Murder and a Song (A Pattie Lansbury Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

Pattie replied
tentatively.

                Harry
joined them outside, wiping his hands on his shorts.  He was very rumpled and distracted. “So,
what’s the situation?  Why are you
talking to us about this thing?”

                Constable
Palmer took over the questioning. “Mister Widmore, what was your association with
Blossom Carter?  How did you know her?”

                “We
just met,” Harry replied, rubbing his eyes.

                “So
you didn’t have any kind of relationship with her?”

                “How
could I?” he said bluntly. “I’ve not left the tent the last three days.”

                “He’s
right.”  The speaker was the fourth young
man, who had been sitting in the van.  He
was a little younger than the others, barely thirty, but he looked just as
scruffy as the others. “We’ve been here together the whole time since we got
here.  Unless they’ve been getting each
other’s life stories when he takes a pee around the back of the tent.”

                “And
you are?”

                “Tim
Jeffreys.” He crossed his arms and waited by the tent entrance. “Do you want a
statement, or…?”

                Pattie
looked to Constable Palmer, who shook her head. 
Pattie looked into the tent and said, “How about a Polaroid of that
cat?”

                “Sure,”
said one of them, took the snapshot, and passed it to Pattie.  He smelled of cigarettes and beer.  The photograph developed in front of her eyes
and then she slipped it into her pocket. 

                It
was beginning to get dark.  Pattie took
Constable Palmer to one side and said, “Perhaps you were right, my dear.  I’m at a loss.  But something about these lads doesn’t sit
right with me…”

                “Do
you think they’re covering for each other?”

                “I’m
not sure,” Pattie replied, frowning through her spectacles. “I’m going to say
something that I haven’t needed to say for years: I think that I’m going to
have to sleep on it.”

Chapter 7

    Back at the Pat’s Whiskers Feline
Retirement Home, also known as Pattie’s house, she fed her baker’s dozen cats
and sat for a while as they ate.  There
was always a comfortable silence after dinner time, when they all sat around
and licked their chops, then padded off for somewhere warm and quiet to curl up
and sleep.

                Pattie
decided to do the same.  After a meagre
dinner of toast and jam – she hadn’t been into cooking since her husband passed
away years ago – she put on her nightgown and climbed into bed.  Two of the cats jumped up with her: she must
have forgotten to close the door to the main room.  She didn’t usually allow the cats into the
bedrooms.

                “Once
in a while doesn’t hurt,” she said softly in the darkness, and petted the
nearest.  She couldn’t see, but she had a
sense that this one was Mia, her long-haired Birman.  Mia had a soft spot for Pattie, and the feeling
was mutual.  Mia would quite happily give
up her own bed if it meant snuggling up with Pattie.  The cat kneaded the bed sheets for a little
while, as Pattie considered the details of the case.

                If
those young men in the tent had murdered Daryl Hardy, then how had they managed
to commit the crime with Blossom sleeping right there beside him?  Surely she would have woken up to the sound
of a man being stabbed in the back.  Not
to mention that they might have had to root around for that knife beforehand…

                A
reasonable explanation would be that Blossom wasn’t actually in the tent at the
time of the murder.  The men snuck in
after they saw her leave and then did the deed. 
But that didn’t explain how she could have returned to sleep beside her
lover and not notice that he had a four inch