“Which is?”
“You’re the best private eye in all of Maine,” she said with a proud smile.
“I’ll drink to that,” Charles said, raising his glass of soda.
“Me too,” Mitch said.
That’s when Mom came swooping into the restaurant to join us. “I’m here!” she cried. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing,” Nan said, sending a wink my way. “Nothing at all.”
Well, I guess I could tell Mom later. I’d had more than enough excitement that night already.
Octo-Cat nudged me with his paw. “Now that that’s over with, I’m ready to collect on my favor.”
Mom was busy giving her order to the waitress, so I bent down and quietly hissed, “What is it?”
“I want you to buy me a house,” he said with a Cheshire grin.
“A house!” I exploded.
He nodded excitedly. “And not just any house. My house. I want to go home.”
My jaw hung open as I searched for the appropriate response. Nothing came to me, though.
“Don’t worry, you’re coming, too,” Octo-Cat added in a futile effort to answer my objections. He’d learned a lot about human society lately—I’d give him that—but there were certain things that still went way over his head, money being a prime example.
“You want me to just buy Ethel’s house?” I hissed again. “ There’s no way I can afford that huge place.”
“We’ll figure out the details later,” he assured me, returning his attention to his meal.
When I glanced back at my human dining companions, I saw Mom staring at me with a look I instantly recognized.
She knew.
What’s Next?
I never signed up to be a private investigator with a snarky, talking cat for a partner, but there's no backing down now. Especially considering a prominent politician was murdered pretty much right in my backyard.
The only witnesses were the senator's two hairless cats, Jacques and Jillianne. Normally pets want to help us solve their owner's murders, but this time it seems the two devious felines might actually be the ones who committed it…
Surprisingly enough, my own partner in crime, Octo-Cat, actually wants to help this time, but he can barely understand our two prime suspects because of their strange Cornish Rex accents. And I thought speaking tabby was hard!
So, there you have it, even with two successful cases behind me, I really don't know how I'm going to solve this one. Is it too late to go back and pick another career?
Pre-order to save! HAIRLESS HARASSMENT is just 99 cents until it releases on May 30.
Sneak Peek of Hairless Harassment
Hi, I’m Angie Russo, and my pet cat never ever stops talking. Not just mews and meows, but actual words that I can understand. So far, I’m the only one who seems to have this ability, and I still have absolutely no idea why.
It all started when I got zapped by a faulty coffee maker at the law firm where I work as a paralegal. Since then, Octo-Cat and I have used our special connection to solve two murder investigations together. Yeah, even I have to admit, we make a pretty great team.
Only a few weeks have passed since our super sleuthing earned the local handyman Brock Calhoun a get-out-of-jail-free card. And already my feline sidekick is begging for another case. Apparently, napping and complaining all day isn’t an exciting enough life for him now.
All my life I’ve been on the search for that one amazing talent that would make me special and give me purpose. My nan starred on Broadway in her prime, and my parents both work for the local news station and love what they do.
They were all so sure of their talents early in life, but I’ve really struggled to pinpoint mine. I couldn’t even figure out my passion well enough to nail down a bachelor’s degree, racking up seven associate degrees instead.
I definitely never expected to find my true calling as a paralegal, especially considering how much I’ve always hated lawyers. But now that I have Octo-Cat and my special ability, I find that working at the offices of Thompson, Longfellow & Associates provides the perfect way to use my new-found abilities for good—especially considering that the newest partner knows all about my ability to speak to animals.
Oh, yeah! Charles didn’t get fired. Instead, he got promoted. I was so proud of him that I even suggested we go back to the Little Dog Diner in Misty Harbor to celebrate with the world’s best lobster rolls. He told me it would have to be some other time, though, because he already had plans with his new girlfriend, Breanne Calhoun.
Yeah, I don’t get that, either.
The news that he’d started dating the cold and snippy realtor we’d very recently suspected of murder was enough to extinguish my crush on Charles once and for all, though. I’ve also decided that the next time Octo-Cat refers to him as “Upchuck,” I’m not going to correct him.
The thought of him and Breanne together makes me sick, too.
It’s for the best, though, I suppose. I really need to focus on understanding my new pet-whispering abilities, and Octo-Cat and I both need to get better at investigating cases without raising the community’s suspicions. That pretty much means I have no time left for love or infatuation or whatever it was I once felt for Charles.
Anyway, who needs a boyfriend when you have a talking cat?
Not me. Well, at least not for right now.
Lately I’ve been spending a lot more time with my mom. Ever since she helped us catch the real murderer in our latest case, she has been on this kind of career high. She got the exclusive scoop and even managed to record our showdown with the murderer live and on camera. The feature was picked up all over the nation, and she and my dad have received job offers from clear across the country.
The latest was from San Antonio, I think.
She’s not saying yes to any of them, though. At least, not unless I agree to move with them, too. But I would never leave Nan, and Nan would never leave Blueberry Bay.
So we’re all staying put exactly where we are.
Sure, if enough people learn my secret, I probably will have to leave eventually. Right now, a total of five people know—Nan and my parents, who I told on purpose, along with Charles Longfellow, III and a college student named Mitch, who both figured it out by accident. Hopefully I can keep that number from growing any larger, but it seems like several people are on the verge of figuring things out already.
And that definitely worries me.
Especially since my mom just invited me to help her with her newest investigative journalism assignment…
I’d finally switched to a part-time schedule at the firm, and today was one of my days off. And by off, I meant I got to stay home and pack up my tiny rental house under the supervision of one very demanding tabby.
Not only did I have to discard a number of my belongings that he found to be inadequate, but he was also the reason I had to move in the first place. Granted, I’m the one who said I’d owe him a big favor if he allowed me to put him in a harness to take him outside. I hadn’t counted on that favor amounting to more than six-thousand square feet, though.
As it turned out, the favor he wanted was for me to purchase the old manor house he had lived in with Ethel Fulton before she was murdered and, through a truly unbelievable series of events, he came to live with me. Now a twelve-dollar harness was costing me the better part of my five-thousand-dollar monthly stipend, and I’d learned to be more careful about promising my kitty companion open-ended favors.
Yes, my former boss, Richard Fulton, did offer me a generous break on the price. Also, there were fewer interested parties once the greater populace found that the former homeowner had been murdered, but still—still!—owning Fulton Manor would require a pretty penny from me not just to keep up with the mortgage, but also to carry out the many repairs that seemed to be more or less essential for safety purposes.