Cat Crimes for the Holidays

by Greenberg, Martin H.; Gorman, Edward; Segriff, Larry

• ISBN13: 9780345482228
• ISBN10: 0345482220
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-01-03
• Publisher: Ivy Books

Summary

CELEBRATE THE HOLIDAYS WITH FAMILY AND FELINES In these nineteen original tail-twitching tales of mystery, cats from Maine coon to Scottish fold, tabby to Siamese, white Persian to calico crack all manner of holiday capers. Arbor Day reminds a veterinarian how a kitten's coat cinched a murder case . . . A smart young woman at Christmas discovers that the way to an old man's inheritance is not through his heart but through his cat . . . A family Hanukkah celebration gives a sharp-eyed cop with a fondness for felines insight into blackmail and murder . . . An abused stray at Thanksgiving sends a family over the edge . . . And many more! Once again mystery fans will cheer as cats meet crime for a fur-raising showdown of deceit, detection, and a dizzying display of feline fireworks.

Author Biography

Martin H. Greenberg has been called "the best anthologist since Ellery Queen." In addition to coediting the Cat Crimes series, he is the editor of Women on the Edge. He resides in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Ed Gorman has won the Shamus Award and has been nominated for both the Edgar and Anthony Awards. He makes his home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Larry Segriff is the author of three novels and the coeditor of the award-winning anthology The Fine Art of Murder. He lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Excerpts

Dr. Couch Saves a Cat
by Nancy Pickard

"It may seem terrible," the old veterinarian admitted to his granddaughter, "that I was so worried about a cat when there was a person who had just passed on. But it was an awfully nice cat, and the human being wasn't much to brag about, I'm sorry to say."

"Tell me about the cat, Grandpa."

"A child after my own heart."

The old man smiled at the ten-year-old whose hair was the same shade of shiny walnut that his had been seventy years ago and who was a stringbean, as he had been in his youth, and who also had inherited his unusual shade of light brown eyes. Her name was Frances--which she hated, except for the fact that she was named after him--and so she went by Frankie. His name was Franklin Couch. Everybody except the child--even his own daughters, sometimes--called him Dr. Frank. He was a formal sort of man with most people, a trait he deeply regretted when he gauged the emotional distance between him and his daughters. With animals and small children, however, he was magic. Butterflies landed on him, shy little house spiders climbed down walls until they were face-to-face in conversation with him, wild doves allowed him to pick them up and cradle them in his hands before gently putting them back down again. Dogs who barked, lunged, and bit at every other vet bared their teeth in goofy smiles at Dr. Frank. Cats he'd nev
er met before rubbed their foreheads hard against his own and tapped their paws against his cheeks, their claws politely tucked away.

Children such as his own granddaughter tended to run up to his side and slip their hands into his. His daughters had done that, too, when they were little, but now he couldn't recall the last time he'd held their hands. Adults of the human species were a puzzle to him, mysteries to which he knew he hadn't a clue. His wife, Lorraine, was long dead, so he couldn't ask her how to reach his own girls again. It was when she died that he'd felt them slipping away; it was Lorraine, he then understood, who had long bridged the gap between them.

Dr. Frank observed the pert, upturned face of his granddaughter, whom he loved so much it made his heart swell and hurt, and felt sad at the thought of one day watching her, too, disappear into the mists of adulthood.

"Meow," she teased him.

He heard her and smiled.

It was how she called him out of the reveries into which he often sank these days, like an old dog in a patch of sunlight. His grandchild knew him well, he thought ruefully: If his phone barked instead of rang, he'd probably answer it more often.

"It's a murder story," he warned her. "Are you sure you want to hear it?"

"Oh, yes! As long as only people die. No animals, right?"

"I promise no animals die in this story."

"Okay, then."

He knew exactly how she felt and couldn't agree with her more.

"The victim was a man named Joseph Becker," he said, settling back into the easy chair while she also settled herself more comfortably in the crook of his right arm, squeezed into the tiny space between him and the side of his chair. He heard her give a contented little sigh, and felt like giving one just like it himself. "Joe Becker was a good-looking man in his thirties who was a partner in a small business that, um--" Dr. Couch thought, searching for a simple method of getting across to a ten-year-old the idea of a middleman, "--that bought crops that farmers grew and sold them to big businesses. Most of the young men of our generation had gone off to fight in World War Two, but Joe Becker couldn't go, because he had flat feet."

Young Dr. Franklin Couch hadn't gone to war, either, not because he was a veterinarian, but because he was an only son who was already the sole support of a wife, two little dau

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Excerpted from Cat Crimes for the Holidays by Martin Greenberg, Ed Gorman, Larry Segriff
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.