When the Cat's Away

by Molly Fitz

“Hey now,” I cut in, not liking his tone. “There’s no need to speak to her that way. Lauren, tell me about the gardening business.”

  “David had his own gardening business when we met. Actually, that’s how we met. Father hired his company to do some work. We met, fell in love.” A dreamy expression flitted across her face, only to slide away as quickly as it had come, replaced with sadness. “But of course, being a gardener wasn’t good enough for my father. He offered David a job in the family company, and David sold his gardening business.”

  I watched as David twisted his Rolex around his wrist. I could see it now. A rags to riches story. He’d been a lowly gardener, making a living but maybe not much else, when he’d stumbled upon a wealthy client with a single daughter. I’m not saying David pursued Lauren for material reasons. Heck, they may well have legitimately fallen in love. Still, I could see why he’d willingly give up his gardening business for a well-paying—very well-paying—job in Lauren’s family business.

  I turned to her. “Do you have a prenup?”

  She blinked. “Why, yes. Of course. Father insisted.”

  “What would happen if you and David divorced? He’d get nothing?”

  “Not nothing. One percent for each year of marriage. Plus any assets he came into the marriage with. Why?”

  “So after twenty years of marriage, you’d walk away with twenty percent? Considering Lauren's family worth, that’s not to be sneezed at,” I said to David, who crossed his arms over his chest and refused to answer.

  “I don’t understand,” Lauren cried. “What are you insinuating? That David wants to divorce me? We’re here on our second honeymoon, for crying out loud.”

  “Got it,” Galloway said. “The pesticide is Paraquat. It’s a restricted herbicide used to control weeds. One small sip can be fatal, and there is no antidote. All we need is to confirm it was Paraquat that killed Rory, that it is Paraquat in this vial, and you have a supply of Paraquat left over from your gardening business…” He trailed off, leaving them to join the dots.

  Lauren rounded on David. “You did this?” she whispered, tears flowing down her cheeks. “You killed Rory?”

  David crumbled like a sandcastle at high tide. “I didn’t mean to kill him.” He ran a hand around the back of his neck and shook his head. “I put the poison in the smoothie… and handed it to you.” He looked at his wife, and I watched as the pieces fell into place. She took a step back, then another, realization dawning.

  Her whisper was strangled and barely audible. “You wanted to kill me?”

  He took refuge in anger. “Oh, come on. Surely you aren’t buying this charade? This marriage? That it’s been twenty years of wedded bliss? It’s been hell, Lauren! Your dad has interfered every step of the way. Every decision, big or small, has to have his stamp of approval. You were constantly going to Daddy with every little thing. I was your husband, Lauren, the man of the family. That was meant to mean something, but it didn’t. It never did. And I’m done with it. I want out.”

  Her voice gained strength, and she took a step closer. “You wanted to kill me?” she repeated. “Why? Because of the prenup? Because twenty percent wasn’t enough, you wanted it all? Daddy warned me you were getting greedy, but I didn’t believe him. Now I do.” Her slap rang loud in the hallway, and I quickly jumped between the pair.

  “Hey now, enough of that!” With one hand on Lauren’s chest and one on David’s, I stood between them. “Quick question,” I said to David. “How did you end up poisoning Rory if your wife was the target?”

  “Oh, I know.” Lauren sneered. “David got us both smoothies, even though I don’t particularly like them. He handed me mine. The poisoned one, I assume. And I was heading back to our table to put it down while I got some real breakfast when I bumped into Rory. You’re right. He flirts like there’s no tomorrow, and I’ll be honest, I was not immune to his charms. He told me he had a surfing lesson and was running late and had no time for breakfast, so I gave him my smoothie and told him I’d get another one. Which I did.”

  I glanced at David. “You didn’t know your wife had given her smoothie to someone else?”

  “She returned to the table with a smoothie in her hand. I assumed it was the one I’d given her.”

  “Yet she didn’t keel over after drinking it,” I pointed out.

