Cat in the Flock (Dreamslippers Book 1) Read online

  Praise for Cat in the Flock

  “The launch of an intriguing female detective series... A mystery with an unusual twist and quirky settings; an enjoyable surprise for fans of the genre.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “Clearly author Lisa Brunette has a genuine flair for deftly crafting a superbly entertaining mystery/suspense thriller. Cat in the Flock is a terrific read…”

  — Helen Dumont, Midwest Book Review

  “Brunette’s portrayals of Cat and Granny Grace are nothing short of genius.”

  — On My Kindle

  “A fascinating plot populated with interesting and engaging characters.”

  — The Wishing Shelf Awards

  “Already hooked, this reader intends further sojourns in Cat’s dreamslipping world. Highly recommended.”

  — Frances Carden, Readers Lane

  “Filled with twists and turns, humor, a little romance, and suspense, this refreshing take on the world of private investigating will appeal to readers of many different genres.”

  — Janna Shay, inD’tale

  “A fascinating tale of mystery, romance, and what one woman's dreams are made of. Brunette will keep you awake far into the night.”

  — Mary Daheim, bestselling author of the Bed-and-Breakfast and Emma Lord/Alpine mysteries

  “Gripping, sexy and profound, Cat in the Flock is an excellent first novel. Lisa Brunette is an author to enjoy now and watch for the future.”

  — Jon Talton, author of the David Mapstone Mysteries, the Cincinnati Casebooks and the thriller Deadline Man

  “A drinkable, page-turning thriller that poses questions about faith, family, sexuality, and secrecy in an authentically rendered Seattle landscape.”

  — Corrina Wycoff, author of O Street

  “A little Sue Grafton and a dose of Janet Evanovich, mixed with the issues of closeted, born-again Christians, Iraq war veterans with PTSD, and rival love interests for 'Cat' Cathedral, is just the right recipe for a promising new series.”

  — Rev. Eric O'del, Amazing Grace Spiritual Center

  A portion of the sales of Cat in the Flock supports Jubilee Women's Center, which provides safe and affordable community housing and support services to help women transition out of homelessness and into independent living.

  Included in this edition of Cat in the Flock:

  Book club discussion questions.

  The first chapter of the second book in the Dreamslippers Series, Framed and Burning. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming editions.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for the use or misuse of any information contained in this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cat in the Flock

  by Lisa Brunette

  Copyright © 2014 by Lisa Brunette

  Cover Design: MonikaYounger, www.youngerbookdesign.com

  Author Illustration: Lindsey Look

  Author Photography: Allyson Photography

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9862377-0-6

  Published in the United States of America

  Published by Sky Harbor LLC

  P.O. Box 642

  Chehalis, WA 98532

  [email protected]

  Direct inquiries to the above address

  Cat in the Flock

  Book One in the Dreamslippers Series

  by Lisa Brunette

  Sky Harbor LLC

  For the real Amazing Grace, 1934-2011,

  and the Red Door Community she helped found.

  Prologue

  She was in a child's bed, a Hello Kitty blanket pulled up to her chin. Stuffed animals surrounded her: a little plush frog with googly eyes, a duck with a faux-leather beak. She heard something that sounded like a fire crackling, and a wash of hot air blew her hair back. Fire materialized in the space above her bed, a devilish man emerging from the flames. He was red, with hooved feet, and he carried a pitchfork. He was floating above her, his veined, leathery wings beating with methodic slowness. She gasped, unable to breathe, unable to scream. The phrase "Mommy, help me" formed in the back of her throat, but she was too afraid to voice it. The devil pointed his pitchfork at her. His eyes were dark as ink and bore into hers.

  "Ruthie," he said, shaking his head, "I can't let you get away." He raised his pitchfork up and then down, sinking it through the bedspread and right between her legs.

