Crafts, Cat Burglars, and Murder Read online

  Crafts, Cat Burglars, and Murder

  A Craft Circle Cozy Mystery

  Stacey Alabaster

  Fairfield Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Message to Readers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Copyright © 2017 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Thank you so much for buying my book. I am excited to share my stories with you and hope that you are just as thrilled to read them.

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  Chapter 1

  When people ask me if I am a dog person or a cat person, I always answer, “Neither, I’m a full human!” Some people laugh; some don’t. I always think it’s funny. Either way, it’s a diplomatic way to answer the question without offending anyone in either camp. People can get rather passionate about these things, you know.

  But I think deep down I know the answer.

  It just wasn’t polite to voice it, especially in my present company.

  Because on that particular Saturday in early spring, the Pottsville Pet Rescue animal shelter was very low on abandoned dogs, but was in fact packed to the rafters with cats. The furry little creatures were looking for new homes, or for their old owners to come and claim them.

  Cats, cats, everywhere…and not a one to adopt them.

  The Pottsville Pet Rescue shelter held a lot of fond memories for me. I got my rescue dog, a border collie named Jasper, from that very shelter a few months earlier and we’d been best pals ever since. We do everything together. He accompanies me to work at my craft shop every day and he’s always by my side whenever I’m on an important—or dangerous—mission. And I still keep the leash we took home from the shelter that day of his adoption, even though it’s already fraying from overuse and the blue logo of the Pottsville Pet Rescue animal shelter no longer looks so blue. It’s more of a dull grey these days. But, hey, I’m a sentimental person.

  Jasper wasn’t with me on this particular day, however. He was at home, at my lake house, being dog-sat by my ex-husband who had just made an unexpected reappearance in my life. Adam can be irresponsible and erratic, and always there when you don’t want him and absent when you do, but at least he was good with dogs. I trusted him to look after both Jasper and my other dog, a small terrier named Casper, while I was volunteering.

  I wasn’t volunteering just to avoid my home life. I promise.

  Okay, I sort of was.

  But the animals required my attention either way.

  As it was feeding time, I figured my task would be easy. I turned out to be wrong.

  I leaned down to be at eye level with the creatures in the cage. The accommodation was comfy enough, as far as shelters go, but there were four cats to a room and they didn’t always get along. There was a ginger cat cowering in the corner away from the other three who wouldn’t budge. “Hello, kitty,” I called out to him, crouching down to try and call him over to the feeding tray for his afternoon meal. But he wasn’t having any of it—not the food and not me. Instead, the other three cats gobbled up all the kibble before he even moved.

  The manager, Tom, was a quiet man in his late thirties whom the animals all seemed to like. He was also the man who’d matched me with Jasper so I held him in high regard.

  “Doesn’t look like I’ve quite got the knack for talking to cats,” I commented as Tom came up to the car with a large bucket of dry pet food. The shelter relied almost entirely on volunteer donations for pet food, and thankfully a bulk bag had been delivered that morning.

  Tom grinned at me. “It’s just nice to see some volunteers down here,” he said, dishing out the food into individual bowls. “Like I was saying, we had a part-time employee who bailed on us all of a sudden, leaving me here on my own, looking after dozens and dozens of animals that need my attention. So I appreciate it.” He set down another bowl of food. “I’m sure the animals appreciate it as well.”

  “Hmm, I’m not sure I’m really being that much help. The dogs seem to love me,” I mused. “But the cats…not so much.”

  He laughed. “They just take a little longer to warm up to people. Cats are notoriously standoffish creatures.”

  Hmm, they definitely were.

  “This is just the easy part, the feeding. Now is the hard part: grooming them,” Tom said. He laughed. “So I’m going to have to wish you good luck with that.”

  The short-haired cats didn’t need too much attention, but the long-haired ones needed regular brushing and Tom left me with nothing but a brush and a comb to arm myself with.

  It seemed to take an hour per cat. First I had to catch them, then I had to convince them to sit still, and finally, I had to wrangle them while trying to get the knots out of their coats, while they wailed and scratched at my face and arms.

  But to be honest, I didn’t really mind how long the task took. Part of the reason I was even at the shelter on my day off was because I was avoiding being at home. For the last two weeks, since Adam has come back to town and decided to stay, I’d only gone home to shower, sleep, and occasionally eat. I was having the majority of my meals in restaurants and grabbing all my coffees from cafes, which was starting to put a dent in my savings account.

  At least volunteering was a free activity, and one I could feel good about.

  The grumpiest one of the lot—my tubby ginger friend who, according to Tom, had been found all alone, abandoned in the woods—still wouldn’t budge from the back of his cage, even when I tried to tempt him with a treat. His coat was medium length and could probably go another few days without a brush, so I gave up and retreated, putting my hands up in a show of peace. “I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone then. Do we have a deal?”

