The Whole Cat and Caboodle: Second Chance Cat Mystery (3 page)

Charlotte shook her head. With her height and perfect posture she might not have fit every grandmother stereotype, but she had a huge, loving heart. She and my own grandmother had been friends since they were girls. “Maddie met her beau, Arthur, at a fund-raiser for the Botanic Garden. She’s still in the rose-colored-glasses stage when it comes to him. She probably just got caught up in whatever his latest plans are and forgot to call you.”

“Arthur?” I said slowly.

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “Arthur Fenety.”

Arthur Fenety.

Maddie was seeing the man who had brought in the silver tea set and then wanted to buy it back a day later. The man I’d thought was a little too smooth, a little too charming.

And it was really none of my business.

Avery had the paint cans open and had brought in a couple of big buckets of water. I looked at my watch. It was almost twelve o’clock. Time to get started. Maybe Maddie would arrive in a few minutes.

The ladies were eager to learn. I explained how to make the color wash by diluting the paint. Then we tested the depth of the color on some scrap wood. We got started by dipping the legs—which I’d detached from the underside of each little table—using a brush to pull the color upward and create a faded effect.

I was glad I’d brought Avery along. She had a great eye for color, she didn’t mind getting her hands dirty and she might have had an opinion on well, pretty much everything, but a lot of her insights were dead-on. Elvis stayed on his seat, watching intently but happy to be away from the paint.

The hour-long class was over before I knew it. A couple of times I couldn’t help glancing over at the door from the hall, hoping Maddie might show up late, but she didn’t.

When the class ended, Avery helped me pack everything and prop up the color-washed table pieces so that they weren’t lying on the drop cloths as the paint finished drying. There was nothing happening in the room for the rest of the day, so we’d be able to pick up the completely dry tables in the morning and the ladies could retrieve them from the shop later in the week. We carried the rest of our supplies back out to the truck. Mr. P., whose posing duties had ended at the same time as the workshop, held open the door to the parking lot. The only spot I’d been able to find was at the far end of the space—the parking area of the office building next door was being paved and their clients were using the Legacy Place lot—so I tried to carry as much as I could in each trip.

Once everything was loaded, Avery left with her grandmother. I could hear the two of them arguing about what they were going to have for supper. Liz wanted to order a pizza and Avery seemed to be making the case for fermented vegetables.

I walked back to the building. I’d found a heavy canvas tote in the truck that I used at the market and it was over my shoulder, Elvis’s head poking out of the top. Mr. P. held the door for me. “Thank you,” I said. “That was the last load.”

He smiled. “You’re welcome, my dear.” He reached over and stroked the top of the cat’s head. Then he pulled a tiny spiral notebook and an equally tiny pencil out of his pocket. He tore a page out of the book and offered it and the pencil to me.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“You’ve been repeating the same three names under your breath. Why don’t you write them down?”

I felt my cheeks get warm. “Thank you,” I said. “They all wanted me to say hello to Gram next time I speak to her and I was afraid that I’d forget somebody’s name. I hadn’t realized that I was talking out loud.”

My grandmother was somewhere on the Atlantic Canadian coast with her new husband, John, in an RV that wasn’t much bigger than a minivan. John looked like he could be actor Gary Oldman’s older brother. He had the same brown hair, streaked with gray, waving back from his face, and the same intriguing gleam in his eyes. There were thirteen years between them, which had raised some eyebrows, but Gram didn’t seem anywhere near her seventy-three years and, even more importantly, she didn’t care what other people thought.

I took the pencil and paper from Mr. P. and scribbled down the three women’s names before I forgot them.

“At your age when you talk to yourself it’s charming,” Mr. P. said. “When you do it at my age they start asking if you eat enough roughage, and watch to make sure you’re not wearing your underwear on the outside.” He hiked up his pants and gave me a wink and a smile. “Sometimes I do, just to mess with people.”

I watched him head down the hallway, nodding at Charlotte as she came from the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if the old man might have been messing with me.

Charlotte smiled as she walked up to me. Like Mr. P., she reached over to pet the top of Elvis’s head. “The class was lovely, Sarah. Thank you. I know Isabel roped you into it.”

“It was fun,” I said, taking the fabric tote she was carrying. “Is this everything?”

She glanced in the top of her bag and then nodded.

“Where could I drop you?”

“Oh, I don’t mind walking,” she said as we started across the parking lot. “I don’t have that far to go,” she pointed at the carryall, “and my bag’s not that heavy.”

