Kittyzen's Arrest Read online

  Kittyzen’s Arrest

  Country Cottage Mysteries #1

  Addison Moore

  Bellamy Bloom

  Contents

  Book Description

  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

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Recipe

  Dog Days of Murder

  Preview: Cutie Pies and Deadly Lies (Murder in the Mix)

  Chapter 1

  20. Preview: Six Merry Little Murders

  Books by the Authors

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  Copyright © 2019 by Bellamy Bloom and Addison Moore

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This eBook is for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase any additional copies for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright © 2019 by Bellamy Bloom and Addison Moore

  Book Description

  My name is Bizzy Baker, and I can read minds. Not every mind, not every time, but most of the time, and believe me when I say it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

  Bizzy Baker runs the Country Cottage Inn, has the ability to pry into the darkest recesses of both the human and animal mind, and has just stumbled upon a body. With the help of her kitten, Fish, a mutt named Sherlock Bones, and an ornery yet dangerously good-looking homicide detective, Bizzy is determined to find the killer.

  Cider Cove, Maine is the premier destination for fun and relaxation. But when a body turns up, it’s the premier destination for murder.

  Chapter 1

  My name is Bizzy Baker, and I can read minds. Not every mind, not every time—but it happens, and believe me when I say it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

  “Good morning.” I hold up the carafe to the elderly man reading his paper. As the manager of the Country Cottage Inn, I certainly don’t mind helping out in the café when it’s needed. “More coffee?”

  “Please.” He nods politely. Lovely lady. Lovely inn. I’m glad I talked my wife into coming here. He frowns a moment. Fine. She talked me into it. As she likes to remind me, she’s always right. I’ll never admit to it, but it sure is true.

  I can’t help but chuckle as I fill his mug to the brim. Reading minds isn’t always this pleasant. For instance, the time I was at junior prom and my date smiled right at me and thought to himself how much the dress I was wearing belonged on a corpse at the morgue. Or the time I shared my first kiss, and the boy whose lips had just assaulted mine brazenly wished I was some girl named Tina.

  I’m not Tina. I will never be Tina, but at times I’ve wished I could trade places with just about anyone.

  My name is Bizzy, and I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman who has ended up as the manager of the Country Cottage Inn, right here in Cider Cove, Maine, where I grew up.

  I head to the next table, to a girl with her hair up in a messy bun, books strewn across the table, glasses slung low on her nose, and she happens to have a Dexter University sweatshirt on. I hold up the carafe and she signals for me to proceed.

  I’m going to need all the free refills I can get. She looks down and frowns at her books. Who am I kidding? There’s not enough coffee in the world to help me get through this semester. The mechanics and special relativity of physics? What was I thinking signing up for that class? I’m really in over my head this time.

  I point down to her physics book and smile. “You’ve got this. Just take lots of notes and read everything they assign.”

  Common sense wins again. The girl looks momentarily relieved. “Thank you. That actually does make me feel a bit better.”

  I give a little wink before heading to the back of the café.

  Ah, Dexter University. I’ve only left Cider Cove once and that was to attend Dexter where I nearly completed my undergraduate work—and by nearly, I mean I was one semester shy of earning that shiny new degree, but like most things in life I was terrified of reaching that goal. And trust me, I don’t like the fact I hightailed it right back to Cider Cove with my scholastic tail between my legs as an official college dropout, but the more I thought about the pressure graduation would bring, the more I was convinced I couldn’t do it.

  A brunette with long dark curls hovers over her phone and I stop cold in my tracks.

  My God, is that Mack? The girl looks up briefly, and thankfully it’s not her.

  “More coffee?” I ask as I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Yes, and keep it coming.”

  “Not a problem.” I quickly refill her mug, but I can’t seem to pick up on any thoughts she’s having. Some people are simply impossible to read and I have no idea why.

  Mack comes to mind once again.

  The entire mind reading debacle can be traced back to that fateful Halloween party I attended when I was thirteen with my very best friends, Emmie Crosby and Mackenzie—Mack Woods. Let’s just say an innocent game of bobbing for apples went horrifically wrong.

  Emmie was nowhere to be found. Come to find out, she had cornered her junior high crush at the pumpkin carving station and there were both sharp knives and first kisses involved.

  But Mack and I were going for the apple bobbing gold—or so I thought. Let’s just say Mack’s efforts to help me secure my mouth over a juicy red apple were less successful in that arena than they were in her efforts to send me to the other side of existence.

  The more I struggled to come up for air, the more Mack would hold me under, seemingly cheering me on until she finally pushed me right into the giant whiskey barrel that housed the slippery fruit.

  I hit the bottom of the barrel headfirst so hard I saw stars right there under water. It was a nightmare of splashing and twisting and turning, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to untangle my limbs and stand up.

