The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

Chapter 8

We got back to the shop about one thirty. I was glad to get out of the SUV and stretch my legs. We’d stopped at a farm stand for tomatoes, green beans and new potatoes.

“You made good time,” Charlotte said as I handed her a bag of vegetables.

“That’s because Sarah needs glasses,” Rose said.

I turned to look at her. “I do?”

“Well, it would explain why you didn’t seem to be able to see any of the posted speed limits.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Are you implying I was speeding?” I said.

Mr. P. noisily cleared his throat.

Rose shook her head as she headed for the stairs. “I guess I’m getting old. I didn’t think I was being overly subtle.”

“I wasn’t speeding,” I said. “I may have accelerated several times to pass other cars that were going too slow, but I wasn’t speeding.” I might have been just a little self-righteous in my denial.

Rose kept going. Charlotte’s lips were twitching.

“Liz drives faster than I do,” I said.

Rose stopped on the bottom step and looked over her shoulder at me. “And if Liz drove off a cliff would you do that, too?” she asked. She started up the steps.

I’d been hearing some version of that line from her and Liz and Charlotte and my grandmother since I was five. “Well, if I did it wouldn’t be because I was speeding!” I called after her.

Rose started up the steps but I could tell from the way her shoulders were shaking that she was laughing.

Liz came in later in the afternoon to report on her dinner with Channing. He’d used his contacts in the business world to find out more about the lawsuit and the fraud investigation into du Mer. The quality of the products was the problem. Customers were claiming the products were not organic and natural and didn’t contain the ingredients listed on the label.

“That’s impossible,” Mac said. “Leila graduated with a bachelor of science in chemistry before she got her MBA. She understood the manufacturing process and she’d put quality control checks in place.” He shook his head and grimaced. “I know I keep saying this, but nothing, nothing makes sense.”

Liz patted her blond hair. “Let us figure things out. We’re pretty darn good at it if I say so myself.”

“You are pretty darn good at it,” he said. “I’m glad you’re on my side.” He looked at me. “I’m going out to the shed to take another look at that old bed frame.”

I nodded. Once Mac was gone I put my arm around Liz and kissed her cheeks. She smelled like spring flowers. “Thank you for having dinner with Channing,” I said. “I know it was a sacrifice.” I tried not to grin but it got away from me.

Liz turned her head and gave me the stink eye. “You’re not too old to spend five minutes in the corner,” she warned.

I laughed. “Did you know that Gram still has the naughty chair in storage?”

“And clearly we still have the girl who used to sit in it.”

“Liam spent as much time in that chair as I did,” I protested.

Liz squeezed my cheeks between her thumb and middle finger. “What I remember is how many times you were both in it at the same time.”

I grinned at her, remembering the big upholstered chair in Gram’s living room where she would put Liam, or me, or most often Liam and me for a time-out. We were supposed to think about whatever it was we’d just done. Mostly we’d poke each other with our elbows and smack the sides of our sneakers together, and the time in the chair would end up getting extended by several minutes.

“So when are we going to see Liam again?” Liz asked.

Charlotte came past us with a box from under the stairs and smiled. “Is Liam coming?” she asked. My tall, blond brother with his little boy good looks was popular with women of all ages, and Charlotte and the others loved to spoil him.

When my mom married Liam’s dad not only did he get me, and a stepmom who loved him like crazy, he also got a grandmother and three fairy godmothers. When I reminded him of that he’d pretend to get thoughtful for a moment and then say it was worth putting up with me to get all of them.

“I think he’s coming around Labor Day,” I said. “He’s still consulting on the harbor front development.”

The downtown project, which was going to add a hotel and several new shops to the waterfront, had already had several stops and starts. Now the start date had been delayed from the end of the month to the beginning of October because the town still got a lot of visitors during September. The developers were trying to cause as little disruption to businesses in the area as possible.

Charlotte set the box she was carrying on the counter next to the cash register and smiled. “It’ll be good to see Liam and Isabel will be here in—”

“—ten days!” I finished, grinning at her. “I can’t believe Gram and John have been gone so long.”

“It’ll be good to have them home,” Liz said. “And it would be nice if we could have this business with Mac settled by then.” She held out her hand and studied her nails for a moment. “I think I need to go do a little more fact-finding and maybe get French tips.” She waved at us and left.

I walked over to join Charlotte and she put her arms around my shoulders and gave me a knowing smile. “I think Chuckie Caulfield is beginning to win Liz over.”

I looked around, somehow expecting that Liz had heard and would come through the door to tackle Charlotte. “Do not say that in front of Liz!” I hissed. “I’m not saying it might not be true but don’t say it out loud.”

“Don’t worry,” Charlotte said, still smiling as she released me from the hug. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.” Then her expression turned serious. “I know this is none of my business,” she began, “but that’s never seemed to stop any of us before. Did you and Nicolas argue over this case?”

I sighed softly. “What did he tell you?”

She smoothed the front of her apron. “Nothing, but it was pretty clear from his mood when I saw him that something was wrong. You can call it mother’s intuition if you want.”

I shook my head.

“You have to know that he loves Rose and Liz just as much as you do. They’re just as much his family. I know that he can be overprotective in the extreme. But it comes out of love.”

“I probably shouldn’t be talking about Nick with his mother,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that we hadn’t argued about the Angels being on the case. And I couldn’t tell her about Nick’s insistence that he’d seen Mac with Erin Fellowes right before she was killed. He’d asked me not to tell anyone.

