The Purrfect Halloween Prank
A Beatrice Young Cozy Cat Mystery (#4)
Alannah Rogers
Copyright © 2015 Alannah Rogers
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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1
There was little Beatrice Young liked more than Halloween. Christmas was, of course, her number one holiday, but Halloween made for a close second.
As the sixty-two-year-old café owner drove down the road from her converted barn house into the small town of Ashbrook, New Hampshire, she considered what she liked about the season.
First there was the charm of fall—the orange and gold foliage, cozy sweaters, hot drinks, and crisp days. But Halloween took it to another level with its costumes and hint of spookiness.
“Are you all looking forward to Halloween?” Beatrice asked the three cats in the back seat.
Petunia, a fluffy Himalayan who had recently waltzed into her life, meowed prettily. “I know just the costume for you, darling. You’re going to be the prettiest of princesses! And you Hamish, well, maybe we’ll dust off that old Sherlock costume.”
Hamish, a muscular Maine Coon cat, flattened his ears back. He tolerated the costume wearing every year but his expression said that he was never going to love it.
“And you Lucky, well I special ordered that spider costume for you. So we’ll have to retire your Batman outfit for now.”
Lucky, her little black cat, didn’t hear a word she said. He was busy cowering in his cat carrier and occasionally peeping out through the ventilation slats to peer jealously at Hamish and Petunia, who sat side-by-side, oblivious to the terror that was car travel. The two had been quite cozy since Petunia had arrived a couple of weeks before—sleeping in the window seat together in the sunshine, eating at the same bowl, cleaning each other’s heads. Poor Lucky. He clearly felt like a third wheel.
Beatrice hummed to herself happily as she drove, mentally checking through her Halloween to-do list. Buy candy for trick-or-treaters. Carve pumpkin. Make a zillion pumpkin pies. Bring out pumpkin-pie scented candles and Halloween decorations. Eat a zillion pumpkin pies. Roast a chicken…
These thoughts bumped along in Beatrice’s brain as she piloted her pickup through the gentle curves of the hilly country road. Ashbrook was close to the White Mountain National Forest, which made it a popular tourist spot and a prime place to spot fall colors.
Sugar maples had exploded into fiery reds and oranges, in contrast to the more muted yellows of poplars and the stalwart Christmas green of the pines. The little Cape Cod-style houses scattered here and there featured armies of bright orange carved pumpkins, cotton batting hung in trees, or fake tombstones sticking up like old teeth. Early morning light flooded these ghoulish scenes, coating them with sunshine the color of warm butter.
People in Ashbrook were serious about Halloween: it was like a competition to see who has the best display. And Beatrice usually led the pack. Except this year she hadn’t even started.
She blamed her tardiness on increased business at The Cozy Cat Café and on all the mysteries she’d been tackling lately. Between the mayor’s murder, a small-time counterfeiting ring, and a case of extortion, there’d been more than enough crime solving for her and the cats. Beatrice suspected that the sheriff now relied on Lucky, Hamish, and Petunia to sniff out clues—they were just so good at it.
Her mind busy, Beatrice was only half paying attention to the road. After all, she’d driven this route thousands of times. She could probably do it blind. Still, deer had a habit of leaping out of the bush and there was the occasional high school kid, just learning to drive, who might accidentally nick you.
So when Hamish started yowling in the back seat, she snapped to attention, surprised that she’d been so absent minded. “Thanks Hammy,” she said. “You’ve always got my back.”
But the big, tawny cat didn’t stop there. If anything, he pitched his voice higher. The last time she’d heard him meow like that was a couple of months ago when she’d accidentally stepped on his tail in the kitchen. Petunia took up the cause and began yowling alongside him, the pupils of her blue eyes dilating.
She was afraid. But why?
Beatrice scanned ahead for potential danger. The cats, after all, were rarely wrong in their warnings. They were on a long, lonely stretch of road that cut through the forest. There weren’t any houses in the thick brush. She slowed down and spied up ahead something sitting in the middle of the road. Her long-range vision was still good, or good enough that she could see that the thing wasn’t road kill or a fallen branch—it was sizzling. Spitting. Like it was a bomb about to go off…
The next moment was a blur. Beatrice put the car in reverse and hit the gas. As the truck zoomed backwards up the road, everything in front of her exploded. Debris flew up, smacking against the windshield with such force she thought it was going to shatter.
But her old, trusty truck was built like a tank. It shuddered and careened but stayed in one piece. Since she couldn’t see anything, either in front or behind her, Beatrice put on the brakes, shut off the ignition, and anxiously looked in the back. Lucky’s cat carrier was still strapped in. Hamish and Petunia were clinging for dear life to the seat, claws dug deep into the upholstery, ears flat against their heads.
“Everyone okay back there? What the heck was that, anyway?”
She spun back around, assessing the danger. The air had cleared. In front of her, a small pile was smouldering, smoke rising from the remains of whatever had gone off.
“Well, if that wasn’t a homemade bomb then my name is Sally Ann,” Beatrice said, turning the ignition back on. “The question is, who would be crafty enough to make such a thing? And was it meant for me?”
