Лори Касс - Tailing A Tabby

I shrugged. “How can you gentlemen not know who won the Newbery Award last year?”

Skeeter lowered his beer. “That a new hockey trophy? No, wait. Golf.”

“Golf?” Chris slapped Greg on the shoulder. “Too bad you’re not as good a golfer as a pitcher.”

Greg grinned. “Doesn’t hurt any worse than a line drive.”

I stared at him. “You were hit by a golf ball?”

“By a ball his buddy there smacked,” Rafe said.

Brett Karringer nodded sheepishly. “Hit it off a tree and it caromed into the back of his head.”

“You got to work on your aim,” Skeeter said. “Next time see if you can get him right between the eyes.”

For some reason, the men found that hilarious. When the laughter faded, I turned to Greg. “Did you go to the hospital?” I asked. “Head injuries aren’t anything to mess around with.”

“Being hit with one more ball isn’t going to do me any damage.” Greg smiled. “I’m fine.”

I wasn’t sure how he could be so sure, but it was hard enough to get my male friends to take care of themselves, let alone practical strangers, so I let it go. I looked at Chris. “You wanted to talk about something?”

“Oh, yeah.” He reached into the carrier to scratch Eddie’s chin. “You know our other marina, the one at the east end of Janay Lake? It’s full up this year and I’m looking to keep them happy enough to come back. So I was wondering if you could talk your boss into getting the bookmobile to make a stop out there.”

My boss? Maybe someday I’d get used to being underestimated. But I doubted it. “I’ll see what I can do,” I said dryly.

“Yeah?” Chris smiled, his teeth showing white against the leathered skin. “Cool. Thanks, Min-Tin-Tin. You’re all right, for a girl.”

If I’d been more awake, I’d have come back with a snappy rejoinder, but fatigue was turning my brain into mush. “And you’re… not so horrible for a boy.” Lame, so very lame. I nodded at the other boys, slid the cat carrier off the counter, and headed home for a long afternoon’s nap.

“Hang on, Min, I’ll walk out with you.” Rafe got up and took the carrier from me. “I’d like to stay, guys, but there’s a house that needs working on.”

Rafe owned what you would call, if you were being kind, a fixer-upper. When he was done redoing the siding, wiring, HVAC, and plumbing of the century-old house, it would be a showpiece, but for now it was more a blot on the landscape.

“How’s your cut healing?” I’d taken him to the Charlevoix Hospital after an accident with a reciprocating saw.

“Never better,” he said promptly. “You should quit worrying so much. If you’re not careful, you’re going to grow up into a regular old girl.”

“I can think of worse things to grow into,” I said mildly.

“Five bucks says you can’t come up with ten by the time we get to your dock.”

I immediately started counting on my fingers. “A person who doesn’t read. A narrow-minded person. Someone who doesn’t understand the necessity of an occasional day off. Someone who doesn’t know how to laugh at herself. Someone who doesn’t like chocolate. That’s five. Someone with no sense of humor. With no appreciation for architecture. With no appreciation for art. Or with no love of beauty. Or someone who cares so much about a single issue that they forget about everything else in their life. Ten.”

Rafe handed me the five-dollar bill he’d so recently won from Chris, but I wasn’t done. “I’d rather be a girl than someone who doesn’t like girls, or someone who thinks girls are useless. And I’d rather be a girl than—”

“You won, already,” Rafe said. “See you later, Minnie.” He handed me Eddie’s carrier and headed off, shaking his head.

“And,” I told Eddie, “I’d much rather be a regular old girl than someone who doesn’t like cats.”

Eddie didn’t say anything, but I’m sure he was pleased.

• • •

On Saturday evening I walked up to Kristen’s restaurant. Kristen Jurek and I had met on Chilson’s city beach at the age of twelve. Though Kristen was a born and bred local, she’d committed the unusual act of taking a summer kid under her wing. I’d never forgotten her kindness, and every time I said so, she rolled her eyes and said I’d paid her back a zillion times over and to forget about it, okay?

I would reply that offhand suggestions I’d made three years ago about what to name her restaurant hardly counted in the grand scheme of things, and she’d say that karma was karma, no matter who did what, and to shut up about it or she’d stop making crème brûlée for me every Sunday night.

That was a threat I didn’t want to risk, so I kept quiet. At least for a little while.

I said, “Hey, guys,” through the kitchen’s screen door and went on in. Even late on a Saturday night, the staff was hard at work. Cutting, chopping, cooking, baking, all those things I rarely did and made a mess of when I tried. The one time Kristen had tried to explain the importance of presentation was two hours of my life I could have spent reading. I still regretted the time lost.

A fortyish woman in a tall white hat and a white jacket glanced up at me, her face sharpening at the sight of a stranger in her midst. But the sous-chef, his assistant, and one of the summer interns all nodded to me and/or said, “Hey, Minnie,” and the woman’s face relaxed.

“Hi,” I said to her. “I’m Minnie Hamilton. Is Kristen in her office?”

“Misty Overbaugh,” she said in a gravelly voice. “And I’d be careful if I were you. She’s wrestling with the menu for next week.”

My eyebrows went up. Kristen never waited until the last minute to work up a menu. Never.

“Somebody called with a special deal on chicken breasts,” Misty explained. “She said she couldn’t pass it up.”

I grinned. That was Kristen. “Nice meeting you,” I said, and headed back to the office. I navigated the maze of short hallways and storage rooms that were a direct result of Kristen’s insistence during the remodeling phase that the kitchen be the best possible kitchen, forget the expense, full speed ahead.

What had once been a massive summer cottage was now one of the finest restaurants in Tonedagana County. Diners ate food grown and produced in the region while seated in the rooms where wealthy summer people had formerly spent their leisure hours. Nothing served in the restaurant was frozen, and nothing edible was shipped in from outside the state of Michigan. Well, she did make an exception for spices, but there wasn’t much she could do about that and it was noted on the menu.

I stood in the doorway, looking fondly at my fair friend. Kristen, at nearly six feet tall and Scandinavian blond, was the reverse image of five-foot, curly-black-haired me. “I hear chicken nuggets are popular,” I said.

She looked up at me with bleary eyes. “Why didn’t you stop me from ordering all that chicken?”

“Because I like to see you suffer.” I dropped into the rickety wooden contraption that served as the guest chair. “That, and even if I’d been here you wouldn’t have listened to me.”

“I would, too, have.”

“You think?”

She pushed herself away from the computer and stretched. “No. I would have said what makes you think you know anything about running a restaurant when you can’t even pop microwave popcorn without burning it.”

“My skills are more in the peanut butter and jelly range.”

“It’s good to know your strengths.” She picked up her phone. “Harvey, can you…” She gave me a thumbs-up and grinned. “You’re the best, kid,” she said, then hung up. “Two crème brûlée desserts being prepped right now.”