by Liz Dodwell
The Christmas Kitten
A Polly Parrett Pet-Sitter Cozy Murder Mystery
Book 2
LIZ DODWELL
The Christmas Kitten: A Polly Parrett Pet-Sitter Cozy Murder Mystery (Book 2)
Copyright © 2015 by Liz Dodwell
www.lizdodwell.com
Mix Books, LLC
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To Taz and Cappy
In remembrance
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Author’s Notes
Liz Dodwell
One
The box was red with Santa faces on it, tied rather sloppily with green ribbon. The van’s headlights swept across it, sitting prominently on my front porch, as I pulled into the driveway.
It had been a really long day. Christmas was only a week away and a lot of my clients had left to spend the holidays in other parts of the country, or just to get away from the cold. Florida was particularly popular and, right now, it was appealing to me as the heating on my old van gasped and coughed while it struggled to stay alive. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go out again and a long hot bath was calling to me.
The dogs of course heard me coming and there was a cacophony of howls and yips behind the door. My poor mutts had been alone for nearly eight hours and they weren’t used to it, so first order of business was to let them out in the yard. Oh, I’m Polly Parrett, by the way, and I own a pet-sitting service, Pets and People, Too, in Mallowapple, Maine.
At this time of year many of my regular customers give me little gifts, but I wondered who would have left a gift at my door. Keys in hand I bent down to pick up the box and recoiled in disgust as my olfactory senses caught a whiff of something decidedly malodorous. Oh no, not another of Mrs. Weevleduntz’s plum puddings!
Mrs. W. was one of Mallowapple’s more eccentric residents, and the proud parent of a one-legged rooster named Lefty, which was odd because he only had his right leg; shouldn’t he have been called Righty? Anyway, she’d had a husband once, but he’d walked out claiming he’d had enough of the loud-mouthed, dirty, hen-pecking bird. He was talking about his wife, of course. I didn’t think she was that bad, though she wouldn’t win any popularity prizes.
For all her oddities, though, Mrs. W. was devoted to Lefty and a host of other damaged and abandoned critters, and I couldn’t fault her for that. I could, however, be critical of her cooking skills. It was last Christmas that I’d discovered she had a serious problem with her sense of smell – she didn’t have any – when she proudly presented me with a homemade plum pudding. She’d used genuine suet to make it, which must have been completely rancid, and it was all I could do not to barf right there and then. Instead, I put it in the very back of the van and drove to the local dump with all the windows open – it was barely 35 degrees.
Sighing, I figured the box could wait until I’d dealt with the dogs, so I opened the door and Angel, Vinny and Coco tumbled out. Always the boy, Vinny went straight for the bushes to lift his leg fifty times; Angel, my sweet pit bull mix, wanted hugs and kisses, but Coco – sometimes called “the nose” – went straight for the stinky box.
“Oh no, you don’t.” I tried to scoop her up but she was going wild, whining and clawing, and slipped from my grasp so her paw caught in the bow of the ribbon. Instinctively she tugged, the ribbon came loose catching the edge of the lid and off it flipped. Coco was delighted and stuck her head over the side, her little nub of a tail wagging like crazy (she’s a toy poodle). Using considerably more caution I peered inside, dreading the sight of oozing plum pudding.
What the…? This was no boiled pudding. Trying to make itself as small as possible amongst a pile of pee-sodden, stinky tissue paper, was a kitten.
“You poor little thing, you must be frozen.” Slowly I reached for the tiny creature and stroked its head with a finger several times before cradling it in my hand. “Let’s get you in the house.”
The kitten’s ears and paws were cold, so I held it close to allow my own body heat to warm it while I set up a bed in a basket with a heating pad and a fleece blanket. Cold is more dangerous to a kitten than hunger, but with no emergency vet in Mallowapple – or anywhere near – I’m always prepared to take care of most situations.
Coco was still dancing around in a fever of excitement. I really wasn’t sure of her motivation; did she think this was a wonderful new toy? To be safe, after I wrapped the kitten up I set the basket on the kitchen counter out of reach while I took a few moments to get my jacket off and dash to the bathroom. On the way back I grabbed a jar of powdered kitten formula and a bottle of unflavored Pedialyte. I was guessing the kitten to be around five or six weeks old, so partially weaned, but not knowing how long it had been without food I thought the formula would be the easiest to digest.
Rounding the corner into the kitchen I stopped short in horror. There was one of the dining chairs close to the counter and the silverware drawer pulled open creating steps up to the counter, and there was Coco on the counter, her head in the basket. I flung aside the formula and leapt straight forward across the kitchen table. Unfortunately, I’m no Carl Lewis – he was a famous long jumper – and my leap actually landed me on the table where my paperwork was stacked, and I slid inevitably to the floor with the papers, and taking the dining chair out in the process. Feverishly I disentangled myself and pulled myself up to the counter to find Coco now curled up in the basket, diligently washing the kitten who she had tucked into her chest. Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.
