Cat Cross Their Graves

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

(Joe Grey Cat Mystery Series, Book 10)

HarperCollins, 2005
Hardcover: ISBN 0060578084
Paperback: Avon, ISBN 0060578114
E-book: HarperCollins
Audiobook: Download and digital rental (CD no longer available)

When '40s film star Patty Rose retired to the seaside village of Molena Point, California, she didn't expect to face a killer. The night Patty is brutally murdered, only a tortoiseshell cat named Kit hears the three shots fired.

Finding Patty dead, Kit sets out to track the shooter. The police arrive and so do tomcat sleuth Joe Grey and his tabby friend Dulcie. Unable to find Kit, the two cats set off on her trail. When the graves of several vanished children are discovered nearby, it seems the trouble is greater than any of the cats ever imagined.

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Quotes from the reviews

"Fans of the series will welcome this new episode, which maintains the expected suspense and investigative skills of the cats." --Booklist, December 15, 2004

"... a purr-fectly delightful beginning for the new year." --Barnes & Noble newsletter Ransom Notes

"[Not] your typical light cat cozy.... Murphy handles such sensitive issues as child endangerment and death well.... Fans will welcome back all their old friends, both feline and human." --Publisher's Weekly, January 7, 2005

"The somber plot is leavened by the author's affection for her characters and their rewarding small-town lives." --Kirkus Reviews

"Even those who are not fans of fantasy will be drawn into [Murphy's] stories.... Multilevel and always intriguing." --Carmel Pine Cone, December 24, 2004

"There's a special kind of magic in a Joe Grey mystery even when he steps out of the limelight to allow his female felines to shine. The trio are so believably portrayed readers will actually accept these intelligent cats exist somewhere in California." --Harriet Klausner, www.thebestreviews.com

"A very satisfying story of good and evil.... Some interesting questions about after-life.... I liked this book best in the series." --Mysterious Women, Issue 4, 2004

"A string of recent awards for her Joe Grey novels have made Murphy a dominant presence in the mystery field. Along with Rita Mae Brown and Lillian Jackson Braun, the Carmel resident has popularized feline sleuthing with readers all over the country." --Bob Walch, Monterey County Herald, January 2005

"[I] soon became captivated by a delightful child who is one of the pivotal characters in the book. Lori's tenacity and self-sufficiency won my heart.... [A] very interesting story full of delightful characters, and a mystery that goes back many years. The cats lead the reader on a suspenseful chase through the town and across the rooftops as they follow clues and try to watch out for each other and their important people. If you are already a fan of this series, this addition will definitely please you." --Gayle Wedgwood, Mystery News, April/May 2005

"Murphy writes interesting, complicated mysteries and lets cats be cats, even when they're smarter than most people. If you're allergic to cats and cat mysteries, let this be the series you read." --Anna Ashwood Collins, Glynco Observer and Jekyll's Golden Islander, April 7, 2005

"Having spent several brisk and stormy January days in Carmel-by-the-Sea I was transported in Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s latest Joe Grey mystery, Cat Cross Their Graves. Not your average cozy cat mystery, this compelling series has just a touch of the tough and the supernatural--cats talking to humans. . . [C]raftily woven . . . Enjoyable and real." --Mystery Lovers Bookshop News, October/November, 2005

Excerpt from the story

Up the Molena Point hills where the village cottages stood crowded together, and their back gardens ended abruptly at the lip of the wild canyon, a row of graves lay hidden. Concealed beneath tangled weeds and sprawling overgrown geraniums, there was no stone to mark the bodies. No one to remember they were there save one villager, who kept an uneasy silence. Who nursed a vigil of dread against the day the earth would again be disturbed and the truth revealed. On winter evenings the shadow of the tall, old house struck down across the graves like a long black arrow, and from the canyon below, errant winds sang to the small, dead children.

There had been no reports for a dozen years of unexplained disappearances along the central California coast, not even of some little kid straying off to turn up at suppertime hungry and dirty and unharmed. Nor did the three cats who hunted these gardens know what lay beneath their hurrying paws. Though as they trotted down into the canyon to slaughter wood rats, leaping across the tangled flower beds, sometimes tabby Dulcie would pause to look around her, puzzled, her skin rippling with an icy chill. And once the tortoiseshell kit stopped stone still as she crossed the neglected Bower bed, her yellow eyes growing huge. She muttered about a shadow swiftly vanishing, a child with flaxen hair. But this kit was given to fancies. Joe Grey had glanced at her, annoyed. The gray tom was quite aware that female cats were full of wild notions, particularly the tattercoat kit and her flights of fancy.

