Claws for Alarm Read Online Free PDF Page A

his eyes.
    â€œSorry, chum. I know it was a bit sneaky of me, but would you have given ’em up willingly?”
    Nick stretched out full length and turned his head.
    I chuckled. “I didn’t think so.” I held the photo up for inspection. It was pretty grainy, but I could make out a dark-haired man in an expensive-looking suit sporting a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses emerging from a building. I set the photo to one side and smoothed out the paper, biting back a gasp as I recognized the cramped handwriting and what was written there.
    The left side of the page chronicling Bronson A. Pichard was ragged, with deep slashes that resembled claw marks. I glanced across the room at the low table I’d set the journals on and wasn’t surprised to find them knocked in a pile on the floor. Well, that’d teach me to lock things up, although with Nick around, that didn’t seem to do much good, either.
    He wiggled out from underneath the bed and sat, head up, staring at me. I waved the paper in the air. “Well, Nick, what have we here? Who said it was okay for you to deface your former owner’s property?”
    He stared at me another minute, then calmly raised his front paw and began licking it.
    I folded the paper and crossed the room to tuck it inside my purse. “If this is your way of reminding me about my promise to look up Pichard, I haven’t forgotten. I want to follow up any lead I can on your former master’s whereabouts, but right now isn’t the best of times. I’m a bit distracted by the honey of a mess my sister’s gotten herself into. But I’ll get to it—don’t worry.”
    Nick’s ears flattened back against his skull. I got the distinct impression if he could speak, he would have said something like:
Stupid human. I am a cat, and an extremely talented one. Haven’t you figured out I can do whatever I want
?
    Apparently not. But I was learning.
    *   *   *
    I pulled up at Aunt Prudence’s a few minutes before nine thirty. She’d moved several times since I last visited her, which had been the year I’d moved to Chicago. I’d never been to this house, and it was too dark now for a real good look, but if the wide latticed porch that went around thefront and almost the entire left side was any indication, the place was HUGE.
    I glanced over at the ball of black fur in the passenger seat. Nick, unfortunately, had turned out to be a mite too big for the carrier. (Did I say
mite
? I’m being kind again.) Good thing he enjoyed riding shotgun. I sighed and gave his forepaw a shake. “Wake up, Nick. We’re here.”
    His head came up a bit, and he looked first right, then left, before dropping it back onto his forepaws. I switched off the ignition and tapped my keys against the steering wheel. “Get that tail moving and your rear in gear. I’m not carrying you. And first thing Monday I’m taking that carrier back to the Pet Palace and getting a refund. I can’t even exchange it, dammit. That was the biggest one they had.”
    The porch light flicked on just as I climbed out of the SUV, bathing the surrounding area in a harsh white light, and then a stout figure with short, stylishly cut gray hair, bundled head to foot in a bright purple terrycloth bathrobe, burst out of the front door and made a beeline straight for my car, arms stretched wide.
    â€œNora! Thank God you’re here at last!”
    Aunt Prudence is barely five-three, and I’m five-eight in flats, so I dutifully bent over to let her chubby arms envelop me in a bear hug to end all bear hugs. She planted a kiss on my cheek and whispered against it, “Everything will be all right now, I know it. Sharon always said you were the one with the cool head, the one she’d count on if she were in a fix. I remember her exact words:
If ever I get in trouble, Pru, I’d rely on Nora to get me out. When the good