A Tale of Two Kitties (A Magical Cats Mystery) - Softcover

Kelly, Sofie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1432844180 ISBN 13: 9781432844189

Publisher: Wheeler Publishing Large Print, 2018

Synopsis

With a well-placed paw on a keyboard or a pointed stare, librarian Kathleen Paulson's cats, Hercules and Owen, help her to solve cases. But she'll need to rely on them more than ever when a twenty-year-old scandal leads to murder. To prove a good friend innocent, Kathleen will have to dig deep into the town's history -- and into her sardine cracker supply.

About this title

About the Author

Sofie Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of the Magical Cats series. She also writes the Second Chance Cat Mystery series as Sofie Ryan. A mixed-media artist, Sofie lives on the East Coast with her husband and daughter. Visit her at sofiekelly.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2017 Sofie Kelly

 

Chapter 1

You’d think by now it wouldn’t bother me to step on a body in the middle of the kitchen floor, but I was in my sock feet and the body—missing its head, no surprise—was damp.

With cat slobber.

“Owen!” I yelled, hopping on one foot while I rubbed the other against my pant leg.

The cat stuck his gray tabby head around the living room doorway and looked at me, face tipped quizzically to one side.

“Come and get this,” I said, pointing at the headless yellow catnip chicken, aka Fred the Funky Chicken, I’d just stepped on.

He craned his neck to see what I was referring to, then gave a murp of recognition almost as though he were saying, “So that’s where I left it.” He came across the floor, picked up the chicken body in his mouth and deposited it next to his food dish beside the refrigerator, nudging it out of the way with one paw. Then he turned to look at me.

“Thank you,” I said. I leaned down to pick up the few bits of catnip that had fallen out of the mangled cat toy. Owen had a thing for catnip in general, and neon-yellow chickens stuffed with it in particular, and I had friends who bought them for him just about as fast as he could chew them apart.

I dumped the bits of dried catnip in the garbage and reached for my shoes on the mat near the back door.

“Mrr?” Owen said.

“I have a meeting at the library.”

He immediately raised his paw and took a couple of passes at his face with it. Then he crossed to sit in front of the kitchen door.

I knew what that meant. “No, you can’t come with me,” I said.

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Mrr,” he said again.

I shook my head. “You can’t come. Cats don’t belong at the library.” They didn’t belong at the library, but both of mine had ended up there more than once. “Just because I’m the head librarian doesn’t mean that you and your brother get special privileges.”

Owen narrowed his golden eyes. His whiskers twitched, and then he disappeared.

Literally. It was his superpower, so to speak, the way the Flash could run faster than anyone else on the planet, although I was pretty sure Owen hadn’t gotten his ability due to the explosion of a particle accelerator during a thunderstorm.

I’d gotten very blasé about Owen’s ability to just vanish whenever he wanted to. I remembered how it had made me think I was losing my mind the first few times I’d seen it happen, and then the stomach-churning fear I’d felt when I realized what could happen to him and his brother, Hercules, if anyone had found out about my cats’ unbelievable abilities. Hercules couldn’t become invisible at will; he could walk through walls. Both cats also had a seemingly uncanny ability to understand what was said to them. And now, to make things ten times more complicated, I was almost positive that Marcus’s little ginger tabby, Micah, had the same vanishing skill as Owen.

My Marcus. Detective Marcus Gordon, who only believed in the facts, in things he could see and touch. If I was right about Micah there was a lot I’d need to explain. Not that I had any explanation. All three cats came from the old Henderson estate, Wisteria Hill. That had to have something to do with their abilities. I just had no idea what.

I’d sold my car when I’d moved to Mayville Heights from Boston two and a half years ago to supervise the renovations at the library. I spent my first few weeks in town exploring, walking for miles, which is how I’d stumbled on Wisteria Hill. At the time the property was abandoned. Now my friend Roma owned it, and the old farmhouse was full of life again. Back then it had seemed lonely and forgotten.

Owen and Hercules had peeked at me from a tangle of raspberry canes, two tiny balls of fur, and then trailed me while I explored the overgrown English country garden behind the old house. When I left, they’d followed me down the rutted gravel driveway. Twice I’d picked them up and carried them back to the empty house, but they were undeterred. They were so tiny and so determined to come with me that in the end I’d given up and brought them home. They were affectionate with me, but I’d quickly learned that because they had been feral they didn’t tolerate anyone else touching them.

