Софи Райан - Telling Tails

“Hello, sweetie pie,” she replied. “How’s Rose?”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Charlotte called you.”

“Liz.”

I leaned back in the chair. “Rose is fine, Gram. She spent the night with me. She snores, by the way.”

Gram laughed. “I know. I shared a room with her when the four of us went to Florida.”

“I’ll call Liz when I get to the shop,” I said. “I’m actually in Rose’s apartment right now waiting for her to get dressed.”

“They’ll work it out,” she said. “Do you know how many arguments they’ve had over the years?”

I shook my head even though she couldn’t see the motion. “I don’t have a clue.”

She laughed again. “Neither do I, but I can promise you that it’s a very big number.”

“I miss you,” I said.

“I miss you, too,” she said. “But I’ll see you in a bit more than a month.”

Gram and her new husband, John, had gotten married almost a year ago. Jess and I agreed that John looked like actor Gary Oldman’s slightly older brother. He had the same dark hair, streaked with gray, waving back from his face, and the same intense gaze behind dark-framed glasses. There were thirteen years between Gram and John—she being the elder—which had raised some eyebrows, but Gram didn’t seem anywhere near her seventy-four years. And more important, she didn’t care what other people thought.

They’d set out on their honeymoon in an RV that wasn’t much bigger than a minivan, intending to travel along the East Coast and work on a project for the charity Home for Good. One house-building project had turned into several, and now after nearly a year away Gram and John were finally coming home.

“I can’t wait to see you,” I said.

“You, too,” Gram said. “I have to go. John has breakfast ready. Give Rose a hug for me. And tell her I said to listen to you.”

“I will,” I promised. “Give John a hug for me.”

“I will.” She blew a kiss into the phone. “Love you, sweetie.”

“Love you, too,” I said.

Rose came bustling out of the bedroom then. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble,” she said, fastening her watch as she came into the kitchen. Elvis had already wandered around the apartment, sticking his furry black nose into pretty much everything. Now he was sitting quietly at my feet washing his face.

“You aren’t any trouble,” I said. “I’d do the same for Jess or Nick.”

Rose grinned and raised an eyebrow at Nick’s name.

I felt my face get red. “You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean,” she countered.

“Yes, I do,” I said, getting to my feet. “Which is why I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“I know it seems like we’re all a little pushy sometimes when it comes to Nicolas and you,” Rose said, reaching for the green-and-white canvas tote she’d left on one of the chairs. I picked it up for her.

“A little?” I asked, narrowing my gaze at her.

She wrinkled her nose at me. “You know that I love that boy as though he were my own, but goodness, he is as slow as cold molasses when it comes to women. All we’re trying to do is kindle a little spark so the two of you can get the fire lit.” And then she wiggled her eyebrows at me.

All of them—Rose, Charlotte and Liz, not to mention Gram, who wasn’t even in town at the moment—had been trying to nudge Nick and me into a relationship since we’d both ended up unattached and back in North Harbor at the same time, telling me about Nick’s great hair genes, and him about my good dental hygiene. We’d been spending a lot more time together lately now that Nick had started running with me when he wasn’t working. I wasn’t sure if I could call what was happening a romance, though. We had an easy familiarity that came from having known each other since we were kids. He was funny and handsome and I had no idea whether it would turn into something more—or if I wanted it to. I’d kissed him—more than once, and he seemed to like kissing me—but that was as far as it got. Rose was right; Nick could be as slow as cold molasses. But I wasn’t exactly a speedster myself.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. I wrapped my arms around Rose and gave her a hug. “That’s from Gram. She called while you were getting dressed.”

“I’m sorry I missed her,” Rose said. “I’ll call Isabel tonight.”

“She’d like that,” I said as we moved out into the hall.

Rose pulled out her keys to lock the door. “Who finked me out to her?”

“Liz called her. I don’t think she was trying to fink you out to Gram.”

“Sarah, how long have Liz and I been friends?” Rose asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Since sometime just after the dinosaurs died out, I think.”

She glowered at me.

I held the front door for her and we stepped outside. “What I do know is that in all the years you’ve been friends, Liz has always had your back, so whatever it takes to fix things, I think you should do. And by the way, Gram said to tell you that you should listen to me.”

“I’m starting to see where your bossiness comes from,” Rose grumped.

I laughed and unlocked the SUV.

I stuck the sticky note with the address and phone number for Jeff Cameron’s sister on the dashboard. I decided we had a better chance of getting the information we were looking for if we talked to her in person, and if we didn’t call first it was a lot harder for her to say no to talking to us.

Since we were going to Second Chance after we talked to Nicole Cameron, we took Elvis with us. He sat on the front bench seat of my SUV between Rose and me and watched the road the way he always did.

“I wonder who used to own Elvis,” Rose said. “Do you think it could have been a long-distance truck driver?” The cat turned and eyed her as though he’d taken offense at the suggestion that anyone could claim ownership of him.

“Maybe,” I said. “That would explain why he’s a bit of a backseat driver.”

Rose reached over and stroked the top of Elvis’s head. “He’s very intelligent,” she said. “Look at how he can tell whether or not someone is telling the truth.”

I was still making sense out of that skill. We’d all noticed that if someone was stroking the cat’s fur and telling a lie, Elvis would get an expression on his face that, as Liz expressed it, looked like he’d just had one of Avery’s kale smoothies.

Elvis’s apparent lie-detecting ability had come in useful in more than one of the Angels’ cases. Both Mac and Jess had theorized that somehow the cat was reading body reactions in much the same way that an actual polygraph machine did. Considering that he had an uncanny ability to figure out my mood, they were probably right.

“I know where you’re going with this, Rose,” I said. “We’re not taking Elvis in with us when we get to Nicole Cameron’s house. For all we know she might not even like cats.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that.”

“Good,” I said.

“Although I certainly don’t see why anyone wouldn’t like Elvis. He’s handsome, he’s an excellent mouser and as I just said, he’s extremely intelligent.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Elvis straighten up as though he’d understood every word Rose had said. And for all I knew, maybe he had. I talked to him all the time, and sometimes it really did seem as though he was listening. And other times he made it very clear that he wasn’t listening to what I was saying at all.

Nicole Cameron lived on a tree-lined street about halfway up the hill from the main downtown. The houses were mostly Cape Cod style with a few two-story, older Federal-style homes.

“There it is,” Rose said, pointing at a gray-shingled house with a tall maple tree in the front yard. A red Jeep Wrangler was parked in the driveway, its front wheels turned sharply to the right as though it were parked on a hill.