by Sofie Kelly
TITLES BY SOFIE KELLY
curiosity thrilled the cat
sleight of paw
copycat killing
cat trick
final catcall
a midwinter’s tail
faux paw
paws and effect
a tale of two kitties
the cats came back
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Penguin Random House LLC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kelly, Sofie, 1958– author.
Title: The cats came back / Sofie Kelly.
Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley Prime Crime, 2018. |
Series: Magical cats ; 10
Identifiers: LCCN 2018014151| ISBN 9780399584596 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399584602 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cat owners—Fiction. | Women librarians—Fiction. | Cats—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9199.4.K453 C39 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014151
First Edition: September 2018
Cover art by Tristan Elwell
Cover design by Rita Frangie
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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contents
Titles by Sofie Kelly
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
About the Author
acknowledgments
This is the tenth book in the Magical Cats Mysteries, an achievement that didn’t seem possible when the series began and that wouldn’t have happened without so many wonderful, supportive readers. Thanks to all of you.
My agent, Kim Lionetti, is and has always been one of my biggest cheerleaders. Thanks, Kim!
This book in particular, and the series in general, has benefitted from the talents of my editor at Berkley, Jessica Wade, who always makes me look good. Thanks go as well to Tara O’Connor, for getting the word out about Kathleen, Hercules and Owen’s latest adventures.
And, as always, thanks to Patrick and Lauren. So happy you’re my tribe!
chapter 1
The body was on the front seat of my truck, about halfway between the passenger door and the cloth grocery bag I’d left in the middle of the seat.
“Not again,” I muttered, setting the box of glasses I was holding in the bed of the truck. I glanced at my watch. I couldn’t exactly leave the body where it was, but I didn’t want to be late, either.
A flash of movement registered at the edge of my vision. I let out a breath as what I’d caught a glimpse of came into focus. A second corpse, small, furry and rodentlike, just like the one on the seat, appeared to be hovering about three inches above the hood of the truck.
I narrowed my eyes in the general direction of the seemingly levitating body. “Very nice, Owen,” I said. “I’m sure Everett will be happy to learn that the offender who’s been digging up his onion sets has been dealt with.”
Everett Henderson, my backyard neighbor, had been waging a war all summer long against a persistent and aggressive vole that seemed to be digging up whatever he planted just as quickly as he planted it—for sport, Everett insisted. His wife, Rebecca, had tried to convince him that if he’d just leave the vole one small area to dig in, it would leave the rest of the garden alone. But Everett wasn’t willing to concede one square inch of the yard to what he called “a thieving interloper.” He’d tried tenting the entire garden with netting, setting out a perimeter of mothballs, putting a large owl statue on an overturned galvanized bucket in the middle of the bed and even spraying a boundary around the garden of a pest control product that allegedly contained fox urine. The vole had been undeterred. It had, however, met its match in Owen, it seemed.
Just then the small gray-and-white tabby appeared—literally—on the hood of the truck, holding the dead vole in his mouth. There had been a time when Owen’s ability to appear and disappear at will had been disconcerting; now it was just something he did, a quirk, like the way he had to inspect his food before he ate it or how he loved to ride shotgun in the truck. There was a gleam of satisfaction in his golden eyes as he looked at me. I felt sorry for the dead rodent. It had never stood a chance against the cat.
Owen and his brother, Hercules, had spent the early part of their lives—at least as far as I knew—out at Wisteria Hill, Everett Henderson’s former family homestead. Both cats were excellent hunters, a skill that had most likely been honed during that time.
I pointed toward the backyard. “We don’t want to keep Ruby waiting,” I said, making a hurry-up gesture with one finger. Normally, since it was Thursday, I would have already been on my way to tai chi class, but it had been canceled. My friend Maggie Adams, who was the instructor, was over at the Stratton Theatre, supervising the installation of artwork from the artists’ co-op that she was past president of.
Owen immediately jumped down to the driveway and headed for the backyard, the dead vole still firmly in his mouth, passing Hercules on the path that wound around the side of the house. They exchanged a silent glance, the kind of mute exchange I’d seen pass between them dozens of times. Sometimes I wondered if they used a kind of mental telepathy to communicate. Given their other skills the idea really wasn’t that far-fetched.
Hercules launched himself onto the hood of the truck in his brother’s place. He gave himself a shake and then padded over to me. “Mrrr,” he said, cocking his head to one side, and it seemed to me there was a question in the sound.