  Four things came from that horrific nightmare. One: I have an irrational fear of large bodies of water. Confession: I haven’t swum since the incident and don’t plan to anytime in the future. Just the thought of the water engulfing me and my inability to breathe or reach the surface scares the living daylights out of me. But since living in coastal Maine makes it nearly impossible to avoid the water, I’ve adopted a rule I can live with. As long as the water never goes higher than my ankles, I’m fine with walking the shoreline.

  Two: I’m terrified of confined spaces. I suspect tumbling around in a dark whiskey barrel filled with water will do that to a person.

  Three: It initiated my distrust of Mack Woods.

  Mack and I grew up together.

  Mack, Emmie, and I used to be an unbreakable trio—that is, right up until high school when Mack saw fit to steal every boy that I even remotely showed any interest in.

  And after she went home with my date at prom, I decided it was time to
cut ties, and thankfully Emmie sided with me. I don’t know what I would have done if I had lost Emmie’s friendship, too. Although, I’ve never counted it a loss to be rid of Mack.

  And last but not least, number four: It was from that day on that I suddenly had the ability to pry into other people’s minds. And, believe me, I did not like what I heard. Apparently, Mack has never had a high opinion of me, but words like suffering and pity were used when she was seemingly forced to be in my presence. And forced by who? I have no idea, but she was never without a fake smile and a mean thought thereafter.

  And let’s just say listening in on other people’s thoughts hasn’t been a picnic either. Suffice it to say, I don’t bother asking people how my outfit looks, or what they think of my new haircut.

  On the surface, everyone is exceedingly polite, but peel back the curtains and you get a lot of truth you didn’t bargain for. And that includes my mother and my sister Macy, too. Of course, they weren’t having cruel thoughts about me, just exceptionally honest ones. The only person who has never had so much as a criticism of me has been Emmie. Every thought that girl has about any and everyone is one hundred percent pure.

  In fact, I’ve become so wrapped up in people’s honest criticisms, I’ve created an entire list of my own to go along with them. And for good reason. No matter how hard I seem to want something, it seems the farther away it gets. Take for instance the fact I love to bake. Well, if I don’t burn it, I find something else that will botch up the recipe. Thankfully, Emmie is an excellent baker and gladly takes my ideas and runs with them. She’s so sweet to me, she tries to give me credit for her yummy desserts, but I would never dream of letting people think I had a hand in making them.

  And that leads me back to why I dropped out of college. Since I was little, the one thing I wanted more than anything was to run my own business. My mother had her own realty company at the time and I wanted to be just like Mom, a large-and-in-charge success, holding the world by her purse strings. But since I seemed to burn everything in the kitchen—and burn down all the good things I touched in general, I decided to run from my collegiate endeavor as well.

  Instead of finishing college, I hightailed it right back to this sleepy seaside town, Cider Cove.

  I set down the carafe and head outside of the café right past the patio and onto the white sandy beach where my cat springs up out of nowhere.

  I sigh dreamily as the sapphire waves crash over the shoreline. My sweet kitten, whom I aptly and ironically named Fish, and I stride farther away from the Cottage Café and watch as the morning swells foam over the shoreline. Fish is a four-month-old black and white longhaired tabby that I found mewling her poor little heart out behind my sister’s soap and candle shop, Lather and Light, just up the way on Main Street. I took the poor little thing straight to the vet, and once it was determined she was a stray, I took her into my home and my heart.

  “Let’s walk out farther,” I say as Fish threads in and around my ankles. Fish doesn’t seem to mind the sand. In fact, she finds it amusing if anything. Since Fish is so good with people, I have her with me at all times while I’m at work. She loves the inn and she loves the pets that come through it as well.

  To the water’s edge! she cries out—of course, it’s all in her mind. We’ve been communicating this way since I brought her home and we’re both quite happy with the situation. I can’t hear every animal’s thoughts, but it’s few and far between when I don’t.

  “Careful,” I call out after her. “You know how we both feel about water.”

  I’ll never touch the stuff. There’s not a beast on the planet that will ever make me dip a paw into it.

  A dry laugh pumps from me as I glance back at the inn. It’s a tall and stately structure with a stone façade, blue shutters over the windows, and ivy covering its every free surface.

  The Country Cottage Inn isn’t only a rather large hotel set right on the beach, but it boasts of over three dozen cottages that we rent out that extend over the rolling hills behind the inn itself. I reside in one, as does my best friend Emmie. Her brother lives in another, and my Grandma, who is technically nobody’s grandmother, lives in the cottage just beyond the main entry.

