Laurie Cass - Bookmobile Cat 02 - Tailing a Tabby Read Free Page B

one ear.
    “You are such a dork,” I said, but I said it quietly and with affection. Eddie was a doofus, but he was my doofus, and I loved him. “You’re lucky I didn’t name you Alonzo.” I had first encountered Eddie in a cemetery, next to the grave site of one Alonzo Tillotson, born 1847, died 1926.
    I’d assumed the tabby cat had a home and tried to shoo him away, but he’d followed me all the way down the hill and into Chilson, where he’d done that figure eight thing, purring and turning and twisting around my ankles. If he’d been trying to charm me, it had worked just fine.
    Dr. Joe, the vet, had checked him out and told me he was around two years old. I’d tempted fate by running a notice in the newspaper for a lost cat, but even though I’d virtuously run a normal-sized advertisement instead of the tiny one I’d considered, no one had called. Eddie and I had been together ever since.
    “Not inseparable, though,” I said. “That would be weird. I mean, I like you a lot, but there’s no need for you to come into the bathroom with me.”
    Eddie opened his eyes to narrow slits, then closed them again.
    “Or the shower.” I tried to think of other zones that should be Eddie-free. The kitchen counter, certainly. Though I’d never seen him up there, there was paw-print evidence that he’d made the jump. And my closet. Maybe I needed to get a different latch for the door. What he found attractive about curling up on my shoes, I had no idea, but it wasn’t unusual for me to come home and find him sleeping on the floor of mytiny closet. For two weeks he’d preferred my blue flip-flops, but he’d switched to my running shoes. “Hope the flip-flops don’t get lonely,” I told him.
    “Mrr.”
    “Tell me about it,” I said. “Depressed flip-flops are the worst. No flip, no flop, nothing but Eddie hair on them. It’s a—”
    “Mrrr!”
    I took my gaze off the road for a scant second. “You okay, pal?” He’d sounded a little frantic and I hoped his stomach had settled completely from his lunch of dry cat food and water.
    “
MRR!”
He sprang to his feet.
“MRRRR!”
    “Okay, bud, okay.” I checked the road for a place to pull over. Nothing but curving asphalt, narrow shoulders, even narrower driveways, and trees. “Hang on a minute, there’s bound to be a spot past this curve. Then we’ll pull over and see what’s up, okay?”
    The road was curving sharply and the fact that I’d already started bringing the bookmobile to a stop was the only thing that kept me from hitting the woman who was running into the middle of the road, waving her arms over her head, andshouting.

Chapter 2
    V ehicles that are thirty-one feet long and weigh twenty-three thousand pounds loaded do not stop on a dime, but even so, I was surprised at how quickly the air brakes brought us to a halt.
    Faster than thought, I unbuckled myself and reached to unlatch the door of the cat carrier. “Eddie? You all right? Sorry about that hard screeching stop.”
    He glared at me from the farthest and darkest possible corner of the carrier and didn’t reply. I’d rigged up a way to strap the carrier down, but even so the hard braking would have caused him to slide around inside the carrier.
    Since he didn’t look as if he was in dire shape, I left him to his sulk and opened the bookmobile door. I hurried down the steps and ran back to the woman. “Ma’am? Are you okay?”
    As we drew closer to each other, I could see that the woman was wheezing with exertion. Her brown graying hair was falling out of its ponytail, and while her cheeks were red with the effort from running, the rest of her face was pale.
    “It’s my husband,” she panted.
    A black-and-white blur made of one hundred percent Eddie streaked past us, galloped down the road, then made a hard right down a driveway.
    The woman paid no attention. “It’s my husband, down at our house. He’s having a stroke, I’m sure of it, and I need to get him to the