Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Teaser chapter
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sofie Kelly
Also by Sophie Kelly
NO CAT DOOR REQUIRED . . .
The steps up to the apartment were at the back of the building. I set the messenger bag down on the floor of the covered porch at the top of the stairs. Herc popped his head out and looked around. “Not a sound,” I warned. “Not a meow, not a rumble, not even a burp. Rebecca will be here any minute.”
I bent down to close the top of the bag. He jumped out, looked right and left and then disappeared through the door before I could grab him.
Yes, through the closed door.
My heart stopped. I dropped down into a crouch. Hercules was definitely gone, gone through a thick, solid door. That was the other thing about him that I couldn’t tell anyone. He could pass through any solid object—doors, six-inch-thick walls, concrete foundations.
I didn’t have a clue how he did it. In fact, the first time I’d seen him walk nonchalantly through an inch-and-a-half-thick wooden door at the library, I thought I was having hallucinations or even a stroke. Because cats can’t walk through doors or walls . . . can they?
Also by Sophie Kelly
Curiosity Thrilled the Cat
OBSIDIAN
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First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, September 2011
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
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 actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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ISBN : 978-1-101-54398-6
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is a solitary occupation, but it takes the hard work of a lot of people to create a finished book. Thank you to my agent, Kim Lionetti, and everyone at Bookends LLC. Thank you as well to my editor, Jessica Wade, whose skills make me look good, and to Robin Catalano, who knows more about grammar than I ever will.
Special thanks go to Police Chief Tim Sletten of the Red Wing, Minnesota, Police Department for generously and patiently answering my questions. Any errors in police procedure are due to my playing with reality.
Thank you to all the readers who have e-mailed or written to let me know how much they like Owen and Hercules and to share their own cat stories.
And, as always, thank you to Patrick and Lauren, who make everything better.
1
It was pretty clear the body wasn’t going to go in the back of Roma’s SUV. The legs were hanging out, almost touching the driveway.
“Can’t we just push him in?” she asked, kicking dirty snow away from the back tires.
“No, we can’t just push him in,” Maggie said. “That would break his legs.” She walked to the other side of the SUV. “Maybe if we put him in feetfirst . . .” She looked at me. “What do you think, Kathleen?”
What did I think? I thought it was freezing. “He still won’t fit,” I pointed out. “Could we take his legs off?”
Maggie looked at me, aghast. “Take Eddie’s legs off? How?”
“I have a hacksaw under the front seat,” Roma added oh-so-not-helpfully. Because she was a veterinarian she had a number of things in her vehicle that other people didn’t.
I gave her a look. “No, I don’t mean saw off his legs,” I said. “But don’t they detach somehow?”
Wrong thing to say. Maggie laid a protective hand on Eddie’s thigh. “Do your legs detach?” she asked me.
I exhaled slowly, watching my breath hover in the air. “No,” I said, “my legs don’t detach, but I’m a human being and Eddie’s a mannequin.”
“He’s a mixed-media assemblage piece,” Maggie said huffily.
The real Eddie Sweeney—“Crazy” Eddie Sweeney—was number 22, a six-foot-four forward for the Minnesota Wild hockey team and the pride of the state, born and bred. Maggie had been commissioned to create a display featuring Eddie for this year’s Winterfest. I was pretty sure the Winterfest committee had been expecting Maggie’s collage panels, not a life-sized re-creation of Eddie in pads and skates. He looked so real, truthfully, that he had given me the creeps the first time I had seen him dressed and sitting in a chair in Maggie’s art studio.
“Could we wrap him in plastic and tie him to the roof racks?” Roma asked.
All I could see were Roma’s eyes and nose buried under the hood of her heavy coat.
“Realistically, how far do you think we’d get before someone called the police?” I said.
“Good point, Kathleen,” she said.