Literally Murder (Black Cat Bookshop Series #4)

Literally Murder (Black Cat Bookshop Series #4)

by Ali Brandon
Literally Murder (Black Cat Bookshop Series #4)

Literally Murder (Black Cat Bookshop Series #4)

by Ali Brandon

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Overview

From her Brooklyn bookstore, Darla Pettistone not only sells mysteries, but solves them, aided by her big-boned black cat, Hamlet—who has suddenly pounced into the spotlight after unleashing his fists of furry…  
 
After a video of Darla and Hamlet performing at a martial arts tournament goes viral, the Florida chapter of the Feline Society of America invites the “Karate Kitty” to be the guest of honor at their championship cat show in Fort Lauderdale.
 
Upon arrival, Darla discovers that not everyone in the Sunshine State has a sunny disposition. Animal rights activists are on the march, and a cat show contestant stages his own angry protest when his special breed Minx—half Sphynx, half Manx—doesn’t win. Then Hamlet disappears—only to be found next a dead man's body. Now it’s up to Darla and Hamlet to take best in show and collar the killer…
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781101602348
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date: 09/30/2014
Series: Black Cat Bookshop Series , #4
Sold by: Penguin Group
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 194,061
File size: 2 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Ali Brandon is the pen name for Diane A. S. Stuckart, author of the Leonardo da Vinci Mysteries, as well as several acclaimed historical romances and numerous works of short fiction under the names Alexa Smart and Anna Gerard. The New York Times bestselling Black Cat Bookshop Mysteries include Double Booked for Death, A Novel Way to Die, and Words with Fiends.

Read an Excerpt

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE

DARLA PETTISTONE FROWNED AS SHE PAGED THROUGH THE sheaf of blueprints spread atop the table in her bookstore’s upper floor lounge. Seeing the shop’s planned coffee bar neatly laid out on paper was one thing. Being confident that the design would translate into satisfactory reality was another.

“I’m still not sure, Cecil,” she told the beefy construction superintendent seated across the table from her. “Maybe we should change the angle of the main seating area. Oh, and are you sure we should put the sinks right there?”

Cecil heaved a patient sigh redolent of the sausage breakfast sandwich he had been eating when he’d arrived thirty minutes earlier. His bald, black head gleamed with sweat despite the fact that it was late February in Brooklyn and the temperature outside was hovering in the teens. He swiped said shiny dome with a yellow bandana and then crossed bulky, sweatered arms over his ample gut.

“Here’s the deal, Ms. Pettistone. You want to turn your kitchenette into a nice little coffee bar for your store like you asked for, this is it,” he said, and stabbed a stubby finger at the blueprints. “You want the Taj Mahal, I’ll build that instead. But if you want us to get started this weekend, you gotta sign off on the design now. Otherwise, it might be another couple of months before Mr. Putin has a break in his schedule to fit your job in.”

“But that’s part of the problem,” Darla explained with another worried look at the drawings. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning for Fort Lauderdale. I’m going to be in Florida for more than a week, so I won’t be here to keep an eye on things.”

“True,” came a voice from behind her, “But remember, I will be.”

The speaker was Darla’s store manager, Professor James T. James. The unflappable retired university instructor had run Pettistone’s Fine Books for more than a dozen years, well before Darla had inherited the business the previous spring from her late great-aunt, Dee Pettistone. In addition to his managerial duties, James was an expert on rare and collectible books, which in the past couple of years had become a major revenue source for Pettistone’s. The new coffee bar that Darla was commissioning would, she hoped, be yet another cash stream. Given the current unsettled business climate facing independent bookstores, serving specialty brews would be another way to draw in customers—and, with luck, keep them in the store long enough to encourage a book purchase along with their lattes.

“The timing actually is rather fortunate, if you think about it,” James went on in the same sonorous tones that, back in his teaching days, likely had held the attention of even the most lackluster student. “Not only did Mr. Putin assure us that will the job be finished in under two weeks—quite an amazing feat in itself—but the bulk of the construction will take place while Hamlet is safely with you at the cat show.”

Darla shot a fond look at Hamlet, the bookstore’s oversized feline mascot, who was snoozing on the arm of a nearby love seat like a small black panther lounging on a tree branch. She had inherited Hamlet along with the bookstore, and their initial relationship had been rocky, to say the least. Darla had never been much of a cat person, but then Hamlet wasn’t the kind of bookstore feline that curled up in cute wicker baskets and purred nicely for customers.

Rather, he ran the place with an iron paw, stalking up and down the aisles like a furry potentate when he wasn’t sprawled on a shelf somewhere. Darla’s regular customers all knew their place in the Hamlet hierarchy and did not dare pet him or call “kitty, kitty” without his lordship’s express permission. More than one innocent transgressor had found himself unceremoniously chased to the front door for violating those rules, to the point where Darla finally had posted a not-so-tongue-in-cheek sign reading, “Beware of Cat.”

In fact, Darla often wondered just who was in charge at Pettistone’s, her or Hamlet.

But in the year since Darla had owned the bookstore, the two of them had developed a bond. Not that she’d yet made Hamlet’s BFF list, Darla told herself in amusement—James and her teenage goth salesclerk, Robert Gilmore, likely ranked above her—but she and Hamlet now coexisted in a mutually respectful manner that, given the fact Darla had never considered herself a “crazy cat lady,” was good enough for her.

And James had a point about the advantages of her and Hamlet being gone during the construction, she realized. Hamlet was used to having free rein of the three-story brownstone that housed Pettistone’s Fine Books in its first two floors and Darla’s apartment on the third. (This didn’t count the garden apartment below rented by Darla’s best friend, Jacqueline “Jake” Martelli.) Hamlet was a moody enough feline on good days. Chances were that construction in the bookstore would send the finicky cat into a major snit that could last for weeks.