I pulled my keys out of my pocket. “I have time.”

Charlotte’s glasses had slid down her nose, and she frowned at me over the top of them. “Thank you, dear, but I’m perfectly capable of getting an empty cookie can and a canister of tea bags home.”

“I know that,” I said. “I also know that no matter what you said, you’re worried because Maddie didn’t show up and you plan on going to check on her. I thought maybe I could go with you.”

She fingered one of the buttons on her rose-colored sweater. “I know I’m being an old worrywart. It’s just not like Maddie to not call if she wasn’t coming.”

My mother had always told me to trust my instincts. Now I was wishing I’d paid more attention to the funny feeling I’d had about Arthur Fenety and at least asked Sam if he’d heard anything about the man. Because he owned The Black Bear, Sam knew pretty much everything that was happening in North Harbor. Maddie had been a nurse and she was one of the most responsible people I’d ever met. I wasn’t going to ignore my gut feeling again.

“You’re not being an old worrywart,” I said. “I want to check on Maddie, too. We might as well go together.”

Charlotte patted my arm. “All right, let’s go see what’s going on.”

“Does she still live at the end of your street?” I asked as I slid onto the front seat of the truck. I set Elvis down and he settled himself in the middle, between us.

She nodded. “Oh yes. That house has been in her family for close to a hundred years. I can’t see her selling it.”

In North Harbor a hundred years didn’t really make a house that old. There were lots of buildings that dated back to the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Charlotte fastened her seat belt and reached over to give Elvis a scratch under his chin. “We’re probably worrying about nothing.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t hurt to check.” Once we got there I’d decide how to sound Maddie out about Arthur Fenety.

I backed out of my parking spot, made a tight turn in the tiny lot and pulled out onto the street.

“You drive like your grandmother,” Charlotte said, folding her hands in her lap. Elvis was looking straight ahead out the windshield.

“That’s probably because she’s the one who taught me how to drive,” I said. “Do you remember that old one-ton truck she had? She called it Rex.”

“Heavens, yes,” Charlotte said, with a shake of her head. “Don’t tell me she taught you how to drive on that old rust bucket.”

“She did,” I said, grinning at the memory of being behind the wheel of the old green truck for the first time, front seat squeaking as we bounced down a pothole-pocked dirt road just on the outskirts of town. “Liam took driver’s ed, but the class was the same time as honors math, so I was going to have to wait an entire term to learn to drive. I didn’t want him to get his license months before I did.”

There’s only a month between my brother—well, strictly speaking, my stepbrother—Liam and me. My mom and his dad had gotten married when we were in second grade. One moment he’d be a pain-in-the-butt, overprotective big brother, making it pretty much impossible for me to date anyone, and in the next he was covering for me when I set the vacuum cleaner on fire. (Another long story.)

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Charlotte shoot me a skeptical look. “Your mother agreed to let Isabel teach you how to drive?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly tell her.”

“And I’m thinking you didn’t exactly tell Isabel that you didn’t have your mother’s permission for driving lessons.”

“Pretty much.” I stopped at the corner and looked over at Charlotte. Elvis seemed to be as interested in the story as she was.

She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’ve never heard this story. So, what happened?”

I grinned. “I got my license two hours before Liam did.”

“And?” Charlotte prompted.

“And I was grounded for two weeks and couldn’t drive for a month.”

She laughed. “So was it worth it?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Not only did I get my driver’s license before Liam got his, I could drive a stick and he couldn’t.”

Charlotte pushed her glasses up her nose. “Let me guess,” she said. “Isabel taught him how to drive that old truck, too.”

I nodded. “You know Gram. She’s big on being fair.”

Gram was my dad’s mother. She had no biological connection to Liam, but she’d always considered him to be her grandchild, too.

I put on my blinker and turned onto Charlotte’s street.

“That’s Maddie’s car,” she said, pointing through the windshield.

“Maybe she’s here, then,” I said. I pulled up to the curb in front of the little stone house. It looked just the way I remembered it, like it belonged on a winding lane in the English countryside, not on an East Coast, small-town street.

Maddie’s wasn’t the only house in town with a beautiful garden. Even though the growing season was short in Maine, there seemed to be flowers everywhere in the late spring and summer; in window boxes and planters in front of the shops and in backyards like Maddie’s.

