The Catswold Portal

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

  The firm has been completely restructured, though it will remain in its Union Square offices. It had been virtually bought out by the Lillith Corporation in early 1957, but that corporation has since filed for bankruptcy. Lillith’s extensive charitable branch has been sold to the new philanthropic Alice West Cat Rescue Foundation, named for the late and well-known animal artist, Alice Kitchen West.

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  If you enjoyed The Catswold Portal, you’ll love Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s award-winning Joe Grey Mystery series. Joe Grey is not your average sleuth—he’s a tomcat who, with the help of his feline friends Dulcie and Kit, uncovers the nefarious doings in his sleepy hometown of Molena Point, California. Besides their exceptional sleuthing skills, Joe, Dulcie, and Kit have one more advantage over your average cats—they can communicate with humans. But these fine felines don’t talk to just any Tom, Dick, or Harry; they choose their human friends carefully, and only when the case is at stake. From fighting an evil, green-eyed “cat” burglar, to solving murders of a more human nature, they take the case and use a healthy dose of feline intuition to collar the killer.

  Turn the page for a glimpse into the mysterious and intriguing world of Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s Joe Grey series.

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  Joe Grey was content just being a regular old tomcat. But after a mysterious accident, everything started to change. First he found he could understand human speech, then he found he could talk (quite useful for scaring dogs), and then even read! But he really wanted to worry when he found himself feeling human emotions like guilt and sympathy. And now he’s in a real predicament—when a man is murdered in a dark alley behind the local deli, Joe is the only witness. He must put his newly acquired skills to the test to make sure the killer ends up behind bars. Now Joe has to deal with the responsibility that comes with being a Cat on the Edge—not a human, but no longer just a regular old tomcat!

  Perusal of the human mind was not a feline concern. Cats didn’t think about human perversion. Cats felt human depravity. They knew that human lust and dark human hatred existed, and they accepted those aberrations. Cats did not analyze those warped human conditions. Cats left the philosophizing to men.

  Yet all the time he had been fleeing from the killer, a part of him had been trying to analyze the man. Trying to guess at the man’s motives. Trying to figure out his intentions not only at chasing him, but his purpose in killing Beckwhite. Trying to unravel the mystery that had transformed that thin human face into a killer’s mask.

  What did he care what drove the man to kill? He wasn’t connected to this man’s problem, and he didn’t want to be. And inside him, alarms were going off. These thoughts were new and terrifying. A gut level signal was warning him that he was in the throes of mental and emotional change. A new facet of himself had awakened, new concerns were surfacing.

  The transformation had been coming on him for some weeks, but it had not been stirred violently alive, not until tonight. Now, some foreign presence within him had come alert. And it was clawing to get out, to break free.

  He ran the last two blocks caught in a distressing tangle of fears and wanting nothing more complicated than his warm, safe bed, wanted to curl up safe on the blanket next to Clyde, protected by his human housemate.

  Joe Grey never regretted the mysterious accident that gave him the ability to talk and understand human speech. And now he has company—this mysterious gift has been given to his girlfriend Dulcie, too. The problem is, Dulcie isn’t only listening to humans, she’s believing them! She is convinced that the man in jail for killing a famous artist and burning her studio is innocent. And, leave it to Dulcie, she is determined to find the evidence that would convict the real murderer—even if she has to get Joe Grey—a real Cat Under Fire—killed in the process!

  At least if Dulcie had to solve puzzles, the murder of Janet Jeannot was better than agonizing over the mystery of their own pasts. They’d done enough of that this summer. Their sudden onslaught of uncatlike thoughts, and their ability to speak human words had been a shocker. When Joe had first experienced his new and alarming talent, he had tried to remain cool and laid-back. Scared as he was, he’d attempted to handle the matter with some restraint. But not Dulcie. She had exploded into her new life with wild eagerness, embracing her sudden new talents with hot feline passion. Wanting to learn everything about the world all at once, trying to make sense of the entire universe, she’d just about driven him crazy. Even watching TV had become a challenge as she soaked up information.

