Kittens and Killers

by Diana Xarissa

  Kittens and Killers

  An Isle of Man Ghostly Cozy

  Diana Xarissa

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  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

  Acknowledgments

  Letters and Lawsuits

  Also by Diana Xarissa

  About the Author

  Text Copyright © 2019 D.X. Dunn, LLC

  Cover Copyright © 2019 Linda Boulanger – Tell Tale Book Covers

  All Rights Reserved

  Created with Vellum

  For Mom – it’s been a while since I dedicated a book to her.

  Author’s Note

  This marks the eleventh book in the Ghostly Cozy series. I’m enjoying spending time with Fenella and her friends more and more with each title. Mona may be my favorite character, but don’t tell the others. If you haven’t read any of the other titles in the series, I suggest you start at the beginning and read them all in order, but each story should be enjoyable on its own, if you prefer not to do that.

  Fenella grew up in the US, so these books are primarily written in American English. Characters who are British or Manx use British terms rather than American ones, however. I try to make sure that I’ve done this throughout the book, but I’m sure I make mistakes. If you find any, please let me know so that I can correct them.

  I could (and do) talk for hours about the Isle of Man. This unique UK crown dependency in the Irish Sea was my home for over ten years and still holds a very special place in my heart. I don’t think there is anywhere else in the world quite like it.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The shops, restaurants, and businesses in this story are also fictional. The historical sites and other landmarks on the island are all real. The events that take place within them in this story are fictional, however.

  If you are interested in keeping up with all of my new releases, all of my contact details are available in the back of the book. I have a monthly newsletter as well as a fun Facebook page. I’d love to hear from you.

  1

  “Jack is leaving tomorrow, isn’t he?” Shelly Quirk checked as she and Fenella started their morning walk down the Douglas promenade.

  “He is. He has to be back in time to recover from his jet lag before classes start back up again,” Fenella Woods confirmed.

  “Are you going to miss him?” was Shelly’s next question.

  Fenella took a deep breath. “I am, actually, which I wasn’t expecting.”

  Fenella and Jack Dawson had been a couple for over ten years when Fenella had been living in Buffalo, New York. It had been a good but unexciting relationship built on mutual respect and admiration rather than passionate devotion. When Fenella had inherited her Aunt Mona Kelly’s estate on the Isle of Man, she’d welcomed the opportunity to cut her ties in the US and move to the island. Jack had had difficulty accepting that the relationship was over. Many months after Fenella had moved, Jack had come to visit her, seemingly determined to rekindle their relationship.

  “He’s given up on the idea of you two getting back together, hasn’t he?”

  “He has. Truthfully, he’s almost a different person now. If things were different, I might almost be disappointed that he’s not still interested in me.”

  Shelly laughed. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  Fenella nodded. She’d never expected to think such a thing, but the trip to the island had changed Jack in many ways. She wasn’t sure if his new attitude toward life had come about because he was more confident now that he’d traveled abroad for the first time, because he’d found himself caught up in a murder investigation, or if there was something else going on entirely, but she found herself liking the changed man a great deal.

  “He’d probably still welcome the thought of you two getting back together,” Shelly suggested.

  “I’m not sure he would, but I really don’t want to try again. I would hate trying to have a long distance relationship and I’ve no interest in moving back to Buffalo.”

  “Jack could move here. He seems to like it here.”

  “We’d have to get married in order for him to get a visa. Just because I like him a lot doesn’t mean I want to spend the rest of my life with him. There are other complications, too.”

  Shelly chuckled. “Like Donald and Daniel.”

  “I’m not sure what I’d call Donald,” Fenella sighed.

  Donald Donaldson was a very wealthy man who pursued Fenella whenever he was on the island. Because he traveled a great deal, managing his businesses, the pursuit seemed to start, stop, and then restart almost constantly. His daughter, Phoebe, had been in a bad car accident in New York City some months ago, and Donald had been by her bedside ever since.

  The last Fenella had heard, he was planning to move his daughter to London soon to continue her treatment there. Fenella wasn’t entirely clear on his intentions with regard to herself, though.

  “How is his daughter doing?”

  “As well as can be expected, apparently. The last time I talked to Donald he said that she has good days and bad days. He has her doing a dozen different therapies and he thinks they’re all helping, but no one can say at this point what the limits on her recovery might be. Once they’re settled in London, Donald wants me to come over and spend some time with him. I’m not sure what I should do.”

  “Do you want to see him?”

  “Yes and no,” Fenella said. “We had a lot of fun together when we went out, but there were always difficulties.”

  “Like Donald’s reputation as a player, and Daniel.”

  “And the fact that he’s rich, and I felt intimidated by that.”

  “Except now you know that you’re just as rich, if not richer.”

