Софи Райан - The Whole Cat Аnd Caboodle

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly and gave her the short version of what had happened. About halfway through my explanation Elvis wandered in, jumped up on my lap and laid his head on my chest as though he was listening to me breathing.

“Are you all right?” Gram asked.

“I am,” I said. Just talking to her made me feel better. “And Maddie is with Charlotte.”

“What can I do?” I could hear her moving around and guessed that she was looking for a piece of paper and something to write with. That was Gram. Whenever something was wrong the first thing she did was look for a pencil and make a list.

I put one arm around Elvis and stretched out my legs. He tipped his head and his green eyes looked up at me. I started to stroke his fur and he closed them and began to purr. “There really isn’t anything you can do,” I said. “Maybe you could call Maddie. She’d probably love to talk to you.”

“Okay, I’ll do that,” Gram said. “Now what can I do for you?”

“You’ve already done it,” I said.

“Anytime, sweet girl,” she said. I could feel the warmth of her smile coming through the phone somehow. “So, tell me how the workshop went?”

“It went very well.” Elvis was purring so loudly I was surprised Gram couldn’t hear him through the receiver. “I could have done without seeing Mr. Peterson naked, though.”

For a moment there was nothing but silence. “Naked?” Gram finally managed to choke out. “Alf was . . . naked?”

“As the day he was born.”

“Did he have some kind of breakdown or a stroke?”

I laughed. “No. It’s a long story, but there was an art class in the room next door. Mr. Peterson was the model but he got the dress code and the room wrong.”

“Oh, sweet girl, that would be enough to put a person off their food,” she said. “No offense to Alf.”

“Mr. P. doesn’t strike me as the type of person who takes offense that easily,” I said. “And it would take a lot more than the sight of his wrinkly backside to get rid of my appetite.”

She laughed. “I miss you,” she said.

“I miss you, too,” I said. “Tell me more about your day.”

Elvis suddenly lifted his head and licked the edge of the telephone receiver.

“And Elvis just sent you a kiss.”

“Give him one from me.”

I spent the next five minutes hearing about Gram and John’s adventures along the coast of Nova Scotia. When I hung up I was still hungry, but not nearly as lonely.

I’d come to North Harbor to figure out what I was going to do next after my job had disappeared. I’d spent a week with my mom and dad, mostly feeling restless and out of sorts. My mother had suggested coming to Gram’s. Mom had walked up behind me while I was standing, looking out the kitchen window, and put her arms around my shoulders.

“I love you, pretty girl,” she’d said. “But I’m kicking you out.”

I’d turned to look at her. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

She’d kissed the top of my head. “Your grandmother is expecting you for supper. North Harbor is where you need to be. You have a house there and, more importantly, that’s where your heart is. Go figure out what you want to do next. Your dad and I are only a phone call away.”

The next morning Gram had brought me breakfast in bed. She’d told me I had exactly one week to wallow. That had been a Wednesday. I made it until lunch on Thursday. I hated having unwashed hair, I’d gotten crumbs in the bed and my pajama bottoms had a hole in one knee.

How could I lie around feeling sorry for myself with Gram around? A lot worse had happened to her. She’d lost my grandfather. She’d lost my dad, her only child. And she could still find joy in the world. She’d told me once that it would be an insult to my dad’s memory to give up on life because he’d been the type of person to grab onto it with both hands. And since I could still grab onto life pretty well with both hands that’s what I was trying to do. Which was why, in the end, I hadn’t told Gram what I also hadn’t told Nick: I didn’t know what had happened at Maddie’s house this afternoon. I just knew she wasn’t telling the truth about it.

Chapter 6

I couldn’t cook. Whatever the cooking equivalent of a green thumb was, I didn’t have it. In middle school I was voted Most Likely to Set a Kitchen on Fire after a term of culinary arts classes in eighth grade. But I did like to eat and I paid a lot of attention to food. I’d seen the glass bowl of fruit in the middle of the teak table in Maddie’s backyard. And Arthur Fenety had had a cup of coffee, about half-full, at his place. What I hadn’t seen was the omelet that Maddie had said she was making for the two of them to share.

Maybe I couldn’t make an omelet—okay, definitely I couldn’t make an omelet—but I knew they weren’t something you whipped up, stuck in the refrigerator and then popped in the microwave later to warm up.

“So, where was it?” I asked Elvis. “Presumably she would have brought it outside to serve it to Arthur.”

The cat stopped purring long enough to lift his head and give me a blank look. He didn’t know, either.

I closed my eyes and pictured the round table again, set with sunny red, orange and white place mats and matching napkins. There hadn’t even been any plates at either of their places, which made sense. When the omelet was finished, she would have just slid it onto the plates and served it. But she didn’t. Why?

I didn’t think for a moment that Maddie had killed Arthur Fenety. She wasn’t that kind of person.

“She’s hiding something,” I said. “What? And why?”

He didn’t have an answer to that question, either.

I looked at the phone. Should I call Michelle? And tell her what? That I knew Maddie wasn’t telling the whole truth because she let some eggs get cold? What difference did that make, anyway? It was a police investigation. It was none of my business.

I was still hungry. I reached for the phone and punched in my friend Jess’s number.

“Hey Sarah, what’s up?” she said.

“Have you had supper?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Not unless you count three Tic Tacs fused together that I found in my pocket about an hour ago.”

Unlike me, Jess could cook. It was just that she’d get busy sewing and forget. “How about supper at The Black Bear?”

“Umm, yes,” she said. I pictured her at her sewing table, tucking her long brown hair behind one ear.

“Twenty minutes too soon?” I asked.

“Not for me. I’m doing over a wedding dress and I’m out of ideas. Maybe supper will inspire me.”

“Nothing screams ‘Marry me,’ like a pub with a house band named The Hairy Bananas , ” I said, dryly.

Jess laughed. “You joke, but a couple of years ago a guy actually proposed to his girlfriend at Sam’s place. It was one of those elaborate public proposals and he did it during halftime of the Superbowl.”

“Please tell me you’re making this up.”

“I am not,” she said, a bit of indignation in her voice. “All I can remember is that it involved tortilla chips, bean dip and a pretty expensive diamond ring.” She paused for effect. “The ring turned up a couple of days later.”

I groaned. “Now I know you’re making it up.”

She laughed again. “I’ll see you in a bit,” she said, and ended the call.

I hung up the phone and gave Elvis a little nudge. He opened one green eye and looked up at me without lifting his head. “I’m going to meet Jess for supper,” I said. “You have to get up.”

He sat up, yawned and stretched and finally jumped down to the floor and headed to the bedroom. I went into the bathroom to wash my face, and when I walked into the bedroom Elvis was sitting on the white faux-leather lounger, looking expectantly at the TV.