Buy a Whisker (14 page)

Jess and I had agreed to meet at her shop after work and walk over to Thursday-night jam together. She was just finishing a display in the tiny front window when I walked in. I waved at Elin, one of her two partners, who was behind the cash register. Jess hugged me, and I began peeling off my outdoor things. “How was your day?” I asked.

“Very good,” she said. “I started a quilt with those vintage rocker tees from that last box I got from you guys. Come take a look.”

I followed her into her sewing space, which was a small room off the main store. The quilt she had started piecing was spread over her worktable. “Oh, that's nice,” I said.

She grinned. “I think so. Will you tell Mac thanks for me? He's the one who found the shirts.”

I nodded. “I have some news that involves Mac.”

“What is it?” she asked, leaning back against the table.

“He's going to move in to the shop. We're going to make an apartment on the second floor.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“What prompted that?” Jess asked.

I explained about the building where Mac was
living being sold and how Avery had suggested we turn the storage room into a small apartment.

“I think that's a great idea, having Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious living above the shop,” Jess said, resting her hands on either side of the table. “You won't have to worry about security, and the rent will help you get the building paid off faster.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “He
is
paying rent, right?”

I nodded. “Yes, Mac is paying rent. We're being very professional about the whole thing.”

She gave me a saucy grin. “Would it be a bad thing to get a little unprofessional with Mac? Since you don't want to start something with Nick.”

“You're incorrigible,” I said.

She flipped her long hair over her shoulder. “Yeah, that's part of my charm.”

I looked at my watch. “We should probably get going if we want to get a decent table.”

“Do you know if Nick is coming?” Jess asked as she pulled on her coat.

“He said he is,” I said. “Oh, and he said to tell you the nachos and salsa are on him.”

She clasped both hands under her chin and gave me a moony, love-struck look. “I love it when a guy buys me things to impress you. You think I could convince him that buying me a pair of diamond earrings is the way to your heart?”

“No,” I said, feeling in my pocket to make sure I had my phone. “And Nick isn't buying nachos to impress me. He's buying them because you bought them last time.”

Jess laced her fingers together and rested her hands on top of her head. “Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.”

I was out of witty comebacks. I stuck my tongue out at her.

Nick showed up just before Sam came out for the jam, sliding onto a chair between us that Jess had been guarding for the previous half hour.

“Tortilla chips and salsa are on the way,” he said.

“Nicolas Elliot, I may love you,” Jess said with mock seriousness, one hand pressed to her chest with her usual melodramatic flair.

“Are you sure it's not just my hot salsa you love?” he asked, drawing out the word “salsa” and making it sound a little risqué.

“It is spicy,” Jess crooned, winking at him.

I rolled my eyes at them. “Will you two knock it off?” I said.

The waiter came to the table then and set the food between Nick and Jess.

Jess propped one elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “Ignore her,” she said to Nick. “She's just jealous because there's a little heat between us.”

I covered my face with both hands and shook my head while the two of them laughed. I was saved from any more of their wit by Sam slipping onto a stool onstage and starting on the intro to Clapton's “Wonderful Tonight
.
”

We didn't talk at all during the first set, although
more than once Nick's eyes met mine when we were both singing along with the music.

Finally Sam said, “Thank you very much. We're going to take a little break and we'll be back.”

The noise level in the pub immediately rose. Nick pushed back his chair and looked around for our waiter.

Jess leaned forward and caught my eye. “So when are you going to start work on the new apartment?” she asked.

“As soon as I get the building permit,” I said, grabbing the last tortilla chip from the basket.

“You mean the place Rose is going to move into?” Nick asked. He caught the eye of our waiter and pointed to the table. “Mom told me,” he added.

“No, she's adding an apartment over the shop,” Jess said. “Mac's going to live there.”

“You're not serious?” Nick said. Even though Jess had been talking, he was looking at me.

“I am,” I said. “Do you have a problem with Mac?”

Nick wiped a hand across his chin. “No,” he said, but I noticed it had taken just a little bit longer than it should have for the response. “But make sure you get Josh Evans to draw up a rental agreement, you know, just to be on the safe side.”

