The Bikini Car Wash Read Free Page A

When he reached the checkout area he forced the big friendly smile back on his face. His customers needed to see him looking cheerful. And he’d found that his employees made fewer mistakes if it seemed like he was happy with their work. As soon as he reached the door to the office stairway, the smile disappeared.
    Pete Guthrie knew that most people in Plainview considered him a very lucky man. He’d grown up as the only son of one of the city’s oldest families. In high school he’d been both a scholar and an athlete. He’d done well at the state university, graduating cum laude. And after a brief, and very flashy, marriage to a former beauty pageant winner, he had come home to be handed the family business.
    He had a fine house, an expensive car and a number of local women stepping all over each other to get his attention. Pete hardly noticed. He didn’t have time to notice. His life was consumed by the day-to-day challenge of a keeping a quirky, family-owned store viable in a world of big-box grocery magnets.
    Upstairs he walked down the dreary, ill-lit corridor without even noticing it. The door to Miss Kepper’s office was open, and he stopped at the entrance for a quick word. The aging spinster had worked for Guthrie Foods longer than Pete had been alive. She knew every aspect of the operation. And without her help, Pete was pretty sure he never would have made it through the first five years.
    “Have you found someone to take on the advertising?” he asked.
    Miss Kepper shook her head. “I’ve talked to several candidates, but no one is quite who we’re looking for.”
    Pete nodded, acceding to her judgment. “Okay, well, keep at it. The right person is bound to walk though the door eventually.”
    The woman agreed.
    “Do you have the mailing address for Mrs. Meyer?” Pete asked.
    “Mrs. Meyer?”
    “You know, the older lady who complains about everything.”
    “Oh, her. Yes, yes I think I do.”
    “Good. Could you make a note to yourself to send of copy of every product decision to her.”
    Miss Kepper looked horrified. “You’re joking,” she said. “We have about thirty ‘discontinues’ a week and at least that many new products.”
    Pete nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “And Mrs. Meyer says she wants to hear about every decision we make. So I’m going to bury that old woman in mail,” he said. “Send her notices until she screams for mercy. The last thing I need is another senior citizen looking over my shoulder.”
    As soon as the words were out of Pete’s mouth, he wished he could call them back. Way to go, Peterson, he thought sarcastically to himself. Why didn’t you just call her a dried-up old maid?
    Miss Kepper was definitely a person in the over sixty-five age category. And she was fiercely loyal to Pete’s father, who was, without question, the senior most likely to be looking over Pete’s shoulder.
    The woman’s back stiffened slightly and Pete knew that he’d offended her. Unable to fix that, he instead gifted her with the one thing he knew she would truly be grateful for.
    “Listen, I’m going to be working in my office for a while,” he said. “Could you hold all my calls? And could you phone my dad and ask him if he could come by here tomorrow.”
    “Certainly,” Miss Kepper answered evenly. The color in her cheeks was the only sign of what those words truly meant to her.
    For decades the worst kept secret in the break rooms ofGuthrie Foods continued to be that Miss Doris Kepper was in love with Hank Guthrie, Pete’s father.
    The two had met in college in 1962. Hank had been a “big man on campus,” football star and president of his fraternity. Miss Kepper had been a shy mouse hoping to complete an associate degree and land a job as a secretary. She had fallen for him; hook, line and sinker. It had been her homework, her term papers and her class notes that allowed him to make good grades while leading a wild social life. He’d grown so accustomed to taking