Cat Playing Cupid (Joe Grey Series #14)

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Overview

In this cozy mystery, a cat pounces into sleuth mode when a cold case interrupts a wedding in a California seaside town.

It took Joe Grey’s human, Clyde, nearly forever to pop the question to Ryan Flannery, and what more romantic time to tie the knot than on Valentine’s Day? But dark secrets from the past, uncovered by Joe and his feline pals, threaten to ruin the happy union.

First, a body discovered many miles away reopens a ten-year-old cold case involving a man who disappeared days before his own wedding. The jilted bride is back in town and eager to find the truth . . . or to hide evidence of her own wrongdoing. Trouble is, she’s soon involved with Ryan’s father, who is house-sitting and preparing meals for Joe Grey while Clyde and Ryan are on their honeymoon.

Then another body is found closer to home on the grounds of a ruined estate, deserted save for a band of unusual feral cats. Around the wrist of the corpse is a bracelet bearing the image of a rearing cat, and the cats discover a rare literary volume hidden nearby that divulges their own secret: their special ability to speak.

But as the police investigate the two murders, located more than five hundred miles apart, only Joe Grey suspects that the crimes are related. It takes a chase from which the tomcat wonders if he’ll emerge alive for anyone to hone in on the connection between the murders. Finally, feline perception and cop sense combine to bring a killer to justice in this delightful new tale involving Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s three amazing cats.

Praise for Cat Playing Cupid

“Murphy's gentle blend of fantasy and mystery includes revelations about her unusually verbal cat detectives sure to please series fans.” —Publishers Weekly

“Murphy’s feline-loving fans will enjoy the latest in her long-running series.” —Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061974717
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/18/2023
Series:	Joe Grey Series , #14
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	372
Sales rank:	181,862
File size:	901 KB

About the Author

Shirley Rousseau Murphy is the author of twenty mysteries in the Joe Grey series, for which she has won the Cat Writers’ Association Muse Medallion nine years running, and has received ten national Cat Writers’ Association Awards for best novel of the year. She is also a noted children’s book author, and has received five Council of Authors and Journalists Awards. She lives in Carmel, California, where she serves as full-time household help to two demanding feline ladies.

Read an Excerpt

Cat Playing Cupid

Chapter One

The newspaper clipping was yellowed and tearing at the folds, though it had been handled carefully over the years by the detectives who worked the case or who, during the preceding decade, had taken a fresh look at the cold file, reading the missing report on Carson Chappell, and making additional inquiries. Unable to come up with any new leads, each had committed the folder once again to limbo among the department's unresolved cases.

Bridegroom vanishes before wedding

Local resident Carson Chappell, senior partner of the accounting firm of Chappell & Gibbs, did not appear for his wedding on Sunday afternoon at Community Church and has not been heard from for nearly a week. His fiancée, Lindsey Wolf, also of Molena Point, told reporters she last saw Chappell five days earlier, when he set out alone on a camping trip into state park land east of the village . . .

The file contained a dozen such articles clipped from central California papers, as well as the detective's original interview with the would-be bride, his case notes, random notes by the various officers who had later studied the case, and several human-interest pieces published over the intervening years. The fact that a well-known accountant and financial adviser had disappeared, and that any prospective bridegroom would go off camping, alone, a week before his wedding, certainly provided reporters with ample questions around which to weave a story.

The most recent clipping in the file, however, did not mention Carson Chappell. It was dated just this previous week, ten years after Chappell's disappearance,and had been cut from the San Francisco Chronicle. This was the article that currently interested Detective Dallas Garza as he sat at his desk talking on the phone with Lindsey Wolf, the clipping lying on the desk before him:

Remains of hiker found in seaside tree house

The skeleton of a man was discovered last evening in a makeshift tree house shelter on the central Oregon coast by a group of Boy Scouts on a weekend camping trip. The victim had apparently died from gunshot wounds, and two bullets were recovered by sheriff's deputies. The heavily wooded acreage is on private land and is a new campsite for the Scouts' yearly outings. The body had been disturbed by small animals and possibly a bobcat, but enough of the bones remain for possible identification. Neither the Oregon Bureau of Investigation, Oregon sheriffs' departments, nor Oregon police have outstanding missing reports of hikers in that area. "All past missing cases have been resolved," said OBI agent Henley Mills when interviewed at the scene.

This three-pronged congruence of players and events...the sudden availability of someone to work the department's cold files, the discovery of this body though it was not likely related, and the phone call from Lindsey Wolf...held Garza's interest. He sat staring at the article as he spoke with Lindsey; she had faxed it to him just a few moments earlier, and then had followed up with the call.

