From the Grounds Up (2 page)

Still, when I looked around, I couldn't help but picture the white-railed porch fitted with cafe tables and cushy easy chairs. And those seats filled with free-spending Brookhills Barbies and caffeine-needy soccer moms.

Just because we built it, though, didn't mean they would come. The Junction was a good mile north of the old Uncommon Grounds and far from the elementary schools and churches, soccer fields and tennis courts around which life in Brookhills revolved. Leaving a trail of muffin crumbs and coffee grounds wasn't going to get them here. It would take some real work.

But . . . the depot was just so damned
cute
. I tried to peer in a window. The slanting light of early evening allowed me to barely make out three round clocks on the opposite wall and what looked like the original ticket windows below them.

Amy, our free-thinking barista, would love working in this place. I could already imagine her behind the ticket window, latte-ing and cappuccino-ing. Maybe we'd have frequent-buyer cards that looked like train tickets to be punched.

Here I'd pretty much lifted my leg on the idea of the strip mall Sarah had showed me, but now I was getting lyrical, internally at least, about an abandoned train station even farther off the beaten track.

OK. Down, girl.

I turned to Sarah. 'I take it the recent businesses didn't do well?'

'The antiques shop was fine for a while, but they were drawing only from the immediate area, with not a lot of repeat customers. The cafe, now, did fairly well, from what I understand. I'm not sure what happened. It just closed.'

Uncommon Grounds would have to do a whole lot better than 'fairly well'. 'Tell me again why you think we can succeed. Because of our marketing expertise?'

I knew Sarah had been playing me back at the nondescript strip mall. Now here I was, practically begging for a repeat of the hard sell. I wanted to believe.

'Nah,' Sarah said. 'I just fed you a line at the industrial park. As the listing broker for that space, I'd have gotten the whole commission if you committed to it.'

A commission. And she was pitching again, trying to get me excited without my even setting foot in the place. To recalibrate myself, I gave the railing a little shove. Damn. Solid as a rock.

'Rebuilt not five years ago,' my real estate agent said.

I even liked the ugly old recliner. I wanted the depot. I couldn't afford it, but I wanted it. The American way.

I folded my arms. I wanted to stomp my foot like Sarah had done earlier. Or, better yet, kick her in the shins.

'Why did you even show this to me?' I said unhappily. 'We'd have to increase our sales by fifty per cent just to cover the overhead.'

'No, we wouldn't.'

'And why is that?'

Sarah smiled. 'Because I own it.'

'You
own
the depot?' Hope burned bright for a moment, but I fought it. Just because we wouldn't have to pay rent didn't mean we could generate the income needed in a classically low-traffic location.

'I own the depot,' she repeated, the Cheshire cat grin getting bigger. Sarah had a set of choppers that made dentists wish they could charge by the acre. 'I inherited half from my father years ago and the rest when my Auntie Vi died last week.'

'I'm sorry,' I said automatically.

'About what?' Sarah asked, looking confused.

'Your aunt. Her recent passing?'

Never one for sentimentality, Sarah waved the subject aside. 'Vi was in her nineties and ready to go. Now, what do you think about the depot?'

'I think it's great,' I said honestly. 'But even without rent, we'd still have a ton of expenses. An abandoned train station isn't—'

'It's not exactly abandoned,' Sarah interrupted.

'Not technically, I suppose, if we moved in. But—'

'Don't you read the newspapers? Watch the local news?'

'Of course I do.' Occasionally. 'Why do you ask?' I did a three-sixty spin without seeing any ground-breakings. 'Is there a plan to develop this area?'

'No.'

Enough. 'Sarah, I refuse to ask if it's bigger than a breadbox.
Or
whether we're talking animal, vegetable or mineral.'

'Suit yourself, but the answer is worthy of the build-up.'

My eyes narrowed. 'Spill it.'

'Brookhills Junction resumes service as an official train stop on September first.'

Sarah Kingston's smile rivaled the sun.

Chapter Three

September first.

And it was now mid-May. Three and a half months. Not a lot of time to outfit the place and turn it into a gourmet coffee shop with all the bells and whistles that caffeine-fiends had come to expect. God knew what kind of problems lurked behind the walls. The building was nearly a century and a half old.