He got to his feet. “Excuse me a second. I see someone I need to talk to.”

“Somebody's jealous,” Jess said in a singsong voice.

I made a snort of annoyance. “More like somebody stays in touch with Liam and when my brother's not around starts acting like him.”

“How is Liam?” Jess asked. She picked up the empty salsa dish, sighed softly and set it back down.

“He's good,” I said. “Busy. He had dinner with Mom and Dad on Sunday, and Mom said he may be in town soon, something about a project he's going to consult on.” I reached for my cup and drank the last of my coffee. “That reminds me, what's the status of North Landing?”

Jess made a face. “I'll know more tomorrow. There's a meeting scheduled for six thirty.”

“Any idea what's going to happen?”

She shook her head. “Not a clue.”

Over by the stage I spotted Vince Kennedy talking to Asia. Jess followed my gaze. “If it all falls through, it isn't going to be good for Vince,” she said.

“Liz, either,” I said.

“Not to mention Jon West himself,” Jess added. “You think he killed her?”

I knew she meant Lily. “No,” I said, turning my empty cup in a circle on the table.

“Why so sure?”

“He just doesn't strike me as the type.”

She frowned. “Wait a minute. Don't tell me. Elvis didn't do that thing he does when people are lying, did he?”

“Maybe,” I hedged.

“Well, good for our little feline Sherlock Holmes,” she said with a grin. “You know, just because it
wasn't Jon West who killed Lily doesn't mean it couldn't have been someone connected to the development.”

Adam brought more nachos and salsa to the table. I thanked him while Jess grabbed a chip.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Jon West has investors,” she said around a mouthful of a lot of salsa and a little chip.

“Like?” I reached for a chip before Jess got them all.

“I don't have a clue,” she said. “But rumor has it whoever they are, they have enough influence that the bakery property will just be expropriated if Caroline doesn't sell to Jon West.”

I remembered West saying he could get the land by expropriation. At the time I'd thought he was bluffing to get Rose off his case.

“So who could do that?” I said.

Jess shrugged. “I don't know, but whoever it is, they're walking around in big shoes.”

After the band's last song of the night, Sam made his way over to me, still carrying his guitar.

“I have a couple of boxes for you in my office,” he said as he reached the table. “You're really going to let Liz's granddaughter re-create a seventies hair band in your front window for Valentine's Day?” he said with a smile.

“C'mon, where's your sense of romance?” I teased.

He laughed.

“Is it all right if I pick them up in the morning?” I asked. “I didn't bring the SUV.”

“Sure,” he said.

“Glenn McNamara told me you stepped in to help fill Lily's place in the hot-lunch program,” I said. “Thank you.”

“It's no big deal,” he said with a shrug.

“It is to the kids,” I said.

“How's the detective business?” Sam asked with a sly smile.

“You heard?”

He nodded. “Eric's art class came for supper last night. Alfred Peterson was with them.” He leaned in a little closer. “Are he and Rose a couple?”

“They're seeing each other,” I said, pushing my hair back from my face. “I've kind of been afraid to ask exactly how much of each other they've seen, if you know what I mean.”

Sam's smile got a bit wider. “Hey, love's grand at any age.”

Vince Kennedy had been working his way over to us. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. He looked at Sam. “They need you in the kitchen.”

Sam made a face. “Please tell me it's not the bread slicer again.”

Vince shrugged. “Sorry. I don't know.”

Sam handed him the guitar. “I'll see you in the morning,” he said to me, and headed toward the kitchen.

Vince turned to me. He'd trimmed his gray-streaked beard into a goatee and he was wearing his hair a little shorter. It made him look a little younger, although I could see worry lines around his brown eyes.

Vince was a tall, wiry man who never seemed to be completely still. His hands or his feet were always moving. I sometimes wondered if he was keeping time to a song only he could hear. “I just wanted to say thanks for the deal you gave Asia on that guitar she bought from you last week.”

