Cat Playing Cupid

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

(Joe Grey Cat Mystery Series, Book 14)

Morrow (a HarperCollins imprint), 2009
Hardcover: ISBN 0061123994
Paperback: Avon, ISBN 0061123986
E-book: HarperCollins
Large print: Center Point, 160285419X
Audiobook: Download and digital rental (CD no longer available)

Winner of the Cat Writers' Association's
2009 Muse Medallion

It took Joe Grey's human, Clyde, nearly forever to pop the question to Ryan Flannery, and what more romantic a time to tie the knot than Valentine's Day? But who wants to ruin the wedding, which is attended by half the police department, by reporting a newly unearthed corpse? Not Joe and his feline pals. Secretly the cats set out to identify the body.

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Quotes from the reviews

"Murphy's gentle blend of fantasy and mystery includes revelations about her unusually verbal cat detectives sure to please series fans." --Publisher's Weekly, December 1, 2008.

"This is still a quality mystery, with excellent pacing, ratcheting tension, consistent characters, and suitably nasty villians. . . . A must wherever the series has fans." --Booklist

"The three talking cats are adorable even grumpy acerbic Joe Grey while fans of the series learn more about their backgrounds. Shirley Rousseau Murphy has written a purrfectly delightful anthropomorphism feline whodunit." --Harriet Klausner, Genre Go Round Reviews, November 26, 2008

Excerpt from the story

Turning in his swivel chair to face the bookcase behind him, Dallas reached for the other cold files he’d shoved out of the way between copies of the California Civil Code, his hand brushing against the gray tomcat where Joe lay curled up, dozing. Damned cat really had taken up residence, Dallas thought, amused.

Maybe Joe Grey’s nose was out of joint, with Clyde about to be married. Maybe home had already changed, probably the house was in an uproar. Knowing Ryan, they might already be rearranging furniture, cleaning out cupboards to accommodate her belongings. If cats were anything like dogs, the gray tom wouldn’t like any disturbance in his home and routine. Change, to an animal, translated into threat.

With enough provocation, who knew? The tomcat, Dallas thought, might move into the station fulltime.

“Things bad at home?” he asked the tomcat, scratching Joe’s ear. “Ryan won’t throw you out, you know. Or,” he said, looking into Joe’s yellow eyes, “could you be jealous of her?”

Joe glared at him, and Dallas grinned. “You’ve had your own way around the house for a long time. Maybe you don’t like competition from a new roommate and her dog?”

The tomcat studied him almost as if he understood.

“And why aren’t you out catching mice instead of schlepping around in here sleeping and cadging treats from the dispatchers? The time you spend in the department, Joe, you might as well move in and get yourself on the payroll.”

The tomcat turned to lick his paw, and then looked at Dallas sleepily as if willing him to get on with his own business and leave a cat to nap in peace. Dallas scratched Joe’s head until Joe tired of the attention, sat up, licked the other white paw and gray leg, then washed the white strip down his dark nose.

“Strange,” Dallas said companionably, “that Lindsey was so uptight. I hope that wasn’t guilt talking.”

The gray cat, still washing, raised his yellow eyes to Dallas.

“This wouldn’t be the first time a guilty party brought evidence to the attention of the law,” Dallas told him, “trying to turn away any new suspicions.”

Joe Grey yawned in Dallas’s face, lay down again on the bookshelf, and seemed to go back to sleep. Dallas watched him, a grin touching his stern Hispanic face--he found he liked having the cat to talk to.

He’d never cared much for cats until this one, he’d always been a dog man. Pointers, fine gundogs. But this cat, in some ways, seemed more like a dog than a cat. Joe was, for one thing, a pretty good listener, more attentive than Dallas expected cats to be--the gray tom seemed, in fact, nearly as responsive to his moods as were his dogs.

Part of the comfort in talking to an animal--dog, cat, or horse--was that they didn’t offer advice, didn’t tell you what to do. Animals were sympathetic and willing listeners, but they couldn’t repeat what they heard. Couldn’t pass on some casual remark, or the contents of a phone conversation or high-security interview--and as Dallas stroked Joe Grey, appreciating the cat’s admirably mute ways, he didn’t see, when the tomcat ducked his head under the detective’s stroking hand, the cat’s sly and knowing smile.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Joe Grey twitched an ear and rubbed his whiskers against Dallas's hand. Dallas scowled at the stack of paperwork that seemed to grow every day. Cops always had too much paperwork, Joe thought, curling up on the blotter, directly in Dallas's way, so that the detective had to work around him; when Dallas pushed him gently aside, Joe didn't get up and move, but stretched out, taking up more space and shoving away papers with his hind feet. . . .

“I can’t clear up this mess with you on top of it,” Dallas said. Lifting Joe, he set him down at the end of the desk, determined to clean up his paperwork. Free up the coming weekend so he could enjoy Ryan’s wedding, Joe thought, without a cluttered desk waiting for him.

“This wedding better go smoothly,” Dallas said, almost as if he could read Joe’s mind. “We don’t need to call in the bomb squad.” And that wasn’t a joke, the tomcat knew too well. Just a year ago a bomb explosion had created a near disaster at the wedding of the police chief, the church nearly demolished and several people injured minutes before the guests would have filed in.

A lucky, anonymous tip had averted calamity, had probably prevented a mass murder--a tip that Dallas and the chief still wondered about, the tomcat thought, smiling.

“But no one,” Dallas said, “has a grudge against Ryan or Clyde, not the way a few scum would like to seriously damage anyone in law enforcement.” Ryan and Clyde weren’t cops, but still . . . Ryan was like Dallas’s daughter, and Clyde was a close friend to many in the department.

Praying that Dallas was right, that nothing ugly would happen, Joe looked up at the detective, purring companionably.

“No,” Dallas said, pummeling Joe as if he were a dog, until Joe hissed a warning and Dallas withdrew his hand. “Sorry,” he said. Then, “No, nothing bad is going to happen. This will be a quiet, happy wedding--low key, just as Ryan and Clyde want. The department would take apart anyone who tried to make it otherwise, anyone who tried to harm those two.”

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