I was the first to arrive at McNamara’s.
“Hey, Sarah,” Glenn said. Glenn McNamara was tall with broad shoulders and strong arms and still wore his blonde hair in the brush cut he’d had as a college football player. “What can I get for you?” He grinned. “The cinnamon rolls are still warm.”
“I’m meeting Rose and a couple of friends,” I said. “So for now, just a table, please, and that should not be construed as a hard no as far as the cinnamon rolls are concerned.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. He showed me to a table in the corner. “Coffee while you wait?”
I laughed. “Do you have to ask?”
“I hear you have a prize-winning cat,” Glenn said when he brought my coffee in a big stoneware mug to the table.
I laughed. “I know Elvis is just a cat, but I swear all that attention—not to mention Rose and Alfred spoiling him all weekend—has gone to his head. I came out of the bedroom this morning to find His Majesty sitting on one of the stools at the counter and when I put his food on the floor he complained long and loud.”
Elvis had still been miffed at me when it was time to drive to work and he’d spent the ride muttering on the passenger seat next to me instead of doing his usual backseat driving.
I took a sip of my coffee. It was hot and strong and delicious.
“What about the case?” Glenn asked. “Were there any problems?”
He knew about the Angels’ latest investigation, I remembered, because he’d suggested Cleveland and Memphis in the first place.
“None,” I said. “And I’m hoping the show here is the same.”
Glenn held up one of his huge hands with the index and middle fingers crossed over each other and went to help a man who had just come in the front door.
Rose arrived less than five minutes later. Debra and Christine showed up before Rose had a chance to take off her jacket.
Christine set her leather satchel on the floor by her feet.
“I like that bag,” I said.
“Me, too,” she said. “It came from a thrift store in Portland.”
“ReBoot?”
She nodded. “That’s the place.” She leaned down and flipped the top flap. “You wouldn’t believe how much it holds. I have everything for my class tonight in case I get a few minutes to study.”
I gestured at the headphones poking out of the top of the bag. “I have the same ones. How do you like them?”
“They’re not quite as good as the active noise-cancelling headphones which is what I used to have, but I’m not buying batteries all the time anymore.”
“What she’s not telling you is that she’s descended from a long line of mole people,” Debra said with a teasing smile.
“Mole people?” Rose asked.
Christine made a face at her friend. “Debra gives me a hard time because when I study I need to shut out all distractions. So I go into the bedroom, I turn off the lights and I put my phone in a drawer. Then I put on this big old Patriots hoodie, put on my headphones and pull up the hood so I can shut out the world.”
“Mole people,” Debra repeated.
After a little deliberation we all ordered Glenn’s BLT sandwich. “I swear you won’t be sorry,” I told them.
“Vinegar coleslaw or dill pickle kettle chips?” Glenn asked. “The kettle chips are made just down the coast in Rockport.”
“I’ve never met a carb I didn’t like,” Debra said, “and since Tim isn’t around, I’ll have the dill chips.”
The rest of us chose coleslaw. Rose and Debra decided to share a pot of tea as well.
“It will only take a few minutes,” Glenn said.
“Please feel free to tell me it’s none of my business,” I said, adding cream to the refill of coffee Glenn had poured for me, “but does your friend Tim have something against potato chips?”
Debra blushed and ducked her head. “Not exactly.”
Christine was stirring her own coffee. “It really has nothing to do with potato chips and everything to do with the fact that Deb is just way too nice.”
She glanced over at Debra, who looked a little embarrassed but smiled and said, “Go ahead and tell them.”
Christine took a drink from her coffee and then wrapped her hands around the heavy mug. “When the three of us were in high school we went on a class trip to Nova Scotia in Canada. It turns out ketchup-flavored potato chips are a Canadian thing. This football player who Debra had the hots for liked those chips when no one else in the group did. No one.” She jabbed her finger in the air for emphasis. “So Deb pretended to like them, too.”
Debra’s cheeks reddened again. She shrugged. “I was sixteen. What did I know?”
Rose reached over and patted her arm.