  Ever since she had been a kitten, Dulcie had watched TV with her elderly housemate. Curled cozily on Wilma Getz’s lap, she had basked in the music and motion of the programs, and in the incomprehensible but fascinating voices. Then suddenly this summer, when she had begun to understand human words, she’d fixed her attention on the programs, eagerly lapping up the smallest detail. Sitting rigid on Wilma’s lap, like a little furry scholar, she had soaked up the daunting new experiences and ideas as if, her entire life, she had been waiting for this moment to learn and discover.

  Joe Grey is, well, peeved. His human housemate Clyde has been trying to volunteer him as a once-a-week Animal Therapy cuddle-kitty. And just when Joe is about to nab the cat burglar who’s been terrifying his usually quiet coast town, he has to add this to his plate as well! But when Joe finds out that this “pet-a-pet” scheme is really his girlfriend Dulcie’s idea, he can’t say no. Dulcie needs Joe’s help to prove that the old folks’ home is hiding more than just lonely seniors—she’s already uncovered a severed finger and a very, very busy open grave. In Cat Raise the Dead, Joe can’t resist Dulcie’s feline feminine charms, even if he sees nothing but trouble from butting into yet another human mess!

  Leaping up, she wandered among the bottles and crowded jars, stepping carefully, sniffing at the lids, trying to identify the contents. Makeup, certainly, but some smells were very strange. Stepping over an array of lipsticks and little boxes of eye makeup, over eyebrow pencils, cotton swabs, and a pair of tweezers, she paused to look into the three-way mirror, enchanted by her multiple reflections. To see herself from all angles at once, see herself from the back as if looking at another cat, was like an out-of-body experience.

  Forgetting Joe, preening shamefully, she heard, from the drive below, from somewhere beyond the kitchen, a car start up and pull away, heard it move around the front of the house and head off up the long drive.

  A miniature chest of drawers stood beside the hat-boxes, a little, perfect piece of furniture no taller than her shoulder. She nosed at it, and with a careful claw she pulled out one of the drawers—and she raised her paw to strike, her eyes blazing.

  But these were not mice. In the small drawer, the furry bodies looked, in fact, more like dead caterpillars lying fuzzy and still.

  Some were gray, some brown, some nearly white. They did not smell like anything that had ever lived. Puzzled by the lifeless fuzzy creatures, she shoved the drawer closed and opened the next.

  She froze, staring.

  Eyeballs. The drawer contained human eyes.

  There’s a bad new cat in sleepy little Molena Point: a renegade tom with a penchant for robbery, a scorn for his fellow felines, and a disdain for human laws. And this Cat in the Dark is masterminding a crime spree that’s quickly headed toward murder most foul. Dulcie and Joe Grey both know the score—they’ve seen Azrael in action. But how can they expose the criminal without letting ordinary, untrustworthy humans in on the secret that certain select cats think—and talk? Cats like them…

  It was not until the next morning that Joe, brushing past Clyde’s bare feet, leaping to the kitchen table and pawing open the morning Gazette, learned more about the burglary at Medder’s Antiques.

  “What are you reading?” Clyde picked Joe up as if he were a bag of flour, so he could see the paper.

  Joe dangled impatiently, twitching his tail, as Clyde read.

  Clyde sat down at the table and dumped pepper on his eggs. “So this is why
you’ve been scowling and snarling all morning, this burglary.”

  “I haven’t been scowling and snarling. Why would I bother with a simple break-and-enter? The police can handle the simple stuff.”

  Clyde raised an eyebrow.

  “So there’s a new cat in the village. So are you satisfied? It’s nothing to worry you, nothing to fret over.”

  Clyde was silent a moment, watching him. “I take it this is a tomcat. What did he do, come onto Dulcie?”

  Joe glared at him. Stupid humans could be all too perceptive at the wrong times.

