Purrder She Wrote

by Cate Conte

  I wondered why Katrina wouldn’t confide in me. Had Adele done something in the past that would make Katrina worry like this? “Katrina. Is it … safe to have Adele working at the café?”

  Katrina’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh. Of course. Maddie, I didn’t mean … of course it’s safe. She gets upset sometimes on behalf of the cats. It’s harmless.”

  Then why was she a murder suspect? I cleared my throat. “Well, there are cats at the café. So I just want to make sure I have the right people here.”

  “She’s perfect,” Katrina said. “Trust me. I know this is all going to work out.” She tried valiantly to infuse confidence into her words.

  “Yeah. Okay, then. I guess we’ll see,” I said in response to her original question. I gave her a hug, then watched her walk to her car and drive away. Then I went looking for Grandpa to grill him about what was going on with my sister.

  Chapter 11

  Ethan saw the determined look on my face when I returned to the kitchen and made a hasty exit. He was probably still trying to process the fact that one of our first customers had been murdered. Among all the other things he was trying to process about his new life. I’m sure he didn’t want to hear why the cops were visiting with my sister’s husband to compound everything. I wasn’t sure I wanted to either, but I felt like I had to know.

  “So what’s the deal?” I demanded as soon as Ethan had disappeared. “What did Val say? What’s going on with Cole? And why was Ellory asking me about my cat toys?”

  Grandpa calmly finished his piece of pizza, then wiped his mouth. I crossed my arms and tapped my foot, demonstrating my impatience. He cocked his head at me.

  “Would you sit? I’m not going to tell you anything while you’re standing over me like one of those nuns from elementary school.” He grimaced.

  “A nun?” I shook my head and dropped into a chair, tucking one leg under me. “I’ve been called many things in my life, but a nun is truly a new one. And stop trying to sidetrack me, Grandpa.”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t become a cop, Madalyn,” he said. “You’ve definitely got the one-track mind for the job. Now. What I was going to tell you before that high-strung friend of yours busted in here like a bull in a china shop was why the police came to talk to me. Which has to do with why your sister called me. Which you cannot discuss with anyone else, am I clear?” He frowned, drawing his bushy white eyebrows together to illustrate his point.

  “Yes, fine, clear.” I leaned forward in anticipation, although a sense of unease had settled over me.

  “Ellory paid me a courtesy call to tell me that Valerie’s husband called in the dead body.”

  “The dead body.” I sat back, letting my foot fall to the floor like a stone. “Like, Holly Hawthorne’s dead body?”

  Grandpa nodded.

  My brain struggled to catch up. “But … how would he have known that she was dead? Unless he was at her house. Why would he have been at Holly Hawthorne’s house?”

  “Well now,” Grandpa said. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?”

  “So the cops went to talk to him about … what? Wouldn’t they have talked to him when they came to see what was going on?”

  “He left,” Grandpa said. “He called it in and left. Or left first, and then called it in. I’m not entirely sure which. And apparently he didn’t go home, because he wasn’t at his house when they went over. Hence the call from Val.”

  “Left? How do you just leave a dead body?”

  Grandpa shrugged. “Guess he thought he had a good lawyer he should talk to first. He must’ve gone straight to Daddy.”

  I let that sink in. “So is he in trouble for leaving the scene?”

  “I’m not clear on all the details, but since he was the one who called it in, naturally they wanted to know why he was there, when was the last time he’d seen her, all the usual questions. Ellory only told me he was being questioned as part of typical procedure. He didn’t tell me anything else. And he didn’t want me to hear it from Val and come storming into the station demanding information. His words.” Grandpa looked amused by this.

  I thought about this. “Was he the only one at her house?”

  Grandpa looked me in the eye. “It’s not clear. There were other people around the house at some point. Evidence of a party. But when her body was found, I’m not sure who else was there. Ellory was vague.” He hesitated. “And there’s another piece.”

  “Great. Does it have to do with a cat toy?” I was being sarcastic, but Grandpa wasn’t laughing.

