Chapter 24: Just Business
Knowing Ali would be safely locked up for the time being, Clare effected re-entry into her real life: coffee and pie at the Greenline Café, then chat with her staff about The Cellar and a possible Sears appliance adjunct store. For once, Clench didn’t follow her to the café. He was busy moving Ali’s car from the street to parking behind the jail, and searching it thoroughly.
“About The Cellar, I want to get more things in it before opening. People have been bringing things in but we can’t just take everything left over from their yard sales, we have to be somewhat selective. I think we need flyers in the surrounding towns and maybe an ad in the paper. I’ll take care of that, but maybe one of you can drive around the county to post flyers. Now, let’s talk about appliances.”
The empty dress shop next door that she’d considered for The Cellar, before settling on the old Woolworth’s basement, was too small for an appliance store if she wanted to carry larger items like refrigerators, stoves, washers, and dryers, and the floor might not be able to hold all that weight. It would be fine for small appliances. She’d expanded the main store into an old bakery and shoe shop on either side of the Woolworth store, and they had basements too, but so far she had no use for them. Moving even small appliances downstairs and then up again would not be a good idea. Better to move sideways into another street-level store. And she wouldn’t use the basements for stock. People bought what was on the shelves, and sometimes she agreed to special orders. But there was no stock room of extras.
What about tools? She already carried a small selection of Sears tools from the later catalogues, but they went fast and she could probably sell a lot more. And old farm equipment.
Clare had been to Lehman’s, the huge store in Kidron, Ohio, that sold all sorts of low tech tools and farm supplies and housewares. Originally established to serve the Amish, Lehman’s now attracted tourists and Hollywood set designers, even missionaries working in remote parts of the world without much of a power grid. The Rag and Bone Shop attracted Lehman’s customers too. The stores were about three hours apart, but a serious shopper, or tourist, would be likely to spend an entire day at one or the other because Lehman’s was so big, and The Rag and Bone Shop was getting bigger. They weren’t exactly competitors since The Rag and Bone Shop carried original antique Sears catalogue items exclusively, which no one else in the world could. Lehman’s carried modern reproductions, or continuing productions, of old products, but not the clothes and jewelry that Clare also sold.
Clare wondered briefly if Jennifer Ebrahim intended to continue her husband’s import business. Probably not. Clare doubted that she wanted to make those business trips to Iran. Would Ali continue the business? Not if he had more pressing plans. Should she offer to buy whatever carpet stock they might still have? A one-time special purchase sale. Ali wouldn’t like that, but Jennifer might want to distance herself from the business. However, Ali might have inherited the business. Maybe Jennifer needed money, though; Ali would not necessarily support her, not without controlling her every move, and there was no reason for Jennifer to tolerate that just for whatever money he wanted to give her. She was young and able to get another job.
Meanwhile, there was plenty of work to be done before she started up a new project. She went back to her office, after whispering to Sandy, “I don’t want to talk to any customers today about where I get the Sears merchandise. I’m going to be busy.”
One of the things she had to take care of was the Sears kit house deliveries. She probably could have sold a house kit to half the population of the country. But none of Jackson’s delivery vans were not big enough to carry one kit, and he never drove a semi, so they had to be delivered by train to a freight station the next town over. Clare wanted to re-open the old train track in Greenline. At one time there had been a siding that ran behind her store and the line of shops on the main street. Now, anyone who ordered a kit house had to make arrangements to unload, usually one box car and one flat bed, which was fine. They presented their receipts to the station master and unloaded to a semi or sometimes made several trips with smaller truck or a horse trailer. So far it had worked out, and Clare didn’t need to be there, nor anyone else from the store.
She did wonder if the train engineer was like Jackson — someone with an unexplained connection to the sources of the Sears goods. Of course she’d asked Jackson, but he just said rather vaguely that the kits were loaded at a warehouse somewhere and the engineer had nothing to do with it. In any case, she would just feel better if that part of the business were also in Greenline. So she needed to call the railroad company. Greenline owned the land under the old tracks, and also owned what abandoned tracks remained and the old depot. Luckily they hadn’t been torn up to make a bike trail. A little way out of town, the tracks ran by a river, so the idea had been bandied about, but nothing had come of it. The city had agreed to the reopening of the tracks and sidings. They hadn’t seen so much activity in decades.
She wouldn’t actually need the siding behind her building. That would be too noisy and too crowded. But if the old train depot were opened again, maybe she could use it for a little extra office space. It was a couple of blocks down and back. If the house kits came into Greenline, it would give some of the local guys another way to make money, unloading and loading. She even knew of a couple of men in town who were independent truckers with semis.
There’d been some talk about making the old train station into a little restaurant, different from the Greenline Café; maybe just ice cream, maybe a coffee shop. But Clare wanted at least half of it for office space.
Time to move her thinking across the street.
“I’ll be at the café, Sandy,” Clare called after locking the office.
She took notebook as usual, and sat down for some coffee and strawberry pie.
“Thanks, Jeanette. Say, I have another marketing survey for you. My surveys always include just one person.”
“Ha! I am honored.”
“Do you think people around here would prefer a store with little appliances, like blenders and toasters and irons, or big ones like washers and dryers and refrigerators? Old Sears, of course.”
“Sooner or later somebody’s going to want something of everything. But right off hand, I’d say maybe the little ones. People replace them more often, and they will buy them for gifts, you know.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. I’m thinking of opening a room for appliances in the old Bon Marché dress shop.”
“Oh, that’ll be good. I think people will go for that. When is The Cellar going to open?”
“I need to collect some more merchandise before I open up. Just to get off to a good start. Maybe I’ll hit some flea markets this weekend. I might have to drive up to the Hartville flea market again, and do some yard sales in Akron. I want people around here to bring in their things but I don’t want to stock it just with things from around here. It would be like going to the church rummage sale.”
“Which is this weekend.”
“Arrgghh. I might have to go to that. I can go to Akron another weekend.”
“So, I saw that boy get arrested.”
“Oh yeah? He’s locked up now. Don’t know for how long, but this time it’s more serious.”
“The newspaper know about it yet?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to anybody but the sheriff and the sales clerks.”
“Oh, I heard people talking about it in here a couple of hours before you came in. Everybody knows. I expect they’ll check the police reports and maybe want to talk to you later.”
Before Clare finished her pie, Jerry Jenkins, the one reporter for the Greenline Week walked in.
“Hi Clare. Mind if I sit with you?”