Read The Whole Cat and Caboodle: Second Chance Cat Mystery for Free Online

dad had gotten married when we were in second grade. One moment he’d be a pain-in-the-butt, overprotective big brother, making it pretty much impossible for me to date anyone, and in the next he was covering for me when I set the vacuum cleaner on fire. (Another long story.)
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw Charlotte shoot me a skeptical look. “Your mother agreed to let Isabel teach you how to drive?”
    “Well, I didn’t exactly tell her.”
    “And I’m thinking you didn’t exactly tell Isabel that you didn’t have your mother’s permission for driving lessons.”
    “Pretty much.” I stopped at the corner and looked over at Charlotte. Elvis seemed to be as interested in the story as she was.
    She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “I can’t believe I’ve never heard this story. So, what happened?”
    I grinned. “I got my license two hours before Liam did.”
    “And?” Charlotte prompted.
    “And I was grounded for two weeks and couldn’t drive for a month.”
    She laughed. “So was it worth it?”
    “Absolutely,” I said. “Not only did I get my driver’s license before Liam got his, I could drive a stick and he couldn’t.”
    Charlotte pushed her glasses up her nose. “Let me guess,” she said. “Isabel taught him how to drive that old truck, too.”
    I nodded. “You know Gram. She’s big on being fair.”
    Gram was my dad’s mother. She had no biological connection to Liam, but she’d always considered him to be her grandchild, too.
    I put on my blinker and turned onto Charlotte’s street.
    “That’s Maddie’s car,” she said, pointing through the windshield.
    “Maybe she’s here, then,” I said. I pulled up to the curb in front of the little stone house. It looked just the way I remembered it, like it belonged on a winding lane in the English countryside, not on an East Coast, small-town street.
    Maddie’s wasn’t the only house in town with a beautiful garden. Even though the growing season was short in Maine, there seemed to be flowers everywhere in the late spring and summer; in window boxes and planters in front of the shops and in backyards like Maddie’s.
    I’d seen Maddie only twice, briefly both times, since I’d been back in North Harbor. She’d been visiting her son, Christopher, in Seattle when I arrived and since she’d gotten back we hadn’t had much of a chance to spend time together. Probably because of her new romance, I realized now.
    “Stay here,” I told Elvis. He meowed what I hoped was agreement.
    Charlotte and I got out and walked up to the front door. She turned the antique crank doorbell and we waited.
    “I don’t think she’s here,” she said after a minute or so.
    I knocked on the yellow-paneled door with the heel of my hand. There was no response to that, either. “Maybe she went somewhere with her friend,” I said. I tried to keep the little twist of anxiety spinning in my chest out of my voice.
    “That’s probably it.” Charlotte pressed her lips together, and I knew she wasn’t completely convinced.
    I looked around. A stone walkway led around the side of the house to the backyard. “Or maybe Maddie was working in the garden and just lost track of time. Why don’t we go take a look?”
    Charlotte exhaled slowly. “I’m acting like an old busybody, I know, but this is just not like her.”
    I gave her arm a squeeze. “You’re not a busybody; you’re just worried about a friend. Let’s take a look. Maybe we’ll find her in the backyard, attacking the weeds.” I was trying to convince myself as much as Charlotte, because the Maddie I remembered wouldn’t have not shown up without calling—unless something was wrong.
    Maddie
was
in the backyard. We found her sitting in a chair pulled up to a round teak table that looked as though it had been set for lunch. For a moment, until she wrapped one arm across her body, I wasn’t sure she was all right. I couldn’t say the same about the man in the chair beside