Final Catcall: A Magical Cats Mystery Read online

  Praise for the New York Times Bestselling Magical Cats Mysteries

  Cat Trick

  “An entertaining series.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “The mystery is well plotted, though the suspects aren’t all that obvious. Small-town charm and a charming cat duo make this every cat fancier’s dream.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  Copycat Killing

  “I’ve been a huge fan of this series from the very start, and I am delighted that this new book meets my expectations and then some. . . . Cats with magic powers, a library, good friends who look out for each other, and small-town coziness come together in perfect unison. If you are a fan of Miranda James’s Cat in the Stacks Mysteries, you will want to read [this series].”

  —MyShelf.com

  “This is a really fun series and I’ve read them all. Each book improves on the last one. Being a cat lover myself, I’m looking at my cat in a whole new light.”

  —Once Upon a Romance “A fun whodunit. . . . Fans will appreciate this entertaining amateur sleuth.”

  —Genre Go Round Reviews “This charming series continues on a steady course as the intrepid Kathleen has two mysteries to snoop into. . . . Readers who are fans of cats and cozies will want to add this series to their must-read lists.”

  —Romantic Times

  Sleight of Paw

  “Kelly’s appealing cozy features likable, relatable characters set in an amiable location. The author continues to build on the promise of her debut novel, carefully developing her characters and their relationships.”

  —Romantic Times

  Curiosity Thrilled the Cat

  “A great cozy that will quickly have you anxiously waiting for the next release so you can spend more time with the people of Mayville Heights.”

  —Mysteries and My Musings Blog “If you love mystery and magic, this is the book for you!”

  —Debbie’s Book Blog

  “This start of a new series offers an engaging cast of human characters and two appealing, magically inclined felines. Kathleen is a likable, believable heroine and the magical cats are amusing.”

  —Romantic Times

  Also Available from Sofie Kelly

  Curiosity Thrilled the Cat

  Sleight of Paw

  Copycat Killing

  Cat Trick

  FINAL CATCALL

  A MAGICAL CATS MYSTERY

  SOFIE KELLY

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2013

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-10162773-0

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents

  Praise

  Also Available from Sofie Kelly

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  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

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe a debt of gratitude to many people for the success of the Magical Cats Mysteries. Thank you to all the readers who have embraced Owen, Hercules, Kathleen and everyone else in Mayville Heights. Thank you as well to my agent, Kim Lionetti, whose guidance and enthusiasm keep me on track. My editor, Jessica Wade, makes every book better and does so with unfailing good humor—and a little help from her assistant, Jesse Feldman. Thanks to both of you. Fellow writer Laura Alden can always be counted on for a pep talk and a laugh when I need one. Chief Tim Sletten, the now-retired police chief of the Red Wing, Minnesota, police department, once again answered a barrage of questions and was very gracious when I played with the facts. Any errors are mine, not his.

  And as always, thank you to Patrick and Lauren, the two best things that ever happened to me.

  PROLOGUE

  The cats were waiting in the kitchen. I kicked off my shoes and knelt beside them. Owen immediately began sniffing the sling on my left arm. Hercules climbed up on my lap and licked my chin. I took a shaky breath against the prickle of tears I could feel about to fall. I wasn’t going to sit around on the floor crying. I was going to fix things with Marcus. I was going to keep apologizing until he listened. The problem was that when Detective Marcus Gordon was hurt, it wasn’t easy to get him to listen.

  I sat on the footstool in the living room and tried his number. His cell phone went to voice mail. (He didn’t text.) There was no answer at his house, either. I heard something clatter to the floor in the kitchen. I went back out to find Owen and Hercules with the keys to my truck lying between them. “You’re not exactly subtle,” I said, bending to pick up the key ring. “Then again, if I see him in person, maybe I can get him to listen.”

  Owen meowed loudly. I looked at Hercules, and after a moment’s hesitation, he gave a soft meow as well. I knew it was a bad idea to be driving one-handed, but I was past caring.

  The cats followed me out to the truck, and there didn’t seem to be any reason not to let them come along. Owen looked out the passenger window while Herc sat beside me and stared out the windshield.

  Marcus wasn’t down by the tents set up alongside the water beside the Riverwalk for tomorrow’s food tasting. A couple of hours earlier Maggie and I—and Hercules—had been there while the police took away a killer we’d helped catch.

  “Are you all right?” Maggie had asked as we stood on the grass next to the boardwalk. She touched my shoulder, which had been twisted almost out of its socket, and I winced. “Okay, obviously you’re not.” She pulled out her cell phone.

