by Tracey Drew
It wouldn’t be the first or the last time I mopped up blood from a feline crime scene.
Wrapped in my robe, I fetched a dustpan and broom and trudged down the stairs. Both cats sat in the entranceway beside the back door, tails curled around their paws, looking like a pair of fun-sized gargoyles. One of said gargoyles appeared immensely proud of herself.
“Purrrt,” said Pearl.
I’d almost place a bet she was the murderer, though Kit was the one with the downy feather clinging to one ear. Apparently, cats brought their humans prey because they regarded us as big, dumb kittens who couldn’t hunt for ourselves. Noting their smug but curious expressions as they watched me scoop up the poor birdy’s corpse, I had to concede the experts were likely correct.
“Good hunting, guys.” Could cats’ sensitive ears detect sarcasm? “Why don’t I put your generous gift outside and fill your food bowls?”
The cats raced upstairs while I dumped the feathered body in the trash and calculated how much coffee I’d need to forget this gruesome start to another Cape Discovery day.
After coffee, cereal, and sleepy conversation with Harry (in that order), I made sure he ate his breakfast of champions chocolate spread on toast. I stole a piece to eat on the way to the old butcher shop.
It was early, too early for many tourists to be out and about, but still plenty of locals indulging in their morning coffee before work. While some cafés catered to the breakfast crowd, most of Discovery’s stores and small businesses didn’t open until nine. The pop-up store, which opened at eight, being an exception. Lucas Kerr must subscribe to the ‘early bird catches the worm’ philosophy.
As I crossed the road, licking the last trace of melted chocolate off my thumb, I spotted the closed sign hanging on the store’s door. I checked my watch: seven thirty-five. Sean would have arrived five minutes ago. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have a clue about my brother’s routine. But since he’d started working at the pop-up store a couple of months ago, I’d had to suffer through a litany of complaints about early morning starts during family dinners.
I knocked, expecting Sean to bounce up between the rows of shelves. But the store remained silent. Dust motes swirled inside, sunshine flaring off the windows where pork chops and sausages had once been displayed. Perhaps he was out in the back room, headphones clamped to his ears, blissfully unaware I’d arrived. Pointlessly, I glanced at my watch again. Sean wasn’t the only one who had to work this morning, not that he was known for considering other people’s needs.
When I tried the door, I assumed it’d still be locked, but it wasn’t. I jumped back a step as it swung outward toward my nose. Whew—close call. Poking my head through the open doorway, turtle-style, I called my brother’s name.
Once…and then again. More silence.
Skin tightened across my forehead as I frowned. “Don’t tell me you forgot to lock up last night, Sean.”
I hovered in the doorway, uncertain of the best course of action. Nothing in the store appeared out of place. Petty thieves hadn’t taken advantage of the unlocked door to raid packets of imported candy or pilfer baseball caps. I could just flick the old-fashioned lock and shut the door—no one would be any the wiser…
Something brushed against my bare calf, and I let out a high-pitched sound that probably only the neighborhood dogs’ sensitive ears would have heard. I glanced down and saw twin tails flying high as two black cats trotted into the store.
“Kit! Pearl! Get back here,” I hissed as they sauntered along the center aisle.
Blasting telepathic insults at the pair, I slipped inside and closed the door behind me. This wasn’t the first time the cats had followed me, and perhaps the sly little devils remembered this used to be a butcher shop. They were in for a rude surprise if they expected to find an unattended pork chop on one of the shelves. I hurried past a display of greeting cards, packaged candy, and kitchen utensils. Meanwhile, Kit and Pearl had vanished behind the service counter.
Shivering sheep sherbet.
The door between the storefront and the back room that the butcher had used to, uh, prepare his goods was cracked open. And I’d bet a dozen cherry and carob slices the cats would sneak through it.
Any cat that could resist an open door wasn’t much of a cat.
This worked to my advantage. It was easier to corral two nosy felines in a small room with few hiding spots than it would be among shelves and the hundreds of items they could knock off them. Sure enough, when I rounded the counter, I spotted the tip of a tail disappearing through the gap.
