Silence Of The Hams

my class though.“
    “Anyway, Mike says Conrad did some research and discovered that the zoning had never been changed. It’s something strange, like ‘residential, with an exception to sell food products.’ I mean, you couldn’t put in a used car lot or anything.“
    “Conrad Baker figured this out himself?“ Suzie asked. “I’ve run into him a couple times and I always thought he was pretty dim. Nice man, but about as bright as a breadstick.”
    Shelley said, “Oh, no. He’s really bright. Just quiet. Back in high school he won all sorts of awards—in the days when awards really meant something. He went to college for two or three years, got in on the tail end of the hippie thing. He and Sarah got married right after she graduated and they went off to Oregon or someplace to be flower children. They ended up working in logging camps as cooks.“
    “How do you know all this stuff?“ Jane asked, surprised, as she often was, by Shelley’s memory for gossip. She supposed that came from having lived in the same place for so long. Jane had grown up a State Department brat, never living in one place for more than a year and often for less. When she married, she had been determined that her children would stay put and form the kind of lifelong friendships and connections that Shelley proved were possible.
    “My mother was friends with Sarah and Grace’s grandmother. Bridge club,“ Shelley explained.
    “Seems to me that somebody mentioned the Bakers having lost a child, too,“ Suzie said.
    “Yes, I’ve heard that, too,“ Shelley said. “But I don’t know any of the details. One of my husband’s sisters once missed a period and has carried on for years about her ‘miscarriage’ so I always take remarks like that with a grain of salt.“
    “Well, whatever their background, Conrad’s certainly a good cook,“ Jane said. “He’s been practicing for the opening and selling some of the stuff at cost to Mike. We had pastrami sandwiches last night that were fantastic. He’s going to sell some of that trendy, healthy stuff—soyburgers and tofu chicken, which sounds revolting. But he’s also got a gadget for making potato chips. Puts a little garlic seasoning in the oil and they’re wonderful.“
    “Grease, salt, and starch. What more could a person ask?“ Suzie said with a laugh. “So the handsome jogger was the one leading the fight against opening this heavenly place? Why would he care?“
    “Because he paid far too much for his house and now he’s trying to drag the neighborhood up to his standards?“ Shelley said. “His wife, Rhonda, told me. They’d moved here from someplace in California and the price of the house looked great compared to California prices. It wasn’t until they got moved in and were knee-deep in a lot of very expensive renovations that they realized they’d paid far too much. She didn’t say so exactly, but suggested that he thought he could ‘improve’ the whole community and make his house worth what he paid. Having what he calls a ‘market’ in the middle of a residential area probably looks like a death knell to his plans.“
    “That, and he’s just a natural-born grandstander, I think,“ Jane said. “Not only thinks he’s superior to everyone else, but wants to make sure we all know it. I went to see him once and didn’t like him at all.“
    “Went to see him? What do you mean?“ Shelley asked.
    “When my husband died I had to figure out how to handle the insurance money and Steve’s portion of the profits from the family pharmacies, so I talked to a couple lawyers about setting up trusts for the kids’ college expenses. Somebody suggested I consult the PCA, as Suzie so aptly calls him, so I did. He asked all sorts of questions—well, you’d expect that—but after a while I realized a lot of the questions weren’t relevant. It took me a while. You know what a basket case I was for a while back then. By the time I realized what was going on, I’d blurted out all kinds of stuff about the pharmacies’ finances, how much I’d invested myself back when I got that little inheritance and the business was having money problems, even the fact that the pharmacies had been having a long-running feud with the IRS about some deductions. I guess I thought he was just trying to be chummy and put me at my ease, or maybe trying to get a really complete view of the situation, but after a while, it started making me uneasy. He was asking about my