Клер Донелли - The Big Kitty

“ The Big Kitty is 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 The KenKen Killings

“A paws-itively winning team! The Big Kitty 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, author of Double Booked for Death , a Black Cat Bookshop Mystery

“Applause for paws—Sunny and Shadow take Best in Show!”

—Susan Wittig Albert, author of Cat’s Claw , a Pecan Springs Mystery

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

—Carolyn Hart, author of Dead by Midnight

“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. Cozy mystery lovers will adore Shadow and pine for many more adventures for him and Sunny.”

—Miranda James, national bestselling author of the Cat in the Stacks Mysteries

The Big Kitty

Claire Donally

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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. The publisher does not have any control over

and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

THE BIG KITTY

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

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / May 2012

Copyright © 2012 by Tekno Books.

Cover illustration by Tony Mauro.

Cover design by George Long.

Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or

electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of

copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 978-1-101-58076-9

BERKLEY ®PRIME CRIME

Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

BERKLEY ®PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is

stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the

author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Mom, who suffered through the first draft of this story, and to editors John Helfers of Tekno Books and Shannon Jamieson Vazquez of Berkley Prime Crime, who suffered through the succeeding ones.

Additional thanks to my niece Jackie, to Mike, Denise, Jack, Kathleen, and Bill and Karen for their cat stories.

And of course, to Lily, Mulie, Belle, Dinoot, and Theo—especially Theo—for practical cat demonstrations.

A Note from the Author

When I first discussed the idea of a cat mystery set in Maine, I thought, “What better location than the town of Kittery? It even sounds right!”

With all the outlet stores, the nearby city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and a naval shipyard bringing people from all over the country into the area, Kittery seemed ideal.

Except …

Kittery might be a little too real. It’s a fairly small town, and it didn’t seem quite fair, smearing a murder all over a real place. You can get away with killing lots of people (at least on paper) in large, impersonal metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, or even New Orleans. But there’s a reason why small-town murders tend to happen in fictitious places like St. Mary Mead, Pecan Springs, Texas … or Cabot Cove, Maine.

So I picked up Kittery and sort of smooshed it together with the neighboring township of York Harbor to create Kittery Harbor, a safely make-believe locale with its own politics, movers and shakers … and a cat lady. But as I worked on the plot, the specter of county politics arose, so I decided to secede the whole area from the real world.

Elmet is the name of an ancient Celtic kingdom that controlled part of what is now Yorkshire, England. So, Elmet County is a sort of parallel universe to Maine’s York County. It’s close to Portsmouth, there are lots of outlet stores nearby, and the town fronts on a harbor but there are still farms in the hinterland. Christopher Levett, an early settler in Maine, is commemorated with a fort in the real world. In Elmet County, he gives his name to the county seat.

I had a lot of fun creating a world that connects with reality in general, but definitely not in particulars.

No people were hurt in the creation of this literary crime (if you don’t count the author’s hair tearing), and all places and politics are definitely made up.

Any resemblance to real people, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

However, some cat caregivers may recognize a few traits exhibited by certain feline friends …

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The watcher crouchedin the darkness between cars, staring through the plate glass of the storefront at the woman inside.

He liked the way her dark hair spread out in a mane behind her head, gleaming in the glow from the screen she was watching.

A splash of light from a passing car invaded his hiding space, and he crouched lower. Not that he needed to worry about passersby. All but two of the shops in this little strip were already dark, and the food store was down at the other end of the block. Besides, even if someone were to stroll by, it was unlikely that they would spot him in the shadows.