Literally Murder (A Black Cat Bookshop Mystery) (2 page)

“So what brings you here on a freezing cold day like this?” Darla asked her with a smile.

The old woman gave her a wide-eyed look. “Why, I wanted to know all about your upcoming trip to Florida. Robert said it had something to do with Hamlet, but for the life of me I couldn’t guess what.”

“I don’t know why he made it sound so mysterious. Hamlet is going to be the guest of honor at this year’s Feline Society of America National Championship show.”

“How exciting! But however did you ever manage that?”

“Remember that video of Hamlet at the martial arts tournament that Robert and I competed in last year? You know, the one of Hamlet out on the mat mimicking me as I did my karate routine? Well, the video went viral. That means—”

“Really, Darla, I know what viral means,” Mary Ann replied with a smile, cutting Darla off with another wave of her gloved hand. “I am quite Internet savvy, if I do say so, myself. Why, I even have three boards on Pinterest now.”

Since Darla had no clue what Pinterest was, she conceded the win to the older woman.

“Sorry, Mary Ann. Anyhow, when you combine all the different videos of Hamlet’s performance at the tournament that people uploaded, he had close to a million online hits, and that was back before Christmas. When Jake saw that, she called her mother in Fort Lauderdale. Apparently, Mrs. Martelli is good friends with the man who is president of the Feline Society of America, which is headquartered there. Jake suggested that her mom should tell the FSA folks to bring Hamlet down to Florida as their celebrity guest for this year’s annual championship show.”

Darla smiled. After all, who could resist a cat who mimicked his human with such sly accuracy? Even she laughed every time she saw the video, and she was the one who’d been unknowingly mocked. She’d even forgiven Hamlet for the fact that his performance at the tournament had caused her to be disqualified from her first and only karate competition.

Darla had scoffed when Jake first mentioned the cat-show idea, but her friend had been of the opinion that it never hurt to ask.
Hey, kid, they can only say no
had been her brash response. Still, the cop-turned-private-investigator had been as surprised as Darla when, a couple of weeks later, a registered letter arrived inviting one Hamlet the Cat to serve as the FSA guest of honor at the end of February.

“I still can’t believe I’m going to leave all this snow behind and go to Florida,” Darla went on. “They’re paying all my expenses to bring Hamlet down, and they even arranged for a plus one, so Jake is coming with me, too. She’s going to act as Hamlet’s official bodyguard. The cat show is on Saturday and Sunday, and FSA will put us up in the conference hotel for three nights starting Friday, but Jake and I decided to stay the whole next week and make it a real vacation.”

“What fun,” Mary Ann agreed. “I’ve often wondered if Brother and I should sell our place and move to Florida with all the other old people, but I know he would never leave the shop. So you and Jake will just have to enjoy the sunshine for me.”

“I’ll bring you back a souvenir,” Darla promised. Then, with a look around the empty bookstore—only two customers had stopped in since she’d unlocked the doors more than an hour ago—Darla added, “And maybe I should bring back some of that sunshine, too. Who wants to go out shopping in all this gloom? I swear, I don’t know how Great-Aunt Dee kept the place going in the winter.”

“Things will get better, my dear. We’re just having an unusually unpleasant season this year, is all. And once your new coffee bar is built, I’m sure scads of people will stop in for a nice hot drink, if nothing else.”

They spent a few more moments chatting about the remodeling job, and then Mary Ann pulled on her scarf again. “I’d better not leave Brother for too long. He might do something foolish, like try to shovel the walk outside the building.”

After the woman had made her good-byes, Darla spent a few minutes helping a customer who had come in just as Mary Ann was leaving. Once she’d rung the gentleman up and sent him on his way, she excitedly reached for the box waiting for her on the counter. Given that she’d be officially representing Pettistone’s Fine Books while at the Florida cat show, Darla had decided to do a little branding for the event, and when she had discovered a custom embroidery shop only a few blocks away, she had placed a rush order.

