Клер Донелли - The Big Kitty

A puff of breeze brought the scent of the sea, never too far away. Then the wind shifted, pulling a bouquet of aromas out the storefront’s open door. The watcher inhaled deeply, catching a mixture of dust and furniture polish, the sharp smell of electrical machinery at work, and then a whiff of the floral fragrance the woman was wearing, and under that the earthier tone of her own smell.

His head swam a little. The doorway was just a few yards away, beckoning him on this unseasonably warm evening. Maybe he should go in, make his move—

The breeze stopped being playful, turning into a gust that brought the chill of the ocean as well as its aroma. He hunkered down as it whistled around him. And as he did, the woman in the store moved to close the door, locking it and then rubbing her arms.

So much for that idea, he thought, turning to slink away.

Why do I keep coming back to her? he continued as he squeezed under a parked car and out the other side. It’s not as though I see her doing anything interesting—like eating.

With a flick of his tail he crossed the road, ready to leave. But then he heard the rumble of a car engine and caught a whiff of exhaust … and other familiar smells. He knew this vehicle. Turning around, he settled down on all four paws.

This could be interesting.

*

Still rubbing herarms, Sunny Coolidge returned to her computer and the latest crisis. She should have been home an hour and a half ago, but that was before some jackass had started acting out on a flight from Paris to Atlanta, getting his plane diverted to the customs and TSA facilities at Pease Airport in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Frantic Web searches by stranded passengers in search of nearby accommodations had led to a surge of e-mails at MAX—the Maine Adventure X-perience site—and Sunny’s computer. Since the travel agency here in Kittery Harbor, Maine, was just across the state border and less than five miles from the airport in New Hampshire, she’d gone into overtime matchmaking passengers with local B&Bs, beating the bushes for whatever additional accommodations she could find, and arranging transportation.

Well, at least Ollie—Oliver Barnstable, a.k.a. “Ollie the Barnacle,” the owner of MAX—should be happy tomorrow with all the extra revenue. And in spite of the late hour, Sunny was glad to help out the stuck travelers. It made her feel a little less like a mere Web lackey tending the site. When she’d come home to Maine eight months ago to take care of her ailing father, she’d only intended to take a brief leave of absence from her reporter job at the New York Standard . But unfortunately, the sickly state of the newspaper business had led her editor at the Standard to make her absence more permanent. And to pour salt into that particular wound, after he’d broken off their professional relationship, he broke off their personal one, too. Talk about a one-two punch.

When Sunny had tried for a job at the local rag, the Harbor Crier , Ken Howell, the editor there, had turned her down flat. Apparently after all his years of running the place, he didn’t want some big-city “professional” sticking a nose in his business. But luckily Ollie, who was a major partner on the paper, had heard she was looking for work and had offered her the job at MAX. Compared to her old New York salary, the pay could only be called puny … but at least puny was better than nothing.

To tell the truth, it was a little odd to be back working just two doors down from the store where she’d had her first job. In high school, Sunny had spent Friday evenings and Saturdays behind the fountain at Barnstable’s Sweet Shoppe, working for Ollie’s father. Sometimes Ollie would come by, dressed in a suit and tie from his job down in Boston, and give his dad a break. He was a lot older than Sunny and plainly hated working in the place.

But even if he detested the work and could be a little skeevy—he used to creep Sunny out a little by telling her she was the sweetest thing in the Sweet Shoppe—Ollie was otherwise all business. Sunny remembered him always arguing with his father about how they should open on Sundays, something the elder Barnstable refused to do. In the end Barnstable Senior passed away while Sunny was in college. Ollie had sold the store, taken the insurance money, and gone off to New York City. Apparently he’d invested that money well, because a few years before Mike’s illness, Ollie had come back to Kittery Harbor flush with cash and ready to do business around town. He’d invested in the faltering Harbor Crier , bought the row of stores where his dad’s shop used to be, and put a lot of money into local real estate and other business opportunities, including MAX.

Sunny had been surprised that Ollie had even remembered her, much less offered her a job. Maybe he just wanted someone around who’d spent time in the big city. Sometimes he’d talk to her about New York—the traffic, neighborhoods, Broadway shows he’d seen, expensive restaurants where he’d dined. He never gave away much about his business there, though.

And, Sunny was glad to say, he never told her she was the sweetest thing in the MAX office.

She thought she’d be writing promotional copy for the travel agency, and there was some of that. Mostly, though, she tended the website, arranged accommodations and sightseeing opportunities for prospective tourists, and dealt with the rare drop-in customer.

The operation struck her as a little underhanded—Ollie had a “select list” of B&Bs, tour operators, and local destinations that gave him kickbacks. But there were occasions, like tonight, when Sunny felt she was actually doing a good deed and helping people. Besides, it wasn’t as if there were that many other ways to earn a living in a town the size of Kittery Harbor, and she didn’t want to leech off her retired father.

The thought of Dad made her frown as the e-storm finally quieted down on her computer. He was responsible for getting his own dinner tonight, and he still wasn’t reconciled to the realities of a post–heart attack diet. Even worse, there were too many accommodating widowed neighbor ladies who’d be only too glad to cook him a nice, tasty, artery-clogging meal.

Their cooking’s probably why they are widow ladies, she thought sourly.

Would things have been different if Mom were still around? Unlikely. Dad had spent much of his working life on the road instead of at home, trucking rock salt all over New England. Sunny suspected that it was decades of diner cuisine which had finally caught up with him, not home cooking. And anyway, Mom’s cooking had ceased to be a factor almost fifteen years ago, when Sunny was just finishing exam hell for her first semester at Boston University. In a cruelly ironic twist, while Dad was out delivering a load of road-clearing salt to Boston, Mom had gone off the road in Kittery Harbor, just before Sunny was to come home for the holidays, another fatal accident victim of what became known as the Christmas ice storm.

Sunny pushed away her wandering thoughts when she heard a tapping at the door. She rose from behind her desk to see a birdlike woman waving energetically at her through the glass.

Sunny unlocked the door and the woman bustled inside. “You’re Mike Coolidge’s daughter, aren’t you?” she asked, standing so close she almost poked Sunny in the face with her oversized nose. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Ada Spruance, and I need help.”

Sunny had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something stupid. Ada Spruance certainly did need help. Standing face-to-face with her, Sunny didn’t need the faint whiff of cat pee that emanated from the woman’s clothes to remind her that Ada was famous—or infamous—around town as the local Cat Lady.