Page 22 of Tempting Frey
My friend glanced at the open balcony door and back at me. “How?”
“Monty parked on the sidewalk and stood on the truck bed. He lifted the mattress, and Jordy took it from him on the balcony.” I scrolled through my gallery and showed him the picture I took of the guys moving my few possessions.
Calvin laughed. “That’s so Monty somehow.”
I licked the spoon and began scooping another portion, equal parts of pie and ice cream. “People think he’s slow on the uptake because he speaks before he thinks, but when Montyactuallythinks, problems get solved.”
“I like Monty,” Calvin said softly. “Jordy is scary, though.”
“Thing with Jordy is that even though he’s lived in Beauville for years, nobody knows all that much about him. He appeared one day, got into a fight at the pub, and Dad put him in jail overnight. In the morning, Monty picked him up and gave him a job.”
“There must be more to that story.”
“Probably. But I was just a kid, so nobody told me any details.”
“Barclay says he doesn’t know either. It’s weird that Monty, with his blabbermouth, never said anything about what went down.”
“You could just ask them.”
But Calvin shook his head. “Nah. They might have good reasons for not telling people. Anyway. What about work?”
I grimaced and shoved another heaping spoonful of goodness into my mouth. Thank heavens for ice cream.
“Uh-oh. In trouble already?”
I swallowed and confessed the embarrassing truth. “I had a shouting match with Frey today.”
Calvin looked horrified. “What? Freyshoutedat you?”
“More like I shouted at him, and he growled back. It was my third day at work, dammit, and I yelled at the mayor.”
“But why?”
Where to begin? “He’s so frustrating! All these old-timers want to conserve Beauville and keep it like it was in the past, but in today’s economy, we won’t survive unless we open up to change. Frey doesn’t get it. I mean, he does get that the town needs more jobs, but I don’t think he has a realistic grasp onwhat kind of jobs and how many. My parents’ generation is all like ‘Why don’t the youngsters stay? Why is everyone moving away?’ Wah, wah. Well, look around yourselves! We have a grocer, a pub, one B&B, a minuscule pharmacy, one doctor—thank God for Hunter—and the lumber mill. They’re talking about closing the post office.”
“Phil says we have more kids than ever being born in Beauville.”
“And what will we do with those kids when they need to go to high school? My older brothers and I had to go to Green Peaks boarding school Monday to Friday because spending four hours a day on a bus wasn’t an option. Half of my friends were home-schooled. A hybrid learning center would be ideal for high schoolers in Beauville, like online courses with some local supervision, but I don’t know what Frey thinks about my strategy. Besides, that baby bubble is about to burst. Most of the bears work at the mill, but there’s nothing else. Only a few have online jobs, and some poor souls commute all the way to Green Peaks. If the parents can’t keep a job, the families will move away, like my brothers did.”
“What about the repair shop and the bakery?”
“A few decades ago, a small business could survive with no customers outside of the town, but it’s getting more difficult. The diner is fine, and so is Jordy, but I spoke with both Vince at the bakery and Paulie at the shop. They’re barely making ends meet.”
“But surely if Frey could bring jobs to Beauville, he’d do it. Aren’t they installing internet cables all over town because of that?”
“That’s not going to be enough. Get this, every time someone visited town with the intent to invest and build, Frey chased them away.”
“But those were developers.”
I knew Calvin meant well, but I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Why do you people keep using the word as if it were a slur?”
“I get why the bears don’t want big hotels in Beauville like in Green Peaks,” Calvin said. “It’s bad for the environment, and it would ruin the town.”
“It’s the town that decides what’s allowed to be built within the town’s limits. It’s what I’ve been trying to get into Jesse’s and Morris’s heads, and into Frey’s. If we get investors to build small-scale facilities for high-cost but low-impact tourism, we get the money flowing in without turning Beauville into a gaudy resort.”
Calvin frowned, his thinking face on. “What do you mean by high-cost and low-impact?”
“Beauville is the perfect escape, isn’t it? We have people from the city owning cottages in the area. They want peace and quiet, which they don’t get in Green Peaks. If we had a couple of small B&Bs like Monty’s, well-maintained hiking trails, and one more restaurant, things would be happening. Can you imagine a spa down by the creek with a small pool and a sauna? Only one-story buildings would be allowed, with green roofs. You could build little cottages with forest views and hot tubs, and people from the city would pay a fortune for a getaway like that.”
