She picked up a raspberry macaron. “Maddie called it his bargaining chip. No matter what he proposed, the neighbors and the city were going to insist he scale back, so by starting outrageous, he could bargain down to what he really wanted.”
“Ask for the whole loaf so when they offer you half, you can say you’ll take three-quarters and claim you compromised for the sake of the community. Even if you tick everyone off in the process.”
“Exactly. But these neighbors were smart, organized, and suspicious. They figured the block would never be the same. The businesses would fail, and he would buy them up and bulldoze everything. No more salon or coffeehouse. No more affordable rentals.”
Hard to imagine the changes going that far. But when a guy uses fear to get what he wants, you never know how far he’ll go.
I turned back to the file, flipping pages as I talked. “Who was the seller? And why did Maddie need to hide behind an LLC? Oh, so the seller died and the property went into his estate.” I’d thought the man who ran the grocery ancient when I was a kid, but he’d died quite recently. The lawyer handling both the estate and the sale was Amanda Wagner, a young woman from the old law firm. I hadn’t seen her since its collapse, though I knew she and her husband, whom she’d met at the firm, had set up shop in an old house near Broadway, doing landlord-tenant and real estate work. And apparently, probate. “That would explain the delay. Did you tell all this to the police? Why didn’t they take your files?”
“They took some files but let me keep copies, so we can run the business. They copied our hard drives and took Maddie’s phone and her laptop. I told them everything, but I’m such a space right now, worried about Maddie. Have you seen her? They won’t let me see her yet.”
“I have seen her. She should fully recover, but it will take time. One more thing and then I’ll let you get back to work. Can you give me a list of her purchases on the block, by date?”
Jess sat at her computer and clicked away, pausing once to consult a paper file. I was surprised at the extent of the paper filing system—I’ve managed to limit my paper files to personnel, some catalogs, and a few tax and banking records—but chalked it up to the nature of the business.
While she worked, I wandered into Maddie’s office. If there had been a course in business school on staying organized and keeping a clean desk, Maddie had obviously aced it. A yellow legal pad lay on her desk, a few notes on the top page. Hard to decipher, but the few words I could make out seemed to relate to a school fundraiser.
In the corner of the room, a poster on an easel showed a water-color-style rendering of Maddie’s vision for the new building. Almost brick for brick a copy of the original I’d seen in her family album.
A striking landscape of the San Juan Islands hung above a trio of waist-high bookcases. A few objects and family photos were interspersed with books. I picked up a photo of Tim and the kids, taken a few years back. The boy, Max, was the same age as Kristen’s youngest, thirteen now, and the girl, Mia, two years younger. Although kids you don’t know well are always older than you think. They were beautiful, and I felt a stab of envy, or maybe it was grief for what I had never had.
Although if Laurel was right about the affair—and I still hadn’t wrapped my head around that possibility—maybe Maddie didn’t have it all, after all.
Next to it sat a shot of Maddie and her parents. I didn’t remember a lot about her father, David Petrosian, one of those dads who seemed more focused on business than family. I’d almost envied that, since I could never escape my dad, our high school history teacher.
I’d made quite a practice of envying Maddie. But not right now.
Not right now.
Then came a recent shot of both kids, in soccer uniforms, with Tim and a man in a Sounders uniform. A small wooden stand held a tiny Armenian flag, three equal bands of red, blue, and orange.
On the last bookcase stood a photo of the corner grocery back in the day. If I’d guessed right, the building had once belonged to Maddie’s great-grandfather, Mr. Gregorian. How it had left the family, I had no idea. Maddie had been determined to get it back. But what a price she’d paid.
And on the shelf below that, next to a cluster of painted rocks I assumed had been a kid’s art project, was a snapshot of Maddie, Kristen, and me at our high school graduation, in our caps and gowns.
I put the photo back. Better get out of here before I lost it completely.
Out front, Jess handed me the list of Maddie’s purchases in the neighborhood. As I’d suspected, the first came two and half years ago, when she bought the insurance agency property from Frank Thomas’s widowed mother. Then she’d acquired the building that housed the salon, followed by the gray stone apartment building and the other office building. Last came the corner grocery. That gave her five of the six properties on one side of the street. She appeared to have no interest in the buildings on the west side.
“What about the coffeehouse?” I asked.
“They didn’t want to sell. The building’s been in the family for ages, and they want to keep it for their kids. Maddie respected that.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been a huge help.”
“Anything for Maddie,” Jess replied. “I
