The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas Read Online Free PDF Page A

sniff at Marge’s fingertips.
    I said, “Lucy makes friends a little faster than Elvis, but they’re both very sweet cats.”
    Marge lifted both cats out and cradled one in each arm. They both went limp with trust. Marge brings that out in a cat.
    She said, “Any special needs?”
    “No, they’re easy. I’ll let you know when the owners will be back.”
    I was already backing toward the front door, ready to hightail it to my other clients.
    Marge said, “Take the carriers with you.”
    Chastened, I came back to collect the carriers. I didn’t take time to fold them, just carried them out and tossed them in the back of the Bronco to use when I brought the cats home. Elvis had left his scrap of paper in his carrier, and I grinned to myself when I thought how put out he would be when he remembered it.
    The delay at Cupcake’s house had thrown me an hour late. On an ordinary day, I get up at 4:00 A.M. and see eight or nine pets, spending about thirty minutes at each house. With travel time and the occasional delay, my morning visits are usually over by nine or nine thirty, and by then I’m starved for breakfast and sleep. Now it was already close to eight o’clock, and I still had four pet visits to make, some with multiple pets in one house. On top of that, I would have to give an interview to a new homicide detective. It was going to be a long morning.
    I didn’t realize I was being tailed until I left the second house of the four on my list. I had turned onto Midnight Pass Road, and a white Jaguar convertible I’d seen behind me earlier swung too close behind me. Convertibles aren’t good choices for tailing somebody. The woman driver was clearly visible. Her head was snugly wrapped in a printed scarf, and she wore huge dark shades, but she was definitely a woman. A pale woman with bright red lipstick. I couldn’t see her fingernails, but I would have bet good money that the hands with a death grip on the steering wheel had scarlet fingertips.
    I said, “Oh, great! That’s just terrific !”
    My first thought was that Briana had switched from stalking Cupcake to stalking me, which had a kind of sick glamour to it. My second thought was that Briana had just killed a woman in Cupcake’s house, which detracted a lot from the sick glamour.
    Instinctively, my hand went to my cell phone to call Guidry and tell him the woman who’d murdered another woman in Cupcake Trillin’s house was following me. But then I remembered that Guidry had gone away. The murder wasn’t his problem, and neither was I.
    The car in front of me stopped for a red light, and I oozed to a stop behind its bumper. The Jaguar jerked to a stop, and the driver threw open the door and ran toward the passenger door of the Bronco. I could have locked the door. To this day, I don’t know why I sat there like a dope and let Briana hurl herself into the seat beside me. She wore a thin white linen shirt hanging loose over slubby white linen pants, but she wasn’t naked under them. In fact, the lace bra under her shirt seemed designed to be seen. The bra probably had an Italian label and cost as much as my Bronco.
    She seemed more afraid of me than I was of her.
    “Please,” she said. “I need help. As Cupcake’s friend, I’m begging you.”
    I said, “In the first place, you’re not Cupcake’s friend. You’re a stalker who broke into his house and killed somebody. In the second place, I’m a pet sitter, not somebody who can give you help.”
    Her red lips pushed out in the way lips do when people are confused. “I meant you were Cupcake’s friend.”
    “Well, that’s true. But I can’t help you.”
    “You’re the only one who can help me! And I didn’t kill anybody! I know it looks that way, but I swear I didn’t do it!”
    I am both blessed and cursed with an uncanny ability to tell when a person is lying. I don’t know if it’s some genetic trait or the fact that I had an alcoholic mother who lied as skillfully as she put on