“You’re right, James,” Darla agreed with a determined toss of her red braid. Then she turned to the superintendent again. “It’s settled. We might as well do this now, while Hamlet is busy being guest of honor down in Florida.”

Cecil flashed crooked teeth in an approving smile as he plucked a pen from the pocket of his flannel shirt and handed it to her. “Good decision, Ms. Pettistone. We’ll get the job knocked out in no time. You and your little kitty will come back to a fancy new store, and everyone will be happy.”

At those last words, the “little kitty” in question slit open one emerald green eye and shot a baleful look in Cecil’s direction. Darla paused in midsignature and gave Hamlet a warning look of her own. Cecil had not yet had the dubious pleasure of meeting the store mascot up close and personal. Last thing she needed was for Hamlet to take offense at the man’s innocent words and give him feline what-for, putting the kibosh on the project before it even began!

Fortunately for the future coffee bar, the finicky cat had apparently decided to let the superintendent’s lapse slide. After briefly flexing one oversized paw to display a formidable set of claws—just for effect—Hamlet shut his eye again and went back to his nap. Darla allowed herself a relieved smile at the reprieve. She finished signing the documents and wrote out the requisite deposit check to Putin Construction.

Darla had hesitated to use the company at first, given Alex Putin’s reputation in the neighborhood as the “czar-father” of construction with rumored ties to the Russian mob. But her NYPD detective friend, Reese, had assured her that the man was a legitimate business owner with no criminal record beyond the usual parking violations. Jake also had given Putin the thumbs-up, as she’d done a little PI work for him (and gotten a bit too chummy with the man, in Darla’s opinion). Since his online reviews for his construction work were uniformly positive, Darla had decided to give his company a shot.

As Darla and James escorted Cecil downstairs, Darla said, “You saw the alley and courtyard behind the building. If you can bring in all your materials that way, that would be great. But just in case you need to use the front door, too, we can move the bookshelves out of the way so you have a clear path either way to the stairs.”

“That’ll work fine, ma’am.”

While Cecil pulled on a bright blue down coat big enough to fit her and James both, Darla pointed out the projected pathway. Once the maze of bookshelves filling the store was realigned (Great-Aunt Dee had cleverly had casters added to each shelf unit), it would be a straight shot from the front door, past the stairway to the room beyond, and then to the back door. In fact, the brownstone’s layout reminded Darla of what back home in Texas they called a shotgun shack. Not that the elegant Federal-style building which housed the bookstore resembled anything shacklike.

The shop’s main room—originally the brownstone’s parlor—opened into what previously had been the dining room. Other than replacing the connecting doorways with open arches, Great-Aunt Dee had basically left the parlor intact, meaning that a majority of the original, ornately carved wooden built-ins remained. Now those built-ins served as additional bookshelves as well as display space for old crockery and bric-a-brac. The parlor had undergone a slightly greater revamping, with much of its original mahogany wainscoting repurposed to build a narrow, U-shaped counter near the store’s front window, where the register was located. Overall, the bones of the old brownstone were clearly visible, unlike with other similar buildings that had been totally gutted and modernized.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Pettistone,” Cecil assured her again, tugging a crimson knit cap over his bald pate and sticking out a calloused hand to shake. “We’ll get you taken care of just fine.”

Refusing to hear anything ominous in that promise, Darla shook, smiled, and saw him out. She hurriedly shut the door after him, but not before an insidious blast of frigid air whipped its way in.

Florida can’t come too soon, Darla thought with a shiver as she straightened the “Sale” sign that the wind gust had blown away from the nearby display of cookbooks. Given the fact that she’d lived in Dallas for most of her thirtysomething years, she was not yet acclimated to the frigid weather in New York.

Then she heaved a sigh. “Well, it’s done. In another couple of weeks, Pettistone’s will be entering a new era. Books con coffee . . . you know, like café con leche,” she explained when James raised a gray brow. “I wonder what Great-Aunt Dee would have thought about this.”

“Dee was quite the businesswoman, so I am sure she would have approved,” the man assured her, adding, “And may I again thank you for not asking me to take on barista duties? Much as I enjoy a nice latte, I would not relish serving them all day . . . particularly if I would be expected to draw—ahem—cartoons in the foam.”

“Don’t worry, that’s Robert’s department,” Darla told him with a smile. Then, spying her clerk unpacking a box a few shelves away, she called, “Robert, wasn’t last night your final class in barista training?”

Robert poked his head around the shelf and grinned back, his dyed black hair flopping over one kohled eye. Darla bit her lip but didn’t say anything about the black eyeliner. Since the youth had diligently followed her rule these past months about no visible piercings while on the clock, she had finally relented and allowed him a minimum of goth makeup at work.

As long as you don’t scare the customers, had been her main stipulation.

“Yeah, last night was our final exam, and I, like, aced it,” he bragged. “They gave me a certificate and stuff. I even got first place in latte art because I drew a picture of Hamlet’s face in the foam that everyone thought was sick.”

Knowing that “sick” was a major compliment, Darla gave him an approving nod. “That’s wonderful. Maybe that cat face can be the Pettistone’s Coffee Bar trademark.”

Robert’s black-rimmed eyes widened. “Hey, great idea, Ms. P.!”

James gave a genteel snort as he headed toward the rear of the store. “Yes, a great idea. I suppose we will also be ordering coffee cups with Hamlet’s image upon them.”

