The Lucky Cat Shop

By Debi Matlack

Maeve Kavanaugh wasn't sure what she wanted from life, but her grandfather's old junk store definitely wasn't it. 
The Lucky Cat Shop was Poppy's headache, not hers. Still, the sneaky old man made sure she had no choice about taking over. A series of events lead her not only to store ownership but a whole host of things that, until then, she'd never known existed and really wished she could forget about. An old Bible sheds some light on her family's background and reveals a danger determined to wipe out her entire family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debi Matlack
• Release date: Feb 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781492130680

Debi Matlack

Debi Matlack is a rare creature, a native-born Floridian. This means that the concept of snow and ice and mountains sounds good on paper, but is best experienced vicariously, through print and visual media rather than personal experience. She lives in Floridduh, land of the completely ridiculous, please God-don’t-let-the-perpetrators-be-from-Florida-(damn) news story, with her parents and husband and cats. Her main ambition, right behind not ending up as one of the aforementioned news stories, is to be successful as a writer. Proceeds will be used to support her and her family in a manner to which they would like to become accustomed. The quest continues.

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The Lucky Cat Shop

© 2016

by Debi Matlack

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s (overactive) imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, events or locales is entirely coincidental and a result of said author’s coinciding lack of imagination. Pinehaven is based on a number of small Florida towns I’ve lived in and as such, does not represent any single place. Any mistakes or errors in information or description are strictly my fault.

This work contains smatterings of what might be described in polite company as ‘salty language’, otherwise known as profanity, swearing or cussing. There is also some mild sexual content. If you find such things offensive, step away from the book. If you choose to keep reading despite this warning and find yourself offended, you only have yourself to blame. The author takes no responsibility for your delicate sensibilities, or lack thereof.

Printed in the United States of America, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1492130680

ISBN-10: 1492130680

Cover photography by Debi Matlack copyright © 2016 

Chapter 1

Poppy wanted me down at the store. Again. God alone knew what transgression I’d committed this time. Meanwhile, I had a job interview in Gainesville. At the rate I was going, I would remain unemployed forever.

I suppose I was technically employed at Poppy’s Lucky Cat Shop, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Spending morning, noon and night in the company of my grandfather was way more family togetherness than I cared to partake in. I’d spent ten years in the dismal office of a logging equipment manufacturer, when downsizing had forced me back to Pinehaven and my grandfather’s house and business. It was a thirty-mile drive to Gainesville but the only major employers actually located in Pinehaven were Wal-Mart and the state penitentiary and, frankly, I had no interest in working for either one. A decade of answering phones and tedious data-entry made me overqualified for one and under qualified for the other.

Working in Poppy’s junk shop didn’t count, as far as I was concerned. Constant sorting and moving of someone else’s discarded belongings from one place to another didn’t satisfy my artistic bent. I wanted to make things with all the crap he had lying around. Poppy thought otherwise and we had frequent, loud, demonstrative... discussions, regarding our difference of opinion. Even when we weren’t living and working together, our mutual stubbornness and lack of restraint when it came to expressing how we felt about things caused us to argue; now we did it constantly.

I parked at the curb outside the store, right by the front door. That would piss off the old goat. A prime parking space for customers taken up instead by his wayward granddaughter’s ugly, loud pickup truck. Not that customers were exactly circling the block to get inside. If more than a handful of people wandered through, let alone bought anything, it was a banner day.

The bells chimed against the glass on the front door as I went in and I heard him yell from the back, Move your truck!

I’m not plannin’ on being here that long, old man!

I stood by the counter in my best outfit, which wasn’t all that impressive. It consisted of things I’d scored at Goodwill: a pair of faded black dress pants, a black cardigan and a pale blue tunic. It was the best I could d0 in my current financial situation. I’d taken the time to put on some makeup and do something with my unruly hair, which meant it was combed and pulled back out of my face, again the best I could do with what I had to work with. I waited for Poppy, arms crossed, coming to a full rolling boil. I was a grown woman and I still not only reluctantly jumped when Poppy said to but wondered how high I should try to get. At my age, I’d hoped for much more for myself, like not living back under Poppy’s roof and having no job to speak of.