“It's a good beginner guitar,” I said. “I'm glad she
likes it.” We both looked over to the stage, where fifteen-year-old Asia Kennedy was talking to Eric, The Hairy Banana's bass player when he wasn't giving art lessons or creating graphic novels. Asia's spiky blond hair was sticking out all over her head. I could see her strong rower's shoulders and legs under her long-sleeved blue T-shirt and the argyle leggings Jess had made.

“I know you gave her the family rate and I appreciate that,” Vince said.

I turned back to face him. “I'm glad Asia likes music,” I said. “It got me through my teenage years more or less unscathed. She's a good kid.”

Vince's expression turned serious. “She really is,” he said. He shook his head. “I'd better get this back to Sam's office,” he said, holding up the guitar. “Thanks again, Sarah.”

I smiled. “You're welcome.”

I stopped at the pub in the morning to pick up the boxes of KISS gear for Avery, and Elvis and I had breakfast with Sam. The conversation eventually turned to the development proposal and Lily's death.

“Do you think someone could have been that upset with her refusal to sell that they could have killed her?” I asked.

Sam raked his fingers through his beard. “On purpose? Nah. I can't see it. Take Vince, for example. That development goes ahead, his problems are pretty much solved.” He reached for his coffee. “If he could just get market value for that old building
of his father's, the old man would be able to stay in that nursing home until he dies.” He took a sip from his mug. “But could you imagine Vince killing Lily—killing anyone—over that?”

I couldn't.

“Or what about Liz? The Emmerson Foundation holds the mortgages on two buildings that would come down for North Landing and they're both in default, but I don't see Liz shoving Lily down a set of stairs.”

I didn't say that wasn't exactly what had happened. I just nodded in agreement.

*   *   *

Friday turned out to be a busy day at the store. The Angels spent most of the day working on a timeline for the last twenty-four hours of Lily's life, when they weren't waiting on customers. I saw Charlotte and Rose on their cell phones at different times. Mr. P. was still digging into Jon West's background.

I'd waffled all morning, but in the end I hadn't told them what Jess had told me. An unsubstantiated rumor that someone with enough influence to push through the expropriation of Lily's Bakery and had invested in North Landing didn't have anything to do with Lily's death, as far as I could see.

I knew Mr. P. and Rose were up to something I probably wasn't going to like, my new hands-off policy or not. They left so quickly at the end of the day that Rose left her big tote bag behind.

When she wasn't waiting on customers, Avery spent all of her time cleaning up the mannequin
parts and putting the figures together. By the end of the day, all four of them were assembled in the workroom. They gave me a start when I came around the corner and discovered the four figures standing there, naked except for their wigs.

Liz came to pick up Avery and Charlotte at the end of the day.

“There's a meeting tonight about the status of the harbor-front project,” Charlotte said to me as she came down the stairs carrying her coat. Avery had taken her grandmother out back to see the mannequins. “I'm going with Liz.”

“I heard,” I said, holding her heavy wool peacoat so she could slip her arms into it. Jess and Nick had talked a bit about the meeting at The Black Bear. “Jess will be there, too.” Charlotte's bright yellow scarf had fallen to the floor, and I bent to pick it up. “What do you think is going to happen?”

She took the scarf from me and tied it loosely at her neck. “I truly don't know,” she said.

Mac and I agreed to meet back at the store at seven thirty to start clearing out the upstairs storage room. When I got back to the shop about twenty-five after, the Ellisons, father and son—whom I'd hired to do snow removal—were in the parking lot with a front-end loader and a dump truck, taking away some of the massive snow pile at the end of the small lot, so I had to park on the side street. A shooting star arced across the harbor, and I closed my eyes and made a wish. Aaron Ellison waved from the cab of the loader as I hurried across the empty lot.

Mac was waiting for me by the back door. “Where did you park?” he asked.

“Around the corner,” I said, pointing up the hill.

“I'll walk you back to your car when we're done,” he said.

I unlocked the back door, and when we stepped into the workroom, I gave a start of surprise. Avery had moved “the band,” and for a moment I thought there were two people standing at the far end of the room.