  “It does. What Katrina said was true. They found Holly on the beach, facedown in the sand. But … she’d been choked. With one of your cat toys.”

  “Choked? My cat toy? The fuzzy oversized mouse?” I dropped into a chair, not sure my legs could hold me any longer and regretting the few bites of pizza I’d had. My stomach was churning violently. Then another thought punched me in the gut. “Does Ellory think I did it? Is that why he came here?”

  “You? Why on earth would he think you did it?” Grandpa asked.

  “Because I have the cat toys,” I said. But he only wanted to know who made them, I reminded myself. And if he wanted to arrest me, he would’ve just done it. He certainly didn’t need Grandpa’s permission. The whole concept of the toy confounded me though. Who choked someone with a cat toy? How did you even do that?

  Talk about sending a message.

  “Maddie. No one thinks you killed anyone. Unfortunately, the jury is out on Adele. That’s why Ellory wanted to confirm who made them, and if they would be floating around the island freely. If only a few people have access to them, it certainly narrows down the pool. Especially since Holly didn’t have a cat. So she wouldn’t have had the toy on hand.”

  “So whoever did it had the toy with them? Or brought the toy specifically to use on Holly?” But then what did Cole have to do with all this? He certainly didn’t have any of my cat toys. “Grandpa. Was Cole … seeing Holly?” I asked. “Do they think he did it?”

  “I don’t know, Maddie. That definitely wasn’t part of the conversation.” We were both silent for a bit.

  “How’s Val holding up? She sounded freaked,” I said finally.

  “She’s worried. And it’s not helping that her husband hasn’t been in contact with her. What kind of man shuts his wife out and runs to Daddy?” Grandpa shook his head in disgust, then glanced at me. “Sorry.” He didn’t sound it though.

  “Don’t be sorry. I don’t like him either. Never did.” I’d be willing to bet most of our family felt that way too, even if my parents would never admit it. Well, that and the fact that Cole’s mother was on the hospital board, which meant my dad had to play nice anyway, semirelated or not, since the board was technically my dad’s boss. The simple fact was, Val was too good for Cole Tanner. The problem was, she didn’t think so.

  Grandpa smiled a little at that. “I know that, Maddie. Your poker face isn’t as good as you think.”

  “Oh.” I felt a little bad. I wonder if Val knew how I felt. Then I decided I didn’t care. Clearly, Cole was even worse than I’d thought, if he was at some woman’s house while my sister was home alone. “So wouldn’t he be more of a suspect than Adele?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around all this. “I mean, that’s a little more suspicious than the fact that Adele made a stupid cat toy, don’t you think?” I shut my mouth abruptly when I realized I was arguing for my brother-in-law to get locked up. Which would likely make my sister unhappy.

  Grandpa didn’t even seem to notice. “I don’t know, Maddie. I do know the Tanners and Hawthornes have known each other for years, so it could have been quite innocent.”

  “Uh-huh.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “If it was so innocent, why didn’t Val know he was over there?”

  Grandpa hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t know that either.”

  “Well, if all of it was so aboveboard, seems to me she wouldn’t be in the dark,” I said. “It also seems that Ad
ele maybe doesn’t have anything to worry about. But Val might.”

  I went upstairs a few minutes later and flopped down on my bed, covering my face with my pillow. I felt a light thump on the bed, then a loud purr sounded in my ear. JJ always knew when things weren’t right. I peered out from under a corner of my pillow. “Hey, bud. Did you hear what happened?”

  JJ regarded me with his big green eyes, kneading his paws deliberately and seriously into the blanket.

  I nodded. “It is pretty serious. I mean, she didn’t seem like the nicest person and all, but who the heck chokes somebody with a cat toy?”

  JJ squeaked. It sounded reproachful. I remembered his insistence today in bringing me one of the cat toys and felt a chill. Then I realized how crazy that thought was and pushed it out of my head. JJ was smart, but that didn’t mean he could sense a murder before it happened.

