Софи Келли - A Case Of Cat And Mouse

Rebecca glanced over at the carriage house again. “Selfishly, I’m happy that you and Roma decided not to tear that building down.”

Eddie swiped a hand over his close-cropped hair. “It is structurally sound, at least as far as the framing and the roof trusses go.”

“So what are you going to do with the space?” I asked.

He grinned. “Let’s just say Roma and I haven’t reached a consensus yet.”

I laughed.

“Does Roma think the cats will accept the move into their new home?”

Eddie rubbed his stubbled chin. “I hope so. There are only five cats left now and Roma has been talking about moving Smokey down to the clinic full-time.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“She’s just had the thought in the last couple of days. She said she was going to ask you what you thought.”

Smokey was the oldest cat in the feral cat family. He had gotten his name from his smoke-gray fur. Desmond, another Wisteria Hill cat who had lived at Roma’s animal clinic since Marcus discovered him and the previously unknown colony, had seemed to tolerate the old tomcat when Smokey had spent an extended visit there. It might work.

“Maybe,” I said.

Eddie smiled at Rebecca and at the same time tipped his head toward me. “If our cat whisperer here can convince Lucy to accept the new space, I think we’ll be okay. Where Lucy goes the others will follow.”

Since Lucy was feral, too, I could never get too close to her, let alone touch her. But I had some sort of connection with the little cat, the same way I did with Owen and Hercules and with Marcus’s ginger tabby, Micah, who had also come from Wisteria Hill. Lucy seemed to somehow know I had her best interests at heart. And I wasn’t going to forget that it had been Lucy’s insistent meowing that had brought Marcus into the carriage house just before the hayloft had collapsed.

I smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

“You know, she’s been coming out to watch me the past couple of days,” Eddie said.

“That’s a good sign,” Rebecca said.

I’d been so busy at the library and working on the show that I hadn’t seen much of Roma or Eddie, or anyone else for that matter, for the past couple of weeks. “When are they going to start working on the warehouse?” I asked.

One of the empty warehouses at the far end of the waterfront downtown was eventually going to be the home of Eddie’s hockey training center. The project had been stalled multiple times but now that Everett had gotten involved, things were finally going well.

Eddie grinned. It was impossible to miss his enthusiasm—or to not catch a little of it. “Three weeks. Assuming there are no last-minute problems.” He gestured toward the house. “But you didn’t come here to talk hockey. C’mon. My starter is in the fridge.”

We headed across the yard. Rebecca seemed so tiny walking next to Eddie. She was more than a foot shorter and with her layered silvery hair she reminded me of a tiny forest fairy.

“I want to hear all about the show,” Eddie said. “What’s it like cooking on the set?”

“Hot,” Rebecca said, raising her eyebrows for emphasis. “And steamy. Last week when we got those two unseasonably warm days I thought I was going to melt and run down a crack. Plus, the space is a lot smaller than it looks and sometimes it’s hard not to get in each other’s way.” She smiled then. “And it’s lots of fun. I never thought I would be on TV.”

Even though the show hadn’t aired yet, Rebecca had already developed a fan base online. That hadn’t surprised me at all.

“Do you all get along?” Eddie asked. “Or is it more cutthroat?”

“Cutthroat? Heavens no!” she said. “When I broke my rolling pin Ray loaned me his. And when Caroline upended a bowl of flour on Kassie we all helped clean it up.”

“The guys used to watch the original version of the Baking Showdown all the time,” Eddie said. I knew he was referring to his former teammates. “I’m glad Ruby’s friend revived the show. And by the way, Sydney wants your autograph the next time she sees you.”

“I’m honored,” Rebecca said.

Eddie looked at me. “What about you, Kathleen? How do you like working behind the scenes?”

“I like it,” I said. “It’s not that time-consuming. Basically, my job is to find interesting facts for Eugenie, and sometimes Russell, to use in conversation with the contestants. I’m trying to work in references to Mayville Heights any chance I get. I’ve had to research some pretty obscure things, so it doesn’t always work.”

The original Great Northern Baking Showdown had aired on network TV and ended twelve years ago. The premise was simple. A dozen amateur bakers competed for the top prize, fifty thousand dollars and a top-of-the-line double oven, six-burner gas range. In Elias’s remake the winner still received fifty thousand dollars, along with a chance to study at the Culinary Institute of America in New York.

Each of the ten episodes had a different theme: bread, pastry, dessert, etc. However, at any time the judges could add a complication, such as a mystery ingredient or a mandatory baking technique. They could also take away any tool, from the bakers’ stand mixers to the parchment paper they used to line cookie sheets. The competition wasn’t just a measure of the contestants’ baking skills. It was also a test of their flexibility in the kitchen.

At first I’d hesitated when I was approached by Elias Braeden himself to take the researcher job. I’d met him the previous winter. The man was an intriguing mix of bluntness and charm, qualities he had honed while working for my friend Ruby Blackthorne’s grandfather. Idris Blackthorne had been the town bootlegger and had run a very lucrative regular poker game, among other enterprises.

Elias’s interests included a casino. While I had no reason to think he was anything other than an honest businessman, he had worked for Idris, which meant he wasn’t someone to turn your back on. But Ruby was very close to Elias. He’d known her from the time she was five days old and he was one of the few people she’d been able to count on as a mixed-up kid. So when he’d asked me to step in to avoid a delay in production it was partly my loyalty to her and partly my loyalty to the town that had made me say yes.

“I think just having the production here overall is good for the town,” Rebecca said as we stepped into the side porch. “The production crew is staying here. So are the bakers. Maggie is helping the illustrator. You’re doing research. Eric is catering. Harry and Oren have worked on the sets. And I know they’ve had inquiries at the St. James and several of the bed-and-breakfasts from people interested in trying to get a glimpse of filming. Everything’s going perfectly!”

As soon as the words were out of Rebecca’s mouth I had the urge to knock on wood. I wasn’t generally a superstitious person but I had grown up around theater people and they were. “Knock on wood” was one of my actor mother’s superstitions, a way to avoid tempting fate.

I felt silly but I tapped softly on one of the kitchen chairs.

Just in case.

chapter 2

Eddie kept a small amount of the sourdough starter for himself and sent Rebecca home with the rest, along with a detailed list of instructions for its care and feeding. Rebecca held the glass bowl securely on her lap and smiled all the way down the hill. Whatever uncertainty she’d had before seemed to be gone.

“Thank you for everything, Kathleen,” she said as I pulled into the driveway at her house. “I’ll bring some bread over for you to try this evening.”

“I’m looking forward to that,” I said with a smile. All the contestants practiced their recipes multiple times before an episode was filmed.