AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER9
King of Pastriesin Coral Gables was as different from the flagship store in East Hialeah as Wagyu beef was from ground chuck. The posh, upperclass neighborhood with its million dollar Spanish style houses and tree-lined streets was nothing like the colorful chaos of the rusty industrial zone.
Here, Sylvie didn’t have to go nuclear to get a parking spot in a lot so poorly planned that her old Jeep had been as pockmarked as a golf ball. Instead, she followed an orderly line of luxury cars to get around the perfectly landscaped shopping center. Around the back, there weren’t any illegally parked cars or piles of garbage stinking up the street. No one had stolen her reserved space near the back door.
“Buenos dias,” she greeted the two elderly ladies working in the kitchen. They’d been making pastelitos for the bakery since before Sylvie was born. It was how they maintained pitch perfect flavors people came back for over and over. The flavors that reminded them of home.
After a quick spot test while chatting with the ladies dressed in matching hairnets and King of Pastries t-shirts, Sylvie popped a ham croqueta in her mouth and slipped through the swinging door to the front of the house.
She checked her watch. Freddie was arriving in a minute. Trying to keep her nervous excitement in check, Sylvie set to work filling a large, white box with the store’s logo stamped on the side. The image had remained unchanged for decades. A crown atop the “P” in Pastries. The Original Since 1970 stamped at the bottom.
While selecting an assortment of their best items, Sylvie’s mind raced. She couldn’t imagine what Freddie found. A tiny part of her, smaller than a hairline fracture, worried that it wouldn’t be favorable.
She banished the fear almost as quickly as it came. Both Campos and Machado grandfathers had died when Sylvie and Lauren were in high school, but she was sure her families weren’t the thieves. Sylvie could recite her grandfather’s version of events from memory. His father had extended his hand out to his longtime friend and was met with alligator jaws chomping off his limb.
“Sylvie!”
Sylvie glanced up at the door as she placed a coconut pastelito on top of the neat pile of sweet carbs. Freddie, her light brown hair piled into a messy bun and her pretty round face behind huge glasses, smiled as she walked into the bakery.
“Freddie! I’m putting a little something together for you to take to the office. Sit and I’ll get you a café con leche.” With her chin, she pointed to one of the small round tables lining the plate glass window overlooking the parking lot.
“Thanks! Just a cafecito would be fantastic. I’m off sugar.”
Sylvie delivered the large pastry box to the table before signaling for one of the ladies behind the counter to bring them two shots of espresso. “Can you take these to the office?”
“Can I?” Freddie laughed. “I’ll be the most popular girl in school when I walk into my little community paper with that.”
After some friendly chit-chat, Sylvie was so tense she could easily remain in the seated position even if someone pulled her chair out from under her.
“So here’s the tea.” Freddie knocked back a second shot of espresso. “There was a lawsuit in 1979.”
“A lawsuit?” Sylvie leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. With her brain working, her body had a chance to relax. “For what? With who?”
“Pastry King versus King of Pastries and then a countersuit going the other way.” She paused as if dramatic dun dun dun music was going to fill the space. “My guess is a dispute over trade secrets.”
Sylvie leaned in, her body twitching in anticipation. “Guess? Don’t you know what the lawsuit stuff says? What the outcome was?”
Freddie shook her head. “It’s a super old case which would be problematic enough on its own, but everything is sealed. I’m working on whether I can get my hands on some of the documents. I have a call in to legal to see what’s what.”
Deflated, Sylvie’s mind raced. She’d never heard anyone mention a lawsuit. Her mother would’ve been young, but she would’ve been around. Why wouldn’t she have ever mentioned it?
“You might want to see if somebody in your family knows what happened. All I’ve got is a suit, counter suit, and a notice that the record was sealed by court order. Even that was hard to get. Obviously nothing is electronic.”
After Freddie was gone, Sylvie finished some administrative tasks in Coral Gables and jumped back in her Jeep to brave the Miami traffic again. The drive to East Hialeah would’ve only taken twenty minutes if it wasn’t for the crushing traffic tripling her driving time.
A call to her mother revealed nothing. She didn’t remember anything about a lawsuit, but sounded just as troubled by its existence. She promised to call her own mother to find out what she knew, but neither of them were hopeful. After a stroke, her memory was spotty.
By the time Sylvie arrived at the flagship bakery, the unanswered questions were a corset crushing the air from her lungs.
Slipping in through the back door, she crossed the busy kitchen and popped her head into the store to get her godmother’s attention. The thick-waisted blonde signaled that she would meet her in the back.
While Sylvie waited for her in the microscopic office, she didn’t even have the benefit of pacing. The only thing she could do with her nervous energy was continuously pop the cap of a highlighter that had been left on the mostly empty desk.
She couldn’t care right then that someone had sat at her desk and left it in disarray. Her brain couldn’t get off the lawsuit. More specifically, why had there been no resolution? Why had it been sealed?
“Mija, what’s wrong?” Regina kissed her cheek in greeting, her King of Pastries t-shirt so tight across her ample chest that only ing of Past was visible. “I haven’t seen you so upset since your parents said you couldn’t go to the Jingle Ball when you were a kid.”
Sylvie glared. “I was almost fifteen and they knew full well Shakira was my favorite.”