She opened the package and pulled out the topmost item—a polo shirt in an appropriately tropical pink—and gazed in appreciation at the logo: a black silhouette of a cat set against a blue book and encircled by the bookstore’s name in gold thread. Neatly stitched right above where the breast pocket would be on a dress shirt, the design looked crisply professional . . . classy, as her good-old-boy father would have put it. Indeed, the polos had turned out even better than she’d expected, so much so that she wish she’d done this months ago.

“James! Robert! Come see our new corporate shirts,” she called, eager for their approval, too. As the pair joined her at the register, she held up a lime green one and gushed, “Aren’t they great?”

Obviously, the unspoken answer to that question was a resounding
no
. James and Robert exchanged twin looks of horror before turning back to Darla, eyes wide as they stared at the polo shirt. Disappointed by their obvious lack of enthusiasm, Darla shook her head.

“Look, y’all, I told you I was thinking about doing this. Right now, no one can tell us from the customers. This will give all of us a nice professional look, especially now, when we’ve got the coffee bar to bring in a whole new crop of customers.

“But—but they’re girly pink,” Robert squeaked, holding out crossed forefingers in the universal “back off, Evil” gesture.

James was more restrained if equally to the point. “While I understand your thought process, Darla, surely you do not wish me to appear as if I worked as a greeter at a discount retailer. Short sleeves are not, as they used to say, my thing.”

“Aha! I knew you would say that.”

With a chuckle, Darla set aside the pink shirt and reached into the box again, pulling out a flat, tissue-wrapped bundle and then handing it to James.

As if he were disarming a bomb, the ex-professor gingerly peeled off the wrapping. Within was a crisp, white long-sleeved dress shirt neatly folded to display a smaller version of the Pettistone’s logo embroidered high upon the garment’s left sleeve.

“See, you can even wear your sweater vests with this,” Darla told him, referring to the man’s personal uniform, one that he’d worn every day she’d known him.

James briefly held up the shirt to gauge its size, the snowy fabric a bright contrast to his mahogany features. Finally, the frown that creased his broad brow relaxed, and he allowed himself a slight smile. “Perhaps I would not be averse to wearing this particular style.”

“Good, because there’s also one in pale blue for you,” Darla told him, knowing her manager favored that shade. Then she turned to Robert.

The youth had dispensed with the makeshift cross gesture but still wore an expression of dismay. “Uh, no offense, Ms. Pettistone, but I don’t think I’d, you know, look good in one of those shirts with all those sleeves, either.”

“That’s what I figured,” Darla told him with a smile. Feeling rather like a magician with a top hat filled with rabbits, she reached into the shipping box again and pulled out yet another shirt, which she tossed to Robert. “Maybe you’ll like this one better.”

“Sweet!”

Robert nodded in appreciation as he caught the black polo and held it up to admire. While he occasionally topped his work outfits with a bright-colored vest in good-natured imitation of James’s personal style, the rest of Robert’s wardrobe was strictly goth black, enlivened by the occasional gray. Knowing that, Darla had ordered him a couple of black shirts and reserved the bright colors for herself.

“I’m not going to be a real stickler about it,” she told them, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d wear your new shirts to work at least a couple of times a week. Oh, and I bought a few extras in different sizes and colors. I figured once the coffee bar is up and running, we can display a couple and maybe sell them to our customers.”

“I would agree there might be a market for such a thing,” James observed, refolding his new shirt and wrapping it again in its paper. “For some reason, much of the shopping public seems to enjoy purchasing logoed items. Of course, there is no accounting for—”

“
Me-ROOW!
”

The unmistakable cry of a cat ignored for far too long interrupted James’s platitudes. Hamlet had stalked down the stairs toward the register. He paused, and then, with a single graceful bound, lightly landed upon the countertop next to Darla’s box of shirts.

“Hey, little goth bro!” Robert exclaimed. This was the usual greeting between him and Hamlet, and it normally was followed by a fist bump . . . or, on Hamlet’s part, a paw bump. No matter how many times Darla had tried to get Hamlet to follow suit with her, however, the cat had stubbornly refused to play along.

