Buy a Whisker (6 page)

We heard very little about the investigation into Lily's death for the rest of the week. Both Michelle and Nick came by separately to ask Avery and me a few more questions, but they were both tight-lipped about what they'd discovered so far. It was Nick's job, as an investigator for the medical examiner's office, to figure out how and why Lily had died, and Michelle's to investigate if it turned out a crime had been committed. The fact that no one had said immediately that her death was an accident made me wonder if my suspicions were right.

Rose
seemed
to be staying out of things. She didn't try to wheedle information out of me with cookies and hot chocolate. She didn't try to eavesdrop when Michelle came by with her follow-up questions. She seemed to be doing exactly what I'd asked her to do. Which told me she was up to something.

Cleveland, one of the trash pickers I regularly bought from, came by on Friday with a battered old dining room hutch in the back of his truck. Most of
the faux walnut finish was worn off. There were watermarks on the exposed wood and more than a few scrapes and gouges.

Mac stood in the parking lot while I climbed in the back of the half-ton and took a closer look at the piece of furniture. “Tell me you're not going to buy that,” he said.

“It's solid wood,” I said.

“Good,” he countered. “We can burn it for heat if it gets any colder.”

I made a face at him.

He just shook his head. “You're on your own with this one, Sarah,” he said, heading back to the shop.

“Fine with me,” I called after him. I was feeling restless. It had been a while since I'd had a big project to work on. And maybe it would take my mind off what had happened to Lily.

Cleveland and his cousin carried the hutch into the work area, and I paid him twenty dollars for it.

“Did you see the look on his face?” Mac asked after the two men had left. “He thinks he put one over on you.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said, circling the big piece of furniture. It had three shelves, scrollwork at the top and two louvered doors on the bottom. It stood about five and a half feet high. I was already thinking about possible ways to refinish it.

Mac held up both hands. “I'm not going to say another word.”

“You can tell me what a genius I am when this is done,” I said.

I took some photos of the hutch so I could study them over the weekend and decide what exactly I wanted to do.

I ended up spending most of the weekend working on the apartment kitchen with Mac. We got the upper cupboard boxes hung and all the doors attached on Saturday. Then, while Mac installed the sink, I painted the living room ceiling. By late Sunday afternoon I was wiping out the insides of the cupboards while Mac screwed on the hardware.

“I never would have gotten so much done without you,” I said to him. He was kneeling on the floor, using the cordless drill, and I was halfway up the small stepladder. We both had dust on our jeans and bits of sawdust in our hair—me more so than Mac since he kept his dark hair cropped close to his head.

“I don't mind,” he said. “I didn't like the idea of Rose living somewhere she might not be safe.” He grinned. “Or if she moved in with Liz, where Liz might not be safe.” He fastened the last doorknob and stood up, stretching one arm up over his head and then the other. “Can I help you?” he asked.

I shook my head. For a moment I'd gotten sidetracked watching his muscles move under his black T-shirt. “Thanks, but this is the last one.” I wiped the bottom cupboard shelf and dropped my cloth back into the bucket. Then I climbed down, wiping my damp hands on my jeans.

“It looks like a kitchen now,” I said with satisfaction, turning slowly to take in the whole space.

“That it does,” he agreed.

“Am I crazy, Mac?” I asked, reaching for the bucket that had been balanced on the ladder's paint shelf.

“Are you talking in a general, existential sense, or do you have something specific in mind?” he said, a teasing edge to his voice.

“Both.” I set the bucket on the floor and leaned against the counter. “What if Rose drives me crazy? What if I drive her crazy?”

He picked up the drill and began to unscrew the bit. “You'll work it out. You can talk to Rose. She's reasonable.”

I shot him a look.

“Most of the time,” he amended. He put the bit back in a small plastic case and set the drill itself in the bottom of his toolbox. “Have you always been close the way you all are?” he asked. “If that's not too personal a question.”

