Cover Copy
Single mom and gourmet cat food entrepreneur Colbie Summers thought she’d escaped her tiny California hometown forever. But when her father needs her, she packs up her adolescent son, their finicky feline, Trouble, and her budding business. She knows change is tough—but she doesn’t expect it to be murder . . .
Between dealing with her newly rural life, her grumpy, sports-obsessed father, and preparing to showcase her products in the local Sunnyside Power Mom’s trade show, Colbie has more on her plate than she bargained for. Luckily, she has her official taste-tester, Trouble, by her side to vet her
Meow-io Batali Gourmet Cat Food line. Things look promising—until one of the Power Moms is found dead—with an engraved Meow-io specialty knife buried in her chest.
As the prime suspect, Colbie needs paws on the ground to smoke out who had means, motive, and opportunity among the networking mothers—including a husband-stealing Sofia Vergara lookalike. And the cat’s still not out of the bag when a second violent death rocks the bucolic community. Trouble may have nine lives, but Colbie’s only got one to clear her name and stop a killer from pulling off the purr-fect crime . . .
The Trouble with Murder
A Gourmet Cat Mystery
Kathy Krevat
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Lyrical Press books are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2017 by Kathy Krevat
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First Electronic Edition:
eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0298-3
eISBN-10: 1-5161-0298-3
First Print Edition:
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0301-0
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0301-7
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my father Jim Hegarty. He lived life fully and loved deeply, and will be missed by many.
Acknowledgments:
I’d like to thank Jessica Faust, my awesome agent for making my publishing dreams come true, and Tara Gavin, my wonderful editor, for saying “Yes” to Trouble and making this book so much better.
This book wouldn’t exist without the help of my critique group, the Denny’s Chicks: Barrie Summy and Kelly Hayes.
I would not be writing today if it wasn’t for the gentle editing of my first critique group, Betsy, Sandy Levin and the late Elizabeth Skrezyna.
I can never express the gratitude I feel toward all of the family and friends who support my writing career:
Pat Sultzbach, Lee Hegarty, Manny and Sandy Krevat, Donna and Brian Lowenthal, Patty Disandro, Jim Hegarty Jr., Michael and Noelle Hegarty, Matthew and Madhavi Krevat, Jeremy and Joclyn Krevat, Lynne and Tom Freeley, Lori and Murray Maloney, David Kreiss and Nasim Bavar, Lori Morse, Amy Bellefeuille, Sue Britt, Cathie Wier, Joanna Westreich, Susan O’Neill and the rest of the YaYa’s, my Mom’s Night Out group, and my book club.
A special shout out to Terrie Moran, author of the Read ‘em and Eat mystery series, for her friendship and encouragement, and to Dru Ann Love for her friendship and support of the cozy mystery community.
Special thanks to the following experts for unselfishly sharing their knowledge:
Sergeant Cathy Allister, San Diego Sheriff’s Department
Jim Hegarty for website and technical assistance
Katie Smith, NewRoad Foods
Stephenie Caughlin, Seabreeze Organic Farm
Olga Brumm, Animal Artistry Grooming
Dr. Susan Levy, for her medical knowledge
Judy Twigg, for being a typo-finding guru
Mountains of gratitude and love to my brilliant, beautiful and creative daughters, Devyn and Shaina Krevat, and to Lee Krevat, the love of my life!
Chapter 1
A chicken rang the doorbell.
I stood in the open doorway, a little dumbfounded, and stared down at the beige bird with a mop of floppy feathers on its head that looked like a hat. The kind of hat women wore as a half joke to opening day at the horse races. How could it even see through that thing? And did it really just ring the doorbell?
Braving the mid-morning heat of Sunnyside, California, inland from downtown San Diego by twenty miles and what felt like twenty degrees hotter, I stuck my head out and looked up and down my dad’s street. No teens were hanging around, giggling over their prank.
The chicken ruffled its whole body as if to say, “Yes, it was me.” The you idiot was implied by the way it poked his beak toward me and then scratched its feet on the wooden porch floor.
“Right.” I spoke out loud. To a chicken. I had to get out of the house more.
I’d been up since four in the morning, grinding various chicken parts and cooking them for my organic cat food business, and I was already tired. Maybe this was a poultry hallucination brought on by exhaustion. Or induced by guilt.
Maybe this was the king of the chicken underworld, seeking retribution for what was going on in my kitchen.
I shook my head. I had to stop reading so many of those horror novels my bloodthirsty twelve-year-old son, Elliott, couldn’t get enough of.
My dad shuffled over to stand beside me, tugging his bathrobe tighter around his waist. “Hey, Charlie,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. He was talking to a bird too. “A boy bird?” I asked. Was that really the most important thing about the chicken on our doorstep?
The chicken ignored both of us, now finding the railing fascinating enough to peck.
“Of course he’s a boy bird,” he said, his Boston accent coming through. “He’s one of Joss’s Buff Laces.”
“What?”
“His chickens. This is a Buff Laced Polish chicken,” he said. “Look