A PURR Before DYING: A Nick and Nora Mystery
Cozy Mystery
6th in Series
Setting – California
Beyond The Page (February 21, 2023)

Synopsis

No one’s who they seem in the thrilling new Nick and Nora Mystery, and someone’s playing the part of a clever killer . . .

When a nighttime soap opera comes to town to film an episode, no one’s more excited than Nora Charles, who’s landed the contract for catering the shoot. But if she thought the show’s plotlines were full of drama and intrigue, that’s nothing compared to what she witnesses among the cast and crew, who are sneaking off for secret liaisons one minute and at each other’s throats the next. It’s all a titillating behind-the-scenes look for Nora—until she stumbles across the body of the show’s slain director.

It’s not long before the local authorities finger the brother of Nora’s good friend for the evil deed, and it’s up to Nora and her sidekick Nick to get him off the hook. As she begins to sort out the cast’s romantic entanglements and professional rivalries looking for a motive, she also discovers that the victim was involved in the mysterious death of the show’s previous director.

And then another member of the crew is found murdered, and Nora knows she’ll have to act fast to figure out who’s playing the part of the killer, before she’s cast in the role of the next victim . . .

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Excerpt

Nick cocked his head and let out a loud merow.

I leaned over to give him a scratch on the white streak behind his ear. “Let’s think. Who stood to profit the most from Harriman’s death?”

Nick’s paw snaked out, tapped the screen where the article on Forbes taking over directorial duties was still on display. “Forbes is the logical choice, I agree.” I typed his name into the search engine, and stifled a gasp at the number of pages that came up. There were easily over a hundred. I narrowed it down a bit by typing in “Anton Forbes—Dean Harriman” and got considerably fewer. I clicked on a handful and found them all to say mostly the same thing: Harriman was considered an eccentric genius, and though Forbes was talented, many felt he lacked Harriman’s drive. Harriman had plucked him from doing horror movies and taken him under his wing. They’d worked together on two prior projects, both of which had been commercial successes. Every article ended with the same sentiment: Harriman’s untimely death had given Forbes’s fledgling career a much-needed boost. I started to close the computer, but Nick’s paw shot out, covering my hand.

“Merow.”

“You think I should search a bit more? Okay.”

Finally at the bottom of the ninth page of results I found an article entitled “Dean Harriman, Casualty or Calculation?” It had been written two weeks after the director’s death by a reporter named Millicent Martin. The gist of the article was that Harriman, although brilliant, had made many enemies in his life. Had someone decided to end it prematurely? There was a reference near the end to Forbes’s good fortune at his mentor’s demise. A veiled reference, perhaps, to a motive? The last line of the article was particularly interesting:

Rumor has it Harriman was set to reveal something stunning about one of his coworkers. Unfortunately—or is it conveniently?—his lips are now forever sealed.

I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my temples. Nick, sprawled next to the laptop, looked over at me, his golden eyes wide.

“Well, there was a police investigation, and they couldn’t find any evidence to indicate it was anything other than an accident caused by Harriman’s carelessness and ego. Aside from this Millicent Martin, everyone else seems to agree. That last line of her article is particularly interesting, right? I wonder what Harriman was going to reveal, and about who? I bet this Millicent Martin thought it was Forbes.”

Nick cocked his head and the corners of his lips turned down. Then he jumped off the table and disappeared underneath. A few minutes later I heard the familiar sound of Scrabble tiles being batted around. I lifted up the edge of the tablecloth just as the tiles came flying out. I picked them up, laid them on the table and started to move them around. A few minutes later I stood back and surveyed the word I’d spelled out.

Bogus. A word that meant something not genuine. A phony, a sham.

I heard a loud merow from underneath the table. It seemed my kitty definitely thought there was something off about Harriman’s death. “Fine, Nick.” If I had to be perfectly honest, something didn’t strike me right either. It was almost as if the death had been a bit too pat and terribly convenient for Anton Forbes, particularly if he’d been the object of Harriman’s big reveal.

I’d been an investigative reporter for too long to just turn my back on what seemed to be a good mystery.

I heard a loud tap tap tap and shifted my gaze to the rear counter. Nick had wriggled out from underneath the table and had leapt onto the counter. He stretched up on his haunches, tapping his claws at the frame that held my newly acquired PI license.

“Okay, fine,” I muttered and punched a number into my cell, that of Hank Prince, my former informant from my Chicago reporting days. If there was anyone who could dig up dirt buried deep, Hank was the man.

“This is Hank Prince. I’m not available to take your call right now, but leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as I can.”

“Hey, Hank,” I said. “Nora here. Can you do me a quick favor when you get some time? No rush, but I need some information about the death of a director named Dean Harriman. Also, anything you can find on a director named Anton Forbes, and any suspicious deaths he might have been associated with. It’s, ah, for a possible Noir story. Thanks.”

Well, I wasn’t lying. Noir was the online true crime magazine I wrote for part-time. Since acquiring my license I’d written a few articles on becoming a PI, which had proven to be a big hit with the readers, but I’d no doubt that an article on an actual investigation into a mysterious death by a fledgling PI would have both readers and my editor salivating. I hung up and glanced down. Nick squatted by my feet. He lifted his head and I swear his kitty lips parted in a smile.

“Happy now?” I asked him. “We’ll see what, if anything, Hank can scare up. And if he doesn’t turn up anything suspicious on either front, it’s a dead issue. Okay?”

“Merow,” said Nick. Then he turned around, tail straight up, walked over to the refrigerator, turned around twice and lay down.

I sighed. It couldn’t do any harm to see what, if anything, Hank might turn up. If there was one thing I knew from experience it was that when it came to crime, Nick’s premonitions were nothing to sneeze at.

About the Author

While Toni Lotempio does not commit – or solve – murders in real life, she has no trouble doing it on paper. Her lifelong love of mysteries began early on when she was introduced to her first Nancy Drew mystery at age 10 – The Secret in the Old Attic.  She and her cat pen the Nick and Nora mystery series originally from Berkley Prime Crime and now with Beyond the Page Publishing.  They also write the Cat Rescue series from Crooked Lane and the Pet Shop series, originally published by Midnight Ink and rebranded last  year as “Urban Tails Pet Shop Mysteries.”  Book six in the Nick and Nora mysteries, A PURR BEFORE DYING, is released this February from Beyond the Page.  There is also a new series, Tiffany Austin Food Blogger, coming out in April.

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