I’d seen Maddie only twice, briefly both times, since I’d been back in North Harbor. She’d been visiting her son, Christopher, in Seattle when I arrived and since she’d gotten back we hadn’t had much of a chance to spend time together. Probably because of her new romance, I realized now.

“Stay here,” I told Elvis. He meowed what I hoped was agreement.

Charlotte and I got out and walked up to the front door. She turned the antique crank doorbell and we waited.

“I don’t think she’s here,” she said after a minute or so.

I knocked on the yellow-paneled door with the heel of my hand. There was no response to that, either. “Maybe she went somewhere with her friend,” I said. I tried to keep the little twist of anxiety spinning in my chest out of my voice.

“That’s probably it.” Charlotte pressed her lips together, and I knew she wasn’t completely convinced.

I looked around. A stone walkway led around the side of the house to the backyard. “Or maybe Maddie was working in the garden and just lost track of time. Why don’t we go take a look?”

Charlotte exhaled slowly. “I’m acting like an old busybody, I know, but this is just not like her.”

I gave her arm a squeeze. “You’re not a busybody; you’re just worried about a friend. Let’s take a look. Maybe we’ll find her in the backyard, attacking the weeds.” I was trying to convince myself as much as Charlotte, because the Maddie I remembered wouldn’t have not shown up without calling—unless something was wrong.

Maddie
was
in the backyard. We found her sitting in a chair pulled up to a round teak table that looked as though it had been set for lunch. For a moment, until she wrapped one arm across her body, I wasn’t sure she was all right. I couldn’t say the same about the man in the chair beside her. It was pretty clear Arthur Fenety was dead.

Charlotte made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. “Maddie—oh, my word! What happened?” she asked, bending down and laying one hand on the other woman’s arm.

Maddie turned her head at the sound of her friend’s voice. “Charlotte,” she said. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again I could see they were bright with unshed tears. “Arthur’s gone.”

Charlotte looked at me. I pressed two fingers to Arthur Fenety’s wrist, even though I was already certain he was dead. There was an abrasion on the back of his left hand. It was red and raw but it wasn’t bleeding. His skin had an ashen pall that told me it was too late to do anything for him.

There was no pulse.

I shook my head. Had Maddie been sitting out here with a dead body? Clearly she was in shock.

Maddie focused on me then. “Sarah.” She managed a tiny smile. “I missed your workshop. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. But she obviously wasn’t.

“I want you to go wait with Charlotte. I’ll take care of things here.”

“I can’t leave Arthur alone,” she said. I noticed she avoided looking directly at the body, although she reached toward it.

I caught her hand, sandwiching it between both of mine. It was icy-cold. “He won’t be alone. I’m going to stay with him. It’s okay.”

I had a flash of memory—the night my father died—when Maddie had taken a bewildered five-year-old’s hand and told me to go with my grandmother. She’d promised to stay with my dad. Her hazel eyes locked on to mine and I wondered if she was having the same memory. “All right,” she said softly.

“I’ll take her inside,” Charlotte said.

I shook my head again. “Take her out to the truck. There’s a blanket behind the seat.”

She frowned. “The truck?”

“We shouldn’t touch anything. Out here or inside.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “You’re right.” I let go of Maddie’s hand and Charlotte helped her to her feet, putting one arm around her friend. I stepped into Maddie’s sight line so she couldn’t see the body anymore, just in case she decided to turn in that direction.

Charlotte looked back over her shoulder as they started around the side of the house. “Sarah, call nine-one-one and then call Nicolas, please,” she said. She recited a phone number.

I waited until the two of them were out of sight and then I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. After I’d hung up, I took a couple of steps closer to the body. It was slumped to the side in the teak chair, head sagging toward the right shoulder, eyes closed. There was a little foam at the right corner of the mouth, and the lips looked blue and waxy. I noticed that there was a ceramic bowl filled with fruit salad in the center of the table and a coffee cup, half-full, at Arthur Fenety’s place. I’d had a bad feeling about the man from the moment he’d brought the tea set into Second Chance, but I’d never expected things to end like this.

I pulled a hand back over my hair and punched the number Charlotte had given me into the phone. Nick Elliot was Charlotte’s son and a former EMT. He’d know what to do for someone in shock. I got his voice mail. After a moment of awkward hesitation, I explained who I was and where I was, and hung up.

Nick had been back in town only a few weeks after working for a couple of years in New Hampshire, and since North Harbor wasn’t a very big place, I was surprised I still hadn’t run into him.

