Клэр Донелли - Catch As Cat Can

Praise for the New York Times bestselling Sunny & Shadow Mysteries

“Small-town Maine hasn’t been this dangerous since Jessica Fletcher started finding dead bodies in Cabot Cove! In this debut, Sunny Coolidge, with the able assistance of a ‘big kitty’ named Shadow, proves she has the skills to make a successful amateur sleuth.”

—Miranda James, New York Times bestselling author of the Cat in the Stacks Mysteries

“Deftly combines heartwarming humor and nail-biting suspense for a fun read that leaves you looking forward to Sunny and Shadow’s next adventure.”

—Ali Brandon, New York Times bestselling author of Plot Boiler , a Black Cat Bookshop Mystery

“A purrfect debut. Four paws up and a tip of the tail.”

—Carolyn Hart, New York Times bestselling author of What the Cat Saw

“A charming, witty, exciting new entry in the genre, featuring the best-realized and most personable fictional character on four legs. You’ll love Shadow. And Sunny’s fun, too.”

—Parnell Hall, author of NYPD Puzzle

“With a dandy plot and comic relief provided by Shadow, Last Licks continues a pleasing series packed with suspense and amiable characters.”

— Richmond Times-Dispatch

“A must-read for all ailurophiles.”

—Melissa’s Mochas, Mysteries & More

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Claire Donally

THE BIG KITTY

CAT NAP

LAST LICKS

HISS AND TELL

CATCH AS CAT CAN

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

CATCH AS CAT CAN

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with Tekno Books

Copyright © 2016 by Tekno Books.

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.

BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

For more information, visit penguin.com.

eBook ISBN: 9780698167100

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / May 2016

Cover illustration by Mary Ann Lasher.

Cover design by Colleen Reinhart.

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.

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For Mom, who always liked dogs, and Belle, who always loved Jack.

Also, many thanks to Larry Segriff of Tekno Books for staying the course in difficult times and to Michelle Vega, who inherited me.

And finally, many, many thanks and a loud purr to all the people who read these stories and enjoyed them.

Contents

Praise for the New York Times bestselling Sunny & Shadow Mysteries

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Claire Donally

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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

1

The wind offthe water was frigid enough to cut through the thickest coat. He shivered, hunching his shoulders as his eyes flicked around, searching for someplace warm. Bright winter sunshine was giving way to darkness now. He’d spent the day wandering around town, mooching a bit here and there, keeping out of the cold, and watching . . . always watching.

Somehow, though, he kept winding up back here, unable to make up his mind. Side by side stood the office and the store. Looking through one large window, he could see her, all bundled up against the chill, her eyes on a computer screen.

Maybe that was just as well. If she spotted him, there’d be trouble. She’d let him know pretty clearly that she didn’t want him around there. But he didn’t care. She could say what she liked, he knew he could walk in there and do as he pleased. He almost decided to tap on the glass, but there was the other window, the store. He’d spent a lot of time working on the owner and it had paid off—he’d been generous. But there was generous, and there was more. And he wanted more, even if he had to steal it.

How to do that? He could wait till a customer entered and the owner was distracted. Or . . . he could just do it under the owner’s nose and dare him to do anything. Again, he was pretty sure he could get away with it. A quick peek showed that the store looked completely empty right now. If he managed to find a way in, he could take whatever he wanted, no problem.

So—love, or greed?

He never got a chance to make up his mind. The choice was yanked away from him as a hand descended, caught him by the scruff of the neck, and raised him high in the air.

His breath came out in a furious hiss as he dangled helplessly, his tail lashing in frustration. He tried to twist round, but he couldn’t bring his teeth or claws to bear on this stranger. All he caught was a glimpse of a hairy face, a smoky stink . . .

And then a new voice started angrily shouting.

*

Sunny Coolidge scowledat the computer screen, sighing. The shopping cart software on the website still wasn’t working. And since online commerce was the lifeblood of the Maine Adventure X-perience—MAX for short—failure of the payment system meant big trouble. The upgrade for the shopping cart was supposed to fit in seamlessly, but now it wasn’t talking with the rest of the site.

Just like one of those girls in middle school suddenly bullying kids she’s known since first grade, Sunny thought. And with about as much reason.

She kept poking at the source code, but she couldn’t find the problem string. If she didn’t make any progress soon, she’d have to roll the whole site back to its previous configuration and hope that didn’t leave any exploitable security flaws.

Good thing it’s a slow day, she thought. Tuesdays didn’t see a lot of tourist action in the dead of winter. Things would pick up a bit later in the week, with people booking romantic weekends in the local bed-and-breakfast scene. That’s why she’d taken the opportunity to install the new shopping cart and had spent the whole day trying to get it to play nicely with the rest of the site software—or at least notice it.

Sudden noise outside brought her eyes from the screen to the big plate glass window at the front of the office, just in time to see a furry gray streak taking cover under a parked car.

What’s Shadow gotten into this time? Sunny wondered.

Her dad had already called earlier in the day with a missing cat alert. That had become all too common lately, Shadow hitching rides into town with her. Since he’d adopted her more than a year ago, Sunny knew the big gray cat was a wanderer. But the situation had gotten a lot worse since an attractive nuisance had opened next door to the MAX office.

Among his many business enterprises, Sunny’s boss, Oliver Barnstable, owned a bit of real estate here in Kittery Harbor. Specifically, he rented out the row of shops around the MAX office—the New Stores, as the locals called them, although they’d been built back when Sunny’s dad was a kid. Names tended to stick in Kittery Harbor—the folks were on the conservative side.