A Champion for Tinker Creek, page 1
A Champion for Tinker Creek
Synopsis
Master mechanic Lyle James built a successful but lonely life in Tinker Creek after rescuing his dad’s auto repair shop until an international development firm conspires with local officials to condemn the shop and steal his land.
Jose “Manny” Porter has come home to take a reporting job at the South Georgia Record, a regional newspaper where his father is publisher and editor-in-chief. As the son of a driven Anglo father and Cuban exile mother, Manny knows all about how competing parental expectations can chill efforts to even find sex—much less love.
After a night of passion, Lyle and Manny are thrown together in a fight to save Lyle’s business. Their struggles may lead to more than either expected for their community and their lives.
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A Champion For Tinker Creek
© 2022 By D.C. Robeline. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-63679-212-5
This Electronic Original Is Published By
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, NY 12185
First Edition: July 2022
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editors: Jerry L. Wheeler and Stacia Seaman
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design by Inkspiral Design
eBook Design by Toni Whitaker
Acknowledgments
First, my most impactful teacher, Faye, for fanning a spark of interest in reading and writing into a bonfire that still fuels my creativity many years later.
Second, Bold Strokes Books, for reading a novel set in a mythical neighborhood in a fictional town and believing in it enough to publish it.
Third, thank you to my mom, stepdad, and sister, Catherine, for supporting the idea as soon as I told you about it. My sister especially for being the manuscript’s most graceful and critical early reader.
Last, but not least, to my longtime partner and husband, for persistently overcoming my every objection to writing a novel and then making insightful suggestions along the way as I did. Without his dogged encouragement, I might never have written it, so, in front of God and everybody, thank you, Rich, for everything. I’m not sure I could have done it without you.
Chapter One
The Contract
I had turned on our lights and neon Open sign when a full-size, cherry red Ford F-150 truck swerved up to the door. I stepped outside as a stubby little man in a short-sleeved white shirt, lightweight dress pants, and cowboy boots thumped to the pavement from the cab and shut the vehicle door. The truck’s electronic security system locked the vehicle with a loud click.
“May I help you?” I asked.
“You might,” he said. “If your name is Lyle James.”
“Then you’re in luck.”
His face lit up. “Mr. James, I hoped I might catch you before the day got too busy.” His enthusiasm felt out of place for an auto repair shop at ten past seven in the morning.
“Well, you got me. How can I help you?”
He paused. “It’s actually a little complicated. May we go into your office?”
“I don’t see why not,” I replied, ushering him in. “Take a seat,” I said, pointing to the two client chairs opposite my desk. I stepped into the small kitchenette next to my office and started to fill the coffeepot. “I haven’t had my second cup yet this morning,” I said. “Would you like to join me?”
“No, thank you.”
I poured the water into the machine and turned it on before returning and taking my seat behind my crowded desk.
“So, how can I help you,” I asked for the third time.
He reached into his front shirt pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to me. It bore the civic seal of St. Michael’s Harbor and identified him as Benoit Corde, Director of the city’s Procurement Department.
The coffee maker bell rescued me from an immediate response. I stood up and went to the kitchenette, where I splashed some milk in my mug and followed it with a healthy dose of my weekday fuel while my mind whirled.
Three weeks ago my business, Bonne Chance Motors, bid on a contract from St. Michael’s Harbor to service its utility and safety vehicles.
I knew the bidding would be competitive and ours would likely not be the lowest offer since I specified using a better, more expensive paint than others would have chosen. Further, this would be our first contract with the city.
Now, less than one month later, the procurement department director shows up looking to get work done? I walked back in my office and sat down, stirring a teaspoon of sugar into my coffee. He looked at me with anticipation.
“Mr. Corde, I’m delighted you would consider us for work. But as you probably know, we have an outstanding contract bid that your department will decide whether or not to grant. So, our taking any other personal work from you right now strikes me as really inappropriate.”
I sipped my coffee as his face fell, then registered confusion and a bit of annoyance.
“No, no,” he blurted. “Please, you misunderstand me. Of course that would be inappropriate. We don’t work that way.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “Please, let me explain.”
I nodded.
“You might remember about two weeks ago, two of my colleagues came by for a site visit at your facility.”
Actually, I had been out delivering an expensive car to one of our more finicky clients and had been gone during the visit. But I remembered it was on the schedule. I nodded.
“Well, I was supposed to be on that visit but missed it because my daughter fell ill. And since three of us are supposed to conduct these site visits, I thought…” His voice trailed off, and he raised his hands, palms up.
“You thought you would go ahead and make up your site visit right now?”