As Beatrice put the car back into drive, hands shaking as she carefully cruised past the explosion site, she drew up a mental list of people who might want to get even with her. The list was unnervingly long. After all, she’d made a lot of people’s lives complicated, like jail complicated, by sniffing out their criminal activities.
“Well there’s only one thing to do,” Beatrice said as she slowly drove off towards town. “Zoe’s going to have to open the café on her own this morning. Time to pay the sheriff a visit.”
2
Beatrice stopped short as she entered Sheriff Jacob Roy’s office, the cats at her heels. Usually a dingy, uninspiring space, it was festooned with all matter of Halloween knickknacks. Paper cut-outs of black and orange witches were strung from wall to wall and there was a festive collection of ornamental gourds fighting for room with the sheriff’s stacks of paperwork. Some sort of cobweb-like material was tacked into the corners of the windows.
When she entered, he was sipping from an orange mug that declared “I love Halloween!” except where the “love” should have been, there was a heart-shaped pumpkin.
“Don’t ask,” he said, catching sight of Beatric
e hovering at his doorway.
“Mrs. Roy at it again?”
“Yep. She went to that pop-up Halloween store on Oak Street and the next thing I knew I was sharing office space with half their merchandise.”
“I think she did a lovely job.” Beatrice admired the plastic spiders caught in the cobwebs and the glitter spray painted on the gourds. The cats tiptoed about, eyes round as they took in all the decorations. Beatrice and the sheriff were good friends, had been since she’d babysat him many years ago, so she spent a lot of time in that office.
“I’ve been meaning to go to that pop-up store but I don’t have a minute to myself lately,” Beatrice said. “This is the latest I’ve left my decorating and you know how I love Halloween.”
“You and Sandra both. By the way, she’s been bugging me to ask you for dinner. She loves having company, always complains that I never invite anyone over. Plus you gotta see the house. If you think this place screams Halloween, then you haven’t seen nuthin’ yet.”
“I’d love that. I don’t get to see Sandra enough.” Beatrice shook her head. “What am I making all this small talk for? Jake, someone set off a bomb in front of my car this morning.”
That got his attention. He spit his coffee back into the orange mug. “A bomb? What are you going on about, Bee? There aren’t bombs in Ashbrook.”
“I’m farsighted, not nearsighted, thank you very much. And last I checked, a bomb’s something that’s supposed to explode and hurt people, or at least ruin their stuff. Well, this thing had a lit fuse and everything. Sitting clear in the middle of the road on the straight section about five minutes before you get into town. Thank goodness these little rascals gave me the heads up before I drove right into it.”
“It was probably some kids goofing off. You know, with Halloween coming up.”
Beatrice sat in a chair opposite him, unwrapped a toffee twist from the pile sitting on his desk, and popped it in her mouth. Hamish and Petunia had settled into one of the cat beds, their fluffy tails tickling the others’ nose and making them sneeze. Lucky crouched in the other bed, looking lonely. Beatrice scooped him up and put him on her lap.
“People always say that around Halloween. There’s a rash of pranks and everyone says it’s just some bad kids.” She leaned forward. “But Jake, this set-up was deliberate. It was like it was waiting for me. I mean, I drive that route every day. Same time. Someone must have known I’d be there.”
“Who would want to do that to you?”
“After all the cases I’ve been helping with this fall, the better question is who wouldn’t?”
The sheriff pulled a pencil covered in bats out of a jar and began chewing on the end, his salt and pepper moustache twitching. “The last thing I need on earth right now is some vigilante trying to blow you up. After everyone found out that our mayor was an FBI-wanted criminal, I’ve had the media crawling up my shirt. I had to change my number. News crews are still camped out on my lawn. What’s with this town lately? You’d think there was a full moon every night.”
“I’d believe it.”
The sheriff leaned forward on his desk, hands clasped. “Bee, you gotta help me with this one. I’m up to my eyeballs.”
“You want me to investigate my own stalker?” Beatrice reached for another candy. “I’m going to need to eat a lot more of these.”
“Get them to help you.” The sheriff gestured at the snoozing Petunia and Hamish, all twitching whiskers and downy fur. “I’ll do as much as I can but I’m going to need you to step in on this one.”
Beatrice considered this change of events. At first, the sheriff had been resistant, heck sometimes downright hostile, to the idea that she could help solve local crimes. This was a total change of heart. Dealing with the aftermath of the mayor’s criminal record and secret identity must really be taxing him.
“Alright Jake, I’ll do what I can. But don’t tell me you look so fussed just on my account. You know that this kind of stuff, maybe not bombs but definitely strange pranks, always happen at this time of year. It’s a tradition, a pattern. Someone’s behind it and they have a purpose.”
The sheriff sighed. “Alright Bee, maybe I do have a hunch that something’s off.” He stood up and flipped through the filing cabinet behind him. Finding the file he wanted, he handed it over to Beatrice.
“I’ve been keeping track of anything funny that happens around Halloween. Putting it in this file. Always said I’d take a good hard look at it to see if it was random or one person’s doing. But you know, it’s just me and the deputy in this here office. Don’t have a lot of time for extracurricular sleuthing.”