I stepped into my red Keds and bent down to tie the laces. “You’re wasting your time,” I said in the general direction of the last place I’d seen Owen. “You can’t go with me in the truck because I’m going to walk.”

I counted silently to three and he appeared again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m going to a meeting. You’d be bored.”

Owen made grumbling noises in the back of his throat and turned his head, pointedly looking away from me.

“I think you left a Funky Chicken in my closet,” I said.

One gray ear twitched but he still didn’t look at me.

“Look in my black pumps.”

Owen shook himself and started across the kitchen floor. “Mrr,” he said softly when he got to the living room doorway.

“You have a good day, too,” I said.

It was a gorgeous morning as I started down Mountain Road. The sun was high in the sky over Lake Pepin and it was already warmer than the typical high for a day in early November.

It had been a while since I’d walked to the library. It was something I used to do every day. When I’d discovered everything I wanted to do was within walking distance, I hadn’t bought a car. Eventually, Harrison Taylor had gifted me with a truck that could make it through even the worst Minnesota snow, a thank-you because I’d discovered some papers that had helped him find his daughter. Harrison’s son, Harry Junior, took care of the yard work at my small house. The old man and I had met when he’d accompanied his son one day. I’d stepped into my backyard and for a moment thought Santa Claus was sitting on one of my Adirondack chairs. Harrison and I had quickly become good friends.

Mountain Road curves in toward the center of town, so as I headed down the hill the roof of the library building came into view. The library sits just about at the midpoint of a curve of shoreline, protected from the water by a rock wall. The two-story brick building has an original stained-glass window at one end and a copper-roofed cupola, complete with the restored wrought-iron weather vane that had been placed on the roof when the library had been completed more than a hundred years ago.

The Mayville Heights Free Public Library is a Carnegie library, built in 1912 with money donated by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. I’d originally come to town to supervise the restoration of the building for its centenary, as well as update the collections and set up Internet access for the library’s patrons. Very quickly the town and its people began to feel like home and when I’d been offered the chance to stay I’d said yes.

At the bottom of the hill I waited for two cars to pass and then crossed over to the same side of the street as the library. My friend Maggie, who was an artist, had created a collage map of the hiking trails in the area for the new Tourism Coalition that would be ready to hand out in the spring. Now Everett Henderson had her working on some ideas for a similar map of Mayville Heights. Everett had financed the repairs to the library as a gift to the town. The self-made businessman knew how to get things done and I felt confident that we’d have a town map by spring.

Ella King drove past me, waving when she caught sight of me. I waved back. I was guessing that she had just dropped her husband, Keith, at the library for the same meeting I was headed to.

Several weeks previous, a crew working on renovations to the main post office had torn down a wall and discovered a small cache of photos and undelivered mail. No one had any idea how it had all ended up there. Based on the postmarks, the mail had been behind the wall a bit more than twenty years. Some of the photos were of the same vintage, others were much older. The letters and cards had all been delivered, but no one was quite sure what to do with the photos, and before I knew what was happening the library board had offered to take them. Several days later a small cardboard box had been delivered to the library.

Mary Lowe and I had opened the box at the front desk and looked through the photos. Mary was my most senior employee. I’d hoped she might recognize some of the people in the pictures. In the end she’d taken seven photos to give to, if not their original owners, at least to family who’d probably be happy to have them.

As far as the post office was concerned the photos were now the property of the library. I hated the thought of them sitting in a box on a shelf in our workroom. What I wanted to do was reunite the pictures with the people in them or at least a family member. I thought of how much fun my sister and brother and I had gotten from looking at old photos a friend of our parents had unearthed from early in their acting careers. I knew there had to be people who would treasure these images if I could just find them. That’s what this meeting was about.

Maggie was coming because I knew whatever we ended up doing would benefit from her artistic eye. Rebecca Henderson and Keith King were on the library board. Rebecca was a long-time member, while Keith was the newest addition, and I felt both of them would have some good suggestions. I’d also asked Sandra Godfrey, who was a mail carrier now but who had worked in the main post office at one time, to join us.

It looked like I was right about Ella having dropped off Keith. He was standing on the walkway in front of the building, talking to Abigail Pierce, another of my staff members. She was wearing a chocolate-brown coat sweater she’d knit herself, which went well with her red hair streaked with gray. Abigail was also an author and I was hearing lots of great buzz about her new children’s book.

Keith caught sight of me and smiled. He was about average height, wiry and strong with dark hair and a pair of black-and-stainless-steel-framed glasses. The glasses were new in the last month. “Hey, Kathleen,” he said, nudging one corner of the frames.

