Софи Райан - A Whisker Оf Trouble

I walked over to Rose.

“What is it?” Rose asked. “It’s something to do with Teresa Reynard, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

She looked up at me, her head tipped to one side. And then she smiled. “You’re a kind person, Sarah,” she said.

She must have seen the confusion on my face.

“I called Liz when we got back. When she was a girl she went steady with Teresa’s grandfather. She went steady with half the male population of North Harbor, but that’s not really relevant.”

Rose knew about Teresa’s background.

Why was I surprised about that? Between the three of them, she and Liz and Charlotte had gone to school with, taught—in the case of Rose and Charlotte, or dated—in the case of Liz, most of the male population of North Harbor over the age of twenty-one.

“I’m not saying I think you’d ambush Teresa—” I began.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she interrupted. “I can be a bit of a pit bull when we’re working on a case. But I promise I’ll be a pussycat with Teresa.”

I swallowed back a smile, leaned over and gave her a hug. “How about I get in touch with Teresa and get her to stop by?”

Rose nodded. “That’ll be fine.” She looked at her watch. “Heavens! It’s almost time for me to get to work. What do you need me to do?”

“There are two boxes of grade school readers that I’d like to put out on display,” I said. I looked back over my shoulder and frowned. “I’m just not sure where they should go.”

Rose looked thoughtful, her tongue caught between her teeth. “What if I rearranged things in the hutch?” she asked, referring to one of my first purchases for the store, a monstrosity we hadn’t been able to sell in almost a year. At the moment its shelves were showcasing everything from Avery’s trophy candleholders to a collection of Depression glass plates. “I can spread everything else around the store.”

“Sounds good,” I said. Rose had a good eye for displaying things in unexpected ways like a collection of cocktail glasses on a tray next to a vintage rubber ice pack and several patent medicine bottles.

“I’ll just get Alfred a cup of tea and then I’ll get started,” she said, bustling past me.

I walked slowly back to Mac, wondering if there were any other private investigators who drank so much tea. “I’m going to grab some lunch and do some paperwork. Would you get Avery started cleaning that silver service I bought from Helen Craig?”

“Will do,” he said, rooting through the bits of metal strewn in front of him. “Did you talk to Rose about Teresa?”

I nodded. “She agreed not to go pit bull on Teresa. And I agreed to ask Teresa to stop in.”

He grinned. “That’s good.”

I found myself smiling in spite of myself. “Well, not to overkill the metaphor, but you know what she can be like when she sinks her teeth into a case.”

Mac groaned and shook his head. “Go eat, Sarah,” he said. “I think you’re suffering from low blood sugar.”

I laughed and headed for the shop.

A black paw appeared around the side of my office door as I settled on the love seat and began to unwrap my roast beef sandwich from McNamara’s. Elvis had impeccable kitty radar when it came to lunch. He stopped for a drink from his water bowl but ignored the kitty kibble in his dish, jumping up instead to sit next to me on the love seat. He leaned forward and sniffed in the direction of the sandwich on my lap, then looked expectantly at me.

I pulled a small bit of roast beef from between the slices of French bread and offered it to the cat. “You’re so spoiled,” I said as he ate.

He made a low, contented sound in the back of his throat. After he’d had a taste of my sandwich, Elvis was happy to sit next to me on the love seat and wash his face while I had my lunch. When I finished eating I moved behind the desk. I’d sent a text to Teresa and I knew I had about an hour before she showed up.

When I went downstairs just before one thirty, I found Rose standing in the middle of the store, head cocked to one side, hands on her hips, frowning at something.

I walked over to join her. She’d brought out an old wooden dressmaker’s dummy that Mac had trash-picked. Avery had named it Francine. Rose had attached a small globe to the top of Francine’s neck, topped it with an oversize hat swathed in lavender tulle and hung about half of our collection of costume jewelry necklaces around the dummy’s neck.

“What do you think?” she asked, her mouth pulled to one side. “Is the hat too much?”

I studied the figure, my arms folded over my chest. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it makes her look very worldly.”

Rose rolled her eyes at my pun and swatted me with the back of her hand as I started for the door to the workroom. I stopped to look at the bookshelf where she’d arranged the grade school readers along with a pair of Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Robots, an Etch A Sketch and some other toys from the seventies that had been in a box in our under-the-stairs storage space. I turned to look back at her. “Looks good,” I said, gesturing at the shelves.

“Thank you,” she said, brushing off her hands. “Avery went and got the toys for me.”

“I’ll thank her, too,” I said.

Mac and Mr. P. had their heads bent together over something in the middle of the workbench. Avery was sitting on a stool at the far end, rubbing the handle of a silver milk jug with a soft cloth. When she saw me coming she set the jug in front of her, held up her hands like a spokesmodel showing off the newest car model. “Ta-da!” she said.

The old silver had polished up even better than I’d hoped. “Nice work, Avery,” I said with a smile.

She grinned back at me and pushed the stack of bracelets she was wearing back up her left arm. “It’s kind of pretty. I thought maybe we could set the long table with that yellow-flowered china and put the tea stuff in the middle with maybe some plants?”

“I like that idea,” I said.

“So, can I do it?” she asked. She made a motion as though she was going to flip her hair over her shoulder and then remembered that she couldn’t.

Avery had cut her hair to chin length a couple of weeks before and dyed a wide strip in the front cranberry red. Both the color and the style suited her. Liz had grumbled that now they couldn’t go anywhere that boys weren’t looking at Avery.

“I look right back at them,” Liz had said. “So they get the message, look but don’t touch!”

We’d been having dinner at Charlotte’s and Avery had looked up from her mashed potatoes and waved her fork in Liz’s direction. “Yeah. I might as well become a nun.” She’d frowned. “Do you have to be Catholic to be a nun?”

“You can date when you’re forty,” Liz had retorted.

Avery had regarded her grandmother thoughtfully across the table. “Do you know how old you’ll be then, Nonna?” she’d asked.

“I’m perfectly capable of doing the math, thank you very much,” Liz had replied tartly.

Rose had opened her mouth to say something and Liz had fixed her with a baleful look. “Say one word, Rose Jackson, that has anything to do with my age and you’ll be wearing that dish of potatoes for a hat.”

Straight-faced, gray eyes twinkling, Rose had held up her right index finger and written the number one hundred followed by two plus signs in the air. Charlotte had wisely leaned over and whisked the potatoes to the other end of the table.

I looked at Avery now, her enthusiasm for decorating a table in the shop evident on her face. “Yes, you can do it.”

She clapped her hands gleefully together like a little kid. “Thanks, Sarah,” she said.

“Thanks for getting that box of toys out for Rose,” I said.