The Whole Cat and Caboodle: Second Chance Cat Mystery (5 page)

I cut four tiny bites of chicken for Elvis, set them on a piece of paper towel on the floor and crooked my index finger at the cat. He rubbed the side of his face against Maddie’s wrist, jumped down and came across the floor to me. Being a well-mannered cat, he gave a soft meow of thanks before he started eating.

I poured a cup of tea for myself, added lots of milk and sugar and took the last seat at Charlotte’s table. Liz lifted her cup and nodded with what I took to be approval of my tea-making abilities. I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d told Charlotte it was the only thing Gram had been able to teach me to do in the kitchen.

“Sarah, what’s going to happen now?” Maddie asked. Both of her hands were wrapped around the china teacup. She had long fingers, the nails cut short and square, the opposite of Liz’s immaculate manicure.

I ran my finger around the rim of the cup. I didn’t want to tell Maddie or the others about my suspicions. “There’ll be an autopsy,” I said, finally. “The police will have more questions for you. They’ll need to contact his family.”

Maddie put a hand to her throat. “Oh, my word,” she said, the color that had come back to her face draining away. “I forgot about Daisy.”

I looked at Liz, raising an eyebrow.

“Arthur Fenety’s sister,” she whispered.

Charlotte put a hand on Maddie’s arm. “The police will take care of that,” she said.

“I should call her.”

Charlotte shook her head. “You can call her later.”

“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Liz said, tracing the loop of the teacup handle with one finger.

Maddie exhaled slowly. “I don’t really know what to tell you,” she said. “I invited Arthur for brunch. He says it’s the best parts of breakfast and lunch put together and the time is more civilized.” Her voice trailed away. She cleared her throat and when she spoke again her voice was stronger. “He arrived between quarter after twelve and twelve thirty. We talked for a few minutes; then I went in to start cooking. I was going to make an omelet for the two of us to share when the phone rang. Everything took longer than I meant it to. When the omelet was ready and I went back outside, Arthur was . . . gone.” She looked across the table at me. “I couldn’t find a pulse. I . . . I should have called an ambulance. I don’t know what came over me. It was only a couple of minutes and you and Charlotte showed up, thank heavens.”

“How long were you in the house?” I asked. Elvis had finished his snack and had started washing his face. He paused, one paw raised, as though he wanted to hear Maddie’s answer, too.

She turned to look at me, fingering the collar of her tailored yellow blouse. “I don’t know, really. I didn’t look at the clock. No more than about fifteen or twenty minutes, I’m guessing. I . . . I shouldn’t have left him alone for so long.”

Liz immediately spoke up. “Don’t think like that. Arthur wasn’t a young man. This kind of thing can happen at our age.” She’d put a cookie on her napkin and broken it into several pieces, but I noticed she hadn’t eaten any of them.

I nodded agreement that I didn’t completely feel. I didn’t see the point in saying that I didn’t think Arthur Fenety had died of natural causes. “Liz is right,” I said. “There’s no point in speculating. Let the police do their job.” I glanced at my watch. “Is there anything else I can do for you before I head back to the store?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m in good hands here.” She looked at Liz and Charlotte before her gaze met mine again.

I pushed back my chair and got to my feet. Charlotte stood up as well and came around the table, wrapping me in a hug. “Thank you, sweetie,” she whispered against my ear.

“If you need anything, call me,” I said softly.

She nodded.

I leaned down and put my arm around Maddie’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry this happened,” I said. “But I’m very glad that I got to see you.”

She reached up and covered my hand with hers. “I’m glad I got to see you, too, Sarah,” she said.

I straightened up and Liz was on her feet. “I’ll walk out with you,” she said. “I think I blocked you in.”

I scooped Elvis up off the floor, gave Maddie and Charlotte one last smile and headed for the front door with Liz right behind me.

Liz’s car was parked at the curb. It wasn’t blocking my truck in any way.

“I can back out just fine,” I said to her.

She crossed one arm over her midsection. “Well, look at that,” she said. She gave a small shrug.

“Yes, look at that,” I repeated. Elvis leaned sideways in my arms and gave Liz a look that could only be described as skeptical.

“I’m glad you were with Charlotte,” she said.

I opened the driver’s door of the truck and set Elvis on the seat. He immediately sat down and looked expectantly up at Liz.

I turned to face her. “Okay, what’s going on?” I said.

She brushed a stray thread off her lavender shirt. “Nothing’s going on. I just wanted to ask you what happened without Maddie sitting right there.”