A short time later I carried the basket to the couch to feed my new charge. I made Coco walk but she jumped up to supervise anyway. Ditto, my fat tuxedo cat, ambled out to see what was going on and was met with a low warning growl from Coco.
“You’d better back off, Chubbs. She’s getting very possessive.”
With my formula-filled syringe at the ready I picked the kitten up; this time, my finger touched something on its neck. It felt like chain. I pushed the fluff-ball’s hair aside; it was chain. Gold chain. A gold chain bracelet, in fact. Surely no-one would have put a bracelet round a kitten’s neck and left it as a gift for me? The only person I knew who could afford such a thing was my boyfriend, Tyler, and he’d never do anything as stupid as put a kitten in a box and leave it out in the cold.
I undid the clasp and held the bracelet up. It was quite plain; the sort of chain you add charms to. Turning it over I noticed something on the back of the clasp. Letters; it looked like AVO, or maybe AVD. Someone’s initials, perhaps?
Coco interrupted my thoughts with a little whine and looke
d pointedly at me, then at the kitten. “Alright, miss. Let’s take care of your new baby. I can tell you, though” I lifted up the little one’s tail and took a quick look, “she has brought us quite a puzzle.”
Two
“This is easily a $500 bracelet.” Tyler picked up the piece from among the dregs of our Chinese take-out and fingered it. “Are you sure there’s no one who would give it to you?” His voice was light, but did I detect a slight note of jealousy? Awesome.
“Are you jealous?”
“Just wondering if I need to keep a closer eye on you.”
You know, Tyler Breslin is super-sophisticated, sexy and smart – and let’s just say I’m not – yet for some reason he wants to be with me. How lucky can a girl get? I snuggled down so my head fit comfortably against his shoulder as we sat on the couch. “If anyone needs to worry, it’s me. I saw how Britney Harris was giving you the eye during the Christmas caroling at the town square last week.”
“She was not.”
“Was, too, and don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”
“Okay, I did notice,” Tyler grinned and lifted my chin so I was looking at his face, “but no woman can take the place of my lady with the alluring eyes.”
Oh, wow. You don’t know how great that makes me feel because I have a condition – grandly called heterochromia – which means I have different colored eyes. One is green and one is brown. I used to be embarrassed by it but Tyler says it’s very sexy, and I’m not about to disagree.
Going back to the bracelet, I took it from Tyler. “I guess I’ll drop this off at the Sheriff’s office when I take the kitten over to the vet in the morning. Maybe someone has reported it missing.”
“The Sheriff is hardly likely to be interested in ‘lost and found’ when he has a murder case to deal with.”
“What murder case?”
Tyler’s eyebrows rose in astonishment. “You haven’t heard?”
“Obviously not,” I said crossly, “or I wouldn’t have to ask about it.”
“OK, OK.” Tyler threw up his hands. “It happened just around the corner from here; there must have been cops and reporters all over the place. I can’t believe you didn’t see anything.”
“Well I wasn’t here, was I? Today I was over in Corkeep,” that’s a neighboring town, “filling in for one of my crew, and with all the extra holiday business I had 21 calls to make. I haven’t even had a chance to do any Christmas shopping yet, and on top of that I have an abandoned kitten to deal with.” I was beginning to get really irritable.
“Why don’t you have another glass of wine?” Tyler’s voice was low and soothing, which only ticked me off more.
“Just tell me what happened,” I snarled.
He poured the wine anyway, then settled back.
“The dead woman is Nicole Whittier; did you ever meet her?”
I shook my head. “Isn’t she the one who bought the old Fickett place on Woodland Lane? The one whose husband you never saw?” Tyler is a real estate broker and gets most of the Mallowapple listings.
“That’s her. She claimed he was overseas on a mission. He’s an Army Ranger – special ops. At any rate, she had his Power of Attorney and everything was in order, so the sale went through with no problems. She seemed a nice enough woman; I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill her. The police aren’t giving out details of how she died but word is that a blow to the head did it.”
“Whose word is that?”
“Becky Marchand heard it from Doreen Crocker and told Nita who told me when I stopped in for lunch.”
“Ah.” That all made perfect sense to me. Becky is best friends with Doreen who is married to Stan Crocker, our local doctor, who occasionally has to attend crime scenes because the nearest coroner is hours away. Doreen would have squeezed Stan for information and immediately ratted to Becky, who would have told her other friend, Nita, who owns Bennie’s Diner, and from there Nita would have blabbed to everyone who came in.
“Anyway,” Tyler went on, “the even bigger news is that the woman’s two daughters are missing - actually, according to Nita, the woman is their stepmother - and nobody knows where the father is right now.”
“You mean he killed his wife and took the girls?”
“No, just that his whereabouts are unknown. He could be deployed somewhere, or training… and probably has no idea yet that anything has happened.”