Christine smiled. “Deb kind of oversold her enthusiasm for those ketchup chips. Tim’s father was in Toronto on business a month after we got back and Tim got him to bring back ten small bags of them.”
“It was such a sweet gesture I didn’t have the heart to tell him I really didn’t like the darn things,” Debra said, shaking her head. “After that it just kind of snowballed.”
“See? Too nice,” Christine said.
“How long did you go before you told him?” I asked.
Christine had just taken another drink of her coffee. She made a strangled sound halfway between a cough and a laugh. She put one hand to her chest but held up the other to show us she was all right.
“You did tell him, didn’t you?” Rose said.
“I couldn’t,” Debra said. “Every day I waited, it got harder. And how can I tell him now? It would be way too awkward. I know how silly it sounds, but I rarely even order chips if Tim is with us, because he always says it’s too bad they don’t have my favorite flavor and then about a week later he shows up with a big bag of the darn things he ordered from some Canadian place online.”
Rose gave her shoulder a squeeze. “You’re a very kind person.”
“Who has to feed ketchup potato chips to the squirrels to get rid of them,” Christine said in a low voice beside me.
“I like that the three of you have stayed friends all these years,” Rose said.
I had a feeling she was going on a fishing expedition. Maybe I could help. “Rose and my grandmother have been friends since grade school.”
“I had cookies.” Rose lifted the lid of the teapot to peek inside. “I wanted to be friends with Isabelle because she was tall and I wasn’t, which meant I couldn’t reach the top shelf of books in our classroom. And I’d read everything on the bottom shelves. So I walked right up to her and said, ‘I’ll give you a cookie if you’ll be my friend.’”
I’d recently seen a photograph of Rose at around the age she was talking about. I could picture her with her crooked bangs and a fierce look of determination on her face marching across the playground to talk to Gram.
“Of course, Isabelle, being a pragmatist even then, wanted to know what kind of cookie I was offering,” Rose continued.
I laughed. “That sounds like Gram. I’m guessing they were chocolate chip.”
Rose smiled. “They were.” She poured a cup of tea for Debra and one for herself. “How did you two meet?” she asked, looking from Debra to Christine. “And how did you meet Tim?”
“Chem lab!” they replied in unison.
“What did you do?” I asked. “Blow it up?”
“There’s no shame in that,” Rose said. “Sarah set her school on fire. Twice.”
Christine turned slowly to stare at me. “You set your school on fire?”
“No,” I said, realizing I sounded a little defensive. “I set one of the ovens on fire. In Family Living class. It was mostly just a lot of smoke . . . and a little water from the sprinklers.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Rose said, leaping to my defense. “Those sprinklers were not calibrated properly.”
“I’m sure they weren’t.” Debra’s lips twitched in amusement.
“And we were talking about you two, not me,” I said, determined to get the conversation back on track. “How did you two meet?”
“And how did you meet Tim?” Rose added.
Christine reached for her coffee. “Like Sarah, it involved fire,” she said.
“I was at one table with a lab partner who wouldn’t let me do anything because he was afraid I’d mess something up and ruin his perfect GPA.” Debra took a sip of her tea. “Christine and her partner were at the table beside us and Tim was on the other side.”
“We were studying Charles’s Law,” Christine added. “And in our defense, who thought it was a good idea to let a bunch of sixteen-year-olds use Bunsen burners?”
“How did the fire start?” I asked.
Debra held up her hand. “In my defense, you’d think a guy who was worried about messing up his GPA would keep his textbook well away from any flames.”
“So you set your lab partner’s chemistry textbook on fire, and . . . ?”
“Tim tried to beat the flames out with his lab notes.” Debra made a face. “Not a good idea, it turned out.”
“So I threw a beaker of water on the whole thing,” Christine said. “At least I thought it was water.”
Rose’s lips were pressed together and she was shaking with laughter.
“Mr. Medina put the whole thing out with a fire extinguisher,” Debra said, “but not before he got the tiniest bit singed.”
I stared at her across the table. “You set fire to your teacher?”
“No!” She looked offended at the idea. “And his wife only had to draw on one eyebrow.”