For now, however, Hamlet didn’t appear interested in hanging with his human “bro.” Instead, his attention was fixed on the shipping box. He leaned closer for a sniff at the cardboard, only to rear back with a hiss almost as loud as a big rig releasing its air brakes.

“I do not think he approves of the shirts,” James observed.

Robert shook his head. “No, he’s mad because he knows there’s not one in there for him. Right, Hamlet?”

Hamlet slanted the youth a cool green look that Darla translated to mean
Did you seriously just say that?
Then, to further illustrate his feelings on the matter, he swiped one back paw back and forth atop the counter, like he was burying something in his litter box. Finally, with a swish of his long tail that sent the topmost of the nearby stack of free newspapers flying, the cat leaped off the counter and strolled his way toward the games section.

“Do you think he figured out about the T-R-I-P?” Robert asked, carefully spelling out the last word.

Darla shrugged. “He saw me take my suitcase out of the closet last night, and I’ve got a couple of Florida guidebooks upstairs in my bedroom. Even worse, he caught me putting fresh towels in his cat carrier. A free vacation sounded like lots of fun when Jake and I first planned it, and it’s good publicity for the store, but maybe Hamlet isn’t up to traveling.”

“He will be just fine,” James assured her. “You have that calming spray from our friends at the rescue organization, and since he walks quite well on a leash, you will be able to exercise him outside when you get there. Besides, the construction noise and mess would likely be far more stressful on a cat than staying in a nice hotel.”

“Yeah, and it’s, you know, probably safer,” Robert said. “Those guys on the crew, they do a great job, but they don’t always pay attention to stuff. What if they were, like, bringing in tools from outside and left the door open for a minute? Hamlet could run outside and get lost and maybe freeze or something.”

While Darla didn’t doubt Hamlet would be able to make his way home should he escape the brownstone—to her past dismay, he’d done just that a time or two—she realized that James and Robert did have a point about the construction. The finicky feline would never put up with that sort of disruption to his personal stomping grounds. On the other hand, while Florida would be a strange new world for this Brooklyn-born cat, he’d be under her watchful eye twenty-four/seven the entire time, either on his leash or in his carrier. What kind of trouble could he get into that way?

Her earlier good spirits returning, Darla reached again for her bright pink polo.

“You’re right,” she told them as she refolded the garment and packed it away with the others. “It’ll be a couple of days watching Hamlet play Mr. Celebrity at the cat show, and the rest of the time it’s going to be nothing but sun and fun. I’ll probably be so relaxed I won’t even get around to sending out a bunch of postcards bragging about how warm it is in—”

Splat!

The unmistakable sound of a book hitting the wooden floor cut her short. Darla gave an exasperated sigh and turned in the direction where Hamlet had headed. The cagey cat had a habit of occasionally knocking books from their shelves. Of course, when she went to investigate, Hamlet invariably would be innocently sleeping far from the scene of the crime, or else would be nowhere to be found at all. In fact, she had yet to catch him in the act, but he remained her prime suspect in what she’d come to call “book snagging.”

While it was an annoying bit of mischief on his part (and hard on the books, to boot), picking up after him wasn’t the problem. Rather, it was the fact that, more often than not, the book titles that mysteriously ended up on the floor had something to do with whatever might be happening at the time. While everyone else attributed Hamlet’s apparent insights to coincidence—at least publicly—Darla was convinced by now that the clever cat knew exactly what he was doing every time he sent a particular volume flying.

While Robert and James resumed their duties, Darla hurried over to where she guessed the most recent book had fallen. Sure enough, in front of the shelves that held the various trivia, puzzle, and other game-related books lay a single slim paperback. As for Hamlet, she spied him snoozing on one of the overstuffed reading chairs two aisles over.

Playing innocent or legitimately not guilty?

She picked up the wayward volume and glanced at it in surprise. What had she just been telling James and Robert about the upcoming Florida trip? Something about fun and relaxation? She shook her head. If the book she held was Hamlet’s prediction of what was to come, then apparently she’d spoken too soon. For this instructional guide to playing poker was titled
Want to Bet?

