Read Cat Raise the Dead for Free Online

scent of peaches and melons, then the delicious aromas which seeped through the glass door of the butcher’s, but soon she crossed the westbound lane of Ocean, crossed the wide, tree shaded median and the deserted eastbound lane. Heading up Dolores toward the white cottage which Joe Grey shared with Clyde Damen, she plotted how best to soften up Joe, get him to join Pet-a-Pet. And she kept thinking about Jane Hubble and the other patients, who, Mae Rose said, had disappeared. Probably she was being silly, believing such stories; probably the old people at Casa Capri were just as safe as babes tucked in their beds, the staff kind and unthreatening—except perhaps for the owner of the care home.
    Beautiful Adelina Prior, in her lovely designer suits and her crème-de-la-crème coiffure and makeup, seemed, to Dulcie, as out of place at Casa Capri as a tiger among bunny rabbits. Why would a woman who looked like a model want to spend her life running an old people’s home?
    Trotting through the inky shadows where large oaks roofed the sidewalk, she thought of being trapped in Casa Capri, behind those tightly locked doors—if there was some criminal activity—and her paws began to sweat.
    It was one thing to pry into the crimes she and Joe had solved earlier this year, where they could escape through windows and unlocked doors and over rooftops. But to be confined within Casa Capri, where the doors were always bolted, made a chill of fear clamp her ears and whiskers tight to her head, made her cling low to the dark sidewalk, in a wary slink.
    But yet she wanted to go there. And she knew, if something was amiss, she’d keep digging at it, clawing at it until the mystery was laid bare.

4
    In the hills high above the village a miniature world of tiny creatures crept through the grass, vibrating and humming, a community whose members were unaware of any existence but their own, of any needs but their own to kill or be killed, to eat or be eaten. The two cats, poised above this Lilliputian landscape, waited motionless to strike. Around them the grass stems had been pushed aside to carve out little mouse-sized trails, but some of the paths were wide enough for rabbits, too, major lanes winding away, dotted with pungent droppings. One pile of rabbit scat was so fresh that grass blades still shivered from the animal’s swift flight. The cats, leaping to follow, panted with anticipation.
    Above them the clouds drew apart, freeing the moon’s light, and the moon itself swam between washes of blowing vapor; the dark hills caught the light, humping between earth and sky like the bodies of sprawled, sleeping beasts.
    All night they had worked together stalking cooperatively, not as normal cats hunt but as a pair of lions would hunt, hazing and driving their prey. Dulcie’s eyes burned toward the trembling shadows, her smile was a killer’s smile, her paws were swift. She was not, now, Wilma’s cosseted kitty rolling on stolen silk teddies.
    But yet as they hunted, a poetry filled her, and she began to imagine she was Bast, stalking among papyrus thickets, clutching live geese in her teeth. Racingthrough the grass, she was Bast, hunting beside Egyptian kings, Bast the revered cat goddess, Bast the serpent slayer leaping to the kill…
    The rabbit spun and bolted straight at her and beyond her, exploded away, was past before she could strike. She jerked around streaking after it, hot with embarrassment. Joe had flushed the creature nearly into her paws, and she had missed it. It sped away, kicking sand in her face, dodged, zigzagged, showed her only its white fluff tail, and disappeared into a tangle of wild holly. Her nostrils were filled with its fear and with the smell of her own shame.
    But then it swerved out again, and she dodged after it. As it doubled back she sprang, snatched it in midair, clamped her teeth deep into its struggling body.
    Its scream cut the night as she tasted its