Peach Cobbler Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

bring Moishe over here and he could take care of the problem. It’s only a few miles and you told me he was a good mouser.”
    “You want Moishe to catch your mouse?” Hannah couldn’t believe her ears. The woman who thought mousetraps were inhumane preferred letting Hannah’s mean feline killing machine loose on her tiny rodent?
    “I’ll make it worth his while. I’ve got a package of shrimp in the freezer. You can take it with you when he’s done and he can have a nice treat when he gets home.”
    Hannah started to chortle. “You want to hire my cat as an assassin and pay him off in frozen shrimp?”
    “You don’t have to put it quite that way. But really, dear . . . I’ve always hated mice and I won’t get a wink of sleep tonight knowing that it’s running around loose.”
    Hannah sighed. That was probably true. The sleeping mind could play all sorts of tricks. Her mother might dream that she was being chased by a giant rodent and really have a heart attack.
    “Hold on and I’ll talk it over with Moishe,” Hannah said, unwilling to cave in too easily and encourage more requests for help from her mother. Coaxing Moishe into his traveling crate wasn’t easy, and listening to him complain as she drove to town wouldn’t be pleasant.
    “You have to talk it over with a cat? For heaven’s sake, Hannah! You’re acting as if he’s your child!”
    “He’s better than a child. Think about it, Mother. Moishe doesn’t ask for an allowance, he eats cold food straight out of the can, he toilet trained himself, and he’s never going to need money for college.”
    There was silence for a moment and then Delores started to laugh. There were times when her sense of humor won out over her oh-so-proper exterior. Hannah was grinning as she turned to her cat, who was sitting on the coffee table grooming his tail. “What do you say, Moishe? Are you in the mood to do a little mouse hunting for hire?”
    As she said the word mouse, Moishe’s ears tipped toward her, swiveling like miniature satellite dishes. Hannah turned back to the phone. “He’s definitely interested,” she reported.
    “Then you’ll come?”
    “Of course I’ll come,” Hannah said, wondering why out of three daughters, a son-in-law, and whole phone book of friends, Delores always called her when there was a problem.
    “Why is he hissing like that?” Delores asked, leaning down to peer into the cat carrier. “Do you think he smells the mouse?”
    No, he sees you, Hannah thought but she didn’t say it. It was probably best if her mother didn’t now how much Moishe disliked her. “He’s not fond of traveling,” Hannah excused her bristling, hissing pet. And that was a masterful understatement, since her ears were still ringing from Moishe’s nonstop yowls of protest all the way from her condo garage to her mother’s driveway. “Where’s the mouse?”
    “In the guest room. He dashed out of the closet and ran in there. I chased after him and shut the door.”
    Hannah Moishe through her mother’s living room, a pale blue room filled with museum-quality antiques and artwork. It was immaculate, as always. Delores didn’t clean it herself. Marjorie Hanks, Luanne’s mother, came in to polish, dust, wash, and wax every Tuesday and every Friday. In high school science, Hannah had learned that nature abhorred a vacuum and the same could be said for her mother.
    “Is it heavy?” Delores asked, as Hannah set the carrier down in the hallway for a moment to get a better grip.
    “Yes,” Hannah answered, not mentioning that it was one of the more inane question she’d ever heard. She hoisted her hissing burden, carried him to the guest room door, and set him down again with a grunt. “Okay. He’s ready to go.”
    “He doesn’t look very happy about it,” Delores said, peering in through the grate again.
    “He’ll be okay once I let him out of the carrier, but I’d better supervise to make sure nothing gets knocked over. And I think we