The Fugitive Grandma

Chapter 43 - The Circle of Influence

The Santa Ramona police station on Magnolia Street was a battered, suburban bunker. Palm trees formed a perimeter around the rectangular stucco-and-concrete structure. The station was two miles north of the Great American store that had just been robbed.

Lowry and Riggs stewed in a holding pen where the police questioned incoming suspects.

The store manager used one of his allotted phone calls to contact Ben Jenkins in Dallas. Jenkins in turn contacted Great American’s legal and government affairs departments. Executives in these set off a series of contacts with connections in the Santa Ramona mayor’s office.

As explained to the mayor, it was an incident the company found outrageous and incomprehensible, a gross violation of the firm’s rights by local law enforcement.

In a best-case interpretation, giving the police the full benefit of the doubt, this was a clueless mix-up in the chaos that followed a brazen armed robbery. Viewed in a harsher light, it was a flagrant case of police abuse that could end in massive litigation and financial pain for the city.

Lowry and Riggs waited as the negotiations between corporate headquarters and city hall progressed quickly and predictably. Lowry knew it was only a matter of time before the police caved and released them.

He was concerned about Perez, who was in the hospital, recovering from the injury he suffered when Silvia broke the bottle of chardonnay over his head. But he decided not to use one of his phone calls to check on the wounded guard.

Lowry couldn’t decide which aspect of his current predicament was the most infuriating. Was it the fact that an embittered retiree, an old working-class woman without power or standing in the community, a woman who had already embarrassed him once before, had just made off with a staggering bounty of cash and prescription drugs that ranked among the greatest robberies ever perpetrated against his firm?

Or was it the fact that, in the aftermath of this audacious crime, he and his security guard were the only two arrested, while Stella Valentine and her grandson remained at large?

To further add to his rage and humiliation, there was the open defiance of his own employees, Silvia and Marco, who clearly sympathized with the Valentine woman over their boss.

Perhaps the worst thing was the rising sense of dread that this was far from over. His whole experience with Stella Valentine felt like a mystical force rising up out of nowhere, something ugly and unnatural and unstoppable, a spreading contagion that Lowry couldn’t quite understand, much less control.

Lowry had spent his whole life running stores, and he knew that establishing complete control was the key. He’d walked into many situations similar to the Caruso takeover. He’d faced down tough unions, angry workers, and disgruntled retirees in the past. Throughout his career, he had won every battle of every war against these people. He had always succeeded in pacifying all resistance, in breaking down the sense of community, decapitating the leadership, and making an example of the troublemakers, until anyone who remained saw that resistance was futile.

Coming into Santa Ramona to handle the Caruso acquisition, Lowry took all the right moves from his playbook, purging Vince and Elmer, bringing in his best security muscle, and shutting down anything that looked like a threat.

But something had gone wrong with his plan. He had underestimated this situation and misjudged the bond among the old Caruso’s workers. He had thought they’d give up and accept his plan. But it felt like they refused to give up. And it was all because of Stella Valentine. She was the spark that kept the flame from dying out.

He thought about the resistance he’d faced from every one of the old-time employees he had encountered: Stella, Elmer, Vince, Silvia, Marco, and even that old Szymanksi woman he’d noticed lurking around the store during the past few days. They were all in this together somehow, though he couldn’t be sure of the scale or the specifics of the conspiracy.