  In fact, the Country Cottage Inn is the only rental facility that permits pets to stay on the premises—a rule I employed once I was given charge over this place. I’ve always appreciated animals a bit more than I’ve appreciated humans, partly because I’ve never met an animal who has had a bad thought. If my strange gift has given me anything wonderful, it’s been the ability to read the minds of animals.

  And I never shy away from striking up a conversation with them. The great thing about it is people never question your sanity when you’re talking sweetly to a cute furry little creature. And my love of animals is what inspired me to open the inn to pets as well. It’s a crying shame more places don’t invite responsible pet owners to bring along their fur babies. In fact, I took it one step further and opened up a pet daycare center in the back of the inn.

  That’s exactly how Country Cottage Critter Corner was born. To be honest, Critter Corner is truly the star of this place. We have an entire facility attached to the back that has both an indoor and outdoor area that allows ample room for the animals to roam within their respective areas. We get as many cats as we do dogs and bunnies alike.

  The entire inn feels like my baby through and through. But I’m not the owner, and to be honest, I think that takes the pressure off me. The owner of the inn is actually a wealthy earl who lives in England. We met once and the rest of our correspondences have been over the phone or through emails. And to be honest, I like it that way. It almost feels as if the inn and the surrounding properties are mine. And when I’m not running the front desk, or minding the grounds, checking on boarders, or paying the bills, you can find me in the café wishing that I could bake right alongside the pastry chefs, because as my moniker suggests, I do like to whip up a sweet treat in the kitchen now and again—even if it does end in catastrophe.

  The waves slap over the shore almost violently, reminding us that summer is a quickly fading dream and fall is upon us. It’s mid-September and tonight is the farewell to summer bonfire, right here at Cottage Shores, and everyone in Cider Cove will be here.

  I head down to the waterline in haste. It’s my job to make sure the beach is clean, cleared of any unwanted debris, and that there is more than enough chopped wood brought in to feed the hungry fires that will dot the sand later this evening.

  Fish jumps in front of me. It’s so beautiful here. Why must the people come and ruin everything?

  I can’t help but giggle at that one. “You have no idea how many ‘people’ feel exactly that way.”

  I take a full breath as I look out at the expansive cove itself with its pristine belt of sugary sand that caves in like the letter U. An embankment of maples, sweetgums, ashes, birch trees, and oaks ensconces us on either side as they stand tall and proud, almost right to the waterline on either side of us. Their leaves have already turned colors of burnt orange, deep gold, and fiery red. There is no place as magical as Cider Cove in the fall.

  The wind picks up, causing the ocean to churn like a washing machine ready to hit the spin cycle.

  Fish trots out about three feet ahead of me and freezes. Her long fluffy fur stands on edge in a ridge over her back as she looks wide-eyed and terrified down to my right, and I turn my head that way just in time to see a white and red freckled dog bounding this way at a million miles per hour, and, just like that, Fish darts to my left in a blur.

  “Fish!” I scream as I run out a few feet to my left, but no sooner do I dart in her direction than she’s already dashed past me the other way. The rather large dog barks up a storm with his tail pointed up and ears standing erect as he does his best to chase her.

  “No! Stop! Fish!” I howl in a tizzy as my sweet cat bolts my way, and just as I’m about to catch her, she zooms right between my legs and so does that pesky pooch, knocking me
off balance in the effort. “Oh no!” I buck backward and trip over a piece of driftwood. My legs do a little tap-dance as I try to regain my footing, but it’s no use. I land smack on my bottom in the wet mushy sand as water pools around me in what feels like a hostile foamy display.

  “Oh God.” A sense of panic grips me as I struggle to rise. The memory of being trapped in that whiskey barrel comes rushing back uninvited, and suddenly every muscle in my body threatens to paralyze with fear. I struggle to rise just as a wall of water engulfs me from behind and I’m left gasping and reeling as I get sucked out to sea a good ten feet.

  Can’t breathe!

  Can’t see, think, or feel.

  It’s as if every nightmare I’ve ever had has suddenly come to life and sprung on me from behind in the form of a killer wave.

  “Hey!” A pair of arms gesticulate wildly as a man with dark hair wearing a full three-piece suit wades in cautiously, yet quickly, in an effort to give me a hand. “I’ve got you!” he shouts as I flail and gasp, trying my best to find my footing as another wave crashes overhead—this time right over the two of us.

  “Geez!” he shouts as he clasps his hand onto mine. Only, instead of pulling me toward shore, a swell pulls us both out farther in the opposite direction.

  “Help!” I scream at the top of my lungs, but with the wind picking up and the violent waves sloshing around us, I can hardly hear myself.

  My feet lose their grip of the bottom and my body demands to move with the wild current, but I’m holding onto the man in his nice three-piece suit as if he were a life preserver.