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I’m not much of an athlete I’m sorry to say, and even though Odelia has put me on several diets, I’m a cat of Rubenesque proportions or, as a smart cat once said, blessed with a low point of gravity. As a consequence the ten feet to the floor seemed… challenging.

“I think I hit the dead man, Max,” said Dooley, still looking as if he’d been picked up and squashed down by the hand of God. “Do you think he’ll mind?”

“He’s dead so I’m pretty sure he won’t.”

“He doesn’t look happy.”

“That’s because someone killed him. You wouldn’t look happy if someone killed you.”

At this point, I’d given up on navigating my way down to the floor and had decided to sit this one out. I had a great view of the victim and could do all the detecting from up there. And I’d just found a nice spot to sit and relax when all of a sudden this nice spot dropped out from underneath me. One moment it was there, and then it wasn’t, if you see what I mean.

Moments later, I landed with my butt on the dead man’s head, ricocheted away, and landed—on all fours—right next to Dooley.

I blinked a few times, wondering what was going on, when suddenly Dooley bellowed,“Timber!” and grabbed me by the shoulder, giving me a vigorous shove.

We managed to jump out of the way as the dead writer fell out of his chair and crashed to the floor. He bounced once, then lay immobile, a cloud of dust kicking up.

Dooley and I both coughed and stared at the dead man, who stared right back at us.

It was not a pleasant sight, nor was it the proudest moment in my career as a feline sleuth. Feline sleuths—or any sleuths for that matter—don’t make a habit of thumping murder victims on the noggin—twice!—and knocking them out of their chairs. It’s just not done. At least not to my knowledge—which now extended to at least one movie in all of the Hallmark Movies& Mysteries Channel franchises, including but not restricted toGarage Sale Mysteries, Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, Fixer Upper Mysteries andHailey Dean Mysteries.

Before we could respond, though, we were surrounded. Surrounded by humans. Lucky for us they were all humans we were familiar with: Odelia, Marge, Tex, Uncle Alec, Gran, and even Odelia’s solid cop boyfriend, Chase Kingsley.

“What do we have here?” asked Alec with a frown. “Two cats and a dead man.”

“Add a parrot and you have all the makings of a pretty funny joke,” Tex quipped and laughed loudly at his own joke. When no one else laughed, he quickly cut the laughter short.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “We slipped and fell.”

It was a terribly embarrassing thing to say. I don’t normally slip and fall. Then again, I’m only feline, after all. These things happen to the best of cats, right?

“What’s that?” asked Odelia suddenly, pointing at something on the floor.

It was a cream-colored envelope, with a logo embossed on the front.

“Don’t touch it,” said Uncle Alec when Marge made a move to pick it up. “Abe!” he bellowed. “Come in here a second, will ya?!”

Abe came running.“What, what, what?” the voluminous man asked, panting.

Uncle Alec pointed down at the envelope and Abe frowned.“Huh. Where did that come from? And why have you moved the body without my explicit permission?”

There was a slight pause, then Gran said,“He fell.”

“He fell?”

“He fell,” Gran repeated. “Keeled over. It happens.”

Abe didn’t look convinced. With the air of a man who’d done that kind of thing a thousand times before, he pulled on a fresh pair of gloves, bent down with some effort, and picked up the envelope, then turned it over in his hands. “Buckerfield Publishing.”

“That’s Chris Ackerman’s publisher,” said Marge, who knew her way around books—being a librarian and all. “Or at least it was his publisher. I read somewhere that he recently signed a ten-book deal with Franklin Cooper, rumored to have netted him a neat sum.”

“Well, open it,” said Gran.

Abe cleared his throat officiously, then opened the envelope and extracted a sheet of paper. Like the envelope, it was beige and embossed with the same logo. He quickly scanned the document’s contents and frowned. “Signed Malcolm Buckerfield. Says here he’s making Ackerman a counteroffer. Practically begs him not to change publishers. Offers him…” Abe gulped a little, like a turkey about to gobble up a particularly tasty morsel. “Holy mackerel.”

“Just spit it out, Abe,” said Uncle Alec.

Abe’s eyes rose over the document to meet Alec’s. “Ten million smackeroos if you please.”

“Nice,” croaked Gran. “This Chuck Peckerwood was some rich dude.” She directed a reverent look at the dead man. “Too bad he’s dead. We might have hit it off.”

“Instead, someone hithim off,” Uncle Alec grunted.

Abe suddenly fixed his eyes on me.“What the hell is that cat doing in here?”

Chapter 9