Midnight Paws

  Jessica Beck

  GHOST CAT

  MIDNIGHT PAWS

  Ghost Cat: Midnight Paws

  Copyright © 2013 by Jessica Beck All rights reserved.

  Second Edition: April 2015

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Ghost Cat: Midnight Paws

  When Christy Blake loses one of her two cats, Midnight, and her boss in what looks like a robbery attempt at her secondhand shop, Memories and Dreams, she thinks it’s the end of the world. But Midnight isn’t ready to go anywhere just yet, so he comes back as a ghost cat to help her track down his killer. Clearly there is a bond between Christy and Midnight that is too strong to be broken by something as trivial as death.

  The First Time Ever Published!

  The First Ghost Cat Cozy Mystery.

  A Brand New Mystery Series by Jessica Beck.

  Jessica Beck is the New York Times bestselling author of the Donut Mysteries, the Classic Diner Mysteries, and the Ghost Cat Cozy Mysteries.

  To Sim, absolutely the greatest cat I’ve ever known!

  Chapter 1

  As I stood in the hallway on a dark autumn afternoon searching the bookshelves for something to take my mind off my crushing sadness and pain, I felt the unmistakable brush of a cat’s tail caress my leg, a sensation that any cat lover in the world would recognize. Before I could look down, though, a sudden movement above caught my eye, and I spotted my Russian Blue cat, Shadow, sitting on the top of a bookcase halfway down the hall.

  An icy chill raced through me the second I saw him watching me from so far away.

  The reason? I had only one cat now.

  It had been three days since my Black Bombay cat Midnight’s life had been extinguished by the same robber who’d killed my boss, Cora Anthony, and there was a hole in my heart so big from the double loss that I doubted it would ever go away. If I hadn’t had Shadow to lean on lately, to stroke endlessly, to whisper my pain to, I don’t know if I would have made it. It was bad enough losing my employer and dear friend, Cora, in such a senseless act, but while I’d cared for her, if I was being totally honest about it, Midnight had meant even more to me.

  So much so that apparently I was still feeling phantom brushes from his tail against my leg.

  When I looked down and saw Midnight’s ghostly image sitting on the floor below me, I nearly fainted on the spot.

  “Merw?” he asked plaintively in his softest voice, the one that always told me he was worried about me. For folks who didn’t understand cat language, it probably sounded a great deal like any other comment Midnight might have made, but I knew my cats so well that I could read every inflection in the sounds they made. All I had to do was hear a single comment from either one of them, and I knew precisely what was on their minds.

  I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs away. I was clearly seeing and hearing things now. I’d been in mourning for the past three days, and I doubted that I’d had more than a random bite of toast or a half-hearted sip of water in all of that time, something definitely out of the ordinary for me. I enjoyed eating, and I usually wasn’t ashamed of who knew it.

  “You’re just overwrought, Christy,” I said softly to myself. “It’s perfectly reasonable that you’d be imagining all sorts of things right now.” I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and then I told myself that no matter how much I wished it might be otherwise, Midnight was gone.

  When I looked back down at the floor, I was relieved—and yet also more than a little saddened—by my late cat’s absence.

  Maybe it was time I got something a little more nourishing to eat before I started seeing my parents again too, though they’d both been dead for years.

  I was walking into the kitchen when I happened to glance up at Shadow, searching for some reassurance that I still at least had one cat in my life.

  That’s when I stopped dead in my tracks.

  There on the ledge beside Shadow was the faint presence of Midnight, looking down at me with an expression that told me that he knew something that I didn’t.

  Clearly, that was a fact that I was in no position to dispute.

  I was still trying to come to grips with what I’d just seen when the telephone rang.

  “Hey, Christy, it’s me. How are you holding up?” It was great to hear Marybeth Jackson’s voice. She was the best friend I’d ever had, and her call was exactly what I needed after what I’d just seen. We’d been roommates in college at UNC-Asheville, and now we were living together again in her grandparents’ former house in Noble Point, North Carolina, located snuggly in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a creaky old place, with sloping floors and not a square right angle in the entire building, but it suited both of us perfectly.

  “I’m hanging in there,” I said. I would have loved to tell her what I’d just seen, but Marybeth was skeptical of all things supernatural, and I knew for a fact that she didn’t believe in ghosts of any kind, whether they sported two legs or four.

  “Have you had anything to eat today?” she asked.

  “Gosh, Mom, I don’t remember,” I said with the hint of a smile, despite the heaviness in my heart. The moniker was what we always called each other when one of us was being overly solicitous toward the other.

  “I’m going to take the high road and ignore that, if that’s okay with you. What do you think about me taking off work early so we can hang out together?” she asked.

  I knew how important her career was to her as a pharmaceutical company’s drug rep, so it was no small sacrifice on her part to make the offer. “As much as I appreciate the gesture, you don’t have to do that. I’m okay.”