Logo coffee cups?

Darla was about to echo the “great idea” sentiment in regard to James’s cynical suggestion when Robert abruptly spoke up again. “Wait, I almost forgot. While you and Professor James were upstairs with Mr. Cecil, some guy brought a package. I left it on the counter. And it’s not, you know, books or stuff.”

Before Darla could inspect her package, however, the string of small bells hanging on the front door jingled. In hurried a small female figure wrapped in a full-length, balding mink coat and an incongruous pink-and-orange scarf that swaddled her from throat to eyes. Then, like a thrift-store houri, the woman raised a gloved hand and, clutching one fringed end of the scarf, gave it a swirl. The pashmina promptly spun away to reveal a familiar, wrinkled face.

“Mary Ann!” Darla exclaimed as she recognized her elderly neighbor. “You shouldn’t be out in this weather.”

The old woman gave a dismissive wave. “Really, Darla, I’ve lived in Brooklyn all of my life. I’m used to a little cold. Besides, young Robert does an excellent job of keeping our steps free of snow and ice.”

She smiled in the youth’s direction. Robert had finished unpacking his box and was headed to the back toward the recycling pile. Hearing his name, however, he paused and turned and gave the woman an enthusiastic wave.

“Hey, Ms. Plinski. Great coat.”

Mary Ann tittered as she gave a little pirouette to better show off the garment.

“Of course, I would never purchase a new fur,” she confided to Darla while Robert trotted off. “I found this one boxed up in our storeroom. Who knows how long it’s been sitting there? Brother probably bought it in an auction years ago and forgot all about it.”

Mary Ann and her older brother owned the brownstone next door to Darla. In addition to the apartment the two shared, their building also housed their antiques and collectibles shop, Bygone Days. Robert helped out the elderly pair on occasion with the heaving lifting. In return, Mary Ann had leased out her garden apartment to the youth at a substantially reduced rate. She had even waived her “no pets” rule on his behalf, allowing him to keep his tiny Italian greyhound, Roma, there with him.

“So what brings you here on a freezing cold day like this?” Darla asked her with a smile.

The old woman gave her a wide-eyed look. “Why, I wanted to know all about your upcoming trip to Florida. Robert said it had something to do with Hamlet, but for the life of me I couldn’t guess what.”

“I don’t know why he made it sound so mysterious. Hamlet is going to be the guest of honor at this year’s Feline Society of America National Championship show.”

“How exciting! But however did you ever manage that?”

“Remember that video of Hamlet at the martial arts tournament that Robert and I competed in last year? You know, the one of Hamlet out on the mat mimicking me as I did my karate routine? Well, the video went viral. That means—”

“Really, Darla, I know what viral means,” Mary Ann replied with a smile, cutting Darla off with another wave of her gloved hand. “I am quite Internet savvy, if I do say so, myself. Why, I even have three boards on Pinterest now.”

Since Darla had no clue what Pinterest was, she conceded the win to the older woman.

“Sorry, Mary Ann. Anyhow, when you combine all the different videos of Hamlet’s performance at the tournament that people uploaded, he had close to a million online hits, and that was back before Christmas. When Jake saw that, she called her mother in Fort Lauderdale. Apparently, Mrs. Martelli is good friends with the man who is president of the Feline Society of America, which is headquartered there. Jake suggested that her mom should tell the FSA folks to bring Hamlet down to Florida as their celebrity guest for this year’s annual championship show.”

Darla smiled. After all, who could resist a cat who mimicked his human with such sly accuracy? Even she laughed every time she saw the video, and she was the one who’d been unknowingly mocked. She’d even forgiven Hamlet for the fact that his performance at the tournament had caused her to be disqualified from her first and only karate competition.

Darla had scoffed when Jake first mentioned the cat-show idea, but her friend had been of the opinion that it never hurt to ask. Hey, kid, they can only say no had been her brash response. Still, the cop-turned-private-investigator had been as surprised as Darla when, a couple of weeks later, a registered letter arrived inviting one Hamlet the Cat to serve as the FSA guest of honor at the end of February.

“I still can’t believe I’m going to leave all this snow behind and go to Florida,” Darla went on. “They’re paying all my expenses to bring Hamlet down, and they even arranged for a plus one, so Jake is coming with me, too. She’s going to act as Hamlet’s official bodyguard. The cat show is on Saturday and Sunday, and FSA will put us up in the conference hotel for three nights starting Friday, but Jake and I decided to stay the whole next week and make it a real vacation.”

“What fun,” Mary Ann agreed. “I’ve often wondered if Brother and I should sell our place and move to Florida with all the other old people, but I know he would never leave the shop. So you and Jake will just have to enjoy the sunshine for me.”

“I’ll bring you back a souvenir,” Darla promised. Then, with a look around the empty bookstore—only two customers had stopped in since she’d unlocked the doors more than an hour ago—Darla added, “And maybe I should bring back some of that sunshine, too. Who wants to go out shopping in all this gloom? I swear, I don’t know how Great-Aunt Dee kept the place going in the winter.”

“Things will get better, my dear. We’re just having an unusually unpleasant season this year, is all. And once your new coffee bar is built, I’m sure scads of people will stop in for a nice hot drink, if nothing else.”

They spent a few more moments chatting about the remodeling job, and then Mary Ann pulled on her scarf again. “I’d better not leave Brother for too long. He might do something foolish, like try to shovel the walk outside the building.”

