Cat With a Clue

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Book: Read Cat With a Clue for Free Online
Authors: Laurie Cass
leaving Aunt Frances, I’d gone back to the library and worked a little longer. By the time I was done, it was far too late to cookanything—how unexpected!—so I’d picked up dinner at the local Chinese-Thai place and patted myself on the back for supporting the local economy.
    I ran the water warm and started washing my minimalist dishes. “It was a little creepy,” I said, “being in the library when everyone was gone.” I’d jumped every time the ventilation system had kicked in. “I ended up locking my office door. I felt silly, but you won’t tell anyone, will you?”
    â€œMrr,” Eddie said.
    â€œAnd if I’m jumpy about being in the library, I bet other people will be, too.” And that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Libraries were safe places. Havens. Harbors. Refuges. Places to learn. Repositories of knowledge. Locations of possible wisdom. Knowing that the Chilson library—
my
library—had been violated was an affront to everything I believed in.
    Right then and there, I vowed to do whatever I could to help the police find Andrea’s killer and to repair any and all damage to my library’s reputation.
    â€œMrr.”
    That time his voice sounded a little too close. I turned.
    â€œHey!” I flicked soap suds at him. “Get off the counter! You know that’s not allowed, at least not when I’m home. What are you thinking?”
    â€œMrr.” He chin-rubbed the corner of the knife block—which had been a joke gift from Kristen, because she’d put bookmarks into the slots instead of the utensils for which it had been designed—one more time and jumped off the countertop.
    â€œCats,” I muttered, or tried to, because a yawn interrupted the single syllable, turning it into something that sounded more like, “Caaa.”
    â€œMrr,” Eddie said from the top of the short flight of stairs that led to the bedroom.
    â€œHold your little kitty horses,” I said. “Humans brush their teeth before going to bed.” I’d heard of people brushing the teeth of their pets, but unless Eddie developed a health problem that threatened to shorten his life, I wasn’t ready to try.
    In short order, I was sliding between the sheets. “What do you think?” I asked. Eddie was walking around me, clearly trying to decide which of my body parts he wanted to cut off the circulation to the most. “Jane Austen, Tess Gerritsen, or L. A. Meyer?”
    He flopped down on the bed, rested his chin on my right hip, and started purring.
    â€œYou know,” I said through another yawn, “you could be right. It would probably fall on my face, smashing some pages in the process, and that’s never—”
    Eddie reached out and put his front paw across my lips.
    â€œEww.” I turned my head. “I know where that paw has been.”
    â€œMrr,” he said firmly.
    â€œFine.” I turned off the light and rolled onto my side. Eddie restarted his purr and, despite the morning’s event, I fell into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter 3
    T he next morning was a bookmobile day—or, more accurately, thanks to my current schedule, a bookmobile three-quarters of a day—and I shut myself up in my office to steam through as much work as I could before hightailing it for Tonedagana County’s lake-strewn, rolling countryside. I even filled my favorite Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services coffee mug with Kelsey Coffee rather than waiting for a fresh pot to brew.
    â€œBrave woman,” Josh said, as I headed back to my computer. “Are you brave enough to send your director application to the board?”
    â€œWorking on it,” I said over my shoulder.
Sort of.
    Back at my desk, I had just set my hands to the keyboard when my phone rang. I was tempted to ignore it. There were few phone calls I got these days that lasted less than fifteen minutes, and time was

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