Софи Райан: The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

Rose and her furry sidekick, Elvis, were disappearing up the steps to the second-floor staff room. I knew she’d be back in a couple of minutes with a slice of coffee cake for both Mac and me.

Mac walked over to the cash desk where he’d set his own coffee mug. He was tall and lean and the long-sleeved gray T-shirt he wore showed off his muscles very nicely. He had light brown skin and kept his black hair cropped close to his scalp.

I took a sip of my coffee and pushed a stray piece of hair back off my face. Usually I wore my brown shoulder-length hair down, but I’d pulled it back into a ponytail, since we were going to be working for most of the day on the old house. “I saw the boxes you left by the back door,” I said. “Thank you.”

“There’s more under the stairs if you think we need them,” he said, walking back over to me. He studied my face. “Are you having second thoughts about taking the Hall estate on?”

I shook my head. “No. The numbers are good. We both checked them. We’ll make a nice little profit and I think the price is reasonable as far as what Stella Hall will have to pay. The house just makes me a little sad, piled full of . . . well, boxes of junk that no one else wants.” I ducked my head over my cup and gave him a sidelong glance. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to laugh?”

His brown eyes met mine. He put a hand over his heart. “I promise.”

“The first time we went out to look the place over—when we were trying to decide what to charge Stella—when I got home that night I cleaned out two closets.” Mac smiled. “Just between you and me, I came back here and put two boxes of old parts in the scrap-metal recycling bin.”

“And how much did you pick back out the next day?” I teased.

“No comment,” he said, taking another sip from his cup.

I laughed.

Mac could fix just about anything. About eighteen months ago he’d left his high-powered job as a financial planner to come to Maine and sail. I had no idea what had prompted him to make such a dramatic change in his life. I’d asked him once and he’d very skillfully evaded the question.

I hadn’t asked again.

During the sailing season he spent every spare minute crewing for pretty much anyone who needed an extra set of hands on deck. Wooden boats were Mac’s passion. There were generally eight windjammers tied up at the North Harbor dock during the season, along with plenty of other boats, so there were lots of opportunities to get out on the water.

I knew eventually Mac wanted to build his own boat. He worked for me because, he said, he liked the satisfaction of having something tangible to show for his efforts at the end of the day. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t fix, as far as I’d seen. Second Chance was successful as much from his efforts as from mine.

“It probably wouldn’t hurt to take a few extra boxes,” I said, walking over to the front window to straighten two quilts that were hanging on a wooden rack. “According to Gram, Edison was a collector of—well, a lot of things. Maybe some of his collections will turn out to be something we can sell here or in the online store.”

“We have some of those plastic bins out in the garage,” Mac said. “Do you want to take maybe half a dozen?”

I nodded. Rose came down the stairs then, still trailed by Elvis. She handed me a slice of coffee cake on a blue-flowered napkin.

I smiled. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” She smiled back at me.

Elvis looked up at me and blinked his green eyes.

“No,” I said, breaking off a chunk of coffee cake. “Don’t think I don’t know Rose already fed you a piece.”

The cat made a huffy sound and headed for the workroom.

Rose handed a piece of coffee cake to Mac. “I left half of the cake for you upstairs in the blue tin,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. “I fixed your iron. It was just a loose connection. It’s on the workbench.”

Rose clapped her hands together. “Aren’t you wonderful?” she exclaimed.

Rose’s steam iron was probably as old as I was. It gave off copious amounts of steam, surrounding her in a cloud as if she were standing in a fogbank. And it was as heavy as an anvil. But she liked using it and when it had stopped blasting steam a few days ago, Mac offered to see what he could do. I wasn’t surprised he’d been able to fix it.

“I may as well go do those last two lace tablecloths,” Rose said. “I can probably get them done before Charlotte gets here.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I think we’ll put the bigger one on that table.” I pointed to a long farmhouse kitchen table that sat about three feet from the back wall of the shop. Mac had sanded it for me and I’d whitewashed the top and painted the legs black. It had turned out even better than I’d hoped. With the lace tablecloth and several place settings of vintage china, I knew it would make customers think of happy meals shared with family and friends.

Charlotte arrived about five minutes to nine. Her cheeks were rosy and her white hair was a little mussed.

“Did you walk?” I asked. “I could have picked you up.”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “It was a lovely morning for a walk.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and looked down at me. Even in flats Charlotte was at least an inch taller than I was. She had perfect posture—it seemed she was incapable of slouching. And she still had the steely glare of the high school principal she’d been before she retired.

“I’ll just go put my things upstairs and you can head out to Edison’s.” She hesitated for a moment and then reached out and gave my arm a squeeze. “Thank you for taking this on, Sarah,” she said. “I’ve been in that house.” She shook her head. “I know Stella tried to get Edison to keep the place up, but he acted like running a vacuum cleaner around would kill him. The dust bunnies have probably taken over.”

“I have Mac and Rose and Elvis in case there’s anything with more than two legs,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”

“Nicolas is using this against me, you know,” she said, pulling the soft cotton scarf from her neck and tucking it into the pocket of her jacket. “He says my garage is in danger of looking like Edison’s.”

Nicolas Elliot—Nick—was Charlotte’s son, a former EMT who now worked as an investigator for the medical examiner’s office.

“Did you suggest that maybe he should come and clean it out?” I asked. I’d known Nick since we were kids. In fact, when we were teenagers I’d had a huge crush on him. I’d seen him butt heads with his mother over the years. I’d never seen him win.

Charlotte shrugged. “No. Although I did point out that about ninety percent of the boxes in there belong to him.” A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “That was the last I heard about the garage.” The almost smile turned into a grin as she started for the stairs. “I’ll be right back,” she said over her shoulder.

By quarter after nine we were on the road, with Mac riding shotgun and Rose and Elvis in the backseat. I’d been serious when I told Charlotte that I was taking the cat along to deal with anything that had more than two feet. While I believed that all living creatures had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of the animal equivalent of happiness, I didn’t really want most of the four-legged ones sharing my space while they were doing it—Elvis excluded, of course.

Before I’d acquired Elvis, or maybe more accurately, before he’d acquired me, the cat had spent some time living on the streets around the harbor front. I wasn’t sure if that was where he’d honed his skill as a rodent wrangler, or if that particular ability came from his previous life, whatever that had been.