  “I still haven’t really managed to get my head around that,” Fenella told her closest friend. “I never imagined, when I inherited Mona’s estate, that it would be worth as much as it is.”

  Over the course of her long life Mona Kelly had managed to accumulate dozens of properties all over the island. She also owned stocks, shares, bank accounts, an expensive red sports car, the luxury apartment that Fenella now called home, antiques, jewelry, and goodness knows what else. Fenella had been delighted with the apartment and the car. Everything else felt like a huge bonus, one that she was still coming to terms with in her own mind.

  “Well, you don’t have to decide anything today. What are you and Jack going to do with his last day on the island?”

  “He wants to have one last drive around so that he can take a final look at it. He’s hoping to come back one day, but he has a long list of other places he wants to visit now that he’s actually tried traveling. I expect I’ll be getting postcards from all over the world soon.”

  “Good for him. I feel as if I should be doing more traveling,” Shelly told her. “The island is pretty special, though, and I’m retired, so it isn’t as if I need a holiday from my life.”

  “I know what you mean. The first thing I thought about when I found out I had money was traveling, but I still haven’t gone anywhere. I don’t really like beaches or heat. I don’t ski. As a historian, I should want to visit museums and historical sites, but I keep putting it off because I’m still enjoying seeing the sites around the island.”
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br />   “Maybe we should go somewhere together,” Shelly suggested. “Let’s talk about it another day.”

  The pair had walked from one end of the promenade to the other and were back at their apartment building.

  “Yes, let’s,” Fenella agreed. “I think we’d have lots of fun together wherever we went.”

  “I should be visiting interesting and exciting places to use as settings for my books.”

  “How is the writing coming?” Fenella knew that Shelly had been trying to write a romance novel for a few months now.

  Shelly shrugged. “Slowly. I set this first book on the island, but I think I’m going to have to find a more interesting setting for the next one. It isn’t that the island is boring, exactly, but it isn’t as exciting as a cattle ranch in Texas or an island in the Caribbean.”

  “You only feel that way because you live here. I’m sure Americans will love reading about the island. Most of them have probably never even heard of it.”

  “I keep thinking I should change the protagonist, as well as the setting. I’ve made the heroine an older woman who was unexpectedly widowed, but maybe I’d be better off writing a more traditional story about a younger woman.”

  As Shelly herself had been unexpectedly widowed just over a year earlier, Fenella suspected that she’d modeled the heroine on herself. “I think you should write the story you want to write. You don’t have to worry about making a living from your writing. It’s just for fun, right?”

  “It is just for fun, but I’d love it if it became a big success, not for the money, but because that would mean lots of people would read my book.”

  “Maybe you should focus on getting it written before you do anything else,” Fenella suggested. “My friend who makes her living self-publishing her work told me that she wrote about half a dozen books that she’ll never publish because they’re so awful. She reckons it took her that long to get good enough to try her hand at self-publishing.”

  “Half a dozen?” Shelly echoed. “I don’t think I can write half a dozen books, let alone wait until the seventh one to actually try to do anything with them. I was hoping to self-publish this one if I can’t find an agent or a publisher, or whatever I need.”

  “As I said before, you should probably focus on writing the book for now. All those other things come later.”

  “In that case, I’m going to go and write,” Shelly told her. The pair had made their way up to the sixth floor while they’d been talking. Shelly gave Fenella a quick hug and then disappeared into her apartment as Fenella dug around for the keycard that opened her own door. It was always in the bottom of her bag, but she found it eventually.

  “I’m back,” she called, startling Katie, her tiny black kitten, who was asleep on one of the chairs in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that showcased the promenade and the sea beyond it.

  “You don’t need to shout,” Mona said sternly as she walked into the room.

  Fenella looked over at her and sighed. Mona looked younger than ever today in a long gown that showed off her slender figure. Although the woman had been over ninety when she’d died, the Mona who wandered through Fenella’s apartment looked no more than thirty. Fenella could barely remember Mona from the very occasional visits Mona had paid to the US during Fenella’s childhood. It seemed, therefore, that the woman in her apartment truly was Mona’s ghost and not a figment of Fenella’s imagination.

  “Jack is leaving tomorrow, isn’t he?” Mona asked as Fenella headed for the kitchen.

  “Yes, he is,” Fenella agreed. “I’m not sure what you’ve done to him, but he’s going back to Buffalo a changed man.”

  “I told you I didn’t do much, just made a few small suggestions to his subconscious, that’s all. Let’s face it, the man needed the help.”

  Fenella couldn’t argue with that, even if she did feel slightly uncomfortable with the idea that Mona was manipulating Jack in some way.

  “Once he’s gone, you’ll have to have Daniel over for dinner,” Mona told her. “I’ll make sure I’m out that night.”