Then one of the cats let out a yowl unlike any I’d ever heard before. The eeriness of the low, echoing sound swept a prickling across my scalp and down my spine. Swear I’ve never been the superstitious sort, but at that moment, I wished for a handful of salt to toss over my shoulder. Or maybe a garlic necklace and a silver bullet because my instincts were screaming vampire-werewolf-ghost-of-a-butcher’s-wife.
I admit I hesitated, my bare toes curling on my rubber flip-flops, ready to bolt back the way I came and let Sean deal with the fallout of my cats.
Or rather, Nana Dee-Dee’s cats.
Another gut-twisting growly yowl came from behind the door.
Whether Nana Dee-Dee’s cats or mine, I couldn’t desert them when they were clearly upset about something. I was being ridiculous. With a last glance over my shoulder to see if Sean had arrived—he hadn’t—I pushed open the door and barged inside.
Nothing much had changed from the last time I was in this room. L-shaped work surfaces still ran along the walls, although they were now covered with boxes of stock, and the large island counter took up most of the available floor space. An unpleasant metallic smell hung in the air, taking me straight back to when the butcher shop still had carcasses stored in the walk-in chiller and knives lying around on blood-soaked chopping blocks.
And let’s not mention the body buried in the crawl space under the floor.
But one thing differed dramatically from that time.
A boat-shoe-clad foot lay on the floor, sticking out from behind the island counter.
Three
I clamped a hand over my shocked yelp, not wanting to be one of those women who shrieked then regressed to hand wringing while exclaiming, “Oh, the horror.”
Breathing through my nose, sounding much like a hyperventilating Darth Vader, I blinked down at the expensive-looking boat shoe and the foot inside. A band of reddened, hairless skin encircled the ankle. It looked as if someone had treated him to a bad leg wax.
But the foot definitely wasn’t Sean’s; this thought struck me with instant relief. The last time my brother fitted a shoe that small was when he was twelve. Plus, he wouldn’t be seen dead in boat shoes.
Dead. In. Boat. Shoes.
I shuddered but finally managed to peel my hand away from my mouth and take a—relatively—normal breath.
“Excuse me? Hello? Are you okay…?” My heart rate tripling, I waited for the shoe to move.
Because, you know, Boat-Shoe-Guy must have passed out from the world’s worst paper cut; the only injury I was willing to believe might explain the crimson splatters speckling the floor. He was sure to come around…any…second…now.
Nope. Still no movement.
My gaze zipped from the floor to Kit. His whiskers quivering, he stood near the corner of the workbench, back rounded in a witch’s cat arch. From somewhere behind the bench came a light clinking sound. I hoped Pearl wasn’t emptying the poor man’s pockets. The little thief.
But even if Pearl was committing larceny, I couldn’t put off the inevitable for one panicked heartbeat longer. Squeezing my eyelids into visually narrowed blinkers and giving the workbench a wide berth, I sucked in oxygen, held it, and glanced down at Boat-Shoe-Guy.
And yup. I now had to change his nickname to Dead-Boat-Shoe-Guy.
Protective squinting and complete lack of medical training aside, it was obvious even to me that Elvis had well and truly left the bui
lding. Or in this case, as the dearly departed wasn’t sporting a sparkly jumpsuit or pompadour hairstyle, the store owner, Lucas Kerr.
He lay sprawled on his stomach, his sightless gaze directed at the back door and the two-seater couch beside it. If the bloodied head wound wasn’t sufficient evidence that the man was on the wrong side of living, then the chef’s knife sticking out of his back was a clincher.
Pinned by the knife was a piece of paper printed with wobbly capitals: YOU WERE TOLD TO GET OUT OF TOWN!
So, not only was Lucas Kerr Dead-Boat-Shoe-Guy, but he was also Murdered-Dead-Boat-Shoe-Guy.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Pearl close to a small staff refrigerator. She was playing with something she’d found, batting it with her paw and then pouncing. Clearly traumatized by the nearby dead body. She flicked the object into the air, and I saw it was small and metallic.
