Buy a Whisker (12 page)

Liz slid the envelope across the table, glanced at it, and left it next to her plate. “Thank you, sweetie.”

“How's business?” Elspeth asked me as she added sugar to her coffee.

“Down from summer and fall,” I said, “but the skiers have helped.”

“Us too,” she said, taking a sip from her cup. Elspeth ran a successful spa and salon, Phantasy, which drew tourists to town for the relaxation and pampering they offered. “Last week a tour guide called. There was some problem with the grooming equipment where they were skiing, so they brought twenty-four people over for spa manicures. And Glenn McNamara supplied lunch.” She brushed her hair back from her face. “That was something Lily used to do for us.” She stared into her cup for a moment. “Her death was a horrible thing.”

“You went to school with Caleb Swift, didn't you?” I asked. “Lily went out with him for a while.”

Elspeth hesitated for a moment; then she nodded. “I did.”

A look passed between her and Liz.

“What's going on?” I said.

Elspeth pressed her lips together for a moment. Then she looked at me. “I knew Caleb,” she said.

Liz looked concerned, but she didn't speak.

Either way it was Elspeth who shook her head. “It's not a big deal, Sarah. Caleb and I went out for a while. He was a jerk, the proverbial entitled rich kid. Which I should have seen.” She rolled her eyes and gave me a self-deprecating smile. “I didn't have the best taste in men back then.”

I smiled in sympathy. “I'll tell you about some of the guys I dated in college sometime.”

We talked about some ideas Elspeth had for luring more tourists to town during the off-season. I finished the last of my coffee and stood up. “I'd better get back to the shop,” I said. “It was good to see you, Elspeth.”

She smiled. “You too.”

Liz walked me to the back door. I wrapped my arms around her in a hug. “I love you,” I said.

She smiled. “Everybody does.”

Mr. P. showed up at Second Chance just after lunch, when Avery arrived for her shift. It turned out that the two of them had walked to the shop together.

“Am I a distrustful and suspicious person for thinking that it can't be a good thing having those two in cahoots?” I said to Mac when they came in, heads together.

“They could be working toward world peace,” he said with a slight smile.

I turned and raised an eyebrow at him.

The smile got a little wider. “Or world domination,” he added. He looked at his watch. “Do you have time to go over the list of things you want to put an offer in on from the Thomas estate?”

“Yes,” I said. “Just give me five minutes to get Avery working on some new teacup gardens.”

Charlotte was at the cash desk with a pencil and a pad of paper, working on an idea for a window display for Valentine's Day. Our window displays changed a lot, usually because Charlotte or Avery had come up with a new idea. But since their ideas seemed to bring customers into the store, I didn't mind if they changed the window every second day.

I touched Charlotte on the shoulder as I passed her. “Come up with any ideas yet?” I asked. All I could see on the paper were some scratched-up hearts and the word “love” crossed out several times.

“What exactly did you have in mind for the window?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I don't really know. Just something other than hearts and chubby babies with bows and arrows. Something a little different.”

“Define ‘different,'” Charlotte said with a smile.

“I can't quite do that yet,” I said.

Her eyes twinkled. “Can I ask Avery to help me?”

“I don't know. Can you?” I said.

Charlotte laughed.

“If I say ‘yes, go ahead,' am I going to regret it?” I asked.

“Possibly.”

“Go ahead,” I said, smiling back at her. “I trust you.”

I went out to the workroom and showed Avery the box of cups and saucers I wanted her to clean and fill with potting soil. Our tiny teacup gardens were a perennial hit with the tourists, and I wanted to have more ready for the next bunch of Canadian skiers.

“Want me to do the planting, too?” she asked.

“That would be a big help,” I said. “Thank you.”

She slipped off the stack of bracelets she was wearing on her left arm—some of them her own creations and some from her collection of vintage jewelry—and stacked them on the workbench. “Is it okay if I help Charlotte with the front window when I'm done?” she asked, picking up the box of teacups.

I nodded. “As a matter of fact, she'd like your help,” I said. “She's looking for ideas.”