After the woman had made her good-byes, Darla spent a few minutes helping a customer who had come in just as Mary Ann was leaving. Once she’d rung the gentleman up and sent him on his way, she excitedly reached for the box waiting for her on the counter. Given that she’d be officially representing Pettistone’s Fine Books while at the Florida cat show, Darla had decided to do a little branding for the event, and when she had discovered a custom embroidery shop only a few blocks away, she had placed a rush order.

She opened the package and pulled out the topmost item—a polo shirt in an appropriately tropical pink—and gazed in appreciation at the logo: a black silhouette of a cat set against a blue book and encircled by the bookstore’s name in gold thread. Neatly stitched right above where the breast pocket would be on a dress shirt, the design looked crisply professional . . . classy, as her good-old-boy father would have put it. Indeed, the polos had turned out even better than she’d expected, so much so that she wish she’d done this months ago.

“James! Robert! Come see our new corporate shirts,” she called, eager for their approval, too. As the pair joined her at the register, she held up a lime green one and gushed, “Aren’t they great?”

Obviously, the unspoken answer to that question was a resounding no. James and Robert exchanged twin looks of horror before turning back to Darla, eyes wide as they stared at the polo shirt. Disappointed by their obvious lack of enthusiasm, Darla shook her head.

“Look, y’all, I told you I was thinking about doing this. Right now, no one can tell us from the customers. This will give all of us a nice professional look, especially now, when we’ve got the coffee bar to bring in a whole new crop of customers.

“But—but they’re girly pink,” Robert squeaked, holding out crossed forefingers in the universal “back off, Evil” gesture.

James was more restrained if equally to the point. “While I understand your thought process, Darla, surely you do not wish me to appear as if I worked as a greeter at a discount retailer. Short sleeves are not, as they used to say, my thing.”

“Aha! I knew you would say that.”

With a chuckle, Darla set aside the pink shirt and reached into the box again, pulling out a flat, tissue-wrapped bundle and then handing it to James.

As if he were disarming a bomb, the ex-professor gingerly peeled off the wrapping. Within was a crisp, white long-sleeved dress shirt neatly folded to display a smaller version of the Pettistone’s logo embroidered high upon the garment’s left sleeve.

“See, you can even wear your sweater vests with this,” Darla told him, referring to the man’s personal uniform, one that he’d worn every day she’d known him.

James briefly held up the shirt to gauge its size, the snowy fabric a bright contrast to his mahogany features. Finally, the frown that creased his broad brow relaxed, and he allowed himself a slight smile. “Perhaps I would not be averse to wearing this particular style.”

“Good, because there’s also one in pale blue for you,” Darla told him, knowing her manager favored that shade. Then she turned to Robert.

The youth had dispensed with the makeshift cross gesture but still wore an expression of dismay. “Uh, no offense, Ms. Pettistone, but I don’t think I’d, you know, look good in one of those shirts with all those sleeves, either.”

“That’s what I figured,” Darla told him with a smile. Feeling rather like a magician with a top hat filled with rabbits, she reached into the shipping box again and pulled out yet another shirt, which she tossed to Robert. “Maybe you’ll like this one better.”

“Sweet!”

Robert nodded in appreciation as he caught the black polo and held it up to admire. While he occasionally topped his work outfits with a bright-colored vest in good-natured imitation of James’s personal style, the rest of Robert’s wardrobe was strictly goth black, enlivened by the occasional gray. Knowing that, Darla had ordered him a couple of black shirts and reserved the bright colors for herself.

“I’m not going to be a real stickler about it,” she told them, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d wear your new shirts to work at least a couple of times a week. Oh, and I bought a few extras in different sizes and colors. I figured once the coffee bar is up and running, we can display a couple and maybe sell them to our customers.”

“I would agree there might be a market for such a thing,” James observed, refolding his new shirt and wrapping it again in its paper. “For some reason, much of the shopping public seems to enjoy purchasing logoed items. Of course, there is no accounting for—”

Me-ROOW!

The unmistakable cry of a cat ignored for far too long interrupted James’s platitudes. Hamlet had stalked down the stairs toward the register. He paused, and then, with a single graceful bound, lightly landed upon the countertop next to Darla’s box of shirts.

“Hey, little goth bro!” Robert exclaimed. This was the usual greeting between him and Hamlet, and it normally was followed by a fist bump . . . or, on Hamlet’s part, a paw bump. No matter how many times Darla had tried to get Hamlet to follow suit with her, however, the cat had stubbornly refused to play along.

For now, however, Hamlet didn’t appear interested in hanging with his human “bro.” Instead, his attention was fixed on the shipping box. He leaned closer for a sniff at the cardboard, only to rear back with a hiss almost as loud as a big rig releasing its air brakes.

“I do not think he approves of the shirts,” James observed.

Robert shook his head. “No, he’s mad because he knows there’s not one in there for him. Right, Hamlet?”

Hamlet slanted the youth a cool green look that Darla translated to mean Did you seriously just say that? Then, to further illustrate his feelings on the matter, he swiped one back paw back and forth atop the counter, like he was burying something in his litter box. Finally, with a swish of his long tail that sent the topmost of the nearby stack of free newspapers flying, the cat leaped off the counter and strolled his way toward the games section.

“Do you think he figured out about the T-R-I-P?” Robert asked, carefully spelling out the last word.

Darla shrugged. “He saw me take my suitcase out of the closet last night, and I’ve got a couple of Florida guidebooks upstairs in my bedroom. Even worse, he caught me putting fresh towels in his cat carrier. A free vacation sounded like lots of fun when Jake and I first planned it, and it’s good publicity for the store, but maybe Hamlet isn’t up to traveling.”

