The Whole Cat and Caboodle: Second Chance Cat Mystery (2 page)

Sam had moved his mug and the music out of the way, and I’d set the guitar case on the table. Elvis studied me for a moment and then went back to his breakfast.

“Who’s your friend?” I asked, tipping my head toward the cat.

“That’s Elvis,” Sam said, flipping open the latches on the battered Tolex case with his long fingers. He was tall and lean, his shaggy hair a mix of blond and white.

“Really?” I said. “The King of Rock and Roll was reincarnated as a cat?”

Sam looked at me over the top of his dollar-store reading glasses. “Ha, ha. You’re so funny.”

I made a face at him. Elvis was watching me again. “Move over.” I gestured with one hand. To my surprise the cat obligingly scooted around to the other side of the plate. “Thank you,” I said, sliding onto the burgundy vinyl. He dipped his head, almost as though he were saying, “You’re welcome,” and went back to his scrambled eggs. They were definitely Sam’s specialty. I could smell the salami.

“Is this the cat I’ve been hearing about?” I asked.

Sam was engrossed in examining the vintage Fender. “What? Oh yeah, it is.”

Elvis’s ears twitched, as though he knew we were talking about him.

“Why Elvis?”

Sam shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to like the Stones, so naming him Mick was kinda out of the question.” He waved a hand in the direction of the bar. “There’s coffee.”

That was Sam’s way of telling me to stop talking so he could focus his full attention on the candy apple red Stratocaster. I got up and went behind the bar for the coffee, careful to keep the mug well out of the way of the old guitar when I brought it back to the table. Elvis had finished eating and was washing his face.

“What do you think?” I asked after a couple of minutes of silence. Sam’s head was bent over the neck of the guitar, examining the fret board.

“Gimme a second,” he said.

I waited, and after another minute or so he straightened up, pulling a hand over the back of his neck. “So, tell me what you think,” he said, setting his glasses on the table.

I put my coffee cup on the floor beside my feet before I answered. “Based on what the homeowner told me it’s a 1966. It belonged to her husband. It’s not mint, but it’s in good shape. There’s some buckle wear on the back, but overall it’s been taken care of. I think it’s the real thing and I think it could bring twelve to fifteen thousand.”

Beside me Elvis gave a loud meow.

“The cat agrees,” I said.

“That makes three of us, then,” Sam said.

I grinned at him across the table. “Thanks.”

When I got up to leave, Elvis jumped down and followed me. “I think you made a friend,” Sam said. He walked me out to my truck, set the guitar carefully on the passenger’s side, and then wrapped me in a bear hug. He smelled like coffee and Old Spice. “Come by Saturday night, if you’re free,” he said. “I think you’ll like the band.”

“Old stuff?” I asked, pulling my keys out of the pocket of my jeans.

“Hey, it’s gotta be rock-and-roll music if you wanna dance with me,” he said, raising his eyebrows and giving me a sly smile. He looked down at Elvis, who had been sitting by the truck, watching us. “C’mon, you. You’re gonna get turned into roadkill if you stay here.” He reached for the cat, who jumped up onto the front seat.

“Hey, get down from there,” I said.

Elvis ignored me, made his way along the black vinyl seat and settled himself on the passenger’s side, next to the guitar case.

“No, no, no, you can’t come with me.” I leaned into the truck to grab him, but he slipped off the seat, onto the floor mat. With the guitar there I couldn’t reach him.

Behind me, I could hear Sam laughing.

I blew my hair out of my face, backed out of the truck and glared at Sam. “Your cat’s in my truck. Do something!”

He folded his arms over his chest. “He’s not my cat. I’m pretty sure he’s your cat now.”

“I don’t want a cat.”

“Tell him that,” Sam said with a shrug.

I stuck my head back through the open driver’s door. “I don’t want a cat,” I said.

Ensconced out of my reach in the little lean-to made by the guitar case, Elvis looked up from washing his face—again—and meowed once and went back to it.

“I have a dog,” I warned. “A big, mean one with big, mean teeth.” The cat’s whiskers didn’t so much as quiver.

Sam leaned over my shoulder. “No, she doesn’t,” he said.

I elbowed him. “You’re not helping.”

