I pulled my keys out of my pocket and took a moment to study Mac. He looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “You want to keep your work life and your private life separate. I understand that,” I said. “As you pointed out a little while ago, this isn’t a typical workplace. But if you’re interested at all, I think Avery might be onto something.”
After a long moment, he nodded slowly. “I guess it doesn’t hurt to take a look.”
I unlocked the door and we stepped inside. Overall, the space was bigger than the studio apartment Jess had lived in downtown before she found her current place. It was definitely bigger than the first apartment she and I had shared in university. And Avery was right. We really didn’t have much stored up here at the moment because it was just too much of a hassle lugging things upstairs and then having to cart them back down again a week or so later.
“I know those sliding doors work,” I said. I walked across the room and looked at the space on the other side of the two panel doors. “There’s room for a bed and a dresser in here. Maybe even a chair.”
Each of the rooms had a good-sized window that let in lots of light. And the old house had been well insulated during the original conversion years ago from a home to a business, so it was warm.
“The floors are in decent shape,” Mac said, reaching down and swiping a hand across the wide wooden boards.
I pointed at the end wall. “There’s plumbing in that wall. It wouldn’t be that hard to make a galley kitchen there and then go through that closet and connect to the bathroom in the hall.”
“What would we do for a staff washroom?”
“Do a little work on the one downstairs. We could put in a new sink and a new toilet, maybe find an end of vinyl or some tile for the floor and let Avery paint the walls.” I pulled a pen and a scrap of paper that had a short grocery list scribbled on it and sketched out a rough floor plan with a tiny galley kitchen on the back. I handed him the piece of paper. “Could you build that?”
Mac studied my drawing for a moment, pulling a hand over his mouth.
“We worked pretty well together on Rose’s apartment,” I said.
He smiled. “Yeah, we did, didn’t we?”
“So can you build it?” I repeated.
He nodded. “Uh-huh. Except for the basic rough-in of the plumbing, I can do this.”
“So now the big question—do you want to do it?” I said.
Mac looked around the room. I knew he was intrigued by the way he was eyeing the end wall as though he were picturing a run of cupboards. “We could think about it,” he said. “On the condition that I pay the going rent. No special deals, Sarah.”
I nodded. “Agreed. And I have a condition.”
“What is it?”
“If this arrangement doesn’t work out for either of us for any reason, we say so—no hard feelings.” I held out my hand. “What do you say? Do we have a deal?”
Mac hesitated, but only for a second or two. He took my hand, smiled and said, “We have a deal.”
Mac and I spent about an hour after the shop closed measuring the storage space and roughing out a floor plan with measurements scribbled on the side. Avery had wanted to stay and help, but I’d promised she could help us work on the downstairs washroom.
That evening, after a scrambled-egg sandwich and a clementine for me, and some Tasty Tenders for Elvis, I got a pad of grid paper and a pencil and started turning my rough drawing into a rudimentary floor plan. Elvis sat beside me, craning his neck and poking his head in my field of vision every few minutes. He put his paw on the page at one point and looked at me. “There for the sink?” I asked.
“Merow,” he answered.
I took a look at the spot on the drawing where he’d rested his paw. He was right. I set my pencil down, stretched my right arm over my head and reached for the phone. Elvis stretched as well and then sprawled over the floor plan as I punched in my parents’ number.
“That’s not helping,” I said. He gave me a look that seemed to suggest he wasn’t trying to help.
My dad answered the phone. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said. I knew he was smiling, and it seemed to me that I could feel the warmth of that smile coming through the receiver.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. “Is it cold there?” My parents lived in New Hampshire, where my dad taught journalism at Keating State College.
“It’s two-flap weather,” he said.
“That’s some serious cold,” I said with a laugh. Dad had a mangy pile-lined leather aviator hat with earflaps, which he wore only when it was really, really cold. My mother hated that hat. She said it made him look like he’d been out in the bush about a week too long. She and I had both bought him other hats over the years, but he liked his aviator hat more than any of them.
It had disappeared once under mysterious circumstances, and the entire neighborhood had been treated to the sight of my dad in a holey sweatshirt, pajama bottoms and unlaced Red Wings racing down the street after the garbage truck and then striding back, triumphantly holding the hat over his head like he was some kind of marauding Viking with a head on a pike. The hat had never been safer after that.
“Is Mom around?” I asked.
“She is,” he said. “Hang on and I’ll get her.”
“Love you,” I said.
He’d already set the handset down, but I heard him call, “Love you, too!”
After a few moments of silence Mom picked up the phone. “Hi, baby,” she said.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “Dad said it’s cold there.”
“You’ve heard the expression ‘a three-dog night.’ Well, we had an ugly-hat day.”
“I heard that,” my dad called out in the background.
Mom and I both laughed.
“So what’s new with you?” she asked.
I explained about Mac losing his apartment and Avery’s idea to create an apartment up above the shop. “That could work,” she said, and I pictured her reaching across the kitchen counter for a pencil and a pad of paper. “What were you thinking of for a layout?”
I shifted Elvis with one hand and pulled my drawing from underneath him while he muttered and murped with annoyance. I described my plan, and Mom made a couple of suggestions for the galley kitchen. I managed to scribble them on my sketch without having to make Elvis move altogether. He’d rolled onto his back and was watching me with a bemused look that seemed to say, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I talked to your grandmother this morning,” Mom said. “She’s going to call you later. She’s worried about Liz.”
“She doesn’t need to be,” I said, stroking the fur under Elvis’s chin, which immediately put me back in his good graces. I explained what Michelle had told me.
Mom gave a soft sigh of relief. “Isabel will be happy to hear that.”
We talked for a few more minutes and then we said good night.
I was about to set the phone up on the counter when it rang. “Gram,” I said to Elvis. He reached over and put a paw on the phone, cat for “well, hurry up and answer it.”
I picked up the receiver. “Hi, Gram,” I said.
“Hello, dear,” she replied. I found myself smiling all over again.
“Before you say anything else, Liz isn’t a suspect anymore in Lily’s death,” I said. “I had supper with Michelle, and they know Liz wasn’t anywhere near the bakery that night.”
“Thank heavens!” Gram exclaimed. “Liz would never hurt anyone. She’s all bark and no bite.”
“That’s because her bark is usually enough,” I said.
She laughed. “So are the Angels dropping the case?”
Elvis butted my hand with his head, and I began to scratch behind his left ear. “Not likely. Rose is determined to figure out who killed Lily.”
“She was a lovely girl,” Gram said quietly.
“Yes, she was,” I agreed. I swallowed a couple of times because all of a sudden there was a lump in my throat. This was the first time I’d let myself acknowledge that I missed Lily. We’d started to make a connection, as far as I was concerned, and I was sorry it was never going to become more than that now.