“He will be just fine,” James assured her. “You have that calming spray from our friends at the rescue organization, and since he walks quite well on a leash, you will be able to exercise him outside when you get there. Besides, the construction noise and mess would likely be far more stressful on a cat than staying in a nice hotel.”

“Yeah, and it’s, you know, probably safer,” Robert said. “Those guys on the crew, they do a great job, but they don’t always pay attention to stuff. What if they were, like, bringing in tools from outside and left the door open for a minute? Hamlet could run outside and get lost and maybe freeze or something.”

While Darla didn’t doubt Hamlet would be able to make his way home should he escape the brownstone—to her past dismay, he’d done just that a time or two—she realized that James and Robert did have a point about the construction. The finicky feline would never put up with that sort of disruption to his personal stomping grounds. On the other hand, while Florida would be a strange new world for this Brooklyn-born cat, he’d be under her watchful eye twenty-four/seven the entire time, either on his leash or in his carrier. What kind of trouble could he get into that way?

Her earlier good spirits returning, Darla reached again for her bright pink polo.

“You’re right,” she told them as she refolded the garment and packed it away with the others. “It’ll be a couple of days watching Hamlet play Mr. Celebrity at the cat show, and the rest of the time it’s going to be nothing but sun and fun. I’ll probably be so relaxed I won’t even get around to sending out a bunch of postcards bragging about how warm it is in—”

Splat!

The unmistakable sound of a book hitting the wooden floor cut her short. Darla gave an exasperated sigh and turned in the direction where Hamlet had headed. The cagey cat had a habit of occasionally knocking books from their shelves. Of course, when she went to investigate, Hamlet invariably would be innocently sleeping far from the scene of the crime, or else would be nowhere to be found at all. In fact, she had yet to catch him in the act, but he remained her prime suspect in what she’d come to call “book snagging.”

While it was an annoying bit of mischief on his part (and hard on the books, to boot), picking up after him wasn’t the problem. Rather, it was the fact that, more often than not, the book titles that mysteriously ended up on the floor had something to do with whatever might be happening at the time. While everyone else attributed Hamlet’s apparent insights to coincidence—at least publicly—Darla was convinced by now that the clever cat knew exactly what he was doing every time he sent a particular volume flying.

While Robert and James resumed their duties, Darla hurried over to where she guessed the most recent book had fallen. Sure enough, in front of the shelves that held the various trivia, puzzle, and other game-related books lay a single slim paperback. As for Hamlet, she spied him snoozing on one of the overstuffed reading chairs two aisles over.

Playing innocent or legitimately not guilty?

She picked up the wayward volume and glanced at it in surprise. What had she just been telling James and Robert about the upcoming Florida trip? Something about fun and relaxation? She shook her head. If the book she held was Hamlet’s prediction of what was to come, then apparently she’d spoken too soon. For this instructional guide to playing poker was titled Want to Bet?

TWO

“THE SKIES HERE IN FORT LAUDERDALE ARE CLEAR, AND THE temperature is a balmy seventy degrees . . . sweater weather for us Floridians.”

The news was met with a murmur of approval from the passengers as the plane taxied toward the gate. Darla had stuffed her coat into her checked luggage as soon as they’d reached the airport. She was set for the southern weather with white denim jeans, which she now cuffed to her knees, and a blue-and-white striped shirt she’d chosen for its distinct sailor vibe.

Darla had left the store that morning in James’s capable hands, reminding herself that a) she was due a vacation, b) Hamlet would be happier far away from the construction, and c) she’d be crazy not to jump at a chance to get out of the frigid temperatures dogging New York. But she still had a few niggling doubts about her decision that hadn’t been helped by the text from James that had come right before she had boarded the plane.

Construction crew is here. Union plumber is MIA.

Her message back had been a terse Boarding now, will call for an update once in FL. Not that there was anything out of the ordinary with a construction job starting off slowly; still, it put a damper on things to know her project wasn’t starting off smoothly.

The engines shut down as the plane halted at its assigned gate, and even before the familiar ding sounded as the captain turned off the seatbelt light, passengers were already on their feet and scrambling to retrieve their baggage.

This is why I hate to fly,” Jake good-naturedly grumbled as she unfolded her six-foot frame from her aisle seat and began fishing in the overhead bin. “By the time I get all the kinks out, it’ll be time to head back to Brooklyn again.”

“Hey, you’ve got over a week to unkink,” Darla reminded her friend with a sympathetic smile. “We’re here until next Sunday. Besides, I read online that our hotel is right next door to a day spa, if you want to book a massage.”

She refrained from mentioning that at least the older woman had had the space beneath the seat in front of her free throughout the trip. Not that Darla begrudged her friend the leg room, since the ex-cop-turned-PI’s bum leg—courtesy of a shoot-out with a bank robbery suspect a few years earlier—had left her with a permanent limp and caused her early retirement from the NYPD. Still, Darla had spent the three-hour flight competing with a cat carrier for foot room. She would wager she had just as many kinks as Jake, despite being a good six inches shorter than her friend.

While Jake pulled down their carry-ons from the overhead, Darla slipped into the seat Jake had vacated. Flipping her auburn braid over her shoulder, she leaned down to pry the cat carrier in question from where it had been lodged since the beginning of the flight. Then, with an effort, she hoisted the soft-sided container up onto the center seat and anxiously peered through its mesh side to see how the official FSA Guest of Honor was faring.

“You okay in there, Hammy?”

A groggy but decidedly peeved growl was her reply.

“Uh-oh,” Darla said to Jake, who was now busy with her cell phone. “I think the herbal calming spray is wearing off.”

