I heard a crash from the other side of the door and Vi’s voice raised in alarm.

Jessica cracked the door open and said, “Help!” and just as I turned to see what was wrong, a white streak flew into the room straight at René.

The cat jumped up onto his chest and climbed up to his shoulders, where she sat hissing in the direction of the door. René tried to get a better grip on the pot with a cat stuck to his neck. Just as I started toward René to help with the cat, the door flew open and Baxter charged in with a deep bark. He ran at the chef and the cat. René backed up until he hit the table. He dropped the pot, and Mac’s grip slipped as well. They sprayed a good amount of bouillabaisse all over the kitchen and themselves. The cat continued to hiss and must have been digging in its claws if René’s shouts were any indication.

A stream of angry French ensued and I was glad that I didn’t understand a word he said.

Baxter slipped in the mess on the floor and then began sampling it. Mac stood looking shocked as the red liquid soaked into his jeans.

At that moment, Wally entered the kitchen through the swinging door from the dining room. He carried a large, several-tiered cake and was backing into the room with it.

Duchess hissed again. Baxter looked up from his soup and narrowed his eyes. Duchess launched herself at Wally and Baxter followed. Wally was caught off guard and threw his hands up to protect himself from Baxter. The cake went flying. Wally ended up covered in frosting and Baxter began gulping down bites of cake.

“Not Isabel’s cake!” Jessica cried. She hurried forward but stopped when she started to slip in the frosting.

Duchess ran toward Seth and attached herself to his neck. Baxter gave chase again and I stepped in front of him to stop his progress. I grabbed his collar.

“Baxter!” I scolded. “Sit!”

Baxter looked at me mutinously, but sat.

“Look at what you did,” I said. Baxter hung his head and refused to look at me.

René, Mac, and Wally were covered in either bouillabaisse or frosting.

Tuffy had wandered in as well and hid behind Seth’s legs, growling.

“We must get these animals out of the kitchen!” René said, his face almost as red as the soup.

I dragged Baxter to the door. Vi was there and took the dog. I handed her some paper towels to wipe the soup and frosting off his feet. Tuffy followed Baxter and cast a menacing glance backward at Duchess.

René stood with his arms out, surveying the damage to his chef’s whites.

“I don’t know how that cat always finds me. It’s like she knows I don’t like cats and does it to spite me.”

“You’re covered in soup,” Jessica said. She dabbed ineffectually at the red spots.

René was already stripping his chef’s smock off. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt underneath and I spotted a fleur-de-lis tattoo on his upper arm.

“Cool,” Seth said. He pointed to the tattoo. “Are you from Quebec?”

René tilted his head at Seth as if trying to figure out how he had come to that conclusion. He glanced at his arm and shrugged a new smock over his head.

“No, I am from France,” René said.

Jessica pried Duchess off of Seth. The cat had begun purring and clung to the boy like she had found a long-lost friend. “I’m going to take Duchess back upstairs—I don’t know how she keeps getting out,” Jessica said and went out the door that led to the dining room to avoid the dogs.

“Let’s get your sandwich finished up so I can move these coolers outside, and clean up this mess,” Emmett said. He cast a concerned glance at René who was still muttering under his breath.

Seth shrugged. “I can finish it.” He picked up a knife and spread mustard on the bread.

Mac and I grabbed paper towels from the sink area and began wiping up the mess on the floor and the walls. We dabbed at his jeans, but they would need to be thrown in the wash—if they survived at all. I handed Wally a roll of paper towels and he began wiping up the cake and frosting.

“The cake was for Isabel—to celebrate her new book,” Wally said as he dumped the remains in the trash.

“I can make another one,” Emmett sighed. “Why did you bring it back in here?”

Wally held his hands out. “I was trying to help. The title was spelled wrong—I wanted to have you fix it before anyone saw it.”

After most of the mess was under control, I left Seth to his food prep and ducked back out into the hall to see how Vi was doing with the dogs. Mac followed and went upstairs to change.

“What happened?” I said to her.

“Baxter just went nuts when he saw that cat. I don’t know why—he’s never had a problem with cats before. . . .”

I wondered where she got her information since he had been known to chase the neighbor cats up a tree. I knew he wouldn’t have hurt Duchess—it was more of a game to him than anything else. I had seen him slow down while pursuing an older cat. It seemed the chase was the goal, not actually catching the feline.

“You’re going to get yourself kicked out of here and then what will you do?” I said to him.

He had the decency to lower his ears and look at the floor, but I wasn’t fooled.

“We better check on the cottage and get these guys out of here before they cause any more trouble,” I said to Vi.

She nodded and headed off toward the front desk to talk to Wally.

I sat and petted Baxter and Tuffy while waiting for Seth. He eventually appeared, munching on a muffin that was left over from breakfast.

“Did you leave any food for the rest of us?” I asked. “We have to get through another day or two, you know.”

Seth broke off a piece and shared it with the dogs. “There’s plenty,” he said through a mouthful of muffin.

As I pointed out some crumbs Baxter had missed, the lights clicked on. And I heard the whirring of a fan blowing in the heating vents.

Seth and I heard a round of applause and cheering start up in the lounge.

“Papa’s a genius with the generators,” Seth said.

I nodded and thought I had underestimated my dad’s skills. If he could fix something that the maintenance guy had been unable to repair, either Dad was way better than I thought, or Kirk was a terrible mechanic.

“Let’s get the boys outside after all the cat excitement,” I said.

We grabbed our coats from the hooks by the back door and stepped outside with the dogs.

The crunch of snow underfoot was the only sound in the softly padded yard. We took the dogs through the garden toward the cottage, which I had assumed was some sort of outbuilding, but now saw was a small house. The walkway became more snow covered as we moved farther from the parking lot.

I smelled snow on the air and knew that we were in for more of it later that day. I started thinking about winters as a kid when we had lost power and schools had shut down. It only happened a couple of times, but it had been fun then. In Crystal Haven, we lived close enough to town to at least walk to buy food and I had had access to all of my things. And there wasn’t a murderer on the loose.

“So what’s the deal with that chef guy?” Seth interrupted my thoughts.

“He’s engaged to the owner’s daughter and I guess he’s trying to make the restaurant some sort of destination dining. Why?”

“In New York, I took French in school and we had this teacher from Quebec.” He threw a snowball for Baxter who chased after it with glee. “He was really cool and taught us all the swear words.”

“I’m sure your parents are thrilled that their tuition money was well spent.”

Seth grinned. “Did you hear what he said when the cat jumped on him?”

“Something angry in French,” I said.

“He said, ‘Tabarnak.’”

“So?” I said. Baxter returned and bounded around Seth until he made another ball to throw.

“It’s a swear word, but only in Quebec. Someone from France wouldn’t use it.”

“So, you think he’s not French, but Canadian?”