“It's not,” I said. “And yes, we pretty much have. When my father died, Rose, Liz and Charlotte kept my mom and Gram and me going. They didn't just wrap their arms around us. They wrapped their lives around us. They'd always been part of my life, but they became family. Then, when Mom met Peter, my stepfather, they made him and Liam family as well. Do you remember the fairy godmother in Cinderella?”

He nodded.

“That's what they've always been like, more opinionated and no magical powers, but otherwise that's pretty much it.”

“It sounds nice,” he said, setting the toolbox over by the door.

I shrugged. “It was, although I didn't always think so when I was a teenager.” I started to laugh.

Mac narrowed his eyes. “What?” he asked.

“When we were thirteen, Michelle and I wanted to go see Aerosmith in concert down in Portland.”

“Michelle. You mean the detective.”

I nodded. I couldn't stop laughing. “They took us. Gram, Liz, Rose and Charlotte. All four of them, plus Michelle and me in Liz's big ol' Lincoln Continental. They all had Aerosmith T-shirts and jeans. They had every single CD, which they played all the way there and all the way back, and they sang along with every song. Loudly.”

“Liz in an Aerosmith T-shirt?” Mac asked. “No. You're kidding me, right?”

I shook my head, but I couldn't stop grinning at the memory. “Oh, it gets better. We had great seats—some contact Liz had through the foundation. During ‘Walk This Way,'
Steven Tyler came down off the stage. He was maybe four feet away from us. Remember, Michelle and I were thirteen.” I laid a hand on my chest. “We could barely breathe, we were so excited.”

“I sense there's more,” Mac said, the hint of a smile pulling at his mouth.

“He started dancing with Rose.”

“Rose?” His eyes darted from one side to the other.

“Uh-huh. With a whole lot of hip action.”

Mac started to laugh as he stretched an arm up
over his head. “You're telling me that Rose Jackson was dirty dancing with Steven Tyler at an Aerosmith concert?”

“There are photos,” I said. “And the band was filming the concert for some reason, so somewhere there's video of Rose, as she put it, ‘getting down with Steven Tyler.'”

Mac was shaking with laughter now, one arm wrapped across his chest.

I held up a hand. “There's more. You've seen that purple scarf she wears sometimes, with the silver Aztec design?”

He nodded.

“Tyler gave it to her. He slid it off his own neck and wrapped it—there's no other word to use—seductively around her neck.”

Mac grinned at me. “Let me guess. You were scarred for life.”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “No. That happened when he kissed her. And I don't mean a peck on the cheek.”

Mac pulled a hand over his neck. “Don't tell me Steven Tyler slipped Rose the—”

I held up a hand and shook my head. “No, no, no!”

“Well, that's not so bad,” he said with a shrug. “Tyler was probably just trying to be nice to a fan.”

“Who frenched him,” I said, raising an eyebrow for emphasis.

Mac's mouth opened and then closed once more without making a sound. He started laughing again.

I couldn't help laughing again myself. “I can still see Steven Tyler's expression,” I said.

“Hey, for all you know, maybe he liked it,” Mac said, his dark eyes gleaming with humor.

“Yeah, that's the thing,” I said, making a face. “I'm pretty sure he did.”

“Oh, now I'm never going to listen to ‘Walk This Way' quite the same way ever again.” He pushed away from the counter and straightened up.

“Do you have any grandparents-slash-crazy-senior-citizens in your family?” I asked, bending down for the bucket.

“I think Rose and Liz and Charlotte—and your grandmother—are pretty much one of a kind,” Mac said. The broom was leaning in the corner by the door to the hall, and he reached for it.

“I can do that,” I said.

“So can I,” he said.

I took the bucket of dirty water into the bathroom to dump it, realizing that he hadn't actually answered my question. I wasn't surprised. Mac was a master at deflecting personal questions, and I'd never pushed it.

My cell phone rang as I stepped back into the kitchen. It was Jess.

“Are you still working in the apartment?” she asked.

“We're just about done,” I said, pulling my hair free from its ponytail.

“I have a shower curtain and a window curtain for the bathroom and a roman shade for the kitchen.”