  Could he?

  Chapter 12

  My alarm went off at seven the next morning. It felt like I’d only been asleep for an hour, but really I’d gone to bed around midnight and fell asleep right away. My sluggishness was probably a combination of the grand opening busyness and the crazy developments that happened later, but I still hated it. I needed coffee.

  I rolled out of bed, trying not to jostle JJ. He hated being disturbed, especially first thing in the morning. I figured it was because he was finally able to sleep in a bed, rather than a patch of grass in the local cemetery. He was entitled to some comfort.

  Still, he opened one eye and gave me a dirty look when I moved his pillow slightly. “Sorry,” I muttered, then headed for the bathroom. After washing my face and sweeping my hair back into a ponytail, I went downstairs in search of coffee. And smelled heaven from the kitchen.

  I poked my head in. Ethan was busy at the oven already. “What are you making? Smells amazing.”

  “Tropical fruit muffins and blackberry scones,” he replied without turning. “I found some gorgeous mangoes at the farmers’ market yesterday.”

  “Tropical fruit muffins? My God. I love it. We have a new special of the day.” I spied a full coffeepot and made a beeline. “I would’ve gone to the market with you. I haven’t had a chance to get over to one lately. Is Adele here?” I prayed she was, because that would mean she hadn’t been arrested overnight.

  Ethan shook his head. “Haven’t seen her.”

  That wasn’t good. A stab of concern pierced my gut. I pushed it back and poured a giant mug of coffee. “Have you seen Grandpa?”

  “I did earlier. I thought he’d started cleaning.”

  “Maybe he did. I came in here to get coffee before I could face any of that. I guess I’ll go scope it out now and get ready for opening. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Actually, I do.” He glanced over his shoulder, then sighed. “But it feels weird to be talking about this right now. With … what happened last night.”

  “I know. But we can’t do anything about it. We have to keep doing our thing and hope it gets figured out soon. So what do you need?”

  “Well. I need an industrial-sized oven.”

  I blinked. “That was probably the last thing I was expecting you to say right now.”

  Ethan grinned. “Listen, I was thinking about this.” He put his mixing spoon down and turned around to face me, his eyes bright with excitement. “We can set up the garage as our café area. Make it really festive with a counter and everything, and have ovens in the back, get a couple of fancy coffee makers. That will solve the problem of sharing the kitchen, and we won’t need to create a whole new one in the house. People can go out there to get served, and either sit out there and eat or bring their food in here and hang with the cats. We could even accommodate the people who are maybe on a wait list for a time slot with the cats and want coffee, or even people walking by who see us and want a snack. What do you think?”

  What did I think? That it was too early to be discussing much, let alone planning a construction project. Especially when we had a million other details to get sorted out. I’d barely gotten our café cell phone in time for the opening, and I was still working with our developer out in California on working the bugs out of our online registration system. But Ethan was more animated than I’d seen him in a while, and he did move across the country to humor me.

  “I think that’s a really interesting idea,” I said. “Let’s put it on our list to talk about. If we ever find a contractor, which I’m beginning to think will take an act of God.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. It gives us time to sketch out what we really want and that way we only have to do the work once. Right? Besides, Adele was calling her nephew. Let’s see how that goes.”

  He made a good point. As usual. I wondered if Adele had gotten to make the call before being ambushed with questions about Holly’s murder. “Right. Okay. Let’s sit down later and talk it through. Right now I have to scoop litter boxes.”

  “I’ll have a muffin for you when you’re done.” He waggled one in front of me.

  I plucked it out of his hand. “I’ll take it now. For energy,” I said, winking at him. I took a giant bite, balancing the muffin on top of my cup of coffee so I could wrench the door open. The muffin was heavenly. I went out to what used to be Grandpa’s living room and looked around, devouring my food in about five bites. I could feel my energy returning as I assessed the work in front of me. There was evidence Grandpa had been there. There were new blankets on the window seats and the food bowls were full. The water bowls, however, hadn’t been changed and the litter boxes, which I’d done my best to disguise using cat furniture, hadn’t been cleaned. I could tell by the trail of cat litter around each of them.

