“What’s your problem?” he asked.
“Hi,” Harry offered, as lightly as he could. “You still serving breakfast?”
“Uh huh,” the old guy said pointing to the glass case. “Coffee and donuts – breakfast of champions.” He started walking back to the upstairs door. “Leave the money in the chamber pot.”
“Ah, how much?”
The old guy turned and for the first time properly looked at Harry. “What do you pay at Starbucks for your none-y fatty amaretto latte cappuccino?”
“I pay about four bucks for my regular latte.”
“How much do they charge for donuts?”
“I don’t usually eat donuts.”
“Well today will be a treat for ya. Leave five bucks in the pot.”
“You’re a trusting soul.”
“Look around you, mister. If somebody came in here and cleaned the place out – including the Mr Coffee machine – they’d get maybe a hundred and twenty bucks worth of stuff. I have better things to do than guard three dozen eggs and two gallons of milk.”
“And Spam. Don’t forget that.”
The old guy leaned one elbow on his counter. “And what is wrong with Spam?”
“Other than it’s Spam?”
“Listen you, Spam is good food. Have you ever had a fried Spam and cheese sandwich on white?”
“Sounds great,” Harry said. “Do you serve that here?”
“I have decided I don’t like you,” he said as he turned to leave.
“I have a feeling you don’t like many people.”
Just before the old guy began his clump up the stairs, Harry heard him say: “That’s no lie.”
* * *
Sitting alone at the counter Harry felt as if he had broken into a stranger’s empty house. He placed a fiver into the chamber pot and helped himself to a coffee and a donut. The donut was fresh and delicious. The old guy had been right about one thing – it was a treat.
The door opened behind him. Harry noticed that there was no bell like in most establishments but of course a bell would just disturb this proprietor. A tall man, in his mid-50s with thin but still flaming-red hair, walked up to the counter, dropped a dollar in the pot and helped himself to a coffee.
Harry looked into the pot and said: “I guess I paid tourist rates.”
“What’d he get you for?” the redhead asked.
“Five bucks for a coffee and a donut.”
The man walked to the steps and shouted, “Todd, get down here.”
They both waited for any sound to come from upstairs. Eventually the slow clump heralded the arrival of the old man. “What da you want?”
“Did you charge this man five bucks for a coffee and a donut?” the redhead asked.
“No, I asked this nice New Yorker—”
“I’m from Philadelphia,” Harry interrupted.
“Like there’s a difference. I merely asked this Philly boy what he usually pays for coffee and recommended that he donate accordingly. You see, I don’t sell things here, Mayor. If I did, you would charge me commercial taxes.”
“Did Todd inform you that the fiver was a voluntary contribution?”
Harry had no intention of getting in the middle of a local inter-governmental squabble. “Ah, he may have. I don’t rightly recall.”
The mayor took the fiver out of the pot and handed it back to Harry then opened his wallet and replaced it with a couple of bills. “Two bucks is fair; consider it a welcome gift to a newcomer.”
“Is there anything else you want?” old Todd asked the mayor.
“No.”
The old guy turned to Harry. “Do you get offended by foul language?”
“No, not usually.”
“Good,” Todd said as he shuffled back to the stairway. “Fuck you, Mayor.”
“And good morning to you, Todd,” the mayor replied.
“Are you the mayor that dabbles in real estate?” Harry asked.
“I’m the real estate agent that dabbles in being a mayor. You must be Mr Cull; Trooper Cirba told me to keep an eye out for you.”
“Harry,” Harry said extending a hand.
“Charlie Boyce,” the mayor said, shaking it. “So, you a cop?”
“No.”
“So, how do you know Cirba?”
“We’re drinking buddies.”
“Oh, right. I got it all wrong then. I thought you were up here helping with the murder investigation.”
“I heard something about a murder. Who was it?”
Charlie sighed and shook his head. “Local kid; actually, he wasn’t a kid. I just knew him for a long time. He used to work for me in winter. He was a good guy but always seemed to wind up with a bad crowd. You know?”
“What happened to him?”
“They found him in the woods. Paper says he was shot.” Charlie thought for a moment then shook off the mood. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. People ’round here are real nice, and that’s no lie.”
“Except for Todd, of course,” Harry said.
The mayor laughed. “See, you’re getting to know the place already. I’ve got a sweet little lakeside cottage for you. If you’re finished with your coffee I’ll take you over.”
On the way out the door the mayor picked up a loaf of bread, a half a dozen eggs and a pint of milk, stuffed them in a bag and handed them to Harry. “Now that’s worth a fiver.”
Harry added a tin of Spam and a bag of cookies to his shopping and dropped twenty into the pot. He didn’t want to give old Todd anymore reason to dislike him.
* * *
Harry followed the mayor on the potholed lake road that was only wide enough to let two medium-sized cars squeeze past each other. The mayor strictly obeyed the fifteen miles per hour speed limit – when you’re the mayor you have to.
The slow pace gave Harry the chance to take in his surroundings. The houses around the lake were an eclectic mix. At one end of the spectrum were the old A-frames. An A-frame house was available mail order, just four long pieces of wood stuck in the ground like a big triangle, with pitch roofing tiles nailed to the sides. It gave you one large room with sloping walls downstairs and a cosy little bedroom upstairs. Back in the fifties some families of eight would spend the entire summer in one of them and they would get to know each other – very well. These days most of them had a more modern extension tacked on.
In between there was a variety of different sized homes all the way up to proper multi-storey luxury hunting/skiing lodges built by New Yorkers who spent their Wall Street money on a mountain dream.
Harry parked his car next to Charlie’s in the driveway of one of the in-between-sized houses and went inside. It was a quaint bungalow with comfortable furnishings and an oldfashioned kitchen that could be described as clean but not gleaming.
“Now before you decide whether you like it or not,” Charlie said as he searched for the rope that operated the curtain that covered the length of the living