Charlotte gave me a look I couldn’t read. It was almost a mix of love and . . . sadness? “I’d love it if you could talk to me as my daughter-in-law,” she said.

A lump formed in my throat. Before I could say anything Charlotte spoke again. “But knowing you were with someone who makes you happy would be just as good.”

I leaned my head against hers. “I love you,” I said, my voice raspy with emotion.

“I love you, too, sweetie,” she said. “Always.”

I straightened up just as a couple of customers came through the front door.

“I’ll take care of them,” Charlotte said.

I escaped to my office, closed the door and leaned against the desk. I loved Charlotte and Liz and Rose. I knew they all wanted Nick and me together. It would be the perfect happy ending as far as they were concerned, but I wasn’t so sure it would be for the two of us.

I went to the staff room and got a cup of coffee, then I sat down at my desk and called my dad.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What makes you think something is wrong?” I said.

“My Dad Spidey Sense and, by the way, you don’t have to be bitten by a radioactive spider to get it.”

Talking to Dad always made me feel better. Technically, Peter Kennelly was my stepfather, but to me he was just Dad. And I was his child just as much as Liam was. Like Liam he had the ability to make me laugh no matter how bad I felt and I knew I could always count on him to chase the monsters out from under the bed no matter how old I got.

“There’s no such thing as Dad Spidey Sense,” I said, leaning back in my chair and propping my feet on the corner of my desk where I could admire how cute my sandals were.

“Is, too,” he insisted. He hummed the X-Files theme. “And it has determined that the Angels have a case.”

I laughed. “That’s not Spidey Sense, that’s reading the North Harbor newspaper online.”

“Hey! Good reading skills are one of my superpowers.”

“Yes, the Angels have a case.”

“Who’s the client?”

I hesitated but I knew if I didn’t tell Dad he’d just call Rose or Charlotte and find out. “Mac,” I said. I filled him in on the background.

“What do you need?” he asked. I knew he’d grabbed a pen and a pad of paper and was making notes. I pictured him writing, his mouth twisted to one side.

“You hold your mouth funny when you think,” Mom liked to tease him.

“Anything you can find out about the incident that put Mac’s wife in a coma. In the end what happened was ruled accidental, but for a while, as far as the police were concerned, Mac was the main suspect. The only suspect, I think.”

“I’ll use my contacts and see what I can find out. It might take me a day or two.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“Sarah, Mac’s a good man,” Dad said. “This’ll work out.”

“Love you,” I said.

“You, too,” he said. “Talk to you soon.”

I hung up and slid down in the chair so I was sitting on my tailbone. He was right. Mac was a good man. Was that why he was in this mess?

I leaned my head against the back of my chair and closed my eyes. Now that I’d called Dad I didn’t know what to do next. There was a soft knock on my door then.

“Come in,” I called, opening my eyes and straightening up.

It was Mr. P. “Am I interrupting?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “All I was doing was beating my head against a metaphorical brick wall.”

“Sometimes those can be as painful as the real thing.”

I nodded. “Have you confirmed Stevie’s alibi yet?”

He pushed his glasses up his nose. “It’s going to be Monday before I can do that, but there are a couple of things I wanted to talk to you about.”

I leaned forward and gestured at the love seat on the other side of my desk. Mr. P. sat down. He cleared his throat. “First of all, I managed to get some security camera footage from Glenn McNamara’s neighbor across the street.”

“Did you find anything useful?” I asked. On the drive out to see Stevie Carleton I’d told Rose and Mr. P. the story Glenn had told me, that Erin had stopped in at McNamara’s looking for directions to Second Chance. Based on his serious expression I thought I knew what his answer was going to be. I was right.

“No,” he said. “The camera is old and the quality of the images is poor—dark and grainy. I have a piece of software that cleaned up the image a little, but in the end all I can do is confirm the car is a gray Toyota and it appears to be a man in a baseball cap in the driver’s seat. If you’d like to look for yourself I’d be happy to show you what I have.”

“If you can’t see anything I doubt that I would.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose with two fingers. I’d been hoping the car Glenn had seen would turn out to be a clue even though I knew the chance was pretty remote.

Mr. P. was studying me, his expression thoughtful behind his wire-framed glasses.

“You said there were two things you wanted to talk about,” I said.

“It’s about the witness who supposedly saw Mac talking to Erin Fellowes.”

I could suddenly hear my heartbeat thudding in my ears.

“At some point Detective Andrews will have to provide that information to Josh.”

I nodded slowly. “I think so.”

A furry black paw poked around the office door followed by the rest of Elvis. He padded into the room, jumped up beside Mr. P. and looked expectantly at him. The old man reached over to stroke the cat’s fur. “I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put any effort into digging up that name when we’ll have it soon, anyway,” he said.

He knew Nick was the witness. And somehow, someway, he’d guessed or figured out that I knew as well.

“I think you’re right,” I said, trying to keep my tone as offhand as his had been.

Alfred got to his feet, giving Elvis one last scratch on the top of his head. “I’ll let you get back to work,” he said. He started for the door.

“Thank you,” I said.

He turned and smiled at me. “Things have a way of working out, my dear,” he said. “Have faith.”

Elvis launched himself from the love seat to the top of my desk. My chin was propped on one hand and he walked across the top of the desk to nuzzle my cheek. “Mr. P. said to have faith,” I told him.

The cat cocked his head to one side and gave me a look of skepticism. Even he knew I wasn’t very good at that.