“Well, give him another spritz of it,” Jake advised. “Who knows how long it’ll take first class to clear out so all us little people back here in economy can get off. Besides, we still have to collect our checked luggage, and then we’ve got the drive to the hotel. Let’s just hope Ma isn’t late.”

So saying, she put the phone to her ear and began talking. Darla overheard snippets—“No, Ma, I said outside baggage claim!”—but her attention was on the oversized feline, whose protests were becoming more and more vocal.

“Come on, Hamlet,” she coaxed, giving the spray bottle a couple of quick pumps. A faint scent of brandy tinged with something herbal promptly perfumed the air around the carrier. “Hold on just a little longer, and then we’ll be in a nice hotel room where you can stretch out.”

Though she had to give the cat props in that he’d been more than cooperative to that point. Feeling somewhat foolish, she had explained to him the previous night that the carrier was not a harbinger of a visit to the vet’s—a bad place, to his mind—but a means to take him off to meet his fans. Whether it was that explanation or the fact that she’d baited the carrier with shrimp snacks, Hamlet had surprised her by climbing in on his own this morning. And several good spritzes of calming spray had kept him sleepy and mellow . . . that was, until now.

“Mee-roooow!”

Despite the renewed application of the herbal spray, Hamlet was rapidly rousing out of the relaxed state he’d been in for the greater portion of the trip. Now his muzzy cries could be heard over the bustle of passengers around them, impatient to deplane. Apparently, the calming concoction had a half life, at least when it came to this particular cat. The sooner she got Hamlet off the aircraft and into the terminal, the better.

“Mee-roooooow.”

Hamlet gave a low, threatening rumble, which, had Darla heard it while wandering a veldt instead of sitting trapped in a 747, would have spurred her to flee for her life. The sound seemed to trigger a similar primitive reaction in the nearby passengers, for a space miraculously opened in the aisle beside her seat as people scuttled back.

By now, Jake had ended her call. Before Darla had a chance to update her on the situation, however, her friend gave her a conspiratorial wink and then spoke up.

“Now, now, we don’t want a kitty meltdown,” she addressed their fellow passengers within earshot. “Maybe we can squeeze by everyone else and get the poor little fellow out of here right now, before things go really bad.” Jake shoved the phone into her jacket pocket and started up the aisle, both of their carry-ons in tow.

“Gangway—ferocious cat coming,” Jake called as she began plowing her way through the queue before her. “Outta the way, folks, if you value your flesh! Ferocious cat! Make room! Hide the children.”

Choking back a surprised laugh at her friend’s chutzpah, Darla grabbed Hamlet’s carrier and, hoisting the case on one hip, promptly followed after her. Unlike Jake, however, she didn’t need to assume a carnival barker’s spiel to clear a path. Hamlet was doing all the talking for her.

“Me-ROOW! Hisssssssssssssss!”

Those passengers who’d been stubbornly ignoring Jake and continuing to block the aisle were not so quick to disregard Hamlet’s warning cries. Most beat a hasty retreat back into their seats. A few more hardy souls broke into a trot in the direction of first class and the plane’s open door, Jake on their heels. Darla moved behind them as quickly as she could, given that she was hauling a struggling twenty-pound cat. It wasn’t until she’d reached the front that she paused long enough to set the carrier down with its unwilling occupant and extend the telescoping handle.

Thank goodness for wheels, she thought with a sigh, glad that she’d spent the extra money for a rolling carrier. Waiting at the door and the jetway beyond were the usual contingent of flight attendants and gate personnel. Jake, with a regal nod, had already sailed past them.

“You and your kitty enjoy your vacation,” the male flight attendant who’d made the earlier arrival announcement told her.

“Me-ROOOOW!” was Hamlet’s reply, the outraged sound making all of them jump.

“Thanks. Sorry,” Darla managed with a weak smile as, leaving behind the stunned airline employees, she hurried into the jetway.

She’d left Hamlet’s harness buckled on him for the journey. Still, in the mood he was in, she didn’t dare unzip the carrier enough to snap on his leash and let him trot alongside her. Knowing Hamlet, the minute her back was turned, the wily feline would probably slice the lead with a claw and make a break for freedom.

“Jake, wait up,” Darla called as she hurried through the tunnel, the sound of the carrier’s wheels rumbling loudly behind her. The air in the jetway was warm and humid, unlike the cool, uncirculated air of the plane. If this was a preview of weather to come, she’d done well to pack away her coat.

“I’m going to have to remember that ferocious-cat trick the next time I fly,” Jake said with a grin in the direction of Hamlet’s carrier as Darla caught up. “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten off a plane that fast before.”

“Yeah, it worked pretty well,” Darla conceded with a smile of her own as they headed to the baggage claim area. “And Hamlet seems to know we’re on terra firma. He’s quieted down again.”

“Well, let’s not stress him any more than we have to,” Jake said. “Why don’t I wait for the luggage, and you can take Hamlet outside to the curb to look for Ma.”

“But how will I know her? What does she look like?”

“Everyone in the family says she and I look alike, except I have more gray hair. She dyes hers,” Jake said with a wink.

Darla chuckled. “Okay, that helps. What kind of car does she drive?”

“Last time it was a blue Mustang convertible. Before that it was a big yellow pickup. She swaps out her car every couple of years, though, so for all I know she’s got a Jeep now,” Jake said with an indulgent shake of her curly head, adding, “But don’t worry, I described you to her, so she’ll find you if I’m not there yet when she pulls up.”

They parted ways at the baggage carousel, with Darla wheeling the cat carrier through the glass doors leading outside to the passenger pick-up area. As the doors closed behind her, she was enveloped by a warm breeze redolent with the scent of tropical blooms overlaid by diesel fumes.

