Love in a Nutshell

THREE

At ten on Monday morning, Kate lobbed an open case of uncooked chicken wings into the Dumpster behind Depot Brewing. Misfortune had sunk its teeth into Matt Culhane. Or at least into his walk-in cooler.

“I’m telling you everything was okay when I left last night,” Kate said over her shoulder to Jerry.

Jerry’s face was locked tight with anxiety, a muscle twitching at the side of his jaw. “Can you prove it? Someone screwed up and hit that cooler’s power switch. I’m betting it was you.”

She turned back to grab something else to toss from the cartful of spoiled food. Jerry wasn’t looking much better than the tray of tepid slider patties. Having had her work life pass before her eyes on a couple of occasions, she knew the expression of someone staring down unemployment. And because it must suck to be him at this moment, she decided not to take it personally that without cause or investigation he’d pinned the blame on her.

He’d also called her in five hours early. Niceties such as hairstyle and matching socks had fallen by the wayside as she’d scrambled to get to the brewery.

“Jerry, I know I had the least experience of anyone last night, but honestly, my lack of experience makes me even more careful. I’ve told you what I saw. What happened after that, I don’t know.”

Before last night, she also hadn’t known that Jerry was in the habit of leaving the kitchen and taproom in the hands of the crew and disappearing when Matt was elsewhere.

“Someone has to have seen something,” he said.

Kate lobbed a five-gallon jug of mayonnaise that was now both heart attack and food poisoning by the tablespoon. It made a satisfying thud as it hit the bottom of the Dumpster.

“Possibly,” she replied, though she had her doubts.

Jerry sighed. “I need to go in and clear more food. Just keep tossing.”

Kate couldn’t begin to imagine how much money Depot Brewing had lost overnight. She couldn’t put the cooler incident down to carelessness, either. Not only had the unit’s power switch to the right of the door been turned off, but the door had been left open, too. From what she could gather from the brewery gossip, without both of those events, the cooler would have held its temperature within the allowable range until morning.

She also knew that the walk-in’s door was tough to leave open. Kate had scared the bejeezus out of herself Saturday evening when she’d wheeled in a cart with the bins from the salad prep area and the door had shut. On the bright side, her panicked scream had made the cooks’ nights. So what if her brain had shut down when the door slammed? So what if there was a latch on the inside, too? Everyone had issues, and maybe hers was a touch of claustrophobia, especially when trapped inside a giant stainless-steel refrigerator.

Her attention was drawn by the clank and rattle of a cart being wheeled across the asphalt. Steve and Amber had arrived with more spoiled food for the Dumpster, and Kate knew this was prime sleuthing time. She kept her head down and continued to clear her cart.

“So where do you think Matt is?” Amber was asking Steve.

“I’m thinking more about what he’s gonna do when he gets here. Someone is dead meat.”

Amber grimaced. “I’m glad I got cut early. I’m off the hook.”

Steve nodded. “And the dude trusts me, for sure.”

“So where do you think he is?” Amber asked again.

Steve shrugged. “Maybe he has a secret girlfriend. Like a married one.”

“I’m sure that’s not the case,” Amber said, turning on her heel and huffing off, back to the building.

“Another babe under the spell of Matt Culhane,” Steve said to Kate. “I’ve been asking Amber out for weeks. She always says she’s too busy, but I know if he was asking-”

“I find it hard to believe he would date an employee,” Kate said.

Steve shrugged. “You never know in the restaurant business. Late nights. Lots of beer and parties. And, he’s got one or two women hanging around here who are borderline stalkers.”

Kate thought it sounded a little like jealousy on Steve’s part, but Matt was a pretty hot ticket. “Are you saying Amber might have sabotaged the cooler because she’s obsessed with Matt?”

Steve looked shocked. “No way! She just has a huge crush on the guy. But who doesn’t? I mean, everaliI mean,y female in a hundred-mile radius drools over him.”

Matt stepped forward to take a tub of blue cheese from Kate and pitch it into the Dumpster. “Talking about me?”