Avery grinned. “I'm full of ideas,” she said.

She was definitely full of something.

Mac was just coming out of the tiny staff room with two cups of coffee when I got to the top of the stairs.

“Umm, is one of those for me?” I asked.

“Yes, it is,” he said, holding out one of the mugs.

We spent the next hour going over our scribbled list of items we'd seen at the Thomas house that might work in the store. I was surprised by how
many of the items I had scrawled on my handwritten list had ended up on Mac's as well.

“Great minds think alike, I guess,” I said when we got to the sixth thing in a row.

“It's better than fools seldom differ,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me.

I shifted sideways in my chair and tucked one foot up underneath me. “Speaking of fools,” I said. “I told Rose I wasn't going to give them a hard time anymore about their investigations.”

“Why?” he asked, narrowing his dark eyes.

I stretched my shoulders, hunching them up around my ears. “It took me a while, but I realized that I'm wasting my time. They're either going to nod and smile and do what they want anyway. Or argue until they wear me out and do what they want anyway. I decided to eliminate that whole part in the middle.” I pulled my hand back through my hair. “It's the part that makes my hair fall out, so it seemed like a good part to get rid of.”

Mac tented his fingers over the mouth of his cup. “What about Nick?”

“He can fight with them if he wants to,” I said, stretching my arms out in front of me. “Let Nick's hair fall out for a little while and see how he likes it.”

Mac stood up. “For what it's worth, I think it's a good decision,” he said. He looked toward the hallway. “I'd better go see how Avery is doing.” He gestured at the notepad on my lap. “Let me know if you want me to check the numbers before you put the final offer together.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I will.”

He hesitated in the doorway. “Sarah, what about the chandelier from Doran's department store? What do you want to do with it? It doesn't look like the North Landing project is going to happen, so are they still going to want to buy it for some other project?”

I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. “Is it ready?”

“I've cleaned it up and replaced the missing screws. I don't want to do much more without some money on the table. What do you think?”

I looked up at the ceiling, but there weren't any answers there. “I agree with you.” I got to my feet. “I think I'll call Jon West's office. If he's not interested anymore, I'll call the guy I told you about who's renovating that restaurant.”

He nodded. “Let me know what happens.”

“I will,” I said.

Mac left, and I moved over to my desk. The door opened a little more and Elvis wandered in, giving a start of surprise when he saw me. “Merow?” he said inquiringly.

“Hey, it's my office, too,” I said.

He looked around as if he were going to dispute my words. Then he walked around the desk, jumped onto my chair and gave me a look that was decidedly smug.

“That doesn't prove anything,” I said. I scooped him up and sat down in the chair, and he settled himself happily on my lap. I had the feeling I'd just been conned.

I called the North by West office and left a message with Jon West's assistant. She promised she'd have him call me back as soon as possible. That was the kind of promise I tended to view with a lot of skepticism, so I was surprised when my phone rang only twenty minutes later and it was the North by West developer on the other end.

“Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, Jon,” I said. “I wanted to check with you before we put the chandelier from the Doran's department store up on our website or sold it to someone else.”

“Oh, I'm still interested in it,” he said.

“You are?” I couldn't quite keep the surprise out of my voice.

“I could be there in about half an hour to take another look at it,” he said. I heard what sounded like the slam of a vehicle door.

“That would work,” I said. “Do you remember how to find us?”

“I do,” he said. “I'll see you in thirty minutes.”

I hung up the phone and leaned back in the chair, stroking Elvis's fur with one hand. “Jon West is going to be here in about half an hour,” I said.

He turned his head and looked at me with one green eye.

“Yes, I know Rose will be all over him like you on a can of Tasty Tenders.”

He lifted his head and licked his lips.

“I don't actually have any right now,” I said.

That got me a glare before he dropped his head again. Elvis may have been a cat, but he seemed to
have a better command of the English language than some people did.

I looked at the papers I'd just laid on my desk. “I'll work on these later,” I said to Elvis. “Let's go see what's happening downstairs.”

