The Red Cat Consignment Boutique certainly looked to have a good thing going.

Open for only a few months, this small business was attracting a growing base of local consignors looking to make a few extra dollars on the resale of their decorative and household items.

Located in the Lake Highlands Village shopping center, best known for the Green Spot and ever-popular White Rock Local Market, the store was enjoying walk-up customers, as well.

Monday morning proved an unwelcome wake-up call for Jan Jeffress, however, who came to find out Red Cat had recently filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Jeffress, a Lake Highlands resident, along with her husband Scott are now left searching for answers, and the owners who seemed to have skipped out.

"The store has been completely cleaned out," she explains. "We went by and were met by a woman who would only identify herself as a person contracted by the bankruptcy court, and she said she couldn't help us."

Jeffress, along with several other local residents, had a number of consigned items at the Red Cat, including chairs, lamps and a table.

To make matters worse, in her effort to figure this out, she's learning that the answers you get depend on who you ask.

According to other local publications - Jeffress enlisted the help of several outlets to try and get some help - the owners of the boutique, Marukh and Steve Hall, are claiming the landlord locked them out the property and confiscated everything in the store.

Vicky Gillispie, the property manager for Lake Highlands Village Shopping Center, is looking to set the record straight, however.

"The Halls were current on their rent and had a lease that runs through March of this year," she says. "We've been left in the lurch like everyone else. In fact, I even had items of my own consigned with the Halls."

"Our corporate office hasn't even had to time respond because we were only alerted to them closing up the business on Monday."

Seems another consignor came by the shopping center's leasing office looking for answers just yesterday. "We found out about the bankruptcy filing the same day as everyone else," says Gillipsie.

"Anyone saying that we're responsible for locking the doors and confiscating people's property is absolutely wrong."

So where does this leave Jan and Scott Jeffress? Unfortunately, without much leverage.

Seems this is the second business to go under for the Halls, who made a run at an Internet Cafe several months back in Little Forest Hills.

The difference this time is they're taking other people's things with them on their way down.

Calls to Steve Hall at his current business, Hall's Landscape Company, went unanswered.

Vicky Gillispie expects the bankruptcy notice to be posted on the door at the Red Cat within a few days.

She hopes the bankruptcy court will steer consignors in the right direction, because the Lake Highlands shopping center owners certainly weren't responsible for closing down the Red Cat.

LH Today will continue to follow this story, in hopes we can help these local residents get some honest answers.