I heard the wail of sirens getting closer and followed the walkway to the side of the house. I could see Charlotte and Maddie in the front seat of the truck. Elvis had climbed onto Maddie’s lap and she was stroking his fur. All of a sudden I was glad Avery had brought the cat along.

In a couple of minutes a black-and-white pulled in behind my truck and an officer got out. I raised my hand to catch his attention and he walked across the grass to me.

“Ms. Grayson?” he asked. He wore the standard patrol-officer uniform and his hair was buzzed close to his scalp, so all I could see was dark stubble.

I nodded.

“You reported a body.”

I pointed into the backyard. “At the table, just around the corner.”

“Please wait here,” he said.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and stood there while he went to have a look. In less than a minute he was back, just as an ambulance pulled in behind the police car. He held up a hand to me and walked across the lawn to meet the paramedics. I waited while he showed them the body and then came back to me again.

“Ms. Grayson, what were you doing here?” he asked.

I explained about Maddie not showing up and how Charlotte and I had come to check on her. “I think Mrs. Hamilton’s in shock,” I said, gesturing at the truck. “I thought it was better if she waited there instead of staying where the . . . body was.”

“I’ll get one of the paramedics to check on her.”

The officer, whose last name was Whalen, according to his name tag, asked more questions and I answered them as best I could. He nodded after everything I said and made notes in a small spiral-bound pad. I couldn’t read anything in his face.

“I’m going to need you to hang around for a little while, until I talk to the other two ladies,” he said finally, closing the notebook and tucking it into his shirt pocket.

“That’s all right,” I said, thinking I should call Mac and tell him I was going to be a while, but maybe not why.

I turned back to the street as a dark blue sedan squeezed in curbside in front of my truck. At the same time a black SUV parked at the end of the line of vehicles, and a man got out and started up the sidewalk. It wasn’t until he came level with the house that I realized I was looking at Nick Elliot.

“Please wait here,” Officer Whalen said to me. He headed across the lawn toward the blue car, stopping for a moment to speak to Nick. It was obvious the two men knew each other.

Nick had always been tall, but he was well over six feet now. He was wearing a navy Windbreaker over a sky blue polo shirt and black pants with multiple pockets on the sides. Charlotte got out of the truck on the driver’s side and walked around to him. He said something to the police officer and then turned his attention to his mother, putting one hand on her shoulder.

I felt a little silly just standing there next to what looked like a bed of daylilies, but I didn’t want to intrude on Nick and Charlotte’s conversation. Finally I saw Charlotte point in my direction and Nick turned my way for the first time. He said something to his mother, gave her shoulder a squeeze and started toward me.

It had been years since I’d seen him and it looked as though those years had been good to him. The sandy hair was the same, only shorter. And he was still built like a big teddy bear—but now the bear seemed to have the shoulders of a defensive lineman. He wasn’t quite the shaggy-haired, wannabe musician I remembered from all the summers I’d spent in North Harbor when I was growing up. He definitely wasn’t the same guy I’d French-kissed at fifteen.

Then he smiled at me and I caught a glimpse of the boy I remembered. “Sarah, hi,” he said.

I smiled back. “Hi, Nick,” I said, taking a couple of steps forward to meet him. “You got my message.”

“You left me a message?” He frowned and felt in his pocket for his cell phone, setting down the boxy silver case he was carrying. I wondered what had happened to the black nylon backpack full of first-aid supplies that he’d used to carry everywhere.

I looked at him uncertainly. “If you didn’t get my message, then what are you doing here?”

He gestured over his shoulder at the car angled at the curb in front of my truck. “I’m here because Michelle called me.”

From the time I was twelve years old until I was fifteen, Michelle Andrews had been my best friend in North Harbor. Each summer we’d just pick up again where we’d left off. Then right after my fifteenth birthday, all of a sudden, she stopped talking to me. I still didn’t know why. I’d known Michelle had become a police officer, but somehow it felt different to
see
her as a police officer.

“Michelle?” I said stupidly, even though I could see her getting out of the driver’s side of the car. She was wearing gray pants, an emerald green shirt and a black leather jacket. Her red hair was pulled back into a smooth ponytail.

Nick nodded. “She caught the case.”

I’d known things were going to get complicated—just not this complicated. I’d realized that as soon as the first police officer saw the body, with its blue lips and blood-specked froth at the corner of the mouth, he’d call for a detective.

I had no idea how Arthur Fenety had died, but I was certain it wasn’t from natural causes.