He jumped to the floor before I could set him down. I got up, brushed the cat hair off my lap and put on a little rosy lip gloss. Elvis, meanwhile, was washing his face.

“Ready?” I asked.

He made one last pass behind his left ear.

“You look good,” I said.

He tipped his head to one side and eyed me. Then he meowed again and started for the door.

Apparently we both looked presentable.

“You know, I read somewhere that the longer people live together, the more they start doing the same things,” I said as we started down the stairs. “Do you think that happens with cats and people?”

Elvis stopped on the second step and gave me a look that could only be interpreted as “Don't be ridiculous.”

Charlotte and Avery had their heads together at the cash desk, but Avery bounced over to me before I could cross the floor to them.

“Sarah, can we do KISS in the front window?” she asked. She was like a puppy in her enthusiasm, and Elvis made a wide berth around her and headed for the back room.

“Do you mean candy kisses or people kissing?” I asked.

“Number one, no. And number two, ewww!” she said, making a face. “I mean the retro band. You know, the guys in makeup.”

I looked over at Charlotte. “You said you wanted something that wasn't the typical hearts and flowers,” she said with a completely straight face.

“What exactly do you want to do?” I asked warily.

“We want to do the band in the window,” Avery said, making a gesture in that direction with one hand. “We could use those mannequins we got from Doran's.”

I'd known that trip would come back to haunt me. When we bought the huge chandelier from the lobby of the Portland department store, we'd also purchased several old-style glass-front wooden display cases and six mannequins.

“You can't let these go to the dump,” Avery had insisted when she'd come across a row of the plastic people. “These are art.”

The vintage figures looked like giant Barbie dolls. Mac had come to stand beside me. “It's not the worst idea,” he'd said quietly.

“Okay,” I said. “Have you lost your mind?”

Mac had given me an enigmatic smile and held up his phone. “People collect just about everything, including store mannequins from the 1960s, which I'm almost certain these are.”

We'd ended up buying six of the dozen figures, disassembled in three large cardboard cartons, for five dollars apiece, and then we'd turned around and sold two of them for two hundred and fifty dollars to a collector in Florida who had stowed them in the back of his Winnebago RV. As he'd driven off, it had looked like one of them was waving out the back window.

“What are you going to do for costumes and wigs?” I asked.

“That's why this idea is so totally brilliant,” Avery said, throwing her hands into the air. “It's not going to cost anything, if that's what you're worried about, and I know it is.”

“Nothing?” I said.

“I swear,” she said, pressing one hand to her chest with a melodramatic flourish. “Mr. P. said that Sam and the guys in his band dressed up as KISS for some kind of charity thing and we could probably use their stuff if we asked. So could we ask?”

Before I could say yes or no, she waved her other hand. “And I can borrow whatever makeup stuff I need from Phantasy. I already called Elspeth and asked her. Could you just please say yes so we can get on with it?”

A life-size KISS re-creation in my front window for Valentine's Day? It was just plain weird.

I looked over at Charlotte, who smiled back at me. I looked at Avery, who looked like she was going to bounce out of her skin.

“Yes,” I said.

Avery turned to Charlotte and did a fist pump in the air. Then she turned back to me.

“Thanks, Sarah,” she said. “I promise you're going to love it.”

“You're responsible for asking Sam about borrowing those costumes.”

“Deal,” she said at once.

“And you have to do all the heavy lifting, not Charlotte.”

“I promise,” she said, crossing her heart with one finger like a five-year-old making a playground swear.

She pulled out her cell phone. “I'll call Sam right now.”

I walked over to Charlotte. “KISS?”

“Would you like to see the list of ideas I vetoed?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don't think so.”

“You have to admit, our more . . . exotic windows are the ones that seem to bring in customers,” Charlotte pointed out. “Remember the Christmas goat?”

I laughed. The Christmas goat came from the Scandinavian holiday tradition. Our Christmas goat in robes like an old-fashioned Santa Claus had brought a lot of people into the store, if only to ask why a goat was playing Saint Nick. It had been worth the thirty dollars I'd paid for the toy goat at a Bangor toy store.

