The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

Chapter 10

Rose and I spent the afternoon out at Clayton McNamara’s house finishing the inventory.

“I should have a recommendation for you and Glenn on what to sell and how in about a week,” I told Clayton as we stood in his driveway.

“I appreciate that,” Clayton said. “It’ll be good to get things cleared out so Beth and Glenn don’t have a pile of junk to deal with when I’m gone.” Then he grinned. “Not that I’m planning on taking that final drive anytime soon.”

“I should hope not,” Rose said with a smile.

Clayton pointed a finger at me. “And I don’t want to see any friends and family discount when all this gets added up. I can be a cantankerous old coot when I set my mind to it.”

I gave his arm a squeeze. “And have you forgotten who my grandmother is? You’re not the only one who can dig their heels in.”

Clayton laughed. “Lord help us,” he said.

I told him I’d be in touch soon and Rose and I headed back to the shop.

The rest of the afternoon was quiet, which didn’t surprise me. The weather was beautiful and there weren’t that many summer days left.

“Would you like a ride home?” I asked Rose as I went to lock the front door at the end of the day.

“Thank you, dear, but Alfred and I are going with Liz.” She handed the floor attachment to Avery, who had just pulled out the vacuum cleaner.

“We’re making peach cobbler,” Avery added. “I’ll try to save you some but you know how Nonna is when it comes to dessert.”

“I heard that,” Liz said. She was standing in the doorway to the workroom.

“I know,” Avery said as she plugged the vacuum into the wall outlet. “That’s why I said it.” She gave her grandmother an exaggerated smile and started the vacuum.

I headed for the workroom, pausing to give Liz a kiss on the cheek as I passed her. “She’s going to run the world one of these days,” I said, glancing back in Avery’s direction.

“I know,” Liz said. “I don’t know whether to be proud or terrified.”

Liz had just pulled out of the parking lot about fifteen minutes later when Nick pulled in. I’d been set up, I realized. I headed outside to intercept him.

“Hi,” he said, taking off his sunglasses and giving me a tentative smile. He’d been to court. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back and no tie. His dark suit jacket was draped over the back of the passenger seat. He smelled faintly of spearmint chewing gum and Hugo, the aftershave he’d been wearing since we were teenagers.

I glanced down the street half expecting to see Liz’s car at the curb with Rose watching out the back window, but there was no sign of them. “What pretext did Rose use to get you here?” I said.

“No pretext,” he said. “I called her and asked her to make sure you were alone so we could talk.” He held up both hands. “I conspired with Rose, Sarah. That should tell you how much I want to fix this thing between us.”

Nick looked so earnest standing there that I couldn’t help laughing. “Now you owe her,” I said.

He gave me a wry smile. “Which shows just how important this is to me. Please, tell me what I can do to fix things.”

I wrapped one arm over my head, digging my fingers into my scalp. “I don’t know. I just don’t want to keep arguing with you over the same things.”

“I don’t want that, either.”

“So what now?”

Nick’s mouth worked as though he were trying out what he wanted to say before saying the words out loud. “Just for now, just until the murder of Erin Fellowes is solved, can we set aside our differences?”

“Nick, we’re working at cross-purposes. How can we set things aside?”

He was shaking his head before I finished speaking. “No, we’re not,” he said. “We both want the truth. Give me a chance. Please.”

I tried to let go of my aggravation, consciously loosening my shoulders, which seemed to be hunched up by my ears. He was right. I wanted the truth and I knew Nick well enough to know that he was after the same thing. “There’s something I want to ask you first.”

“Anything,” he said.

“You said you saw Mac with Erin. Did you see Mac as in you saw his face, or did you just see someone with the same color skin?” I knew what I was potentially accusing him of, but I had to know.

Nick took a deep breath. He shook his right hand as though he were trying to loosen his fingers. “I saw a man. He was wearing a gray hoodie and his hands were in his pockets so I didn’t see what color skin or hair he had. But I heard Erin Fellowes call him Mac. For the record I don’t think Mac is a murderer but I do think he’s keeping secrets and it’s very possible those secrets are why Erin Fellowes is dead.” His eyes were glued to my face. “She said, ‘Mac, leave me alone.’ I heard her clearly, Sarah. I’m sorry.”

I felt a surge of relief. Nick’s ID of Mac was far from certain. “All right,” I said slowly.

His eyes searched my face a little uncertainly. “All right what?”

