Cat on a Cold Tin Roof Read Online Free PDF Page A

them back to me.
    â€œThank you,” I said.
    â€œI need your cell phone number,” she said, pen at the ready.
    â€œMy cell phone’s on the blink,” I lied. “I’ll have to give you my home number.”
    â€œHow about your office number, as long as you’re on a case?”
    â€œI work alone, I’m on a job, and it could be two or three days before I fight my way through this snow to get to my office.” Or two or three weeks before I catch up with the rent and the phone bill .
    â€œAll right,” she said, scribbling down the number as I gave it to her. “Good luck.”
    â€œThanks for your help, ma’am,” I said, walking out of the building.
    I went to the car, considered stopping for a couple of cheese coneys or a four-way, decided that “breakfast” was filling enough and that the last thing I wanted to look at was food, and drove back to the east side of town, to the likeliest of the animal shelters.
    I walked in, prepared to show the photos, and found that I didn’t have to, that no cat had been brought in for the past three days.
    Okay, so it wasn’t in the house, it wasn’t in the yard, it wasn’t at the SPCA headquarters, and it wasn’t in the closest, likeliest shelter. So what the hell was my next move? Cincinnati’s not the biggest town in the world, Chicago’s probably twice its size, even Cleveland’s bigger, but I remembered reading that one deer could hide from a pair of hunters on one wooded acre, so how the hell was I going to find a small cat in a modern city, especially one where 90 percent of the surface was covered by maybe a foot of snow?
    And how many more days, or even hours, could I spend looking for it before the bombastic Mrs. Pepperidge fired me and maybe decided I hadn’t earned my money and refused to pay me?
    I looked at the list. Five more shelters to go.
    And when they all turned up negative, what then? I couldn’t even blame the weather. What if the snow all vanished? Hell, there were probably thousands of stray cats roaming the streets and alleys and yards.
    For a moment I wondered if Mrs. Pepperidge would take Marlowe as a replacement. Then I sighed, started the car again, and headed off to the next shelter.

3.
    I got to see a lot of Cincinnati in the next day and a half, most of it covered with snow and ice. Every shelter assured me that they hadn’t taken in any cats in the past two days, or at least not one with a white spot over its eye, and every shelter did its damnedest to convince me I’d be just as happy with one of the cats currently in residence. Even after I explained that I was a detective looking for a particular missing cat, they ascertained that I myself didn’t own one and began the sales pitch all over again. One of them, after studying the photos, explained how I could take this geriatric, wildly overweight tabby home with me and apply a little dye to its left eyebrow and no one would know the difference.
    It was dark when I got home, which means the cat had been missing for maybe thirty-one or thirty-two hours, which probably meant it had found a new home or lost a tussle with the kind of dog that could eat Marlowe for breakfast. At any rate, I was out of ideas and probably close to being out of work as well.
    As a kid I’d dreamed of coming home to a loving wife, who’d rush to the door, throw her arms around me, and tell me how much she’d missed me, even though I’d only been gone for a few hours. When my marriage broke up, I occasionally daydreamed about coming home and being greeted by a loving dog that couldn’t stop wagging his tail or jumping up and down from the sheer joy of being in my presence once again.
    I opened the door and trudged in. Marlowe was sleeping on the couch. He opened one eye.
    â€œI’m home,” I announced.
    He gave me a look that said, Fine, just keep off my couch and closed his eye again.
    I