How to Paint a Cat (Cats and Curios Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

flaming-red hair, quickly identified as former City Hall janitor turned amphibian specialist Sam Eckles. The day after the murder, Sam failed to turn up for his current consulting position with the California Academy of Sciences. His name and photo had been widely distributed, but his whereabouts were still unknown.
    The second fugitive’s description was more nebulous in nature. An older gentleman with a balding head and short rounded shoulders, his identity was at first a mystery.
    Soon after, however, the police issued a bulletin seeking information on fried chicken entrepreneur James Lick, the front man for a North Beach fried chicken restaurant—and Uncle Oscar’s most recent alias.
    • • •
    THE NIECE THREADED her fingers into Rupert’s fur, anxiously running them through his fuzzy coat. Despite the suspicious circumstances, she refused to believe that Sam and her uncle were responsible for the intern’s gruesome slaying.
    Sam was a gentle soul, intimidating in size and frequently off-putting in odor and personal hygiene. But the frog whisperer’s large hands had held the tiniest and most delicate of tree frogs. His mannerisms struck some as strange, but he was fundamentally incapable of harming another living being.
    The niece felt similar confidence in her uncle’s innocence. Even after his last two years of clandestine activity, it was impossible for her to imagine him taking such a violent, malicious action.
    And yet, she thought pensively, the day of the murder, Lick’s fried chicken shop had been emptied out and shuttered. All of the pots, pans, and cooking implements had vanished—along with her uncle.
    Rupert let out a sleepy grunt of protest at the woman’s nervous tug on his fur. She couldn’t convince herself that the intern’s death was totally unrelated to Oscar’s disappearance.
    Reaching for the lever at the base of the chair, she pulled herself into an upright position. The chair back clicked into its vertical slot, but her fingers remained tightly wrapped around the metal handle.
    There was one more troubling fact she couldn’t dismiss.
    Her uncle’s short-statured height fit the only description thus far known about Spider’s assailant.

Chapter 6
    A CLAIRVOYANT CAT

    ISABELLA PERCHED ON the edge of a display table, staring curiously at the leather recliner where the niece sat. The tip end of the cat’s orange and white striped tail strummed the table surface as she tilted her head inquisitively.
    Isabella and her person had been living together for several years now, and the cat was adept at reading the woman’s thoughts. She knew the murder at City Hall and the possible connection to Oscar’s disappearance had been weighing heavily on the niece’s mind.
    It was too bad that humans had such limited means of communication, Isabella reflected with a superior twitch of her whiskers. If only the niece spoke the cat’s more sophisticated language, Isabella could have given her a great deal of useful information—about more than just Oscar and the murdered intern.
    To start with, there were a number of minor everyday events that her person’s less advanced faculties simply missed or glossed over.
    For instance, Isabella knew that a brightly colored cat toy had recently fallen into the dirty clothes hamper. The catnip-filled packet was likely to cause the niece great consternation after the next wash cycle. Isabella had tried every possible means to alert the niece to this hazard, to no avail. The woman was destined to find the toy’s disintegrated remains in the dryer vent and strewn throughout the washed clothing.
    Then there was the large hairball that Rupert had coughed up beneath the couch in the second-floor living quarters. Isabella had been monitoring the cylindrical-shaped lump for several days. It had almost cured to the optimal weight and soft, spongy texture.
    Late one night when her unsuspecting person was on her way to the bathroom, the barefoot woman would step on