Read Online Cat Laughing Last by Shirley Rousseau Murphy - Free Book Online Page B

blond Kate Osborne. Clyde and Kate were old friends, but now that Clyde had really fallen for her, she’d turned standoffish. Wouldn’t come down from San Francisco, hadn’t been down for over a month, didn’t want Clyde to come up. Something was going on with her. Clyde didn’t know what it was, and as a result, he’d been fierce as a goaded possum. Maybe it was Kate’s search for her unknown family, maybe she was totally wrapped up in that, didn’t want to think of anything else. Though that project, in Joe’s opinion, could lead her into more grief than she’d ever wanted.
    Looking out through the cracks between the porch boards, he saw Charlie coming down the street, walking the few blocks from her apartment—and looking very pretty, her kinky red hair tied back with a calicoribbon, her blue-and-white striped dress as fresh as new milk. When she had hurried up the steps above his head and gone inside, he slipped out of the musty dark to the porch again and sat down beside his cat door, his face to the plastic flap to listen.
    â€œHi! Clyde, you there? Am I the first one here? You in the kitchen?”
    Her cheery greeting met silence. Joe heard the kitchen door swing. “Hi! There you are. I brought some chips.”
    No answer.
    â€œWhat?” Charlie said.
    â€œCan’t you knock? Since we’re not dating anymore, you could at least—”
    â€œWell, pardon me.”
    Again, silence.
    â€œWhere’s Joe?” she said. “You two have a fight?”
    A longer silence.
    â€œWell?”
    â€œNo, we didn’t have a fight!”
    â€œSo where did he go to sulk? And you’re sulking in here, in the kitchen. Were you fighting about the house again, about selling the house?”
    â€œNo, we weren’t fighting about selling the house.”
    Charlie said no more. Joe heard one of them open the refrigerator and pop a couple of beers. Charlie knew how to handle him; Clyde’s moods didn’t bother her. And she was partly right. The problem about the house did make him cross.
    Ever since construction had begun on Molena Point’s new, upscale shopping plaza—ever since its two-story, plastered wall had risen at the boundary behind Clyde’s backyard, blocking their view of the sunrise and the eastern hills, Clyde had been entertaining offers from realtors. The mall hadn’t affected the property values, not in Molena Point, where village lots were so scarce that a buyer would pay half a million for a teardown. And this latest offer to Clyde had topped all the others. It was not from someone wanting a home or vacation cottage, but from a restaurateur planning to open an upscale café—a perfectly understandable plan, in a village where the businesses and cottages were mingled, many shops occupying former residences.
    The offering realtor said the house would remain, along with the house next door, which the buyer had already purchased. The two buildings would be converted into dining and kitchen space and joined by a patio whose tile paving would run back to the two-story plaster wall, with outdoor tables and umbrellas and potted trees.
    Dulcie thought it would be charming. Joe thought there were enough patio restaurants in the village. Clyde vacillated between outright refusal and considering the offer; he couldn’t make up his mind. But he was as angry as a maimed wharf rat about his view being destroyed. Joe could understand that. The wall made Joe, too, feel like he was in a cage.
    But what if Clyde did sell? Where would they live? The idea of moving upset Joe and seemed nearly as unsettling to Clyde.
    Joe thought maybe his own distress came from his kittenhood, from the time when he’d had no real home, just an alley and a few one-night stands, then for a while a stranger with a shabby apartment and a bad disposition—until he met Clyde.
    His and Clyde’s move down from San Francisco, when he was