Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 14 - Murder in a Casbah of Cats Read Online Free PDF Page A

humor.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Take another look. See the painting above the mantel in the picture?”
    I looked more closely at the canvas. Above the mantel in the picture was a smaller painting.
    “Yeah. So?”
    “Take a closer look. That picture is the same as the large one.”
    Not quite understanding, I stepped up on the hearth and squinted at the image in the picture. Sure enough, the painting within a painting duplicated the original.
    “Yeah. I see what you mean.”
    “Now, look again, at the small one.”
    I squinted at it. “A third painting?”
    “Yes. Like looking into mirrors until everything vanishes into infinity.”
    Shaking my head, I studied the canvas again. “I see what you mean.” After a moment, I said, “Makes you wish pictures could talk, huh?”
    He grunted. “Sure solve a lot of problems.”
    I looked around at him. “How’s that?”
    He nodded to the old man’s gray eyes. “Those eyes saw who killed his grandson, Mr. Watkins—the third.”
    I hesitated. “I see what you mean. In here’s where it happened. Must’ve been rough, for everybody,” I added.
    Reluctant to answer, he shrugged. “All of us. Edna almost fainted when she got back from her sister’s funeral and heard about…” He hesitated and drew the tip of his tongue across his lips. “You know, about the death.”
    I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. I glanced back at the picture. “Like you say, the first Herbert Watkins had a sense of humor.”
    As awkward as it is to say it, I got along fine with all the cats except one. Now he was probably a registered feline from Australia or New Zealand, but as far as I was concerned, he looked like one of the thousands of mackerel-colored back alley cats you see in—well, all the back alleys.
    He hated me. Of that there was no question. First time I leaned down to pet him, he beat me to the punch and laid open three parallel red lines on the top of my hand. With a warning hiss, he backed away, dropped into a crouch, and laid his ears back.
    I glanced around to see if anyone was around. They weren’t, so I hissed back. “Do that again, buster, and I’ll put tacks in your litter box!”
    After a light lunch, I wandered the grounds, spotting Frank Creek sitting in the shade of a white gazebo, eating the lunch Edna had brought him. I gestured to a chair. “Mind if I join you?”
    “Be glad for some company,” he exclaimed. What little hair he still kept was gray. His blue denim shirt was sweat stained under the arms and down the middle of his chest.
    “Hot out today.”
    “Yep,” he said around a mouthful of ham-and-cheese sandwich. “Be the dickens if we didn’t have the shade from all them trees.”
    I surveyed the yard. Fern moss covered the ground in the shade beneath the live oaks, separated from adjoining beds by a manicured lawn of St. Augustine grass. “You must spend most of your time on the yard.”
    He chugged down some iced sweet tea, spilling some on either side of his lips. “Takes time. Four days a week during the season, and here, the season is almost all year.” He laughed.
    For a few moments, neither of us spoke. I was enjoying the breeze in the shade and the sweet smell of honeysuckle coming from somewhere.
    The old man broke the silence. “No offense intended, Mr. Boudreaux, but how come Miz Watkins hired you to look after her cats?”
    “No offense at all, Frank. And call me Tony.” I had no intention of revealing Skylar Watkins’s opinion about unsupervised domestics. “As far as why, I don’t know. Like I told Henry, seems to me they, and you, do the job just fine.”
    He took another bite of sandwich and chewed for a few moments. Switching his bite to the other cheek, he said, “Miz Watkins, she’s got the money. She can afford it, but it don’t make a whole lot of sense.”
    Leaning forward, I said, “It’s my turn now, Frank. No offense, but the others all call her Skylar. You call her Miz Watkins.”
    He