The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

Chapter 12

At quarter to one we left for the courthouse, Liz following my SUV. Rose talked about the history of the building as we drove, probably as a way to distract me, I realized.

Josh Evans was waiting for us inside the courthouse. In his expensive dark suit and equally pricey haircut, it was hard to find a glimpse of the kid who’d loved to argue. Then he pushed his sleeve back to check the time and I caught a glimpse of his Darkwing Duck watch and somehow I felt a little better. He smiled and walked over when he caught sight of us. “Hi, Sarah. Everything is running on schedule,” he said. “I’ve seen Mac. He’s fine.” The knot between my shoulder blades seemed to unkink just a little.

Josh said hello to the others. Then he went over what was going to happen in the courtroom. “After the charges are read the judge will ask Mac how he pleads. He’ll say not guilty. The ADA and I have already talked about bail.” His gaze flicked momentarily to Liz. “I’m going to agree with her suggestion and I don’t have any reason to believe the judge will have a problem with it.” He gave us an encouraging smile. “Things should go pretty quickly.”

“Is it all right if we go in and find seats now?” I asked. I felt a little antsy standing in the hallway and I was guessing Josh probably had things to do.

Josh nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I’d been inside the courtroom once before, when Maddie had been arraigned, but I’d forgotten how intimidating the room was. The walls were painted a dark taupe while all the trim, moldings and columns were a glossy white. Vintage brass chandeliers hung from the fourteen-foot ceiling, and what I was guessing were reproduction sconces added more light from the walls. The high, multipaned windows had been restored and refinished in a dark wood stain. The rest of the wood, the railing, the spectators’ seating—which reminded me of old wooden movie theater seats—and the judge’s bench were a warmer oak finish. The space was formal and serious and I reminded myself that Mac hadn’t done anything wrong so there was nothing to be afraid of.

We took the first row of seats behind the low railings so we were as close as we could get to where Mac and Josh would be sitting. We’d been inside the courtroom only a couple of minutes when Rose leaned across Charlotte, who was sitting next to me. “Sarah,” she said, gesturing over her shoulder. I turned to see what she was looking at. Jess and Sam had just walked in. Sam was wearing a sport coat and tie with his jeans. Jess had on a wildly patterned red dress.

I stood up and Jess came down the aisle and hugged me. “What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“Where else would I be?” she said with a smile. She gave me one more squeeze and moved into the row behind us.

Sam caught both my hands in his. “No one in their right mind would believe Mac could hurt anyone,” he told me.

“Thank you for being here,” I said.

“Any time, kiddo.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead and then took a seat next to Jess.

I was about to sit back down when the courtroom door opened again and Glenn McNamara walked in, followed by his uncle Clayton. They both smiled and Glenn raised a hand in hello as they took a seat on the aisle four rows back.

I took my seat again but a couple of minutes later I noticed Rose look over her shoulder once more. I turned to see that Channing Caulfield had come in, along with two men I knew that Mac had crewed for several times. Suddenly my chest got tight, like someone had just sat on me, and I had to take several deep breaths to make the sensation go away. By the time we were ready to begin, almost every seat behind me was filled by someone who knew Mac: Vince Kennedy, who played in The Hairy Bananas with Sam, Stella Hall, whose brother’s house we’d cleared out back in the spring. I started biting the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t cry. Just before court was in session, Jackson Montgomery slipped in and took a seat in the back. True to his word he was still in town. I nodded in recognition and he raised a hand in return.

Mac came into the courtroom looking serious but collected. I saw him swallow a couple of times when he looked behind us and realized the courtroom was more than half-full of people, all of them there for him.

Josh was right about the process and bail and very quickly we were all in the hallway outside the courtroom.

Rose hugged Mac and then stepped back to look him over. “Are you all right?” she asked, her eyes searching his face. “Did they treat you well?”

He smiled. “I’m fine, Rose.”

Avery threw her arms around him then. “Was prison horrible?” she asked.

“It wasn’t prison and it wasn’t horrible,” Mac said. He shook hands with Mr. P., hugged both Charlotte and Jess and as he turned to speak to Sam and Glenn his eyes locked with mine and he smiled.

I looked around but there was no sign of Jackson. His not staying around was probably for the best.