I reached over to stroke the soft black fur on the top of his head. “Yes,” I said. “I think Everett’s garden may be safe, at least for now.” I glanced at the front seat, where the other furry corpse still lay. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like another vole. I turned my attention back to Hercules. “We have to leave in a minute.”
I tipped my head toward the windshield. “Could you move that so I don’t have to go get a shovel?”
He craned his neck to see what I was gesturing at, then he walked through the windshield, landing lightly on the front seat. Unlike Owen, Hercules couldn’t become invisible on a whim. He could, however, walk through walls, doors and windows, through pretty much any obstruction that got in his way.
The first time I’d seen him do that, I thought I’d imagined it. I thought I was overtired, that my eyes were playing tricks on me or I needed glasses. My knees had started to shake so hard that I’d had to sit down on the floor before I fell down. That time Hercules had vanished into one of the library’s meeting rooms. He hadn’t darted past me. He had walked through the solid wooden door to the small meeting room just as though it wasn’t there, and it almost seemed as though there had been a faint pop as the end of his tail had disappeared.
I remembered how I had pressed my hands on the door, pushing at the smooth wood, looking for some kind of secret opening or hidden panel. But the door had been thick and unyielding. The second time I’d witnessed the cat walk through a solid wall, I’d been afraid I was having some sort of mental breakdown. Now, like Owen’s disappearing act, it was just Hercules being Hercules.
It had never felt like a good idea for anyone to find out what the cats could do, so I’d always kept that piece of information to myself. I hadn’t told anyone, including Marcus. Detective Marcus Gordon was logical, sensible and practical—and very handsome. I was crazy about him. I couldn’t keep this kind of secret from him much longer, especially since I’d discovered his cat, Micah, shared Owen’s talent for disappearing. The fact that all three cats came from the old Henderson estate had to have something to do with their abilities. I just had no idea what.
The little black-and-white furball was sniffing Owen’s second victim now. He nudged the corpse with his nose and finally picked it up in his mouth, making his way over to the open driver’s door, where he dropped his burden on the edge of the seat. He made a face, crinkling his nose and scraping his tongue against his teeth as though he were trying to get rid of a bad taste. He looked up at me, green eyes slightly annoyed.
“What?” I said. I knew that look.
He poked the body with one white-tipped paw. I leaned down for a closer look.
The furry corpse wasn’t a corpse at all, I realized. It was actually a large, dark gray pom-pom made out of some kind of faux fur material.
“Okay, where did that come from?” I asked. I slipped a covered elastic from my wrist and smoothed my hair back off my face into a ponytail. I’d had the long, dark layers trimmed over the weekend, but my hair was still long enough to pull it back when I wanted to.
The cat gave me a blank stare. He didn’t seem to have any idea, either. Then I remembered that last night when Maggie had stopped by, she’d had a bag of items from fiber artist Ella King that were going to the artists’ co-op store that Maggie helped manage.
Owen adored Maggie; he had a pack rat streak that went with his natural cat inquisitiveness and he wasn’t above swiping something that took his fancy. From time to time I’d caught him raiding Everett and Rebecca’s recycling bin. Had he swiped the fuzzy ball from Maggie’s bag?
I picked up the pom-pom and leaned around the door of the truck. “Owen,” I called.
In a moment he poked his head around the side of the house. Part of a dried leaf was stuck to his left ear. What? his expression seemed to say.
I held up my hand, the ball of gray fur dangling from between my thumb and index finger. “Explain this,” I said.
The cat made his way over to me, making low muttering noises in the back of his throat. He jumped up onto the front seat next to Hercules, glaring at his brother as though he thought he’d been ratted out. Hercules pointedly moved sideways onto the passenger side of the truck, lifting his chin and gazing out the window with a bit of a self-righteous attitude.
I was still holding on to the pom-pom. Owen tried to grab it from me, coming up on his hind legs, but I’d seen his tail twitch from the corner of my eye just before he moved and for once I was faster. I whipped my hand behind my back. “Were you rooting around in Maggie’s bag last night?” I said sternly.
The little gray tabby immediately ducked his head as though he’d suddenly discovered something engrossing on the blanket that covered the bench seat.
I stretched across the seat and stashed the pom-pom in the glove compartment. I was pretty sure Owen’s skills didn’t extend to popping that open.
“I know you love Maggie,” I said. I suspected that was why he’d swiped the gray ball of faux fur. In his kitty reasoning he’d expected to be caught and that we’d make a trip to return what he’d taken and he’d be adorable and contrite.
