A Cat Tells Two Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

with my fingers, running them along the glass just as I had run my hands along the top of the money in the safe-deposit vault.
    Jo’s offer had been financially generous. Two hundred dollars a day for two weeks ran to twenty-eight hundred dollars tax-free. That was a lot of cat food. Plus, the offer came at a good time. The first few weeks of the new year were always depressing and empty of possibilities.
    I smiled at myself in the mirror, a bit grimly. An old lover of mine had once told me that my smile was terrible; it was totally dishonest. I made a face. It was irritating but true that I often evaluated myself by what men I had known told me. Why did I believe them? I was too old for such nonsense.
    A blur flashed across the mirror. Pancho was on the move.
    I picked up a hairbrush and balanced it in my hand. It was a beautiful tortoiseshell brush with fine, stiff bristles.
    It was perfect for a head of thick hair like that stable girl had, I realized. Ginger had that gorgeous thick red hair. I remembered her with a sudden flash of hatred. My reaction was so bizarre, I stood up and walked away from the mirror. I sat down on the bed.
    Why wasn’t I feeling compassion for that girl, like I felt for Jo?
    Ginger’s grief had been stupefying. She had wept like someone who had lost everything. No, I realized, I did not hate her. I was jealous of her.
    Why? Because Harry and she had been lovers!
    Agitated, I left the bed, walked into the hallway, and then back to the bedroom.
    Why was I jealous? Harry had been a surrogate absent father—kindly, eccentric, wise, comforting,
safe
. Was that the way I had really felt? No, I wanted to be in that girl’s place. I wanted to mourn Harry as a lover.
    I walked quickly down the hallway and into the living room. I scooped Bushy off the sofa and hugged him. He accepted the attention stoically.
    “Bushy!” I called his name. He looked past me. I whispered into his ear, “You knew all along I would accept Jo’s offer, didn’t you? You knew it all along.”
    I lay down on the sofa, still holding him. There was no reason not to go back out there. I had discovered Harry’s corpse. Why shouldn’t I discover his murderers? What else were fantasy lovers for?

5
    I left the cottage and walked hastily toward the main house. It was a wet, cold morning. The trees were threatening—naked, precarious, hovering over the property. I had no qualms about leaving the cottage because Pancho and Bushy had settled in nicely; although Pancho seemed perplexed at the lack of space in which to flee. He would have to develop a circular flight.
    “Is that you, Alice?” Jo cried out from the kitchen when I entered.
    Then she appeared in a ludicrous outfit. She was wearing a huge leather apron with deep pockets—like a blacksmith would wear—and around her neck was an enormous and very frayed kitchen towel. “You arrived just in time. I was making eggs,” she said.
    Her ancient kitchen table with its splintered wooden legs was piled with utensils and condiments, as if she was embarking on a major feast rather than a modest breakfast for two. She pointed to the clutter and said, “Harry always made the eggs. He used to say I didn’t know how to fry them, scramble them, poach them, or even boil them. I never knew whether he was serious or not. Well, here I am, without Harry, and I’m going to make eggs. How would you like them, Alice?”
    “Scrambled would be fine, Jo,” I replied, sitting down at the table to watch her. It was zany, but that was one of the Starobins’ most wonderful qualities: they always did things outlandishly.
    Carefully, almost painfully, she broke five eggs in a saucer and then proceeded to whip them with a flourish, her blacksmith’s apron continually getting in the way. When the scrambling was finished, she collapsed suddenly into a chair.
    Two of the long-haired Himalayan cats leapt onto her—one on her lap, one on her back. Two more leapt on the table, prowling,