“That’s awful. Those poor kids. How old are they?”
“Six and ten; Amalie and Sophie.”
“Shouldn’t there be a search party or something? What if they just ran away?”
“There was a search party,” Tyler said. “I was out with them all afternoon but the volunteers were sent home when it got dark.”
At this time of year the sun sets by four o’ clock, and overnight temperatures can drop below twenty, which didn’t bode well for the girls if they were out there. Of course, if they were in the clutches of some blood-crazed murderer that would hardly be any better. I sighed and looked at the little kitten, contentedly curled up with Coco, and wished the two girls had been dumped on my doorstep as well.
Three
“I’m so cold.” Amalie’s voice was hardly more than a whisper as she hunched in her pink puffer coat; then it turned into a wail. “And I’m hungry!” Her little face scrunched up in misery and her lips quivered as she tried not to cry. “I want to go home. I want my daddy.”
Her big sister wrapped her arms around her. Sophie, who was ten going on thirty, had watched out for Amalie since she was a baby, when their mother had died giving birth. She had taken one look at the babe, wrapped in a blanket with a funny knitted hat on her head and making little snorting noises and she’d burst into tears, so overcome was she at the amount of cuteness she was witnessing.
Because Daddy was gone so much, she’d taken it upon herself to be the best big sister Amalie could have. Oh, there had been several live-in nannies, but Sophie understood that none of them could love Amalie as she did, and she monitored everything they did. Then came Nicole. She wasn’t a nanny; Daddy had brought her home one day and told the girls she was a special friend. Later, when he told them she was going to be their new mother Sophie had cried and raged that she didn’t want another mother. Daddy had said she’d feel differently in time and that, anyway, Amalie deserved a mother, to which Sophie had yelled Amalie didn’t need a mother because she had her!
Two months later, Daddy and Nicole were married. That was about a year ago, and now here they were in Mallowapple and everything had gone wrong. Anger and self-pity welled up inside Sophie. She hated Mallowapple and she hated Nicole. But now Nicole was dead and Daddy would probably be angry, and she didn’t know what to do.
Amalie’s crying brought Sophie back to reality and she rubbed her sister’s back. “Just a little bit longer. We’ll find somewhere soon, but you have to be brave just a bit more. Please, Ammi?”
A loud sniff told Sophie her sister would try and, holding hands, they trudged on through the snow, with Sophie thinking how much she hated that, too.
Coming from Texas the girls had been filled with excitement to think they’d finally get to experience snow. Well, there hadn’t been any – until today. At first it had been fun; they’d rolled in it, tossed handfuls into the air and tried to catch snowflakes on their tongues. But now it was hard work crunching through the crystallized inches, and everywhere Sophie turned things looked the same.
She’d insisted they stay off the roads, out of sight. Their house was close to the edge of town so it hadn’t been difficult to slip across the field and through the tree line. At first the trees weren’t too dense, then they started to run into low-growing brambles that tore at their clothes and their faces. With luck, they happened on a hiking trail – not that they knew what it was – and they followed it ‘til they came into a clearing. Walking round the edge of the clearing they found another trail, only this time it was a deer trail. If they’d gone just a bit further they would have
picked up the hiking trail again, and the searchers who came looking for them several hours later might have caught up with them. As it was, they pushed on as best they could until here they were, in a sparsely treed place, cold, frightened and completely lost.
It was only a few minutes later that Sophie noticed it was lighter up ahead. With a firm grip on Ammi’s hand she pulled her toward it. As they got closer they realized the lights were a mix of colors.
“Is it a house?” Ammi sounded hopeful. “They probably have hot chocolate. And sugar cookies. Do you think they’ll have sugar cookies? I love sugar cookies.”
“I don’t know.” Sophie was afraid to get her hopes up. “We’ll have to get closer and see.”
And so they kept going, hurrying now, ‘til they got close and their mouths dropped open in astonishment.
“Is this Santa’s house?” Ammi asked. And, indeed, it was understandable she might think so. There was a large, old house, draped in lights; they hung from the eaves, around the windows and across the roof. A brilliant star sat atop the house with lighted angels trumpeting horns on either side. Wreaths with big red bows hung on the siding and Santa waved from a sleigh above the porch. In front of the house at least a dozen trees glittered brightly and, around them, a toy train chugged, pulling trolleys filled with toys.
As the girls stood there the front door opened, spilling even more light into the dark night. “Down,” snapped Sophie, and pulled Ammi to the ground with her. An elderly man stood in the light while a dog stepped past him and walked stiffly down the steps. The door closed and the girls watched the dog wander towards some nearby bushes and sniff around before squatting to pee. It was obvious from her deliberate movements that she was an old dog, but her senses had not yet failed her, for as she turned to head back to the house her nose lifted and she looked directly at the sisters. For a few moments she stayed still, but then she began to move toward them.