Midnight Paws

by Jessica Beck

  “Sadly, no, but I will take a rain check. Where are you going to eat?”

  “I thought I’d just pop in next door to the shop. Some of Celeste’s French toast sounds wonderful to me about now. I really am getting my appetite back.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and then Marybeth said, “Maybe I could be late for my first appointment.”

  I laughed. “Then again, maybe you’d better hit the road. It isn’t like we won’t have countless other opportunities to have breakfast together.”

  “I know, but I can almost taste her pancakes just talking to you.”

  “I said that I’m having French toast,” I said.

  “Even better. At least have a bite for me, would you?”

  “I’ll have two,” I said. “I’ll see you this evening.”

  “See you then. And thanks again for letting me know what happened.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  If Celeste’s restaurant had been located thirty miles away, I still would have been willing to drive that far to eat her food. She offered a variety of home-cooked meals that reminded me of my grandmother’s cooking, though Celeste was less than five years older than I was. The fact that her place was right next door to the shop just made it that much more special for me.

  The café’s warmth swept over me the second I walked in. The painted concrete floor was dark blue this year, but with New Year’s coming up in a few months, I wondered what color Celeste would go with. Every year she changed the color, and it stayed that way all year, with one exception. I didn’t live in town that year, but I heard that she’d chosen a deep crimson that turned out like dried blood. She tolerated it for two months, but then she changed it to sky blue, a color that showed dirt, but had the advantage of not making the place look like a crime scene. Red vinyl-clad booths lined the walls, covered tables filled the space in the middle of the floor, and a long counter ran across the back, a barrier between the dining room and the kitchen.

  “I was sorry to hear about what happened next door last night,” Celeste Montgomery said as she offered a sympathetic smile. I was sure that Celeste had been a real beauty when she’d been younger, and there were still many hints in her porcelain white skin and her luxurious black hair, but working at the diner had added too many pounds over too many years, and she was more than just pleasantly plump these days.

  “How did you find out so quickly?” I asked as I took my jacket off and found a seat at the bar. A dozen folks were eating there, mostly spread out in ones and twos.

  “It’s a small town. Folks talk,” she said with a wave. “Do you need a menu, or do you know what you want?”

  “Coffee, and an order of French toast, please,” I said.

  “Would you like any sides with that?”

  I briefly considered the thick-cut bacon Celeste served, but I decided quickly that the toast would be enough. “No, thanks.”

  “Young lady, you’re going to waste away if you don’t start eating more,” Celeste said.

  “Nobody could ever accuse me of that,” I said, though it wasn’t true just now. Normally I had a healthy appetite, but with Midnight gone, I just didn’t have the heart. In fact, this breakfast was a real step forward for me. Celeste’s French toast was the first thing that had sounded good to eat since I’d lost my cat, though I’d enjoyed the pizza Marybeth and I had shared last night well enough. I wasn’t sure that “lost” was the precise word I should use, since he’d turned back up as a ghost. Temporarily misplaced, maybe?

  Celeste disappeared into the kitchen and I was sipping my coffee when Jim Hicks approached. There was a bandage on his face, so the first thing I asked him was, “What happened to you?”

  “I hit my face on a tree branch I was cutting after the big storm we had the other day,” the local real estate agent said as he rubbed the spot tenderly. “It was my favorite tree, but lightning must have hit it or something. At least I’ll get some good firewood out of it. By the way, I’ve been meaning to come by. I’m sorry for your loss,” Jim said. He was a tall, thin man, almost gaunt, and every time I saw him, I thought that he’d missed his calling as an undertaker. Instead, he was into real estate. He’d been after Cora to sell her business to him recently, but she’d steadfastly refused.

  “Thanks for your thoughts,” I said, taking another sip.

  “What’s going to happen to the place now? Do you know?”

  “Actually, I’m going to run it myself,” I said, startling myself to hear me saying it aloud. I figured that maybe if I said it long enough and loud enough, I might just get used to the idea.

  Jim looked surprised to hear the news. “Seriously? That’s an awfully big task for someone so young. Do Cora’s cousins know about your plans?”

  So, Jim was even better connected than I’d thought. “Do you happen to know them yourself?”

  “Not personally,” he said. “To be honest with you, I was counting on them being willing to sell it to me.”

  “They might, but they don’t have a say in it. Cora left it to me. Why are you so interested, anyway?”

  “Just between you and me, I’m getting a little tired of real estate,” he admitted quietly. “I’ve been frugal and saved some money along the way, and I think running a shop like yours could be fun. Christy, surely you don’t want to be saddled with so much responsibility running that shop from day to day. I can’t imagine the profit margins are such that you can live in any kind of style. On the other hand, if you accept my offer, I can pay you enough to allow you to find your true calling at your own leisure.”

  “Jim Hicks, why are you bothering Christy?” Celeste asked as she walked out of the kitchen carrying my French toast. “Leave the poor girl alone.”

  “We were just having a friendly chat,” he said.