I was laughing so hard I couldn’t talk, imagining their poor teacher with one eyebrow gone probably feeling panicked that the three of them could have burned the school down.
“The whole class learned a lesson about the value of working smoke detectors and fire extinguishers,” Debra added, squaring her shoulders a little virtuously.
“Mr. Medina made us clean the entire lab on a Saturday as punishment and that’s how we got to be friends,” Christine finished.
Debra grinned. “Somehow Tim got into the school PA system and we blasted Aerosmith the entire time.”
Rose caught my eye across the table. Tim had gotten into the school’s public address system and probably past some kind of security camera. I had a feeling we were thinking the same thing.
Our food arrived then and the conversation pretty much stopped except for Debra and Christine exclaiming over the bacon and the mayonnaise on their sandwiches.
“Glenn makes his own mayo and his recipe is top-secret,” Rose explained. “I’ve tried to bribe him to no avail. He gets his bacon from a small farm near Camden.”
Afterward, over cinnamon rolls—with more tea for Rose and Debra and more coffee for Christine and me—the talk turned to the upcoming cat show.
“You know, I was a bit nervous about the show in Searsport,” Debra confided.
“Did something happen?” I asked.
“Nothing really serious, just a couple of incidents at a couple of the earlier shows. Several cages were damaged and a sprinkler system went off.”
“Who would do something like that?” Rose asked.
Debra shrugged. “The general consensus seems to be it’s either Paul and Suzanne Lilley—they want to start a rival cat registry—or a woman named Sorcha Llywellyn. She was suspended from competing for a year for lying about aspects of her cat’s lineage. Some people get a little too caught up in the competition.”
Rose picked up her cup, realized it was empty and set it back down again. “I confess that might have been me on one or two occasions.”
I made a bit of a show of clearing my throat as I said, “One or two dozen.”
Everyone laughed.
“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the cats,” Christine said to me. “Maybe it’s more personal.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “No reason, really. I was just speculating.”
We talked for a few more minutes then made a promise to meet up at the show for setup on Thursday afternoon.
Rose hugged Debra. “I’m happy you’re going to be living so close by. I hope I get to see more of you—both of you—and Socrates.”
“I appreciate the offer to look at my dad’s records,” Christine said. “I’ve avoided dealing with them for too long.”
“It’s my pleasure,” I said. “You may be surprised what they turn out to be worth.”
“I could always use a little something extra to put toward tuition.” She smiled. “I have a list somewhere. I’ll look for it and email it to you.”
Debra and Christine left to pick up some boxes from a friend so Debra could finish packing. Rose and I headed back to the shop.
“You didn’t seem that surprised when Debra mentioned the Llywellyn woman,” I said.
“That’s because Alfred already looked into her. She was hundreds of miles away in Florida when the incidents happened at the other shows. And the young woman readily admitted what she’d done and didn’t object to the one-year suspension. She had no reason to want revenge on anyone associated with the show. It wasn’t her.”
“Do you think it could be Tim Grant?”
Rose took a moment before she answered. “I would be happier if it isn’t, but I admit it’s possible.”
“I feel the same way,” I said.
“Alf told me about his suspicions with respect to the Lilleys.”
“Do you think he’s right?” I glanced over at her.
“I think his instincts are generally right,” she said. “I’m just not sure how that’s going to help us.”
Tuesday was another busy day at Second Chance. A bus full of Japanese tourists on the way to Prince Edward Island stopped in late in the afternoon and it was half an hour past closing time before we’d rung up the last customer.
As I came in from the parking lot after carrying two quilts out to the bus, Mr. P. beckoned to me. I stepped into the sunporch. “I did a little digging into Tim Grant,” he said.
“And?”
“There’s a very small window of time during which the cages that were damaged could have been vandalized. He has an alibi for that time. And for the sabotage to the sprinklers.”
“I take it you think it’s a good alibi,” I said, picking a clump of cat hair off my jeans.
“Are two firefighters and a police officer good enough?”
I stared at him in surprise. “Yes. What on earth was Tim doing?”
Mr. P. smiled. “A dog got its head stuck in a road grate. Tim stopped to help. There was a story in the Portsmouth Herald. He managed to turn the dog ninety degrees and get him out.”
“That was a nice thing to do,” I said, “and I’m glad Tim’s not the person who has been trying to disrupt the shows. Debra and Christine would be hurt.”
I dropped Rose and Mr. P. at the house about fifteen minutes later and left Elvis with them.
I expected to see Nick’s vehicle when I pulled into Charlotte’s driveway, but it wasn’t there.
“Is Nick running late or am I early?” I asked as I stepped into the kitchen and kicked off my shoes.
“He just called to say he has to go in to work,” Charlotte said. “A fire somewhere.” She was rinsing a carrot under the tap.
Nick was an investigator for the medical examiner’s office, but before that he’d been a paramedic and he still worked some fill-in shifts.
“I haven’t seen him in more than a week.” The kitchen smelled wonderful. “He didn’t make it to the jam last Thursday night.”
There were place mats and napkins on the table. I added the cutlery, salt and pepper shakers and a dish of Charlotte’s mustard pickles.
Charlotte had started chopping the carrot. “He works too much. He needs a girlfriend.”
“I know,” I said, looking around to see what else I could do. “But it’s not really something we can order online for him.”
“That would be convenient,” she said with a smile, “but it’s not likely Nicolas would want a girlfriend his mother picked out.”
That was true.
“You probably know him better than anyone.”
“No. No. No,” I said, shaking my head emphatically. “I am not playing matchmaker for Nick.” He wouldn’t like me playing matchmaker any more than he’d like his mother doing it.
“Do you want Rose to do it?” Charlotte asked.
I grinned. “It could be entertaining.”
“Really?” she said. “So you thought it was entertaining when she tried to get you and Nick together?”
I made a face at her. In truth, it had been funny in the beginning. Later, Rose’s efforts had made me a little anxious because while I loved Nick to pieces, I loved him like a brother and I knew she—and everyone else who wanted us together—was going to be disappointed.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you.” Charlotte scooped up the chopped carrot and dropped the pieces into a pot. “I made devil’s food cake for dessert,” she said.
I leaned against the counter and managed to snag a chunk of carrot. “I know a bribe when I hear one,” I said.
“Does that mean you don’t want a piece?”
She had me. I hung my head. “No, it does not.”
Charlotte tried to stifle a smile and failed.
“I’ll see if I can think of anyone who’s single that I might be able to introduce to Nick. No promises. And I can’t make him go out with anyone if he’s not interested.”
She gave up on holding back the smile. “Thank you, sweet girl,” she said.
I shook my head. “You’re lucky I have no willpower when it comes to your devil’s food cake.”
Supper was delicious, as always, and the cake was devilishly good. Charlotte and I spent about an hour going over her ideas for the backyard, with her showing me the detailed plan she’d drawn out and pictures of the different plants she thought would work. I went home with a lot more enthusiasm for the project—and a large piece of cake.
When I stepped into the hall, Rose came out of her apartment. She looked somber.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. My grandmother and her husband, John, were visiting my mom and dad. “Did something happen to Gram?”
Rose shook her head. “No. It’s nothing like that. They’re all fine.”
I felt a rush of relief that made my knees go weak for a moment. I put one hand on the wall.
“Come in for a moment,” Rose said.
“Okay,” I said. I followed her into the apartment.
Mr. P. was seated at the table. Elvis was on his lap. He got to his feet, setting the cat on his chair. Like Rose, he looked troubled.
I felt my stomach flip-flop and drop. “Was there more vandalism over at the arena?” I asked.
Mr. P. shook his head. “There was a fire—not at the arena.”
“I know,” I said. “Nick didn’t come for supper. He got called in to work. Do you know where it was? Was anyone badly hurt?”
“It was out near Clayton McNamara’s,” Mr. P. said.
Near Clayton’s, he’d said. Not at, so the old man was all right. Then I remembered who else lived out that way. I put a hand on my chest and it seemed to me that I could feel my heart racing underneath it.
Rose took both of my hands in hers. I could see the gleam of unshed tears. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,” she said. “But Christine is dead.”