Sunlight lanced through the dust-filled air in golden shafts, highlighting a rusty iron bed frame on the left and the battered wicker elephant on the right of the cramped aisle. I could envision the frame as a trellis in someone’s garden and the elephant on the porch, freshly painted with a new piece of tempered glass across the top, holding a glass of iced tea and maybe a potted plant. Any number of uses beat all hell out of that crap cluttering up the shop for another forty years.

Poppy strode from the back room, wiping rust and dirt off his hands on a faded red shop rag. A decrepit pickup rattled down the alley from behind the building. A dusty dresser mirror propped in the bed caught the afternoon sun and flung the beam through the side window, blinding me momentarily. The offending vehicle paused at the street and pulled away.

Sanford and Son bring a fresh load of garbage?

He sighed and tucked the rag into the back pocket of his dungarees. Maeve, don’t come in here ready for a fight. I’m tired of it.

Apparently you aren’t, since we have the same argument every single time. I glanced at my watch. Poppy, I need to be somewhere in an hour, and it takes forty-five minutes to get there. What do you want?

I’m giving the store to you.

When the old man had an announcement to make, he didn’t mess around. Don Pardo leaping into the room wearing a bikini, accompanied by dancing feathered ponies wouldn’t have surprised me as much. Blinking, I stared at him, probably with my mouth hanging open for several seconds before I recalled I could speak. My reply was as intelligent as my expression.

What?

You need a translator? I said I’m giving you the store. He scrubbed his work-worn hands through his wealth of white hair, leaving it to stand in tufts. I’m tired, Maeve. I’ve been at this place for three-quarters of my life. I wanna go fishing once in awhile, spend time with my great-grandkids.

Then sell it.

His eyes went wide behind the wire frames of his glasses. His head swung slowly from side to side. Absolutely not.

If you give it to me, that’s what I’m going to do. Talk about a ‘zonk’ prize. I’d have probably done better on Let’s Make A Deal. If he had spent most of his life in that dark, dingy old store, I had spent my entire life there. Even before Poppy and Granny took us in after our parents were killed, Mike and I were there every weekend with Mama, visiting and helping out. It was fun when you were five or six. Add twenty-five more years and it wasn’t that much fun anymore.

You can’t do that. This place has been in our family for over a hundred years. My grandfather—

—built the building all by himself with his own two bare hands, brick by brick, all made from clay dug from the site, fired by the power of a homemade Archimedes death ray, prehistoric cypress wood beams, original, hand-harvested, antique Spanish nails from St. Augustine, and opened his general store here. I know Poppy, you’ve told me a thousand times. Okay, the death ray thing and hand-harvested nails were my embellishments, but the principle was the same.

The thought of selling the place held some appeal. It would fetch a tidy sum, being a historic landmark in an old small-town downtown that was gradually being revitalized. I could finish college, maybe go to art school, and finally get a job doing something I enjoyed and not digging around through other people’s crap to add to the crap we already had.

Maeve, don’t be a smartass. You’re just like your mother, God rest her soul.

He wasn’t going to distract me with the sentimental comparison, especially when it came holding hands with a reprimand. If you want it to stay in the family so much, give it to Mike. He’s got the wife and kids, I’m sure they’d love to be saddled with a big old red brick building full of drafts, cobwebs and junk.

Mike doesn’t want it.

What a surprise. And you thought I would?

He shook his head. I was hoping. An old man can dream, can’t he? He frowned at me. This place needs to stay in the family. There’s a lot of history here if you’d just open your eyes.

I fired a glare at him. I can see junk, because that’s what it is. I’ve seen junk for thirty years. You won’t let me make anything out of this stuff. That’s what people are into these days, recycling, reclaiming, restoring. But you won’t let me touch any of it. Because it’s so full of goddamn history!

