Death Waxed Over - Tim Myers [6]
As I worked on my display, I couldn’t help wondering what had set her off. She’d been open only a week, but I was already seeing a sharp drop in my sales. It hadn’t really surprised me. Gretel had the wisdom of her franchise to back her up and help her keep from making some of the mistakes that had nearly ruined me.
I’d been wondering if she was going to wipe out my business, and then she actually had the nerve to make her declaration to the world that she was going to bury me! If I lost it all, it wasn’t going to be without a fight. I was determined to prove her wrong, no matter what it took. If that meant extending my hours and deepening my discounts, I could get by on less if I had to. At least I had all of River’s Edge to help defray my expenses, while she had only her stand-alone shop. I just wish I knew what kind of cash reserves she had. Buying the franchise couldn’t have been cheap, and I knew their support only went so far.
Starting Monday morning, I was going to plan an assault on Flickering Lights that would drive one of us out of business; I just hoped it wasn’t At Wick’s End. I loved my candleshop too much to just let it sink quietly into oblivion.
But if a fight was what Gretel Barnett wanted, then she was going to get one.
I laid out my display, including a free giveaway drawing for one of Eve’s most ornately carved candles. It was a work of art, though she hadn’t liked it when I’d said that, and I was hoping we could get enough names and addresses with the entry forms to start a newsletter for At Wick’s End. It was an idea I’d picked up from my research on making small businesses grow, and I was willing to try just about anything. Another article had said that if you could get the kids interested in your crafts, a lot of times the parents followed, so I also laid out some sheets of lavender beeswax that had been damaged in our storeroom. They weren’t good enough to sell, since one edge of the delicate sheets had been crushed in storage, but I’d trimmed the bad parts away with a pizza crust cutter, and they’d be perfect for kids to play with.
Heather watched my progress, then said, “If you need more space, I can give you a corner of my table.”
“Is it too much?”
“No, I’m starting to wish I’d done more myself. It looks like you’ve done your homework on self-promoting.”
“Let’s just see if it works.”
I finished displaying the candles and inexpensive kits I’d brought along to sell, and finally I was ready. Ten feet away, I noticed Gretel was watching me from her table, but I wasn’t about to say a word or acknowledge her presence again if I could help it. My signs were all homemade—and they looked it—but hers sported a professional appearance that was just too sleek to be her own work. There were carefully crafted displays that showed some of the simplest steps to making candles, and even I had to admit they were very well done. It wasn’t a fair fight since she had a franchise’s expertise to draw from, but that didn’t really matter to me anymore. I was ready for her. She’d thrown the gauntlet down, and if she was having second thoughts about taking me on, she was going to have to make the first move at brokering some kind of peace between us.
Gretel appeared to start my way once or twice before changing her mind and backtracking to her spot. She was either going to start Round Two of our fight, or she was coming over to apologize, but as the gates opened and people started coming in, she frowned and settled into her seat. Though she was new to the area, somehow Gretel had finessed a prime spot for her display, and I wondered if she’d paid off the organizers. Her table was five feet away from the Civil War cannon that adorned the grounds, a great attraction for the visitors coming in. I’d heard that the Founder’s Day committee had wanted to drape the cannon in bunting too, but the Sons of the South had put their collective feet down. That cannon was a relic from history, they’d argued, a captured trophy from a Yankee ship, won with the spilled blood of their ancestors, not some prop for the show. I was