  Chapter 1

  Cat woke with a start, gasping and sweating, the sounds of the plane's engines in her ears, soon joined by the sound of a little girl crying. Despite her best efforts not to, Cat had fallen asleep on the long flight from St. Louis, and she'd slipped into someone else's dream. Cat sat up, wiping the sweat from her brow. She wondered who "Ruthie" was. That's what the devil had called her in the dream.

  Shaking off the image, her senses returning, Cat realized there was a good chance that "Ruthie" was the girl who was crying in the back of the plane. Cat turned around to see if she could spot her. The seat backs were too high. She unfastened her seat belt and stood up as if to stretch. Nothing in the front rows. She turned and looked behind her. The crying seemed to come from the right side of the cabin. Also coming from that direction was a woman's troubled voice: "It's okay. We'll be there soon. Everything will be okay."

  Cat followed the sound of the woman's voice, and there was the girl, sobbing into the woman's arms.

  Conscious of staring too much, Cat sat back down. She burned with a strange sense of frustration and embarrassment. Her dreamslipping experiences always told her just enough about people to feel as if she were a Peeping Tom, voyeuristically sneaking into the minds of her dreamers. On the other hand, the dreams told her so little about who her dreamers really were. With strangers especially, she lacked the context that would make the dreams make more sense, give her something to hang them on.

  It was Cat's greatest hope that her grandmother, Grace, who shared her dreamslipping ability, would be able to help her do something useful with these dreams. That's why she was moving clear across the country from St. Louis to Seattle: to apprentice with Granny Grace, who had for most of her life used dreamslipping to solve crimes as a private investigator. As Cat's dreams had mostly been an awkward inconvenience in her life so far, Cat felt the weight of all that she had to learn. She sighed and settled back into her book just as she heard the girl's crying subside.

  Cat saw the woman and girl once again when they landed at Sea-Tac Airport. The child was in that stage that Cat found amusing in little girls, when they begin to express themselves by dressing in outrageous, girly color combinations. She wore pink high-top tennis shoes with purple pants and a clashing yellow top. In her hair was a fuchsia bow with blue polka dots. They walked on ahead of her as if in a hurry. The woman, who was likely the girl's mother, tugged her daughter along after her as the child tried to keep up on skinny little legs. The girl was pulling a tiny pink suitcase on roller wheels with rainbow-colored letters spelling her name, R-U-T-H, across the front.

  Ruthie, the devil had said, I can't let you get away. Get away? In little-girl speak, that could mean go on a trip, or a move. But Cat couldn't tell by their carry-ons whether they were on a trip or moving across the country, as she was. Cat lost sight of them in the crow
ded corridor, and she felt a pang of regret. If only she could have helped that girl...

  She neared the security entrance and scanned the crowd for her grandmother, who was never hard to spot.

  As if the oversized, pink-feathered hat weren't enough to catch the eye, Granny Grace was waving both glove-clad hands at Cat. Her grandmother was dressed as if she herself had been on a trip, in another time period when travel was a rare activity to be done in one's best attire. The hat was pale pink, wide-brimmed, and adorned with glorious pink-and-cream feathers. She wore a smart brown safari dress with a wide pink belt to match the hat. Of course Granny Grace had donned heels—of a sensible height for strolling through an airport on a Sunday afternoon—but heels nonetheless. Cat recognized them as a pair of calfskin Etienne Aigners that Granny Grace had had for years.

  "Cathedral Grace McCormick." Granny's voice rang out over the din of roller-bags and shuffling footsteps.

  "Amazing Grace," Cat answered as her grandmother swept her into a warm hug. "Amazing" really was the woman's legal first name; she'd had it changed during her last divorce. And "Cathedral" really was Cat's legal name. But she had her very Catholic mother to thank for that one. As Granny Grace put it, "The ones who convert are always the most fervent."

  Cat inhaled her grandmother's scent: a mixture of the incense Granny Grace burned in her house, Halston perfume, and peppermint Altoids.

