“Dammit, Kendric! Why didn’t you tell me the old codger had died?” Luka, my business partner and best friend of 15 years, rants as he bursts into my office.
“Well, good morning to you too, sunshine,” I drawl, flashing him a bright smile. It’s entirely too early in the day for his shit, but if there is one thing I have learned in the last seven years of working with him, it’s that there is no slowing him down until he lets all his big boy feelings out and gets over himself. With that in mind, I lean back in my desk chair and take a long swig of my coffee, settling in to watch him pace and rave for a few minutes until he is ready for me to talk him off this latest ledge.
“Don’t start with me. I’m gone for two fucking weeks visiting family, and I have to come back to this? I had to hear Wayne fuckin Kennedy finally kicked the bucket from the old biddies at the coffee shop? What the fuck, man? I thought we were partners! Please tell me you called Sjoberg and got him started on the acquisition. I swear to Christ, if Daniel isn’t already on the case, I will lose my shit for real this time. See? This is why I never take a trip. This is why I should never have let my mother wear me down and convince me to come home. I don’t care how damn cute my nieces are. They aren’t worth losing our damn business!”
Watching Luka stomp back and forth in my shoebox of an office isn’t nearly as entertaining as it should be, especially once he mentions our lawyer. I must not hide my cringe as well as I hoped, when he abruptly stops and whirls on me.
“What. Did. You. Do?” he bites out, emphasizing each word with a step until he’s looming over my desk.
“Well…” I drag out, trying to find a way of explaining how the last week has gone without him completely blowing his top.
“Fucking hell, Ken. You didn’t call him, did you?” With a resigned huff, Luka falls back into one of the two club chairs facing my desk.
“No, I did actually call him. Being the only lawyer in a town this size really comes with its pitfalls for him at times. Turns out he was old man Kennedy’s lawyer, too. No surprise there, really…”
Luka and I are co-owners of the Spirit of Hops Brewstillery—a craft beer and micro-distillery in town. We have a kickass taproom and outdoor space and a fully functioning industrial brewing and distilling setup in the rear of the building. We have poured our blood, sweat, and tears into this business for the last seven years and have loved every moment. Over the previous three years, we have wanted to expand to add a legitimate bar to our campus for those who want a more classic feel instead of the taproom vibe.
For decades, Wayne Kennedy has owned the building that once upon a time was the carriage house for the train depot that our building used to be. It would be the absolute perfect location for a bar with it just being across the parking lot from our main building. Our campus is the capstone of Rapids Bay's historic Main Street business district. The main drag dead-ends at our parking lot, so anyone coming into town is bound to wind up either in our taproom… or, hopefully, the bar. If we could just get our hands on the place. We’ve been trying for three years now to get Wayne to sell or sign it over, and while his death was a blow to the community, Luka had hoped it would be the opening we needed to snag the building.
“Cut to the chase, man,” Luka says, resigned impatience coloring his tone as he drops his head back, staring up at the ceiling in exasperation.
Drama, thy name is Luka. I love him like a brother, I really do, and I will be the first to admit our business wouldn’t be what it is today without him. But damn, can the man be dramatic.
“Kennedy had a will. He left the place to some long-lost niece or something. I’ve been trying to get more information and do some research on her, but Sjoberg won’t tell me shit. Been keeping my eye on the place too and haven’t seen her around yet. The most I know is she came into town last week for the reading of the will, and hasn’t left yet. My guess is she’s been waiting to get Carl to come out and do an inspection.”
I’ve known Luka since I was 17, and in that time, I’ve learned how to manage him. Give him the facts up front, fill in the details after he has his little freakout and has time to process.
“Nothing can just be easy in this damn world, can it? Where the hell did a loner like Wayne come up with a niece? Did you even know he had family?” Luka asks, sitting up straight once again, a sure sign he’s wrapping his mind around the news.
“No one did, as far as I can tell. I talked with Anya at the coffee shop the other day, and she said she hadn’t heard anything. If anyone knows anything in this town, the biddies know it too, and when they know something, Anya knows it whether she wants to or not.” The coffee shop just up Main Street is our little town's literal and figurative hub. If anything happens, one of the old women around town will inevitably find out about it and then share the details—real and imagined—with the rest of the group of white hairs, loudly, the next morning when they all meet for their daily coffee. Ah, the joys of small-town living. Not only is someone always in your business, but said business is spread to everyone else by the modern equivalent of the town crier.
“Dammit, Kendric! We can’t lose that building. I saw Carl’s truck in the lot when I pulled in. With any luck, he’s still there with this long-lost relation of the ugliest man in town,” Luka says with a long, suffering sigh.
“Now, now, Luka. It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead. You don’t want said ugliest man alive to drag his ugly-ass ghost around to haunt you, do you?”
We joke, but in truth, we both deeply felt Wayne's loss. He was like a father to me after my own dad died when I was only ten. Luka didn’t come into the picture until college. Still, once we returned and started our business, Wayne was our biggest supporter. He helped us secure the building and even gave us some of the seed money to get the place renovated and off the ground. Nothing feels the same without his grumpy ass stomping into the taproom first thing every day after we open and grumbling about something or another.
I think the carriage house had been in his family for years, at least back to his great-grandfather, but the story seemed to change just about every time you heard it, so I never knew exactly what to believe with him. Once upon a time, he had run the only watering hole in town out of the lower level of the building. As he got up there in age, he couldn’t keep up with it anymore and had to close. I was too young to step in and help back then, but regardless, the old coot was too stubborn to accept help or, god forbid, ask for it. So instead of hiring someone to keep it running, he just up and closed down one day with no notice. But that’s Wayne for ya. His way or no way. End of story.
Knowing someone who most likely never even met the man is taking over his building just doesn’t sit right. I can’t let them sell it off to some developer or tear the place down altogether. Not happening. If worse comes to worst, I know Luka and I could pull the funds together to buy it out from under whoever it is, but I don’t know the specifics of our current position. Luka is the money man, handling the business side of things while I manage the day-to-day running of the place, manage staff, and help develop new products.
“Okay, so we try to corner this niece of his, and… what? Sweet talk her out of his inheritance? Offer to buy it flat out? What's the play here?” I ask, settling back in my chair with my arms folded across my chest. Confrontation isn’t my thing, so I intend to let Mr. Grumpy-Pants sitting across from me handle this.
“Until we know what we are dealing with, I don’t want to reveal our hand. We have the money for a buyout if necessary. Still, I would rather see if there are other options to explore before we shell out a bunch of cash that could be better spent on renovating the dump once we get it,” Luka explains, his ‘no-nonsense business look,’ settling over him again, replacing the angsty drama queen that raged in here a few minutes ago.
“K, so what, you go chat up the new neighbor and see what she has to say?” I ask.
“Funny you should ask that…” he says, an innocently evil look in his eyes. I swear, no one else on this planet can pull that look off like he can. It's terrifying to go up against if you don’t know him… and annoying as hell if you do.
“Nope. This is a business thing. You know that’s your wheelhouse. You handle business and money and all that shit.”
“And you handle the people. Right now, this is a people problem, not a money problem… yet. Hopefully, you can work your people magic and make all this go away before it ever even turns into a money problem at all.”
Sometimes I hate my best friend and his damn logic.