Cat in a White Tie and Tails A Midnight Louie Mystery

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

• ISBN13: 9780765327475
• ISBN10: 0765327473
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-07
• Publisher: Forge Books

Summary

Midnight Louie goes along as chaperone when PR whiz Temple Barr and her fiance, rising media star Matt Devine, head to Chicago so she can meet his family. Matt's mother has a tragic past primed to rise and bite anybody in reach, even the ex-alley cat sleuth. When Louie is snatched, the catnapping's surprising motive loops back to Vegas and a string of unsolved murders connected to magic . . . and ex-magician Max Kinsella, Temple's former significant other. Skeptical homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina has commissioned Max to investigate the cold case murder she suspects he committed two years earlier. With traumatic amnesia from a recent attempt on his life, the once infallible Max is more sitting duck than predator. It will take an alliance of frenemies to solve the serial deaths before one of them joins the fatality list.

Author Biography

Cat in a White Tie and Tails is the twenty-fourth title in CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS’s sassy Midnight Louie mystery series. Previous titles include Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta, Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme, and Cat in a Topaz Tango. In addition to tales of her favorite feline, Douglas is also the author of a historical suspense series featuring Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have “outwitted” Sherlock Holmes. Douglas resides in Fort Worth, Texas.

Table of Contents

"Twisty, riveting, and intriguing. Even longtime fans of the series are bound to say 'Wow, I never saw that coming!' to the very end.”
— RT Book Reviews Top Pick!, 4 1/2 stars on Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme

“Fans and feline fanciers will no doubt curl up and purr.” 
—Kirkus Reviews on Cat in a Topaz Tango

 “If either Mike Hammer or Columbo had a cat, it would be Midnight Louie.”  —Cat Fancy

“Douglas’s humor and keen plot twists keep this long-running series purring.”
—Publishers Weekly on Cat in a Red Hot Rage

Excerpts

Chapter 1

Underwater
 

She was in the water, drowning.
Her hands pressed against her constricted chest, thumped it as if she could force the liquid from her lungs.She couldn’t … breathe. Move.
She’d fallen from the top deck of a ship, a huge ship like theTitanic.Another ship was heading toward her, not like theTitanic,more like theBlack Pearlpirate ship.
She knew she was dreaming then, knew she had to struggle to wake up because a nightmare had her by the throat. She knew someone was by her side to do it, if she could only move her paralyzed lips or body before the dark water sucked her under.
She could see the oncoming ship’s billowing black sails scudding like storm clouds above her. It was as colorful and clear as a movie scene. She should remember this and write it down.…
Oh, God!The ship’s bowsprit was a solid metal lance twenty feet long, and the ship was wallowing deep in the waves to strike her right in the heart. The figurehead poised below that lethal weapon … was no naked mermaid.
It was a blindfolded and blinded man with blood trickling from his eyes, his battered body bound to the ship’s bow, his mouth distorted around a dirty rag of a gag that bottled up his silent scream.
He was a dead man sinking.
And she knew just who he was and how long he’d been dead.
“Temple. Temple.” Someone was shaking her awake. Her hero.
She looked into Matt’s dark eyes blinking in the bedside table light. As she blinked herself, he crushed her into his arms.Hmm.Strong arms, warm bare chest … Her heart was considering a different reason to race.
“You’re here, Temple. You’re with me. You’re safe.”
“Yeah. Yeah! Oh, my God, it was an awful dream.”
“About what?”
“Oh, high seas, and falling into the ocean to drown, and a ghastly, ghostly pirate ship and a handsome buccaneer to rescue me.” She felt like Dorothy Gale explaining a Darkside Oz.
Matt laughed, relieved to hear her making sense. “You’ve never had a nightmare with me here. They common?”
“No, Matt.” She sighed.
“We’re going up in an ‘airship’ of sorts tomorrow morning. Maybe you’re nervous about the flight.” When she hesitated, he added, “About meeting my family?”
“Or maybe it’s Chinese takeout for dinner?”
He laughed again and rolled her over atop him as he turned out the light. “Fiancées the world over go out of town to meet the future in-laws every hour. Granted, my family’s a bit messier than most, but they don’t bite.”
She nodded and murmured as he rubbed her back and let him think what he wanted, needed to.
When she shut her eyes she could still see the grotesque dead man racing toward her. She’d never seen him dead until now, just knew about it. Knew his name. He’d roughed her up once. Clifford Effinger. Sleazeball, petty crook, family abuser, deadbeat, Matt’s detested stepfather, and victim of an unnamed killer or killers, slain just the way she’d dreamed him, on the Oasis Hotel’s famous sinking sailing ship attraction months earlier. This could not be a good omen.

 
Copyright © 2012 by Carole Nelson Douglas