  He just shot me a grumpy look before settling back down in the corner and shutting his eyes. Alright then.

  Another one, a long-haired ragdoll kitten who couldn’t afford to miss a grooming session, hissed at me when I tried to pick him up and when I finally got him in my arms, he pushed his claws down so hard on my bare arms that he drew blood and I had no choice but to let him go while I yelped in pain.

  See? That is why I’m more of a dog person.

  “You got any metal gloves I can use for protection?” I called out to Tom. My little ragdoll friend really needed a brushing, or his coat was going to be nothing but fur-balls. “How did your last volunteer do it?”

  Tom laughed. “You’ll get used to it!”

  I left at the end of my first day very tired and with red, raised scratch marks up and down my arms, promising that next time I would return wearing a suit of armor. Or at least a long sleeved t-shirt. But aside from my unwelcome reception from our feline friends, nothing particularly unusual stood out to me on that first day at the shelter.

  On my second shift, I discovered that something strange seemed to be happening.

  Tom had given me the keys to open the doors, trusting me alone for a couple of hours while he went to church, given that it was a Sunday. The shelter wa
sn’t open to the public on Sundays but someone still had to be there to brush and feed the cats and dogs and clean out the cages. I was more than happy to do it and was actually looking forward to an hour or two alone with just the animals for company. That was usually how I liked it.

  But as I walked up the aqua green corridor of the shelter, I noticed that three doors were swinging open.

  My heart stopped beating for a moment.

  Did I forget to close the cage doors before I left last night?

  Was this really all my fault?

  I couldn’t remember whether Tom or I had been in charge of locking all the cages, but given that it was my very first shift, it seemed more likely that the mistake lay with me rather than someone who had worked there for five years.

  I ran to the cages, hoping that by some force of miracle, the cats had been well behaved and just sat in their cages all night, waiting for me to come back.

  Of course they hadn’t. My grumpy ginger fella, the ragdoll with the matted coat, and a short-haired tabby were missing.

  Oh, now I’m really in big trouble.

  Tom was a kind, compassionate man, but would he really forgive me for letting three cats go free during my first shift?

  Even though I had no idea how they had all escaped through the locked front door I had just come through, I ran out into the yard, hoping that at the very least they hadn’t gone too far.

  The shelter backed onto the woods, which only made me panic more. If the cats had gone into the woods, there was really little hope of finding them.

  “Kitty… Here, kitty kitty…” I called out, though it was entirely in vain. It was spring but it had been a cold night and there was still fog and mist in the air, making it even more difficult to make anything out.

  I was just about to turn back and go inside to at least make sure the other animals weren’t in any distress when I heard footsteps, heavy, like they were running, and most likely from a male.

  That was when I spotted him.

  He was young, couldn’t have been more than twenty. He was wearing tight jeans and a flowing blouse of a top. Long, brown hair flowed just past his shoulders, real fashionable like all the young man in bands seem to have these days.

  And carrying two full cat cages.

  I started to run after him. “Hey!” I yelled, stumbling through the mist and fog.

  He looked back at me over his shoulder with wild eyes, but when he turned away again, he only ran faster.

  “Wait! Come back! You can’t steal those cats!”

  But he was already fleeing from the yard with the cages in his hands. Swallowed by the mist, I could no longer see him.

  I just stood there in shock.

  Looked like we had a literal cat burglar on our hands.

  Chapter 2

  I have a good memory for faces and quite a good hand for sketching them, if I do say so myself, so I got out a sheet of white poster paper and a marker, and got to work.

  I had no idea who the young gentleman had been, but I could recall every detail of his face. And Pottsville isn’t a very big place. Unless he had taken those cats on a bus out of town, he couldn’t be far away. My sketch was going to be the thing that found our burglar and brought all the cats back to safety.

  I heard a voice call through the dark. “What are you doing?”

  Great. It was Adam.

  What I was ‘doing’ was sitting quietly in my kitchen after midnight with nothing but a candle for light, hoping that I wouldn’t make a sound and wake my ex-husband. But that hope had not come to fruition.

  “I’m just drawing,” I said, pulling the sketch in closer so he couldn’t see it.

  He walked over and admired it. “You were always a very talented artist.”

  Yes, and Adam was always very charming and always on hand with a compliment, whether you asked for one or not.

  “Bed time, I think,” I said, standing up and taking the sketch with me. I saw Adam shake his head. He looked hurt, but I didn’t have time to deal with that right then. The next day, I had some serious work to do.

  It’s very unlike me to be the first at work to open up the craft shop, even though I am the owner. Usually my assistant manager Brenda does that, seeing as she’s more of an early bird and I am more of a night owl.