Liz came down the hall with Josh.

“Everything all right?” I asked.

“Mac’s free to go,” Josh said. He moved to speak to his client while I turned to Liz.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No point in having money if you can’t throw it around once in a while,” she said with a smile.

“I love you,” I said, already knowing how she was going to answer.

She waved a hand at me. “Yeah, yeah, everybody does,” she said.

There were a couple of things that Josh explained needed to be taken care of, so we all headed back to the shop. Mac arrived about half an hour later. By then I’d made tea and cut the Bundt cake that Rose had taken out of her freezer when we’d gone home to change. Josh was with him, and Rose immediately invited him to stay for cake. I headed upstairs to get a cup of coffee for him and one for Mac.

When I came back down Mac was standing at the bottom of the stairs. I handed him one of the mugs I was carrying.

“Thank you,” he said.

I smiled. He’d been gone only a few hours and I couldn’t believe how relieved I was to see him. “You’re welcome.”

“I don’t mean for this,” he said, holding up the mug. “Well, I do, but I mean for everything working out so well today.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “The people who deserve credit for today are Josh and Liz.”

Mac smiled. “And I’ve thanked both of them, but I also know that I wouldn’t be standing here right now if you weren’t friends with Michelle. I wouldn’t have been allowed to turn myself in this morning the way I did, Josh wouldn’t have been able to get a reasonable bail set. Michelle made that happen. She did it for you.” He shrugged. “So thank you for being the kind of friend that she’d put herself out for, that lots of people would put themselves out for.” He leaned over and gave me a hug.

Before I could point out that all the people who showed up in court today came because of him, not me, we were interrupted by Avery. We stepped apart, a little self-consciously, at least on my part.

“Hey, Sarah, is there any hot water in the kettle?” she asked. She was carrying the teapot in its knitted cozy.

“Uh, yes,” I said. “But you’ll need to put it on to boil again.”

“Okay.” She bounded up the stairs. “Rose is looking for you,” she said over her shoulder.

“For me or for Mac?” I asked.

“Both of you,” she said. “She wants to plan strategy.”

“Strategy?” Mac said.

Avery stopped two steps from the top and turned to look at us. “Well, yeah,” she said. “We have to figure out who killed that woman. Rose said we can’t wait for the police to do it. Right now she thinks they’re all a bunch of . . .” She hesitated. “I won’t say the word but it rhymes with ‘glass bowls.’” She took the last stairs in one long step and disappeared down the hall.

I turned to look at Mac.

“All bets are off now, aren’t they, as far as Rose is concerned?”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“Is there any way I can ask her to—” He hesitated. “I’m trying to think of the right cliché.”

“Not go off half-cocked? Or get her knickers in a knot?” I shook my head. “Not unless you want to be a ‘glass bowl.’” I smiled at him and headed for the workroom.

Just before closing Avery knocked on my office door. “Come in,” I called.

The teen poked her head around the door. She looked troubled.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“There’s a man in a suit downstairs asking for Mac,” she said. “I don’t know who it is and I wasn’t sure what to do.”

I knew that Mac was out in the garage working on a bed frame I’d found during the spring trash pick. “What does he look like?” I asked.

“He’s tall, very short dark hair with one of those little beards just on his chin. The suit is expensive and Nonna would say he had good posture because you know how she is about that kind of thing.” She shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. “He was at court earlier.”

It was likely Jackson, I realized. “I’ll talk to him,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Mac’s not going back to jail, is he?” Avery said. “I thought maybe that man was some kind of police officer.”

I shook my head. “He’s not a police officer and Mac isn’t going back to jail.”

“How do you know that?” It was impossible to miss the challenge in her eyes—and the concern.

I got to my feet. “Because he didn’t do anything wrong.”

She gave a snort of derision and shook her head, looking so much like Liz I had to bite my tongue not to laugh. “Innocent people get put in jail all the time. Don’t you watch TV?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to Mac,” I said. “Josh is a very good lawyer. You know that. And besides, he has a secret weapon.”

“What secret weapon?”

“Us.”

Her expression cleared and she nodded emphatically. “Yeah. You’re right. He does.”

I went downstairs and discovered I was right. Jackson Montgomery was standing in the middle of the store. He turned as I approached.

