Chez Stinky
An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy
Book 1
Susan C. Daffron
Published by Magic Fur Press
An imprint of Logical Expressions, Inc.
PO Box 383, Ponderay, Idaho 83852, USA
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business organizations, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Susan C. Daffron
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.
ISBN:
978-1-61038-019-5 (paperback)
978-1-61038-020-1 (EPUB)
Digital Edition 1.3 – February 1, 2014
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Synopsis
Chapter 1 - This is Your Life
Chapter 2 - Wine & Whine
Chapter 3 - Happy Hound
Chapter 4 - Tizzy State
Chapter 5 - The Hot Spot
Chapter 6 - The Tarping
Chapter 7 - Ideas
Chapter 8 - Sirens
Chapter 9 - Distractions
Chapter 10 - Keys & Ferns
Chapter 11 - What Happened?
Chapter 12 - Multi-tasking
Chapter 13 - Movie of the Week
Chapter 14 - Epilogue
Thanks for Reading
Dedication & Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Susan C. Daffron
Chez Stinky
An Alpine Grove Romantic Comedy
Book 1
by Susan C. Daffron
Synopsis
Kat Stevens is a slightly insecure, mostly bored technical writer who likes her cat a lot more than her boss. When she inherits her great aunt Abigail's house in the small town of Alpine Grove, Kat's life gets a lot more complicated because the inheritance comes with some hairy conditions: four dogs and five cats.
After coping with out-of-control dogs, cat fights, dust dinosaurs, massive spiders and serious roof problems, things get even more interesting when Kat meets Joel, an unemployed techie type with an enigmatic past.
Chez Stinky is a romantic comedy novel of approximately 80,000 words.
Chapter 1
This is Your Life
Katherine Stevens yawned at her monitor. The document on the screen blurred as she squeezed her eyes shut. She was supposed to be writing a technical white paper, but it was painfully dull. What her colleagues in the other cubicles didn’t know was that instead of writing, she was thinking about the old black-and-white TV show “This is Your Life” with Ralph Edwards. The show was from the 50s and she’d only seen reruns a couple of times. The looks of horror the guests of honor inevitably would get when Ralph appeared and outlined all the most intimate details of their life in front of a live audience were definitely memorable, though.
If they showcased my life, that show would have been canceled after one episode due to terminal boredom. When Kat was a kid, she wanted to be Jo from Little Women, writing fabulous tales of action and adventure from her garret. Or a princess, since everyone knows princesses get to wear fabulous floaty clothes, live in a castle and ride ponies. Of course, you probably also had to marry your ugly third cousin, so as a career choice it did have some limitations.
She looked at the clock on the wall. Only two more hours to go.
No, Katherine Stevens wasn’t a princess. Far from it. She was a technical writer and tales of action and adventure were few. Her acts of daring sometimes included proofreading parts lists to make sure they had the right number of resistors and capacitors. At this point in the mid-1990s, the biggest high-tech innovation of the year was the invention of the Wonder Bra. For all the talk of progress, technology had not moved much beyond asset-boosting underwear.
The company’s lead salesperson, Chris Granger, walked up to Kat’s desk, breaking her reverie. “Hey Kat, are you being followed by a moon shadow?”
She mentally rolled her eyes. Yes, her nickname was Kat. Mom had a fondness for 70s folk singers and a cute sense of humor. Chris never tired of the joke. “No Chris, I’m not. No moon shadows for me. What do you want?”
“I need you to edit my proposal. And I need it by Monday. John Horne is coming to talk to us. He is a super, super important guy, so the proposal needs to be really, really good!” Chris fluttered his long lashes for emphasis, which along with his habit of repeating adverbs was an affectation Kat found annoying. To be fair, he did have dazzling teal green eyes and dark good looks, which probably helped his sales. Like most handsome men in California, he’d bought some hair gel, slicked back his hair and done a stint in Los Angeles as an actor/waiter. When that career choice ended in destitution, he opted to go into technology sales instead.
“Chris, you do realize that the proposal is 400 pages long, right? You were supposed to give it to me last month,” Kat said.
“I know, but I was so busy. You can do it over the weekend, right? It’s not like you have anything to do anyway. I’m going to be flying out to Aspen with Mandi, so I’m not really going to be available to talk about it with you. You’ll figure it out.”
“Okay Chris, but I need to talk to Mark about this.”
“Whatever. I’m headed to the airport now. See ya!” Chris turned around and smoothed back his dark hair with his palms. As he walked off down the corridor, he patted the tops of the cubicle walls.
Talking to her boss Mark would be an exercise in futility. Most of the time when Kat ventured to his office to talk to him, he seemed a little surprised she worked there, even though she’d been with the company for more than a year. His unique ability to make her feel invisible grated, particularly since he had a habit of calling her at home on the weekends to discuss trivial things like comma placement. But given his offensive comments about other women in the office, it could be worse. Fortunately, she wasn’t his type. With her petite frame and wavy dark hair, Kat didn’t have the Malibu Barbie looks Mark tended to find intriguing. Kat often reminded herself that you don’t have to like the person who signs your paycheck.