“I will try to put aside our differences for now, until Erin Fellowes’s killer is found. After that I’m not making any promises.”

He smiled. “Okay,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” He hesitated and then put his arms around me. It was an awkward hug, which told me things weren’t really completely okay with us.

“I’ll talk to you soon,” he said.

I nodded and watched him get into his SUV and drive away.

I went back inside to get my bag and Elvis. The latter I found sitting on Mr. P.’s desk in the Angels’ office, looking idly out the window. He looked up at me and licked his whiskers.

“Ready to go home?” I asked.

“Mrr,” he said, then his gaze darted to the window again for a moment.

“I was talking to Nick.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Which I’m sure you knew. Did Rose tell you to spy on us to make sure I didn’t whack Nick with my purse?” I knew that wasn’t nearly as preposterous as it sounded. The cat suddenly became engrossed in washing his right front paw.

Elvis and I headed home. There was no sign of Rose so I couldn’t tell her I knew what she’d done. Elvis and I ate supper and then he went into the bedroom to watch Jeopardy!

I sat on a stool at the counter and called Liz. “Hi,” I said when she answered on the sixth ring, slightly out of breath. “Did I take you from something? I was going to come over for a minute.”

“Where are you?” Liz asked.

“I’m home. I know what you and Rose and probably Avery as well were up to and I will give you all an A for effort—and sneakiness.”

Liz gave a snort of derision. “If the two of them had listened to me you wouldn’t be home right now. At least not by yourself.”

“You do know that whole chloroform-on-a-handkerchief thing only works in the movies, right?” I said, grinning in spite of myself. I really wanted to be mad at their attempts at matchmaking between Nick and me, but I couldn’t seem to manage it.

“Speak for yourself,” she retorted.

“I’m leaving now,” I said, getting up to grab my bag from the arm of the sofa. “So if Channing is dancing in your living room in his boxers and a feather boa you might want to get him out of there.” I hung up laughing before Liz could answer.

“I’m going to Liz’s. I won’t be long,” I called to Elvis.

“Merow,” he answered after a moment.

Liz let me in and I made a show of peeking into the living room with one hand up to shield my eyes.

She glared at me. “Don’t start, missy,” she warned.

I gave her my best wide-eyed look of innocence, which was pretty darn good.

“Channing wasn’t here and if he had been it certainly wouldn’t have been in a feather boa.” She looked down her nose at me as only Elizabeth Emmerson Kiley French could do and then led the way into the kitchen. “You know feathers make me sneeze,” she added over her shoulder.

Liz didn’t ask if I wanted a cup of tea. She just got out two cups and poured one for each of us. There was a plate with two lemon tarts in the middle of the table. I reached for one. Liz set my tea in front of me and I set the tart on the edge of the saucer.

She turned to the cupboard and handed me a plate. “Were you born in a barn?” she asked.

I broke a bite off the tart and popped it in my mouth, putting the rest on my plate. “No. I was born in a hospital, although rumor has it I was almost born in the backseat of a Toyota Tercel.”

Liz grinned as she sat down opposite me. “Front seat, the way I heard it,” she said.

I made a face, wrinkling my nose at her. “You’ve been looking into Mac’s background,” I said.

She didn’t deny it. She simply nodded and reached for her teacup. Liz had connections in the business world from her work with the Emmerson Foundation.

I waited. She took a sip of her tea and set the cup down again. “It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Mac was an excellent financial adviser, by all accounts.”

“It doesn’t.”

She reached for the other tart. “I would have hired him,” she said.

High praise.

“Did you find out anything about Leila’s family?” I asked, licking my finger to pick up the crumbs of shortbread crust on my plate.

“Old money and many of the clichés that go with it,” Liz said with an edge of disdain in her voice. “Mac’s clients, his coworkers, no one other than Leila’s family, believed he had anything to do with what happened to his wife.”

“You think there were hard feelings when Mac took over as Marguerite Thompson-Davis’s financial adviser.”

“There was a”—Liz cleared her throat—“a conversation that got a little heated between Mac and his future father-in-law right after the account was moved, heated at least on Leila’s father’s part.”

“How heated?” I asked, reaching for the other half of my lemon tart.

“There were pigeons in the parking lot that heard him. Or so I was told.” Liz tapped a nail on the top of the table. “I know that Alfred has eliminated Leila’s cousin, Stevie, as a suspect, but I did find out an interesting piece of information about her.”