Kate hadn’t realized he was there. She allowed herself a glance to see if his sex appeal had diminished over the weekend. She decided it definitely hadn’t and looked back to Steve before she turned to stone or salt or whatever a woman did when staring into the face of temptation.

“We can handle this,” Matt said to Steve. “How about you head inside?” He waited a moment and grinned down at Kate. “Interesting look you’ve got going on. I didn’t know you were into tractors.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. “Tractors?”

“Your choice of headwear. It makes quite the statement.”

Kate absently touched the crown of her head. All she’d been able to find in the way of hair protection when Jerry had ordered her to the brewery had been a fluffy feathered hat of her mom’s or a green-and-yellow John Deere tractor-emblazoned bandana that she’d unearthed in the linen closet. She’d chosen the bandana.

“I was short on time, and Jerry sounded borderline hysterical. Desperate times and all that. Speaking of which, you know this wasn’t an accident, right?”

“Yes. I’m just glad it’s not the weekend. We’ve got a fighting chance to pull it together for a Monday crowd. If this had happened on a Saturday, we wouldn’t have had time to prep the volume of food we’d need.” He paused. “How’d you survive the weekend?”

“I have a new boyfriend named Hobart. He and I have become very close.”

Matt smiled. “I’m going to hate to break you two up.”

“Don’t even think about moving me away from Hobart. Everyone’s back there at one point or another, and all of them talk. You move me, I miss all of that.”

“You’ll have to tell me what you’ve heard.”

“I will, when we can find the time alone.”

“Let’s step into my office when we’re done here.”

“Your office? The one whose walls stop about six feet shy of the ceiling? Think not.”

“Then come to the market with me. I have to pick up food to cover us until the frozen stuff thaws and our replacement shipment arrives this afternoon.”

“Harborside Market?”

“Yes, why?” He hesitated. “Are you worried about the way you look?”

“No, even though maybe I shoul#x2aybe I d be a little. What’s worrying me is that anything I know about the locals in this town, I learned from Marcie at the market. Harborside is the place to see and be seen. If I go there with you, people will think…” She rolled her hand, sending him on to what she felt was an obvious conclusion.

“That we’re shopping?” he asked.

“No, they’ll think we’re more than employer and employee.”

His grin widened.

“What?”

“You are a summer person, aren’t you? Among the locals, you don’t have to do anything to start gossip. It’s self-seeding. The second I hired you, it started.”

“But it’s unsubstantiated.”

“I don’t think a trip to the market constitutes a marriage proposal.”

“We do need to talk, but I want it to be away from town,” she said.

“How about the public parking lot in Frankfort?”

Frankfort was a fifteen-minute drive south, but worth the effort if it kept their conversation off the record.

“What time?”

“Midnight. Hoot like an owl if you think you may have been followed.”

“You’re making fun of me!”

“Only a little.”

“Okay, we’ll compromise,” she said. “How about a ten-minute head start for me, and then we meet at the market?”

“So we’re just bumping into each other?”

“Totally casual.”

FIVE MINUTES later, Kate pulled into an open parking space near Harborside Market, which was weirdly named, since it stood seven blocks from the water. After grabbing her keys and hopping from her Jeep, Kate walked past Keene’s Wine Bar/Bookshop, with its pastel-bright and cheerful Victorian façade. The sporting goods store, with its canoe-shaped sign and manly dark wood exterior, had a placard out front advertising its evening fly tying class. She skirted around that and moved on.

Kate arrived at the quaint market, which still had an original leaded-glass panel of intertwined green vines and red roses above its broad plate-glass window. Inside, she saw the usual gathering of locals, some shopping and some just shooting the breeze.

The market’s automatic door opened as she approached. Even if she hadn’t agreed to meet Matt, the scent of freshly baked cookies would have lured her in. And as always, everything in the store id.n the swas perfectly faced, stacked, and alphabetized. Kate had heard the occasional first-time visitor whisper that it was a little eerie, but she liked it. It gave her comfort to know that someplace in the world, everything was down-to-molecular-level aligned, because in her life, random ruled.

