“Sounds good,” I said. Rose had a good eye for displaying things in unexpected ways like a collection of cocktail glasses on a tray next to a vintage rubber ice pack and several patent medicine bottles.
“I’ll just get Alfred a cup of tea and then I’ll get started,” she said, bustling past me.
I walked slowly back to Mac, wondering if there were any other private investigators who drank so much tea. “I’m going to grab some lunch and do some paperwork. Would you get Avery started cleaning that silver service I bought from Helen Craig?”
“Will do,” he said, rooting through the bits of metal strewn in front of him. “Did you talk to Rose about Teresa?”
I nodded. “She agreed not to go pit bull on Teresa. And I agreed to ask Teresa to stop in.”
He grinned. “That’s good.”
I found myself smiling in spite of myself. “Well, not to overkill the metaphor, but you know what she can be like when she sinks her teeth into a case.”
Mac groaned and shook his head. “Go eat, Sarah,” he said. “I think you’re suffering from low blood sugar.”
I laughed and headed for the shop.
A black paw appeared around the side of my office door as I settled on the love seat and began to unwrap my roast beef sandwich from McNamara’s. Elvis had impeccable kitty radar when it came to lunch. He stopped for a drink from his water bowl but ignored the kitty kibble in his dish, jumping up instead to sit next to me on the love seat. He leaned forward and sniffed in the direction of the sandwich on my lap, then looked expectantly at me.
I pulled a small bit of roast beef from between the slices of French bread and offered it to the cat. “You’re so spoiled,” I said as he ate.
He made a low, contented sound in the back of his throat. After he’d had a taste of my sandwich, Elvis was happy to sit next to me on the love seat and wash his face while I had my lunch. When I finished eating I moved behind the desk. I’d sent a text to Teresa and I knew I had about an hour before she showed up.
When I went downstairs just before one thirty, I found Rose standing in the middle of the store, head cocked to one side, hands on her hips, frowning at something.
I walked over to join her. She’d brought out an old wooden dressmaker’s dummy that Mac had trash-picked. Avery had named it Francine. Rose had attached a small globe to the top of Francine’s neck, topped it with an oversize hat swathed in lavender tulle and hung about half of our collection of costume jewelry necklaces around the dummy’s neck.
“What do you think?” she asked, her mouth pulled to one side. “Is the hat too much?”
I studied the figure, my arms folded over my chest. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it makes her look very worldly.”
Rose rolled her eyes at my pun and swatted me with the back of her hand as I started for the door to the workroom. I stopped to look at the bookshelf where she’d arranged the grade school readers along with a pair of Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Robots, an Etch A Sketch and some other toys from the seventies that had been in a box in our under-the-stairs storage space. I turned to look back at her. “Looks good,” I said, gesturing at the shelves.
“Thank you,” she said, brushing off her hands. “Avery went and got the toys for me.”
“I’ll thank her, too,” I said.
Mac and Mr. P. had their heads bent together over something in the middle of the workbench. Avery was sitting on a stool at the far end, rubbing the handle of a silver milk jug with a soft cloth. When she saw me coming she set the jug in front of her, held up her hands like a spokesmodel showing off the newest car model. “Ta-da!” she said.
The old silver had polished up even better than I’d hoped. “Nice work, Avery,” I said with a smile.
She grinned back at me and pushed the stack of bracelets she was wearing back up her left arm. “It’s kind of pretty. I thought maybe we could set the long table with that yellow-flowered china and put the tea stuff in the middle with maybe some plants?”
“I like that idea,” I said.
“So, can I do it?” she asked. She made a motion as though she was going to flip her hair over her shoulder and then remembered that she couldn’t.
Avery had cut her hair to chin length a couple of weeks before and dyed a wide strip in the front cranberry red. Both the color and the style suited her. Liz had grumbled that now they couldn’t go anywhere that boys weren’t looking at Avery.
“I look right back at them,” Liz had said. “So they get the message, look but don’t touch!”
We’d been having dinner at Charlotte’s and Avery had looked up from her mashed potatoes and waved her fork in Liz’s direction. “Yeah. I might as well become a nun.” She’d frowned. “Do you have to be Catholic to be a nun?”
“You can date when you’re forty,” Liz had retorted.
Avery had regarded her grandmother thoughtfully across the table. “Do you know how old you’ll be then, Nonna?” she’d asked.
“I’m perfectly capable of doing the math, thank you very much,” Liz had replied tartly.
Rose had opened her mouth to say something and Liz had fixed her with a baleful look. “Say one word, Rose Jackson, that has anything to do with my age and you’ll be wearing that dish of potatoes for a hat.”
Straight-faced, gray eyes twinkling, Rose had held up her right index finger and written the number one hundred followed by two plus signs in the air. Charlotte had wisely leaned over and whisked the potatoes to the other end of the table.
I looked at Avery now, her enthusiasm for decorating a table in the shop evident on her face. “Yes, you can do it.”
She clapped her hands gleefully together like a little kid. “Thanks, Sarah,” she said.
“Thanks for getting that box of toys out for Rose,” I said.
“No problem,” she said.
I moved over to Mac and Alfred. They were studying the top section of what looked to me to be a wooden clock case. “Let me see what I can do,” I heard the older man say. He looked up at me and smiled.
Mac turned around. “What’s up?” he asked.
Before I could answer, the bell rang at the back door. I held up a finger. “Hang on,” I said.
Teresa Reynard was at the door. “Hello, Sarah,” she said. “It’s after one thirty.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. By my guess it was less than five minutes after. “Please come in.”
She stepped into the back entry. Her thick mass of curly hair was loose as it usually was. She was wearing work boots and her hands were jammed in the pockets of her brown canvas jacket.
“You said in your text that you wanted to talk to me about Edison Hall.” Teresa was a very literal-minded person, far more so than Paul Duvall.
I gave her a small smile. “Yes. My friends are trying to find out what happened to the man whose body was found at the house.”
“I didn’t kill him,” she said flatly.
“I didn’t think you did,” I said. I led her into the workroom.
“Hello, Teresa,” Mac said. His eyes met mine. “I’ll get Rose,” he added softly as he passed behind me.
“Teresa, this is my friend Alfred Peterson. He’s a private investigator.”
Mr. P. smiled. “Hello, Teresa,” he said.
“Hello,” she said. “Sarah said you wanted to ask me some questions about the man who died at Mr. Hall’s house.”
“Yes, I would,” Mr. P. said. He gestured at a stool. “Would you like to sit down?”
Teresa shook her head. “No, thank you.” She studied him for a moment. “Are you a real private investigator?” she asked.
The question didn’t faze Mr. P. “Yes, I am,” he said, nodding. He pulled out his wallet and took out some kind of ID I didn’t even know he had. He held it out to Teresa, who studied it carefully and then nodded before handing it back.
Rose came in from the shop. “Hello, Teresa,” she said.