He laughed. “Look, the cat likes you.” He rolled his eyes. “Lord knows why. Take him. Do you want him to just keep living on the street?”

“No,” I mumbled. I glanced in the truck again. Elvis, with some kind of uncanny timing, chose that moment to tip his head to one side and look up at me with his big green eyes. With his scarred nose he looked . . . lonely.

“What am I going to do with a cat?” I said, bouncing the keys in my right hand.

Sam shrugged. “Feed him. Talk to him. Scratch under his chin. He likes that.”

I glanced at the cat again. He still had that lonely, slightly pathetic look going.

“You two will make a great team,” Sam said. “Like Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and Richards.”

“SpongeBob and Patrick,” I muttered.

“Exactly,” Sam said.

I was pretty sure I was being conned, but, like it or not, I had a cat.

I looked over now toward the end wall of the store. My cat had apparently helped sell a mandolin. The young man was headed to the cash register with it. Elvis made his way over to me.

I leaned over to stroke the top of his head. “Nice work,” I whispered. I wasn’t imagining the cat smile he gave me.

The woman who had been looking at the post office desk was headed for the door, but there was a certain smugness to Mac’s expression that told me he’d made the sale. I walked over to him. “Go ahead, say ‘I told you so,’” I said.

He folded his arms over his chest. “I can’t. I’m fairly certain she’s going to buy it. She just wishes it were black.”

I laughed. “I guess black really is the new black,” I said. “I’m about ready to leave. I have to pick up Charlotte, and Avery is going to get her grandmother. Do you need anything before I go?”

I was doing a workshop on color-washing furniture for a group of seniors over at Legacy Place. North Harbor was full of beautiful old buildings. It was part of the town’s charm. The top floors of the old chocolate factory had been converted into seniors’ apartments. There were a couple of community rooms on the main level, where the residents had various classes like French and yoga and got together to socialize. We were using one of them for the workshop since many of the class participants lived in the building. Eventually I wanted to renovate part of the old garage next to the Second Chance building for workshops; for now, when I did classes for the general public, I had to settle for renting space at the high school. Luckily the hourly rate was pretty good. This workshop was a freebie my gram had nudged me into doing.

Mac shook his head. “I’ve got everything covered.” He narrowed his brown eyes at me. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to make Avery go with you?”

“Actually she volunteered.”

“Avery volunteered to help you teach a workshop for a bunch of senior citizens?” One eyebrow shot up. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. She’s good with older people. They’ll be feeding her cookies and exclaiming over her hair color, and before you know it she’ll have wangled an invitation to go prowl around someone’s attic.” Avery had a thing for vintage jewelry, and thanks to her grandmother Liz’s friends, was building a nice collection.

I pressed my hands into the small of my back and stretched. I was still kinked from crawling around that old house all morning. “You know, I used to hang around with some of those same women when I was Avery’s age.” I’d spent my summers in North Harbor with my grandmother as far back as I could remember. The rest of the time I’d lived first in upstate New York and then in New Hampshire. “Liz taught me how to wax my legs and put on false eyelashes.”

“I could have gone the rest of my life not knowing that,” Mac said dryly.

“And I know the secret to Charlotte’s potpie,” I teased.

“You’re not going to say it’s love, are you?”

I shook my head and grinned. “Nope. Actually it’s bacon fat.”

My father had been an only child and so was my mother, so I didn’t have a gaggle of cousins to hang out with in the summer. My grandmother’s friends, Charlotte, Liz and Rose had become a kind of surrogate extended family, a trio of indulgent aunts. When I’d decided to open Second Chance, they’d been almost as pleased as my grandmother, and Charlotte and Rose had come to work for me part-time. Now with Gram out of town on her honeymoon, the three women fed me, gently nagged me about working too much and pointed out every single man between twenty-five and, well, death. When Gram had asked me to offer one of my workshops to her friends, how could I say no?

I glanced at my watch. “I don’t expect to be more than a couple of hours,” I said. “And I have my cell.”

“Elvis and I can hold down the fort,” Mac said. “Are you going to take another look at that SUV?”

I’d been thinking about replacing the aging truck we used to move furniture with an SUV, if I could get it for the right price. “I might,” I said.

“Well, take your time,” Mac said. “It’s Monday afternoon. Nothing ever happens in this town on a Monday.”

Of course he was wrong.

