Death Takes a Ride (The Cate Kinkaid Files Book #3): A Novel by Lorena McCourtney Read Free Book Online

bother.”
    “That’d be great! Mr. Halliday said not to come to work today. Some outfit is coming in to clean up.”
    Cate stepped back to let Shirley inside. “There was a lot of blood.” An understatement about the scene that Cate was trying to keep out of her mind.
    “I’ll go home and get some sleep before I go back to the hospital. Hopefully Jerry will have my pickup fixed by today.”
    “You can freshen up if you like. Bathroom’s down there.”
    Shirley started in the direction Cate pointed, but then she spotted one of the unique features of the house. She was too polite to comment on the oddity of painted planks circling the living room about a foot below the ceiling, but she eyed them doubtfully.
    “That’s Octavia’s special walkway,” Cate explained. “And that’s Octavia,” she added, as her white cat padded over to inspect the newcomer.
    “I guess I’m more of a dog person myself,” Shirley said warily as Octavia, tail swishing, looked as if she might be considering climbing up Shirley’s leg. Cate scooped her up. “You made a special walkway for the cat?” Shirley asked.
    Cate explained the basics of how she’d acquired both cat and house. “I was living with my uncle and aunt when I took Octavia to keep her from going to the pound, and then it turned out her former owner had in her will that whoever got the cat also got the house. But then the house that was here burned down, so the lawyer who was executor of the will had this new one built.”
    Cate left out the fact that a killer had started the fire in an effort to kill Cate and another woman in the burning house. It was one of the incidents that reinforced Mitch’s negative attitude about her work as a PI.
    “Cats like to walk around up high?”
    “Oh yes. Octavia spends a lot of time up there. The window seat”—Cate pointed at the padded seat below a picture window—“is so she can be warm and comfortable and still watch birds and squirrels outside. She has an outdoor, screened-in playroom too.” Octavia also had a trust fund, although Cate didn’t mention that.
    “Wow,” Shirley said, which was apparently all she could think to say about a house that Mitch called the Kitty Kastle. She hesitated and then looked toward the bathroom as if wondering if it had any peculiar cat features.
    “It’s a normal bathroom,” Cate assured her. “Octavia uses a litter box like any ordinary cat.”
    Although Octavia’s litter box had her name written in goldscript over the arched doorway, and she was extraordinary in other ways as well. In spite of her deafness, she had some uncanny knowledge about when the landline phone was about to ring. Cate sometimes reminded her she shouldn’t feel all superior about that; she didn’t seem to have any special ability concerning cell phone calls. Octavia also gave Cate occasional advice on PI situations. Cate always assured herself the helpfulness of that advice was surely only coincidental.
    “She does like to nap in the bathroom sink occasionally,” Cate added.
    “Well, uh, okay,” Shirley said.
    Cate heard the bathroom door close firmly. Apparently Shirley didn’t want sink company.

    By the time Shirley came out to the kitchen, Cate had coffee perked, orange juice poured, and scrambled eggs, hash browns, and toast ready to dish up. Shirley had folded the coveralls so the blood was concealed on the inside, and she was now in the gray sweatpants and T-shirt she’d been wearing under them. Cate found a plastic bag for the coveralls, and they sat down to eat together.
    There were various things Cate wanted to know, but Shirley seemed more inclined to eat than talk. Cate suspected she came from a hard-working family where mealtimes were solely for consuming food, not for bonding experiences.
    Finally, however, Shirley had cleaned her plate and leaned back to enjoy a second cup of coffee. They talked a little about what a great hospital RiverBend was, and the beautiful wooded grounds