“Wasn’t my life,” I said. “Wasn’t there. Not my place to judge.
Did you have an issue with it?”
Evidently, she didn’t mind what she saw in my face. She watched me for a moment longer before she nodded slowly. “I wanted something different. I had a bachelor’s in education from a misspent youth.” She gave me a flicker of a smile. “And I saved up enough money to start Sunflower.”
“Your tutoring business,” I said.
She nodded. “It went better than I thought. There are a lot of people in West Side communities who want something better for their children, and who are willing to put their money behind a better education.”
“Seems smart,” I said.
“My business didn’t make much,” she said. “My customers are contractors, construction workers, truck drivers. But they want more for their kids.”
“Me too,” I said.
She smiled a little. “I made money by volume. There was too much work for me, in fact. So, I found another woman after the first year, and helped her open her own Sunflower.”
“A franchise.”
“If you can call it something that grandiose,” she said, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. “She found a similar excess of business, and we recruited others, and so on. Mostly single women, most of them with a child or two. We helped kids, and we made enough to get by.”
“How many Sunflowers are there now?” I asked.
“Thirty-nine,” she said. “Each of us puts fifty dollars a month into a pot. And from that money, we pay the tutoring fees of a few children who want to learn, but whose parents can’t afford to pay. It’s not an enormous venture, Mister Dresden. It never will be. But it created a place for women to provide for themselves while helping children.” Her chin lifted. “I’m proud of that. Proud of the people I work with. Proud of the good we’ve done.”
I nodded. “Sounds nice,” I said. “Tell me about the lawsuit.”
She grimaced. “His name is Tripp. Tripp Gregory.”
“The human lawsuit?”
She gave me a brief smile. “He owns the building I work from.”
“You rent?”
She nodded. “I’m contracted. I…used to have an office there, in my previous life.”
I tilted my head and frowned. “Tell me more.”
“Tripp…isn’t a good person. He was a facilitator. But he was arrested on narcotics charges and has been in Pontiac for the past eight years.”
“Let me see if I’m getting the picture,” I said. “Tripp was your pimp and contact, paid your fees to the outfit. Some kind of sweetheart deal on rent?”
She looked down and nodded. “For services rendered.”
“Hngh. He gets a dime, I’m guessing, and goes away, and you have a chance to alter your life. So you do. You change up your business, but not your location. Only now he’s out of the clink, and he wants something from you.”
“I couldn’t change location without raising my prices beyond what my customers could have afforded. Sunflower would never have gotten off the ground.” She grimaced. “H-he says I owe him for the time. Back pay.” She glanced up quickly. “In more than one sense.”
I had to work to keep myself from growling audibly. I was almost sure I did not like Tripp.
“So,” I said, “tell me about the suit.”
“There’s a clause in our contract that he says makes him my partner. He’s demanding repayment from all the ‘profits’ the company made—and he’s also calling all the money we donated for the kids who couldn’t pay our profits.”
“Seems like utter crap to me,” I said.
She grimaced. “I had enough to pay an attorney to look at the contract. She said he had a case.”
