“But you don’t think you’re wrong,” I said.
Nic shook his head. “Probably not. Sorry.”
Maggie was holding on so tightly to the sleeve of her T-shirt with one hand, I was surprised she hadn’t actually ripped a hole in it. “I’m the one who should be sorry,” she began. “I’m sorry for thinking you had . . . I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.”
Nic held up a hand. “No. I should have told Ruby what I suspected right away.”
I gave Maggie’s shoulder a squeeze. “This is fixable,” I said. “I have to go to work in a few minutes, but I’ll go home at the end of the day and get a certain furball who will take care of any mice foolish enough to venture into the shop.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Unless you wanted to just get a shovel.” She pressed her lips together but it didn’t stop a grin from spreading across her face.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “So not funny,” I said.
Nic’s eyes darted between us. “Am I missing something?” he asked.
Maggie’s shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter.
“A couple of springs ago there was some major flooding in the downtown,” I said stiffly. “There was a rat in the basement of the store.”
Nic made a face. “What happened?”
Maggie looked at me. “Oh, let me tell him. Please.” Her green eyes were sparkling with mirth.
I wrinkled my nose at her. “Go ahead,” I said, “but the next time you find a rodent using your basement as a swimming pool, you’re on your own.”
She grinned at me. “No, I’m not.”
“Somebody tell me,” Nic urged.
Maggie turned sideways so she could see both me and Nic. “Like Kathleen said, there was a lot of flooding in the downtown two springs ago, and there was about four feet of water in the basement at the shop—it was before we got the pump. Kathleen was with me when I went to check things out.”
“And you found a rat?”
Mags nodded. “Floating in the water.” She shuddered.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I didn’t do anything,” Maggie said. “Kathleen scooped the rat out of the water with a snow shovel.”
Nic looked at me. “That was nice,” he said. He still looked confused.
“Oh, it was.” Maggie’s gaze darted to me for a moment. “Until she used the shovel like a lacrosse stick and flung the rat at Ruby.”
“That was an accident,” I said, trying not to sound huffy.
“We think Kathleen was some kind of Scottish Highlander in a past life,” Maggie teased. “She was probably very good at the caber toss.” She gave me a sweet and totally fake smile.
Nic held up a hand and looked at me. “Okay. Why did you throw a dead rat at Ruby?”
“Like I said, it was an accident.” I shot daggers at Maggie, who was having way too much fun telling the story. “I tossed the rat outside. I didn’t even see Ruby.”
I hadn’t. The rat had gone whizzing past Ruby’s head, just inches from hitting her, much to my embarrassment. She’d been a very good sport about the whole thing. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have flung it out on the sidewalk in the first place, but I was trying to get the thing out of the shop, away from Maggie.
Maggie was shaking with laughter now. She gestured at Nic with one hand. “And that’s not the best part. The rat wasn’t dead.”
Nic frowned. “What?”
“It wasn’t exactly dead,” I said.
“So it was what, just partly dead?”
That made Maggie laugh harder.
“It was—I don’t know—unconscious, stunned.” I pressed a hand to my forehead. I was laughing now, too, because the whole scenario had been just like something out of a Monty Python movie. The rat had zipped by Ruby’s head, landed on the sidewalk with an audible splat and then gotten up, shaken itself and scurried away.
Nic turned to Maggie. “Yeah, you definitely wanna get the cat,” he said, deadpan.
Once Maggie got control of herself, she apologized again to Nic.
“Let me know what happens,” he said. “If the cat doesn’t catch anything, I can set some traps—the humane kind.” He grinned at me. “Because I don’t even know where the snow shovel is.”
Maggie and I walked back up to her studio. She bumped me with her hip. “Are you mad at me because I told that story to Nic?”
“Yes,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” she retorted. “Because that’s one of the things that made Marcus fall for you.”
I stopped and stared at her. “What?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head. “No. He told you?”
She smiled. “Uh-huh. He said he saw how kind you were.”
“Because I flung what I thought was a dead animal at Ruby?”
Maggie grinned. “Because you were worried that Ruby might have been hurt and you were worried about the rat, too.” She nudged me again. “I’m glad you didn’t go back to Boston.”
I bumped her back. “Me too.”
“So what do we do now?” she said as we started up the steps again.
“First we deal with the furry intruders,” I said, “then we’ll find the thief.”
I headed straight up the hill at the end of the day. Owen was waiting by the kitchen door, almost as though he knew I was coming for him, which of course he didn’t.
“Okay, Fuzz Face,” I said, bending down to pick him up. “Maggie needs you to do rodent patrol at the store.”
“Merow,” he said loudly. Translation: “Let’s do it.”
As we drove down to the shop, I explained about the possible mice incursion at the co-op store. Owen listened intently, and when I finished talking, he licked his whiskers. I was pretty sure he knew exactly what was expected of him.
Maggie was waiting at the store, and Owen looked adoringly at her when she thanked him for coming to her rescue. She unlocked the door and we went inside. I saw her hesitate and look around.
I set Owen down. “Go for it,” I whispered.
He immediately began to nose around. Beside me Maggie sucked in a breath as Owen began to sniff around the shelving unit that still held some of the woven placemats. Then he suddenly headed purposefully for the back door, meowing loudly a couple of times.
“I think we’re supposed to go after him,” she said.
“Do you want to wait here?” I asked. “I can go.”
She shook her head. “No, but if Owen catches anything, I will be in the back of your truck—or standing on the roof of the cab.”
“Got it,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders and giving her what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze.
Owen was sitting in front of the back door, which led to the alley. He gave another insistent meow when we joined him.
Maggie opened the door. “Where are we going?” she asked as though she expected him to answer.
Owen led us down the narrow alley to a green metal Dumpster pushed up against the wall of the building, a pile of wooden pallets stacked beside it. He stopped, looked up at me and made a low murping sound.
I peered around the side of the metal bin. “Mags,” I said softly. In the cramped space between the garbage container and the pallets, a mama cat had made a home for three tiny kittens from a couple of scarves and some placemats.
“I think we’ve found your ‘cat burglar,’” I said.
Maggie crouched down and began to talk quietly to the mother cat. I pulled out my phone to call Roma, who was a vet and would know what to do about moving the mother and her babies. I glanced down at Owen, who looked up at me with a decidedly self-satisfied expression on his furry face, and I had the niggling feeling that somehow he’d figured this whole thing out long before we had.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.