A Tale of Two Tabbies by Kathi Daley Read Free Book Online

found out,” I added. “I’m not sure why she would say that if it wasn’t true.”
    “Well, she obviously told someone,” Siobhan commented.
    “Her maker,” I shouted. “Felicity said she’d never told anyone other than her maker.”
    “She was talking to God?” Tara asked.
    “Indirectly,” I theorized. “She said something about confessing to her maker.”
    “The confessional,” Siobhan caught on. “Theresa bugged the confessional.”
    Oh, God. I quickly thought back to the juicy tidbits I’d confessed over the years. I supposed there was nothing too scandalous.
    “How did Theresa manage to bug the confessional?” Finn asked.
    “She’s at the church all the time,” I told him. “She not only played the organ and piano for both the children’s and adult choirs but she was part of the women’s group that helps out with light cleaning and maintenance.”
    “So she’s been listening in on the confessions of her neighbors and using the juiciest ones to blackmail people,” Cody summarized.
    “It would seem. And it would seem that one of the people she was milking had had enough and killed her,” I said. “Locking the cat in the confessional must have been symbolic.”
    “Question is, which of Theresa’s victims killed her?” Tara asked.
    “Maybe Felicity did,” Siobhan theorized. “You said she spoke to Theresa and they argued. You told her to come clean with Finn but instead she fled. Only guilty people flee.”
    Siobhan had a point, but my gut told me that Felicity wasn’t the one who’d killed Theresa. There was no doubt about it: If we were going to figure out what happened, we’d need to put our heads together to break the rest of the codes.

Chapter 5
Friday, April 22
     
     
    I woke the next morning with a new lease on life. Not only were Sydney and Lucie both sitting in the bedroom window looking out at the seagulls that were diving for their breakfast but the weather service had reported a significant rise in temperature beginning today, and the brilliant sunshine streaming through my window seemed to support that very prediction.
    “It seems the two of you are getting along better.”
    Neither cat turned to look at me, but they weren’t fighting or hissing at each other in spite of the fact that they sat only inches apart. I slid out of bed, pulled a warm sweatshirt over my head and knee-high slippers onto me feet, then headed down to make the coffee. Once the coffee brewed I poured some into my favorite pink Coffee Cat Books mug, added a splash of milk, and headed out onto the deck with Max trailing along behind me.
    The sun on my shoulders and the clear blue sky lent legitimacy to the fact that the long and lazy days of summer I’d been longing for all winter were indeed just beyond the horizon. I sat down in my favorite chair and curled my legs up under my body. I took a long sip of my hot beverage as I let the sound of the seagulls in flight and the waves gently lapping onto the shore calm my spirit and warm my soul.
    The gang and I had stayed up until the wee hours trying to decipher the remaining four codes with absolutely no luck. Finn took the link Felicity had forwarded for the fake jewelry site to which she’d claimed to have made her payments to Theresa and promised to track down the source of the money trail. We hoped the other victims had made payments to the same site; if we could identify the source of the payments, maybe we could discover who the other four suspects were.
    I was about to get up and head inside to make some breakfast when Mr. Parsons’s dog, Rambler, came running up to greet Max, who was playing in the waves in front of my cabin. I looked down the beach to see Cody walking toward me. Normally, an early morning visit from Cody would bring feelings of gladness, but today I had the sense he had something serious on his mind.
    “Just in time for my special egg and potato hash,” I greeted lightly in spite of the knot in my stomach.
    “I’m not