Raining Cats & Dogs (A Melanie Travis Mystery) by Laurien Berenson Read Free Book Online Page A

Anyone who lives with multiple dogs in a neighborhood setting has to be aware of the necessity of keeping them quiet. And until recently, I’d had no problems in that regard. Things had become a little more complicated with the addition of Sam’s three Poodles, but we’d been working them out.
    Until Felix and cohorts showed up.
    “My Poodles don’t usually bark this much,” I said. “Your cats have been coming over and teasing them. That’s what’s setting them off.”
    “Teasing them?” She laughed. “You must be kidding.”
    “No, I’m not. When Felix climbs up the back of my house and the dogs see him through the window, they bark at him.” I paused—mindful of the fact that we’d just met and I was going to have to live next door to this woman—then added in what I hoped was a diplomatic tone, “Which is why he’s going to have to stop doing that.”
    Amber drew in a breath. Her chest swelled with the effort. Sam, I noted, was carefully looking elsewhere.
    “But cats are natural climbers,” she said. “It’s what they do. It’s not as if anyone can regulate their behavior.”
    So much for diplomacy. Maybe blunt would work better.
    “Of course your cats are welcome to do whatever they want.” I smiled sweetly. “As long as they’re on your property.”
    Sam reached out, took my hand, and squeezed. Hard.
    “This certainly isn’t something we have to settle right this minute,” he said. “Amber’s barely even moved in.”
    Oh, I thought snidely. Maybe that was the problem. She had yet to unpack her clothes. I did not, however, remove my hand from Sam’s.
    “In time,” he continued, “I’m sure we’ll be able to get everything worked out.”
    “Mrs. Fine is really cool,” said Davey. “She has seven cats. That’s even more than we have Poodles.”
    “Seven cats,” I repeated. The phrase seemed to stick in my throat. “How unusual.” Apparently my standards for what was cool and what wasn’t were different than Davey’s.
    “Not really,” Amber replied. “Many cat lovers tend to be collectors. I certainly never started out to have this many. But the first one needed company, which meant adding a second. The third one sort of adopted me. The fourth was a rescue who turned out to be pregnant, so you can see how things just kind of snowballed.”
    I could, actually. And I’d seen plenty of dog owners do the same thing, adding just one more and then one more after that, until their homes were filled to bursting. Considering that I currently had five big Poodles living in my small house, I didn’t have much room to complain. And I wouldn’t have if Amber Fine had looked like she had even the slightest intention of keeping her feline population out of my yard.
    Then I thought back to what Davey had said. He’d called Amber “Mrs. Fine.” I brightened slightly and wondered if Mr. Fine was going to be joining us in his bathrobe some time soon.
    “Your husband must like cats, too,” I said.
    “James?”
    She made it sound like a question. If she didn’t know what her husband’s name was, I had no idea how she expected me to. I nodded anyway, just for the heck of it, and that seemed to be enough encouragement for her.
    “James travels,” Amber said. “He’s on the road a lot. Business.”
    “What kind of business is he in?” asked Sam.
    Amber shrugged and looked perplexed. As if these were hard questions we were asking. “It’s, like, import/export,” she said. “You know, he buys stuff in one place and sells it in another.”
    Supply and demand. Amber made it sound like a novel concept.
    “Anyway, he’s almost never home,” she said. “Which is why I’m so glad I have all my kitties to keep me company.”
    By now the Poodles had stopped barking. I wondered whether that meant the orange cat was no longer sitting in the window, or that they’d simply grown tired of watching him ignore them. I would need to let the dogs out for a run in the yard before we left