But Sarah
owned
the property. And as a real estate agent, she had connections all over town. Inspectors. Contractors. Hell, her cousin Ronny even was one.

We could do it. If we moved fast.

'How much work does the interior need?' I asked her. 'Is the kitchen from the cafe still there?'

'Let's find out.'

Sarah held up a key. It was enormous by modern standards. A skeleton key, my mom had called them, though I was never sure if that was because the old locks looked like skulls or the keys themselves were long and skinny like skeletons.

As Sarah struggled to open the station's main entrance, I looked around again. The front of the depot bordered directly on Junction Road, one of the few thoroughfares in Brookhills that ran on an angle, north-east to south-west. Much to the disgust of current city planners, who raised ninety-degree grids to the level of religion.

To make the depot area even more of a throwback, the buildings in the Junction fronted directly on the sidewalk, with nothing but a couple of parallel parking spaces between the storefronts and traffic. There were no parking lots in front (like modern Brookhills businesses were required to provide), or even in back. The depot and the store-owners that lined the two blocks north of the tracks were 'grandfathered', meaning they didn't have to comply with current codes, or at least not all of them.

As I faced the front door of the depot, to the left were the railroad tracks. To the right and across a gravel driveway was a florist shop, now closed for the evening.

On the opposite side of the street was PartyPeople, which looked like a caterer. Penn and Ink--maybe a studio or an artists' supply shop--next to them. Tucked in closest to the tracks and directly across from the depot, was a storefront advertising piano lessons.

An eclectic collection of small businesses. We'd fit right in. Sarah, Amy and me. Should Caron change her mind and commit, Uncommon Grounds would be about as eclectic as you could get.

As Sarah finally bested the lock and went to swing open the door, I snuck a glance around the corner to the track side of the building. Four angled parking spots and beyond them at the back of the building, a big lot that looked like it had recently been cleared.

'What's going in behind the depot?' I asked as I followed Sarah into the building.

'Parking.' Sarah slipped the big key back into her jacket pocket. 'People need somewhere to leave their cars before they take the train downtown to work.'

'Of course,' I said absently, trying to get my head around nearly unlimited parking provided to us and to our customers for the magic word: 'free'.

Later, I would count the parking spaces and multiply that by the cost of a latte. The number would be inflated, but hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

Right now, though, I was eager to go over the interior layout of the depot itself. In front of me were three ticket windows. Happily the previous businesses had left them untouched, probably willing to forgo extra space for the charm the counter provided.

The three clocks I'd glimpsed from outside were labeled: 'Seattle', 'Brookhills' and 'New York City'. The Brookhills entry in the center was clean though hanging a little askew, like someone had just finished polishing it. The time, best as I could tell, seemed right--a quarter to eight. In contrast, the bracketing Seattle and New York clocks looked forgotten. To my eye, they read ten after ten and six o'clock, but given the dusky light inside the station and the sheen of dust that covered their faces, ten minutes to two and twelve-thirty were also possibilities. Whatever, they were wrong and would have to be fixed if . . .

'Wait a second,' I said, turning to Sarah who was busy looking for a light switch. 'Did you say people needed to park their cars so they could go to work in downtown Milwaukee?'

'Of course. What do you think they're going to do? Walk? Even if they lived a block away, they'd take their car. This is Brookhills, not Manhattan.'

I still didn't understand. 'But this line runs between Seattle and Chicago and stops in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.'

I knew this because Eric sometimes took Amtrak home from school in Minnesota and I would pick him up at the Milwaukee stop. There were only two trains each day--one heading west at eight fifteen a.m., and one east at eight fifteen p.m. 'Why would anyone take a long-distance train to work just fifteen miles away?'

Light finally dawned, even as the setting sun squeezed through the windows.

I squinted at Sarah. 'Are you telling me this will be a commuter train?'

Over the years, there had been talk of a train running between the western outskirts and the business district of Milwaukee. I was even vaguely aware that a vote had been scheduled. What I didn't know, having been pre-occupied with my own problems the prior couple of weeks, was how that vote had gone.

Now I grabbed Sarah, who was grinning at me, and shook her. 'People will be coming through here to take the train to work in Milwaukee?'