“You’re persistent,” I said.

He smiled. “I messed up. It’s up to me to fix things.”

“Thank you for coming to court.”

“I didn’t stay because I figured it would be awkward.”

I nodded. “Good call.” Avery was over at the cash desk, not even making an effort to pretend she wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.

Jackson looked around. “Is Mac here?”

“He still doesn’t want to talk to you,” I said.

Jackson’s mouth twisted to one side. “I screwed up by staying away so long, I get that. I don’t know what else to do except keep trying to talk to him.” He stopped and blew out a breath. “Please just tell Mac I was here.”

I nodded. “I will.”

Once Jackson was gone I went out to the old garage. Mac had the headboard and footboard I’d trash-picked lying on a large tarp spread on the floor along with a set of side rails and slats that had been in the garage when I bought the property.

“I think I can make all these pieces work,” he said.

“Hey, it feels like a victory just to find a use for the old rails,” I said.

“Tell that to Rose and you can probably get a cake to celebrate.”

“You don’t have to pretend that everything is fine,” I said.

He swiped a hand back over his head. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather pretend a little than sit around worrying about what’s going to happen next.”

“In that case, sponge cake with berries and whipped cream.”

Mac frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You said I could probably get Rose to make me a cake. I want sponge cake.” I glanced over at the shop. “Except she’d probably turn it into a cooking lesson.” Rose was the only person who’d had any success at teaching me to cook. Everyone else from two middle school teachers to my mom to my brother Liam had given up after multiple kitchen “incidents.” In my defense I don’t think any of the fires were really my fault.

“I don’t mind eating your cooking,” Mac said.

I laughed. “That makes you a member of a very elite—and small—group.”

“Fine with me.”

I glanced out the door again.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Jackson was here again.”

Mac looked down at the floor, then bent down and picked up something. “He’s stubborn. I saw him in the courtroom.” He flipped a small metal washer over the back of his fingers.

“This is totally none of my business but I’ve been hanging out with Rose and the rest of them”—I gestured in the general direction of the shop—“and they’ve been a bad example, so now I’m boundary challenged. Why are you being so rigid when it comes to Jackson? It’s not like you.”

He met my gaze and shrugged. “Jackson and I have been friends since the sixth grade. He always had my back and I like to think that I always had his. But he seemed to find it so easy to believe all the things that Leila’s family accused me of. I can’t—I don’t—trust him.” He shook his head as though he were shaking away some old memories. “Do you think I’m wrong?” he asked. “If you were in my place would you just let it go?”

I laughed. “Mac, how many times have you seen Nick and me argue? Or maybe I should say have the same argument over and over again? You should know by now I’m not exactly good at letting things go.”

“Nick’s still in your life. It looks to me like you’re pretty good at forgiving,” he said.

I scraped at a bit of paint on the floor with the toe of my shoe. “It’s not the same thing. Talk about stubborn? That’s Nick.” I held up both hands like I was holding a basketball. “I could take his head sometimes and—” I shook my hands in the air. “But I do trust him. He’s never given me any reason not to. You said you don’t trust Jackson. That’s enough for me. Do what feels right for you and I’ll run interference.”

“Thanks,” Mac said.

I tipped my head toward the shop. “I better go see what’s going on.”

I stepped inside the back door and automatically glanced into the Angels’ sunporch office. Mr. P. looked up and beckoned me inside. His sport coat was hanging on the back of his chair and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up. “I just wanted to show you this,” he said, handing me a photo he’d printed out. “I left the change on your desk.”

I nodded. Mr. P. was scrupulous about paying for the Angels’ use of my printer along with “rent” for the sunporch space. I gave the money to the Friends of the North Harbor Library and the Midcoast Animal Shelter because it made me uncomfortable to make money off them. Trying to argue my way out of the payments had left me with a giant headache and a new wrinkle in the middle of my forehead.

“Hey, that’s Kale,” I said.

Mr. P. frowned. “Excuse me?”

“The guy that was blocking the driveway when the TV people were filming. The one in the Kale Yeah! T-shirt. Why do you have a photo of him?”

His expression changed as if something had just fallen into place for him. He gave me a small smile. “Sarah, your ‘Kale’ is Stephanie Carleton’s partner, Davis Abbott.”