She grabbed a basket from the rack at the door and started down the first aisle just like a normal, non-cloak-and-dagger shopper would. She had no idea what she needed back at the house, but she had to buy something in order to maintain her cover. She reached for the first item that caught her attention and stuck it in her basket.

“It’s quirky-looking, but it tastes the same as regular cauliflower,” a woman’s voice announced from behind her.

Kate turned to see Marcie Landon, the market’s owner. Marcie had ash-blond hair cut into a sleek bob and had been blessed with classic features that left people guessing her age. Not that she held still long enough for a guess to be made. The woman zipped around so quickly that it seemed she was everywhere at once.

“What does?” Kate asked.

“The cauliflower,” she repeated as she came to stand beside Kate. “It’s purple, but the flavor isn’t any different.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Since I started carrying it a few months back, all you summer people have raved over it.”

“Great,” Kate replied, amused that she was still lumped with the summer people long after summer had gone. She’d heard somewhere, though, that it took three generations of full-time residency to be considered a townie, and she was well short of that mark. But speaking of townies, she wondered where Matt was.

“They’re all about the same weight,” Marcie said.

Kate blinked. “What are?”

“The cauliflowers. You’re staring at them. I did worry that there was a certain hypnotic quality to this display. Maybe I should…” She trailed off and gave an appraising look around the produce aisle. “But if I move the cauliflower, then I’ll have to move the peppers, and after that, it’s anarchy.”

“Oh, no. The display is perfect. I’m just distracted.”

The market door opened. Instead of Matt, Junior Greinwold, the town’s beloved but totally inept handyman, shuffled in. As always, balding, slope-shouldered, and bulky Junior carried a blue six-pack cooler. He’d been helping Kate patch up her house, fixing broken toilet seals, regrouting leaky showers, and other minor assorted broken things until she could afford to hire a real contractor. She still didn’t know what he kept in the cooler.

Kate had begun checking out brussels sprouts still on the stalk when the door swung open again. This time, it was Matt. He grabbed a cart and headed her way.

He pulled his cart even to her. “Funny meeting you here.”

“Amazing coincidence.”

“So what do you say we shop together?” he asked.

“Sounds like a plan.”

He closed his hand around her basket’s metal handle. “Here, let me take that for you.”

Kate grasped her basket tightly. “No, I can carry it.”

Matt grinned, “Are you sure? Letting go can be a helluva lot of fun. Good for you, even.”

“Are we still talking about my basket?”

Marcie popped up at Matt’s side. “Well, look at you, Matt. Aren’t you the chivalrous one, taking Kate’s basket.”

Kate let go of the basket and Matt took an involuntary half step backward. Marcie gazed speculatively, first at Matt and then at Kate. “So how long have you two known each other?”

Matt was seemingly oblivious. “Since I hired Kate last week.”

Marcie settled a hand against her heart. “So, no long-ago romance rekindled? That means you felt a spark right away. How sweet.”

“There was no spark,” Kate said.

A bold-faced lie, of course. But her feelings were hers and she wasn’t sharing her spark with the whole town. Or even Matt.

“Nonsense,” Marcie said. “I have an eye for these things. I could tell immediately with each of Shay VanAntwerp’s three husbands. There’s always a spark.”

“Cheese. I need cheese,” Matt said.

Kate figured that was as good a change of topic as any. She whirled around and took off for the deli counter, followed by Matt.

Matt stopped dead halfway to the counter. Junior Greinwold was peeking out at them from behind a soft drink display.

“Hey, Junior,” Matt said.

Apparently, Junior didn’t spy often. He stammered something, grabbed a couple of plastic two-liter bottles, and bolted.

Kate turned to Matt. “You know Junior? He’s been working at my place. He seems like an okay guy, but I have to say the way he holds on to that blue cooler like it’s made of gold is a little creepy.”

Matt resumed walking toward the display case filled with cheese. “He’s a good guy. Hangs out at the brewery. The cooler’s probably filled with my beer, but nobody really knows for sure. And don’t worry about Marcie, either. People love to talk in this town.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care about the gossip. What I care about is having my job made tougher.”