  “What are you doing?” I said. I had my good arm wrapped around Hercules. The air had gotten colder when the sun went down, but holding the little black-and-white cat was like having a portable heater.

  “Calling Roma.” She shrugged. “I know you won’t go to the emergency room, and since you’re stubborn as a mule, it seems appropriate to get her to take a look at that shoulder.”

  Roma was a vet, and one of my closest friends, but she also had first-aid training, so i
t wasn’t really that outlandish of an idea to call her. I talked quietly to Hercules until Maggie put her phone away.

  “Roma is going to meet us at your house in a little while.” She gestured at Hercules. “How did he end up here?”

  “The cats like to ride in the truck. I guess I didn’t see him jump out when I got out.” I figured that was more believable than the truth: He walked through the closed truck door because that happens to be his superpower. Maggie didn’t know that both my cats had some unbelievable and unexplainable abilities. No one did.

  A few minutes later Marcus came out of the tent. Maggie had spotted Liam Stone, one of the organizers of the food festival, and had gone to speak to him. Marcus stared at me for a long moment and then walked across the grass to me.

  “Is your shoulder all right?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Someone should take a look at it.” His voice was cold and emotionless.

  “Maggie’s already taken care of that.” This wasn’t the first time I’d gotten mixed up in one of his cases, but it was the first time I’d seen him this angry. “I tried to call you,” I said. I stopped and looked away for a moment. “What did you want me to do?”

  I expected him to say, “Nothing,” but instead he just looked at me. “Trust me,” he said, pulling a hand through his dark, wavy hair.

  “I do trust you.”

  He looked past me, over my shoulder. Then his blue eyes came back to my face. “No, you don’t, Kathleen. I almost think you trust those cats more than you trust me.”

  “I’m sorry.” I was barely able to get the words out, and my heart felt like it was pounding in the hollow at the base of my throat.

  His lips pulled into a tight line. “Just once, Kathleen—just once—it would be nice if you had a little faith in me.”

  Maggie had started back across the grass toward us.

  “You can go,” Marcus said. He didn’t look at me, and his voice was as cold as winter ice in the lake. He turned and walked away, and I felt tears start to slide down my face. I’d been trying to talk to him ever since.

  He wasn’t at the police station. I drove all over the downtown, but there was no sign of Marcus or his car. I ground my teeth against the gnawing pain in my shoulder and drove out to his little house. It was in darkness and there was no navy blue SUV in the driveway.

  I tried his cell again and his home phone. Voice mail both times.

  “He doesn’t want to talk to me.” Hercules leaned against my side and Owen walked across the front seat to rub his furry gray cheek against my good hand. “Let’s go home,” I said.

  I pulled into the driveway, turned off the truck and yanked the key out of the ignition. “I ruined everything with Marcus,” I said, sucking in a shaky breath. “It’s over, and maybe it never really got started.”

  I walked around the side of the house with the cats trailing me. I didn’t see the chair until I almost fell over it. It was sitting on the path in front of the back stairs.

  My rocking chair. The one Marcus had been fixing for me.

  It wasn’t in pieces anymore. It was all there, every joint strong and tight, with a new leather back and seat. It was back together, every single piece.

  The chair looked wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

  But not nearly as wonderful as the long-legged detective who was sitting in the shadows on my back step.

  I felt my knees go rubbery with relief. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I said.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d say that.” The denim-clad legs stretched and stood up. At the same moment Hercules began to hiss because he could see what I now saw.

  It wasn’t Marcus waiting by my back door.

  1

  It was Andrew.

  Andrew, who was part of the reason I’d ended up in Mayville Heights, Minnesota. Andrew, who I’d once thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with in Boston, until we had a fight and he went off on a fishing trip with his friends and came home married to a waitress from a fifties-themed diner.

  “What—what are you doing here?” I stammered.

  “I came to see you,” he said. He gave me that smile my friend Lise back in Boston always said would melt the elastic in your underpants.

  “I don’t understand.” I’d been living in Mayville Heights for a year and a half. Why was he here now? “What do you want?” My hair was coming out of its ponytail. I pulled off the elastic and shook it loose.

  He shrugged. “I want you.”

  “I’m serious, Andrew.” It was late and I was exhausted. I didn’t want to play word games.

  “So am I.” He gestured at my arm. “What happened?”

  Hercules had stopped hissing, but both cats had moved in front of me so Andrew couldn’t get any closer without tripping over them.

