Step On A Crack

Chapter 16

I COULDN’T BELIEVE my nose when I finally got back to the apartment. It smelled like coffee. Good coffee. Strong coffee.

And that other smell. I didn’t want to jinx it, but I had a deep hunch that something was baking.

Mary Catherine was just pulling out a tray of muffins when I entered the kitchen. Blueberry muffins. I like blueberry muffins the way Homer Simpson likes doughnuts. A young lady like her couldn’t possibly have six muffins for breakfast, could she? Would she share one with me?

And the kitchen. It was sparkling. Every surface gleaming, every cereal bowl put away. Where was the Clean Sweep team?

“Mary Catherine?”

“Mr. Bennett,” Mary Catherine said, blowing a wisp of blond hair out of her face as she put the muffins on top of the stove. “Where is everyone? I thought I was Snow White entering the dwarves’ cottage when I came down this morning. Lots of little beds, but no sign of anyone.”

“The dwarves are at school,” I said.

Mary Catherine gave me a questioning look, similar to the one I’d just seen on Sister Sheilah.

“What time do they leave?” she asked.

“Around eight,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the steaming muffins on the stove.

“Then I start at seven, Mr. Bennett. Not nine. There’s no sense in me coming all this way to help out if you won’t let me.”

“I apologize. And the name is Mike, remember?” I said. “Are those…”

“For after breakfast. How do you like your eggs?” she said. “Mike.”

After breakfast? I thought. I’d assumed they were breakfast. Maybe this au pair thing would work out.

“Over easy?” I said.

“Bacon or sausage?” she said.

No maybe about it, I thought with a smile and a shake of my head.

I was contemplating that win-win decision when I felt my cell phone vibrate. I looked at the caller ID. My boss. I closed my eyes and mentally willed his number off the screen. So much for my telepathic powers, I thought, feeling the phone jump in my hand like a freshly caught trout.

I was sorry it wasn’t a real fish.

I would have thrown it back.