“Just don't let it get too exotic,” I said.

In the back room Mac had the chandelier laid out on a clean tarp. He was at the workbench. I walked over to him. “Jon West is on his way over,” I said.

“Now?” he said.

His gaze went to the end wall where Mr. P. and Rose were doing something on Mr. P.'s laptop.

I sighed. “This is the universe testing my resolve because I said I wasn't going to try to stop them from being detectives if that's what they wanted.”

Mac nodded and smiled, his gaze coming back to me. “The universe has a perverse sense of humor sometimes,” he said.

I smiled back at him and then looked over at the old light. “You still feel comfortable about the price we agreed on for the chandelier?”

He turned the screwdriver he was holding over in
his fingers. “I do. I added a cushion for any expenses we didn't think of. We can make a nice profit off this piece and Jon West will do all right as well. The light's almost an antique, and it is a piece of Maine history. Not to mention he'll be spending a lot less than a new chandelier would cost him.”

“I think I'll just stand back and let you handle things, then,” I said.

“Based on the last time he was here, I think he prefers your charm just a little more than mine.”

I laughed. “Jon is a bit of a flirt, isn't he?”

Mac's expression got serious. “He also goes hard after what he wants. Don't forget that.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I won't.”

Jon West arrived exactly twenty-nine minutes after I'd spoken to him.

“Hi, Sarah,” he said, holding out his hand as he stepped into the store. “I'm glad you called. I'm looking forward to seeing the light fixture all cleaned up.”

He was wearing jeans and a rust-colored denim work jacket with a heavy pile lining and the corduroy collar turned up. His shaggy dark hair was pulled back, like it often was, in a ponytail.

“C'mon back to the workroom,” I said, leading the way.

Mac met us at the door. “Jon, it's good to see you again,” he said, offering his hand.

“You too,” the developer said. The two men shook hands, and then we walked over to the tarp.

Mac and I waited without speaking while Jon West walked around the chandelier.

“Is that the original ceiling chain?” he asked. “I forgot to ask you before.”

I nodded. “And the original ceiling rosette.”

He crouched down to get a closer look at the cutwork and the glass shade. “What about the shade?”

“I don't think so,” Mac said. “It's the shade that was with the light, but we think it was a replacement for the original, probably circa 1930.”

“Are you firm on the price?” West asked, training his blue eyes on me. “Or is there some room to move?” He smiled.

“There's some room to move,” I said with a smile of my own. “I wouldn't argue if you wanted to give me more than we're asking.”

He laughed, straightened up and named a figure that was less than half the amount I'd originally quoted him.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I can't do that when I have other buyers interested.”

West circled the light. Based on the architect's drawings for the hotel that he'd shown us several weeks before, it would look spectacular in the lobby.

“Can I ask who your other buyers are?” he said.

I patted the pocket where I'd put my cell phone as though I'd just felt it vibrate even though it hadn't. “Of course you can,” I said. “I can't tell you, but I don't mind you asking.” Then I smiled.

He named a number that was ten percent more
than his previous figure. I just shook my head. He walked over and stood beside me, his hands in his pockets. “C'mon, Sarah. You know how this works. You name a number. I name a number. We volley back and forth a little and settle on a price.”

“We already did that,” I said. “When you originally called me about the light. I've given you my best price.”

West turned to look at the chandelier again. “That light's a piece of history. It was cast at a foundry just outside of North Harbor. I really want it to be the focal point of the hotel in the harbor development.”

“Do you even have a development?” Rose asked.

I'd seen her start over toward us out of the corner of my eye, but short of tackling her and wrestling her to the floor, I didn't see any way to stop her. My resolution to let the Angels do their thing was about to be tested.

Jon West turned to face Rose. “Excuse me?” he said.

Rose gestured to the chandelier. “You're right. That light is a piece of our history and I would like to see it stay in town, but you don't have all the property you need to start building. You don't have Lily's Bakery.” She studied him for a long moment, then gave her head a slight shake and offered a smile along with her hand. “Where are my manners?” she said. “I'm Rose Jackson, Mr. West.”

