Cat Deck the Halls

by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

(Joe Grey Cat Mystery Series, Book 13)

Morrow (a HarperCollins imprint), 2007
Hardcover: ISBN 006112395-
Paperback: Avon, ISBN 006112396X
E-book: HarperCollins
Audiobook: Download and digital rental (CD no longer available)

The cats who saved Christmas . . .

The charming seaside village of Molena Point, California, leads one to expect a quiet traditional Christmas surrounded by family and friends -- but not this holiday season. Instead of singing carols and climbing into Christmas trees, Joe Grey, feline P.I., is faced with his most difficult case yet -- and that's saying a lot for a wily tomcat who for years has been solving crimes the police can't even crack.

At midnight in the deserted gardens of the shopping plaza, a stranger lies dead beneath the village Christmas tree; the only witness to the shooting is a little child. But when the police arrive, summoned by an anonymous phone call of feline origin, both the body and the child have disappeared. As police scramble for leads, the grey tomcat, his tabby lady, and their tortoiseshell pal, Kit, launch their own unique investigation.

Together Joe Grey, Dulcie, and Kit face their most heartbreaking case yet as they care for the child who may be the killer's next target. Trying to sort out perplexing clues amidst the happiness of the season, they shadow a cast of colorful characters. But neither the police nor their unknown feline assistants are aware that they might have stumbled over the murderer and never known it, until an electrifying final scene when the killer's identity is revealed.

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Quotes from the reviews

For years Shirley Rousseau Murphy has written tales that have delighted readers and critics alike. With her lyrical prose and fast-paced plotting, Murphy has created another delightfully absorbing trip to a magical place populated by unforgettable characters whom readers have come to think of as friends.

"Murphy's fans will be happy to curl up under a blanket as they savor the finely crafted suspense set against the backdrop of hoidays feasts and festivities and the crashing waves of the Pacific." --Publisher's Weekly, October 1, 2007

"The whodunit is cleverly designed to keep the audience, the cops and the cats off balance until the final paw step." --Harriet Klausner, Genre Go Round Reviews, October 16, 2007

Excerpt from the story

The body was discovered only a few minutes after the killer fled. It was glimpsed by a lone and silent prowler looking down from the roof of a plaza shop. By a four-footed wanderer trotting across the steep shingles enjoying the lull in the storm, a lone adventurer out to discover what might be new in the night. By a tortoiseshell cat out on the prowl, to see what she could see.

Below the darkly mottled cat, the streets were deserted. The only movement was the police unit making its way slowly up Ocean--out on the prowl, too, she thought companionably.

As she crossed the plaza roof, she smelled blood, and then cordite. Startled, she approached the plaza below her, and was suddenly shaken by the smell of death. Nose twitching, she padded to the edge of the roof’s rounded tiles and looked down into the enclosed gardens.

Here atop the single one-story shop at the front of the complex she was below the rest of the building, and below the top of the plaza’s Christmas tree, below its crowning star. For a moment the colored lights blinded her. As her pupils contracted, she saw the body under the branches and she hissed and backed away. But then she crept to the edge again, looking.

The man lay unnaturally twisted, his body angled awkwardly between the tangle of oversize toys, his face whiter than paper except for the dark blood spilling from a wide and gaping wound down the side of his forehead and cheek. He was dead, no question, the sour smell of death filled the night. He was beyond help now, beyond any help in this world--but the little child who clung to him was alive and shivering, a little girl lying curled against the dead man, clutching him tight, her face pressed against him and her little tense body shivering with silent sobs.

Crouching and still, the tortoiseshell cat looked out to the street. The deepest shadows were pitch-black, impenetrable even to feline eyes. The smell of death was so sharp it made her draw back her lips, her teeth bared, her whiskers flat against her darkly mottled cheeks. She lifted a paw, but didn’t back away, she stood watching the dead man and the little silent child with her arms tight around his arm and neck, her face burrowed into his shoulder, her little white sweater soaked with his blood.

She thought the child might be five, maybe six years old: it was hard to tell, with humans. Beneath her bloody white sweater she wore little blue tights, and little white boots with fake white fur around the tops. Her hair was jet-black, her skin milky. A ragged cloth doll lay forgotten beneath her, a doll that seemed to have little padded wings. a homemade angel doll.

Kit studied the black shadows of the plaza but did not see a lurking figure. She was crouched to leap down to the child when the little girl choked out a tiny, thin sob, a small, lost sound perhaps too faint for a human ear, and that sob frightened and hurt Kit all the more deeply. This child had been abandoned in a way no child should ever be abandoned, this child should be laughing and reaching up among the laden branches and golden bells and ribbons, not hovering terrified against a dead man, filled with incomprehensible loss: and a terrible pity filled Kit, and an icy fear.

The dying wind carried the scents of Christmas that lingered from the shops, of baking, of nutmeg and ginger and hot cinnamon, all mixed, now, with the stink of death. Away across the roofs behind Kit, the courthouse clock struck midnight. Twelve solemn tolls that, tonight, were death tolls.

This afternoon the village and plaza had been crowded with hurrying shoppers, the park across the street filled with white-robed carolers and with the velvet soprano of Cora Lee French, ". . . rest ye, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay. . ." And now there was no one but a little abandoned child and, somewhere unseen, a killer with a gun, for surely that was a gunshot wound. What else could it be? Kit was alone in the night with a dead man and a lost little girl, and an unseen killer. Nervously she washed one mottled black-and-brown paw, trying to get centered, trying with calming licks to soothe her frightened inner cat.

And then she spun around and bolted away across the rooftops racing to bring help.

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