Софи Райан: The Whole Cat Аnd Caboodle

I’d seen Maddie only twice, briefly both times, since I’d been back in North Harbor. She’d been visiting her son, Christopher, in Seattle when I arrived and since she’d gotten back we hadn’t had much of a chance to spend time together. Probably because of her new romance, I realized now.

“Stay here,” I told Elvis. He meowed what I hoped was agreement.

Charlotte and I got out and walked up to the front door. She turned the antique crank doorbell and we waited.

“I don’t think she’s here,” she said after a minute or so.

I knocked on the yellow-paneled door with the heel of my hand. There was no response to that, either. “Maybe she went somewhere with her friend,” I said. I tried to keep the little twist of anxiety spinning in my chest out of my voice.

“That’s probably it.” Charlotte pressed her lips together, and I knew she wasn’t completely convinced.

I looked around. A stone walkway led around the side of the house to the backyard. “Or maybe Maddie was working in the garden and just lost track of time. Why don’t we go take a look?”

Charlotte exhaled slowly. “I’m acting like an old busybody, I know, but this is just not like her.”

I gave her arm a squeeze. “You’re not a busybody; you’re just worried about a friend. Let’s take a look. Maybe we’ll find her in the backyard, attacking the weeds.” I was trying to convince myself as much as Charlotte, because the Maddie I remembered wouldn’t have not shown up without calling—unless something was wrong.

Maddie was in the backyard. We found her sitting in a chair pulled up to a round teak table that looked as though it had been set for lunch. For a moment, until she wrapped one arm across her body, I wasn’t sure she was all right. I couldn’t say the same about the man in the chair beside her. It was pretty clear Arthur Fenety was dead.

Chapter 3

Charlotte made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. “Maddie—oh, my word! What happened?” she asked, bending down and laying one hand on the other woman’s arm.

Maddie turned her head at the sound of her friend’s voice. “Charlotte,” she said. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again I could see they were bright with unshed tears. “Arthur’s gone.”

Charlotte looked at me. I pressed two fingers to Arthur Fenety’s wrist, even though I was already certain he was dead. There was an abrasion on the back of his left hand. It was red and raw but it wasn’t bleeding. His skin had an ashen pall that told me it was too late to do anything for him.

There was no pulse.

I shook my head. Had Maddie been sitting out here with a dead body? Clearly she was in shock.

Maddie focused on me then. “Sarah.” She managed a tiny smile. “I missed your workshop. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. But she obviously wasn’t.

“I want you to go wait with Charlotte. I’ll take care of things here.”

“I can’t leave Arthur alone,” she said. I noticed she avoided looking directly at the body, although she reached toward it.

I caught her hand, sandwiching it between both of mine. It was icy-cold. “He won’t be alone. I’m going to stay with him. It’s okay.”

I had a flash of memory—the night my father died—when Maddie had taken a bewildered five-year-old’s hand and told me to go with my grandmother. She’d promised to stay with my dad. Her hazel eyes locked on to mine and I wondered if she was having the same memory. “All right,” she said softly.

“I’ll take her inside,” Charlotte said.

I shook my head again. “Take her out to the truck. There’s a blanket behind the seat.”

She frowned. “The truck?”

“We shouldn’t touch anything. Out here or inside.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “You’re right.” I let go of Maddie’s hand and Charlotte helped her to her feet, putting one arm around her friend. I stepped into Maddie’s sight line so she couldn’t see the body anymore, just in case she decided to turn in that direction.

Charlotte looked back over her shoulder as they started around the side of the house. “Sarah, call nine-one-one and then call Nicolas, please,” she said. She recited a phone number.

I waited until the two of them were out of sight and then I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. After I’d hung up, I took a couple of steps closer to the body. It was slumped to the side in the teak chair, head sagging toward the right shoulder, eyes closed. There was a little foam at the right corner of the mouth, and the lips looked blue and waxy. I noticed that there was a ceramic bowl filled with fruit salad in the center of the table and a coffee cup, half-full, at Arthur Fenety’s place. I’d had a bad feeling about the man from the moment he’d brought the tea set into Second Chance, but I’d never expected things to end like this.

I pulled a hand back over my hair and punched the number Charlotte had given me into the phone. Nick Elliot was Charlotte’s son and a former EMT. He’d know what to do for someone in shock. I got his voice mail. After a moment of awkward hesitation, I explained who I was and where I was, and hung up.

Nick had been back in town only a few weeks after working for a couple of years in New Hampshire, and since North Harbor wasn’t a very big place, I was surprised I still hadn’t run into him.

I heard the wail of sirens getting closer and followed the walkway to the side of the house. I could see Charlotte and Maddie in the front seat of the truck. Elvis had climbed onto Maddie’s lap and she was stroking his fur. All of a sudden I was glad Avery had brought the cat along.

In a couple of minutes a black-and-white pulled in behind my truck and an officer got out. I raised my hand to catch his attention and he walked across the grass to me.

“Ms. Grayson?” he asked. He wore the standard patrol-officer uniform and his hair was buzzed close to his scalp, so all I could see was dark stubble.

I nodded.

“You reported a body.”

I pointed into the backyard. “At the table, just around the corner.”

“Please wait here,” he said.

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and stood there while he went to have a look. In less than a minute he was back, just as an ambulance pulled in behind the police car. He held up a hand to me and walked across the lawn to meet the paramedics. I waited while he showed them the body and then came back to me again.

“Ms. Grayson, what were you doing here?” he asked.

I explained about Maddie not showing up and how Charlotte and I had come to check on her. “I think Mrs. Hamilton’s in shock,” I said, gesturing at the truck. “I thought it was better if she waited there instead of staying where the . . . body was.”

“I’ll get one of the paramedics to check on her.”

The officer, whose last name was Whalen, according to his name tag, asked more questions and I answered them as best I could. He nodded after everything I said and made notes in a small spiral-bound pad. I couldn’t read anything in his face.

“I’m going to need you to hang around for a little while, until I talk to the other two ladies,” he said finally, closing the notebook and tucking it into his shirt pocket.

“That’s all right,” I said, thinking I should call Mac and tell him I was going to be a while, but maybe not why.

I turned back to the street as a dark blue sedan squeezed in curbside in front of my truck. At the same time a black SUV parked at the end of the line of vehicles, and a man got out and started up the sidewalk. It wasn’t until he came level with the house that I realized I was looking at Nick Elliot.

“Please wait here,” Officer Whalen said to me. He headed across the lawn toward the blue car, stopping for a moment to speak to Nick. It was obvious the two men knew each other.