  “It’s not a big deal. I wrenched my shoulder. The sling is just to keep me from using it for a day or two.”

  Andrew was studying me, his green eyes serious. I wondered what he was thinking. My hair was longer, and I was a little thinner because I walked so much. I probably looked rumpled and sweaty and tired. That was certainly how I felt. He looked good. His sandy hair was a bit shorter than the last time I’d seen him, but he still had the same broad shoulders, strong arms and, of course, that smile.

  “So you’re all right?”

  I nodded. “I’m fine. Andrew, what are you doing here?”

  I’d spoken to him exactly one time since I came to Mayville Heights, and then only because I’d needed his help when it looked as though Maggie might be a suspect in a murder investigation—another one of Marcus’s cases.

  I suddenly remembered the rocking chair. It was still sitting in front of the back steps. “Was that here when you got here?” I asked before Andrew could answer my first question.

  He nodded. “It’s a nice piece. Where did you get it?”

  Marcus had done a beautiful job. The seat and the back of the rocker had been reupholstered with what looked to be black leather, and I was guessing the finish on the wood was walnut. “A friend of mine was clearing out an old house,” I said.

  Hercules seemed to decide then that he was tired of all the talking. He stalked around Andrew, climbed the steps and meowed loudly at the porch door. The end of his tail was twitching, a sure sign that he was annoyed. At least he hadn’t done what he usually did—walk directly through the heavy wooden door.

  “Are the cats yours?”

  I nodded and pointed from one to the other. “The gray tabby is Owen and that’s Hercules at the door.”

  Owen made a low murp at the sound of his name. He was still watching Andrew, and his whiskers were twitching, which meant he was still deciding whether this was someone to like or someone who should get the kitty cold shoulder.

  “Andrew, it’s late—” I began.

  “Come home,” he blurted.

  I looked around. “I am home.”

  “I mean come home to Boston. With me. Give us another chance. You wanted to know why I’m here? That’s why.”

  Why now, of all nights, did he have to show up at my door? Why couldn’t it have been any of the other five-hundred-plus nights since I’d left Boston?

  “There is no ‘us,’” I said, exhaling softly. “And I have a life here. I have friends. I have a job.”

  “There’s a life waiting for you back in Boston. And friends. And your family.” He swiped a hand over his chin.

  I knew that at this time of night it would be covered with red-gold stubble that would scrape my cheek if I laid my face against his. Why on earth had I remembered that?

  I rubbed my left arm with my free hand. At my feet Owen meowed softly.

  “You’re tired, Kathleen,” Andrew said, his expression softening. He reached a hand toward me and then pulled it back. “I’m going back to my hotel. I’ll pick you up for breakfast in the morning. We can talk then.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Owen s
till eyeing Andrew suspiciously.

  Andrew shook his head. “No, I’m not. Anyway, would having breakfast with me really be so bad? It has to be better than trying to cook for yourself with only one hand.”

  I had to admit that having one of Eric’s breakfast sandwiches did sound better than trying to make oatmeal and cut up fruit one-handed. “Okay,” I said. “Seven thirty?”

  He nodded, then gestured at the rocking chair. “Unlock your door and I’ll put that inside for you.”

  I hesitated. I couldn’t get the rocker into the porch one-handed, but I didn’t want to leave it outside all night.

  “I’m not going to use it as an excuse to stay, Kath.” He made an X on his chest with his index finger. “I promise.”

  As long as I’d known Andrew he’d made that gesture to show he was serious about something. After I left Boston I would feel my chest tighten if I saw someone else do it. He wasn’t a bad guy.

  “All right. Thank you,” I said.

  Hercules narrowed his eyes at me as I unlocked the door. I snapped on the porch light and he jumped up on the bench by the back door. Owen darted in around my legs, and Andrew brought up the rear with the rocking chair.

  He set it down in the middle of the floor and pulled out a set of keys. The little red car I’d noticed parked on the street must be his. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. He leaned down as he passed me and kissed the top of my head, then was gone.

  I sank onto the bench next to Hercules. He touched the sling with one paw and cocked his head to one side. “I’m okay,” I said in answer to the question I knew he was asking.

  Owen launched himself onto my lap. He walked his paws up my chest, stuck his face close to mine and meowed.

  “That was Andrew,” I said. “But you know that.”

  Herc scraped his claws on my sling. When I looked at him again, he scrunched up his furry black-and-white face.

  “Yes, that Andrew.” The cats exchanged a look. On occasion I got the feeling that they had some kind of telepathic communication going.