Judas Cat by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Read Free Book Online

do this if I see fit. And it looks fit to me. Here, Alex. This sort of makes it legal.”
    He took the badge. It required so little in Hillside to make a thing legal.

Chapter 6
    T HE WHITINGS LIVED IN the oldest part of town, on Deerpath Avenue. The street was supposed to have been a hunting trail the Indians followed on their way to the north woods. Where it crossed Appleseed Avenue, there was an iron fence around a knotted apple tree said to have been planted by the legended Johnny Appleseed more than a hundred years before. Horticulturists scoffed at the idea, but no one in Hillside paid any attention to them. They much preferred the legend.
    The houses on Deerpath Avenue were old, and most of them had been handed down from one generation to another from the earliest settlers in the town. The lawns and gardens were spacious, for once each family had kept its cow and chickens, but they now had a zoning law against it. Charlie Whiting had had a word to say on that … when it came to zoning a town with twelve hundred people, but it was one of his lost causes. The frame houses were built on stone foundations, two stories high, every one of them with a screen porch the width of the house. Huge elm trees arched across the street, allowing only a dapple of sunlight through.
    Alex’s father was sitting on the porch when he drove up. He came to the door to meet him. “I’d rather wait for Christmas than for you, son. Laura, Alex is home. Come on out and let supper be for a while.”
    Alex watched his mother come through the hall, his hand outstretched to take hers. She was the light of his life, as he always said. Nearly seventy now, she still walked quickly, leaning forward a little as though she couldn’t wait to get where she was going. Alex had her eyes, and the habit of arching one eyebrow when he doubted the truth of what someone said.
    “The poor old man,” Mrs. Whiting said. “It’s a terrible thing to have to die alone. Did you see him, Alex?”
    “Yes, I saw him.”
    “Did he die a peaceful death?”
    Alex looked away from her. He loosened his tie and sat down on the swing next to his father. “I don’t think so, Mom. I’m afraid he had a rough time of it.”
    “Oh, dear Lord,” she said.
    “Something happened to his cat. It scratched him up pretty bad. Coroner thinks the shock of it was what killed him.”
    “That’d be Mark Tobin,” his father said. “Was Jake up to take a look at him?”
    “He was there first. That’s what he thought, too.”
    “How do you feel about it, son?”
    “I don’t know, Dad. I was up there with Waterman when he found him. Both of us felt as though there was something more to it than we could see. The county men came down and looked around. They didn’t have much to say, and as far as Tobin was concerned it was all cut and dried. Nothing to it.”
    “How about Waterman?”
    “Like I said, he felt the way I did until Altman went to work on him.”
    “Altman’s an inferior sort of person,” Mrs. Whiting said.
    “There’s a lot of things I want to know,” Alex said. “More about Andy, mostly. You’ve got no idea how desolate that house is. It was like seeing bones on a desert. I just can’t believe a man could live in one place for thirty years and not accumulate a lot of junk.”
    “It’s not likely,” Mr. Whiting said. “On the other hand, Andy knew he was going to die soon. He might not have wanted people prying around. He certainly didn’t want it when he was alive. I’ve been trying to remember all I know about him. It’s funny, we don’t pay much attention to people when they’re alive.”
    “Andy was around Hillside for a long time, wasn’t he, Dad?”
    “About thirty years or so. I think the first time I saw him was when he came into the office to put an ad in the Sentinel for some used plumbing equipment. I took the ad myself. The way I remember it, I suggested he get Matt Sanders to put it in for him. He said he’d do it himself, and I