Maeve— I heard the familiar warning in his voice, for my attitude, for blaspheming, for being a general pain in the ass, it didn’t matter.

No way, Poppy. I’m not getting stuck with this crap place in this crap town any more. Nothing you can say is going to make me change my mind.

The bells on the door dinged behind me and I turned to go. A man stood there, silhouetted by the afternoon sun slanting though the glass, his face in shadow. He lifted a hammer from a pile of antique woodworking tools on a table by the door. Gesturing to me with it, he said, How much is this?

I don’t know. You need to ask him. I hooked my thumb back over my shoulder toward Poppy. When I heard no response, I turned to see Poppy eyes go wide with fear and anger. For once it wasn’t directed at me. He was focused on the man with the hammer.

Maeve! was the last thing I heard.

Chapter 2

My skull exploded like a rotten egg and spilled my brains out onto the floor to dry in the dusty shafts of sunlight. I could see it all from a very great distance. On closer inspection of the scene before me, the store looked different. It was my old familiar haunt yet was new, in the way of dream images. My body lay crumpled on the floor by the front door like a discarded handkerchief, Poppy’s near the counter. Piles of the omnipresent junk were overturned and blood splashed over everything like a gory condiment.  The hammer lay near Poppy’s head. My stomach attempted egress out of my mouth as I realized that what was left of Poppy’s head was misshapen, dried blood crusting up his snowy hair in vivid clumps. Mine wasn’t as bad as I thought, though blood oozed in a steady stream through my hair and onto the floor.

I must be dead. I knew Poppy was. No way anyone survived their head being smashed like that.

That dawning fact made every single one of my neural connections shudder and fire out of control, each reaction sending a memory blaring through my brain in a desperate attempt to obliterate the gruesome tableau. The recollections it chose didn’t help much. A metallic shriek coupled with the image of my parents, battered, bloody, and lifeless in the front seat of the car, while Mike and I screamed from the back.  A gentle thump heralded the death of Granny, collapsed with a heart attack. Quiet sobbing led me to Poppy, huddled in a corner of their bedroom. Then, some relief as I recalled the growl and hiss of a torrential downpour the night my nephew Christopher was born.

The agony of my violated skull finally settled, became more focused and located where I expected it would end up, just above my shoulders, and turned into a massive headache. However, headache was far too mild a term to properly convey the depth and breadth of the pain I experienced. There are no words for the searing misery I felt. As a result, the rest of me took its own sweet time checking in. Nothing else really hurt that I could tell, though in contrast to the platoons of rabid drunken elephants rampaging between my ears, anything else would pale in comparison.

Turns out I was wrong. Breathing hurt. As did opening my eyes. I shut them again right away. It didn’t much matter, what little I saw was blurry and made me want to puke, all swirling and sliding around.

Mike, she’s waking up.

What was Karen doing here? I didn’t remember seeing my sister-in-law lying on the floor of the shop too. Why on earth would I be waking up if I were dead? I hoped I was dead, or at least close to dying, so the misery inflicted by the headache would cease and desist. I didn’t want to wake up.

Maeve? I felt a cold hand touch mine, gripping my fingers in awkward reassurance. Mike sucked at comforting, always had. I pulled my hand away, seeking the relative warmth of the blanket. There was a blanket. Why? Were they afraid I’d get cold in the coffin?

She squeezed my hand!

I did not, big dummy. Your hands are clammy and all your squalling makes my head hurt. None of which made any sense. I was dead, or needed to be, and all this foofaraw was disrupting my attempt to be dead in peace.

Shut up.

What, sweetie?

Sweetie my ass. Mike was as cantankerous as Poppy and I combined. For him to get all sweetie-honey-darling, I must be dying. Good. Best get it over with as soon as possible. I sighed, the overly processed air dried my throat, inducing the urge to cough. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I ignored them the best I could until the noise of my brother’s babbling and cajoling faded away and I was mercifully in the dark again.

