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  DUPREE’S REWARD

  (An Adam Dupree Novel #2)

  MICHEAL MAXWELL

  2020 Edition

  Copyright © 2020 Micheal Maxwell

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Micheal Maxwell.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Please Consider This

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Please Consider This

  Excerpt from Dupree’s Resolve

  About the Author

  Also by Micheal Maxwell

  PLEASE CONSIDER THIS

  If you enjoy Dupree’s Reward, please take a moment and leave a review.

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  CHAPTER 1

  The Quarter Moon Café was at the intersection of Opportunity and Inspiration. It was a kind of unofficial city hall. The mayor and council members would argue, plead, and compromise on the issues affecting White Owl. In election years, a thick black strip of duct tape divided the café in half, Dems on one side, Republicans on the other. The owner forbad, under threat of expulsion until after November tenth, anyone arguing partisan politics. The rest of the time it was a happy gathering of locals and the occasional visitor. Good-humored teasing and strong hot coffee were served up with the best baked goods in the county. The Quarter Moon boasted a long, proud history in White Owl.

  In 1927, the Mayflower Bakery opened for the benefit of the Cornish lumbermen who migrated south from British Columbia in hopes of settling on a land offering that failed at the end of World War I. The idea being, the returning Doughboys would jump at the chance of owning a piece of the beautiful highlands country. Few came and fewer stayed. The winters were fierce, rain was frequent, and the roads in and out were nearly impassable half the year.

  The Mayflower’s claim to fame was the meaty, flaky crusted pasties that Mrs. Bridgette Thompson made up each morning. The lumbermen, sheepmen, and locals would line up and hand over a dime or two and walk away with their lunch or a tasty breakfast. When the morning offerings ran out the bakery produced pies, cakes, and loaves of hearty, brown bread.

  The Mayflower was a thriving concern until one morning in May 1933, when Mrs. Thompson was found on the floor of the kitchen, a burning tray of her beloved Lady Finger cookies in the oven, another scattered all around her. The doctor said that her heart simply exploded.

  The building sat empty for a year or two until the wife of a local land agent thought she would give the bakery business a go. After all, her children loved her cookies, and friends often comment that they “never had anything like her scones.” The truth be told, the children would have been just as happy to have eaten the sugary dough from the bowl, just as much as the over-baked version served up by their mother on Saturday afternoons. The friends, who said they never tasted anything like her scones, didn’t mean it in a good way. They often asked if they could take theirs home for later. They were always given another as well. Both only made it as far as the nearest rubbish bin.

  Betty’s Bunnery, as she named it, only lasted six months. In that time there were only two repeat customers. Betty’s husband came once a day to check on her and get a cup of coffee, but his visit often ended in loud tear-filled arguments over why he never asked for any of her baked offerings.

  The second was a woman new to White Owl who came for a dozen buns. Betty said she didn’t have any at the moment. The woman left bemused but said she would return, and she did a week later. When she requested another dozen buns Betty was forced to admit she didn’t know how to make buns.

  “Why is it called a ‘Bunnery’ then?” the woman asked, dumbfounded.

  “Bunnery seemed to go well with Betty.”

  “What about bakery? Since you do have baked goods,” the woman suggested.

  A flustered Betty admitted that she never thought of that.

  That Bunnery closed a week later.

  The little building was again abandoned. Over time the windows were knocked out by local hooligans and angry drunks who took their rage out on the poor little bakery with empty ale bottles. A few years later the land agent died and Betty followed her children to Ohio.

  In the summer of 1940, Mr. Oswald Ming and his wife May came to White Owl. The clever Mr. Ming went to the county seat and obtained the property, building and all, for the ten years of back taxes owed, two hundred and ten dollars. All summer long the Ming’s did repairs and painted. The tables and chairs were replaced with booths. The display cases were replaced by stools and a counter for quick lunch patrons. In the fall the newly converted building opened as a sparkling new, red and gold Chinese restaurant, The New Moon Café.

  For twenty years the Mings served up chop suey, egg drop soup, and chicken chow mein to the grateful residents of White Owl who tired of the heavy meat and potato fare that graced their tables at home. On the twentieth anniversary of the opening of The New Moon, Oswald and May announced they would retire. The next day they packed their car and headed for San Francisco. They sold the property for twelve thousand dollars to Peter Twillham, an investor with great hopes for the little town.

  The sixties were a time of change for White Owl. The new highway brought curious vacationers in their station wagons and camp trailers. Davis’s Grocery became Big D Supermarket. The gas station’s two pumps were replaced by a shiny new six pump Flying A franchise. The New Moon was replaced by a succession of hamburger joints, diners, and The Chicken Coop, which served omelets in the morning and fried chicken for lunch and dinner.