“Aw, Jess, you're an angel,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Hey, no problem.” I pictured her in her sewing room, her feet probably propped up on the table. “Have you eaten yet?”

“No,” I said. My stomach chose that moment to growl, reminding me that all I'd had was a banana for lunch.

“Mac still there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. You guys stay where you are. I made pork and cabbage. I'll bring some over, along with the curtains. I really wanna see how the place looks.”

A bowl of Jess's pork and cabbage sounded a lot better than anything I would have come up with for supper.

“We'll be here,” I said.

“See you in ten,” she said, ending the call.

I turned to Mac. “Jess is bringing supper. And unlike me, she can cook. Can you stay?”

He hesitated for a moment and then nodded. “Thanks. I'd like that.”

There was a round wooden pedestal table in the living room that we'd moved out of the kitchen. Mac and I each grabbed an end and we set it back in the corner.

“What are you going to do with this when Rose moves in?” Mac asked. He tipped his head to one side and studied the table. At the moment it was painted a muddy shade of brown.

“Take it back to the shop and strip it,” I said over my shoulder as I headed back into the living room
for the folding chairs that had been doubling as kitchen chairs.

“What are you thinking about for a finish?” he asked, coming to the doorway to take two of the chairs from me.

“I'm thinking a whitewash if the wood is in decent condition.”

He nodded slowly.

“Remember those white chairs we got at that yard sale in the fall? The ones with the cat-scratched fabric seats?”

“They smelled like cigarette smoke.”

I nodded. “I'm thinking of painting them lavender and getting Jess to make me new seats in some darker purple fabric.”

“That could work.”

I rinsed my cloth in the sink and wiped a fine layer of dust off the top of the table.

“I was holding on to this for Jess,” I said. “She wanted it for the new shop, but now that North Landing is pretty much dead, there won't be a new shop.”

“You really think the development isn't going to happen?” Mac asked. He moved around the kitchen, picking up small bits of wood we'd discarded as shims when we were installing the cupboards.

“It'll be months before Lily's estate is settled.”

“True, but everything probably goes to her mother. She could sign an agreement to sell to the developer when the property is finally hers.”

“She could,” I said, taking the cloth back to the sink to shake it out.

“But you don't think she will.”

I looked at him over my shoulder. “Lily was so against selling. I don't think Caroline will do it. They are . . . were very close.” I hung the wet cloth over the tap and turned, leaning against the counter. “What do you think about the whole proposal? Do you think it's a good idea? Is it sound financially?”

It occurred to me that I could have—maybe should have—asked Mac for his thoughts sooner. He had been a financial adviser for many years before he'd decided he'd rather sail and make things with his hands.

“I just saw a preliminary prospectus,” he said, bending down to pick up two thin shims that had somehow slid into the living room. “But what I saw looks good.” He straightened up.

“But?” I said.

He exhaled quietly and turned the two scraps of wood over in his hands. “The research seems to be solid. There's definitely an interest in development on the scale West is proposing. His financing is solid.”

I sensed a little hesitation. “But?”

“West's carrying a lot of debt for a small company. If this deal falls through, it could break him.” Mac shrugged. “Those are just my thoughts based on a quick read-through of the simplified prospectus. I could be wrong.”

But he probably wasn't. When Mac gave his opinion, it was after he'd taken the time to think things through.

Jess tapped on the door then so I didn't have a
chance to say anything. She had a gray garment bag in one hand and a red insulated cooler in the other. Mac took the cooler and I grabbed the garment bag, taking it into the bathroom and hanging it over the shower rod because there really wasn't anywhere else to put it.

“The blind is out in my car.” Jess gestured at the red bag. “The food and everything you need is inside,” she said. She waved her hand in the direction of the hall. “I'll just go get the blind and we can eat.”

Right on cue my stomach growled.

Jess laughed. “I'll hurry.”

I unzippered the top of the insulated cooler. She'd brought everything—bowls and forks, three small wineglasses and a huge stoneware crock of her pork and cabbage. Tucked in the outside pocket of the bag was a small bottle of apple cider.