Never Tease a Siamese: A Leigh Koslow Mystery Read Online Free PDF

made sense. Why else would someone want to steal both a worthless cat and the contents of its litter box?
    Number One Son certainly had precedent. The file she had just read showed that he'd been operated on three times already for intestinal blockage: dishtowel, oriental carpet tassel, and hair scrunchy, respectively. She couldn't imagine what cloth-like item could possibly be valuable enough for someone to go to such lengths to retrieve it—or even how the cat could have gotten hold of it in the first place—but she darn well wanted to find out.
    "He's still on the phone," Jeanine reported sullenly, walking to the x-ray table and putting a hand on Number One Son. "But I suppose it's all right."
    Leigh smiled and headed for the rack to slip on her lead gown and gloves. She hadn't gone three paces before she stopped cold.
    "Oh, wait," she said to herself, out loud. "I can't."
    She looked helplessly back at Jeanine, whose wide mouth broke into a devious grin. "Oh, no?"
    Leigh's face reddened. "I mean, I might be able to, I just—"
    Damn . She didn't know that she was pregnant. In fact, she probably wasn't. But she couldn't be sure she wasn't. And so she was stuck. Keeping a pregnancy secret at a vet clinic was like keeping a wig secret at a beauty salon. With Dr. Koslow's strict rules about x-ray and gas exposure, the staff knew about each others’ babies before their husbands did.
    And Jeanine would keep this little nugget to herself for all of about five seconds. "Say no more," the tech said smugly. "I'll gown up. You just hit the button."
    Leigh bit her lip and held onto Number One Son while Jeanine got ready, then she stepped behind the lead shield and watched as the tech stretched the cat out on his side. Leigh snapped the picture, unloaded the cassette, and headed for the processor.
    Jeanine stayed at the x-ray table, smirking.
     
     
     
    Chapter 3
     
    " Now do you believe me?" Leigh asked excitedly.
    Randall removed his glasses and peered closely at the radiograph. It took a long time for him to answer. "Well, it seems to be moving along well enough. Not a lot of gas—none of the bowel loops are distended." He shook his head sadly. "Maybe it won't block him up this time. The cat's already got a bellyful of adhesions, and if I have to go back in again—"
    "But what is this, Dad?" she asked emphatically, pointing. "It obviously isn't just cloth."
    He took another look at the inch-long, roughly club-shaped white spot and shook his head. "No, it's metal. But this," he pointed to the fuzzy white area around it, "is probably the cloth that made him eat it."
    Leigh stared. She wasn't great with x-rays, but she knew metal when she saw it. Being perfectly stark white on a field of black and gray, it was hard to miss. "It could be a ring, if you were looking at it straight-on," she hypothesized. "Or some sort of broach."
    "Maybe," he mumbled noncommittally.
    She pivoted him to face her. "You have to admit it, Dad. Ricky Rhodis could be telling the truth. Someone could have convinced him to snatch the cat before it got back to Mrs. Murchison. Let's say they knew the cat had swallowed this—this whatever it is. That could be what Ricky meant when he told his grandmother he wasn't stealing…only returning."
    Randall looked back at his only daughter skeptically. "This cat never leaves Mrs. Murchison's house, except to come here. How do you suppose it could swallow something that belonged to someone else?" He turned back to examine the film again, then shook his head. "It's probably no more than the pop-top from a can of tuna."
    Leigh let out a breath and thought a moment. "However," her father continued, "Your theory does explain the cat carrier and the bagged-up litter, though given the amount of time it takes for foodstuffs to pass completely through the system—"
    "Dad," she interrupted quickly, her hopes rising again. "We're not dealing with a Ph.D. in feline proctology, here, remember? They wouldn't know how long to