Jon West shook her hand and returned her smile with a smooth, professional smile of his own. “I'm guessing you shopped at Doran's,” he said.

“Yes, I did,” Rose said. “I remember being in the
lobby of the Portland store just before Christmas when I was about five. They had a huge evergreen tree set up under that light. It must have been eight feet tall, maybe higher. My father picked me up so I could have a candy cane from the tree, and to me it looked like that chandelier was the star on the top.”

“That's a wonderful memory,” he said, tapping one hand against his leg.

Knowing Rose, it was possible it was actually a wonderful fabrication.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “But it doesn't have anything to do with my original question, which you haven't answered. How are you going to build North Landing without the bakery?”

Elvis had come in from somewhere and jumped up on the workbench behind us. He bumped Jon West's arm with his head, and West reached over and absently began to pet the cat. “I hope to buy the bakery from Lily Carter's estate,” he said.

“Did you kill her so you could do that?” Rose asked in the same tone of voice she might have used to ask if he wanted a cup of tea. “Lily wouldn't sell to you when she was alive.”

New resolve or not, I couldn't just stand there while she accused the man of murder. I stepped between them. “Rose, this isn't the place for this conversation,” I said.

Jon West held up the hand that wasn't stroking Elvis's fur. “It's all right, Sarah. I don't mind answering Mrs. Jackson's question. No, I did not kill Lily Carter. I wasn't anywhere near that bakery.”

Rose had had one hand in her pocket the entire time she'd been talking. Now she pulled it out. She was holding Mr. P.'s cell phone. “When I was a child we had an expression—‘liar, liar pants on fire,'” she said. She glanced down. “I think yours are about to start smoking.”

She held up the phone so we could see it. It was playing what looked like some kind of security video. It was black-and-white, and the quality could have been better. Even so, I recognized the back of Lily's Bakery.

“What is this, Rose?” I asked.

“Just watch, please,” she said.

I saw a figure then, just at the edge of the picture. He or she slipped out the back door of the bakery and disappeared out of the frame. Whoever it was had on a heavy denim work jacket and a knitted cap. What looked like a long, dark ponytail poked out from underneath the hat. The person was careful to keep his or her face turned away from the camera.

“Where did you get this?” Mac asked.

“I have my sources,” Rose said primly.

I had a feeling her source was over at the other end of the room.

“That's you,” she said to Jon West.

West shook his head. “No, it's not.” He looked at me. “You all can't seriously think I killed Lily Carter over the North Landing development.” He jabbed a finger at the cell phone. “This is fake.”

He'd stopped petting Elvis, who bumped him
again with his head. He reached out and stroked the cat's fur again.

Rose shook her head. “No, it's not. It's from a security camera on the building next to the bakery.” There was a slight edge of accusation to her voice. “You were the one playing all those childish tricks on Lily, and when they didn't work, you killed her.”

“Stop,” I said sharply, holding up both hands. “Just stop.” I took the phone out of her hand. “Jon, this does look like you,” I said. “I'm not saying you killed Lily, but did you go there to talk to her?”

The muscles along his jawline were tight, and I could tell he was gritting his teeth together. “I didn't go talk to Lily the night she died. I wasn't the person harassing her, and I didn't kill her. I wasn't even in town the night she died.” Anger made his voice rougher.

He pulled his free hand back over his neck and turned to look at Rose for a moment. “You're incorrect. The entire project is
not
in danger of falling apart. It never was. The town was going to expropriate that piece of land. All that's happened now is that the timeline has been pushed back. The estate will be settled. We'll buy the property instead of going to expropriation, and North Landing
will
go ahead. So yes, Lily made me angry enough that I had a moment or two when I wanted to strangle her, but I didn't actually do it. I had no reason to.”

Elvis shook himself and walked along the workbench to sit by Mac.

West wrestled his emotions back in check. “Sarah, the project is still a go. It's just on hold while everything is settled with the bakery property. Please, would you hold the chandelier for me? I'll cut you a check for a quarter of the price as a deposit.”

I nodded. “Yes.”