Софи Келли - Hooked On A Feline

“I almost forgot,” Peggy said. “Eugenie says hello.”

Eugenie Bowles-Hamilton was a cookbook author who owned a very popular bakery in Vancouver, Canada. We’d met when the revival of the Great Northern Baking Showdown was filming in Mayville Heights back in the spring. Eugenie was one of the two cohosts of the show, straight woman to Russell Perry, the lead singer for The Flying Wallbangers. I’d been hired, part-time, to research and provide background information for the hosts—primarily Eugenie—that fit with whatever each particular week’s focus happened to be.

“You were talking to her?” I asked.

“I saw her in person. I was in Chicago for a couple of days last week to film a small part on another baking show.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said.

Peggy had ended up stepping in at the last minute for one of the baking showdown’s judges. She turned out to be great on camera, and even though the show ended up not airing, word of her warm personality and rapport with the other judge and the contestants had gotten around.

“Would you believe Richard suggested me?” she asked.

Richard Kent had been the other judge on the Great Northern Baking Showdown .

I nodded. “I would. The two of you had great chemistry.”

“We work well together, and while I don’t want to make a career out of this, it was more fun to be back in front of the camera than I’d expected.” She smiled. “Your waiter will be right over.”

After we’d given the waiter our orders, I spotted Mariah Taylor, Harry’s daughter, clearing two booths at the far end of the diner. She was working at Fern’s part-time for the summer and helping her father as well.

“I just want to go speak to Mariah for a second,” I said to Marcus. “I’ll be right back.”

It had occurred to me that swiping a set of AirPods and spraying whipped cream all over someone’s windshield sounded like the kinds of things a group of teenagers might do.

Mariah was stacking glasses in a large plastic bin. She noticed me and smiled. “Hey, Kathleen,” she said.

“How’s the job going?” I asked.

“Don’t tell my dad, but I think I like working for him a lot better.” She gestured at the table. “People are pigs sometimes.”

“I know,” I said. “I had this same job when I was your age. How many times have you found gum stuck to the back of a booth?”

She made a face. “Twice. One time I put my hand on it.”

I nodded in sympathy. “I kneeled on a big wad of grape bubble gum once.”

Mariah brushed a stray strand of hair back off her face. “This is where you’re supposed to tell me to stay in school so I won’t have to clear tables for the rest of my life.”

I smiled. “First of all, there are worse jobs than this, and second, you’re smart enough to know the value of staying in school.”

“Yeah, well, could you tell my dad that last part?” Mariah said.

I laughed. “Bugging you about that kind of thing is part of his job description.”

That got a smile out of her.

“Mariah, do you know anything about some cars being vandalized out near where you live?”

She flushed and her gaze slipped away from mine. “Sorry. I don’t.”

I tipped my head to one side and studied her. “You’re a crappy liar, you know.”

She stared down at the table for a moment. “You can’t tell my dad.”

“As long as you’re not doing anything dangerous,” I said.

Mariah shook her head. “I wasn’t doing anything dangerous and it was a onetime thing, believe me.”

I nodded. “Okay. What did you do?”

She dropped her gaze again. “I went to this party with a girl from my class. There was a lot of drinking and I heard a couple of other girls talking about spraying whipped cream all over someone’s car because the owner had complained about this dog getting loose and doing you know what all over her flowers.”

“Did you know the girls?”

Mariah looked at me then. “One is a year behind me and I didn’t know the other one.” She blew the stray hair off her face again. “The whole thing turned out to be a stupid waste of time. The girl I went with hooked up with some summer guy and ditched me and I didn’t have any way to get home.”

“But you did get home okay?” I asked. I thought about how many times Ethan and Sarah had done something like that and then called me so Mom and Dad wouldn’t find out. Not that I’d ever thought Mom and Dad were that oblivious.

“Yeah,” she said, dropping a handful of forks into her bin. “I called Peggy and she rescued me. And she didn’t rat me out to Dad. And before you say I could have called him, Peggy already said that.”

I struggled to keep from smiling. “She’s right you know,” I said. “And you can always call me if you get into another situation like that.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She smiled. “Thank you,” she said. She looked over at Marcus. “You want me to tell him all of this?”

“Just the part about the whipped cream and the dog.”

“Okay.” She dipped her head in the direction of the booth. “You’d better go. Your food is ready.”

On Sunday, Marcus and I decided to go to the flea market out on the highway. I had been making a halfhearted effort to find a couple of Adirondack chairs for his backyard.

“What about those benches instead?” he asked, pointing at a pair at a stall just up ahead.

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe benches and a pair of Adirondacks.”

He laughed. “You’re not going to give up on those chairs, are you?”

“The arms are perfect for holding a glass of lemonade or a cup of coffee.”

“Or a cat,” Marcus said with a grin.

I smiled back at him. “That too.”

We walked over to check out the benches and discovered that Burtis and Lita were doing the same thing. Burtis and Lita seemed like an unlikely couple on paper. He was rough-and-tumble and as a young man had worked for the town bootlegger. Lita had been Everett Henderson’s right hand for as long as anyone could remember. I had no idea how Burtis and Lita had gotten together—as far as I knew, no one did—but they were good for each other and the way they sometimes looked at each other made my heart happy.

“You thinking of buying those for your backyard?” Burtis said to me.

I tipped my head toward Marcus, who was already walking around one of the benches, checking it out. “Marcus’s yard,” I said.

The ends of the bench were cast iron and the back and the seat were made of wood. Both pieces looked to be in good shape. The only issue was the fact that all the wood on both pieces had been painted a vibrant fluorescent orange, the same shade as a highway safety sign.

“I’m thinking that with a little elbow grease and some paint they’d look pretty good in my backyard,” Brady’s father said. He was strong and solid with thick, muscular arms and a face lined and weathered from so much time spent outdoors. Burtis had lost most of his hair, just a few white tufts poked out from under his ubiquitous Twins ball cap.

Marcus tipped the bench forward with one hand so he could look at the underside of the seat. “Funny. I was thinking the same thing,” he said.

“You should show a little respect for your elders and let me have them,” Burtis said.

Marcus gave a snort of laughter as he set the bench down. “You’re far from old. Nice try, though.”

Burtis pointed a finger at him. “That sounds like something your father would say.”

“I take that as a compliment,” Marcus said.

Burtis smiled. “How is the old man?” he asked. Burtis and Marcus’s father, Elliot, had been friends from the time they were teenagers.