Since Mark tended to disappear early on Fridays, Kat needed to get the conversation with him over with. She looked at the posters she had hanging on her cubicle walls. Half Dome in Yosemite, Glacier National Park, and Jackson Hole in Wyoming. Covering up the Steelcase gray partitions with beautiful scenery did help sometimes. But today, the images mostly just made her want to head to the airport, step on a plane, and get away. She sighed, got up from her chair and went down the hallway to Mark’s office.
Mark Spencer sat behind his large mahogany desk looking down at his fingernails. He had his feet up on the corner of the desk. His amphibious utility sandals had some mud caked on the soles. Maybe he’d gone out for a run with his jock buddies at lunch. Kat knocked on the partially open office door. “Hi, Mark. Can I talk to you for a second?”
“Hey Kat, I’m pretty busy, but I’ve got a couple minutes before I head out.”
“I just wanted to check with you about Chris’s proposal. He was supposed to give it to me last month, but he just handed it off to me and says he needs it edited by Monday. That means I’m going to have to work on it over the weekend.”
“Hmm, that’s interesting,” he said looking up and pointing his nail clippers at Kat. “I’ve been thinking about gingko lately. It’s an herb, you know. Do you think it makes me smarter? I’ve been taking it and I think I’m getting smarter. What
do you think?”
“Well, Mark, I’m not sure. You seem the same to me. If you start getting dumber, should I let you know? So, about that proposal…”
“Oh yeah, work over the weekend, but you’re on salary, so there’s no such thing as overtime.”
With a flourish, Mark flipped his sun-bleached auburn hair and gave a sidelong glance at the mirror on the wall. He pulled a strap tighter on his Teva sandal and then put both feet on the floor with a stomp. “Wow, I really gotta go. Candi is waiting at the Beach House. We’re celebrating my new BMW. Did I tell you I got a rag top? It’s just so cool.”
Kat stared at him. “Okay, ’bye.” It was interesting that most of the men in the office had a preference for tall bleached-blonde women whose names ended in “i.” Maybe the ladies signed their names with cute little hearts, too.
Kat returned to her cubicle and stared up at Half Dome. The John Muir quote suggested that she go climb a mountain. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.
Although climbing a mountain had some appeal, it definitely wasn’t going to happen this weekend. Kat stood up and headed for the office kitchen. A bit of restorative chocolate was in order to help her make it through the rest of the long afternoon. To raise money for the school band, an enterprising child of one of the other writers had strategically placed chocolate bars in the high-traffic area. A little bit of sugary philanthropy might help her mood.
Maria Rossini poked her head out of her cubicle. “Hey Kat! I heard about the proposal. Chris has such a big mouth and thanks to his damn speaker phone, we all know his business whether we want to or not. What are you going to do?”
Kat detoured into Maria’s cubicle and replied, “What I have to do. If we don’t finish the proposal, we can’t submit it Monday, and we have no funding for next year. Then we all lose. Way to plan ahead, Chris.”
Maria shook her mop of dark curls. “Well let me know if there’s anything I can do. I’d like to have this stinkin’ job next year. I can’t believe Chris sat on the thing for so long. Mark is such a weenie. Why does he let that guy get away with this stuff?”
“Who knows? Chris is a pretty man who sells stuff to other pretty people. Mark likes money. And let’s face it, this place needs money to keep going. All I know is that this weekend is going to be long and boring. But I’d like to have a job when January rolls around, too. Want to come over tonight for a Wine and Whine Party?”
“Sure. You can evaluate how bad the proposal is and I’ll drink. You might edit better with some adult beverages.”
Although her editing skills were rarely enhanced by the addition of alcohol, Kat nodded at Maria and smiled. Maria was Mark’s secretary and on her best days she looked like a somewhat shorter and stouter (Maria preferred the term Rubenesque) version of Sophia Loren. Today was not one of her best days, however. Maria took the concept of casual Friday seriously. There’s a fine line between comfortable slacks and sweat pants and today Maria was on the sweaty side. On Fridays, Maria often didn’t use the expensive hair products that kept her unruly curls under control, so today her normally big hair was downright enormous. But Maria was one of those friends you could count on to be sympathetic, particularly about work-related idiocy. This evening’s bitch fest could be amusing. Undoubtedly, it would be the best part of the weekend.
A phone rang and both Kat and Maria turned their heads to look over at Kat’s workstation. “I think that’s yours,” Maria said.
“Probably Chris with more bad news.” Kat rushed back to her cubicle and said over her shoulder, “I’ll talk to you later and we can work out the time to get together tonight.”
Kat grabbed the phone and said “Hello?” with a great exhale of breath, so her greeting came out as more of a shout.
“Hello, is this Katherine Stevens?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, I just got back to my desk; I didn’t mean to bark in your ear like that. May I help you?”
“My name is Larry Lowell and I’m a lawyer in the town of Alpine Grove. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Kat nodded. How could this day possibly get any worse? “What news?”