“Exactly. But only if it’s not too much trouble. We know you’re in business for your clients and not for us.”
“In that case, thank you for coming,” I said, draining my coffee mug and putting it down. “I’d be glad to give you the nickel tour.”
I showed him around the shop and introduced him to my chief mechanic, Mr. Parker O’Brian, and his assistant, Vahn Dinh. We went through the mechanic and body shops, then out to the new paint shed, ending up in the parking lot, where I stood with Corde beside his truck.
“Thank you for the tour,” Corde said. “It was very informative. I can tell you’re proud of what you’ve built here.”
“Thank you for being thorough and wanting to see it,” I replied. “And thank you for your personal business. We look forward to being able to help you after the department awards the contract.” I paused as Corde opened the door and climbed into the cab.
“Without breaking any rules or anything,” I said, “I don’t suppose you might be able to forecast when we might hear about a decision? I’m not trying to be inappropriate, but if we knew a timeframe we could know when or whether we might need additional resources.”
Corde rolled down his window and extended his hand to shake mine.
“I might be able to help,” he said with a trace of a smile across his lips. “Congratulations, Mr. James. Bonne Chance Motors will service St. Michael’s Harbor utility and safety vehicles for the next five years.”
“Wow. Oh my God! Thank you,” I exclaimed as I pumped his hand. “You will not regret this decision, Mr. Corde. Thank you so much for the opportunity.”
“Well, I need to get to the office,” he said. “I’ll call you with a formal notification later today, and then we’ll have a series of meetings to set up a schedule, but welcome aboard. The City of St. Michael’s Harbor looks forward to working with you.”
* * *
An endless line of cars stretched in front of me when I finally eased onto I-95, so I hit the outskirts of St. Michael’s Harbor three hours later than I intended. The place had grown since my last visit, and not in a good way, I thought. But downtown had remained much the same. I smiled and beat a rhythm to the radio on my rental car steering wheel until I turned right into Tommy’s new neighborhood of bungalows and fading Victorian manors.
I glided into one of the diagonal parking spaces in front of number 34. A solid-looking wall with a cracked adobe facade and two tall trees prevented me from seeing the house, but the ornate wrought iron gate said 34 above it in new, shiny black numbers. I must be at the right place, I thought.
Getting out of the car, I stretched, feeling like one of my mother’s pleated origami animals, holding the memories of their previous creases after unfolding. A ring attached to a chain stuck out from the wall next to t
I waited, but no one came. I stepped up to peer through the wrought iron but saw a primordial tableau of trees, ferns, and bushes. When I thought I might pull the ring again, I caught sight of Tommy hurrying to the portal.
“Manny! Oh, it is Manny, isn’t it?” he called out as he approached the gate. “I was afraid you might not make it here until tonight, and after I took off work to be here when you arrived.”
“Not to worry. It’s me. A bit worn from the trip, but otherwise fine.”
The deadbolts fell with a series of clicks, and Tommy swung the gate open. He was wearing shorts, a tight white T-shirt, a tropically colored three-quarter robe, and sandals.
“I’m sorry, did I get you out of the shower?”
“Oh no,” he said with a giggle. “I’m making bread. This is what I wear when I don’t want to get flour or anything icky on my regular clothes. Is this all the luggage you have? You do travel light. Here, let me take the hanging bag.”
The gate swung closed behind us with a metallic chunk.
Tommy is cute, but in a nerd meets twink way. Think button-down shirts and sweaters, bow ties, khaki pants in different shades of gray and brown, and loafers. The thing is, it works for him. Tommy is about the smartest person I know. He’s two years younger, but he graduated with my high school class. He’s dressed this way ever since I’ve known him, although I got him to ditch the shirts with front pockets.
He’s about my best friend in the world and someone I thought I knew, which is why seeing him dressed so casually and in a kitchen had me floored.
“I never knew you baked bread.”
“I don’t. Or at least I didn’t. This is my first time. I’m trying to make Danny’s favorite bread from his late grandmother’s recipe.”
I flashed him a confused look.
“Hmm, you know Danny’s grandmother died, right?”
Danny is, inexplicably, Tommy’s boyfriend, currently two-thirds through a five-year Army tour of duty in Afghanistan. I replied I vaguely remembered seeing an email about her passing, following him as he set out walking down a narrow brick path, almost overgrown with different plants.
The path turned and opened up on a small, highly stylized Victorian whose once-vibrant colors had faded to a gentler pastel palette. With its wraparound porch, steeply pitched roof, and gingerbread trim, the building resembled less a house than a retired amusement park ride.
