A Cat Tells Two Tales by Lydia Adamson Read Free Book Online

barns, and all kinds of horses. Now, only Mona was left.”
    I looked at the clock. We had missed the moment. Happy New Year.
    “Such a wonderful, kindly woman,” Jo said, “and such a good friend to Harry and me.”
    “Her husband. Is her husband still alive?” I asked, remembering that the handyman had, during his disjointed conversation, once referred to her as Mrs. Aspen.
    “I don’t know. He lives in Connecticut, I think, or he did live there. They were divorced ages ago. Mona’s nephew and his wife live on the farm with her.”
    “How old was Mona Aspen?” I asked.
    “Oh, about five years younger than I. But much more vigorous. She still mucked out stalls.”
    “Did she keep valuables in the house?”
    “No, I don’t think so. Oh, wait—antiques, yes, a lot of old things like vases and writing desks and paintings and such. Mona was a great one for horse paintings. But I don’t know if they were really worth anything.”
    She drifted off into a private reverie. I returned to the items on the blanket for a moment, and then lay back—I didn’t feel like going through them anymore at that time. I was tired and cold. The wine was playing tricks in my nose.
    “I must get back to the house now,” Jo said a bit grimly. But she didn’t move off the rocker.
    Then she said, “Will you come to the cemetery tomorrow for Mona’s funeral? There will be only a short graveyard ceremony.”
    I nodded. She got up, smiled in a motherly, almost beatific fashion, and left with the empty wine bottle.
    I started to undress, then noticed that I had hung my winter coat on the hook behind the door. Just as the killers had hung Harry there after they were through with him. The coat had to come down. If I woke during the night, as was my fashion, and saw it hanging in the darkness, there would be an ugly panic. I removed the coat from the hook and placed it on the back of the rocker.

    What a strange little cemetery it was! The headstones were ancient, chipped, obscured. The grounds lay behind a huge new shopping center just off the main east-west road. A strong, swirling wind whipped the overgrown weeds against the legs of the eight or ten mourners. A minister with a large muffler wrapped around his neck said the words over the open grave. Two men with shovels and one with a small earthmover stayed about twenty yards behind the mourners, waiting for the ceremony to conclude. One of them cupped a lit cigarette in his hand.
    Jo held on to my arm tightly. She said in a desperate whisper so close to my ear I could feel her lips, “I’m glad I did what Harry asked. No funeral. No burial. I cremated him and spread the ashes on the gravel driveway from the road to the house. I could not have survived him being buried in this place.”
    The thought struck me as grotesque. I shivered, realizing that every time I walked to the main house I would be crunching Harry deeper into oblivion.
    As the minister began the final prayer, Jo continued to hold tight to me. She was beginning to restrict the circulation in my arm, but I didn’t have the heart to pull away.
    “God, Alice,” she said, her voice breaking, “what a good friend she was to us . . . to me and to Harry and to Ginger. What a wonderful and kind woman she was.”
    It was over. We threw some dirt on the grave and started back to the car. A couple came up and began to speak to Jo. Feeling out of place, I walked to the car to wait for her.
    A large man was leaning against the fender. It was Detective Senay. Another plainclothes detective sat in an unmarked car near the cemetery entrance.
    “Cat-sitting again?” Senay asked.
    “Something like that.”
    “Did you get that list from Mrs. Starobin?”
    “What list?” I asked.
    “The inventory of valuables.”
    “No.”
    “You know, Mrs. Aspen’s nephew is cooperating with us. I don’t understand why Starobin’s widow isn’t.”
    “Maybe, Detective, it’s because there were no valuables in the house.”
    “What