  Celeste looked at me, and I just shrugged. Seeing that, she turned to Jim and said, “Guess what? You’re finished. Now, do you want to go back to your own breakfast, or are you done eating already?”

  “Keep what I said in mind,” Jim said with a smile as he slipped a business card under my plate. I’d suddenly lost my appetite. It hadn’t taken the vultures long to start circling.

  “I’ve changed my mind about breakfast,” I said as I pushed the plate away. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it, but I just don’t have the stomach to eat anymore.”

  “Ignore him,” Celeste said softly. “Jim can’t help the way he is. It’s his nature. Christy, try at least one bite before you write the meal off.”

  I took a whiff of the French toast and smelled the loveliness of it, with cinnamon wafting in the air, and the slightest hint of the egg batter and the raisin toast. It had been fried to a golden and brown hue, and there was a small carafe nearby with real syrup in it. My mind was finished with it, but evidently my stomach had other ideas entirely as it rumbled gently. “I don’t suppose it would hurt to take one bite,” I said as I added the syrup and cut off a bite with my fork. An explosion of flavor went off in my mouth as I tried it, and I savored the taste and texture of the bite. This was levels above any other French toast I’d ever had in my life, including the kind my mother used to make on special occasions. “It’s absolutely incredible,” I said.

  Celeste beamed. “Then eat up.”

  I decided it would be too much trouble to get it to go after all, and besides, I wasn’t in the mood to eat in the shop. “Okay.”

  I saw her walk over to Jim’s table, and after a brief conversation, he nodded, paid his bill, and left. As Celeste walked past my spot at the bar, I said, “You didn’t have to run him off on my account.”

  “No harm, Christy. Jim just needs a reminder now and then that my diner is not a place of business for him. Besides, it feels good to give a scolding every now and then. I suppose he was pressuring you to sell the shop, wasn’t he?”

  I nodded as I took another bit
e. “He said he’d like to own the place himself. Truthfully though, I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to. I’m supposed to run the shop for two years and see how I like it. It’s certainly nothing I ever pushed for, but Cora was pretty emphatic about it in her will.”

  Celeste looked surprised. “I hadn’t realized that Cora had planned things out so thoroughly.” She looked around her place, and then she added, “I don’t know what will happen to this place once I’m gone. Frankly, I’ve never thought about it. What made her plan for the future, do you know?”

  “Maybe she had a premonition about what was about to happen to her,” I said softly.

  “There are more things at work in our world than we could ever know. Those who live on the surface lead a shallow existence indeed.” I hadn’t ever really thought of Celeste as being someone who believed in omens or premonitions. Then again, I hadn’t classified myself that way either before Midnight’s ghost had showed up the day before.

  “May I ask you something personal, Celeste? Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.

  “Of course I do. Don’t you?” Celeste asked.

  “I didn’t used to, but I’m beginning to believe,” I said.

  She looked at me sharply. “Has Cora’s spirit paid you a visit at the shop?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” I said, suddenly sorry I’d asked her opinion about the spirit world. I decided that at least for now, I’d drop the subject. I slid a ten dollar bill under my plate, and then stood. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  “You’re welcome,” Celeste said as she grabbed the ten and handed it back to me. “I never had a chance to offer my condolences before, so let me get this one.”

  “As much as I appreciate the gesture, the truth is that Cora and I weren’t really all that close,” I said in mild protest.

  “You misunderstood. My sympathies are for what happened to Midnight.”

  “That’s different,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re most welcome. What a comfort Shadow must be to you now.”

  “He is,” I said. Celeste’s sympathy for my loss of Midnight touched me, and suddenly I needed to get out of there before I started crying. “I’ll see you later,” I said.

  Some of the folks eating noticed that I was crying, but I didn’t care. I needed to get out of there before I broke down completely, and I didn’t care what anyone thought. All I wanted to do was get in the shop before I ran into anyone else.

  No such luck with that, though.

  Kelly Madigan was standing there waiting for me in front of Memories and Dreams.

  I looked at my watch. “I still have forty-five minutes until I’m supposed to open the shop, Kelly,” I said.

  “This won’t take a second,” she answered, and then her voice faltered. I found it odd that she was staring at my shirt.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That necklace. Where did you get it?” she asked.

  I’d nearly forgotten that I was still wearing the second pick I got from Cora’s shop. I tucked it back into my shirt as I explained, “It was a gift from Cora.” While that might not be technically true, the spirit of it was.

  “I was going to pick that up the day of the robbery,” Kelly said. “It’s mine.”

  I frowned as I zipped my jacket up. “I’m sorry, but it’s not for sale. I’d be more than happy to help you find something else,” I said.

  “I’m not interested in anything else,” Kelly said.

  “Come again,” I called out after her as she stormed off down the sidewalk. I was afraid that I hadn’t won any points for customer relations, but I was keeping the necklace for myself. After all, the wooden box Midnight had chosen wasn’t exactly something I cared to have for my own. The cryptic poem and newspaper-printed note had raised more questions than they’d answered.

  At least the necklace was a simple and uncomplicated parting gift.