“Welcome to Shangri-la,” Tommy said, waving with a flourish. “Which it isn’t really, of course, but the foundation and roof are sound, and we’re far enough from Washington Street that we don’t hear traffic.”
We walked up the short staircase to the porch, and Tommy gently opened the front door and we started down the hall. “First door on the left, living room or salon. First on the right, formal dining room. And now, we have the kitchen.”
The hallway opened up to a large, sunny space, slightly dated but functional, with a double oven, two microwaves, and two refrigerators.
“This part of the building was redesigned in the 1960s,” he said. “If I understood correctly, the quarters for the butler and cook were sacrificed for the larger kitchen footprint. Now, here are the back stairs. They are the only ones to your room. Let’s go up carefully. Some of them really creak.”
We moved up slowly, and I tried to place my feet on the risers where he had stepped to keep from making too much noise.
“This is the floor with your room,” Tommy said. “There are three rooms up here. You can choose which one you want, though the one at the end is bigger and closer to the bathroom, and I cleaned it up yesterday.”
We walked down the hall to the end chamber and paused at the open door.
As a room, it didn’t supply a whole lot. The space included an iron bed frame with both a mattress and box spring, a dressing room mirror, a small desk with a plain lamp, and a smallish wardrobe about the size of an old-fashioned telephone booth.
“The bathroom is just down here,” Tommy said, pointing eight feet to the door at the end of the hall.
I took a look at the bathroom and then came back down the hall to review the room again.
“It’s fine,” I said. “But fess up, these were the servants’ quarters, weren’t they?”
“Yes. But that’s why you’re getting it for only a hundred and fifty per month, basically half of what we pay—and without a lease. You pay month to month, so when you find a place of your own, you can move.”
“Then I’ll take it. Thank you.” I reached in for a hug.
“It is really good to see you,” he said, hugging me back. “Leave your bags up here and let me make you something to eat and you can tell me what’s up.”
Later, over a slice of his first cinnamon bread, we talked about his work at the South Georgia Record and what I hoped to do there.
“I’m glad to have you staying here, don’t misunderstand me, but I don’t know I would have chosen a former chauffeur’s room if I knew I could have a place at Albemarle,” Tommy said.
Albemarle Estate has been my parents’ home since I left. It’s a bit farther down the coast, forty-five acres with everything you would probably expect from an estate.
“But I don’t really have a place there,” I said. “Surely, you must see that. I’m already going to ask Dad for a job. I couldn’t very well do that from a position of strength living under his roof as well.”
“Okay,” he said. “But even if I concede the point, which I am not sure I do, what do you think Dame Isabella is going to say about her baby boy living in the community but not under her roof?”
My mother’s family belongs to one of those wealthier Cuban clans that fled Castro’s revolution, then structured their entire lives around returning and reclaiming the past. That meant my childhood was athletics and academic achievement mixed with grievance, paranoia, and conspiracy. And while passing years had muted some of those motifs, they still made the thought of actually living in my parents’ house less appealing.
“Has she ever backed off the marriage thing?”
“Nope.”
Officially, I am out to both my parents, but their reactions have differed and fallen short of supportive. My father told me he didn’t care how I lived my personal life, but he had no desire to hear about it. My mother, by contrast, simply slipped into denial.
“It’s up to you,” Tommy said. “You’re welcome here, but I’m afraid life is not going to be as smooth as you seem to think. When do you meet with the Old Man?”
“Ten thirty tomorrow morning,” I said. “That’s really the meeting that makes or breaks this whole thing, so I should have conditionally accepted your housing offer. I will be glad to stay here conditional on my father hiring me for the South Georgia Record.”
* * *
Tommy warned me that construction equipment had taken up all the guest parking spots at the paper, so I took a rideshare to the South Georgia Record’s imposing building north of town. As I headed down the long hall toward my father’s office, my nervousness rose. Although we had spoken roughly every six months for a number of years, I hadn’t actually seen him during that time. Outside the door to my dad’s office suite, I paused and knocked.
“Come in,” called Rosa, my father’s longtime secretary and my onetime babysitter.
She had her head down, flipping through a pile of papers in front of her printer.
“Hello, Rosa.”
She looked up as if mystified for a moment, then her eyes focused and widened.
“Manny? Is that Manny? Oh my God. Oh my God.” She got up from her chair, ran around the desk, and gave me a deep hug.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my father’s door open, and he leaned on the doorway with an amused expression. She was still embracing me as my father cleared his throat.
“Oh, tell me you can stay for lunch,” Rosa said.
“Probably, but look.” I pointed to my father in the doorway.