“Welcome to South Florida,” Darla told herself, wishing now she’d gone for shorts and a tank top. This might be sweater weather for Floridians, but she’d been up in New York long enough that her blood had thickened. To Hamlet, she added, “Hang in there, boy. I’ll get you some water the minute we hit the hotel.”

She walked a short distance to the passenger pick-up area, where a steady stream of cars was trolling slowly past, their drivers looking for arriving friends and relatives. No old women who looked like Jake, however. No doubt she was still circling around the airport, Darla decided.

Resigned to the wait, she sagged onto a bench and took a deep breath. Immediately, tension she didn’t know she had been holding seemed to seep from her very pores, along with a fine coating of sweat that abruptly enveloped her. She unzipped a side pocket on the carrier and pulled out the in-flight catalogue she’d taken from the plane. She used it to fan a little air into the carrier, relieved to see that the feline showed no further signs of distress as yet. For herself, she dug into the pocket again for the small clutch purse she’d stashed there. She fumbled through it until she found a tissue, which she used to blot her damp forehead.

“Hey, chica, like they say, it’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.”

Darla looked up to see a short, handsome young Hispanic man dressed in knee-length khaki cargo shorts and a Hawaiian-style shirt grinning down at her. His teeth were bright against his neatly cropped black beard, as precisely trimmed as his short black hair. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the pair of designer sunglasses he wore, but he exuded an air of friendly good humor that reminded her of people she’d known back home in Texas.

“Need a cab?”

He gestured to the vehicle behind him with the usual oversized phone number in block numerals along its side and the requisite triangular sign on its roof advertising some expensive gentlemen’s club.

Darla gave a cautious shake of her head in return—she had a rule about not letting herself be chatted up by strange men—and answered, “Thanks, but we’ve got someone picking us up.”

“You sure? What, you got a little doggie in that bag? You don’t want to wait around, let the doggie get too hot.”

“Actually, he’s a cat, and we’re okay,” Darla assured him, smiling as she decided he was likely harmless if persistent. “Our ride should be here any min—”

A sudden blare of horns and squeal of tires echoed in the tunnel-like passage, the sound cutting her words short. Fluent now in the art of being a defensive pedestrian—living in NYC did that to one—Darla reflexively leaped up, grabbed the carrier’s handle, and ducked behind a column. But feeling morbidly compelled to meet possible death head-on anyhow, she ventured a peek around her concrete barricade. She was in time to see a sporty, dark green Mini Cooper convertible zip around the other passing vehicles and slide to a stop mere inches from the taxi’s rear bumper.

The cabbie’s genial grin vanished, and he spouted a litany of outraged Spanish in the driver’s direction. The coupe’s top was down, and for a stunned instant Darla thought the Mini Cooper was driverless. Then, as she eased her way back around the column for a better look, she glimpsed a shock of bright stop-sign-red hennaed hair barely visible over the top of the steering wheel.

“Keep yer pants on, kid,” came an elderly woman’s voice from the convertible’s direction, the accent almost stereotypical “Joisey.” “It’s not like I hit ya.”

The cabbie made a shooing gesture to the unseen driver. “Hey, lady, this is taxi parking only. Get outta here!”

“Shame on you, treating an old lady with such disrespect,” replied the woman. “I’m picking up someone. I got as much right here as you.”

Proving her point, she shut off her car’s engine, as if prepared to wait.

The cabbie gave his head a disgusted shake.

“Snowbirds,” he spat, referring to the hordes of (mostly elderly) people from Canada and the Northeast—most particularly, New York and New Jersey—who made annual pilgrimages to Florida for the winter months before returning home again in the spring. “They can’t drive, and they sure don’t tip.” He turned back to Darla. “This is what you got to look forward to in sunny South Florida. And, word to the wise, chica: Don’t go near a restaurant around four-thirty in the afternoon. Those crazy snowbirds, they’ll stomp their walkers over their own grandkids to make the early bird dinner special.”

With that parting advice, he hopped back into his cab and pulled off in a cloud of exhaust, leaving the unseen elderly driver waving bony arms to dispel the fumes while shouting a few pithy curse words after him.

Wincing, Darla looked around, praying that either Jake or her mother would show up before any further drama ensued. Said prayers were promptly answered, as the terminal’s automatic glass doors slid open again, and she saw Jake stride out, followed by a skycap wheeling a cart with their bags.

“Hey, kid, why are you sitting there? How come you’re not in the car?”

“What do you mean?” Darla replied. “I’m still waiting for your mother.” She looked toward the loading area in confusion. Then, as realization dawned, she focused back on the green Mini Cooper.

The old woman driving it had popped up from the convertible’s front seat like a prairie dog checking out the surrounding. She waved her arms again, and her spiky hennaed hair fluttered like a cockatoo’s crest in the sudden draft of a passing limo. Bright red lips spread in a thin grin, she called, “Jacqueline, bambolina mia, come give your old mama a kiss!”

THREE

“YOU SAID SHE HAD RED HAIR,” NATALIA MARTELLI SHRIEKED to her daughter over the sounds of interstate traffic. Glancing in the rearview mirror at Darla, she yanked a handful of her own cropped scarlet mane, and added, “That’s not red hair. This is red hair.”

“Both hands on the wheel, Ma!” Jake yelled back as the Mini Cooper swerved precariously close to the next lane, currently occupied by a semi. “You kill me in a car wreck, and I swear I’ll come back to haunt you!”

