Софи Райан: The Whole Cat Аnd Caboodle

Michelle straightened up. Elvis looked around as if he were confused about why anyone would want to stop stroking his fur or scratching behind his right ear.

“I didn’t come here to tell you about the investigation,” she said. “At least not just about that.”

“So why did you come?” I asked. Elvis came to sit beside me, leaning against my leg.

She took a deep breath. “I came to say I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. “Arresting Maddie is part of doing your job.”

She tucked her auburn hair behind one ear. “That’s not what I came to apologize for. I came to tell you I’m sorry for cutting you out of my life.”

It was the last thing I was expecting her to say. For a moment I just looked at her. Then I found my voice. “What did I do?” I asked. “One day you were my friend and the next day you wouldn’t speak to me. I didn’t understand then and I don’t understand now.”

“Do you remember that summer?” She looked down at her feet. “My father went to jail.”

I tried to swallow down the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat but it wouldn’t go. I remembered that summer like it had just happened. It was the summer I’d gotten my dad’s guitar from Maddie and lost my best friend. Michelle had been a summer kid, just like I was, coming to spend two months with her grandparents, long dead now. Then her dad had gotten a job as director for the Sunshine Camp. The camp, for kids with seriously ill parents, had been bought by the Emmerson Foundation, the charitable organization started by Liz’s grandparents. Rob Andrews had had the job less than a year when a routine audit showed there was money missing.

“I remember,” I finally managed to say.

She looked past me, over my shoulder into the darkness, or maybe into the past. I wasn’t sure. “I kept thinking I was going to wake up and it would just be a bad dream,” she said, her gaze coming back to my face.

Michelle’s dad had died in prison, less than three months after he’d been sentenced, from a fast-moving form of cancer that no one had known he had.

“Nobody seemed to understand how I felt.” She stopped and swallowed. “Except you. And then I heard what you said about him to Nick.”

And just like that I understood why Michelle had stopped talking to me. Just like that it suddenly all made sense. Why hadn’t I figured it out before?

The night Maddie had given me my dad’s guitar, and two months after Michelle’s father had begun his four-year prison sentence for embezzling from the Sunshine Camp, Nick and I had sat on the rock wall at the back of my grandmother’s yard and I’d told him that Michelle’s father was a horrible person and that it wasn’t fair that he was still here and my father was gone. And then I’d said, “I wish he was the one who was dead!” A couple of minutes later I’d taken it all back, but obviously Michelle hadn’t stayed around long enough to hear that. And a couple of weeks later, her father was dead.

“I don’t understand,” I said rubbing the palm of my right hand with the thumb of my left. “You had chicken pox. You were in bed.”

She ducked her head. “It was your birthday. I wanted to bring you your present. So I waited until everyone was asleep. Then I snuck out.”

The next day Michelle had ended up in the hospital when she’d come down with some kind of secondary infection—probably from wandering around town late at night. I’d been baffled when she didn’t want to see me and when she wouldn’t even look at me during her father’s funeral sixteen days later.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was a thoughtless, self-absorbed teenager.”

She gave me a small smile. “I think that’s part of the job description. And you’d just gotten your father’s guitar. You were missing him.”

“You were my best friend,” I said. “I was supposed to be on your side and I wasn’t.”

A strange look came over her face. “I think someone set him up,” she said. She straightened up and brushed her hair back from her face. “I’ve been trying to figure out who it was.”

“Have you found anything?”

“You’re not going to tell me I’m tilting at windmills?” she asked, running a hand over the railing.

“I’ve been driving a group of senior citizens who think they’re Charlie’s Angels all over town. I’m the last person who’s going to tell you that.” I chose my next words with care. “And I’d like to be a better friend than that.”

Michelle hesitated and then she leaned forward and hugged me. It was clumsy and awkward but it still felt pretty good.

“Could we have dinner some night and catch up?” I asked when she let me go. I was hesitant because it had been a lot of years since the two of us had been friends.

She nodded. “I’d like that.” Her mouth moved as though she was testing out what she was going to say next.

I bent down to pick up Elvis to give her a minute.

“I’ll do what I can to help Maddie,” she said. “I’ll look at every piece of evidence a second time. I give you my word.”

I nodded. “I know that,” I said.

She let out a breath as though a load had been lifted off her shoulders. “I have to get going.” She leaned over and gave Elvis a scratch on the top of his head. He tipped his head to the right, looked up at her and murped. “Good night, Elvis,” she said.

She smiled at me and there was nothing tentative about it this time.

I watched her walk back to her car, and as she drove away I raised a hand in good-bye and she did the same.

Chapter 25

Rose arrived about quarter to nine Monday morning, carrying her red-and-white tote bag, and looking like the cat that swallowed the canary.

“Did you get it?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

She nodded and set the tote bag at her feet. She lifted out something swaddled in a towel and set it on the counter and began to unwrap it. Elvis, who had been sitting there, reached over with a paw and swatted down one edge of the towel.

“Thank you, Elvis,” Rose said. Underneath two of her best peach-colored towels was a curved, squat gravy boat.

“I hope this is okay,” she said.

“It’s more than okay,” I said. I threw my arms around her shoulders and hugged her. “Thank you.”

“Go call Daisy,” she said. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

I rewrapped the gravy boat and took it up to my office. Then I called Daisy Fenety, crossing my fingers that she’d be interested enough in the china gravy boat that she’d come to the shop.

“It’s on consignment,” I explained. “I can’t promise the owner will take your offer or any offer, for that matter.”

“I could stop by about four thirty this afternoon,” she said. “Would that work for you?”

“It would,” I said.

The day dragged.

About quarter after four I went downstairs. Charlotte had found new shades for the lamps I’d gotten from the motel and Avery had finished scrubbing the chairs. The lamps were on top of a squat wooden bookcase and the chairs were grouped in a semicircle, each with a bright pillow that Jess had made propped against its back.

Charlotte was just ringing up a customer. I waited until she was finished and then walked over to her. I set the china gravy boat on the counter by the cash register. She cleaned her hands with the bottle of sanitizer I kept by the cash register. “Avery and I are going to wait in the sunporch,” she said. “I think Daisy might be more likely to talk to you if we’re not all in the room. Mac will be around in case there are any customers.” She laid a hand on my shoulder for a moment. “Just get her to talk to you if you can.”