'And home again. Every morning and afternoon, weekdays anyway,' Sarah confirmed. 'Sort of comes with the territory.'

I didn't rise to the bait because I was too busy imagining hundreds of riders carrying to-go cups emblazoned with 'Uncommon Grounds', humming their sleep-muzzied way into Milwaukee each a.m. and their work-befuddled way back home every p.m. We'd have to add staff in the morning so we could get them in and out quickly. Efficient, friendly service--that was the key.

'Did you hear me?' Sarah was looking disappointed that I hadn't reacted the way she expected. But then she wasn't acting the way I was accustomed to either. Since when had Sarah needed positive reinforcement?

Her expression changed. 'Wait a second. You're already planning the store in your head.' At that moment, Sarah knew she had me hooked.

So why pretend otherwise? 'You bet I am.'

I led her to the ticket counter. 'We'll serve from all three windows, though one should be an express line. That way, straight coffee-drinkers don't have to wait behind triple-nonfat-no-foam-latte types.'

'We'll bill it as the "UG Express",' Sarah said, warming to the subject. 'Like a train.'

'I love it. And how about railroad-themed drinks, like Chattanooga Chai Tea?'

'Cute,' Sarah said, 'if we were in Chattanooga. Or if Chai Tea sounded anything like "Choo-choo".'

She was frowning at the crooked Brookhills clock. Sarah might not concern herself with fashion--the baggy trousers and jacket not an aberration, but a wardrobe constant. However, she did demand symmetry in her real estate. In fact, the Victorian house she owned was a showplace. How she managed to keep it that way with two teenagers--the children of a dead friend to whom Sarah proved an even better friend--in the house, I didn't know.

Unable to straighten out the 'Brookhills' clock by telekinesis, she moved over and shifted it so '12' was back on top.

'You'll forgive me if I take a little locomotive license,' I said, before Ms Perfect could start cleaning the other two timepieces. 'We're brainstorming. No fair poking fun, though we should be taking notes.'

'Good idea.'

I looked around. 'Do you see any paper?'

Sarah's answer was trampled by the sound of a door being swung open. Hard.

I turned to see a man of about eighty, white beard and close-cropped hair, standing in the doorway. He didn't look happy. 'This is private property. Who let you in?'

Sarah stepped around me. 'Who let
you
out?'

The old man peered at Sarah. 'Identify yourself.'

'It's me,' she said, moving closer.

'Not so "itsy",' he said gruffly. 'You're fat. Who are you?'

Sarah looked affronted. She had put on a few pounds after quitting the cigarettes and then tennis. Smoking she'd participated in for thirty years. Tennis, thirty days. Food, a lifetime.

'I didn't say "itsy", you deaf old fart,' she growled. 'I said, "It's me." Sarah.'

She turned my way. 'This is Kornell Eisvogel. He was married to Auntie Vi. In addition to not hearing well, he's blind as a bat and mean as a snake.'

'Snakes aren't mean. Just misunderstood.' I stuck my hand out to the old man. 'I'm Maggy Thorsen. It's nice to meet you.'

Eisvogel ignored my gesture. In fairness, though, I wasn't sure he saw it through his cataract-clouded eyes.

Instead, he pointed a bony finger at Sarah. 'You're Vi's brother Roger's girl.'

'Once upon a time. My father has been dead for more than ten years.'

Eisvogel didn't seem to care. 'What are you doing here?'

'I asked you first. You know you're not supposed to drive at night. Ronny will hide your car.'

'That son of mine don't know jack-shit. Still can't even close a door.'

'Are you on that again, Kornell?' Sarah snapped. 'Ronny was five at the time. Leave him alone.'

I didn't see the big deal. Even at nearly twenty, my Eric left doors open, including the one shielding the refrigerator. All of that paled in comparison to the time he traced the television image of
Barney the Purple Dinosaur
on the screen with a Sharpie. When they say 'permanent marker', they're not kidding.

'Damn right he was five.' Spittle flew from Eisvogel's lips. 'Old enough to know better. His brother was only three, rest his poor baby soul.'

'Ronny's brother?' I asked.

Eisvogel didn't answer, but Sarah leaned in. 'It was before Vi and Kornell got together, but I guess the three-year-old wandered out of the house and into the street after a ball.'