The Death of Perry Many Paws Read Online Free PDF Page B

kitchen chair and was already into her water bottle. It was the same chair Franklin sat in to eat his meals, but I didn’t mention it. Maybe she would get a spiritual vibe from it.
    Diane volunteered to do the kitchen. “I love poking through kitchen stuff and there may be some pots or bowls or things the boys could use, if you don’t mind.” Her twin sons, Kevin and Keith, were juniors at Clarkson University and had moved off campus this fall to their own apartment.
    I nodded. “Take anything you think they might want. It will save them a trip to Goodwill. Syra, do you mind going throughthe bedroom? Most of Franklin’s clothes probably aren’t in good enough shape for Goodwill, but you might find something that is. You can dump the rest in the garbage bags. Same with bed linens and towels. Just throw them out.”
    Syra saluted, grabbed a box of garbage bags and headed to the bedroom. Grace joined me in the study and for about five minutes we just circled it and stared, not knowing where to start. The shelves were jammed with books; some left open for what may have been years. The floor was stacked with newspapers and magazines, toppling over and encrusted with spider webs and who knows what else. There were stains on the hardwood floor that were probably spilled juice or beer or whiskey that had never been wiped up but had been left to become part of the patina of the wood. Not a look I recommend.
    “I wonder why the cleaning people didn’t dust off the bookshelves or the piles on the floor.” Grace kicked at the newspapers and leaped back as a cloud of dirt ascended into the air.
    “They were only hired to clean up the, um, mess from the crime scene. They weren’t supposed to thoroughly clean the cottage.”
    “Oh well, I wish these newspapers weren’t so dirty. I’d really like to look at them.” Grace owned a bookstore, so any reading material was fascinating to her.
    “Help yourself,” I offered, “but you may want to put something over your mouth and nose. I’m going to attack the bookshelves and see if there’s anything I can rescue. Some of these books look really old and intriguing.”
    We pulled our hair back with rubber bands. We found moderately clean dish towels in the kitchen and tied them around our faces to keep out the dust. We looked like the James brothers pulling a bank job.
    “It’s good to see you back to normal,” Grace commented as she tentatively poked and kicked at the stacks of magazines. “Weird things have been happening and I missed having you to talk to.”
    “Yeah, I’ve been in a daze since finding Uncle Franklin. Shock, I guess. I hardly remember anything from the past week. That’s probably a good thing.” I pulled a beautiful leather-bound Dickens,
Pickwick Papers
, from the shelves and dusted it off with my shirt. “Look at this!! It’s gorgeous.” Grace reached out for the book and lovingly opened it and looked through the pages.
    “Real leather. This is how all books should be made. Of course most people wouldn’t be able to afford them and I certainly couldn’t afford to stock them in my shop, but it’s perfect.”
    “It’s like a work of art.” I took the book back and laid it gently on the table. “This definitely goes back to the house.” My hands lingered on the leather a while longer. “Grace, you said weird things have been happening. What weird things?”
    Grace sat down in the chair next to the table and pushed her cloth off her face. “I’m not sure what it means but I know I’m not imagining things …”
    “What things?”
    “Diane has been flirting with that policeman investigating the murder.”
    “Huh?”
    “Not only is she all coy and flirty around him, she talks about him incessantly. She’s even called him a couple of times, supposedly about something stupid she forgot to tell him in her interview. Tamsen, she’s obsessed with this guy. It’s like a teenage crush.”
    “Does her husband know?”
    “I assume Scott