  State snowplows cleared the highway, and the county bought White Owl snow removal equipment, making the little community accessible year-round. A wealthy member of a positive thinking cult, called Thinking is Creating, built a large meeting hall, and a complex of small cabins for reflection and meditation. The cult held quarterly retreats in White Owl for years, until the leader ran off with the wife of one of the cult’s biggest contributors. The faithful tried to press on, but without the charismatic founder, there wasn’t enough positive thinking to keep the creativity going. The hall and complex were sold to a big church in Walla Walla and continues to this day as a summer camp and conference center, adding to the local economy several times a year.

  The Chicken Coop closed in 1969. The Seattle holding company that owned the property saw it as just another investment, tax-write off property. The building was leased to a woman who ran a consignment and thrift shop through the seventies and into the eighties. As styles came and went, and the town grew around her, Colleene kept The Clothes Closet going. A department store opened in 1982 and for a time the townspeople thought the second-hand clothes were below their dignity, until the recession in the mid-eighties. The department store closed up. They donated everything left after the big closing sale to The Clothes Closet. Once again, the town folks found recycled clothes fit just fine. The Clothes Closet finally closed in 1988, when Colleene retired.

  There was talk of tearing the building down. The value of the corner lot increased considerably over the years. What was once part of the muddy road in front of The Mayflower Bakery was now a row of paved parking spaces, enlarging the lot.

  Seve
ral offers were made. The land, it seemed, was worth far more than the building. One of the serious bids came from ARCO. They intended to tear down the building and build an AM/PM twenty-four-hour gas and convenience store. Unfortunately for them, Gerard Nickerson sat on the city council. His sister and her husband owned the old Flying A gas station, where they ran a small store with gas pumps. The city council refused the permit and the ARCO project was scuttled.

  The Seattle holding company was scooped up by investment bankers who invested heavily in ENRON. They filed bankruptcy when their over-extended empire folded with ENRON. The Clothes Closet building was taken over by the town for taxes and though it was listed at a fair price, it sat empty for years, a white and powder blue eyesore.

  In the late spring of 1999, Mike Kelly and his best friend, Teddy Auckland, petitioned the city council to hold an outdoor music festival in the meadow north of town. Named on the permit application as the White Owl Summer Solstice Music and Art Festival, no one could have imagined what those seven words would mean to the town and its inhabitants.

  Mike and Teddy proved to be a pair of charmingly humble entrepreneurs. The first year, there were around two thousand attendees, twenty-five vendors, and six musical acts that ranged from an acoustic Celtic group, a bluegrass band, Native American dancers, a gospel quartet from Alabama called the Sonshine Boys and a couple of a little past their prime rock and roll bands.

  The audience ranged from old retired couples in motor homes to long-haired vagabonds in beat-up old Volvos. The festival was a great success. The whole mood of the town seemed to lift with the influx of new blood, and all the businesses in town saw a mid-summer spike in revenues.

  In front of The Clothes Closet, a middle-aged hippie sold large colorful tapestries, Seattle Seahawks blankets, and probably a lot of marijuana. The Sheriff’s Department turned a blind eye, not wanting to seem reactionary or unfriendly to all the money coming into town. Apart from a couple of local kids that the giant party proved to just be too much for, resulting in their arrest for a drunken ride through town in the back of a pickup, the weekend proved to be a huge success without incident.

  The next year, Mike and Teddy were welcomed back with open arms. With a larger budget and the rave reviews by vendors and festival-goers alike, the festival grew to a two-day affair. The bill included fifteen acts, most of which were well known in the Americana and Jam Band world.

  The Festival ticket sales topped ten thousand. The venue extended into the side of the Hamilton Mountain basin, which proved to be an amazing natural amphitheater. So many vendors applied that the city offered to close down Main Street and have an open-air market. The promoters were delighted and willingly shared the revenues from the booths fifty/fifty with the city, a move that guaranteed Mayor Chatom’s reelection that November.

  That year, four college girls from Portland loaded up a yellow Pinto station wagon with sleeping bags, an army surplus tent, provisions for the weekend adventure, and set out for White Owl. Nancy owned the car and was the mother hen of the group. Halley rode shotgun and played navigator. Misha sat in the back seat and complained. Later, the other three girls would argue over who invited her. Then there was Dara. She was the sparkler on the cake. Just like her name’s pronounced, Dare-uh was the first to take a dare, the first one in the pool, talk to a stranger, or approach a handsome young man across the room. She would sing, tell stories, and roll down the window and stick her head out, just to feel the wind in her hair. She drove Misha crazy, but Dara Landry was the glue that held the group together.

  The girls seemed to be the essence of the festival, young, outgoing, and very pretty. When the heat of the day got to be too much, they shed their blouses or t-shirts and wore only their bikini tops and shorts. Dara seemed to float through the crowd in her pale-yellow bikini top and flowing, cotton, gypsy skirt. Her long, curly, raven hair bounced behind her and caught the eye of all the young men and some of the older ones. Unaffected, and unaware of her natural beauty, her lovely smile greeted anyone she made eye contact with. A few times she was approached by young men full of themselves and on the prowl for female conquests.

  Her friendly but confident whoa, big boy, cool your jets! was never condescending, and left their fragile male egos intact.