  “Sure you are. And just think, with me there, you’ll be even better. I’ll see you in a few hours, Roomie.”

  “Thanks, Marybeth.”

  “You bet.”

  After we got off the phone, I grabbed a cinnamon-raisin bagel from the counter and then went off in search of Midnight. If I was truly losing my mind and seeing things, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to tell anyone else about it, but I still had to see if my ghost cat was still around.

  “Midnight. Shadow. Come here.” No response, and both cats were gone from their perches above the bookshelves.

  “I’ve got treats.”

  The offer was my last resort, one that I always had to follow through with or take the risk that neither one of them would ever come back to me again when I called them.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t know what kind of treat a ghost cat would like, but it ultimately didn’t matter.

  Neither one of the rascals came to me when I made the offer.

  It was a big house, though, and I was still looking for my wayward cats when I heard the front doorbell ring. As I walked from the back parlor through the hallway toward the front of the house, I glanced up and saw that Shadow and Midnight were both back on top of the same bookcase where I’d found them earlier.

  If Shadow was at all surprised by his roommate’s sudden reappearance from beyond the grave, he wasn’t showing it.

  “Neither one of you go anywhere. I’ll be right back,” I ordered, not at all sure that they would listen to me, no matter w
hat side of the grave they might be on.

  I opened the front door and said, “Oh, it’s just you,” as I realized that Lincoln Hayes was standing outside on the broad porch of our house.

  “I have to say, I’ve had warmer welcomes in my life,” Lincoln said cheerfully. He was a handsome young attorney two years older than Marybeth and me, with dark brown eyes and matching auburn hair. Lincoln and Marybeth had dated off and on in high school, but they’d shifted into Full Friend mode since she’d moved back home to Noble Point. Marybeth thought that Lincoln might have developed a little crush on me since I’d moved to town, but if it were true, I hadn’t seen any signs of it. Not that I was even sure that I wanted anything more than friendship from him. My heart had been broken six months before by a man with a ready smile and a treacherous heart, and I was in no mood to take a chance of it happening again anytime soon.

  “Sorry, Lincoln. I didn’t mean anything by that. I guess I’m just a little distracted at the moment.”

  “Don’t give it another thought. It’s completely understandable. Christy, I’m truly sorry for your loss.” I could see the depth of his pain for me in his eyes, and it really touched me.

  “Come on in,” I said.

  “Thanks. I overestimated the temperature when I decided to walk over to get a little exercise. It’s a little chilly out today, isn’t it? I’m already starting to miss summer.”

  “Not me. Fall and Winter are my favorite times of year.” I had a sudden notion. This was the perfect opportunity to see if I was delusional, or if my cat had truly come back to me from beyond the grave.

  As Lincoln stepped inside, I said, “Do me a favor, would you? Shadow is on top of the bookcase. Come into the hallway and take a look at him for me, would you?”

  As he followed me into the hallway, Lincoln asked, “Do you want me to get him down from there for you?”

  I laughed at the very thought of it. “No, he’s perfectly capable of getting down on his own when he’s good and ready.”

  “Then why exactly am I looking at him?”

  “Just indulge me, okay?”

  Lincoln frowned a little, and then he nodded. I had to know if Midnight was really there, or if he’d just made an appearance in my grief-stricken imagination.

  Lincoln stepped into the hallway, and I held my breath.

  “Is that supposed to be funny?” Lincoln asked a moment later.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s not there,” Lincoln answered.

  “Are you sure?”

  “See for yourself.”

  I glanced through the hall past him and saw that my cats were indeed both gone from their earlier spots. I couldn’t blame Shadow for taking off if he’d decided that he didn’t want to share his place with Midnight. He had every right to freak out even more than I did by his companion’s sudden mysterious reappearance, though he hadn’t shown it so far.

  “Should I look for him?” Lincoln asked.

  I knew my cats better than that. If either one of them wanted to vanish, they were perfectly capable of disappearing without the slightest bit of effort, ghostly state or not.

  “Never mind,” I said. I’d deal with them later. “What brings you by?”

  “Christy, we need to talk,” Lincoln said gravely.

  “That’s what I thought we were doing.”

  That didn’t even merit a smile. “This is serious. I’m sorry, but it really can’t wait any longer. I’ve tried to give you as much time as I could. Why don’t we go back into the living room and have a seat?”

  The living room was in the front section of the house, not to be confused with the back parlor. Marybeth had spent a great deal of time here during her summer vacations as a kid, and when her grandparents had moved to Florida, they’d deeded the house to her as an outright gift. I was happy to be a renter, coming to Noble Point to visit my best friend three months earlier and surprising us both by staying, even finding a part-time job at Memories and Dreams, Cora Anthony’s eclectic shop filled with odds and ends and curiosities galore. At the time, it had seemed like the perfect place for me to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

  At least that was how it had stuck me until three days ago.