“Eh, I’m a wonderful driver,” the old woman protested, though to Darla’s relief she returned her arthritic hands to the ten-and-two position on the wheel. “I’m the only one in the condo association who hasn’t gotten a ticket yet this year.”

“That’s nothing to brag about, Ma. It’s not even spring yet!”

While the two Martellis bickered, Darla shut her eyes and hugged the cat carrier on her knees more tightly. The one benefit of being crammed into the low backseat of the Mini between two oversized suitcases was the feeling of having additional protection in the event that the little convertible went flying off the highway. On the other hand, it was going to take Jake, her mother, and probably a crowbar to pry her out of the car again once they stopped . . . assuming they made their destination in one piece.

Hamlet gave a questioning meow, and Darla returned it with a reassuring little cluck. Lucky for him, the feline had no idea of the peril he was in. A whiff of his calming spray might have helped her endure the ride with similar aplomb. Too bad that she’d zipped the little spray bottle into her carry-on, now in the trunk behind her. Instead, she was going to have to go the Zen route and breathe deeply while conjuring peaceful images in her head.

Several verdant meadow visualizations and many deep breaths later, the vehicle began to slow. Darla cautiously opened her eyes again. She saw in relief that they were exiting the freeway, not that she was prepared to let her guard down yet. Didn’t the old truism hold that most accidents happen ten miles from one’s house—or, in Darla’s case, hotel?

“You and Hamlet okay back there?” Mrs. Martelli called over her shoulder.

The old woman’s initial introduction to the feline had taken place as they’d loaded the luggage into the Mini. Hamlet had managed not to hiss or growl, seemingly accepting Mrs. Martelli as extended family, being Jake’s mother. In return, Mrs. Martelli had made the appropriate noises of approval while also confiding to Darla that she wasn’t a cat person per se, but did the cat-show thing as a lark.

In the scheme of things, Darla deemed that encounter a great success.

Now she nodded. “Hamlet is snoozing, and my heartbeat’s almost back to normal. No offense, Mrs. Martelli,” she hurriedly added, catching the old woman’s glance in the mirror.

The latter grinned again. This time, Darla saw the unmistakable resemblance between Jake and her mother despite their almost comical height difference. Both had the same strong features and heavy-lidded dark eyes, and both women had more than a hint of wickedness in their smiles.

“None taken, kid. And call me Nattie; everyone else does.”

Nattie drove at a more sedate pace now that they were on the surface streets. Darla began to relax a bit, enjoying the warm breeze and sun on her face. “We’re not in Brooklyn anymore, Hamlet,” she murmured, gaping like the tourist she was.

And it was a whole new world, from both Texas and New York: art deco modern office towers and lofty condo buildings, tropical scents intermingling with auto exhaust. Of course, there were numerous fine examples from that same architectural period in New York City, Darla reminded herself, but here the buildings seemed so much more . . . well, deco. It had to be the use of color, she decided.

For, almost as if she had landed in Munchkinland, she was seeing colors she wasn’t used to seeing—at least, not on homes. Stucco ruled this architectural world in lieu of brick or brownstone, in shades of pink and blue and green and yellow. In fact, so common were these sherbetlike colors that the occasional white structure stuck out like the proverbial opposable digit, as James would have termed it. Overall, the city appeared to be quite a splendid place to take a vacation.

A sense of excitement washed through her like an unexpected ocean wave. Nothing boring about this place. Heck, maybe she should open a second Pettistone’s Fine Books location in South Florida, just to have an excuse to come back on a regular basis.

“Up ahead is the downtown business and historic district, where yer hotel and the convention center are at,” Nattie announced as she slid through a yellow traffic light. “We’re looking for Las Olas Boulevard. That’s where the hotel is, and it’s the street where all the tourists go. You got yer restaurants, yer bars, yer fancy-pantsy shops. Oh, yeah, and there’s the Riverwalk, too.”

“Riverwalk?” Darla echoed in surprise, recalling their hotel’s name, the Waterview. “I thought we were going to be near the ocean.”

“Sure, we keep driving, and we’ll be at Port Everglades in a few minutes, if you want to hop a cruise ship. But this is Florida. You got yer water everywhere you look. The hotel’s on the New River that comes out of the Everglades and dumps into the Atlantic not far from here.”

Darla nodded, feeling a bit let down. With her hazy grasp of Fort Lauderdale geography, she’d assumed their accommodations would be overlooking the Atlantic, with plenty of sand and surf. Instead, it seemed the hotel had a view of some placid stream that meandered through the city.

“Don’t worry, it’s not yer run-of-the-mill river,” Nattie assured her, seeming to sense her disappointment. “It runs fast, and there’s all kinds of eddies and whirlpools in it. And they say that, back in the old days, the water was clear enough you could see sharks swimming up it.”

“Sharks?” Jake interrupted. “Are you sure about that, Ma?”

“Would I lie to you?” Nattie gave her scarlet-crested head a vigorous shake, her expression offended. “Last year, I took a part-time job on one of them river taxis that rides up and down for the tourists. The boat people gave me a mike and this whole big spiel to memorize. I got to talk all about Fort Lauderdale history. Why the stories I learned—”

She broke off and swerved around an immense fallen palm frond that practically blocked the lane. The unexpected lane change drew a horn blast from the lumbering sedan behind them.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for the National Bestselling Black Cat Bookshop Mysteries
 
“Fun…kept me guessing to the end!”—Rebecca M. Hale, New York Times bestselling author of How to Paint a Cat
 
“A charming, cozy read, especially if cats are your cup of tea.”—Elaine Viets, national bestselling author of Catnapped!

“[Hamlet is] our favorite sleuthing cat.”—Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

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