I explained how Charlotte and I had ended up at the little stone house, how we’d gone looking for Maddie and found her in the backyard with Arthur Fenety’s body.

“Why didn’t she call for help?”

I’d wondered the same thing myself. “I don’t know,” I said. “Shock, I guess.”

Liz narrowed her blue eyes. “Do you think he had a heart attack?”

I didn’t want to lie to her. Plus I wasn’t very good at it. “I don’t know,” I said, fishing my keys out of my pocket. “He was slumped to one side. I felt for his pulse and I couldn’t find one.”

She nodded, seeming satisfied with my answer. “I should get back inside,” she said.

“Call me if Maddie or any of you need anything.”

“I will.” Liz reached over and patted my cheek. “I’m glad you’re here, Sarah.” She turned then and headed back up the driveway.

I climbed in the truck and waited until she was inside before I backed into the street. I looked down at Elvis next to me on the seat. “There’s something Liz wasn’t telling me,” I said.

He gave a short, sharp meow. I decided to see it as him agreeing with me.

I reached over and gave the top of his head a scratch. “So what’s her secret?” I said. “And what does it have to do with Arthur Fenety?”

Elvis made a sound close to a sigh.

Clearly he didn’t know, either.

Rose was going through boxes when I got back to the store. The double doors to the storage area were open so she could keep an eye on the store, but there were no customers. The first couple of days of the week were always quiet. I set Elvis down and he made a beeline for Rose. Poking his nose and a paw into boxes was kind of his hobby.

She was unpacking a collection of vintage Fiestaware. I knew of at least two collectors who would be interested in the brightly colored cream soup and onion soup bowls. She smiled at me, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Hello, dear,” she said. “Did you go see Maddie?”

I nodded.

She immediately noticed my serious expression. “Is Maddie all right?”

“She’s fine. It’s her . . . friend. Arthur Fenety. He’s . . . dead.”

“Oh, good gracious,” Rose said, closing her eyes for a brief moment. “Where’s Maddie?”

“She’s at Charlotte’s. Liz is there, too.”

Rose nodded. “Good.”

“If you want to leave now, it’s all right with me,” I said.

She set the forest green bowl she’d been holding down on the table. “Thank you, but Maddie’s in good hands. I’ll stop in on my way home.” She brushed bits of newsprint from the front of her red apron. “Do you know what happened to Arthur?”

I shook my head. “Not really. There’ll be an autopsy to find out for sure.”

“That’s so sad for Daisy,” Rose said. “She’s Arthur’s sister. I don’t know if there’s any other family.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that Nick had taken a job with the medical examiner?” I asked.

“It wasn’t my place.”

“Charlotte told me they disagreed.”

Rose pushed her glasses up her nose. “That’s one way to put it,” she said.

I looked around. There were two very large boxes on the floor, holding open one of the doors. Elvis was poking one of the flaps with a paw, trying to get it open. “Get out of that,” I said.

He turned to look at me over his shoulder and then went back to scraping at the cardboard. “Hey!” I snapped. “Stop it!”

He didn’t even bother glancing back at me.

“Jessie’s coming to pick up those two boxes,” Rose said. “Elvis can’t get them open. He can’t hurt anything.”

“That’s not the point,” I said, dropping my bag to the floor so I could go grab the cat. “I told him to stop. He acts like he can’t hear me.”

Rose took another paper-wrapped bowl from the box at her elbow. “Oh, he can hear you. He just doesn’t have any intention of listening.” She smiled without looking up. “He’s a cat.”

“He’s a very bad cat,” I said, picking him off the floor. “You’re bad,” I said, sternly, shaking my finger at him.

His response was to sniff it. Behind me Rose laughed.

I set Elvis down just inside the store. I pointed to the steps. “Go upstairs.” I made a shooing motion with my hand for emphasis. He looked at me unblinkingly. Then he made a wide circle around me and went back into the storage room, in search of Mac—or more boxes he could paw his way into.

“Where’s Mac?” I said to Rose.

She dipped her head toward the back of the space. “He’s in the shed.”

I headed for the door along the back wall. Elvis had jumped onto a metal plant stand. He looked a little like some Egyptian cat-god statue.

I found Mac out back in what we called the shed. The outbuilding had most likely been a two-car garage originally. It had been built much later than the house and had had at least two other lives that I knew about—as an appliance repair business and a pottery studio. My long-term plans were to fix the roof, add some insulation and use the space for more formal workshops, along with badly needed extra storage.

