The Escapee and the Case of the Cat-Napper (A Pattie Lansbury Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 3) Read online

  The Escapee and the Case of the Catnapper

  Nancy C. Davis

  ©2015 Nancy C. Davis

  Copyright © 2015

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known, hereinafter invented, without express written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either products 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.

  Table of Contents

  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

  Story Two - The Case of the Cat-napper

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Thank You

  Your Gifts

  Chapter 1

  Story One - The Escapee

  Chapter One

  Pattie had just finished feeding her family of cats when she remembered how much paperwork she had to do. Her home, which doubled as “Pat’s Whiskers Feline Retirement Home”, came with a lot of red tape. She settled down at the coffee table with a cup of hot Assam tea and went through the latest tax forms, advertisement agreements, and animal insurance papers – not to mention the bills.

  “It seems to get more complicated every year,” she said to Mischief, who had been one of her very first cats. “I should see about training one of you to be my accountant. How about that, hmm?”

  Mischief meowed, then tried to steal Pattie’s chocolate biscuit off her saucer.

  The doorbell rang.

  “I wonder who that could be?” she said, “Well, I can’t very well leave you with chocolate, so I suppose I’m obliged to eat it all at once…”

  Pattie stuffed the chocolate digestive into her mouth in three bites and went off to the front door. She was still brushing the last few crumbs off her cardigan when she opened to door to see four smiling faces.

  The red-headed young man on the doorstep greeted her with an enormous sneeze.

  He rubbed his nose with embarrassment. “Hello, Mum!”

  “Simon! Bless you! Oh, what’s a surprise, it’s so lovely to see you!”

  Simon stooped to give his mother a kiss. Next to Simon was his wife, Linsey, who was holding hands with their two year old daughter, Chloe. Linsey beamed and gave Pattie a hug.

  “Hello, Chloe,” said Pattie, lowering so that she could give the little one a tweak on the cheek. The girl laughed and grabbed Pattie’s arm, shouting “Nanna, Nanna!”

  Pattie ushered in her son and his young family.

  “Come in, come in! Let me put the kettle on.

  Have you had lunch yet?

  What are you doing here?

  Are you staying the night? I’d better put clean bedding and towels in the spare room…”

  Simon laughed as he closed the front door behind him. “Mum, don’t go mad! Let’s get our coats off first, shall we?”

  Five minutes later, Pattie was rattling in her silver tea trolley, loaded with a teapot, cups, saucers, biscuits and cakes. Little Chloe had first choice, of course, and sat on her mother’s lap happily sucking on a rich tea biscuit. The others sat back and waited for the tea to brew in the pot, Simon doing his usual and switching on the news channel. Pattie cleared away her work papers and hid them in the magazine rack.

  “I have some cooked chicken in the fridge, if anyone would like a sandwich?”

  “Maybe a cheese sandwich later, if that’s alright?” said Linsey.

  “Of course! So, what brings you all to Little Hamilton?” asked Pattie, grinning from ear to ear. It wasn’t very often that she got to see her younger son, and she only got the chance to see her granddaughter a couple of times a year.

  “We just thought we were overdue for a visit,” Simon replied, turning away from the TV. “Devon’s not that far away, when you think about it, and now that that ghastly YorkFest music event is over, we can come to the village when it isn’t filled with litter and drunken students.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Pattie, “it was rather fun this year.”

  She was referring to a particularly interesting case that she had investigated as a consulting detective, along with D.C. Tom Downey and his partner, the newly-promoted D.C. Juliette Palmer, over the period of the music festival. It had not been a fun time for the two murder victims, but once Pattie had solved the case and caught up on sleep, she’d felt more stimulated than she had for a long time. The Times crossword just wasn’t enough anymore.

  “We’ve been wanting to visit for a while,” Linsey confessed. “We had such a good time at Christmas here, and I know that Chloe loves to see you. Don’t you, Chloe?”

  “Yes,” said the little girl. “Biscuit!”

  “You already had one biscuit, baby, that’s enough for now.

  “Kitty,” said Chloe, pointing. Simba, Pattie’s friendliest of all her many cats, had jumped up onto the settee next to Simon, who gave a loud spluttering sneeze before shuffling away to the other cushion with the baby. Of all things, Pattie had a son who was allergic to cats...!

  “Bleshew Daddy,” said Chloe, and giggled.

  Linsey laughed and bounced her little daughter on her knee. “So, Pattie, how many do you have now?”

  “Thirteen,” Pattie replied proudly. “There are the latest two by the fire: fast friends. Macy used to belong to Mister Mosby from down the road – I think the Mosby’s moved in after you guys moved to Devon – and the white one is Coconut, who was taken to the police station as a stray a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I thought you named your cats alphabetically?” asked Simon, eyeing the felines that were in every nook and cranny of the room with reddening eyes, and trying not to sneeze.