  “I figured she hadn’t drunk enough. I’d forgotten she doesn’t particularly like smoothies. I still had some Paraquat left. I was going to add it to her wine. At least she’d drink all of it.”

  “But then Rory turned up dead.”

  David shook his head. “It couldn’t have been a coincidence, could it? I tried to poison my wife, and instead, the surfing instructor turns up dead. I knew somehow he’d gotten his hands on the wrong smoothie. Her smoothie. I didn’t realize she’d handed it to him. I thought maybe she’d set it down on the buffet, and he’d accidentally picked it up.”

  “David Walsh, you’re under arrest for the murder of Rory Carr.” Jared grabbed David’s wrists and twisted them behind his back, securing them with handcuffs. He marched him away, voice fading as he read him his rights.

  Lauren remained where she was, pale and shaking. I rested a hand on her shoulder in a soothing gesture. “I’m so sorry.”

  She blinked through bloodshot eyes. “Me too.” She sniffed, tears doing a number on her makeup. She wiped her trembling fingers beneath her eyes, further smearing her mascara. “I need to call Daddy. Get a lawyer.”

  “For David?” I asked in surprise. Did she love him that much she was willing to forgive him for planning to murder her?

  “For my divorce. He can rot in jail. He’ll get nothing more from this family.” She turned to Galloway and Deon, who was just finishing up in the hotel room. “Are you done? Can I come in now?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Deon picked up his forensics case and beat a hasty retreat. Galloway snapped off his gloves and shoved them in his pocket, nodded to Lauren, then quietly shut the door behind him.

  “Wow!” I mouthed. Clasping his hand in mine, I tugged him down the corridor. “Did not see that coming.”

  “Right?” He shook his head then stopped, pulling me into his arms. “Let’s never get to that point.”

  “What, where you want to kill me?” I asked against his chest.

  He chuckled. “Where love turns to hate. If they’d only communicated—years ago—this whole scenario could have been avoided. Did you see Lauren’s face when David was telling her how he felt about her father? She was blindsided. She had no idea. I suspect David let this brew and fester inside, not voicing his dissatisfaction, until boom, it just blows up in their faces.”

  “But also, money.” I felt it only fair to point it out. “Money is a powerful motivator. And whether or not David loved Lauren, he planned to kill her so he could inherit her fortune. And to do so twenty years after he married her? That tells me he married for love. Either that or his nefarious plan was a serious slow burn.”

  “Let’s make a vow not to kill each other,” Galloway suggested, releasing me to thread his fingers through mine, tugging me down the corridor.

  “That’s an excellent plan,” I agreed, my smile slipping when we entered the foyer, and I saw who was waiting for us.

  “Audrey Fitzgerald? We’re here for your photoshoot for the Animal Antics competition.” A woman with a clipboard and bob approached, then, once she’d gotten a good look at my face, stopped short. “What have you done to your face?”

  The photographer behind her snapped a photo and grinned.

  “Tell me you have mad photoshop skills,” I said to the photographer. “I can bribe you in chocolate if need be.”

  “Good thing I like chocolate then.” He winked. “So, what does the other guy look like?”

  “Har har.” I liked him straight away. The reporter, not so much. Her horrified expression at the bruising and dressing on my face did not make me feel any better about my run-in with the surfboard.

  I turned my head, runn
ing my fingers down the unbruised side of my face. “This is clearly my better side. If we can shoot all shots from this angle, that’ll be great.”

  “Let’s get you into makeup!” The woman—I hadn’t caught her name—snapped her fingers, and Yasmin appeared, beckoning me toward her boutique.

  “I’ve worked with worse,” she told me, eyeing me critically. “We can cover most of that with makeup. I’ll see if we can get a skin-colored dressing from Seth rather than this white monstrosity.” She tskd.

