Page 36 of The Children of Eve

I shrugged. “Like cell phone stores and Starbucks a few years ago, it’s not the presence or the product I object to so much as the ubiquity. I feel the same way about vape shops: they don’t add a lot to the life of a street. When it comes to cannabis stores, we don’t so much have an industry here as an outbreak.”

“I agree, which is why we’re on Forest and not downtown. Soon, the city may have to start restricting new openings around Congress andthe Old Port, like it did with fast-food outlets back in the day. We felt it was better not to get caught up in that debate. But I doubt you came here to lodge a formal protest.”

“No, but you did invite an opinion.”

“Guilty as charged. So why are you here, Mr. Parker?”

“I’ve been hired to find one of your employees, Wyatt Riggins. He skipped town and there are concerns about his safety.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“Probably, but not with me.”

“Can I ask who hired you?”

“You can ask.”

I had decided that it would be better to leave Zetta Nadeau’s name out of the investigation for the present, even if her relationship with Riggins might be common knowledge in some circles. Whoever Riggins was running from might track him to the Northeast, and I didn’t want them knocking on Zetta’s door to find out what she knew, not because of something I might have disclosed to the wrong person.

“I can probably guess. Unless it was family, and Wyatt didn’t speak much about them, I’d say his girlfriend stumped up the cash. There must be money in bad art.”

Ouch. I wondered whether Zetta had crossed Donna Lawrence. Unless Lawrence was bisexual and unfaithful, it couldn’t have been over Riggins, yet he was the point of contact between them. Perhaps Lawrence simply wasn’t a fan of conceptual sculpture.

“Everyone’s a critic,” I said, but it seemed sensible to cut short any further discussion of Zetta. “Where did the taste for maté come from? That’s not something one sees often in the cold Northeast.”

“It’s a recent development. I was getting jittery on coffee, and we discourage staff from using our products during working hours, so I was trying to set a good example. It took me a while, but I’ve grown to appreciate maté.”

“Have you traveled much in Latin America?”

“Not me. I’m a homebird.”

“So the gourd was a gift?”

“You can pick them up north of the border now,” she said. “We live in a globalized world.”

Which was, I noticed, not answering the question.

“I should tell you,” Lawrence continued, “that I don’t know a great deal about Wyatt, and he hasn’t been in touch since he started missing shifts.”

“Were you worried when he didn’t show?”

“I was annoyed. We’re struggling to retain staff as it is. There’s a lot of competition in the industry for anyone with experience, and don’t get me started on wage inflation. When Wyatt didn’t materialize, I had to cover for him on what was supposed to be my day off. If he did come back, I’d be tempted to fire him if we didn’t need people so badly.”

“So he had experience in the industry?”

“He’d been arrested a few times during the late nineties and early two thousands, twice in New York State and once down south. I don’t remember where offhand. Misdemeanor and felony marijuana possession, but the most he ever spent behind bars was ninety days, so he was lucky. We have a guy working on our farm who did three years in Arkansas for possession: four point one ounces, and that point one was the difference between a rap on the knuckles and what amounted to ten percent of his life in prison. Wyatt had both used and sold, which wasn’t—and isn’t—unusual, and he knew a bit about cultivation, so he was just what we were looking for. Convictions for cannabis-related offenses aren’t an obstacle to working for us. They’ll bump you right up the list so long as no violence was involved.”

“Do you perform criminal record checks?”

“Of course,” said Lawrence. “There are still conservative elements in this state who aren’t convinced that legalization was the way to go. We don’t want to give them any excuse to come after us.”

I was taking notes as she spoke. I always took notes. It made melook like I knew what I was doing when mostly I was just stumbling around in the dark. But if you stumbled around long enough, you typically found the light switch.

“And Wyatt Riggins just showed up here one day, looking for a job?”

Lawrence didn’t immediately reply, which raised the question of who or what she might not be keen to discuss.

“Listen,” I said, “I don’t want to make anyone’s life more complicated. My client just wants to know that Riggins is safe. If he overstepped a line, I’m not interested in what he might have done or who might have helped him to do it unless someone got hurt.”

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