The second thing I noticed when I stepped into the room we were using at Legacy Place was that nothing had been set up for the workshop. The first thing I noticed was Alfred Peterson. He was naked. Let’s just say it wasn’t a good look for him; he was somewhere between seventy-five and eighty. That’s not to say there aren’t people close to eighty who look good with their clothes off, but Alfred Peterson definitely wasn’t one of them.

I exhaled slowly, sent up a silent prayer—
Please don’t let me see anything
—and headed across the floor, keeping my gaze locked on the old man’s blue eyes.

“Good afternoon, Sarah,” he said with a slight dip of his head as I got close to the center of the room where he had . . . arranged himself. “What are you doing here?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Peterson,” I said. “I’m doing a workshop. What, ah . . . are you doing?”

“I’m posing, my dear.”

I could see that. I was fairly certain he was trying to imitate the Farnese Atlas, a marble sculpture in which Atlas is partly down on one knee, holding the world on his shoulders, except Mr. Peterson was holding a red-and-white-striped beach ball with the logo of a beer company instead of the world, and he had two pillows under his bent knee. I was pretty sure he was sitting on a cardboard box, but I wasn’t going to look behind him to find out for sure.

I gave him what I hoped looked like a sincere smile. “But why exactly are you . . . here . . . like this?”

“Sammy called. There’s a busload of tourists down at the pub and they’re running behind schedule, so he’s not going to get here, and I thought,
Why don’t I just take his place instead
?” He frowned. “I though Sammy said Eric was teaching the class, though.”

Eric was one of Sam’s bandmates. The rest of the time he was an artist.

“Alfred Peterson, where on earth are your pants?” a voice said behind me. It was Charlotte coming from the small kitchen at the end of the main hallway, where she’d gone to put the kettle on for tea. The room rental came with access to the communal kitchen.

“In the gentleman’s lavatory,” Mr. P. said with a slight superior edge to his voice.

“Apparently you left your common sense in there, as well,” Charlotte retorted. She frowned at him, hands on her hips. Even in flats she was an inch taller than I was, and she had the posture and steely glare of a high school principal, which is what she’d been. “What on earth are you doing in the middle of Sarah’s class as naked as the day you were born?”

“This is Eric’s art class, ‘Sketching the Human Form.’” The old man held his head high, chin stuck out. “Sammy couldn’t make it so I’m the model. I may not be a spring chicken but I’ve still got it.”

Charlotte’s mouth twitched and I realized she was trying not to laugh. “Be that as it may,” she said. “There’s no reason to be putting it all on display for the rest of us. And didn’t Sam tell you? Eric’s class is in the small room next door today, and they’re drawing hands.”

“Hands?”

“Hands.”

“But the class is called ‘Sketching the Human Form
,
’” Mr. P. said stubbornly.

It seemed pretty clear to me that getting him back into his clothes wasn’t going to be easy.

“And hands are part of the human form.” Charlotte made a move-along gesture with hers. “So that’s all we need to see. Go put your pants on before the class gets here and the mystery’s gone.”

Mr. Peterson seemed deflated. He handed me the beach ball, while Charlotte headed back to the kitchen down the hall. “Hands? Really?” he asked me.

I had no idea but I nodded, anyway.

The old man slowly straightened up, and I realized that the washrooms were off the outside hallway, too. I thrust the beach ball back into his grasp. “Why don’t you take this with you?” I said. It at least made the front view G-rated as he headed for the door. I couldn’t exactly say the same for what was bringing up the rear.

Avery and her grandmother, Liz French, came in just as Mr. P. got to the door. He nodded as they passed. The two women crossed the floor to join me, Liz’s high heels echoing on the wooden floor. As usual Liz was elegantly dressed, in a lavender tunic over navy pants. Her soft blond hair curled around her face.

“Hello, Sarah,” she said. She handed me a cardboard box and leaned in to kiss my cheek. “I baked.”

That really meant she’d been to Lily’s Bakery.

Liz had a gleam in her blue eyes and I knew she’d have some comment about Mr. Peterson’s attire—or lack of. “Was Alfred naked, or did his suit just really need ironing?”

Beside her Avery made a face. “Geez, Nonna,” she said. “That joke’s older than I am.” She turned to me. “Why was Mr. P. . . .” She paused and gestured with one hand.