The fact that I wasn’t dead did not reveal itself to me with as much clarity as one might imagine. After all, when you died, you should be dead. There shouldn’t be any sensation, any interaction with the environment and people still alive. Where was the tunnel of light and my loved ones waiting for me? I felt disappointed somehow, like the kid that got socks and underwear for Christmas instead of a puppy. I’d never shared Poppy’s vision of Pearly Gates and choirs of angels, but seeing my Mom and Dad would have been nice. All my life Poppy had done his best to indoctrinate me with his vision of the vast paradise that awaited those who would only open their stingy hearts and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Frankly, after losing my parents and never hearing a peep from them, as much as I’d prayed for it, my heart was decidedly closed. Poppy told me if I wanted something badly enough, it would happen, but it never did, which meant that I was deficient in some way or he’d lied to me. When you’re five, there’s no room for error in your Poppy’s abilities. Therefore, it was somehow my fault that I hadn’t felt my parents’ presence again. The seeds of my agnosticism had been sown.

I opened my eyes to skull-splitting pain again. I was alone this time. The curtains were closed around the next bed but I could see them move a little from the air conditioning.

The door to my room opened and someone soft-footed around the curtained bed to stop by mine.

Miss Kavanaugh? I didn’t know this person. At least I was pretty sure I didn’t know him; after getting a hammer to the head, he could have been the Pope for all I could tell. No robes though. He was average in every way, no distinctive features to make him stand out. I waited for him to go on.

Miss Kavanaugh, I’m from the Pinehaven Reporter. I’d like to ask you some questions. He moved closer, a recorder in his hand.

The curtain around the adjoining bed moved again, only this time there was a skinny old man standing there in the gap in the fabric, his hospital gown agape. Making eye contact with me, he glanced toward the reporter and shook his head ‘no’, one finger to his lips. Then he faded like fog.

In my barely conscious state I didn’t take much more than the warning from this strange vision. I was still not convinced that I wasn’t dead and this was whatever place I had ended up. Upon further reflection I was sure Poppy was right. I had been habitually wicked and careless and now resided in The Very Warm Place Downstairs. I looked back at the man in the wrinkled broadcloth shirt and said, No.

But Miss Kavanaugh—

Marchen, get your ass away from her.

A new voice came from the doorway. I was attracting all kinds of attention in Hell, it seemed. Yet another man strode around the curtain, wearing street clothes and a badge. He grabbed the reporter by the arm and pivoted, propelling him to the door. You don’t get a statement before I do, you know that. And now you won’t be getting one at all.

Sounds of protest faded down the hall and I lost interest, too tired to care about the reporter’s fate. He was gone and it was enough. I looked back at the empty bed next to me. It stayed empty. The door opened again and this time a doctor came in. She was wearing a white coat, anyway. She met my eyes and smiled. Why were there doctors in hell? Probably to torture me. I’d never liked them.

Good morning, Maeve. I’m Dr. Balikrishnan. How are you feeling?

Like shit, mostly. My voice was hoarse and almost inaudible, and my sandpaper tongue rasped against my cracked lips.

She gave a little shrug. Understandable, considering what you’ve been through. She held a Styrofoam cup with a bendy straw to my lips. I sipped ice-cold water that flooded the desert climate of my mouth with sweet hydration. At least you’re not dead. It was a close thing there for awhile.

But Poppy is. The voice was better. I took a few more sips before subsiding, exhausted by even this small task.

The smile faded and she drew up a chair. You’re right, I’m afraid. Mr. MacAllister is dead. I am so sorry.

I took a deep breath and sighed it back out again, resigning myself to the notion that I was doomed to be alive, splitting headache and all. Thanks. I figured he was, the way his head was smashed, in my dream, my vision, my whatever. Saying it, even in my head, somehow made it real. As much as that old man and I butted heads all my life, as annoying as he could be, the restrictive, narrow-minded, bad tempered old goat, my Poppy was dead. It hurt too much to cry, but the tears ran down to slide along my neck and trickle into the folds of my gown. I was alive, though I had no right to be, had no idea what I would do now.

