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

Claire Donally

BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

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.

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 …

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

The watcher crouched
in 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.

A puff of breeze brought the scent of the sea, never too far away. Then the wind shifted, pulling a bouquet of aromas out the storefront’s open door. The watcher inhaled
deeply, catching a mixture of dust and furniture polish, the sharp smell of electrical machinery at work, and then a whiff of the floral fragrance the woman was wearing, and under that the earthier tone of her own smell.

His head swam a little. The doorway was just a few yards away, beckoning him on this unseasonably warm evening. Maybe he should go in, make his move—

The breeze stopped being playful, turning into a gust that brought the chill of the ocean as well as its aroma. He hunkered down as it whistled around him. And as he did, the woman in the store moved to close the door, locking it and then rubbing her arms.

So much for that idea,
he thought, turning to slink away.

Why do I keep coming back to her?
he continued as he squeezed under a parked car and out the other side.
It’s not as though I see her doing anything interesting—like eating.

With a flick of his tail he crossed the road, ready to leave. But then he heard the rumble of a car engine and caught a whiff of exhaust … and other familiar smells. He knew this vehicle. Turning around, he settled down on all four paws.

This could be interesting.

*

Still rubbing her
arms, Sunny Coolidge returned to her computer and the latest crisis. She should have been home an hour and a half ago, but that was before some jackass had started acting out on a flight from Paris to Atlanta, getting his plane diverted to the customs and TSA facilities at Pease Airport in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Frantic Web searches by stranded passengers in search
of nearby accommodations had led to a surge of e-mails at MAX—the Maine Adventure X-perience site—and Sunny’s computer. Since the travel agency here in Kittery Harbor, Maine, was just across the state border and less than five miles from the airport in New Hampshire, she’d gone into overtime matchmaking passengers with local B&Bs, beating the bushes for whatever additional accommodations she could find, and arranging transportation.

Well, at least Ollie—Oliver Barnstable, a.k.a. “Ollie the Barnacle,” the owner of MAX—should be happy tomorrow with all the extra revenue. And in spite of the late hour, Sunny was glad to help out the stuck travelers. It made her feel a little less like a mere Web lackey tending the site. When she’d come home to Maine eight months ago to take care of her ailing father, she’d only intended to take a brief leave of absence from her reporter job at the
New York Standard
. But unfortunately, the sickly state of the newspaper business had led her editor at the
Standard
to make her absence more permanent. And to pour salt into that particular wound, after he’d broken off their professional relationship, he broke off their personal one, too. Talk about a one-two punch.

When Sunny had tried for a job at the local rag, the
Harbor Crier
, Ken Howell, the editor there, had turned her down flat. Apparently after all his years of running the place, he didn’t want some big-city “professional” sticking a nose in his business. But luckily Ollie, who was a major partner on the paper, had heard she was looking for work and had offered her the job at MAX. Compared to her old New York salary, the pay could only be called puny … but at least puny was better than nothing.

To tell the truth, it was a little odd to be back working just two doors down from the store where she’d had her first job. In high school, Sunny had spent Friday evenings and Saturdays behind the fountain at Barnstable’s Sweet Shoppe, working for Ollie’s father. Sometimes Ollie would come by, dressed in a suit and tie from his job down in Boston, and give his dad a break. He was a lot older than Sunny and plainly hated working in the place.

But even if he detested the work and could be a little skeevy—he used to creep Sunny out a little by telling her she was the sweetest thing in the Sweet Shoppe—Ollie was otherwise all business. Sunny remembered him always arguing with his father about how they should open on Sundays, something the elder Barnstable refused to do. In the end Barnstable Senior passed away while Sunny was in college. Ollie had sold the store, taken the insurance money, and gone off to New York City. Apparently he’d invested that money well, because a few years before Mike’s illness, Ollie had come back to Kittery Harbor flush with cash and ready to do business around town. He’d invested in the faltering
Harbor Crier
, bought the row of stores where his dad’s shop used to be, and put a lot of money into local real estate and other business opportunities, including MAX.