“Naked as a jaybird?” Liz interjected. “Hanging the moon?”

“Sam got held up with a busload of tourists at the pub,” I said. “Apparently he was supposed to be the model for an art class. Mr. Peterson decided he’d help out by taking Sam’s place. He just got the room and the dress code wrong.”

Avery rolled her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “You guys do get that right now Mr. P. is walking all the way down the hall to the men’s bathroom, past that whole big wall of windows?” She paused, probably for effect. “You know, windows that overlook the parking lot?”

Liz gave me a sweet—and fake—smile. “Given all the cars in the lot, half the town’s probably seen Alfred’s as—”

“Assets,” I said, raising my voice to drown her out. I held out my keys to Avery. “Would you start unloading the truck, please?”

“No problem,” she said. “It’s probably not a good idea for me to stay here. I’m young and impressionable.” She headed for the door.

Liz shook her head. “She’s impressionable, and this is my original hair color.”

“It’s not even close.”

Liz and I turned.

Rose was standing in the doorway. “Do you want to know what your original hair color was?” she asked.

Liz made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “No, I do not. Like my real age, some things should not be discussed in public.”

Rose came across the floor to us. She was barely five feet tall, with cropped white hair and warm gray eyes. She was dwarfed by the neon orange tote bag over her shoulder. Rose’s bags reminded me of Mary Poppins’s carpetbag. I never knew what she was going to pull out of one of them.

“Hello, sweetie bug,” she said with a smile, reaching up to pat my cheek. “Welcome to Shady Pines.”

“Shady Pines?” I asked.

“Don’t encourage her,” Charlotte said. She’d come from the kitchen again, carrying a tray loaded with teacups, napkins and a small glass bowl filled with sugar cubes.

I hurried over to take it from her, setting Liz’s cookies on a stack of napkins, and immediately realized I had nowhere to put the whole thing down.

“She’s not encouraging me,” Rose said. “She just asked a question.” She looked at me. “I call this place Shady Pines because it’s just like living in an old folks’ home. All anyone wants to talk about is how many pills they’re taking and when they last had a bowel movement.”

Liz smirked at me. “You were warned,” she said. She turned to Rose. “Will you please come and live with Avery and me so we don’t have to listen to you talk about other people’s ailments and bodily functions?”

Rose crossed her hands primly in front of her. “Have you actually forgotten Vermont?” She looked over at me. “Liz and I shared a room when we went on a bus tour to Vermont. I seriously considered smothering her with a pillow while she slept.”

“I’m not suggesting we share a room,” Liz said, making a sweeping gesture with her hands. “I have that big house. We could probably go for a day or two and not even see each other.”

“No.” Rose shook her head vigorously. “The key to us having been friends for the past fifty years is never spending that much time together. I’m not about to ruin a beautiful friendship now.” She gestured at the long, multipaned windows on the side wall of the room. “We should open a couple of these. It’s going to get stuffy in here.”

“Is Alfred putting his clothes on?” Charlotte asked me in a low voice.

“I sincerely hope so,” I whispered. I set the tray on the floor and headed for the supply closet at the far end of the room.

By the time I had the cups set out on a table under the tall windows, the other women in the class were coming in. Avery had spread the drop cloths on the floor and was carrying in the various little wooden tables I’d collected for the class to work on. She’d set a cardboard box over by the wall. I was trying to remember what was inside when one of the top flaps, which hadn’t been folded flat, seemed to . . . move.

“Avery,” I said, making a get-over-here gesture with one finger, my eyes fixed on the carton.

She came to stand in front of me. “What?”

I pointed at the box. “Tell me you didn’t,” I said.

She shrugged. “Okay, I didn’t.”

The chance that I would have believed her was pretty much zero, anyway, but Elvis chose that moment to poke his head up out of the box and look around.

“Okay, so maybe I did,” she said. “But, c’mon, he gets lonely hanging out in the store all day.”

The cat jumped out of the box, shook himself and came to sit in front of me, all green-eyed innocence. “Don’t think I don’t know your part in all this,” I said, glaring at him and folding my arms across my chest. In the few months I’d had the cat I’d learned he wasn’t above doing his Sad Kitty routine to get what he wanted. It had even worked on me a couple of times—okay, maybe six or seven times—before I got wise. “Avery, Elvis is a cat. His life is eat, sleep in the sunshine and get scratched behind his ears.”