  The photoshoot, despite my misgivings, actually turned out to be a lot of fun. Yasmin had some heavy-duty concealer that obliterated my bruise. Seth dutifully changed the dressing to a much more discrete skin tone color. The photographer, Danny, captured some brilliant shots of me, Galloway, Thor, and Bandit frolicking on the beach. I gave the woman—despite introducing herself to me twice, I still could not recall her name. Susan? Judith? Helen? Anyway, I answered her questions on how I happened to have a pet raccoon, how Thor had belonged to my best friend who’d passed away, and I shared some snaps I’d taken of the pair that I hadn’t submitted to the competition. Rory hovered in the background the entire time, so as soon as I’d wrapped up the interview and Danny and the woman were nothing more than specks on the horizon, I crossed to him.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked. “Haven’t you seen a white light?”

  “Yes.” Rory nodded. “But I didn’t want to go without thanking you first.”

  I waved a hand in dismissal. “No thanks necessary.”

  “No, but seriously, it…helps…to know that someone didn’t intentionally kill me. That my poisoning was purely accidental.”

  “Yeah. I get that.” And I did. It would be terrible to think someone hated you so much they wanted to kill you. Pretty much how Lauren would be feeling right about now.

  “Well? Don’t let me stop you.” Now that Rory’s murder had been solved and the photoshoot and interview were done, there was still plenty of time to enjoy our vacation, and Galloway had said something about cocktails on the beach.

  Before I could stop him, Rory stepped forward and hugged me. I bit my lip at the icy embrace, causing the cut inside my mouth to bleed. Again.

  “Thanks for everything, Audrey Fitzgerald, private investigator. If only we’d met under different circumstances…” Rory released me, raised a hand in salute, and then looked beyond my left shoulder. I glanced behind me, the dazzling white light blinding. By the time I looked back, Rory was gone, and the light faded.

  “See ya,” I said to thin air.

  Galloway came up behind me, sliding his hands around my waist and tugging me back to lean against the warmth of his body. “Was that a farewell? Has he gone?” He nibbled on my ear, sending shivers of delight down my spine.

  “He’s crossed over. We are now, officially, on vacation.” I turned in his arms and pulled his head down to mine, kissing him.

  “Mom! Mom! Come see. Thor’s found something.”

  I jerked back from Galloway’s embrace and looked toward Bandit, who was galloping up the beach. Behind her, I could see Thor rolling on the sand.

  “Oh no,” I whispered.

  “What?” Galloway asked, following my gaze. “Oh no,” he echoed.

  “What do you think it is?” I asked.

  “Dead fish,” he replied with a grim sense of certainty.

  “Of course it is.” I sighed, and together, we crossed the sand to see what disgusting treasure Thor was currently wriggling around in. “How are you at bathing cats?” I asked conversationally.

  “Oh no! No way! This is all on you.”

  “Aw, come on, you love me, right? Help a girl out here.”

  “No chance, Fitz. There is no way I’m bathing your cat.”

  “Toss you for it?” I headed down to the shore and picked up a pebble, tossing it from hand to hand, eyebrows raised in challenge.

  “You're on!” His grin was full of confidence, and his walk full of swagger. Which was why, when he lost, my victory was that much sweeter.

  Want More?

  We hope you enjoyed What Ghost Around. It's part of the “Ghost Detective” series, which you can keep reading HERE.

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  If you liked this, then you'll also love the “Witch Way” series, featuring an orange tabby named Archie. Meet Archie and the gang HERE!

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  Learn more about Jane Hinchey, her awesome books, and where you can find her at www.JaneHinchey.com.

  Murder in the Meow

  by Daphne Hunt

  About this Story

  MURDER IN THE MEOW

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  An Egyptian Mau cat is smuggled out of Egypt to a British manor house

  Osiris may be descended from Egyptian Pharaoh cats, but even he’s not above solving a murder ... Will his new human, Pepper Park, a young American lawyer on a holiday, be up to the challenge?