For many years the graves had remained hidden, the bodies abandoned and alone, and thus they waited undiscovered on this chill February night. The village of Molena Point was awash with icy, sloughing rain and shaken by winds that whipped off the surging sea to rattle the oak trees and scour the village rooftops. But beneath the heavy oaks and the solid shingles and thick clay tiles, within scattered cottages, sitting rooms were warm lamps glowed and hearth fires burned and all was safe and right. But many cottages stood dark. Despite the storm, it seemed half the village had ventured out, to crowd into Molena Point Little Theater for the weeklong Patty Rose Film Festival. There, though the stage was empty, the darkened theater was filled to capacity. Though no footlights shone and there was no painted backdrop to describe some enchanted world and no live actors to beguile the audience, not a seat was vacant.

Before the silent crowd, the silver screen had been lowered into place from the high, dark ceiling, and on it a classic film rolled, a black-and-white musical romance from a simpler, kinder era. Old love songs filled the hall, and old memories for those who had endured the painful years of World War II, when Patty’s films had offered welcome escape from the disruptions of young lives, from the wrenching partings of lovers.

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

Now in the darkened theater, as the last teary scenes drew to a close, Charlie leaned against Max’s shoulder, blowing her nose. On her other side, Ryan Flannery reached for a tissue from the box the two women had tucked between them. Patty’s films might be musicals, but the love interest provided enough cliff-hanging anxiety to bring every woman in the audience to tears. Over Charlie’s bright-red hair and Ryan’s dark, short bob, Max Harper glanced across at Clyde with that amused, tolerant look that only two males can share. Women--they always cried at a romantic movie, squeezed out the tears like water from a sponge. Charlie cut Max a look and wiped her tears; but as she wept at the final scenes, she looked up suddenly and paused, and her tears were forgotten. A chill touched Charlie, a tremor of fear, She stared up at the screen, at Patty, and a fascination of horror slid through her, an icy tremor that held her still and afraid, a rush of fear that came out of nowhere, so powerfully that she trembled and squeezed Max’s hand. He looked down at her, frowning, and drew her close. “What?”

“I don’t know,” She shook her head, “Nothing. It . . . it’s gone.” She looked up again at Patty, at the twenty-year-old Patty Rose deep into the love scene, and tried to lose herself again in the movie.

But the sense of dread remained, a feeling of regret so vivid that she was jolted completely out of the story. A sense of wrongness and danger that made her grip Max’s hand more tightly. He drew her closer, uneasy himself now, and puzzled.

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

When Charlie shivered again, Max squeezed her shoulder. She looked up at him and tried to smile. His lean, leathery good looks eased her, his steadiness reassured her. The deep lines down his cheeks were smile lines, the tightness of his jaw reserved for less pleasant citizens than his redheaded bride. She leaned into his hard shoulder, rubbing her cheek against his sport coat; he had worn the cashmere jacket she liked, over a dark turtleneck and faded jeans. He had bought their tickets for all six showings mostly to please her, but she knew he was enjoying Patty’s films. She snuggled close, trying to pay attention as the last scene played out. Wadding up her tissues and stuffing them in her purse, she pushed away whatever foolish imagining had gripped her; but she was so engrossed in her own thoughts that when Max reached into his pocket to answer his vibrating cell phone, she was startled. The dispatcher knew not to buzz him here. Not unless the matter was truly urgent.

As he lifted the phone from his belt, the chill touched her again. As he punched in the single digit for the station, sirens began to scream across the village, patrol cars and then the more hysterical wailing of a rescue unit. Max rose at once and quietly left the theater, was gone so fast she had no time to speak to him. Watching his retreating back, she felt Ryan’s hand on her arm--and the chill returned, making her tremble, cold and uncertain. She could not remember ever having had that sudden lost, frightened sensation minutes before the sirens screamed. When Ryan took her hand, she rose helplessly and followed Ryan and Clyde out the side exit, ahead of the departing crowd.

Ten minutes before the sirens blasted, the tortoiseshell kit awoke just as startled as Charlie, just as eerily scared. When the sirens jerked her up from her tangle of cushions on her third floor window seat, she immediately pressed her nose against the cold, dark glass.

The time was near midnight. Above the village roofs and chimneys, above the black pools of wind-tossed trees, the distant stars burned icy and remote. Impossible worlds, it seemed to Kit, spinning in a vastness that no one could comprehend. Beyond the inn’s enclosing walls, a haze of light from the village shops shifted in the wind as indistinct as blowing gauze; against that pale smear, the black pools of trees rattled and shook. She stared down past the lower balconies to the inn’s blowing gardens and patio, softly lit but deserted. What had waked her?

Nothing moved on the patio but the puppets of the wind. She heard no faintest sound.

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