Mac was crouched down in front of a long dresser. It had two long drawers, two short ones, and it sat on four squat, curved feet. The wood, which we thought was elm, was in pretty decent shape. Really the only problem was the fact that it had been painted an unfortunate shade of orange that I thought was reserved just for traffic cones.

“What do you think?” I asked.

He squinted up at me. “The joints are all solid. There’s no sign of mold or worms, although it does smell pretty strongly of mothballs and, if my nose is correct, Evening in Paris perfume.”

“Some time in the sun will get rid of a lot of the smell,” I said. I took a couple of steps to the front of the chest so I could get the full effect of the orange.

“What are you going to do for a finish?” Mac asked, getting to his feet and brushing the dust off his hands. He’d rolled back his sleeves and I could see the muscles in his arms. Mac was all lean, strong muscle. A couple of times I’d thought about inviting him for a run but I was a bit afraid he’d leave me behind.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I’m going for a distressed look but I’m not sure about the color.”

“That orange is pretty distressing,” Mac said with a smile as he came to stand beside me.

I rolled my eyes. “You’ve been spending too much time with Avery.”

He smoothed a hand over his head. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Avery.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What did she do?”

“Nothing. I was thinking maybe we should see if she’d be interested in helping me do some work in here.”

“You mean repurposing some of the pieces?” I said. I looked around. Between Mac and me there were probably a dozen refurbishing projects in various stages of completion and maybe eight or nine more waiting to be worked on.

“She has a good eye for color.”

I had been thinking the same thing. “Okay,” I said, rubbing my left shoulder with the other hand. “I trust your judgment.” I squinted at the chest of drawers, trying to picture it in some other—any other—color. Green, maybe.

Mac frowned at me. “Everything okay?”

I blew out a breath. “I’m not sure. One of the women didn’t show up for the workshop. Madeline—Maddie—she’s a friend of Gram’s. I’ve known her since I was a little girl.” I stretched my left arm up over my head trying to work out the stiffness. “Charlotte and I went to check on her.”

“Was she okay?”

“She was. But her gentleman friend wasn’t. He was . . . uh . . . dead.”

“Dead?” Mac said. His brown eyes narrowed with concern. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure.” I headed for the door and he followed. “The police came, and after that I took Maddie and Charlotte over to Charlotte’s house. That’s what took me so long.”

We swung the wide doors shut and I made sure they were both closed tightly and locked securely. “Do you remember that older man who came in the other day with the silver tea set?” I asked Mac.

“White hair, mustache, nice suit. I remember,” he said, bending down to snag a plastic grocery bag that was blowing across the pavement. “Wait a minute. It was him?”

I nodded. “Arthur Fenety. Which reminds me, the police will be by to get that tea set. It’s in my office.”

Mac shook out the bag and dropped it in the recycling bin by the back door of the shop. “So, how did the workshop go?”

“Good,” I said. “Except Avery brought Elvis with her.”

“Why?”

“She says he’s good advertising for the shop.”

He smiled. “What was her plan? Put a little signboard on him and have him walk up and down the sidewalk?”

“Don’t say that out loud,” I said. “It’s just the thing Avery would be apt to try.”

Elvis was back at the boxes propping open the door, trying diligently to work one paw under a flap of cardboard on the top of the box.

“Don’t do that,” Mac said.

Elvis immediately pulled his paw back and sat down on his haunches.

“I’ll start bringing things in from the truck,” Mac said, heading for the front door.

“I’ll be right there,” I said. I looked down at Elvis, who had come to sit by my feet. “So, him you listen to?”

He looked up at me and blinked, all green-eyed innocence.

Rose was showing a customer the little teacup gardens—tiny, hardy Haworthia or chives, planted in odd china cups with saucers. I inclined my head in her direction. “Go help Rose,” I said. To my surprise Elvis headed purposefully across the floor in her direction. Sometimes I got the feeling that cat was messing with me.

Mac and I unloaded the truck and put everything back in the storage room. Rose sold four teacup gardens and I helped her wrap them while Elvis entertained the customer. By the time we had finished it was five minutes past store closing time. Rose walked around tidying up the displays while I ran the vacuum over the floor and Mac swept the storage room.

“If you talk to Jess tonight tell her those boxes of clothes are ready, please,” Mac said, pulling on his denim jacket.

“I will,” I said.

Jess was my closest friend in North Harbor—closest friend of my age, anyway. I’d known her casually when we were teenagers, but we’d gotten close after we became roommates in college. She had a great sense of funky style, and with a sewing machine and a pair of scissors she could make over just about any piece of clothing. Everything she restyled ended up in a little used and vintage clothing shop on the waterfront. She’d also started making one-of-a-kind quilts from recycled fabric. I’d had two of them in the shop and they’d sold within a week.

