Софи Райан - Buy А Whisker

I did glance over quickly at her then. “It could be good for bringing in more tourists.”

“I know,” Rose said, folding her hands in her lap. “I meant the division it’s caused in town isn’t good for any of us. Whatever happens, those kind of wounds tend to linger.”

We drove in silence for about a minute or so.

“Sarah, do you think that man—Jon West—could have killed Lily because she wouldn’t sell the bakery to him?” she asked.

I exhaled softly. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “People have committed murder for a lot weaker reasons.”

“Maybe what happened was an accident,” she said, “and the person got scared and ran.”

“Then whoever it was, they need to come forward. The longer they wait, the worse it gets.”

“It’s not always easy to do the right thing,” Rose said softly. “It takes you down the road less traveled, and that’s a bumpy trip.”

I nodded without speaking. I wasn’t sure what road we were on as far as the investigation into Lily’s death, but I was certain we were in for a rough ride.

Chapter 11

Tuesday passed quietly. I spent most of the morning working on the old dining room hutch.

“What do you think?” I said to Mac, pushing the dust mask I had been wearing onto the top of my head and wiping my hands on my old jeans.

He walked around the piece. “It seems sturdy enough.”

“The middle shelf is cracked.” I pointed to the split that ran the length of the wood. “Could you cut me a new one?”

He nodded. “Sure. Do you want me to try to match the wood?”

I shook my head. “No. That doesn’t matter.”

Mac grabbed a tape measure from the worktable. “So you’re painting the shelves?”

“I’m painting the whole thing.” I ran my hand over the side of the unit. “The wood isn’t exactly pretty.”

Mac looked past me toward the shelves on the back wall. “Do you remember that desk we cannibalized when we were working on the armoire?” he asked.

I squinted in the direction of the shelves. “If you’re thinking about using the wood from the bottom of the leftover drawer for a shelf, I don’t think it’s long enough.”

“No,” he said. “I was thinking that maybe you could use the drawer pulls on this piece.”

I pulled my dust mask off completely. “I don’t remember what they look like,” I said.

“They’re Victorian ring pulls,” he said. “Let me see if I can find them.”

The chandelier Mac and Avery had been cleaning up was still on the tarp, taking up a lot of the room’s space. “Are you finished working on this?” I asked.

“Almost,” Mac said, looking up from a box he’d just lifted down. “I need to replace a couple of screws that were stripped when I took the glass shade out.”

“I had a call from a developer in Bangor,” I said. “He’s renovating an old building, turning it into a restaurant. I think he’d take the chandelier if Jon West doesn’t want it for his new hotel.”

“Give me another day,” Mac said. “Then you can call West and see what he wants to do.”

“Fine with me,” I said. A day wasn’t going to change anything with respect to the future of the waterfront development, as far as I could see.

“Carl Levenger is coming in sometime today to get that table,” Mac said, pointing at a rectangular wooden table over by the door to the shop. We’d sanded the table smooth and stained it light oak with the legs painted a medium gray color called iron ore.

Carl Levenger owned the Owl & the Pussycat bookstore. He’d bought the table for the back of the store, where his various reading groups had their meetings. Carl showed up about quarter to twelve. He walked approvingly around the table.

“I still really like it,” he said. Carl was a former university professor in his late fifties who had taken early retirement a couple of years ago and come home to run the bookstore when his father died. The Owl & the Pussycat had been started by Carl’s grandfather.

Mac began to wrap the top of the table in a couple of old blankets we kept for just that purpose, and Rose stepped in to help him.

Carl smoothed a hand over his bald pate. “I heard you were the one who found Lily,” he said. “I’m sorry. She was good person.”

I nodded. “Yes, she was.”

“We’d talked about going in on a better security system.” He shook his head. “I wish now we had. Maybe then the police could have caught whoever it was who was hassling her and Lily would still be alive.”

Mac helped Carl load the table in the back of his van. Rose touched my arm. “It’s almost lunchtime,” she said. “How about a fresh pot of coffee?”

I smiled at her. “That sounds good.” She started for the stairs, and I watched Carl pull out of our parking lot and start down the street. Was he right? Was the solution to Lily’s murder as simple as finding out who had been harassing her?

Jess showed up about four o’clock with new three new quilts. She poked her head around my office door. “Do you have a minute? I need your opinion on something.”

“Sure,” I said, coming around my desk. “What is it?”

She grinned. “I’d rather show you than tell you.”

I followed her downstairs. Asia Kennedy was standing in the middle of the shop with Charlotte and Avery. Vince’s daughter was wearing a sock monkey hat with a black quilted jacket, a denim skirt and a wild pair of burgundy-pink-and-orange-argyle knitted leggings.

“Hi, Asia,” I said. “How’s the guitar?”

I’d just sold the fifteen-year-old a used Fender acoustic with a black finish. She’d clearly inherited some of her father’s musical ability.

Asia smiled shyly at me. “It’s awesome,” she said.

“I’m glad,” I said, smiling back at her. I turned to Jess. “So what did you want me to see?”

“Me,” Asia said, sticking out one leg.

“Did you make those?” I asked Jess.

She nodded. “Remember that box of sweaters you sold me?”

I leaned forward for a closer look at the diamond-pattern tights Asia was wearing. She turned her leg from one side to the other. “Those were a sweater?” I said.

“Yep,” Jess said.

“I want a pair,” Avery clamored. “Please, please, please.”

“Which you have to pay for,” Charlotte said.

“I will. I promise,” Avery said, putting a hand over her heart.

Jess smiled. “Come down to the store and I’ll let you look through the sweaters and pick which one you like.”

Avery started jumping up and down and grinning.

Jess held up a hand. “And I’ll give you the same deal I gave Asia. You can have the leggings for free as long as you wear them to school and tell everyone where they can buy a pair.”

“You’re kinda like a walking billboard,” Asia said with a shrug.

“Deal,” Avery immediately agreed.

Jess looked at me. “So will you and Mac keep an eye out for more sweaters the next time you get hired to clear out someone’s house?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“You want a pair to go running in?” she asked, lowering her voice, her blue eyes gleaming.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

Mac and I put a second coat of paint on the living room walls of Rose’s apartment after supper. I told Mac the story of thinking I was going to do battle with a rowdy squirrel in the apartment and discovering Rose instead.

He laughed. “I have a feeling living next to Rose is going to be interesting.”

I shook my paintbrush at him. “Don’t use that word,” I warned. “The last time you did that, I ended up with a detectives’ office in my sunporch and a senior-citizen computer hacker using my Wi-Fi.”

There was a teasing gleam in his dark eyes. “But think how boring life would be without them.”