  “Why does everyone keep bringing up Daniel?” Fenella demanded. “Daniel and I are just friends.”

  “Yes, which is why it’s time to start trying harder.”

  Daniel Robinson was a CID inspector with the Douglas Constabulary. He was an attractive man in his late forties, with light brown hair and hazel eyes. Fenella had met him after discovering a dead body, and their relationship had developed from there. When he’d recently gone away to study for some months in the UK, they’d put everything on hold.

  Once Daniel had returned to the island he’d admitted that he’d met someone else, but that circumstances meant that they couldn’t be together. Before Jack’s arrival, Fenella and Daniel had discussed giving their relationship a fresh start, but with Jack visiting they hadn’t seen much of one another. While Fenella really liked Daniel, she was apprehensive about what the future might hold.

  “I’m not ready to start trying,” Fenella protested.

  “If you don’t hurry, someone else will grab him. He’s gorgeous, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “I’ve noticed. He’s smart and funny and great company, too, but I’m not going to start chasing after him like a schoolgirl.”

  “I should hope not. I expect you to chase after him like a sophisticated woman. Invite him to dinner. Make him feel special. Make him feel as if he can’t live without you.”

  “Is that what you did with Max?”

  Maxwell Martin had been Mona’s fabulously wealthy benefactor from the time Mona was eighteen until his death. He’d showered her with expensive gifts, but the pair had never married, something Fenella still didn’t quite understand.

  “Oh, Max couldn’t have lived without me,” Mona told her with a throaty laugh. “He needed me for so many reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  Mona shook her head. “I haven’t time to go into all of that right now. I’m having a small party later and I need to get everything ready.”

  “A party? Tell me more.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Fenella was sorry she’d said them. Mona seemed to love telling her things about the ghost world, knowing full well that Fenella could never be sure what was true and what wasn’t. The sly grin on Mona’s face told Fenella not to believe a word of whatever Mona was about to say.

  “I’m just having a few friends over for drinks,” Mona told her.

  “Over? As in here? In my apartment?”

  “It was my flat first, and it’s still my home. Where else would I have guests?”

  “What if I don’t want them here?”

  “You won’t be able to see them and they won’t bother you. Why should you care?”

  “Maybe I’m just slightly uncomfortable with the idea of sharing my apartment with a bunch of ghosts, all of whom are total strangers.”

  Mona shrugged. “There are ghosts everywhere, you know. Well, maybe not everywhere, but we’re around in a lot of places. Most people just ignore us and get on with their lives.”

  “I never thought to try that,” Fenella muttered under her breath.

  “If you’re going to be difficult about it, I’ll have my friends meet me in the ballroom instead,” Mona told her. “That will disturb Max, of course, but I don’t suppose you’ll mind disturbing an old and slightly confused man, even if it’s only through his generosity that you can enjoy this flat and everything that goes with it.”

  “Have your party here,” Fenella sighed. “Can you do it while I’m out today? I’d rather not be here, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll make sure you don’t see anyone,” Mona told her, which didn’t reassure Fenella in the slightest.

  She headed for her bedroom to run a comb through her hair before she needed to pick up Jack. The phone startled her as she reached for her lipstick.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Woods? I’m Donna Cannon,” the voice on the phone said. “I was meant to ring you last week, but I ended u
p in hospital and I couldn’t manage it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Fenella said when the woman paused. Fenella had no idea who she was or why she was calling.

  “Yes, well, it’s getting older, you see. I’m seventy-one, no, seventy-two, well, it’s one of those. I’ve never been brilliant at maths, you see.”

  “I see,” Fenella replied after another lengthy pause. “I hope you’re feeling better.”

  “I had a nasty fall in ShopFast. I was wandering through the bakery and I tripped over my trolley’s wheel. Fell right into the bread display and ended up on the ground covered in baguettes.”

  “My goodness, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. They checked me over and then kept me overnight in case I had a concussion from one of the day-old loaves.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Oh, thank you. Anyway, I hope we’ll see you on Monday.”

  Fenella frowned at the receiver. “Monday?” she echoed.

  “Yes, oh, dear. I hope you haven’t forgotten. We’ve only just enough people to run the class, you see. If you aren’t coming we may have to cancel.”

  “Class?” Fenella said slowly. She glanced at the calendar on the wall and then realized. “The class in reading old records starts on Monday,” she exclaimed. “I’d nearly forgotten about that, actually. I signed up months ago and put it on my calendar, but then it was Thanksgiving and Christmas and it sort of slipped my mind.”

  “Yes, dear, that’s why I’m ringing, you see. Marjorie asked me to ring everyone in the class for her. She’s rather busy with other things, but she gave me a discount on the class if I agreed to be her helper.”