There was a clatter and the sheriff looked beside him to see Petunia stretching a paw to bat at a stack of business cards on his desk. She looked at him with her big button eyes, tan ears perked, and then promptly knocked a few more cards to the ground.
“Manners, Petunia!” Beatrice scolded. “Hamish, step in please.”
Hamish joined the fluffy Himalayan but instead of nudging her back, he began to bat at the cards in the same way.
“Heavens, what’s gotten into you two?” Beatrice shooed them both away. “At least you still know your manners, Lucky.”
The little black cat blinked his green eyes. It may have been he was still traumatized by the explosion, but he looked mighty unhappy to see the other cats get all the attention.
“Give me a quick run-down,” Beatrice said. “Any common threads in these cases?”
The sheriff settled back. “One thing’s always struck me—the pranks usually take place at the victim’s home. Slashed tires. House spray-painted red. Anonymous calls saying someone’s going to burn their house down. So this makes me think that your case is different.”
“Or maybe the pranks are escalating,” said Beatrice. “I think it’s high time we found a connection between these cases, if there’s one to find. But first … coffee.”
3
Beatrice may have failed to give her house the Halloween treatment, but she certainly hadn’t forgotten to transform the café. The Cozy Cat Café, run and owned by Beatrice for several decades, had received a full and complete makeover—as was customary.
She took off her coat at the door and smugly surveyed her handiwork. Black paper bats dangled from the lofty ceiling. Fake cobwebs decorated the tall bookcases. Carved pumpkins dotted the floor.
The most important detail was the re-emergence of Beatrice’s stuffed black cat collection. Plush cats sat on tables, perched on sofa armrests, and crowded on top of the counter—stretching, yawning, hissing, sleeping. In honour of Lucky, Beatrice always ran a black cat adoption drive around Halloween and there was a special corkboard on the wall full of black cat pictures, dedicated to that purpose.
“Oh my God, I heard there was a booommmbbb…” wailed Zoe, the pastry chef and Beatrice’s good friend, as she raced out of the kitchen. Her outstretched arms and the splatter of red on her white chef’s uniform gave her an oddly zombie-like appearance.
At the word “bomb” all the patrons turned and stared at Beatrice with alarm. Lucky arched his back and Petunia and Hamish made a quick exit at stage left, probably to go canoodle.
“Oh no, no, no,” she said, directing a death glare at Zoe. “You mean, it’s the bomb. The new candy corn cheesecake is the bomb. You kids today and your parlance…” She steered Zoe back into the kitchen.
“Zoe, you can’t just say the word ‘bomb’ around here and expect people to take it lightly,” Beatrice hissed.
“You so didn’t fool them.” Zoe crossed her arms. “No one says anything is the bomb anymore.”
“Well, our customers don’t know that. Most of us live in our bunker of age and decrepitude, you know.”
“Anyway, tell me about the bomb!” Zoe whispered.
Beatrice sighed. “Let me get my coffee and I’m all yours.”
They perched at the little dining table in the kitchen. The air was heavily perfumed with the scent of cloves and cinnamon from the pu
mpkin cupcakes baking in the oven. Zoe blew her dark bangs out of her face and leaned forward.
“Alright Bee, out with it.”
Her boss gave her a rundown of what had happened, from the smouldering pile on the road, to the cats’ warning, to the sudden explosion.
Zoe’s milk chocolate eyes widened. “How are we ever going to narrow down the suspects?” she whispered.
“What do you mean ‘narrow down’?”
“I mean there are just so many people who want to kill you. Let’s think. Rachel Clark and Sally Ann White—you helped put both their kids in jail.”
“For counterfeiting. It’s not as if I made them do it.”
“Anyone from Rick Parson’s family could be out to get you since you exposed their little extortion scheme. Nancy Sullivan since you revealed her husband was a crook. Maybe even Joan, because I bet she thinks you’re keeping Matthew from her.”
Beatrice stared into her coffee. Matthew was her ex-husband (as of forty years ago) and current best friend. He’d never expressed an interest in dating until recently, when he’d taken Joan out. He’d told Joan that he wasn’t interested, but maybe she felt the blame belonged elsewhere.
“When you put it like that, it sounds pretty serious,” Beatrice said. Lucky yowled on the other side of the kitchen cat gate.
“Poor Lucky. I can’t die. Who would take care of the cats? Also, I need to go on a date with some random man so I can get even with Matthew. These are all important things.”
Zoe chewed her lip. “Also, you sign my cheques. So it would be pretty inconvenient if you died. What are we going to do?”
The oven timer went off and Beatrice pulled the cupcakes out, steaming and delicately scented with cinnamon. “Well, first I’m going to distract myself by baking. And then I’m going to review the case file the sheriff gave me. You know how there are always a ton of random pranks around Halloween. I’m thinking there’s a connection.” She eyed the cupcakes. “These need some nice fluffy cream cheese frosting. How about I get started on that?”
The Purrfect Halloween Prank: A Beatrice Young Cozy Cat Mystery (Beatrice Young Cozy Cat Mysteries Book 4) Page 1