Софи Райан - No Escape Claws

“In other words, you’d have the display for the front window for next month all worked out.”

This time I was the one who laughed.

“So is the détente between Nick and Rose still holding?” Mac asked.

I swung slowly from side to side in my chair. “It is. Although sometimes I feel like I’ve been transported to some other version of this planet.”

His question reminded me that I wanted to ask Nick what he and Rose had been looking at the day before. Even though Rose had said I didn’t want to know, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I probably did.

“It would be great if they actually have stopped butting heads, but . . .”

“. . . that’s probably not the case so I should enjoy the calm before the storm so to speak,” I finished.

“Based on past experience, probably.” The chair or whatever it was squeaked again. “So what’s happening with the case?” Mac asked. “In your last text you said you were going to talk to the parents of the girl this Gina Pearson hit with her car.”

“The father is very angry still,” I said. “Not that I blame him. But he has an alibi. As for the mother, Rose thinks she’s a possibility. And she doesn’t have an alibi.”

“You don’t agree with Rose?”

I sighed softly. “I guess I don’t really want Jia—that’s her name, Jia Allison—to be a possibility. There are already three kids who have lost their mother. I don’t want it to be four.”

“It’ll work out, Sarah.”

“You always say that,” I said.

“And I’m always right.”

I thought about what Avery had said about Mac. You should ask him when he’s coming back so he knows we want him back. Instead I said, “I should probably go check on Avery and Charlotte.”

“Tell them I said hello,” Mac said.

“I will.” I turned back around to face the desk. Elvis was gone.

“I’ll talk to you soon,” Mac said and he was gone, too.

I went downstairs. Charlotte had an armful of pillows and Avery was just coming in from the workroom with a tray of teacup planters—little Haworthia plants in china cups and saucers. They were a perennial favorite with tourists.

“Rose just texted Avery,” Charlotte said. “She’s sending a bus full of tourists from Quebec our way. They’ll be here right after they finish lunch.”

Rose and Mr. P., along with Liam and Nick, were back about ten minutes later.

“How was lunch?” I asked.

“Excellent,” Rose said. “We went to Natalie’s Chowder House.” She looked at me as though she was expecting some kind of reaction.

“Good,” I said, fairly certain that was not the response she was looking for.

“Molly Pace works there,” Mr. P. said.

Molly Pace. Who the heck was Molly Pace?

Liam was leaning against the workbench while Nick was standing feet apart with his arms crossed. They seemed to be enjoying my bewilderment.

“Have you forgotten that Molly Pace is Gavin Pace’s wife?” Rose said. “He’s the man Gina Pearson had the affair with. Try to keep up, dear.”

“I’m with you now,” I said, glaring over her shoulder at Liam and Nick, who smirked back at me. “So did you talk to her?”

“Well, it would have been silly to go there and then not talk to her, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it would,” I said, nodding like a bobblehead doll stuck to a car dashboard. “What’s she like?”

Luckily Mr. P. stepped in to save me. “Not what I expected,” he said.

“What were you expecting?” I asked.

“Someone angrier, I guess, given what Sammy told me about her confrontation with Gina outside the pub—which wasn’t their only encounter, by the way.”

“Do you think she could have hurt Gina?”

Rose shook her head. “First of all, Molly isn’t any taller than I am and she doesn’t have my upper-body strength.”

I had no idea what Rose’s upper-body capacity was and it didn’t seem like a good time to ask so I just nodded.

“And second, she wasn’t even in town the weekend of the fire. She was in Portland with friends, Christmas shopping and indulging in the festivities.”

“So we cross her off the list,” I said.

“Yes, we do,” Mr. P. said.

“But right now we need to get ready for those tourists,” Rose said. She pressed her thumb to her lips and looked around the workroom.

“Charlotte already got the pillows,” I said.

Rose nodded. “Good. What if we put out some of those fancy pots Avery did and maybe some of those old bottles from Clayton’s?”

“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll go get the bottles. They’re under the stairs.”

“I’ll get the flowerpots,” she said. She looked at Mr. P. “Alf, could you give me a hand?”

“Of course,” he said with a smile.

“Liam. Nicolas,” Rose said over her shoulder, “I think that’s enough lollygagging. Don’t you two have work to do?”

Nick ducked his head. Liam cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. They started for the sunporch.

The next hour was busy. The tourists from Quebec were friendly and full of questions about everything. And none of them laughed at my very rudimentary attempts to speak French. It turned out to be a good thing that Charlotte had brought out all the pillows and Avery had carried in her planters. We sold them all, along with dishes, about half the bottles, books, vintage postcards and a large mahogany framed mirror and a chamber pot the purchaser insisted would fit under her seat.

Rose was already rearranging the remaining bottles. The pale green vintage Coke bottles were the first that had been snapped up. I was always amazed by the things people liked to collect.

I put my arm around Rose and kissed the top of her head. “Thank you for telling the tour bus operator about Second Chance. We did well and I think she’ll be back next time she has a tour in this area.”

“You’re welcome, dear,” she said. She put a hand up to her neck. “It helps that I’m wearing my lucky scarf.”

Rose’s lucky scarf (purple with a silver Aztec design) had been given to her by Steven Tyler—yes, that Steven Tyler—after she’d danced in the aisle with him at an Aerosmith concert and kissed him, so long and so deeply that teenaged me had wished for the earth to open up and swallow me alive, especially since Tyler had made it clear he’d enjoyed the encounter.

I went out to the garage to bring in a box of teacups. We never seemed to run out of them. I’d find a few in a yard sale or buy a couple from one of my regular pickers. And I’d purchased two dozen of them from one of Rose’s friends who was giving up her house for an apartment and a very limber yoga instructor who was twenty years her junior.

When I came back into the workroom Avery was lifting a bin down from one of the shelves. “I thought I should reset those two tables,” she said. “Maybe I’ll use those white ghost pumpkins and some of those branches with the little red berries for a centerpiece.”

I nodded. “That’s a good idea.” The place settings of china and the glassware on both of the tables in the shop had sold. The smaller table had even lost the starched linen tablecloth, napkins and silver napkin rings.

Avery set the bin on the floor. She eyed me and shifted from one foot to the other. I waited. “Sarah, would it be okay if my friend Greg stops by at the end of the day to look at some of those old classroom maps we have? We’re working on a project.”

“It’s fine with me,” I said. “Do you know where they are?”

She nodded, fidgeting with her arm of bracelets. “I pretty much know where everything is. I’ve been kind of making a map of back here.”

I set the box of cups on the workbench. “Why didn’t I think of that?”