  When offered drugs or alcohol from a well-meaning partier, her charming ‘I’m good’ conveyed a happiness in her sobriety that was both non-judgmental and understood.

  In the evening, after the last act of the day left the stage, the girls wandered from campfire to campfire enjoying the impromptu jam sessions and sing-alongs. Once or twice Dara’s strong, crystal clear, vocal rose above the crowd and they faded away, letting her sing a verse, chorus, or both. She would smile, stand, and curtsy to the applause of the group circled around the fire.

  On the second day of the festival, Halley and Dara strolled the outdoor market on Main Street. The crafts, antiques, and variety of food items fascinated Dara, not the items, or offerings themselves, but the way the vendors displayed their wares. The food items were of particular interest to her and she took every opportunity to taste the samples and examine the packaging. The manner in which the cookies, brownies, hummus, and loaves of artisan bread were transferred from vendor to buyer fascinated her.

  Long after Halley tired of the booths and returned to the music meadow, Dara chatted and questioned the food vendors about where they were from, how they transported their goods, and what, if any, health and safety regulations they were subject to. Even the most secretive vendor would finally be worn down by the pretty girl with the dazzling smile into giving up the names of their suppliers of bags and banners, and one organic jam alchemist even gave up his secret recipe.

  Instead of returning to her friends and the music, Dara walked around town deep in thought. She was so intrigued by the street market she was convinced it was just the kind of life she would love to live. That night, snuggled down in her sleeping bag, she found it hard to sleep. Her mind raced with the images and words of the afternoon’s vendors.

  On the way home the next day, Dara announced that next year she would have a booth in the street fair.

  “What, selling your million and one hair clips?” Misha groaned.

  “No, I will bring banana nut bread and chocolate zucchini bread. There was nothing like my zucchini bread, and my banana nut bread is way better than anything anybody had!”

  “You don’t know anything about selling stuff at a street market. I bet there’s a lot to it,” Nancy chimed in.

  “She can do it!” Halley said, cutting off the objections of her friends. “You should have seen her. She was in her own world. You could almost hear the wheels turning in her head. Those poor people won’t know what hit them. I say you go, girl!”

  “I do love your nut bread,” Nancy confessed.

  “And how many loaves will you bring?” Misha asked with a doubtful tone.

  “One hundred of each!” Dara declared confidently.

  “Right, two hundred loaves of bread! Just how do you intend to do that? Get real.” Misha was her usual defeatist self.

  “Let me worry about that! I can do this!”

  And so she did. The next year she went to the White Owl festival by herself. Nancy and Halley were committed to other obligations; Nancy to her new boyfriend, and Halley to her job at Macy’s. Misha, no longer part of the group, wasn’t invited.

  Undeterred, Dara spent three days nearly around the clock in full zucchini-banana production. Once she fell asleep on the tiny floor of her apartment kitchen waiting for the next batch to bake.

  In a moment of total commitment, Dara spent nearly all of her small savings on the six-foot banner that announced Dara’s Delights – Homemade Marvels – By the Slice or Loaf! At the last minute, she added …and the Butter’s Free!

  She draped the banner across her sofa and would stand with a silly grin on her face, just admiring her name in bright red print.

  The morning of the big day she was up at four a.m. The
banana nut bread was wrapped in commercial plastic wrap and tied with a yellow ribbon. The zucchini bread was tied with bright green. She bought two five-pound tubs of whipped butter, a commercial metal frosting knife, and a thousand six-inch paper plates. If she forgot anything, she thought, she would just make do. As she pulled into the dawn-lit highway, she began to sing at the top of her voice I’ve Got Confidence, from her favorite movie, The Sound of Music.

  As Dara pulled into White Owl an hour later than planned, the streets were teeming with recent arrivals. The traffic came to an abrupt stop right in front of The Clothes Closet. The intersection was the divider for traffic proceeding to the music venues, and the vendor step-up and parking. Though still a couple blocks away, tickets were being checked, and vendor ID badges checked.

  Dara took in her surroundings and her excitement grew.

  “We’re almost there!” she said to no one.

  The old building on her left was in rough shape. The sign had fallen down or was removed years before. Multiple layers, and just as many colors, of paint, peeled and flaked, revealing the building’s long history.

  Dara sighed and said, “Poor old girl, doesn’t anybody love you anymore?”

  At that moment a cloud passed in front of the sun that sent a slender beam of light exposing the metallic sheen of the words Moon Café. The Ming’s old gold paint, for just a brief moment, gleamed like new.

  “Nice!” Dara squealed as the cloud rolled by and the traffic moved forward. “Was that for me?”

  The Festival didn’t officially open until in the morning, but people came early to secure their camping spots and seats in the meadow or amphitheater. At the end of Main Street, Dara flashed her vendor badge with a wide smile and was waved through. A tall gray-haired man with a clipboard and orange vest approached Dara’s car window.

  “Good afternoon, pretty lady.”