Free Cats on the Prowl (A Cat Detective cozy mystery series Book 1) by Nancy C. Davis

pay-off.
You’ll just have to put your cruise to French Polynesia on hold, just like the
rest of us.”

    A third voice joined the conversation. Willow
recognized that voice, too, but she couldn’t quite place it. “So what are we
going to do?”

    “There’s nothing we can do but wait,”
Josephine replied. “The police interviewed me and Marlena. Now it’s your turn,
Annika.” So the third voice belonged to Annika Neilsson.

    “What are they going to interview me
for?” Annika asked. “I didn’t even know Roy, and I didn’t have any reason to
kill him.”

    “You had a reason to frame Jason for
the murder,” Josephine replied. “You have to admit, Annika, in the eyes of the
police, you had just as much to gain by getting rid of Roy as Marlena and I
did.”

    “I had a lot more reason to do it than
either of you,” Annika shot back. “and I could end up being the one who goes
down in all of this. If I don’t get my share of the bank accounts, I could lose
my house. I could lose everything.”

    “Don’t sing me that song of
heartbreak,” Marlena snapped. “Everybody thinks because I’m some kind of film
star that I’m rolling in loot. It isn’t true. I haven’t worked on a film in ten
years, and no one signs me for endorsements anymore. I’ve been living on my
credit cards for over a decade.”

    “Who’s fault is that?” Annika returned.
“So you squandered your fortune. Cry me a river. You’ve never had to do a day’s
work in your life.”

    “Get over it, Annika,” Josephine
grumbled. “Jason’s been supporting you with his bakery wages ever since you two
first moved in together. Why do you think he started looking for a woman with
some motivation? If you’re going to lose your house, you could always go out
and get a job of your own. You don’t have to sit here complaining about it.”

    “Don’t start in on me,” Annika shouted
back. “You have nothing to blame me for. You milked Roy for every penny you
could get. Then he wised up to the fact that you only cared about his money,
and he took away your ATM cared. That’s when you came up with this idea to kill
him for the last of his cash. Jason may have supported me, but at least I
wasn’t spending his money on high-priced shoes.”

    Marlena laughed, but her laugh sounded
like glass breaking under a car tire. “Girls, girls, girls. We don’t have to
fight amongst ourselves. We’re all in the same boat.”

    “That’s easy for you to say,” Annika
countered. “I’m the one who put that fuel cartridge in the bakery. If those
police detectives suspect me of anything, I’m sunk and you two will ride off
into the sunset with Roy’s money. I’ll bet you planned it that way from the
very beginning.”

    “You may have put the cartridge there,”
Josephine told her, “but Marlena and I are just as culpable of murder as you
are. The murder never would have succeeded without each of us playing our
parts. I was the one who told Roy I needed to speak with Jason and got him out
of the bakery so that you could sneak in the back. 

    “If I hadn’t kept Roy occupied on the
phone,” Marlena added, “you wouldn’t have been able to put the cartridge behind
the oven without getting caught.”

    “So you see,” Josephine went on, “we’re
all in this together.”

    “Still,” Annika argued. “You’ve both
faced the interrogation chamber with perfectly good alibis. I still have to go
through the questioning without one.”

    “I don’t have an alibi,” Josephine
pointed out. “I had to tell those cops I didn’t know anything about Jason
Dempsey and I wasn’t with him when the fire started. Leaving him without an
alibi left me without an alibi.”

    “What about you, Marlena?” Annika
asked. “You can’t claim to be in the same boat with the rest of us. You’re not
a suspect for this murder.”

    Marlena considered the matter. “I admit
I do have the best alibi of the three of us. I planned it that way. I