“Tougher how?”

“Tougher, as in nobody is going to talk trash in front of me about you or Depot Brewing if they think we’re an item.”

“I could give you back your basket,” he offered. “You know-the symbolic handing over of the cauliflower to mark the end of our affair?”

Kate tried not to smile. “Funny. But I’m being serious here. There’s no point in handicapping myself.”

“True,” Matt said. “I should have thought about that.”

They’d arrived at the deli counter, as had Marcie, Junior, and a couple of women Kate had seen at Bagger’s Tavern every now and then. Somehow, she doubted they all craved cold cuts.

Marcie hustled around the counter and nudged aside the teenage boy working there. “I’ll take care of this.” She gave Matt a cheery smile. “What can I get you?”

“Three pounds of Swiss and two of American, sliced medium, please.”

Marcie didn’t move. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you dating anyone, Matt.”

“Work keeps me busy,” he said.

“Then it’s nice to have found someone right there at work, isn’t it?”

Matt was unfazed. “About the cheese?”

“Sammy, three Swiss, two American, medium,” she called to her helper without letting her gaze waver from Matt. “Really, I’ve never seen you look at any woman the way you do at Kate.”

Kate tried to respond but had to pause to catch her breath first. Was that true?

“I am not dating Kate,” Matt said. “I have no plans of dating Kate. She’s an employee and that’s all.”

That might have been true, and even what Kate wanted, but darned if the words didn’t feel harsh. She glanced at her watch and pretended surprise at the time. “Speaking of which, I need to go home and get cleaned up for the dinner shift.” She retrieved her mutant cauliflower and focused on Matt. “I guess I’ll see you at work this evening?”

“No, I have dinner with my family tonight.”

“Good,” she said, and she meant it, too.

Kate needed some time to get her “this is only work” attitude in place. It was that or give in to the spark she refused to feel.

MATT SAT looking at the dining table, worn and scarred from decades of family dinners. Lots of happy memories were contained in thte.tained ose scars and, even though he and his sisters were adults with their own lives and dining room tables, there was something comfortable and special about that particular table that drew them all together for the occasional family meal. So, here he was, women to the left, women to the right, and his dad at the far end.

In just about every way, Matt was a younger mirror of his salt-and-pepper-haired dad. Now, they got along great. When Matt had been in his teen years, however, there had been some friction. It hadn’t been anything bad-just the usual stuff involved when a kid’s testosterone level jumps ahead of his common sense.

When he was a kid, his friends had always told him he was lucky to have the “cool mom” in the neighborhood, and he agreed. He liked that she had bowled in the same Thursday bowling league for the past thirty years, walked three miles every day, and was an eagle eye of an archer. He did, however, feel that pretty soon they were going to have to stage an intervention when it came to her holiday decorations. Every year, for each holiday, she tried to outdo herself. This year, she’d added an assortment of bunny figurines dressed in Halloween costumes parading down the center of the dining table like a zombie army. And last year’s creepy wrought-iron bird figures still glowered at him from the bay window’s sill.

This house had been in the family since it was built in the late 1800s, back when the Culhanes had money enough to build a three-story, seriously ornate Victorian. The locals still called it the Culhane Mansion. Matt found the mansion reference to be overkill, just like his mom’s decorations. He frowned at the bunny in a tiger costume lurking by his water glass.

Matt’s mother leaned forward from her seat to his father’s right. “Is something wrong, Matt?”

Matt opted not to insult the bunnies. “Tough day at work.”

The buzz around the table quieted and Matt knew he’d made a mistake. All his sisters and his mother focused their attention on him. His father pretended to be lost in thought, abandoning Matt to his Inquisitors.

Matt’s sister Maura, nine months pregnant, gave him a concerned look, implying that he lived in a constant state of chaos. Her four-year-old, Petra, sensing something interesting was about to happen, stopped coloring and gave Matt the same look.

“What happened now?” Maura asked.

Petra looked up at her mom and then to Matt. “Yes. What happened now?”

