Софи Райан - The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

PRAISE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SECOND CHANCE CAT MYSTERIES

“A surefire winner.”

—Miranda James, New York Times bestselling author

“An affirmation of friendship as well as a tantalizing whodunit, The Whole Cat and Caboodle marks a promising start to a series sure to appeal to anyone who loves a combination of felonies and felines.”

— Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Ryan kicks off the new Second Chance Cat Mystery series with a lot of excitement. Her small Maine town is filled with unique characters . . . This tale is enjoyable from beginning to end; readers will look forward to more.”

— RT Book Reviews

“Cozy readers will enjoy the new Second Chance Cat series.”

— Gumshoe Review

“If you enjoy a cozy mystery featuring a lovable protagonist with a bevy of staunch friends, a shop you’d love to explore, plenty of suspects, and a super smart cat, you’ll love The Whole Cat and Caboodle .”

—MyShelf.com

“Enjoyable . . . Remember, everyone has a secret, even the cat.”

— Kings River Life Magazine

“I am absolutely crazy about this series . . . The cast of characters is phenomenal . . . I loved every minute of this book.”

—Melissa’s Mochas, Mysteries & Meows

Titles by Sofie Ryan

The Whole Cat and Caboodle

Buy a Whisker

A Whisker of Trouble

Telling Tails

The Fast and the Furriest

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

Published by Berkley

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2018 by Darlene Ryan

Excerpt from A Whisker of Trouble copyright © 2016 by Darlene Ryan

Penguin Random House 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 Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

BERKLEY is a registered trademark and BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the B colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Ebook ISBN: 9781101991237

First Edition: February 2018

Cover art by Mary Ann Lasher

Cover design by Katie Anderson

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.

Version_1

Acknowledgments

As always, I appreciate the support and encouragement of my friends, both online and off. Special thanks go to my editor, Jessica Wade, as well as Miranda Hill and Tara O’Connor. My agent, Kim Lionetti dons many hats on my behalf: advisor; manager; hand-holder; and cheerleader, and wears them all well. A huge thank-you goes to my readers. Thank you for embracing Sarah, Elvis, and the Angels. I’ve gotten to know so many of you from your e-mails and notes and it’s been wonderful to meet so many fellow cat people. And last but never least, thank you to Patrick and Lauren for always being on my team.

Contents

Praise for the Second Chance Cat Mysteries

Titles by Sofie Ryan

Title Page

Copyright

Acknowledgments

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

Excerpt from A Whisker of Trouble

About the Author

Chapter 1

I set the sandwich on top of the dresser. I could tell right away that Elvis was not sold on my idea of supper. He gave the blue bubble glass plate a suspicious look and his eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say a word. He was exceedingly polite, for the most part.

Not to mention he was a cat.

“What? You don’t like it?” I asked. “It’s peanut butter, dill pickle and bacon.”

His whiskers twitched at the last word. In Elvis’s world everything went better with bacon, except maybe peanut butter and dill pickles.

I picked up half the sandwich and took a bite. “It’s good. I swear,” I mumbled around a mouthful of creamy, salty, crispy goodness. Elvis may have been polite, but he wasn’t a stickler with respect to table manners. “You know, this isn’t that different from the real Elvis’s favorite sandwich,” I told him. “Peanut butter, banana and bacon.”

The cat made a huffy sound through his nose at me. As far as he was concerned he was the “real” Elvis, a sleek black cat with a rakish scar across his nose. I reached over and stroked his fur. The top of his head was warm from the early-evening August sun. He closed his green eyes and began to purr.

I set my food down and reached for the mug that held my coffee. It was one of twelve I’d bought when a diner up in Belfast had closed and auctioned off its contents back in the spring. The mugs had replaced the mismatched yard sale collection we’d had in the staff room. I’d also bought a mint green Hamilton Beach milk shake maker and a box of 45s from the diner’s jukebox to sell in the shop.

My shop, Second Chance, was a repurpose store, offering everything from furniture to housewares to musical instruments—most of it from the ’50s through the ’70s. It was part secondhand shop, part thrift store. Some items even got new lives, like the tub chair that in its previous incarnation had actually been a bathtub, or the china cups and saucers that were now tiny planters.

The store was located in an eighteen hundreds redbrick house, just where Mill Street began to climb uphill, in the town of North Harbor, Maine. We were on the edge of the downtown, about a fifteen-minute walk from the harbor front and close to a highway off-ramp, which made it easy for tour buses to find us.

Elvis and I had stayed late to work on my latest project: turning a small metal table with a glass top and a glass shelf into a bar cart. I’d brought the sandwich makings with me for supper, along with a bit of dry cat food for Elvis so we didn’t have to go home and come back again. Second Chance had been busy all day. We’d been open for more than a year now and I was tickled to see that some of the same tourists who had discovered us just a few months after we’d opened were coming back again. I was happy the repurpose shop was still busy as summer began to wind down, and I was hoping that would continue into the fall, but so many customers meant that I didn’t get a lot of time to work on new items to add to our dwindling inventory.

Right now we were replenishing our stock with things we were selling on consignment for Clayton McNamara. Clayton had lived in North Harbor all his life. In fact he’d been romantically involved with my grandmother—when they were both in the first grade. Their short-lived romance had ended when she kissed another man. In Gram’s defense he did have two peanut butter cookies in his lunchbox.

At the urging of his daughter and his nephew, my friend Glenn, the old man was trying to make some space in his small house and clear out several outbuildings on the property. I’d bought some pieces of furniture and kitchen items from one of those buildings. They were projects I hoped to get to in the fall. The rest, most of which had belonged to Clayton’s father, was being sold in the shop. We were getting ready to tackle the house next and we were also planning a yard sale for September. Work was pretty much all I’d been focusing on for the last couple of weeks and that was fine with me.