Elvis gave a short, sharp meow and narrowed his gaze at me.

“And be the enforcer when it comes to mice, birds, bats and the occasional Junebug. You shouldn’t have brought him.”

Avery jammed her hands in the pockets of her black jeans. “You take him with you lots of times.”

“That’s different. That’s work.”

“So is this,” she immediately countered, bending down to pick up the cat.

“How is this work?” I said.

“Public relations. People meet Elvis. They like him. They come to the store. It’s good for business.”

The cat actually leaned his furry face against Avery’s cheek and half closed his eyes. She gave me her sweetest smile.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I muttered. I knew when I was beaten. “He’s your responsibility,” I said sternly. I narrowed my eyes at the cat. “Stay out of the paint.”

Elvis closed his eyes and shook his head, almost as though he’d understood what I’d said and was offended at the suggestion that he’d get paint on his sleek black fur.

I headed out to the truck to get the paint and the trash cans we’d be using to mix the color wash, since Avery had her hands full. The sun was streaming through the wall of windows that made up the east side of the old factory, making checkerboard squares of light on the plank floor of the hallway. Legacy Place had been the Gardner Chocolate factory—“A little bite of bliss in a little gold box”—until the company’s new manufacturing plant had been built just on the outskirts of North Harbor.

The building had had a number of incarnations in the next twenty years, and then about three years ago the Gardner family had renovated the space into a much-needed apartment complex for seniors. The fact that it all happened at the same time that a tabloid had published photos of Hank Gardner, the CEO of the company, boogying at a club with an exotic dancer while wearing a certain item of her clothing as earmuffs was just coincidence. (Gardner had explained it all by saying, “It was January and my ears were cold.”)

The chocolate factory and tourism were the main industries in town and that made for an eclectic mix of people that was part of North Harbor’s appeal. There were musicians, artists, sailors and fishermen, small business owners, factory workers, young people and senior citizens.

I glanced in at the art class as I passed by the room. Mr. Peterson was dressed—thankfully—in a long-sleeved, navy blue golf shirt, gray pants hiked up almost to his armpits and running shoes. He was posed on a stool in the middle of the room, circled on three sides by easels.

Avery had found a chair somewhere and Elvis was perched on it, holding court when I returned with the paint. I set her to work opening the cans and did a quick head count. Eight women had signed up for the class. We were missing someone. I scanned the room. “Does anyone know where Maddie is?” I asked when I realized one of my gram’s longtime friends hadn’t shown up yet.

“Probably with her new boyfriend,” someone said. The speaker was a tiny woman, more petite than Rose, wearing a flowing shirt covered with blue and green parrots.

“Maddie has a boyfriend?” I said.

“Uh-huh. She’s smitten,” Liz said, pulling a men’s faded chambray shirt over her tunic. Liz dressed for every occasion. I’d never seen her in a sweatshirt or yoga pants, unlike most of the other women her age.

Charlotte took a sip of her tea. “Elizabeth is right. Maddie’s like a young girl when he’s around.” She handed me a cookie.

I couldn’t picture sensible, practical Maddie getting giggly over a man. On the other hand, I hadn’t seen her in a long time.

“I was looking forward to seeing her today,” I said. “When I was little, Gram and I would walk to Maddie’s house for lemonade in the summertime. She had an incredible garden behind her house. Gram said there were fairies living there and I was always trying to find them.” I took a bite of the cookie.

Charlotte smiled. “That’s Maddie. She was born with a green thumb.”

Liz nodded her agreement. “I got a poinsettia plant at Christmastime. The thing turned brown—I don’t know what the heck happened to it—but Maddie pulled it out of my kitchen garbage can and brought the darned thing back from the dead.”

“You probably forgot to water it,” Rose said.

“No, I didn’t,” Liz retorted as she fastened the snaps on her paint-streaked shirt. “I definitely remember I gave it the last of the coffee a couple of times.”

Rose sighed. “Well, I don’t think that was a good idea.”

Liz made a dismissive gesture with one hand. Her nails were painted a deep royal purple. “Clearly, since the danged thing turned brown.”