Cat in Wolf's Clothing (9781101578889) Read Free

remembered. Just as I sometimes had to kick myself to remember that Bushy was not a cat-sitting client . . . he was my cat.

Chapter 3
    The Tyre brothers had lived in a very large wraparound studio on a very high floor of their Fourteenth Street building, which stood just west of Fifth Avenue. The wall-less kitchen was in the geographical center of the apartment. Two small bathrooms were set in the short hallway which led from the door to the studio proper.
    The rest of the apartment was just space, shelves, a few pieces of minimal furniture, and windows—my, what windows!—covering all the walls on three sides. Just standing in the apartment was a wild, visual, urban ride. I sat down on a chair in front of the sections of windows that looked south. I could see the Twin Towers. I could see all of the downtown area. A gentle spring breeze rustled the blinds and raced through the apartment. It was not the kind of apartment one would expect to be rented by two recently retired sixty-year-old middle-class bachelors.
    â€œThere is where the bodies were found,” Arcenaux said, gesturing to a spot not far from where I was sitting. “No struggle. None at all. Just two .44-caliber slugs from a Colt. One in each brother. At the base of the skull. Execution.”
    â€œClean, very clean,” Detective Rothwax added.
    I closed my eyes and let the breeze swell against my face. Sitting in that high apartment was like riding a roller coaster. Maybe there were too many windows.
    â€œMadam . . . your mouse,” a voice said.
    I opened my eyes quickly and saw Detective Arcenaux mimicking a waiter.
    He was holding a tray and bending over in a dramatic bow.
    On the otherwise empty tray was a mouse! A mechanical one!
    â€œWell? Look at it!” Rothwax ordered.
    I picked the strange little mouse up from the tray Arcenaux offered me. It was one of those small windup mice. The skin and whiskers were some kind of fabric.
    I wound it up and released it back onto the tray. It careened wildly from side to side for a short time and then stopped dead in its tracks. Not at all like the economy of motion of a real mouse.
    â€œAt first,” Arcenaux explained, “we thought it had been purchased by one of the brothers. But no one we questioned ever saw it in their apartment.”
    I picked the mouse up from the tray again. Poor little mechanical mouse, I thought. So sad.
    Arcenaux continued: “Then, for no reason at all, someone ran it through the computer. The computer told us that in fifteen other murders there had been mouse toys inventoried at the scene of the crime.”
    Rothwax interrupted with his own thought. “Now, you may be thinking that wherever a cat lives in a household . . . there will always be mouse toys.”
    â€œI was thinking along those lines,” I admitted.
    â€œWell, then, Miss Nestleton, I mean Alice, tell me—do you have a mouse toy in your apartment?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAnd, in fact, most cat families don’t have mouse toys.”
    Arcenaux made a gesture with his hand, dismissing his partner’s interruption as irrelevant.
    â€œSo now we have seventeen murders linked by a toy mouse of some kind found at the scene of the crime, along with the victim’s cat or cats. No two of the mice are exactly alike—all are either windup toys or stuffed likenesses or plastic likenesses.”
    I laid the sad little toy mouse back down on the tray, feet up. It was becoming sinister.
    â€œTell her about Retro,” Rothwax said to Arcenaux.
    â€œYou tell her,” Arcenaux retorted.
    â€œWhat or who is Retro?” I pressed.
    â€œWell, its real name is Major Case Retrospectives,” Rothwax explained. “It’s a special new interdepartmental task force put together to deal with major unsolved crimes in the metropolitan area. It meets three mornings a week. We’d like you to attend.” He paused and then