Last Licks by Cynthia Baxter

Author:Cynthia Baxter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2019-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

Even though it was close to lunchtime, my visit to Starbucks and my inability to resist scones had left me full. As I walked to the subway, I noticed that the delicatessens and takeout restaurants I passed were already buzzing with the office crowd. I found myself missing being part of the hustle-bustle of city living.

But that feeling only lasted about ten seconds. Instead, I found myself appreciating the freedom of my life in Wolfert’s Roost. Nowadays, I could have lunch anytime I felt like it. And I could take as much time as I wanted, as long as Lickety Splits was taken care of.

Thanks to Coo, I had added one more destination to my list. And this one was taking me to Brooklyn. I got on the subway after consulting the New York City Transit app on my phone. Forty minutes later, I climbed up the station’s concrete steps and found myself in a different world.

The buildings around me weren’t towering high-rises, the way they were in Manhattan. Here, the streets were lined with shops, with just a few floors of apartments above them. You could tell you were in place where each neighborhood had its own personality.

Unfortunately, this particularly neighborhood’s personality was that of someone who hadn’t quite gotten his act together.

While most of the businesses I walked past were staples of everyday life, like hair dressers and small food markets, there were also several pawn shops and a check-cashing place. There were quite a few empty shops, too, boarded up tight and decorated with aggressive slashes of graffiti.

Savannah Crane lived here? I thought, anxiously checking the address Coo had texted me.

But I knew that neighborhoods could change from block to block, so I kept on walking. By the time I got to the address that Coo had given me, the buildings were a bit cleaner, and there were more bakeries and dry cleaners than pawn shops. But the area still wasn’t what I’d expected.

I stopped when I spotted the number on the address on my phone screen: 304. It was stenciled on the glass door of a shop that sold ninety-nine-cent items, the kind of place I love to browse in. Next to it was a second door with the same number. To the right there were a dozen buzzers, along with handwritten or typed names next to them.

The buzzer for Apartment 5A had a strip of bright-green duct tape next to it. The name CRANE was handwritten on it in black.

I peered through the glass window set into the door. It would have benefited greatly from a good scrubbing. Inside, I could see a small foyer that was a far cry from elegant.

A woman came up behind me. She carried two plastic tote bags filled with groceries in one hand and a leash in the other. At the end was a small, fluffy black dog that immediately began barking at me with the ferocity of a pit bull.

“Going inside?” the woman asked cheerfully.

“Uh, no,” I said. “I was just .

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