  Granny Grace appraised Cat with keen eyes. "Still sporting the college-girl look, I see," she said. Cat wore blue Converse high-tops, jeans with a hole in one knee, and a hoodie. Her carry-on was a backpack, and she had an iPod clipped to her hoodie, the earbuds dangling. Her unruly brown hair was in a no-nonsense ponytail.

  "Grandma," Cat whined. "It was a five-hour flight." She paused for effect. "With a connection. In Phoenix."

  She received a "hmpf" in return, and off they went to track down Cat's checked bags.

  Once they'd secured the luggage, Cat was thrilled to see that Granny Grace had decided to pick her up in Siddhartha, named after the Buddha himself. "I've always preferred his first name," explained her grandmother. Siddhartha was a beautiful '67 Mercedes in mint condition. It was pale yellow, with buttercream leather seats and a convertible top that had never once leaked, her grandmother boasted, despite Seattle's persistent rain. It was a completely impractical car for a seventy-seven-year-old retiree to have, but it fit Granny Grace to a tee. She'd even indulged in a vanity plate: GRACEFUL. It was as graceful a car as ever was built. "With me in the car," she quipped, "it's literally full of Grace."

  Granny Grace took off the gorgeous hat, secured it in the back seat, dug a scarf out of her purse, and wrapped it around her hair, which had been meticulously coiffed, Cat knew, by a young hippie stylist that Granny Grace favored. She perched a pair of oversized Jackie O. sunglasses on her nose. "Looks like your ponytail is appropriate after all," she said with a smile as she put the car in gear.

  Ah, Seattle. It had been a couple years since Cat had been able to fly out for a visit. She loved the sea-salt smell, the calm expanse of Puget Sound, and the fact that no matter what time of year she visited, her eyes rested on lovely evergreen. Back in St. Louis, everything turned brown and died for at least three months out of the year. Here it was early spring and warm enough to have the top down, with a slight chill in the air. It should have been raining, but the sun was peeking out of the clouds as it began to set in the west, creating pearlescent purples and pinks as the light bounced between the water and the clouds. "Oyster light," Granny Grace called it, like the light playing on an oyster shell.

  They couldn't really talk on the drive, what with the wind rushing through, but Cat smiled at her grandmother a few times, who smiled back and once took her hand off the gearshift to squeeze Cat's. They drove home on the Viaduct, both of them aware that its days were numbered; not earthquake-safe, the elevated roadway would be demolished as soon as Seattle got around to officially deciding what to do with its waterfront. They drank in the glorious view: Puget Sound to the left, today calm and grey, with the Olympic Mountains visible beneath a high bank of clouds; and downtown Seattle's eclectic architecture to the right. With her eyes, Cat followed the dark spine of the Columbia Tower up to the top and then looked for the Space Needle to appear around a bend. It was the iconic landmark's fiftieth anniversary, so they'd painted the bottom orange again to match how it looked when built.

  Granny Grace's old Victorian house sat at the top of Queen Anne Hill, with an incredible view of the Space Needle and the Seattle skyline and impressive sweeps of Elliott Bay. Not terribly large, it wasn't a mansion, and though it had three floors plus an attic, it was actually quite narrow, with smallish rooms, some of which hadn't been outfitted with closets. Granny Grace said that was because the tax codes at the time of construction counted a bedroom as anything with a closet, and they assessed taxes based on the number of bedrooms. The builder had simply left out the closets.

  Cat drank in the beveled glass front door, the grand foyer with its old gas chandelier, and the gleaming stairway banister leading to the second floor. It smelled as it always did, a bit musty but clean, the scent of lemons mingling with incense and sage.

