“And some tea bags.” Rose held the door so Elvis could go out first.
I looked at her, raising one eyebrow.
“And a coffee cake.” She followed Elvis outside. “Don’t make that face, Sarah. We all work better after a cup of tea and a little taste of something.”
“If I keep on having a ‘little taste of something,’ I’m going to turn into a big something,” I said, pulling out my keys and pushing the button to unlock the SUV.
“Nonsense,” Rose said, making a dismissive gesture with one hand. “All that running you do, you’d be skin and bones if I didn’t feed you.” She set her bag on the floor of the passenger side of the vehicle and climbed inside. Elvis had already jumped in and settled himself in the middle of the backseat. I set my bag and my briefcase next to him.
“Are those more tablecloths?” Rose asked, half turning in her seat and pointing at the canvas tote.
I slammed the passenger door and slid in behind the wheel. “No. It’s a bunch of sweaters I felted for Jess.”
Rose’s gray eyes lit up. “Is she going to make more slippers?”
I nodded as I stuck the key in the ignition.
Jess was a master at recycling and upcycling clothes. Her latest project was making slippers out of felted wool sweaters. We were going to sell them at Second Chance. She’d made me a red pair of slipper “boots” that I’d worn at the shop most of the winter. So many customers had asked about them that Jess and I had scoured area thrift stores over the weekend looking for sweaters that would felt well. I had done the actual process in my washer and dryer, and Jess was coming by the store to pick up the soft, shrunken sweaters.
“Do you think she’d make a pair for me?” Rose asked. “And for Alfred? They’d be lovely to wear around the apartment.”
“I’m sure she would,” I said. I concentrated on backing out of the driveway and tried to push away the image of Alfred Peterson, who generally wore his pants up under his armpits, in a pair of bright felted boots halfway up his calves.
Second Chance was in a brick building from the late eighteen hundreds located on Mill Street, where it curved and began to climb uphill. We were about twenty minutes by foot from the downtown, and easily accessed from the highway—the best of both worlds for catching the tourists. We had a decent side parking lot and an old garage, which we were working on turning into work and storage space.
Tourists came to North Harbor during the spring and summer for the beautiful Maine seacoast. In the fall and winter it was the nearby hills with the autumn colors and skiing that drew them in.
I parked close to the back door because we’d need to load some empty boxes and garbage bags in the back of the SUV. I’d already arranged to have a Dumpster for the garbage and a bin for everything that could be recycled delivered to Edison Hall’s house.
It looked as though spring was going to be a busy time for us between the influx of tourists eager to get away from the city after a cold winter that had stretched all the way from the Atlantic Canadian provinces down to Virginia, and the work I was planning on the old garage. I wouldn’t have said yes to clearing out Edison Hall’s house if it hadn’t been for my grandmother. She’d known Edison’s sister, Stella, since they were, as she put it, captains of opposing Red Rover teams on the playground.
“Please, do this for me,” Gram had asked when she called from South Carolina. She and her new husband, John, were working their way back to Maine after almost nine months of an extended honeymoon traveling around the country and working on several housing projects for the charity Home for Good. “I know what I’m asking, believe me. I was in that house a couple of years ago and it could only have gotten worse.”
I’d pictured her shaking her head, lips pressed together.
“I’ll call Stella,” I’d told Gram. I couldn’t say no to her, which was why both Rose and Charlotte were working for me. And how bad could Edison Hall’s old house really be? I’d reasoned. Very bad, I’d discovered. The man was a pack rat.
I followed Rose and Elvis into the workroom at the back of the store. I could smell coffee. The morning was getting better and better. I set the bag of felted sweaters on the workbench that ran along one wall of the work space and headed into the shop. Mac had just come downstairs. He was carrying a heavy pottery mug and he held it out to me. His title, on paper at least, was store manager, but he was a lot more than that. He was my colleague, a second set of eyes and sometimes the voice of reason I needed to hear. And more and more he was the person I turned to when I needed someone to talk to. It had started the past winter when I was almost killed in my own house. It was Mac I’d called, Mac who I’d shared with how scared I’d really been. Our friendship had only deepened in the following months.
“You read my mind,” I said, dropping my briefcase at my feet and taking the cup from him. “Thank you.”
As good as Rose’s breakfast had been, this was one of those mornings when I needed a nudge of caffeine.
Mac smiled. “You’re welcome.”
This past winter the building where he had rented an apartment had been sold. So we’d renovated part of the second-floor space above the shop and now Mac had a small self-contained apartment up there and I worried a lot less about security for the store. Not to mention that most mornings the coffee was on when I arrived. It seemed to be working out well for both of us.
Rose and her furry sidekick, Elvis, were disappearing up the steps to the second-floor staff room. I knew she’d be back in a couple of minutes with a slice of coffee cake for both Mac and me.
Mac walked over to the cash desk where he’d set his own coffee mug. He was tall and lean and the long-sleeved gray T-shirt he wore showed off his muscles very nicely. He had light brown skin and kept his black hair cropped close to his scalp.
I took a sip of my coffee and pushed a stray piece of hair back off my face. Usually I wore my brown shoulder-length hair down, but I’d pulled it back into a ponytail, since we were going to be working for most of the day on the old house. “I saw the boxes you left by the back door,” I said. “Thank you.”
“There’s more under the stairs if you think we need them,” he said, walking back over to me. He studied my face. “Are you having second thoughts about taking the Hall estate on?”
I shook my head. “No. The numbers are good. We both checked them. We’ll make a nice little profit and I think the price is reasonable as far as what Stella Hall will have to pay. The house just makes me a little sad, piled full of . . . well, boxes of junk that no one else wants.” I ducked my head over my cup and gave him a sidelong glance. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to laugh?”
His brown eyes met mine. He put a hand over his heart. “I promise.”
“The first time we went out to look the place over—when we were trying to decide what to charge Stella—when I got home that night I cleaned out two closets.” Mac smiled. “Just between you and me, I came back here and put two boxes of old parts in the scrap-metal recycling bin.”
“And how much did you pick back out the next day?” I teased.
“No comment,” he said, taking another sip from his cup.
I laughed.
Mac could fix just about anything. About eighteen months ago he’d left his high-powered job as a financial planner to come to Maine and sail. I had no idea what had prompted him to make such a dramatic change in his life. I’d asked him once and he’d very skillfully evaded the question.
I hadn’t asked again.
During the sailing season he spent every spare minute crewing for pretty much anyone who needed an extra set of hands on deck. Wooden boats were Mac’s passion. There were generally eight windjammers tied up at the North Harbor dock during the season, along with plenty of other boats, so there were lots of opportunities to get out on the water.