  Or so I thought.

  Brushing Kelly out of my mind, I unlocked the door and started getting ready to open the shop on my own. We offered a wide variety of things for sale, from antiques to jewelry to clothing to the oddest collection of odds and ends anyone in this small town had ever seen. We were three steps above a flea market or a yard sale, but not quite up to the elegant antique places I’d seen on my trip to Ireland after graduation. It had been a gift I’d promised myself, and I’d used a nice-sized chunk of what was left from my inheritance from my parents to do it. I hadn’t regretted a single dollar or euro, I’d spent. The money might be gone now, but the memories I’d made would last a lifetime, and really, what better bargain was there?

  As I walked in and locked the door behind me, I realized that I hadn’t done anything about fixing that back door. At least I knew exactly who to call. Cora always used Emily Nance for the ongoing jobs she needed done around the shop, and I’d grown to like her from the start.

  “Hey, Emily. It’s Christy from MAD.” That was what we called the shop in shorthand, at least we had until Cora’s abrupt passing. Several other folks were in on the acronym as well, including Emily.

  “I heard you had a visitor this morning,” Emily said. “Let me guess. You need me to come by and fix your back door first thing.”

  “Have you been eating at Celeste’s?” I asked her.

  “No, why, does she have a new Special?”

  “Not that I know of. If you weren’t there, how did you hear about the break-in?”

  “I ran into the sheriff, and he told me all about it,” she said. “We were both at the drugstore over in Landslide.”

  The nearby town—named, reasonably enough, for the many landslides that often seemed to hit it—was twenty minutes from ours. “What’s wrong with Ketchum’s Drugs?” I asked.

  “I’m having a bit of a feud with Nathan,” she said. Nathan Ketchum spent most of his time picking fights with folks from our town. The subject might change, but Nathan’s temperament was always the same.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “He hired me to build him a new display case. Nathan asked for maple, I made it out of maple, but when he got the bill, he swore he wanted pine. I had his signature on the work order, but he still argued with me about it, so I loaded it back into my pickup truck and drove it back to my shop.”

  “What in the world are you going to do with a display case?” I asked her.

  Emily laughed. “I’ll sell it back to him once he cools off, but in the meantime, I’m avoiding his place.”

  “What’s the sheriff’s story?” I asked. I had to wonder what would make our chief law enforcement officer abandon one of our local shopkeepers.

  “He was in no mood to answer my question when I asked him the same thing, but I think Nathan Ketchum is planning on running for sheriff next election,” Emily said. “I can be there within the hour, if you’d like.”

  “That would be super.”

  “Great. I’ll see you then. By the way, I never told you how sorry I was about Cora and Midnight.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  I was a big fan of Emily’s, but her last words stung a little. I knew that by opening the shop, I’d be getting a great many more sentiments from friends of Cora’s, but I wasn’t looking forward to any of it. I knew everyone meant well, but nothing they could say could ease the pain of my losses. I still had Midnight, at least a shadow of him, but that didn’t mitigate all of my anguish.

  It was finally time to open Memories and Dreams, and with some trepidation, I approached the front door and unlocked it.

  I wasn’t sure why I’d been so worried about facing the public.

  No one was there.

  Was this going to be what it was like now that Cora was gone? The fact that she’d been murdered in the shop might just be enough to keep people away, and without customers, I
might as well shut the place down right now. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world that ever happened, but then again, Cora had entrusted me with carrying on, and I was going to do it if I could.

  Chapter 6

  Emily came in fifteen minutes later, looked around the empty store, and asked with a smile, “Are you sure you’re open, Christy?” She was my age, lean and fit, with her brown hair in a constant ponytail, usually sticking out of the back of a baseball cap. The teams and themes changed with the cap of the day, but her smile rarely did. Her current cap was dark blue and sported gold stitching and lettering celebrating the Blue Ridge Parkway, a driving National Park that was one of my favorite places. The narrow ribbon of road ran through some of the prettiest countryside anywhere in the world, and I loved driving on it in just about any season of the year.

  “I am, at least in theory. I like your hat.”

  She nodded. “Thanks. I picked it up last week. Now, let’s see about that door.” As she started toward the back with her toolbox in one hand, she asked, “Are you sure you can spare the time to show me the problem?”

  “I’ll manage somehow,” I answered with the hint of a grin.

  As we got to the door to the storeroom, I reached out and steadied some boxes that always seemed to want to fall over every time I walked through the door. “Want me to help you move some of those so they don’t fall and kill somebody?” Emily asked.

  “No, I’ll take care of it later. Thanks, anyway.”

  “Just let me know,” Emily said, and then she studied the broken back door, carefully removing the plywood the sheriff’s deputies had installed temporarily. “I can fix this,” she said after a moment’s thought.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind about it,” I replied. “I’m not sure what kind of budget I’m working with right now, but I’ll find a way to pay you.”

  “There’s no hurry,” she said, forgetting for the moment about the billing and focusing instead on the best way to patch the door. “If we have to, we can work something out in trade, if you’re willing.”