“Your great-aunt Abigail has died. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Aunt Abigail? Really?” Kat flashed on a memory of a thin white-haired woman wearing a floppy peasant skirt. “Wow, I haven’t seen her in years and I think my mother lost track of her. What happened?”
Larry cleared his throat and said quietly, “I’m not entirely sure of the precise details, but I know she was ill. She was an ‘unusual’ person, but smart and funny, even right before she passed away. I talked to her just a few weeks ago. She came into my office to talk about her estate.”
Kat raised her eyebrows, “Her estate?”
“Yes, you are named the principal beneficiary of her estate. You have inherited all of her assets up here in Alpine Grove.”
“Assets? What exactly do you mean by assets?”
Larry cleared his throat again. “She has a home up here, but it’s not in the greatest shape at the moment. With a little TLC, you could fix it up. However, there are a few stipulations, as well.”
What was this? Twenty Questions? Getting information out of this guy could take a while. Fortunately, as a technical writer, Kat had years of practice extracting information from recalcitrant people.
“Mr. Lowell, what exactly do you mean by ‘stipulations’?”
“It seems, Ms. Stevens, that there are some animals residing on the property. Abigail loved her babies, as she called them, and she wanted to make sure that they would be well taken care of after she was gone. She remembered that you love animals, and that’s why she wanted you to be their new mom as she would say.”
Their mom? This guy had to be kidding. Maternal she definitely was not. “So Mr. Lowell, what type of animals are we talking about here? I mean, I don’t know anything about cows or chickens or ducks or anything. I have one cat and I live in a 950-square-foot apartment.”
“Please call me Larry. We’ll probably be talking to each other a lot over the next few weeks. It would be best if we could meet in person. Would you like to set up a time to talk about this matter and go over the details?”
“Okay Larry. You can call me Kat. So how many animals are we talking about?”
“Abigail had four dogs and a number of cats. When I went to the property, I don’t think I actually saw them all, so I’m not entirely sure. But we think at least five cats. Abigail left detailed descriptions of the animals, but people had a habit of dumping stray cats out at her place when they no longer could take care of them, so I may have missed some outside barn cats.”
Once he finally spit it out, Larry could share some serious facts. After digesting the lawyer’s information dump for a moment, finally Kat said, “I think you’re right. We should talk about this in person. Could you give me directions?”
Larry related how to get to his office in Alpine Grove and agreed to meet Kat on Saturday afternoon. They would then drive out to the property. He promised to explain the rest of the details when they met.
Kat hung up the phone and stared blankly at her Half Dome poster again. Her quiet and slightly boring life was about to get a lot more complicated.
After the conversations with Mark and the lawyer, it was clearly time to go home and enjoy a little feline companionship. Kat had had enough of the humans of the world. She picked up the three-inch binder with the printout of Chris’s proposal and grabbed an assortment of red pens from her desk. She stopped by Maria’s cubicle on her way out and poked her head in the doorway.
“Hey Maria, I’ve gotta take a rain check for tonight.”
Maria looked up and gave Kat a questioning look. “What happened? Chris didn’t do something even dumber, did he? Maybe we need one of those industrial-size boxes of wine.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I can’t really talk about it right now. I’m tired and I have to get up early in the morning, so I’m just gonna go home, feed Murph, and go to bed. It�
�s been a long, weird day.”
Maria nodded her head. “Okay, so now I’m totally dying of curiosity. If you decide to share, give me a call.”
Kat promised to fill Maria in on the details. She sighed as the tension left her body. It was a relief to open the door and exit the building.
Later, Kat opened her apartment door and was greeted by a rotund black-and-white cat who loudly expressed a compelling need for dinner.
“Well, meeeee-yow to you too,” Kat said as she picked up the cat.
“How’s my little Murphee cat?” she said, snuggling the wriggling feline in her arms.
Murphee wormed out of Kat’s embrace and jumped to the floor. The cat turned around and glared at her with a look of disgust.
“Sheesh, everyone wants something,” Kat mumbled as she walked to the kitchen. Grabbing the bag of outrageously expensive cat food from the pantry, she walked over to Murphee’s cat food dish as the cat continued her monologue about the merits of speedy service and fine feline dining.
“All right, all right, I’m working on it!” Kat said as she poured the food.
Murphee’s prominent belly swayed as she rushed to the bowl. She started gobbling down the food, but stopped to look up lovingly at Kat for a moment. Now that her obvious starvation had been addressed, she was feeling more congenial.
Kat placed the proposal binder on the kitchen table and opened it to the first page. Several typos leaped into view. She sat down, grabbed a pen, and started marking up the text as she listened to Murphee begin her post-feeding cleaning routine.
From below came distressingly familiar noises. “Urrk, aaack, hrrak, yurk!” Without thinking, Kat leaped up, grabbed Murphee out from under the table, and ran to the bathroom, holding the alarmed cat in front of her as foam oozed from between Murphee’s lips.
“Barf on the tile! Barf on the tile!” Kat yelped as she placed the cat on the bathroom floor and slammed the door.
The sounds of “Hack! URRRK! Blaaaap!” came from behind the door as Murphee finished the process of purging the contents of her stomach and a little extraneous hair from her system.
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