Read Online Cat With a Clue by Laurie Cass - Free Book Online

thing.
    â€œI remember being that young.” Mrs. Dugan sighed. “Life was simpler then, wasn’t it?”
    It had also been very limited, both in scope and in size, and fraught with self-doubt and self-esteem issues. “Personally,” I said, “you couldn’t pay me enough to—”
    Crash!
    I whirled around. “Eddie! What are you doing up there?” My cat had managed to dump a shelf full of books onto the floor. I reached for him, but he slid away from me and jumped in Julia’s direction. “Fine,” I muttered, crouching to pick up the books. “Be that way.”
    â€œMaybe he wants you to read to him,” Faye suggested.
    I eyed his selection. He’d dislodged the books in the Dewey decimal five and six hundreds: natural and applied sciences. “You could be right.” I slid the gardening and philosophy books aside and held up
Cats: The Ultimate Beginners’ Guide to Raising Healthy Cats for Life!
and
Think Like a Cat.
    Julia’s laugh was loud and long.
    â€œWe can take one home,” I told Eddie, who wassitting in the middle of the aisle with his tail curled around his paws. “But only one. I know how short your attention span can be.”
    Eddie got to his feet and stalked past me without a glance.
    Smiling, I watched him go. There really was nothing like a cat.

Chapter 4
    â€œS o,” Lindsey Wolverson said that evening at the Round Table. “Your aunt tells me you have a knack for leadership.”
    I sent a panicked glance to my left at Ash, but he was busy sprinkling malt vinegar onto his fries and wasn’t paying attention to either me or his mother, whom I was meeting for the first time.
    Aunt Frances had known Lindsey for years, but I’d never met her. My aunt had told me of backyard picnics and dinner parties and watching Ash and his sister grow from roly-poly toddlers into adulthood, but she hadn’t mentioned that his mother was so flat-out gorgeous that every person in the room—men and women alike—stared at her with dropped jaw. Not only that, but her chic yet casual attire was more elegant than anything I’d ever owned in my life.
    It was a little intimidating, and I wish I’d known ahead of time. Then again, given Ash’s innate good looks, I should probably have guessed something like this was possible. But mathematics wasn’t my strong suit and I didn’t always put two and two together.
    So I smiled, added more salt to my fries than I really wanted, and struggled for something to say that didn’t sound completely stupid. “I . . . I . . . uh . . .” I gave up. Stupid it would have to be.
    Ash gave his fries one last dollop of malt vinegar, then screwed the top back onto the bottle. “You should see her with Sheriff Richardson. You’d think they’d been buds since day one.”
    Lindsey’s perfectly plucked eyebrows went up. “Kit Richardson? That woman has awed me for years. She frightens men who have United States senators on their speed dial. Good for you. How did you do it?”
    Basically, I had no idea, but it probably helped that I wasn’t from Chilson. I hadn’t known I was supposed to be nervous around the sheriff and had assumed she was like the other people I’d met from her office: helpful, courteous, and competent. Then again, it could have been because I’d knocked on the sheriff’s front door early one morning, and it was hard to think of someone in terms of fearsome starch once you’d seen her in a ratty bathrobe.
    I was about to explain parts of that when I accidentally caught the look on the face of a male passing our booth. He was staring at Lindsey, jaw dropped, eyes goggled, and there might even have been a small trail of drool leaking out one corner of his mouth, although that could have been my imagination. “I . . .” But whatever I’d been about to say