Whisker of Evil Read Online Free PDF

distinctive.
    â€œWhat the . . . ?” She peered but couldn’t make out the inscription. The writing was reversed and quite tiny. She thought the first word started with a V. The shield looked like the shield for the Episcopal Church. Inside in larger script were the initials M. P. R. and, underneath, 1945. A 10K stamp rested to the left of the M, far enough away not to draw the eye from the prettily engraved letters and numbers.
    â€œMust have been under the rock,”
Pewter opined.
    â€œGives me an idea.”
Mrs. Murphy, fur finally flattening down, paced alongside the creek bank. She wanted Harry to come out of the water. If need be, Mrs. Murphy could and would swim, but she didn’t like it. One hideously hot and humid day last summer she put her front paws in her water bowl, to everyone’s amazement.
    Harry stepped out of the creek, her work boots sloshing, her pant legs stuck to her calves. She bent down so her friends could see the ring. Living close to animals since birth, Harry naturally shared with them; more, she trusted them. These small predators, her dearest companions, had survived the millennia just as her species had. In her mind, they were all winners, and you learn from winners.
    â€œOld,”
Pewter said.
    â€œStrange. Strange to be here where we found Barry.”
Tucker could only smell watery smells on the ring.
    â€œBut it gives me an idea,”
Mrs. Murphy repeated.
    â€œWhich is?”
Tucker’s large brown eyes looked straight into Mrs. Murphy’s electric green eyes.
    â€œThe creek. Whatever killed Barry could have carried him a distance, even a mile or two, just picked him up and carried him. Barry wouldn’t be wet or dirty, which he wasn’t.”
    â€œHave to be strong.”
Pewter considered Mrs. Murphy’s idea.
“And if something carried him, there’d have been blood over his chest. He wasn’t carried. Whatever attacked him hit him hard and he dropped and died. That’s what I think.”
    â€œLots of strong animals around here. Just chased one,”
Tucker replied.
    â€œThat’s true, although deer don’t kill and carry.”
Pewter knew enough to know that even prey animals could act out of character sometimes. One never knew, and best to be on guard.
    â€œA bear could do it. A forty-pound bobcat could do it if he had to, or a coyote, or a big wild dog.”
Tucker thought out loud.
    â€œOr a human.”
Mrs. Murphy was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.

5

    A unt Tally had been shrinking with age. As a young woman she towered over her female peers, but now in her nineties her five-foot-eight-inch frame had contracted to five feet four inches, the national average, and if there was one thing Aunt Tally hated it was being average.
    Mim, her niece, sat next to her at the end of the sturdy kitchen table in Aunt Tally’s wonderful old Virginia kitchen, the wood-burning cooking stove still in use as well as an expensive Aga, a convection stove known only to the cognoscenti. The Aga was the pride of Aunt Tally’s cook, Loretta Young. Loretta affected the demeanor of the actress she was named for, which was quite a novelty in a cook.
    As it was Sunday, Loretta was down at Big Mim’s to assist with the Sunday dinner. Gretchen, the majordomo of that house, loathed Loretta. Jim had slyly placed a boxing bell on the side leg of the dining-room table. He intended to hit it with a small hammer, thereby amusing his family and guests and serving notice on the two battling broads, as he put it, to settle down, at least until dinner was served.
    Big Mim had driven out to pick up her aunt, who didn’t want to go to Dalmally until the last minute. She declared it took her all that extra time to just pull her face up off the floor.
    Cynthia Cooper, Harry, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker arrived just as Tally had applied her peach lipstick. They hadn’t known Aunt Tally was going to Dalmally.