  Cat unpacked and settled into her room, the Grand Green Griffin. Every room in Granny Grace's house had been decorated in some sort of theme. The kitchen Granny Grace referred to as the Terra Cotta Cocina, based on the Cuban kitchens she remembered from her days in Miami. The bathroom that Cat favored was called the Tempting Turquoise Tub, and it really was both tempting and turquoise. The Grand Green Griffin wasn't grand in size, but being on the first floor, it had tall ceilings, and it was outfitted in shades of green ranging from kelly to sea foam and featured a griffin carved prominently into the fireplace mantel. Many of the bedrooms had fireplaces, as wood fires were the primary source of indoor heat when the house was built in 1883. Here and there throughout the house were paintings done by Cat's Great-Uncle Mick, who channeled his dreamslipping ability into art. They were vibrant works, the paint thickly applied, like frosting on a cupcake. When Cat was younger, she'd test the paint to make sure it was hard, expecting her finger to come away globbed with it.

  Just as Cat finished putting away her things, Granny Grace appeared in the doorway in spandex yoga clothes, which showed off her rather well-muscled arms and the faint hint of ab muscles beneath a slight layer of what she unselfconsciously referred to as "old-age padding."

  She invited Cat to join her, and once Cat changed clothes, the two of them moved to the Yoga Yolk. Cat had practiced yoga with her grandmother during past summer stays in Seattle but had never pursued it as a regular exercise. But now that she'd moved there for good and was entering into formal training with her grandmother, yoga was part of the deal, along with meditation, breath work... basically, whatever Granny Grace deemed necessary.

  Cat followed her grandmother in a series of sun salutations: downward dog, a lunge forward with one leg, and a standing salute to the sun. Then Granny Grace moved into crow pose, crouching forward till her knees touched her upper arms and then lifting her legs so her whole body was balanced on her arms. Cat couldn't do that pose yet, so she sat in a wide-legged squat, watching her grandmother with admiration. Afterward, they sat in the turret window of the pale-yellow-and-white room, sipping tea and sharing fruit. As the sun had set, Granny Grace lit a few candles, preferring them to electric lights.

  "So tell me about your dreamslipping," her grandmother prompted.

  "I had a dream on the plane," Cat said. "I think it was a little girl's dream." She described to Granny Grace how the devil with his pitchfork said he couldn't let someone named Ruthie get away. Granny Grace listened intently, sitting cross-legged in her chair, a delicate yellow teacup balanced in one hand. Cat felt the heat of frustration return to her face. "I lost them at Sea-Tac," she said.

  "Did you find out who they are, or get some way to trace them?" her grandmother asked.

  Cat blushed. "No. Should I have? I mean, the dream—it's not
proof of anything."

  Granny set her cup down. "Dreams never are, Cat. But if you're going to be a PI, you need to start getting details."

  Cat silently accepted her grandmother's instruction, and Granny Grace continued. "You could interpret the dream many ways, it's true. It could simply be a young girl's way of puzzling out sexual curiosities. Some kids begin touching themselves at an early age, you know. It's totally natural. Maybe she has a brother and started to notice—"

  "There's no brother," said Cat. "I think it's just her and her mother. They traveled alone. I have this feeling they're all alone in the world."

  "Well, that could be your intuition, or your imagination. You're fairly imaginative, you know. As I was saying, she could be puzzling out her first sexual awareness, and maybe her mother is devout. Maybe the devil is a symbol from Christianity that has to do with the shame she associates with her body."

  "That's what I'd expect you to say."

  Granny Grace smiled. "But what if..." She paused. "What if that's not it? What if someone hurt her, and this is a post-traumatic stress disorder dream?"

  Cat sat in silence, toying with her cup. "We'll never know," she said.

  "We'll never know," echoed her grandmother.

  "I do remember the little girl's name," Cat said, brightening. "I saw it on her suitcase. It's Ruth."

  "Good. To get the rest, you could have easily taken advantage of the setting. You were in an airport. Everyone's got identification close at hand. I bet the mother had her ID tucked just inside her carry-on."

  "You're right, Gran," Cat said, remembering something Granny Grace told her long ago. "'Take every dream seriously.'"

  "That's it, Cat." Granny Grace beamed at her, her lips still perfectly painted in pearly pink.