Mac picked up Rose’s canvas tote bag. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. Now that sailing season was over I wondered what Mac would do with his free time. In the four months we’d worked together I’d learned very little about him. Any questions about his private life usually got only a one- or two-word answer.

Rose stopped to give me a hug. “Thank you for taking care of Maddie today,” she said. “Give Isabel my love when you talk to her.”

“I will,” I promised. I felt in my pocket for the little piece of paper Mr. P. had given me to write down the names of the women who had passed on messages to Gram. It was still there.

I locked the door behind Mac and Rose. Then I did a circuit around the store, trailed by Elvis, looking to see what was selling and what might need a little more tweaking. There were only three of the teacup gardens left. I knew there were cups in the storage room and more tiny plants upstairs in my office.

“Wanna help me do some planting?” I said to Elvis. He tipped his head to one side as though he was considering the question and then meowed. I took it as a yes.

I set up outside on an old, paint-spattered table we kept by the back door. Elvis jumped up and immediately began poking his whiskers in everything. He had to sniff the cups and the plants, and when I took the lid off the pail of potting soil he stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the edge and pushed his face down inside before I could stop him.

And immediately sneezed. And sneezed. And sneezed. He shook his head vigorously, meowed indignantly and swiped at his nose with one paw.

I struggled to keep a straight face. Even though Elvis was a cat and not a person, it seemed mean to laugh at him.

“Let me see,” I said. I reached for him and used the hem of my shirt to wipe some of the dirt from his black fur. He sneezed one more time and glared at me as if somehow this whole thing was my fault. I fished in my pocket for a Kleenex to try to clean his face a little better.

“I don’t think he’s going to blow his nose,” a voice said behind me. I turned around to see Michelle standing a few feet away, hands in her pockets, a small smile on her face.

“He’s pretty smart,” I said.

“Oh, it’s not that I think he couldn’t. It’s just from his expression I don’t think he’s going to.”

Elvis was leaning sideways, watching Michelle intently as she crossed the space between us. He still had a slightly sour look on his face. I took advantage of the fact that his attention had shifted to clean his fur. He shook his head and took a swipe at my hand with his paw, but his claws weren’t out so I knew he wasn’t really that mad.

“What’s his name?” Michelle held out her hand so the cat could sniff it.

“Elvis.”

He sniffed a couple of times and seemed to like what his nose told him.

“What happened to his nose?” she asked, gesturing to the long, ropy scar that almost bisected the cat’s nose.

“Nobody knows,” I said with a shrug. “The best guess the vet could give is that he got into a fight with something that was probably a lot bigger than he is. The cat, I mean, not the vet.”

Elvis butted her hand with his head, kitty shorthand for “Give me a scratch.” Michelle obliged, stroking the top of his head, brushing away the last bit of soil and peat moss clinging to his fur. His eyes narrowed into slits and he began to purr.

“You have a friend,” I said.

She smiled. “I like cats. Is Elvis the cat that was wandering around downtown for a while?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“How did you end up with him?” Elvis was leaning against her arm, rumbling like a well-tuned motorboat engine.

“Sam,” I said, brushing potting soil off my shirt.

“That explains a lot,” she said, her smile widening. “The animal-control officer tried for weeks to capture this cat. He set up a cage in the alley by Sam’s place. All he ended up catching was one very pissed-off seagull.”

I laughed. “I’m sure Sam had nothing to do with that.”

Michelle rolled her eyes. “I’m sure.” She smiled down at Elvis, who was nudging her hand because she’d stopped scratching behind his ear. “Well, I’m glad he ended up with you.”

I didn’t know what else to say to her. Silence settled between us like a large rock. Then I remembered the silver service. That was probably why Michelle was here. “You came for the tea set that Arthur Fenety wanted to sell,” I said.

“I did,” she said

“It’s in my office,” I said, gesturing at the back door. “Come in and I’ll get it for you.”

Elvis jumped down and followed us. To be more exact, he followed Michelle. When we stepped inside the store she stopped in the middle of the room and looked around.

“This is really nice,” she said. “I should have come in before now.” She looked at me and it was hard to read her expression. Was that guilt I could see in her eyes? I felt as if that rock had just landed in the middle of the room between us.

I cleared my throat. “You’re welcome anytime,” I said. “If I’m not here, Elvis usually is.”

The cat gave an enthusiastic meow at the sound of his own name. We both laughed and it seemed to chase away some of the awkwardness.