Cat Trick

We stepped onto the verandah that ran across the front of the house and down one side. Roma reached over and put a hand on the railing. “This needs to be replaced as well, but Oren says he can duplicate the original design.”

Oren Kenyon was an extremely talented carpenter. He’d created a beautiful sunburst to hang above the main door just inside the library entrance. He was also Roma’s cousin in the convoluted way that everyone seemed to be related to everyone else in Mayville Heights.

Roma unlocked the side door and we stepped into what I guessed had originally been the pantry. “I may make this into a mudroom,” she said. “Or I might just knock the wall down and make it part of the kitchen.”

The country kitchen was a big, bright space with windows that looked out over the backyard, or would once the overgrown garden was cut back. There was also a dining room, a living room and a small parlor on the main floor. Upstairs, I knew there were four bedrooms and a big bathroom with a huge claw-foot tub.

Structurally, the house was sound. The old stone foundation didn’t leak, and there was no rot in the floor joists. The ceilings were high, and the wide wooden floors just needed to be refinished. The rooms were filled with light, and if there were any ghosts, well, they must have been friendly ones, because there was nothing foreboding about the place.

I stood in the middle of the living room floor and turned in a slow circle. “I love this house,” I said to Roma, smiling because her grin seemed to be contagious. “If you don’t jump up and down and squeal, I might.”

“How about we eat first?” she said. She led the way back into the kitchen, where she’d left a small cooler on the round wooden table in front of the window overlooking the backyard.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Rebecca gave you the table and chairs.”

Roma nodded, opening the lid of the cooler. “She said Old Harry made them for Everett’s mother—he turned the legs on a hand lathe—and the table belonged here. Eddie said he’ll refinish it for me.”

“Is there anything he can’t do?” I teased.

Her cheeks turned pink. “No,” she said with a smile, setting salad and a corn bread muffin in front of me. “He’s just about perfect. Well, except for the spiders.” She handed me a napkin roll of utensils and took a thermos and a couple of cups out of the cooler.

“Spiders?” I said. “What does he do? Raise them as a hobby?” I took a bite of my salad. It was good: turkey, apple and dried cranberries mixed with lettuce and carrots and tossed with a citrus dressing.

Roma gave a snort of laughter. “No. I’m pretty sure he has a bit of a phobia about them.”

“Why?” I asked, breaking my muffin in half.

Roma hooked her chair with a foot and pulled it closer so she could sit down. “Because I caught him stomping on something in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He said he was trying to push a nail back into one of the floorboards.”

“Maybe he was,” I offered. “Or maybe he’s auditioning for the road company of Riverdance and didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

She shot me a skeptical look and picked up her fork. “Of course. That sounds so much like Eddie.”

The thought of Eddie Sweeney—all six foot four inches of muscled hockey player—being afraid of a little spider made me smile. He was so perfect in every other way; he cooked, apparently he could refinish furniture, he was a star hockey player for the Minnesota Wild and a romantic boyfriend, plus he looked like he should be on the cover of GQ, not Sports Illustrated.

“Have you talked to Marcus?” Roma asked.

“We’re taking it really slowly,” I said. “We’ve had dinner a couple of times, but that’s all.” Except for a kiss that had made me forget, momentarily, the thirteen times table, my own name and how to breathe. But I didn’t say that out loud.

“Good to know,” she said. “But I meant, have you talked to him about Mike Glazer?”

“I think he’s waiting for something official on the cause of death,” I said.

She frowned, chewing on her bottom lip.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Probably.” She reached for the thermos and poured iced tea for both of us.

“Tell me.”

“I feel like an old busybody.”

“You’re not an old busybody,” I said. Roma knew more about what was going on around town than most people did. Half the town was in and out of her clinic with their pets and she still made house calls, but she kept what she heard and saw to herself. “C’mon. What is it?”