The Whole Cat and Caboodle: Second Chance Cat Mystery Read Free Page B

cat?” I said, bouncing the keys in my right hand.
    Sam shrugged. “Feed him. Talk to him. Scratch under his chin. He likes that.”
    I glanced at the cat again. He still had that lonely, slightly pathetic look going.
    “You two will make a great team,” Sam said. “Like Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and Richards.”
    “SpongeBob and Patrick,” I muttered.
    “Exactly,” Sam said.
    I was pretty sure I was being conned, but, like it or not, I had a cat.
    I looked over now toward the end wall of the store. My cat had apparently helped sell a mandolin. The young man was headed to the cash register with it. Elvis made his way over to me.
    I leaned over to stroke the top of his head. “Nice work,” I whispered. I wasn’t imagining the cat smile he gave me.
    The woman who had been looking at the post office desk was headed for the door, but there was a certain smugness to Mac’s expression that told me he’d made the sale. I walked over to him. “Go ahead, say ‘I told you so,’” I said.
    He folded his arms over his chest. “I can’t. I’m fairly certain she’s going to buy it. She just wishes it were black.”
    I laughed. “I guess black really is the new black,” I said. “I’m about ready to leave. I have to pick up Charlotte, and Avery is going to get her grandmother. Do you need anything before I go?”
    I was doing a workshop on color-washing furniture for a group of seniors over at Legacy Place. North Harbor was full of beautiful old buildings. It was part of the town’s charm. The top floors of the old chocolate factory had been converted into seniors’ apartments. There were a couple of community rooms on the main level, where the residents had various classes like French and yoga and got together to socialize. We were using one of them for the workshop since many of the class participants lived in the building. Eventually I wanted to renovate part of the old garage next to the Second Chance building for workshops; for now, when I did classes for the general public, I had to settle for renting space at the high school. Luckily the hourly rate was pretty good. This workshop was a freebie my gram had nudged me into doing.
    Mac shook his head. “I’ve got everything covered.” He narrowed his brown eyes at me. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to make Avery go with you?”
    “Actually she volunteered.”
    “Avery volunteered to help you teach a workshop for a bunch of senior citizens?” One eyebrow shot up. “Seriously?”
    “Seriously. She’s good with older people. They’ll be feeding her cookies and exclaiming over her hair color, and before you know it she’ll have wangled an invitation to go prowl around someone’s attic.” Avery had a thing for vintage jewelry, and thanks to her grandmother Liz’s friends, was building a nice collection.
    I pressed my hands into the small of my back and stretched. I was still kinked from crawling around that old house all morning. “You know, I used to hang around with some of those same women when I was Avery’s age.” I’d spent my summers in North Harbor with my grandmother as far back as I could remember. The rest of the time I’d lived first in upstate New York and then in New Hampshire. “Liz taught me how to wax my legs and put on false eyelashes.”
    “I could have gone the rest of my life not knowing that,” Mac said dryly.
    “And I know the secret to Charlotte’s potpie,” I teased.
    “You’re not going to say it’s love, are you?”
    I shook my head and grinned. “Nope. Actually it’s bacon fat.”
    My father had been an only child and so was my mother, so I didn’t have a gaggle of cousins to hang out with in the summer. My grandmother’s friends, Charlotte, Liz and Rose had become a kind of surrogate extended family, a trio of indulgent aunts. When I’d decided to open Second Chance, they’d been almost as pleased as my grandmother, and Charlotte and Rose had come to work for me part-time. Now with Gram out of