What the Cat Saw by Carolyn Hart Read Free Book Online

that faux stones would lack.
    Nela held up the necklace, felt its weight, admired the intricacies of the gold settings. A thief would have hit pay dirt if he’d grabbed the purse as he ran. She returned the objects to the interior compartments and carried the purse to the bookcase. She replaced the bag precisely where it had earlier rested.
    And so?
    There were lots of maybes. Maybe the thief planned to take the purse but her 911 call induced panic. Maybe the thief knew of something valuable in the desk. Maybe Marian Grant collected oldstamps or coins. Maybe Marian Grant had a bundle of love letters the writer could not afford for anyone to see. Her mouth twisted. Maybe there was a formula for Kryptonite or a treasure map or nothing at all. Lots of maybes and none of them satisfactory.
    The cat flap slapped.
    Nela turned to face Jugs. He sauntered past her, beauty in motion, sinuous, graceful, silent.
    “It’s your fault that I’m worried.” Her tone was accusing.
    The cat flicked a glance over his shoulder. “…
My territory…I showed him…”
He disappeared into the kitchen.
    Nela wondered if he had vanquished a neighboring tom or if she was simply thinking what he might have done when outside. What difference did it make whether the thought was hers or Jugs?
    A big difference.
    Either the cat remembered a board that rolled on a step or she had dredged up a long-ago memory of a teenage Bill on a skateboard in happy, sunny days.
    What if the cat was right? What if Marian Grant hadn’t seen a skateboard on the step when she hurried out to jog early that January morning? The police surmised she’d caught a toe on a steep step, that she’d been going too fast. There had been no skateboard near the stairs when her body was discovered. But there could be reasons. Maybe some kid lived in that big house. Maybe the housekeeper saw the skateboard and either unthinkingly or perhaps quite deliberately removed it. Maybe the cat was thinking about some other skateboard on some other steps. Maybe the cat wasn’t thinking a damn thing.
    Moreover, a skateboard on the steps might explain why Marian Grant fell, but again so what? She fell because she caught her toeor slipped on a skateboard or simply took a misstep. Her death had been adjudged an accident. To think otherwise was absurd.
    Then why did someone creep into the dead woman’s apartment last night and search the desk?
    This was the easiest answer of all. As Officer Henson said, every town had its no-goods and last night one of them had taken a chance on finding something valuable in a dead woman’s apartment.
    Still…Why the desk and not the purse?
    The apartment was utterly quiet. She felt a light pressure on her leg. She looked down. Jugs twined around her leg, whisking the side of his face against her, staking claim to her. She reached down, paused to remove one rubber glove, and stroked his silky back.
    His upright tail curved slightly forward. “…
You’re all right…I like you…”
    Nela felt a catch in her throat. “I like you, too.”
    The sound of her voice emphasized the silence surrounding them. There was no one to see them. With a decisive nod, she walked toward the door, retrieved the doorstop, pushed it beneath the door. Moving around the living room, she closed the blinds in the windows. She pulled back on the rubber glove and crossed to the desk.
    She wasn’t sure why she was wearing the gloves now. Maybe she had the instincts of a crook. After all, wasn’t it reasonable for her to clean up the mess around the desk, make the room presentable again?
    Although Nela was sure she was unobserved, she worked fast as she stacked papers. The cleanup turned out to be reasonably easy. In keeping with Chloe’s judgment of Marian Grant as efficient, each folder had a neat tab and it soon became apparent that the drawers had been emptied but the papers had fallen not far from the appropriate folder and showed no signs of having been checked over.
    Nela was