  Ever since the earthquake, things have been going from bad to worse in Molena Point, usually the most tranquil little town on the Northern California coast. It started with that suspicious “accident” on Hellhag Hill. In Cat to the Dogs, the police might write off the deadly accident to the night fog, but Joe Grey knows a cut brake line when he sees it—he may be a cat, but he’s solved more murders than your average police detective!

  Frowning, the white strip down his gray face pinched into puzzled worry lines, the big tomcat padded along a fallen sapling between the upturned wheels.

  What had he heard?

  Dropping down on the far side of the wrecked car, his mind played back the crash in a quick rerun: the squeal of brakes, then the skid just about where Deadman’s Curve began. Hellhag Hill was famous for that double twist. If a driver lost control on the first bend, he was hard put, when he hit the second one, to regain command. The too-sharp turn was on him, the canyon dropping straight down away from his front wheels. The locals took that road slowly. The warning signs were numerous and insistent—but in the fog a driver wouldn’t see them. Even a local might not realize just where he was on the hairpin road.

  Had he heard another sound before the squeal of brakes? Had he heard a horn farther away, muffled in the fog? The faint, quick stutter of a warning horn?

  He squinched closed his eyes, trying to remember.

  Yes. First a faint triple beep, then the skid and the crash and the car careening down at him—but had that earlier honking come from a second car, or had this driver honked at something looming out of the fog? Had there been one car or two, moving blindly along that narrow road?

  He thought he remembered the hush of two sets of tires; but had they been coming from opposite directions? Then the faint stutter of the horn, then the scream of brakes and the heart-jolting thunder as the car came careening over.

  The other car must have gone on. Why hadn’t it stopped? Hadn’t the other driver heard the wreck?

  While Joe Grey has played tricks on Max Harper, Molena Point’s head lawman, he’s never had anything but respect for the dedicated sheriff. Now Harper’s in trouble, suspected of murdering two friends, and the only witness, a young girl named Dillon, has disappeared. Both Dulcie and Joe know Harper is innocent, and Joe is a Cat Spitting Mad, determined to prove his pal’s innocence—and find Dillon.

  They looked and looked at the two women, at their poor, torn throats, at their pooled blood drying on their clothes and seeping into the earth.

  The cats knew them.

  “Ruthie Marner,” Dulcie whispered. The younger woman was so white, and her long blond hair caked with blood. Dulcie crouched, touching her nose to Ruthie’s icy arm, and drew back shivering. Blood covered the woman’s torn white blouse and blue sweater. She had a deep chest wound, as well as the wide slash across her throat. So much clotted blood that it was hard to be sure how the wounds might have been made.

  Helen Marner’s wounds were much the same. Her blond hair, styled in a short bob, was matted with dirt where she had fallen. She was well dressed, much like her daughter, in tan tights, paddock boots, a tweed jacket over a white turtleneck shirt, her clothes stained dark with blood. A hard hat lay upside down against a pine tree like a sacrificial bowl.

  No horse was in sight. The horses would have left the fallen riders, would have bolted in panic, the moment they could break free.

  Dulcie backed away, her tail and ears down. She’d seen murders before, but the deaths of these two handsome women made her tremble as if her nerves were cross-wired.

  It’s bad enough that Molena Point has been invaded by a famous writer and his suspiciously rude wife. Now the local yard sales have set off a host of puzzling thefts. In Cat Laughing Last, Joe and Dulcie take the case and soon discover that those sales hold a secret treasure someone will kill to possess. But before the fur can fly, these talented cats will unmask a murderer—and unearth a few other surprises along the way.

  Since their arrival, Elliott Traynor had kept largely to himself as he finished the last chapters of Twilight Silver, the third novel in his historical trilogy. But Vivi had made herself known around the village, and not pleasantly—as if she enjoyed being rude to shopkeepers, as if she took pleasure in being abrupt and demanding.

  The Traynors had not wanted a staff for the cottage they were renting, but had hired the cleaning service provided by Wilma Getz’s redheaded niece, Charlie. Charlie tended the Traynor house herself, early each morning, then left the couple to their privacy.