I raised a curious eyebrow since my mouth was full of lemon tart.

“That property you visited, that house, all mortgaged to the hilt. They’ve been trying to get this organic food business of theirs off the ground for the past two years. They don’t have a pot to—”

I shot her a look across the table.

Liz narrowed her eyes at me. “Bake beans in,” she finished.

“Money,” I said with a sigh. “None of these people knew what it was like to go without and yet it seemed to mean so much to them.”

Liz reached for her tea again. “You know what the good book says. Love of money is the root of all evil.”

I nodded as I picked up my own cup. I wasn’t sure if anything Liz had found out was going to help Mac, but as Mr. P. liked to say, information is power.

There was a white bankers box on the chair between us. It seemed like a good time to change the conversation. I dipped my head in the direction of the carton. “Have you found anything?” I asked.

Liz had agreed to help Michelle in her quest to prove that Michelle’s late father, Rob Andrews, had been framed for embezzlement. When I’d found out what they were doing I’d asked Liz if I could help as well. It was, I hoped, my chance to really restore our friendship.

Liz played with the china cup in front of her, tracing the rim with a finger. “I’ve been going over notes from the board meetings from that time.”

“And?”

“And I haven’t found any indication that anything was wrong or anything was even suspected of being wrong. We all liked Rob. He’d had great references and he was doing a good job.” She leaned over, lifted the lid of the box and handed me a manila folder. “Would you take a look at these?”

“Sure,” I said. “What am I looking at?”

“Financial documents from the time period when Robert Andrews assumed directorship of the Sunshine Camp.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Just take a look,” she said.

I spent about ten minutes going over several pages, line item by line item. Finally I leaned back in my chair. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for,” I said. “The numbers look fine to me. The only thing I did see were a couple of projects I don’t ever remember you talking about.”

“Which ones?” Liz asked.

I took the second page from the folder and turned it to face her. “That one,” I said, tapping the paper with one finger. “And that one.”

Liz nodded. “That’s because I have no memory of either one of them and there’s not a damn thing wrong with my memory.”

Liz had a memory like the proverbial elephant. She could remember every embarrassing story from my childhood.

“And I can’t find any paperwork associated with either project.” She glanced at the single page in front of me and then looked at me again. “That first one, at the top of the page, turns up in some paperwork from before Robert was hired.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “That means . . .”

She nodded. “Michelle could be right about her father.”

There was something more. Her expression was troubled, with tight lines around her mouth and eyes.

“There’s something else,” I said. I tapped a finger on the sheet of paper. “Spit it out.”

“That project, the first time I can find any reference to it in the budget is right after we added new board members.”

She didn’t have to say anything else. I knew why she looked troubled.

“John,” I said. John Scott, my grandmother’s new husband. Back then he’d been Bill Kiley’s grad student. History professor William Kiley had been Liz’s first husband.

She nodded. “Yes. We have to talk to him as soon as he and Isabel get home.”

My tea was cold. I got up for another cup. “So we have to tell Gram that her husband just might be involved—even if it’s indirectly—in sending an innocent man to jail? There’s a great welcome home.” I leaned against the counter.

“I know. I don’t really want to think about it,” Liz said. She looked at me thoughtfully. “So let’s talk about you and Nicolas.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said, hating how defensive I sounded.

Liz swiped her finger through a dab of lemon crème on her plate and licked it clean. “One question,” she said. “When Nicolas walks into a room after you haven’t seen him for a while do your toes curl?”

“Do my toes what?” I asked.

“Do your toes curl?” she repeated with just a touch of annoyance in her voice.

I reached for the teapot and poured a fresh cup for myself. “That’s not how things are with the two of us.”

Liz got up, walked over to me and took the pot from my hand. “I’m going to say one thing and it’s the last thing I’m going to say about this.”

I shot her a skeptical look.

“Tonight,” she added.

“Go ahead.” I folded my arms over my chest. “Not that I can stop you.”

“No, you can’t,” she agreed. Then her smile faded. “Sarah, a lot of people say passion is overrated but I disagree. That kind of heat between two people can keep you warm when life gets cold. And it’s going to get cold.” With that she turned back to the table to refill her own cup.

I thought about the way Stevie Carleton had described Mac and Leila’s first encounter, how she claimed they had locked eyes across a crowded room. If it was true it gave me some perspective on just how much Mac had lost.