“They better be going in the window tomorrow,” I said to Mac. “I thought someone had broken in.”

“I know what you mean,” he said as he unzipped his heavy jacket. “I caught sight of one of them out of the corner of my eye this afternoon and for a moment I wondered why you and Charlotte were doing the wave.”

I laughed.

The first thing we did in the upstairs space was move the few pieces of furniture down into the workroom. “I think we should take all the quilts downstairs as well,” I said, looking at the stack of boxes by the door. “They've been selling like hotcakes.” I waved a finger at him. “Oh, and I forgot to tell you. Jess is making some kind of rock-and-roll quilt with those old T-shirts we sold her.”

“That sounds like something we could hang on the wall next to the guitars,” Mac said.

I nodded. “I thought the same thing.” One of the reasons Mac and I worked so well together was that kind of similar thinking often happened.

He picked up two boxes of glassware that were
also going downstairs. Even under his gray T-shirt I could see his muscles move. He'd pushed back his sleeves, and I could see the smooth, dark skin of his forearms and smell his clean scent of Ivory soap and peppermints as I reached for one of the boxes of quilts. I wiped the back of my hand over my forehead for a moment. What the heck was I thinking? Maybe Jess was right. Maybe it had been too long since I'd been on a date.

When Mac came back upstairs, I was still standing in the same place, staring at the same box.

“Sarah, are you trying to move that with the power of your mind?” he asked.

I smiled and shook my head. “No. It wouldn't get very far. I was just thinking.”

“About what?” He rested one hand on the top box of quilts.

“If we take the chair out of my office, we can move the credenza backward and over a little bit, which means we can access the storage space in the eaves.”

“That's not going to give you a lot of seating space in your office,” Mac pointed out.

“I don't think I've had a single customer up there in the last seven months,” I said, glancing through the open door to the hall. “Aside from Elvis, and he seems to think the desk chair belongs to him, the only other person who spends time in my office is you, when we're working on a quote.”

“Okay. Let's at least take a look,” he said.

We crossed the hall and went into my office. “See what I mean?” I said.

He nodded slowly. “And if we angled your desk just a little, that would give you a bit more space for the love seat.”

“Let's try it.”

We set the chair in the hall, and then Mac adjusted my desk a little to the left so it was on a slight angle. The credenza was moved down and the love seat forward, and suddenly we had easy access to the storage space in the eaves.

“Perfect,” I said with a grin.

Then we heard the sound of something falling downstairs.

Mac and I exchanged a look and he went out in the hallway to listen. After a moment there was another sound I couldn't quite identify.

“Stay here,” Mac said in a low voice. “And call 911.”

He was on his way down the stairs before I could tell him not to do anything stupidly heroic. I pulled out my cell and was about to call the police when I remembered Rose's bag. She'd been in such a hurry to leave with Mr. P., she'd left it behind on the desk chair in the Angels' “office.” It was probably her we'd heard. She'd borrowed my gram's spare keys from Charlotte to get into the apartment. I knew there was an extra key to this building on that ring. Rose had probably borrowed the keys again.

I remembered how I'd launched myself into the apartment bedroom and almost knocked her head off. I didn't want Mac to tackle Rose and maybe break her hip. And I certainly didn't want her to be
arrested for B and E. I hurried down the stairs, moving quickly and quietly just in case it wasn't Rose moving around downstairs. Mac was just disappearing around the door to the storeroom.

“Hey!” he called out sharply. That was followed by the sound of a scuffle. I bolted across the shop, thinking this whole thing was stupid. We should have just called 911 and stayed put.

Mac had the intruder on the floor, one knee in the small of the person's back. He looked up at me. “Sarah, what are you doing down here? Did you call 911?”

“I thought it might be Rose,” I said. I could see that it wasn't and I felt my knees begin to shake. The intruder was taller and male, based on his build. I reached over and flipped on the overhead light.

And discovered it was Vince Kennedy lying on the storeroom floor.