Black Cats and Bad Luck: An Irresistibly Addictive Cozy Mystery by Fern Cooper

Author:Fern Cooper [Cooper, Fern]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2024-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

8

Raspberry Nights

“Someone broke into my motel room?”

I’m having a hard time processing this, even though I’m standing in the doorway staring at the wreckage with my own eyes.

The stuff I don’t mind so much. Clothes everywhere, drawers emptied and overturned. It looks like every crime scene from every cop show I’d ever watched. It’s the message written in my Raspberry Nights lipstick scrawled on the mirror that gets me.

GET OUT!

It’s kind of cliché. This whole setup is. And yet, it’s aimed at me and that makes this scary. Unreal.

Enough to make me really mad. Especially when I realize my little visitor is nowhere in sight.

“My cat!” I dive past the officers dusting for prints or whatever it is they’re doing and ignore a lot of startled shouts as I throw myself under the bed.

No cat. Nothing.

I crawl out, with more than enough help, and plenty of official hands on my arms to keep me from doing anything else destructive when it’s clear they’re still investigating.

“It’s my cat. He’s not here. Have you seen him? Black? Not too big. Kind of fluffy.”

Everyone is staring now.

“What cat?” James asks, his sheriff face on while Pete and Mrs. Pete peer in through the doorway and offer up a single sentiment. “Pets aren’t allowed here.”

Yeah, and this isn’t a dispensary, I want to say, but keep it to myself because they’ve been fairly nice up until this moment. In the meantime, my quasi-landlord doesn’t seem to care because he’s more concerned about what to do with me.

“I suppose we can put you in another room,” he says doubtfully. “The only other one I have open doesn’t have a kitchen though.”

By kitchen, it seems he means there’s no fridge or microwave. Nancy isn’t satisfied with the arrangement though. “How is that any safer? It’s in the same building!”

“But it’s down three units to the right.”

This logic is enough to make Nancy whip out her cell phone as I finally shake off the deputies who let go only after their boss gives them a nod it’s okay.

“I have a cat,” I tell him primly as I brush off my jeans and he almost cracks a smile.

“I believe you.”

He’s looking at the bag I’d brought back with me from the café. I’d dropped it when I bolted into the room. Cans of Salmon Surprise are rolling down the sidewalk.

By now I’m figuring that poor cat is long gone. Obviously, whoever did this probably let him out, and he’s wandering on the property somewhere. For all I know, he snuck out the narrow opening in the window I’d left for him, long before whoever it was showed up.

Of course, he’d found me before, so he might be able to find me again, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. I haven’t had a pet before and I kind of liked having the animal around.

I step outside, looking across the parking lot toward the highway which runs along the front of the property. The traffic out there goes by awfully fast.

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