TWO

“THE SKIES HERE IN FORT LAUDERDALE ARE CLEAR, AND THE
temperature is a balmy seventy degrees . . . sweater weather for us Floridians.”

The news was met with a murmur of approval from the passengers as the plane taxied toward the gate. Darla had stuffed her coat into her checked luggage as soon as they’d reached the airport. She was set for the southern weather with white denim jeans, which she now cuffed to her knees, and a blue-and-white striped shirt she’d chosen for its distinct sailor vibe.

Darla had left the store that morning in James’s capable hands, reminding herself that a) she was due a vacation, b) Hamlet would be happier far away from the construction, and c) she’d be crazy not to jump at a chance to get out of the frigid temperatures dogging New York. But she still had a few niggling doubts about her decision that hadn’t been helped by the text from James that had come right before she had boarded the plane.

Construction crew is here. Union plumber is MIA.

Her message back had been a terse
Boarding now, will call for an update once in FL.
Not that there was anything out of the ordinary with a construction job starting off slowly; still, it put a damper on things to know her project wasn’t starting off smoothly.

The engines shut down as the plane halted at its assigned gate, and even before the familiar
ding
sounded as the captain turned off the seatbelt light, passengers were already on their feet and scrambling to retrieve their baggage.

“
This
is why I hate to fly,” Jake good-naturedly grumbled as she unfolded her six-foot frame from her aisle seat and began fishing in the overhead bin. “By the time I get all the kinks out, it’ll be time to head back to Brooklyn again.”

“Hey, you’ve got over a week to unkink,” Darla reminded her friend with a sympathetic smile. “We’re here until next Sunday. Besides, I read online that our hotel is right next door to a day spa, if you want to book a massage.”

She refrained from mentioning that at least the older woman had had the space beneath the seat in front of her free throughout the trip. Not that Darla begrudged her friend the leg room, since the ex-cop-turned-PI’s bum leg—courtesy of a shoot-out with a bank robbery suspect a few years earlier—had left her with a permanent limp and caused her early retirement from the NYPD. Still, Darla had spent the three-hour flight competing with a cat carrier for foot room. She would wager she had just as many kinks as Jake, despite being a good six inches shorter than her friend.

While Jake pulled down their carry-ons from the overhead, Darla slipped into the seat Jake had vacated. Flipping her auburn braid over her shoulder, she leaned down to pry the cat carrier in question from where it had been lodged since the beginning of the flight. Then, with an effort, she hoisted the soft-sided container up onto the center seat and anxiously peered through its mesh side to see how the official FSA Guest of Honor was faring.

“You okay in there, Hammy?”

A groggy but decidedly peeved growl was her reply.

“Uh-oh,” Darla said to Jake, who was now busy with her cell phone. “I think the herbal calming spray is wearing off.”

“Well, give him another spritz of it,” Jake advised. “Who knows how long it’ll take first class to clear out so all us little people back here in economy can get off. Besides, we still have to collect our checked luggage, and then we’ve got the drive to the hotel. Let’s just hope Ma isn’t late.”

So saying, she put the phone to her ear and began talking. Darla overheard snippets—“No, Ma, I said outside baggage claim!”—but her attention was on the oversized feline, whose protests were becoming more and more vocal.

“Come on, Hamlet,” she coaxed, giving the spray bottle a couple of quick pumps. A faint scent of brandy tinged with something herbal promptly perfumed the air around the carrier. “Hold on just a little longer, and then we’ll be in a nice hotel room where you can stretch out.”

Though she had to give the cat props in that he’d been more than cooperative to that point. Feeling somewhat foolish, she had explained to him the previous night that the carrier was not a harbinger of a visit to the vet’s—a bad place, to his mind—but a means to take him off to meet his fans. Whether it was that explanation or the fact that she’d baited the carrier with shrimp snacks, Hamlet had surprised her by climbing in on his own this morning. And several good spritzes of calming spray had kept him sleepy and mellow . . . that was, until now.