Or maybe I was attributing too human a motive to a cat, albeit a pretty extraordinary cat. Maybe it was simply a case of Owen see, Owen like, Owen take.
I leaned in close to his furry gray face, and he tried to avoid meeting my gaze by staring down at his front paws. “You shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to you,” I said. “We’ve had this discussion before, Owen.”
His golden eyes met mine for a moment. He made a couple more disgruntled noises, then settled himself on the seat and looked out the windshield. I noticed he was careful to keep some space between himself and his brother.
I grabbed the small canvas backpack I had placed on the roof of the cab, along with the box of glasses that was in the bed of the truck, and reached inside to set both on the floor on the passenger side, smiling at Hercules as I did so. Then I slid behind the wheel, pulled out my keys and stuck them in the ignition. We had just enough time to get downtown to meet Ruby. Hopefully, the extra traffic from the music festival wouldn’t slow us down getting across town.
The Wild Rose Summer Music Festival took place every year in late August here in Mayville Heights. Musicians and vocalists—both professional and amateur—came to town from all over the Midwest to work with several well-respected and increasingly well-known teachers and conductors. The highlight of the event was the closing concert, held in the restored Stratton Theatre with a massed orchestra and choir performing everything from classical pieces to rock-and-roll standards—but there were lots of other performances before that. I’d taken in one of the lunchtime events just a couple of days before. The festival brought a lot of tourists to town. Many people planned their vacations around it.
We started down Mountain Road, and I could see almost the entire town spread out along the river. The original settlers of Mayville Heights had taken the shortest route to get where they were going, which meant the town was laid out pretty much like a grid. Streets like Mountain Road stretched, for the most part, straight up the hill to Wild Rose Bluff, which the music festival was named for. The streets that ran from one end of Mayville Heights to the other all followed the shoreline of Lake Pepin, which was the largest lake on the Mississippi River. Much like Loch Ness in Scotland, there had been rumors that the lake was home to some kind of prehistoric creature. However, since most sightings of the creature seemed to involve the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, it was a rumor most people took with a very big grain of salt.
There was more traffic downtown on Old Main Street—not to be confused with just plain Main Street—than on a typical Thursday night, but I still made it to the Riverarts building with five minutes to spare. Ruby Blackthorne’s art studio was in the big brick building. The former school had been converted into working space for Mayville Heights’ artist community a number of years ago, a joint project of the artists’ co-op and the town. The partnership between the co-op and the town had been good for everyone. Not only were the artists responsible for bringing more tourists to town to take workshops and buy artwork, they’d also helped reverse a trend that other small towns were seeing: populations that skewed increasingly older as young people headed for more opportunities
in the city. As my friend Burtis Chapman liked to put it, those places were getting older and grayer by the day. Thanks to Ruby and Maggie and the other artists, that wasn’t happening in Mayville Heights.
Ruby was just coming out of the back door of Riverarts when I pulled into the small parking lot. I backed into Maggie’s spot while Hercules looked out the passenger-side window and Owen craned his neck to see over the dashboard.
“Stay here for a minute,” I said to the boys.
Hercules twitched his whiskers at me. Owen basically ignored me, starting across my lap as though he were going to go right out the driver’s door—assuming he could figure out how to use his paws to open it.
I put one hand on his back. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“Mrr,” he muttered as he tried to wriggle out of my grasp.
“I want to give Ruby the glasses she asked to borrow and find out where she wants to shoot. You can wait for a minute.”
He lifted his head to look at me, ears twitching in annoyance.
Ruby was on her way over to the truck, smiling.
I bent my head close to the cat. “I know what you’re thinking,” I whispered, in case Ruby somehow had bionic hearing. “It wouldn’t be good if this whole photo session had to disappear.” I put a little emphasis on the last word.
Hercules meowed at his brother. A warning maybe to just let it go? Owen made a huffy sound through his nose, his way of letting me know that he was doing what I wanted under duress. But he did sit back down on the seat.
“Thank you,” I said. I leaned over, grabbed the box of glasses and got out of the truck.
Ruby smiled. “Oh, hey, you remembered,” she said. “Thanks.” She took the box from me, peering inside.
“Are you sure those will be enough?”
“Yeah, this is great,” she said. “How did you end up with so many drinking glasses, anyway? Did you go a little crazy at a yard sale or something?”
I smiled back at her. “I didn’t. It had to be the person who lived in my house before me—or maybe it was Lita.”