  “Usually I do, but this one is so pretty with her creamy white fur all over, that I couldn’t resist breaking the pattern! Not that it matters really.

  “That reminds me, I’d better change the sheets in the spare room; the sheets on there will be covered in cat hairs. The catch on the door isn’t very good anymore, and it pops open by itself sometimes.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself Mum, I’ll do it,” said Simon, standing. “Besides, you’ll want to get reacquainted with little Claire!”

  He went upstairs to raid the airing closet whilst Pattie let Claire hop up beside her and stroke Coconut’s milky back. “Careful, cats only liked to be stroked in one direction: front to back. If you go the other way he might not like it!”

  “Yes Nanna,” said Claire, gazing attentively at the queen dozing pe
acefully next to her.

  Pattie turned her attention to her daughter-in-law, who was getting comfy on the settee. Linsey was exactly the sort of girl that she hoped her son would attract: kind, gentle, with a sense of humour as challenging as his own. Pattie was there when they’d met, at the wedding of her other son, Andrew. Simon had been his brother’s best man, and Linsey was a friend of the bride. They hit it off right away and had remained solid ever since – unlike Andrew and Nina, whose strained marriage lasted up until the scandal, and no further…

  It was gazing at Simon’s beautiful wife that Pattie came to a realisation, and gasped. “Linsey! You’re pregnant!”

  The young woman’s face went slack with surprise, but she couldn’t stop a bright grin from emerging straight after.

  “Pattie! How did you know?

  “We haven’t told anyone yet, it’s still really early!”

  “Well, there were a few clues,” Pattie replied with a warm smile. “The unexpected visit was the first – I thought there might be news! But also, you bounced little Claire here on the edge of your knees, away from your belly, which is different to how I’ve seen you do it before. You weren’t comfortable eating the sandwich I mentioned, because you have a pregnant woman’s fear of undercooked chicken. You put a few plumped cushions behind the small of your back just now. And the most obvious clue: you’re positively glowing!”

  Linsey grinned. “We’re so excited about it! In fact, Simon and I wanted to take you out to dinner tonight, and—”

  “Oh, my!” Pattie dropped her teacup, sending the last few droplets flying across the carpet startling Putz, who was sniffing under the coffee table for crumbs. Linsey jumped up, asking what was the matter, but Pattie only stared at the television, which Simon had left switched onto the YTV News channel.

  Linsey followed her gaze. The news reporter was covering the story of an escaped inmate from a nearby prison: “—earlier today, released a statement to the effect that that H. P. Powell, the Warden at Doncaster High Security Prison, takes full responsibility for the escape of Crowley, who also goes by the underworld nickname of ‘Doberman’. The privately-managed Category B prison has had a run of bad press of late, following a string of extreme violence and riots. Residents within a fifty mile radius, including major metropolitan centres such as Leeds, Sheffield and York, are warned to be vigil at all times. A representative from the HM Prisons Inspectorate has yet to be reached about the escape, however—”

  “Oh, no!” said Pattie. What was this? She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. Linsey put her arm around her and called for Simon.

  He came bounding downstairs at the cry. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Look!” said Linsey.

  Once again, a photograph of the escaped prisoner appeared on screen. He was a calm-looking man in his early forties, with blonde hair swept back in a short mane. There were bruises on his face and a deep cut across his lips: his arrest had been a violent one. The left eye was heavily bruised; the other was hidden behind an eyepatch.

  “John Crowley,” groaned Simon, sitting beside his mother. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Should we call the police?” asked Linsey. “He might…”

  “There’s no need at this stage. That prison’s fifty miles away; he won’t get far. It’s bloody Doncaster, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like he’s inconspicuous, is it?”

  It took Pattie two cups of tea and cuddles from four cats to calm down. Finally Simon persuaded her to accompany them to a nearby Italian restaurant as planned. “Lunch will help take your mind off things,” he said.

  That would turn out to be true; but it would also lead to much worse.

  Chapter 2

  Pattie and Simon looked at one another across the dining table at the La Firenze restaurant. They got as far as ordering appetizers before the small talk turned back to the situation at hand.

  “John Crowley is a very dangerous man,” Pattie reminder her son. “And he is very resourceful. It took Andrew four years to find him and put him behind bars.”

  Simon rolled his eyes at Linsey. “You know, I was stupid to think that we could come back to this town and not end up talking about my Star Detective big brother. Mum, the reason Andrew is not here with us now is because he went loopy trying to catch this guy. If he hadn’t falsified evidence he would still be a Detective and he wouldn’t have had to move halfway across the world to get away from all the scandalized country bumpkins that live out here. He was lucky he didn’t get a longer jail sentence himself!”

