Софи Райан: The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

I took another bite of my sandwich. Elvis was the only guy in my life at the moment. “Which is also fine by me,” I said aloud.

He turned to look at me and he almost looked a bit puzzled. “It’s okay with me that you’re the only guy in my life,” I said by way of explanation, in case his confusion was from what I’d said. “You know what Liz says: ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.’”

It was hard not to miss the irony in hearing Liz say those words. Elizabeth Emmerson Kiley French had been married and widowed twice, and everyone who met her was charmed by her—unless they made the mistake of getting on her bad side. She was smart, beautiful and tart tongued. Men, even those a lot younger than she was, tended to lose their ability to think straight around her.

Liz was one of my grandmother’s oldest friends. She, along with Charlotte Elliot and Rose Jackson, were sort of my fairy godmothers. They spoiled me a lot, nagged me on occasion and weren’t shy about sharing their opinion on whatever was happening in my life. I’d suggested once that Liz should learn the words to “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” the fairy godmother’s song from the Disney version of Cinderella . Liz hadn’t been shy about telling me what she thought of that idea.

Rose and Charlotte both worked part-time for me at Second Chance. The rest of their time was spent working at their detective agency, Charlotte’s Angels, along with Rose’s gentleman friend, Alfred Peterson, quite likely the world’s oldest computer hacker. Mr. P. had met all the requirements for becoming a licensed private investigator set out by the state of Maine. For the past several months Rose had been working as his apprentice.

Cases just seemed to fall into their lap. Their first investigation had started when their friend Maddie Hamilton was arrested for murder. The Angels’ most recent case had begun to unwind after Rose had gone to make a very unauthorized delivery to a customer and seen a body that subsequently disappeared.

The Angels didn’t have a case at the moment and I was hoping it stayed that way for a while. Because when Rose and her cohorts were investigating I always ended up getting pulled into things, no matter how vehemently I swore it wasn’t going to happen this time. It had been nice to have nothing more pressing to worry about than what color to paint a trash-picked rocking chair. The only lump in the gravy was that a reality TV crew had been shooting in our neighborhood for the past three days. They were filming a pilot for some kind of treasure hunt show and the street had been clogged from early in the morning until after dark.

Thankfully, they had moved elsewhere in town right before lunch. Just that morning Rose and Elvis and I had arrived at the shop to find the parking lot more than half-full of the crew’s vehicles—without my permission—and a dusty half-ton truck blocking the entrance to the space. The driver was behind the wheel, intently watching the camera crew doing something in the middle of the street several buildings away. He wore a backward Yankees ball cap and I could see several days of scruff on his face. The hat alone was enough to get him the stink eye in North Harbor, where everyone bled Sox red.

Before I could do anything, Rose had marched over to the truck and smacked the hood with the flat of her hand. The sound had echoed down the street. The driver had jumped, slopping coffee, or whatever he’d been drinking from the take-out cup he was holding, onto his shirt. As he turned toward the driver’s side window I saw that the front of his green T-shirt said Kale Yeah!

I’d watched Rose talk to the man. He had wide shoulders and wiry arms under smooth brown skin and he seemed to be shrinking back into his seat. Although I couldn’t hear Rose’s words, I knew her body language. It had struck fear in the hearts of more than one middle school student back when she was still teaching.

After a couple of minutes she came back to my SUV, a satisfied look on her face and her ubiquitous tote bag over one arm. The truck pulled away.

“What did you say to him?” I’d asked.

“I simply reminded that young man of the importance of manners and respect for other people’s property,” she’d said. “And I may have mentioned how many of the nice young men and women on the town’s police force are former students of mine.” She’d given me an innocent look that could rival any of Elvis’s. “Then he remembered a previous engagement so everything worked out just fine.”

“Okay,” I’d said slowly, looking down the street in the direction of the camera crew. “Do you think he’s involved in the production somehow?”

Rose had shaken her head. “I think he’s just another looky-loo. If he were working then why wasn’t he actually doing something other than blocking our parking lot?”

“Good point,” I’d said. “At least I can pull in now. Thank you.”

She’d smiled. “You’re welcome, dear.”

She’d started for the back door and I pulled into the lot. After I’d let Rose and Elvis into the shop I’d gone in search of the person in charge of the treasure hunt project. Half an hour later the crew’s vehicles were still in the parking area but I had a check in my hand large enough to take the edge off my annoyance.

I ate the last bite of my supper now—fishing out a bit of bacon for Elvis—and finished my coffee. I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and then I got to work, using a screwdriver and a thin-bladed putty knife to remove the glass top and the shelf below it from the cart. I was the only one still around. Rose and Mr. P. had gone to watch Rear Window at the library as part of their weeklong Hitchcock film festival. Liz’s teenage granddaughter, Avery, who lived with her and worked part-time for me, had gone home for a short visit with her parents.

Liz and Charlotte were having dinner with Maddie. The three of them had been sorting books for the upcoming library book sale. Charlotte had called earlier to tell me that she had set aside several books she thought might be valuable to get a second opinion from me. I knew a little bit about old books from my mother, who had a small collection of first editions of some classic children’s books.

“Bring them with you tomorrow,” I’d told Charlotte. “I can always take photos and e-mail them to Mom if I need to.”

Mac, my right-hand man and jack-of-all-trades, was out sailing. And my best friend, Jess, was at her shop down on the waterfront, working on a gorgeous gold dress for one of her customers who was planning a fall-themed second wedding. Since everyone else was busy, it had seemed like a good night to get some work done.

It had been a beautiful day, with the sky an endless, cloudless blue overhead, but now heavy clouds were rolling in from the water and I wondered if we’d get some rain later.

For now I was happy to be outside working. Elvis seemed content to stay just inside the garage door, stretched out on the top of the dresser that Mac had finished sanding and cleaning earlier in the day, watching me and making little murping comments from time to time.

Owning a repurpose shop hadn’t been my plan when I graduated. I’d worked in radio after college, eventually hosting a popular evening program playing classic rock and interviewing some of the genre’s best musicians. Then one day I was replaced by a syndicated music feed out of Los Angeles and a nineteen-year-old who read the weather twice an hour and called everyone “dude.”

Growing up I’d spent my summers in North Harbor with my grandmother. It was where my father had been born and raised. I’d even bought a house that I’d renovated and rented. When my job vanished, I’d landed at Gram’s planning to hide under the covers and eat grilled cheese sandwiches. I’d ended up opening Second Chance instead.