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

to bare his teeth and then went back to sleep.
    She sighed. “You’re hopeless, Mr. Paxton. I like all my other tenants. They talk to me. They invite me in to visit. I don’t feel as if I have to shower when I leave their apartments. They don’t know all the crooks in town, and get shot at, and then have the temerity to tell me that someone’s paying them to look for a cat, for God’s sake.”
    â€œI’m sorry you feel that way,” I said, vaguely wondering if there was a college football game on the TV.
    â€œAnd the way you live!” she continued. “I’m not a knife, you know.”
    â€œA knife?” I repeated, frowning.
    â€œYou know—someone who doesn’t know the score.”
    â€œI think you mean a naïf ,” I said.
    â€œWhatever. Anyway, I read detective stories too. I know Lord Peter Wimsey doesn’t live like this, and neither does Philo Vance.”
    â€œThey’re the new kids on the block,” I said. “They work for higher fees.”
    She just stared at me for a long moment and finally said: “Get a life, Mr. Paxton! Get a life!”
    I was going to tell her I’d love one and ask where they were selling them, but she’d walked back out and slammed the door behind her. Hell, I didn’t even get a chance to remind her that Columbo was even more rumpled than I was.
    Marlowe woke up when he heard the door and gave me a glare that said he wasn’t leaving the couch and wasn’t into sharing. I decided to go out for a snack and a beer, then remembered what the weather was like, went to the kitchen, opened a can of roast beef hash, decided I could live without the fried eggs that accompany it if it meant I didn’t have to cook, and took a spoon and began eating it out of the can, which was probably the one thing in the universe that could get Marlowe to relinquish his couch, remind me that we were the Two Musketeers, and wait impatiently while I emptied a third of the can into his food bowl.
    After we’d eaten, and both had to do without beer, we made our way back to the TV. ESPN was showing wrestling, poker, hockey, and high school football, and TCM had run through its store of old mystery series and was having a Bette Davis festival, so I wound up watching a bunch of steroid monsters hit each other with folding chairs and brag about who they were going to rassle (I never once heard any of them say “wrestle”) next week, and finally Marlowe and I drifted off to sleep.
    When I woke up they were showing woman’s golf from somewhere on the far side of the world. I turned off the TV, considered heating up some coffee, decided that Marlowe looked decidedly restless, and figured I’d better take him for a walk before we gave Mrs. Cominsky something else to bitch about.
    The weather was above freezing—it never stays cold for too long in Cincinnati—and that meant everything was melting, and five minutes later I brought a very wet dog back into the apartment.
    I was drying him off with a towel, and he was showing me how very much he resented it, when the phone rang, so I walked over and picked it up.
    â€œMr. Paxton?” said a female voice.
    â€œYeah?” I replied.
    â€œThis is the Wilkinson Animal Shelter.” Pause. “You were here yesterday, looking for a cat?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œI believe we may have the one you were looking for,” continued the voice. “Mackerel tabby, female, white spot above the left eye?”
    â€œSure as hell sounds like her,” I said. “I’ll be right over.” Then I corrected myself. “Well, as soon as I can. You’re about twenty, maybe thirty minutes north and west of me.”
    â€œShe’s not going anywhere.”
    I hung up the phone, left Marlowe sulking in a corner of the living room, and went down to my car. The roads were much more navigable, and even though the shelter was