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Pattie snapped. “Andrew didn’t falsify anything on Crowley’s case. That was another case. Andrew did everything right when it came to catching Crowley, and now that Crowley’s escaped we’re all in trouble!”

  “Mum, this guy doesn’t care about you. You’re just some crazy old cat lady to him—”

  “Thank you for that, Simon.”

  “—and there’s no way he’ll come to such an obvious target. If there’s anyone he has it in for, it would be Andrew; you remember how he was in court raving about how Andrew must have falsified the evidence that put him away, even though everything was cleared by the police? And even if he is after Andrew, then it’s tough luck. There’s no way this guy’s getting out of the country.”

  The waitress came back and put down a bowl of olives and a plate of bread and oil. She glanced at everyone around the table during the uncomfortable silence, then murmured, “I’ll come back in a few minutes for your orders…”

  “Look, you scared away the nice girl,” Pattie huffed, putting on her spectacles and looking at her lunch menu.

  Simon stuffed three pitted olives into his mouth and chewed. “It’s going to be alright, Mum. I promise. We’re here now.”

  “Is that why you really came here? Because you’d already seen that ‘Doberman’ Crowley had escaped?”

  Simon and Linsey shared a look. Linsey said, “Yes, we had already heard about it. But honestly, we’d been meaning to visit anyway, and really we wanted to tell you about the pregnancy.”

  Pattie pursed her lips for a moment, but then softened at Linsey’s smile and glowing cheeks. “I can tell when someone’s fibbing, young lady, but I’ll leave it at that. Let’s try to enjoy our lunch, shall we? I’m famished!”

  That was the last they said on the matter, and soon Claire was too sweetly distracting for even Pattie to worry. They shared some platters and caught up on other subjects, including Linsey’s promotion at her accounting firm, and Simon’s progress at setting up his own legal practice. Mostly, though, they talked about their plans for the new baby, which they hoped would be a boy. Pattie couldn’t wait to have a second grandchild to spoil – but was enjoying spending time with her delightful granddaughter, who was busy drawing cats in her scrapbook with a green crayon.

  It was only when they got back to Pattie’s house that the trouble really started.

  Chapter 3

  The front door swung open on damaged hinges. The glass around the lock had been smashed, and the door had been unlocked from the inside. There was glass in the hallway, ground into the carpet.

  Pattie found Simba shivering in the hallway with wide eyes. She cooed and picked him up to comfort him as Simon went to check the rest of the house.

  He came back a minute later. “There’s no-one here.

  “I can’t believe someone broke in, in broad daylight! Well, I don’t see any damage, and the TV’s still here.”

  “Let’s have a look to see if anything’s missing, okay? I’ll call the police. Is D.C. Downey still working there?”

  D.C. Tom Downey had been one of Andrew’s friends growing up. They’d both joined the police force at the same time, fascinated by the concept of detective work. Thomas had gone on to make a fine Detective Constable. Andrew’s career had eventually been left in tatters. Simon had been friends with Thomas during their school years.

  “Yes,” said Pattie. “I don’t care if there�
��s anything missing. I need to make sure all the animals are okay.

  “Linsey, will you help me count? Let’s try to gather them up and put them in the lounge.”

  “Okay,” Linsey nodded. She’d picked up Claire so that the toddler didn’t have to walk over the glass. Then she put her down on the stairs and said, “Let’s go and see if we can find some kitties, okay?”

  “Kitties!” shouted Claire, and they both went upstairs to look.

  Pattie searched the lounge and the adjoining kitchen. There were muddy boot prints on the carpet that showed the intruder had gone in there. After checking behind the settee and all the other hiding places the cats had found over the years, Pattie found five of them, including Jasper and Mischief. She put Simba amongst them as a calming influence.

  Some of the more skittish cats, like Mia and Macy, would be harder to find, but they were unlikely to have run outside. Archie and Tyson would no doubt have dashed outside during the intrusion or wandered out afterwards, as they were both adventurous outdoor cats. Linsey returned from upstairs to say that they’d found a Birman and a black-and-white with a spot on her nose. That was Mia and Macy accounted for. The new cat, Coconut, was eventually found in the spare room.

  “I must have shut her in there by accident,” said Simon, who was still on hold to the police station. “Sorry, Mum.”

  “That’s okay. It probably kept her safely out of harm’s way.”

  “Did you find all the cats?”

  “There’s a few left to find, but this might help.”

  Pattie stood in the open doorway and rattled a box of cat treats. Two more cats came running in, including Tyson.

  “That just leaves Archie and Harlequin. I’m not worried about Archie; he’s tough.”

  “Which one’s Harlequin?” asked Simon.

  “The silver tabby with three legs. I’ll have to go out to look for her.”

  “Why don’t we go together?” he suggests. “I’ll ask Linsey to stay here for when the police arrive; I’m sure we’ll find Harlequin by then.”