“Good morning,” I said. I pulled my keys out of my pocket and started up the library steps. “Why don’t you come wait inside?”

“You sure?” he asked.

I nodded. “You can have a cup of coffee before the meeting starts.”

“I can’t say no to that.” He grinned.

I unlocked the doors, shut off the alarm system and we stepped inside.

Abigail had switched on the main floor lights. She started for the stairs. “I’ll put the coffee on,” she said over her shoulder.

“You mind if I take a look at the magazines?” Keith asked.

I shook my head. “Go ahead. I’ll let you know when the coffee’s ready.”

I went upstairs and dropped my things in my office. It only took five minutes to get set up for the meeting since I’d gotten the room ready before I’d left the previous day.

“Napkins,” Abigail said, poking her head around the doorway.

“Thanks,” I said, taking them from her. I looked around the room. There were enough chairs around the long table, I’d brought down a whiteboard and there was a carafe of coffee along with another of hot water for tea.

Maggie arrived about five minutes after we opened. I was at the circulation desk sorting the books from the book drop when she walked in. She smiled when she saw me and walked across the mosaic tile floor to join me.

“Good morning. Is this really November?” she asked, unzipping her jacket. “I think it was colder in September than it is today.”

“According to the forecast we could hit close to seventy this afternoon,” I said.

“Global warming or something else?” Maggie cocked her head to one side and eyed me. “I know you know.”

“A weak La Niña that developed in October,” I said, feeling a little like that kid back in elementary school who had liked to read the encyclopedia for fun—which was exactly the kind of kid I had actually been.

Maggie grinned, playing with the fringe of the multi-colored scarf she’d wrapped twice around her neck. “You’re better than Google!”

I grinned back at her. “And I work even when there’s no Wi-Fi!”

“Am I the first one here?” She looked around the main floor of the library.

“Keith’s here,” I said, gesturing in the direction of the meeting room.

Just then Harry Taylor walked into the building. He looked around and when he saw us raised a hand to get my attention and headed over.

“Morning,” he said, nodding at both of us.

Harry was in his late fifties. There were deep lines carved around his green eyes from years of working in the sun, and the fringe of salt-and-pepper hair peeking out from under his Twins baseball cap was pretty much the only hair he had left. He was a quiet, thoughtful man, and very well read, I knew.

“I was hoping I’d catch you before it got busy, Kathleen,” he said. “I’ve pretty much done all I can do on those shelves in the workshop. Next step is to get them put together here.”

Harry was building a shelving unit to fit on one wall of our upstairs workroom. I was hoping that would help us finally get the space organized.

“I can get everything moved out of the way this afternoon,” I said. “You can get started tomorrow if you want to.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “And I’ll be back this afternoon to fix the broken seat in the gazebo.”

“You’re putting shelves in the workroom?” Maggie asked.

I nodded. “On the end wall that’s common with my office. And not just shelves. Harry is making a cupboard we can lock with a drawer underneath. That whole wall will be storage.”

Maggie turned to Harry. “Could you do something like that for me at my studio? I need a better way to organize supplies.”

“What did you have in mind?” he asked, pulling a small notebook and a pencil out of the pocket of his green quilted vest.

Maggie looked at me. “Do I have time to talk to Harry?” she asked.

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

They started toward a nearby cluster of tables, Maggie’s hands moving through the air as she talked.

I set the pile of books by my elbow on a cart as Susan came from the computer area, where she’d just booted up all of our public-access computers for the day.

“I have about half of the books from the book drop sorted,” I told her. “It’s almost time for the meeting to get started, so I’m just going to run up to my office for a minute.”

“I’ll finish the this,” she said, sliding into the chair behind the counter and reaching for the handle at the side to raise the seat.

Susan was tiny, barely five feet tall in her sock feet. She wore retro cat’s-eye glasses that made her look like anything but a stereotypical bespectacled librarian, and her dark curly hair was always pulled up in a topknot secured with anything from a pencil to a chopstick. This morning her hair seemed to be held in place with two white golf tees.

“And if you need me—,” I began.

“Don’t worry,” Susan said, pulling one of the rolling carts closer. “Abigail and I can handle things. If anyone gets out of line I can give them the Mom Look, and Mary taught Abigail some kind of one-legged takedown maneuver that kickboxe...

Edition details

• Publisher: Wheeler Publishing Large Print
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1432844180
• ISBN 13: 9781432844189
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 391