“Mee-roooow!”

Despite the renewed application of the herbal spray, Hamlet was rapidly rousing out of the relaxed state he’d been in for the greater portion of the trip. Now his muzzy cries could be heard over the bustle of passengers around them, impatient to deplane. Apparently, the calming concoction had a half life, at least when it came to this particular cat. The sooner she got Hamlet off the aircraft and into the terminal, the better.

“Mee-roooooow.”

Hamlet gave a low, threatening rumble, which, had Darla heard it while wandering a veldt instead of sitting trapped in a 747, would have spurred her to flee for her life. The sound seemed to trigger a similar primitive reaction in the nearby passengers, for a space miraculously opened in the aisle beside her seat as people scuttled back.

By now, Jake had ended her call. Before Darla had a chance to update her on the situation, however, her friend gave her a conspiratorial wink and then spoke up.

“Now, now, we don’t want a kitty meltdown,” she addressed their fellow passengers within earshot. “Maybe we can squeeze by everyone else and get the poor little fellow out of here right now, before things go really bad.” Jake shoved the phone into her jacket pocket and started up the aisle, both of their carry-ons in tow.

“Gangway—ferocious cat coming,” Jake called as she began plowing her way through the queue before her. “Outta the way, folks, if you value your flesh! Ferocious cat! Make room! Hide the children.”

Choking back a surprised laugh at her friend’s chutzpah, Darla grabbed Hamlet’s carrier and, hoisting the case on one hip, promptly followed after her. Unlike Jake, however, she didn’t need to assume a carnival barker’s spiel to clear a path. Hamlet was doing all the talking for her.

“Me-ROOW! Hisssssssssssssss!”

Those passengers who’d been stubbornly ignoring Jake and continuing to block the aisle were not so quick to disregard Hamlet’s warning cries. Most beat a hasty retreat back into their seats. A few more hardy souls broke into a trot in the direction of first class and the plane’s open door, Jake on their heels. Darla moved behind them as quickly as she could, given that she was hauling a struggling twenty-pound cat. It wasn’t until she’d reached the front that she paused long enough to set the carrier down with its unwilling occupant and extend the telescoping handle.

Thank goodness for wheels
, she thought with a sigh, glad that she’d spent the extra money for a rolling carrier. Waiting at the door and the jetway beyond were the usual contingent of flight attendants and gate personnel. Jake, with a regal nod, had already sailed past them.

“You and your kitty enjoy your vacation,” the male flight attendant who’d made the earlier arrival announcement told her.

“Me-ROOOOW!”
was Hamlet’s reply, the outraged sound making all of them jump.

“Thanks. Sorry,” Darla managed with a weak smile as, leaving behind the stunned airline employees, she hurried into the jetway.

She’d left Hamlet’s harness buckled on him for the journey. Still, in the mood he was in, she didn’t dare unzip the carrier enough to snap on his leash and let him trot alongside her. Knowing Hamlet, the minute her back was turned, the wily feline would probably slice the lead with a claw and make a break for freedom.

“Jake, wait up,” Darla called as she hurried through the tunnel, the sound of the carrier’s wheels rumbling loudly behind her. The air in the jetway was warm and humid, unlike the cool, uncirculated air of the plane. If this was a preview of weather to come, she’d done well to pack away her coat.

“I’m going to have to remember that ferocious-cat trick the next time I fly,” Jake said with a grin in the direction of Hamlet’s carrier as Darla caught up. “I don’t think I’ve ever gotten off a plane that fast before.”

“Yeah, it worked pretty well,” Darla conceded with a smile of her own as they headed to the baggage claim area. “And Hamlet seems to know we’re on terra firma. He’s quieted down again.”

“Well, let’s not stress him any more than we have to,” Jake said. “Why don’t I wait for the luggage, and you can take Hamlet outside to the curb to look for Ma.”

“But how will I know her? What does she look like?”

“Everyone in the family says she and I look alike, except I have more gray hair. She dyes hers,” Jake said with a wink.