  Brenda and I are roughly the same age, both just over forty, but Brenda could easily be mistaken for my grandmother. Well, that’s a little unkind. She doesn’t act like THAT much of an old lady, but she could easily be mistaken for my mother, at least in her manner.

  On this morning, she was carrying a basket full of yarn and needles (probably intending to sit and knit before I arrived at work) and she almost dropped the whole thing in shock when she got to the door and saw me already sitting behind the counter.

  “Have you seen this man?” I asked, holding up a sketch. Brenda knew everyone and everything in Pottsville. If anyone was going to help me track down the missing cats, it was her.

  “What is it to you?” Brenda asked, placing her basket on the counter and unravelling the scarf from around her neck.

  “It’s important,” I said, tapping at the picture. “This man right here is a cat-nabber. He’s stealing cats from the shelter. I saw him with my own two eyes.”

  Brenda looked appalled. “Whatever is he stealing cats for?”

  That was what I had yet to find out. But I knew that no matter what his motivation was, I had to get those cats back before any harm came to them. And before I was fired from my volunteer position. Tom had phoned the shelter around midday, letting me know that he had a flu and would I mind terribly watching the shelter by myself for the entire day.

  I’d sighed a massive sigh of relief over the phone and told him that would be no problem at all, hoping that the cat thief would have an attack of conscience and bring the kitties back at some stage during the day. But he hadn’t.

  So I’d done a little fudging in the record books and claimed that I’d had them adopted out. Wrote that a family had been wandering along and begged to come inside for a look, even though it was Sunday and we were technically closed. They’d fallen in love with three cats and taken them all on the spot.

  It was only a matter of time before Tom figured out I was lying.

  “Come on, Brenda, take another look. You must have seen him before.”

  Brenda screwed up her nose and peered at the sketch again over the top of her bifocals.

  “Looks like one of those layabouts from the street corner down by that supermarket. You know the one. Where all the hippies hang out.” See? I told you she resembled someone a few decades older than me.

  I shook my head. I didn’t know the corner she was talking about . I’d only been in town a few months and wasn’t familiar with every last street corner and the people who hung out on them.

  “Hmm, yes,” she said, firmly this time, as she took another look. “I’ve definitely seen him out the front of the supermarket, begging for spare change with his guitar…playing some dreadful racket.”

  “You mean busking?” I asked, correcting her. “Not begging.”

  She stuck her nose in the air. “Same difference as far as I am concerned. All of them ought to go and get an actual job. The rest of us have to turn up to work at nine o’clock on the dot every morning, we don’t just get to roll out of bed whenever we feel like it and then ask other people to fund our lazy life choices…”

  I wasn’t that interested in hearing her rant. I just had to find my cat burglar.

  “Thanks, Brenda. Bye!”

  I didn’t have Jasper with me that day and it felt a little strange to be walking the streets of Pottsville without my constant companion. Because I don’t own a car, I usually did all my shopping from the small general store near my house, so I’d only ventured over to the larger supermarket, which lay on the far side of town, once or twice.

  The actual supermarket was green and white and had a little pine tree for a logo even when we weren’t in the Christmas season. I
t was large and well-stocked for a small town, probably because it serviced the more rural areas and farmers outside of town as well. It was the kind of place that farmers drove an hour into town every week to do their big shopping. But I wasn’t there to shop. I was there to find a busker.

  The street corner where Brenda said this young man usually was, however, was empty. The supermarket, which was only moderately busy on a mid-Monday morning, stood, green and white behind me, with Easter specials advertised in the windows. Forty percent off hot cross buns and Easter eggs for the next two days only. I decided to risk being bombarded with chocolate and buns and went inside to ask for the manager. Maybe he or she would know where my cat burglar was hiding out.

  I waved over a short, stocky man with balding dark hair who had a ’manager’ name tag but was wearing a blue and white-striped apron like he worked in the deli slicing meats.

  I held up my drawing again.

  I remembered to smile before I launched right into it. “Excuse me, sir? Have you seen this young man today?”

  The manager, whose name tag red “Con” underneath, shook his head. “Sure. That’s Andrew. Andrew Combs.” At least I finally had a name. “Never showed up for his usual set this morning,” Con said with a shrug. “And he’s usually here at nine a.m. on the dot, plays right through till two in the afternoon, on Mondays. It’s his regular spot. Gets pretty territorial about it. Takes in a decent amount of coins, I think. He’s not a bad guitar player.” The manager looked a little concerned. He put down the towel he’d been holding, which seemed to have traces of blood on it. “Has something happened to him?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said. “But just wait till I get my hands on him.” I saw the look of horror cross Con’s face. “I’m just kidding,” I quickly added. “Sort of. But I do need to track him down. You don’t happen to know where he lives, do you?”