  Molena Point’s residents, numbering so many writers and artists, were not put off by Elliott’s reclusive ways. They talked among themselves about his books and about the play, waved when occasionally they saw him on the streets or in the black Lincoln, as they headed to the theater; otherwise they left him to his own devices. The presence, alone, of the prestigious writer, seemed adequate enrichment to their well-appointed lives.

  But no one had warmed to Vivi.

  Traynor’s previous wife had died three years before. Six months later, he married Vivi, a woman forty years his junior. Besides her loud, rude ways, something else about her made the cats want to back away, hissing, a chill that perhaps only a cat would sense. Whatever reason she had for appearing this morning in the McLeary garden could only, in Joe Grey’s opinion, mean trouble.

  Romance is in the air in the charming seaside village of Molena Point, California. Everyone is excited about the upcoming wedding of chief of police Charlie Getz, even cool feline detective Joe Grey. But the festivities are interrupted when two uninvited guests try to blow up the church. Then one of the bride’s good friends, building contractor Ryan Flannery, lands in a heap of trouble when her philandering husband is found dead. In Cat Seeing Double, Joe and his feline sidekicks sign on to the case, finding themselves in the biggest cat fight of their lives—a bare-clawed battle with a prey who is as cunning as he is deadly…

  “Those stained-glass windows,” Dulcie said softly. “How could the killer have wedged the body in like that? To lift a deadweight, pardon the pun, at that angle and ease the body down between the windows…That would be like standing on your hind legs lifting a dead rabbit as heavy as you, hoisting it way out at an angle and slowly down without dropping it. The killer had to be strong. But why bother? What was the point of leaving the body there?”

  “You don’t think he was shot there?” Joe said.

  “Nor do you,” she said, cutting her eyes at him. “Those windows are old and frail. You heard Ryan last night telling Clyde. That glass has to be brittle, and those strips of lead fragile. Those old stained-glass windows in the English Pub, the way if you rub against them, the glass will push loose from the leading? If Rupert had fallen there he’d have smashed those windows to confetti.”

  Dallas said, “We’ll have to take your gun.” The cats heard chair legs scrape, then the front door open, heard the officers and Ryan going down the stairs.

  Leaping from the bathroom window and down the hill, they were just at the edge of the drive when the officers and Ryan came down; and the medics set down their stretcher, prepared to take Rupert away. Slipping into the bushes, they watched Dallas unlock Ryan’s truck door then unlock her glove compartment. Flipping the glove compartment open, he turned to look at her.

  “You said your gun was here?”

  When antiques and valuables begin disappearing from residents’ homes, Joe Grey knows that some
thing is very wrong in sleepy Melona Point. Could the thief be a local, or, even worse, is it the old crook who may be connected to Azrael, the sinister, yellow-eyed cat who terrorized Joe and Dulcie years ago? And when a young, healthy waiter drops dead at a local art opening, the town is on full alert. Cat Fear No Evil brings Joe and Dulcie the most dramatic investigation of their lives, as they follow diverse leads, scratch out the truth, and try to restore a distraught village to its usual cozy tranquility.

  Clyde shrugged, engendering a moment of miscalculation in which the black tom raked his hind claws down Clyde’s shoulder, bringing new blood spurting, one claw dug deep. Joe stopped smiling and leaped from the tower like a swooping eagle, knocking the tomcat from Clyde’s grip. The two cats hit the floor locked in screaming battle, then Joe flipped the tom twice, forcing him into the cold fireplace.

  Crouched over Azrael among the ashes, Joe blocked his retreat with a degree of viciousness Clyde had never before seen in his feline pal. Azrael, driven by Joe’s frenzied attack, backed against the fire wall pressing hard into the bricks—as if wishing the wall would give way and let him through into the dark chimney.

  Watching the two tomcats, Clyde stood clutching his arm and applying pressure to the wound. The cats communicated now only in silence, their body language primal. Clyde could read Joe’s superiority of the moment as Joe goaded and stalked his quarry. The black tom showed only uncertainty in the twitch of his ears and the drop of his whiskers.