He knew Lindsey casually, she had dated his brother-in-law several years back, starting some months after Chappell disappeared. That was nearly nine years ago. Now, Dallas wondered if he'd been smart to include her file among the cold cases he'd given Mike to work, wondered if it was wise to stir up that old and painful relationship.

But Mike had seemed okay with it, as if he was completely over Lindsey...and Dallas wondered, for a moment, amused at himself, if he hesitated to put Mike on the case because of his own sudden surge of interest. Lindsey Wolf was the kind of woman who too easily stirred a man's blood, a tall, lovely, creamy-skinned woman in her forties, quiet and self-assured.

He'd already seen the article she'd sent him, he had read it over breakfast a couple of hours before her fax arrived. Now, when he'd asked Lindsey on the phone if she had information on the Oregon body, she'd said, "Not information, no. But I have questions, Detective Garza. Are you familiar with the disappearance of Carson Chappell some ten years ago?"

"I know the case. I wasn't with the department then, but I've read the cold file."

"I'm on my way up to the city on business...I'm an accountant, as you may remember. I worked for Carson until just before he . . . Before our planned wedding. We're into tax season now, and I can't put that off. I'd like to call you as soon as I return, make an appointment to come in. I have no information on the dead man in Oregon. But I think . . . I have such a strong feeling that that body in Oregon could be Carson. I can't get past that idea. I know that seems far-fetched and unlikely, when he was supposed to be up on the state park land, here. That's what he told me, but . . ." She paused, her voice breaking. Then, "I need to talk with you about it, I need to talk with someone."

"Call me when you get back," Dallas said. "You can try me on the weekend if you like, but I may be hard to reach."

"Your niece is getting married this weekend?"

"She is," Dallas said, knowing there had been no announcement in the paper. "I guess you've talked with Ryan?" Ryan and Clyde, wanting a low-key wedding without a lot of village interest, had given no notice to the local paper; they meant to send in a brief mention when they returned from their honeymoon.

"It's a small village," Lindsey said easily. "I think I heard the news at Jolly's Deli. Isn't he doing the catering?"

"I believe he is," Dallas said. "Call me when you get back, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Oregon case."

Hanging up, he sat quietly, his square face and dark eyes solemn, wondering exactly how Lindsey Wolf had felt when Chappell didn't show for the wedding. Angry. Cheated. Mad enough to . . . What? Then his thoughts turned to his niece's wedding, and he smiled. That would be a far different matter; there was no chance that Ryan or Clyde would back out.

Cat Playing Cupid. Copyright © by Shirley Murphy. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Editorial Reviews

Murphy's diverting 14th mystery to feature talking feline gumshoe Joe Grey (after 2008's Cat Deck the Halls) finds Joe a little annoyed by all the lovey-dovey stuff run rampant in Molena Point, Calif. A year earlier, Joe endured the explosive wedding of Max Harper, the town's chief of police. Then came the Valentine's Day nuptials of his human housemate, Clyde Damen. Joe welcomes the opportunity to swing into sleuth mode after a female skeleton wearing a bracelet engraved with a cat is uncovered at the ruins of an old estate by Joe's feral feline associates. When another skeleton is identified as that of Molena Point accountant Carson Chappell, who went missing in Oregon before his wedding almost 10 years earlier, Joe really has his work cut out for him. Murphy's gentle blend of fantasy and mystery includes revelations about her unusually verbal cat detectives sure to please series fans. (Feb.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

The talking feline detectives of Molena Point catch a cold case. Feline shamus Joe Grey's housemate Clyde is wedding longtime love Ryan Flannery. The nuptials proceed on schedule, but the discovery of two skeletons in two states leads back to an unsolved case involving Ryan's father Mike and his sweetie Lindsey Wolf, who suspects the body found in Oregon is that of her fiance, vanished from a hiking trip just before they were to wed years ago. Meantime, Charlie Harper labors to interest her police chief husband Max in another body that the talking cats have discovered on the deserted Pamillon estate. The clowder of cats who live in the area have already gone through an upheaval when their fearsome leader is killed in an uprising after severely injuring Sage, the childhood friend of town-dwelling cat Kit. When Charlie takes Sage to the local vet, she discovers that the vet knows about the talking cats but has been keeping their secret. As the police try to identify the bodies, Joe and his friends search for clues that will prove Lindsey innocent of the death of her fiance and the wife of his partner, who disappeared at the same time. Murphy's feline-loving fans will enjoy the latest in her long-running series (Cat Deck the Halls, 2007, etc.). Newcomers and ailurophobes may find the story confusing, with too much sentiment and too little suspense.

Kirkus Reviews

Murphy’s gentle blend of fantasy and mystery includes revelations about her unusually verbal cat detectives sure to please series fans.” — Publishers Weekly

“Murphy’s feline-loving fans will enjoy the latest in her long-running series.” — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher