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“Ooh, I’m going to tell Mitch my idea!” Zoe’s eyes lit up as Mitch strode into the café that afternoon.
Pleasure flitted across her face as she noticed the guy following Mitch into the shop.
“Chris!”
“Hi.” Chris smiled at her. “My shift finished early so I thought I’d stop by and see you.”
“Good.” Zoe’s eyes softened as she looked at him.
Mitch cleared his throat. “We bumped into each other outside.”
“Why don’t we all sit down for a minute?” Lauren proposed. There were only two customers in the café, and they were busy drinking their lattes and enjoying their cupcakes.
“Brrt!” Annie agreed as she trotted up to them. “Brrt!” This way!
They followed Annie to a six-seater at the rear.
“We can get you something in a minute,” Zoe told them. “Mitch, I’ve got a great idea!” She scraped back the pine chair and sat down.
“What is it?” Chris looked interested.
Zoe filled the two guys in on her plan to catch the gnome thief. Annie sat on one of the chairs next to Lauren, looking interested in the conversation.
“It sounds pretty good to me.” Chris glanced at Mitch.
“I think so, too.” Mitch replied. “I’ll see what I can do to make it happen. But Zoe, don’t get discouraged if the thief doesn’t bite. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the gardens he’s targeting.”
“I won’t,” Zoe promised, but Lauren noticed the spark of excitement in her eyes. She hoped the thief would target them, just so Zoe wouldn’t be disappointed if her plan didn’t work.
“I might be able to set up the cameras tomorrow, if it’s approved,” Mitch added.
“Don’t forget the gnome.” Zoe giggled.
“Where do you buy gnomes from, anyway?” Lauren asked.
“A garden center, I guess,” Zoe answered. “Maybe there’s a gnome shortage going on and that’s why they’re getting stolen!”
“I’ll see if I can buy one,” Mitch said. “I’ll keep you posted.”
They made Mitch and Chris a large latte each. Mitch took his to go, but Lauren shooed Zoe back to Chris’s table, where Annie remained.
“Enjoy some time with him,” she told her cousin.
“Thanks, boss.” Zoe grinned. She made herself a mocha and joined Chris and Annie.
Lauren glanced over at Zoe and Chris. They were deep in conversation, Zoe looking happy and animated. So was Chris. It would be great if he could get a transfer to Gold Leaf Valley – if that was what he wanted.
The rest of the afternoon sped by until with a start she realized it was five o’clock. Chris had departed about an hour ago and Zoe had filled her in on their plans to have dinner together Saturday night.
“I told him I couldn’t do Friday night, because it’s craft club.”
“I feel the same with Mitch,” Lauren told her. On Friday evenings, the three of them visited Mrs. Finch’s house for craft club, a Zoe invention. Since Zoe’s list of hobbies seemed to change monthly, at times it had been referred to as knitting club, crochet club, string-art club, beading club and now, pottery club. They’d recently agreed it might be easier just to call it craft club.
The two of them had started out with knitting, which Lauren had stuck to – although lately she’d had trouble making up her mind what to knit next. So far, she’d knitted a hat and scarf for herself – and Mitch. Now it was summer, she didn’t really feel like knitting at all, but she didn’t know whether she was game to try her hand at anything else.
That evening, Zoe chatted about her upcoming plans with Chris. It was Zoe’s turn to choose what they did and she wanted them to try a different cuisine – so far it was a toss-up between Nepalese and Moroccan.
“Maybe Annie could help me choose,” Zoe mused as she sat at the kitchen table with Lauren after dinner.
“Where is she?” Lauren crinkled her brow. The feline had eaten her meal of beef in gravy earlier, and then had disappeared.
“Let’s find out.” Zoe jumped up from the table.
A second later, Lauren’s eyes widened as she stood in the doorway of the living room.
Annie was on the carpet, and so was Lauren’s phone. She’d put the device on the coffee table earlier.
“Brrt,” Annie said, and pushed her tinkling ball toward the phone.
“Meow!” came a faint voice from the phone.
“Did Annie call AJ?” Lauren turned to look at Zoe.
“Or maybe AJ called Annie.” Zoe giggled softly.
Lauren crept closer to Annie, who seemed unaware of their presence. She could see AJ on the phone screen.
“They’re using the video app,” Lauren told her cousin.
“No way!”
Lauren and Annie had checked in on Zoe using that phone app when Lauren had had a cold, and Zoe had been in charge of the café. And Lauren knew that Annie had called AJ on the phone previously to ‘talk’ to her, but this was the first time that she had seen Annie use the video app to call her friend.
“Meow,” came AJ’s voice from the other end. A jingle accompanied the sound and Lauren could see a red ball rolling past the screen.
“Are they each pushing their balls and showing each other what they’re doing?” Zoe marveled.
“It looks like it.” Lauren smiled.
“Brrt,” Annie said to her friend on the screen, pushing her pink ball with her paw. Tinkle.
“AJ? What are you doing?” Ed’s voice.
“Meow!”
“Hi Ed,” Zoe called out.
“Zoe? Annie?” Ed’s face loomed in the screen, auburn tufts of hair sticking up this way and that.
“Hi,” Lauren said.
“Brrt!” Annie turned around to glance at Lauren and Zoe, then switched her attention back to the phone screen.
“I think Annie and AJ were enjoying a video chat.” Zoe giggled. “Or a video play date.”
“Really?” At first Ed sounded disbelieving, then he chuckled. “Why not? Annie is one smart cat. AJ, too.”
“Brrp.” Thank you.
While they’d been talking to Ed, Annie had fetched her small toy hedgehog. She held it in her mouth and tilted her head at the phone screen.
“Mew.” AJ appeared a second later, holding a little stuffed bunny in her mouth, gray and white.
“I bought her that rabbit the other day,” Ed told them. “She loves it.”
“Just like Annie loves her hedgehog,” Lauren remarked.
After a few more minutes of conversation, they left Annie and AJ to enjoy their ‘play time’.
“No one would believe us if they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes,” Lauren said.
“I don’t know,” Zoe replied. “Surely we can’t be the only ones who think that Annie can do anything?”