Darla chuckled. “Okay, that helps. What kind of car does she drive?”

“Last time it was a blue Mustang convertible. Before that it was a big yellow pickup. She swaps out her car every couple of years, though, so for all I know she’s got a Jeep now,” Jake said with an indulgent shake of her curly head, adding, “But don’t worry, I described you to her, so she’ll find you if I’m not there yet when she pulls up.”

They parted ways at the baggage carousel, with Darla wheeling the cat carrier through the glass doors leading outside to the passenger pick-up area. As the doors closed behind her, she was enveloped by a warm breeze redolent with the scent of tropical blooms overlaid by diesel fumes.

“Welcome to South Florida,” Darla told herself, wishing now she’d gone for shorts and a tank top. This might be sweater weather for Floridians, but she’d been up in New York long enough that her blood had thickened. To Hamlet, she added, “Hang in there, boy. I’ll get you some water the minute we hit the hotel.”

She walked a short distance to the passenger pick-up area, where a steady stream of cars was trolling slowly past, their drivers looking for arriving friends and relatives. No old women who looked like Jake, however. No doubt she was still circling around the airport, Darla decided.

Resigned to the wait, she sagged onto a bench and took a deep breath. Immediately, tension she didn’t know she had been holding seemed to seep from her very pores, along with a fine coating of sweat that abruptly enveloped her. She unzipped a side pocket on the carrier and pulled out the in-flight catalogue she’d taken from the plane. She used it to fan a little air into the carrier, relieved to see that the feline showed no further signs of distress as yet. For herself, she dug into the pocket again for the small clutch purse she’d stashed there. She fumbled through it until she found a tissue, which she used to blot her damp forehead.

“Hey,
chica
, like they say, it’s not the heat. It’s the humidity.”

Darla looked up to see a short, handsome young Hispanic man dressed in knee-length khaki cargo shorts and a Hawaiian-style shirt grinning down at her. His teeth were bright against his neatly cropped black beard, as precisely trimmed as his short black hair. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the pair of designer sunglasses he wore, but he exuded an air of friendly good humor that reminded her of people she’d known back home in Texas.

“Need a cab?”

He gestured to the vehicle behind him with the usual oversized phone number in block numerals along its side and the requisite triangular sign on its roof advertising some expensive gentlemen’s club.

Darla gave a cautious shake of her head in return—she had a rule about not letting herself be chatted up by strange men—and answered, “Thanks, but we’ve got someone picking us up.”

“You sure? What, you got a little doggie in that bag? You don’t want to wait around, let the doggie get too hot.”

“Actually, he’s a cat, and we’re okay,” Darla assured him, smiling as she decided he was likely harmless if persistent. “Our ride should be here any min—”

A sudden blare of horns and squeal of tires echoed in the tunnel-like passage, the sound cutting her words short. Fluent now in the art of being a defensive pedestrian—living in NYC did that to one—Darla reflexively leaped up, grabbed the carrier’s handle, and ducked behind a column. But feeling morbidly compelled to meet possible death head-on anyhow, she ventured a peek around her concrete barricade. She was in time to see a sporty, dark green Mini Cooper convertible zip around the other passing vehicles and slide to a stop mere inches from the taxi’s rear bumper.

The cabbie’s genial grin vanished, and he spouted a litany of outraged Spanish in the driver’s direction. The coupe’s top was down, and for a stunned instant Darla thought the Mini Cooper was driverless. Then, as she eased her way back around the column for a better look, she glimpsed a shock of bright stop-sign-red hennaed hair barely visible over the top of the steering wheel.

“Keep yer pants on, kid,” came an elderly woman’s voice from the convertible’s direction, the accent almost stereotypical “Joisey.” “It’s not like I hit ya.”

The cabbie made a shooing gesture to the unseen driver. “Hey, lady, this is taxi parking only. Get outta here!”

“Shame on you, treating an old lady with such disrespect,” replied the woman. “I’m picking up someone. I got as much right here as you.”