Nine Lives — D.B. Borton

In the ninth book of The Cat Caliban Mysteries, detective-in-training Cat Caliban rushes into a burning house to save a litter of kittens and escapes with an armful of squirming fur and a charred skull. The experts say it's murder, but who was the victim? To answer that question, Cat and her partner Moses Fogg go looking for the homeowner, an heiress who was once a show jumper and race car driver, but when they find her, they are still in the dark. They must search the past to give this nameless victim a name, and then, they must learn her story. The question remains, however, whether they can find what they seek at last: justice.