  * * *

  This was supposed to be a normal vacation for me to get away from legal work. Just renting a little cottage in an idyllic English town for the summer. It wasn’t supposed to involve the two things I dread the most…murder and cats. After just one day of being settled into my picture perfect life at the cottage, the man who lives in the fancy manor house next door ends up dead and a priceless Egyptian artifact from his travels goes missing and I’m the one to blame.

  * * *

  As if things are bad enough, being suspected of murder, this darn cat keeps showing up at my house every night, and he won’t leave me alone. I’m starting to suspect he’s trying to tell me something. The last thing I want is to go sleuthing under cover of darkness in the English countryside to find a murderer with my only companion being a pushy Egyptian Mau cat, but it just might be what I have to do in order to enjoy the rest of my vacation.

  Copyright © 2021 by Daphne Hunt.

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Prologue

  Chelsworth- England

  Osiris

  * * *

  It was the perfect day for doing absolutely nothing. It was not the perfect day for a murder most foul, not that I knew that yet. Despite what the folklore says, cats cannot predict someone’s death. Though what we can do is almost as impressive. I stretched out in my perfect spot beneath the tall windowpanes in the library, sunning myself and thinking about my talent of doing nothing, blissfully unaware of what lay upon the horizon.

  The warm rays of the sun shone through the glass, leaving squares of light upon the oriental carpets I would occasionally claw at when bored. My tail twitched back and forth, just the tip, indicating a preoccupation with my thoughts which had drifted elsewhere.

  I am descended from the great pharaoh cats of Egypt—this is important, so don’t forget it. As I was saying, there I lay, contemplating my noble lineage while lounging in the sun. Sometimes, when I closed my eyes halfway and tucked my paws beneath my body in what the humans would say looks like a loaf of bread—insulting yes, but quite an apt description—I could occasionally drift into this space between now and the distant past. Time drift: it’s a thing all felines are capable of.

  I envisioned myself trotting down the length of a marble floor through an ancient palace, smelling the rich scents of spices and perfumes upon the air as I hunted mice. During a drift, I believed I shared the thoughts and feelings of my ancestors, thousands of years before. I have seen the sun rise and set between three pyramids at the edge of a desert, lapped up the waters of the Nile, and curled into the arms of a princess with kohl-rimmed eyes as palace servants fanned her with palm leaves. During such waking dreams, I lose all track of time and place, which can be very unfortunate if sinister plots are afoot.

  And that was exactly when it happened.
Or rather, that’s when it all began…when the American arrived for tea. Murder was in the air, sure enough. My nose scented the foul intent of someone ready to do something very evil. I could taste that vileness upon my tongue as I licked my face, but ignored it, at least for a moment.

  The sound of voices in the hall pulled me abruptly from my time drift.

  “Right this way, Miss Park.” A thick Scottish brogue could be heard through the library door—Ewan Dougal, the butler of this grand place I called home. The humans, however, called it Champsley Hall. It’s a nonsensical name, but that was of little concern to me.

  Ewan opened the door to the library and ushered in a young woman. “Please have a seat or a look about. Mr. Havers will be in to see you shortly.”

  “Er…Thank you.”

  The woman was not a cat person; I could tell that fact right away. Instantly, I decided I liked her. When certain humans shy away from cats, it’s only because they don’t realize they are exactly like cats. It’s what makes us gravitate toward them. We recognize our kindred spirits, even if they are human and therefore a lesser species.

  I abandoned the sunny square where I’d been daydreaming and paraded slowly across the room, letting the sun illuminate my gold fur with its black spots. I am a most attractive cat, ask any of the local queens, or even the toms. But what else would you expect? I am named after an Egyptian god, after all. I was brought here as a kitten, hidden in the coat of a rich Englishman when I was but eight weeks old. My exotic green eyes and tawny coat adorned with my exquisite markings made all the ladies in Chelsworth simply mad for me.

  The young woman seated herself at a reading table which was ideal. I was in need of a good scratch behind the ears and on that spot just above my tail. Taking a well calculated leap from the floor, I landed right in front of her on the table.