  “How about if we go into the kitchen, instead?” I suggested. “I can make us some coffee. You look like you could use a cup.”

  The young attorney smiled gratefully, and from the developing bags under his eyes, I could see that he had indeed been working too hard lately. “Actually, that sounds great.”

  We went into the kitchen, and I saw unsurprisingly that our main coffee pot was nearly empty, and undoubtedly cold. Marybeth and I loved our coffee, and it wasn’t all that unusual for us to have two pots brewing at the same time, creating magical elixirs from the far regions of the globe.

  “I’ll put a fresh pot on. Don’t worry; it won’t take long,” I said as I rinsed out the remnants of our last batch in the sink.

  “Don’t go to any trouble on my account,” he said.

  “I’m not,” I said, adding a brief grin. “It sounds good to me, too.”

  “Okay, that’s perfect, then. While we’re waiting for the coffee, we can go ahead and get started.” Lincoln opened his briefcase, really just a fancy men’s messenger bag, on the kitchen table and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

  As the attorney pushed them toward me, he said, “I need you to sign everywhere there’s a yellow arrow. I’ve marked everything for you to make this process easier. Your full name is Christine Olivia Blake, is that correct?”

  I pushed the documents right back at him without replying.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Besides the fact that I have no idea what you’re asking me to sign, everything’s just peachy.”

  “Didn’t anyone tell you?” he asked, looking haggard.

  I shook my head. “I don’t really know how to answer that, do I? If they’d told me, I’d know, but if they didn’t, would I have any idea what I was missing?”

  “I don’t understand. Someone from my office was supposed to call you yesterday to let you know what was going on,” he said.

  “Well, they didn’t.”

  Lincoln frowned slightly. “I apologize for that. I would have called you myself, but I’ve been buried in paperwork lately.”

  I must have flinched at the word ‘buried,’ because he quickly added, “Poor choice of words. Things have been crazy around the office. Sorry.”

  I tapped the documents. “Are you going to tell me what’s in there?”

  He tried to smile, and he nearly made it as he announced, “What it all boils down to is that you’ve been appointed as the acting manager and caretaker of Memories and Dreams.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She didn’t tell you? Cora changed her will two weeks ago. She wanted to give the whole business to you outright, free and clear, but if she did that, she knew her two greedy cousins would challenge the will in court if she cut them out completely.”

  “They can have every last bit of it as far as I’m concerned,” I said. I had no interest in running the place, or ever taking one step through that front door again, whether it was on Cora’s terms, or any others. A part of me had died in that shop right alongside Midnight, and I never wanted to go back.

  “Don’t be hasty, Christy. It would mean a substantial pay raise immediately,” Lincoln said, “and a controlling ownership interest in the business as well after a set trial period. It’s nothing to throw away without some serious consideration first.”

  “Lincoln, I don’t have to take it, do I?”

  “Don’t you want to stay in Noble Point?” he asked softly. For the first time, I could see that Marybeth’s teasing about Lincoln’s crush on me had at least some basis in reality.

  “I don’t know. I have
n’t really thought that far ahead yet.”

  “I know for a fact that there are a lot of folks in Noble Point who would like you to stay, including me, but if you’ve already made up your mind, there’s still time to figure out how you’d like to handle this. In the meantime, while you’re considering your next move, you should take this offer,” Lincoln said.

  “Why?”

  “I can give you a dozen reasons why it makes sense, but there’s really only one that matters. It’s what Cora wanted,” he said softly.

  “So you say.”

  “You don’t have to believe me. It’s all right here in black and white.”

  I glanced over at his messenger bag. “You don’t happen to have a letter or anything from her in there explaining all this to me, do you?” It didn’t make sense. Cora loved writing cryptic puzzles and rhymes for me, and then leaving clues that helped me solve them. Why hadn’t she done it now, when it was most important?

  “What are you hoping for, Christy, a message from beyond the grave? I’m afraid there’s nothing.” Lincoln frowned for a second, and then he added, “I do know that she wanted you to do this. She was pretty insistent on it, as a matter of fact.”

  Lincoln flipped through the documents, and then he pointed to one of the pages in back that was headed with the word ‘Codicils’ on it.

  I glanced at it, and then I pushed the papers back at him again.

  “Don’t you believe what I’m telling you is true?” Lincoln asked.

  “That’s not it. I can read all of this for myself, but that still doesn’t mean that I’ll understand it. If you want me to have a clue about what you’re talking about, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

  He picked up the top document, and then he read the pertinent information aloud.

  “Sorry, but it still doesn’t make sense to me. I didn’t go to law school, remember?”

  Lincoln nodded as he studied the document again. “Basically, it says here that after two years of operating the shop as its general manager, you inherit fifty one percent of the company, with the option of buying out the other two owners at the fair market value of the business. If you choose not to buy them out, they have the option of buying your share from you, but not until those two years have passed.”