I hurried over and snatched it up. It was a Saint Patrick’s Day pin, complete with a rosy-cheeked leprechaun waving a four-leafed clover. As I glanced around at the boxes of stock to see if it’d fallen from one, the squeak of the door opening made me jump. Instinctively, I dropped the badge into my pocket.
“Tessa?”
My gaze shot to Sean, who stood in the doorway, gawking in the direction of Lucas’s foot. He raked his fingers through his already rumpled hair and stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind him.
“What are you…who is…is that my boss?” Without waiting for an answer, Sean strode to the workbench, stuttering to a halt as he stared down at Lucas’s body. “What the…?”
A black shadow appeared by his ankles, but before I could shout a warning, Kit twined around them. My brother let out a scream worthy of a Bela Lugosi movie heroine as, arms windmilling, he stumbled backward. His flailing would have been hilarious in any other situation, not so much in this one. By the time he’d gotten control of his gangly limbs, Pearl and Kit had retreated to the far corner of the room.
“You brought Nana’s cats in here, Tess?”
“No. Jeez. No. They must’ve followed me, and when I opened the door, they ran inside and…” I shudderingly ran out of air. At this rate, I’d need to hyperventilate into one of those non-eco-friendly plastic bags stacked in a pile. But would plastic still work?
With a huff somewhere between impatience and panic, Sean strode over and grabbed my arm. He towed me around to the other side of the workbench, away from his boss’s body. “The door was unlocked?” he asked.
“I thought you must already be inside.”
“Yeah, hit snooze one too many times and got up late.” He gave me an awkward half-hug around the shoulders. “You okay?”
“Not my first dead body.” I’d aimed for nonchalance, but the quaver in my voice probably gave me away.
“A finger bone doesn’t count.” One last half-hug, then Sean pulled out his phone. “Wait over there while I call the cops.”
He turned away, and I drifted over to the cats, who were still grooming themselves in the corner while keeping a careful eye on things.
Above the cats was a counter, sink, kettle, and cups for making tea and coffee. As I reached for a cup, planning to pour myself a drink of water, I spotted a used one by the sink. With a trace of lipstick on the rim, it contained the dregs of what looked like raspberry tea.
I bent and sniffed. Not tea, some kind of…red wine? Having watched enough crime shows with Harry and been regaled with stories from his days on the force, I knew not to touch. Didn’t stop me examining the dried red ring staining the countertop where another cup must have sat though.
As the clipped sounds of my brother’s phone conversation continued in the background, I couldn’t help but imagine a brief timeline.
Sean didn’t lock up every night, and even if he did, he’d told me Lucas sometimes came back later in the evening to catch up on paperwork. Was that what he’d done last night? Drunk red wine on his couch while he worked?
Or maybe he’d arranged for a rendezvous that required a greater degree of privacy than his motorhome parked in the local campground afforded. According to brotherly gossip, Lucas paid the owners double the normal rate to park his vehicle in the far corner of the campground. Away from those who might wish to spy on his comings and goings—or his female visitors’ comings and goings. Of course, there was only so much privacy one could reasonably expect in a small town.
I remembered the note. Meeting someone here after hours didn’t necessarily mean a romantic tryst. Lucas Kerr hadn’t been a popular man, but he might have agreed to discuss business with a rival over a drink.
Or the shared wine resulting in a lipstick-smeared cup might have occurred before the killer’s arrival.
Or a crafty murderer might have smeared lipstick on the rim to direct suspicion away from their gender.
Or, or, or…
I reined in the thoughts swirling around in my head. Observe the facts, Tessa.
Right.
From where I stood, I could see the back door’s lock was still engaged. Unless Lucas had accidentally or deliberately left the shop door open and someone had entered that way, the only other option was he’d let the killer in through the back door.
And then they’d tied him up and stabbed him with a handy chef’s knife from his stock?