Without Poppy. Fresh tears accompanied this thought.

The doctor squeezed my hand gently. Your brother is out in the hall. Do you want me to get him?

I shook my head no, then sighed. Yes. Might as well get it over with.

Mike crept into the room, clearly uncomfortable with his surroundings, eyes darting right and left as if something was going to reach out and grab him. I love my brother, I have to, but we fight like the proverbial cats and dogs and rarely see eye to eye on anything. I opened my mouth to say something disparaging about his extreme caution and instead a coughing sob forced its way out of my throat. He came to me like an arrow in flight, dragging the chair Dr. Balakrishnan had vacated close and grasping my hand tight in his.

Poppy?

He shook his head and bowed it to lean against our linked hands. I felt him shake with suppressed emotion and I gave up, letting the tears flow freely. It was a long time before either of us opened our eyes.

When I finally got myself under control and wiped my face, I saw Mike’s gaze was focused above my eyes.

What? My voice was rough with crying. I reached up and my fingers found bandaging. With my head actively caving in, I wasn’t surprised.

Your hair.

Even though I love him, he’s damned irritating. Spit it out, Michael. What about my hair?

It’s gone.

Poppy was dead, I had tried to be, and all he do could do was fixate on my hair, or the lack thereof. I’d mourn the loss of my crowning glory later. Bigger fish to fry here, dude.

The curtain around the other bed billowed and the old man was back. He glanced at my brother and circled his index finger near his temple in the universal sign for ‘whacko’.

You’re not kidding.

Huh?

I didn’t give Mike time to get going. How long have I been here?

He sat back in the chair. Tomorrow is a week.

What about Poppy’s funeral?

Delayed. He looked back at the door, as if someone were listening. Maeve, it’s all a big murder investigation. They even said you were fighting with Poppy right before it happened and you hired someone to do it.

WHAT?! My shout of protest made my head split a little further down the middle, but outrage gave me a flood of energy. And I also paid someone with the copious amounts of money I don’t have lying around to smash in my skull too? Anger burned through the pain. That’s bullshit. Where’s the guy with the badge? I saw him a little while ago.

Detective Jenkins?

Whoever. Get his ass in here right now.

Mike vanished and soon returned with the man in question, Dr. Balakrishnan trailing in their wake. The detective stopped by my bed and extended his hand. He was tall and lean, with dark hair and blue eyes that seemed to look through me. I guess that was a desirable trait for a cop. Good thing I wasn’t guilty.

Scott Jenkins. We don’t have to do this right now.

I shook his hand with a curt pressure. Anger supplanted grief for the time being. Yes we do. He took a step back and nodded. So what’s this bullshit about me being a suspect?

He gave me a professional nod and a quick smile that was reassuring. Everyone is a suspect in a case like this. Then he got serious. But I’m going to play devil’s advocate so you understand why.

I sighed, my headache settling into a steady throb in synch with my pulse. Whatever.

Okay. Tell me what you remember about that day.

It took a moment for me to gather my thoughts. I had a job interview and I was trying to get ready. You can call the Michael’s store in Butler Plaza to confirm that.

We already have.

Poppy called me to come by the store, even though I told him I had someplace to be.

What store is that?

The Lucky Cat Shop, the junk store. He nodded for me to continue. So I stopped by.

Witnesses said you were arguing. Is that true?

What witnesses? We were alone in the shop.

People passing by on the street saw the two of you arguing. Is it true?

Yes.

So you were angry with your grandfather?

I sighed audibly. I was annoyed. We argue all the time. That day was no different. Ask Mike. I jerked a thumb toward my brother.

He nodded in confirmation. A day where they didn’t argue was a rare occasion. Not even Christmas could go by without some yelling.

Jenkins nodded and turned his attention back to me. Okay. What else?

He told me he wanted to give me the store, I told him I didn’t want it, that I’d sell it. He didn’t like that. I told him to give it to Mike, I shot my brother a glare and he managed to look guilty, "and he said Mike didn’t want