Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Alibi

Moments later, I landed with my butt on the dead man’s head, ricocheted away, and landed—on all fours—right next to Dooley.

I blinked a few times, wondering what was going on, when suddenly Dooley bellowed, “Timber!” and grabbed me by the shoulder, giving me a vigorous shove.

We managed to jump out of the way as the dead writer fell out of his chair and crashed to the floor. He bounced once, then lay immobile, a cloud of dust kicking up.

Dooley and I both coughed and stared at the dead man, who stared right back at us.

It was not a pleasant sight, nor was it the proudest moment in my career as a feline sleuth. Feline sleuths—or any sleuths for that matter—don’t make a habit of thumping murder victims on the noggin—twice!—and knocking them out of their chairs. It’s just not done. At least not to my knowledge—which now extended to at least one movie in all of the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel franchises, including but not restricted to Garage Sale Mysteries, Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, Fixer Upper Mysteries and Hailey Dean Mysteries .

Before we could respond, though, we were surrounded. Surrounded by humans. Lucky for us they were all humans we were familiar with: Odelia, Marge, Tex, Uncle Alec, Gran, and even Odelia’s solid cop boyfriend, Chase Kingsley.

“What do we have here?” asked Alec with a frown. “Two cats and a dead man.”

“Add a parrot and you have all the makings of a pretty funny joke,” Tex quipped and laughed loudly at his own joke. When no one else laughed, he quickly cut the laughter short.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We slipped and fell.”

It was a terribly embarrassing thing to say. I don’t normally slip and fall. Then again, I’m only feline, after all. These things happen to the best of cats, right?

“What’s that?” asked Odelia suddenly, pointing at something on the floor.

It was a cream-colored envelope, with a logo embossed on the front.

“Don’t touch it,” said Uncle Alec when Marge made a move to pick it up. “Abe!” he bellowed. “Come in here a second, will ya?!”

Abe came running. “What, what, what?” the voluminous man asked, panting.

Uncle Alec pointed down at the envelope and Abe frowned. “Huh. Where did that come from? And why have you moved the body without my explicit permission?”

There was a slight pause, then Gran said, “He fell.”

“He fell?”

“He fell,” Gran repeated. “Keeled over. It happens.”

Abe didn’t look convinced. With the air of a man who’d done that kind of thing a thousand times before, he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves, bent down with some effort, and picked up the envelope, then turned it over in his hands. “Buckerfield Publishing.”

“That’s Chris Ackerman’s publisher,” said Marge, who knew her way around books—being a librarian and all. “Or at least it was his publisher. I read somewhere that he recently signed a ten-book deal with Franklin Cooper, rumored to have netted him a neat sum.”

“Well, open it,” said Gran.

Abe cleared his throat officiously, then opened the envelope and extracted a sheet of paper. Like the envelope, it was beige and embossed with the same logo. He quickly scanned the document’s contents and frowned. “Signed Malcolm Buckerfield. Says here he’s making Ackerman a counteroffer. Practically begs him not to change publishers. Offers him…” Abe gulped a little, like a turkey about to gobble up a particularly tasty morsel. “Holy mackerel.”

“Just spit it out, Abe,” said Uncle Alec.

Abe’s eyes rose over the document to meet Alec’s. “Ten million smackeroos if you please.”

“Nice,” croaked Gran. “This Chuck Peckerwood was some rich dude.” She directed a reverent look at the dead man. “Too bad he’s dead. We might have hit it off.”

“Instead, someone hit him off,” Uncle Alec grunted.

Abe suddenly fixed his eyes on me. “What the hell is that cat doing in here?”

Harriet and Brutus were reluctantly wandering the streets around the library. They were nice streets, on the whole, featuring nice houses, but they lacked a certain oomph. The kind of oomph Harriet got from watching The Bachelor , for instance, or The Kardashians . To be honest she was more of a homebody. Perched on her throne—a nice comfy red velvet cushion—in the Poole living room, grooming herself and watching her favorite reality shows, she was in her element. Roaming these streets at night talking to random cats? Not!

“I don’t like this, Brutus,” she said now. “Let’s go home.”

“But we haven’t talked to a single cat.”

“And we won’t. Isn’t it obvious they’re all home? Doing what we should be doing?”

“Nookie?”

She giggled. “Watching The Bachelor , you big doofus. With nookie for dessert.”

Brutus didn’t respond. He wasn’t as big on The Bachelor as Harriet and Gran were. He probably liked The Bachelorette a lot more, even though with Brutus it was hard to be sure. Lately he’d been in one of his silent moods. Not talking much. Harriet hated it.

“Why don’t we leave the sleuthing to Max and Dooley,” she tried again. “This is more Max’s thing anyway. He’s the one who wants to become a super sleuth. He’s the one who’s so obsessed with these silly Hallmark shows, figuring they’ll teach him everything he needs to know.”

“Well, he’s got a point,” said Brutus. “They are some pretty neat shows.”

Harriet scowled at her mate. “Neat? What’s so neat about people looking for clues the whole time?”

“They’re solving murders. Someone should,” said Brutus vaguely.

“The police should. That’s what they’re paid to do. Like your human Chase. The rest of us? We should simply live our lives, oblivious and happy.”

Brutus cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t let Max hear you say that. He wants to contribute.”

“Max is misguided. And so is Dooley. It’s all Odelia’s fault, really. She should never have gotten us involved in all of her amateur sleuthing. I mean, she’s a reporter, for crying out loud. When did reporters get it into their heads that they should be crime fighters?”

“I guess it kinda goes with the territory?” said Brutus.

“No, it doesn’t.” Harriet had given this matter a great deal of thought. “Besides, it’s dangerous. Criminals don’t like it when people mess with their livelihoods. Odelia should leave well enough alone, and so should Max. Before you know it one of those murderers or whatever decides to strike back and then where does that leave us? Without a human.”

This seemed to give Brutus pause, just like Harriet had known it would. “Do you think one of these murderers might target Odelia?”

“Of course! What does a murderer do? He murders. Like a plumber unclogs pipes or a coin collector collects coins, a murderer murders. It’s what they do. So if you’re going to try and stop them, they’re bound to get upset and murder you before you know it.”

Brutus pondered this. “Mh,” he said. “Something in that.”

“Of course there’s something in that. If there’s one thing you should know about me by now, Brutus, it’s that I’m always right.”

Brutus didn’t seem convinced, and soon lapsed into silence once more. It irked Harriet a great deal. She didn’t mind a silent mate—she talked enough for two—but she had the impression he wasn’t consistently paying attention, and that, she simply couldn’t stand.

A scrawny cat with matted fur crossed the road in front of them, stared for a moment, then scrambled off.

“Shouldn’t we talk to him?” Brutus asked. “Ask him what he saw?”