“Wow. She’ll make a great veterinarian,” Candace said, sounding wistful.

I’d met Candace last year during the murder investigation, and ever since, we’d become closer and closer friends. In some ways I felt motherly, but really more like her good friend. Despite our twenty-year age difference, we seemed alike in many ways. She was obsessed with becoming a better cop, and I was obsessed with my cats and my one-woman job. There’d been a time when my old job had consumed me, so I guess I understood Candace on that level. I’d traveled the world buying fabric for a large company, but that hectic life was over. I’d met John, the financial adviser for said company, and when he was ready to retire to go fishing and sit by the lake, I discovered I wanted to return to my first love-the simplicity and peace of handwork. If only we’d had more time sitting together looking out on Mercy Lake. If only.

Knowing that Candace wanted desperately to go back to school herself and become a crime-scene investigator or even an FBI forensics expert, I decided that talking about Allison’s new venture wouldn’t work. Since Candace helped her mother with her bills, money was tight and the topic of school made her depressed. Time to change the subject.

“Cards?” I said.

“Double solitaire?”

“Sure, just don’t injure my hands when you slap down those cards. I have kittens to feed,” I said.

“So you want an advantage? Guess I have to go along with that this one time,” she answered with a smile.

We sipped coffee, chatted and played cards for the next several hours, stopping for the scheduled tube feedings. Candace was too afraid to even pick up the kittens, saying she was scared she might injure one. Both of us handling them probably wasn’t a good idea, anyway.

Snug had finally tucked one leg close to his body and went blissfully to sleep while Candace and I kept each other awake. But at four a.m., both of us were having a hard time keeping our eyes open, much less shuffling the cards. The only thing that helped me stay halfway alert was the tarantula that Shawn kept in the glass case across the room. I don’t mind spiders, but a big hairy one that might climb out of that tank and wander my way gave me the creeps.