drinks that nearly match her eyes.
Her nostrils flare and I can feel it, sweet Harper who wouldn’t hurt a fly, so Ben says, is about to show her true colors once again.
The hairs on my neck stand to attention in anticipation.
She opens her mouth and I shift to face her head on, ready and deeply intrigued.
She…smiles?
A closed, shy, small grin before setting the tray down near Mayor Junior and turning to flee.
I almost call out to her as her back retreats but I’m not sure if I want to apologize, antagonize or rationalize. Everything I said was absolutely true and I take none of it back.
If she doesn’t like it, that’s her problem.
She can’t expect to save her bakery with cookies like that.
She should shut down the food part of her business and focus on the coffee.
But without food she won’t have the margins.
It’s best that she know now so she can prepare herself for dissolution.
And I should be relieved that she simply walked away, already resigning to her inevitable fate.
So why am I…what am I?
Disappointed.
I’m disappointed.
Very weird sensation.
I am not used to it and don’t care for it at all.
So I signal to Renaldo and we get out of the square as quickly as possible.
I make sure to avoid walking by or even looking at the bakery or its owner as we pass.
She’ll come around eventually. A few more failed events and she’ll line up with her hippie friend and all the other owners, begging for me to save them.