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

live there.”
    “How’d you end up over here?”
    “How come you ended up over here?”
    “Touché! My mother moved here when I was in high school. Went to college and all that. Never felt quite the same going back home, you know?”
    She replied, “I know.”
    My stomach growled. She remarked gaily, “Won’t be long. Dinner’s at seven.”
    At least she’d looked at me this time.
    I’m a supper person; they were dinner people, probably because Skylar Watkins was a dinner person. Regardless of what you would call it, dinner that night was a simple, rib-sticking meal of chicken and dumplings with corn on the cob and a dessert of cherry cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
    I glanced out the window in the direction of Frank Creek’s cottage. “He isn’t eating with us?”
    “I usually take him lunch,” explained Edna. “Sometimes he’ll come up for a meal, but most of the time he whips up his own. Said he was getting fat from my cooking.”
    Henry cocked an eyebrow. “You have to admit, he does have a stomach.”
    Edna shot him a dirty look. “Hush, Henry. That’s not nice.”
    Henry laughed.
    The meal was delicious. Edna tried to give me seconds, but I begged off. “I’m one of those that gain weight just looking at it,” I said with a deprecating smile.
    “Me too.” She patted her waist. “I just keep watching mine grow bigger.”
    “I doubt that,” I replied, pushing back from the table and announcing that I wanted to take a stroll around the grounds to work off the meal.
    Gadrate shot me a look that seemed to be a mixture of surprise and concern. Henry just shrugged.
    Frank’s Spartan little cottage was neat and orderly. He gestured to a couch in front of a TV, an older model, but with all the peripherals to ensure digital signals.
    “Want something to drink?” He indicated a liter of peach vodka on the table next to a recliner.
    “Might as well,” I said, never having tasted peach vodka.
    He poured me half a tumbler over ice, then plopped down in his recliner. “Heard Edna whipped up chicken and dumplings for supper, huh?”
    I patted my stomach. “Delicious. Edna is one fine cook.”
    “You bet she is. I had to stop eating up there because I was getting so fat, I couldn’t fit behind the wheel of the tractor.”
    I sipped the vodka. It wasn’t bad. Wasn’t good either. A hint of peach. “Now, you were going to tell me about the murder of Mr. Watkins.”
    The wrinkles in his weather-browned face deepened. “There was no way for the killer to get out of that house, but he did.”



CHAPTER FIVE
    “What?” I leaned forward, thinking I had misunderstood him.
    “That’s right. The old man, he was throwing a Christmas party. Collins showed up. Him and Mr. Watkins argued in the library, and Collins left. I even took him to the main gate, like the old man said. Later, when me and Edna sat in the kitchen drinking coffee, folks in the den heard shouts, then gunshots in the library. They tried to get in, but the doors were locked. When they finally broke the doors down, Mr. Watkins was laying dead on the floor, two bullets in his heart. All the doors and windows were locked.”
    He paused. “The cops never could figure it out. They found Bill Collins in bed at his place later that night. Besides, I saw him leave. Even if he slipped back in some way, how could he get out of the library? See what I mean?”
    “Weird,” I muttered. “And they never found who killed him?”
    “Never.”
    “They ever find out about the doors and windows in the library?”
    “Police brought in their specialists. They couldn’t find nothing. Even took up the carpet to see if there was any trapdoors. Nothing.”
    I pondered his story. “The killer couldn’t just disappear. There has to be a way out.”
    The old gardener agreed. “Sure there does. But where?” He paused a moment. “The cops was real frustrated. They even come up with the possibility of the killer hiding behind the door, and