  I sighed. He’d probably gotten distracted by one of his friends wanting to go out for a walk. Which I shouldn’t begrudge. I’d told Grandpa from the time our anonymous benefactor proposed this idea that he wouldn’t need to do anything for the café except make space for it in his house. He’d insisted he wanted to be involved, and for the most part, he helped every day. But he was seventy-four years old, and he deserved to enjoy his retirement.

  And this was why I needed dependable volunteers. Although Adele had a pretty good excuse to be absent today. I thought about calling her, but I needed to get ready to open. No sign of Gigi, either, since her vanishing act yesterday. Nothing to do but get to work.

  An hour later, litter boxes were scooped, floors were mopped, laundry was in, and water had been refreshed. Treats had also been dispensed. It was a good way to take roll call of my charges. Moonshine, the cat my mother had her eye on, liked the salmon-flavored treats best. She’d roll around on the floor in front of me until I gave her a generous handful. Georgia, the cat at the center of all the Holly controversy, stayed in her cat tree and nibbled daintily at one or two of the chicken-flavored treats. I counted the rest of them. The gray and white tomcat still ate everything like he had no idea when he’d get another meal, which made me sad for him. Then there were my tabby twin brothers, another black cat, an all-white cat with blue eyes, a flame-point Siamese, and my three kitten siblings, all in varying shades of buff and orange, huddled together on a big cat bed on the floor, but ventured forward to scoff some treats. All ten were accounted for. The orange guy was the one anxiously awaiting his adoption screening, which I had a feeling Katrina had forgotten all about in the chaos. I made a mental note to take care of it myself tomorrow.

  Ten was the number Katrina and I had agreed on when we discussed how many cats the café would hold at any given time. Any more than that and I would feel like the cats were taking over the house.

  I went back to the kitchen for a refill. “Where’s my muffin?” I asked.

  Ethan turned and raised an eyebrow. “You grabbed it out of my hand already.”

  I shook my head. “That was the test muffin. Besides, I was so hungry I didn’t taste it. I need another. Please?”

  Feigning a sigh, Ethan handed me a steaming hot muffin on a plate. “Maybe you’ll taste it if you sit and
eat like a human,” he muttered.

  “You’re amazing.” I refilled my coffee and sat down, breaking the muffin open. Mango and strawberry oozed out at me. I slathered it with butter and took a bite. Heaven.

  “Wow. These are … so good. I have no idea how to describe them.” This time I ate slowly, savoring every bite.

  “Glad you like them. Imagine how they’d look in our fancy new case?” He winked at me.

  I laughed. “I got you. We’ll figure it out.” I glanced at the clock. Almost eight thirty. We weren’t opening until noon. I checked the café’s e-mails to see if we had any reservations for today. Until our online registration system was up and running correctly, we had to have people e-mail in for appointments. We tried to keep the ratio of people to cats even so as not to stress the cats out, and people paid for an hour at a time to spend with their feline friends. Yesterday we’d simply opened the doors because it was day one and we wanted people to check us out. But today we were getting into what would become our normal routine.

  Our inbox had nearly fifty new messages. All requests for time slots either today or for during the week. “Holy crap,” I said to Ethan.

  “What?”

  “We’re booked all day. We actually have a wait list. Jeez, I need to get that registration system working. I need paper.”

  He pulled a notepad out of a drawer and tossed it to me with a pen. I sorted out all the time-slot requests for the day and sent confirmations, wait-list notices, and alternate times back to the requestors. Then I sat back and grinned. “I think this is really gonna work,” I said.

  Ethan glanced over his shoulder. “You had doubts?”

  “I don’t know. It’s kind of a hit-or-miss concept, especially out here. But we’re off to a good start.” I stood up. “Listen. I have a quick errand to run. Anything you need my help with before I go?”