Another peek at Lucas.
He wore trendy khaki shorts and a white shirt. Blood splatter had dried on the shirt sleeves, but there was little around the knife. With a wince, I skimmed my gaze upward again to the man’s face and over the nasty wound on his temple. The source of most of the blood.
My stomach lurched, threatening to evict the chocolate toast.
I bent and scooped up Kit, the feline less likely to contaminate the crime scene further by shredding me with their claws. Figuring Pearl would follow her brother as she usually did, I glanced down at my foot. I’d heard slurpy grooming sounds coming from her only a moment ago, but once again, she’d disappeared.
I side-eyed Sean, still with his phone to his ear, his smiling three-quarter profile telling me there was a female operator on the line. Good. While he was distracted, I had time to herd both cats outside before they could do any damage. Since Pearl couldn’t have ghosted through a closed door into the main shop, there was only one other place she could be.
Keeping a tight grip on Kit, who rested his front paws on my shoulder and seemed quite content looking around from that vantage point, I edged over to what had once been the walk-in chiller. The door stood ajar, and mindful of fingerprints, I used my elbow to push it further open.
The hanging carcass hooks had been removed, and metal shelving now lined the walls. These shelves were crammed with more cardboard boxes, many of them ripped open, their contents spilling onto the floor.
Ransacked was the word that sprang to mind. Someone—possibly the killer—must have ransacked the storeroom.
Looking for what?
Perched on an upturned cardboard box amid the chaos, Pearl stared intently up at a high shelf overflowing with a jumble of torn-open packaging. I moved closer, trying to see what she was seeing. But before I could, she leaped nimbly onto the shelf and sniffed around.
“Pearl,” I whispered, “get down from there.”
Naturally, she ignored me. Forced farther into the room, with Kit purring like a lawnmower in my ear, I was now close enough to spot the object of her fascination. A ceramic cat figurine with one raised paw. A Japanese lucky cat, or whatever they were officially called.
She curled a paw around its base and hooked it toward her—and the shelf edge. You can see where I’m going with this, right?
“Stop that right now.”
With the sixth, seventh, or eighth extra sense cats seem to possess, Kit switched his focus from purring to the fun his sister was having without him. He arched away from me, trying to join her. Grappling with the furry, clawed, octopus-like creature determined to escape my grasp meant I foresaw the not-so-lucky ceramic cat’s demise but was helpless to prevent it.
/> “Don’t. You. Dare.”
She dared.
Pearl nudged the figurine again, paused to check she had my undivided attention, then tipped the lucky cat off the shelf. Gravity took over, and it plummeted, shattering on impact behind an upturned box.
Sean appeared in the doorway. “What was that?” He spotted Pearl. “Are you nuts? The cops’ll be here any minute. Get her down from there.”
I peeled Kit off my shoulder, along with a fair amount of skin evidence caught in his claws, and held him out to my brother. “Take him. I can’t get her down with one arm.”
Kit flattened his ears at Sean, who wore the same expression as a man asked to handle a cobra. “Uh. He looks annoyed. Is he going to bite?”
“Probably. But you weigh eighty kilos, and he’s only five. You do the math.” I pushed the tail-twitching Kit into Sean’s chest. With a resigned sigh, he smushed one hand on the cat’s shoulders and the other just above his tail.
This wouldn’t end well.
“Take him out the front and let him go,” I said. “I’ll be out with her in a minute, and they’ll make their own way home.”
Sean backed out of the storeroom as if he were handling an explosive device. Which, to be fair, he kind of was.
I made kissy noises in Pearl’s direction as I eased between boxes, trying not to crush anything beneath my feet. Behind the upturned box lay shards of Lucky Cat, a corner of a plastic baggie peeking out from underneath one large piece.
Curiosity overturning caution, I bent down to flick over the shard. Taped to the inside was a matchbox-sized plastic baggie filled with…pills. Air whooshed out of me, and I froze, palms braced on my thighs.
Were those what I thought they were?