“The walk-in cooler had an issue last night. We lost a lot of food, and I had to scramble to make today work. Did it, though.”

Maura looked relieved. “Now that Dad’s sold the business, you really should have him help out at the brewery. God knows you could use it.”

Matt smiled. His family might be overprotective, but they all looked out for one another. “Got it covered. I added staff last week.”

Petra put down her crayons. Her face was covered with tomato sauce. “Is it a girl or a boy? Boys smell sometew smell imes.”

Matt’s sister Rachel laughed. She was the family’s baby and undisputed princess. She was also the only one in the family with curly hair. Matt’s mother always said it was her mischievious nature that made her hair curl.

She turned to face Matt, her hand resting on her hip. “That’s an excellent question. How does your new employee smell?”

Matt concentrated on chewing his food.

Petra looked around the table. “Boys have a penis and girls have a bagina.”

“Come on, Matt,” Rachel said. “We all want to know if your new staff member has a bagina.”

“Jiminy Cricket. I’m eating pizza. Do we really have to talk about baginas?”

Rachel put her index finger to her lips and studied Matt. “You know what I think?”

She paused for effect. “I’m reading a book about body language right now, and yours is very closed. As if you don’t want to talk about baginas at all.”

Matt put his hands flat on the table. “That’s what I just said. I said it two seconds ago.”

Rachel leaned over to Maura. “Matt’s always been very excitable when it comes to baginas.” Everybody at the table nodded.

“Anyone I know?” Lizzie, his second-youngest sister, asked. She was his best friend as a kid and the tomboy who’d always kept up with him. Her brown hair was still cut short, and her years of playing sports with Matt and his friends had given her an athletic body that looked great in her Keene’s Harbor police uniform. Matt’s friends hadn’t shown a lot of romantic interest in her back then, but they sure did now.

Matt grabbed a slice of pepperoni from the pan. “I don’t think so. She’s new to town. Her name’s Kate Appleton.”

“Hmmm… Is she Larry and Barb’s youngest?” his mother asked.

Matt looked up, intrigued that his mother might know Kate’s parents. “I don’t know.”

“Short, cute, long and curly blond hair?” his mother asked.

In Matt’s estimation, Kate had also gone from cute to sexy. Not that his mom needed to know that. “Short, with short blond hair.”

“I’ll bet that’s Kate, all grown up. And you’d know Larry if you saw him,” his mother said. “He always used to have his Saturday morning coffee with the group in the hardware store.”

Maura smiled at her brother. “Matt didn’t like working Saturday mornings. It cramped his Friday night style.”

“Well, back when we’d spend our Fridayt sd our F nights together at Bagger’s Tavern, I remember Barb being quite the social butterfly. Great singing voice, too,” his mother said.

“As I recall, Larry was a bigwig in the auto industry,” his dad added.

“Advertising,” his mom corrected.

“Cars,” Dad said.

His mother patted his father’s hand where it rested on the table. “No matter. They were good people, though they haven’t been around much in recent years. They own that big old house, The Nutshell. Sits right at the end of Loon Road, on the cusp of the lake, and has a great view of the bird sanctuary across the way.”

Matt stopped eating. “That’s Larry and Barb’s house?”

He knew the house well. He owned the mortgage. The owner was three months behind on the loan and his lawyer had already begun the foreclosure process. He was the jerk evicting Kate Appleton from her bed-and-breakfast.

Matt wanted to ask for more details, but he knew that would tip off his family to the fact that Kate had caught his attention, and in a big way, too. Matt looked toward the front windows, where the iron crow ornaments were silhouetted in the setting sun. He pushed away from the table and went to get one.

“Mind if I take this?” he asked his mother.

“Of course not. Are you actually going to start decorating your house? I could come over with the spare decorations up in the attic, and-”

“Thanks, but all I want is the bird,” he said before she could offer up anything else.

Matt returned to his seat, moved the bunny away from his water glass, and put the crow in its place. The ornament was really kind of creepy, with feet too big to ever work and corroded spots that gave it a diseased look. No matter. Kate was either going to understand the spirit of his peace offering or think he was nuts.