The Death of Perry Many Paws Read Free Page A

caressed the child in the dress. “This is me.” Was she one of those rare people with such a dry sense of humor that you had to payclose attention to know they were being funny? “The boys standing on each side of the chairs are my brothers.” I glanced at her again. No, she was totally serious. Now I wasn’t sure if she was simpleminded or if she thought I was.
    “The two adults are your parents,” I said.
    “Of course,” she answered, unimpressed.
    After that we saw a painting of Claudia and her two brothers as adults. She was still the one in the dress. There were three paintings of Roger Behrends with each of his three wives. Roger was a dapper-looking fellow with a twinkle in his eye that didn’t fade from one decade or wife to another. I mentioned to Claudia that I thought Roger was a very handsome and interesting looking man and she stared at me like I had said I ate cat litter for the fiber. She obviously had some as yet undiscovered affliction that made her unable to distinguish a handsome man from a homely one. Therefore I was rather intrigued to meet her son when she described him as “not as good looking as my father.” I couldn’t imagine that anyone could be less good looking than a man who resembled the offspring of a rabbit and a basset hound.
    I had settled in my room, which was large, light-filled and lovely. A sense of curiosity and obligation sent me to the library to begin poking around and making a plan for getting all the books in order. Claudia hadn’t bothered to show me the library but had pointed it out in passing so I knew where it was. She had gone to her room for her pre-dinner nap and I was left on my own. The library door was still closed so I tentatively knocked and, hearing no response, pushed open the door.
    I could only stand in the doorway and stare. The structural beauty of the room was totally overshadowed by disarray and clutter. Books were piled like columns all over the floor, some tilting so precariously that the landing of a fly could send them tumbling. Since the floor was already littered with books, no one would notice if another coupledozen were added to the mess. Half the bookshelves were empty and spiders had built complex condominiums in all the open spaces. The sunlight forcing its way through the windows illuminated the clouds of dust that filled the air and attached to every surface in the room. As I stared, mesmerized by the floating particles, I thought I could distinguish actual human shapes floating around the room, landing on the books and then launching themselves back into the air to swirl up to the ceiling two stories over my head. I looked at the landing that ran around the second floor of the library and thought I saw ethereal beings lined up peering over the railing at me. Suddenly the leather chair next to the fireplace seemed to be occupied by a pipe-smoking rabbit-faced man who stared at me with disinterest. The dust continued to swirl and the rabbit-faced man reshaped and floated up to join the others at the railing. I wanted to scream. I needed to sneeze.
    “My father was not a tidy man,” a voice boomed behind me, causing me to both scream and sneeze at the same time. I turned around so abruptly that I lost my footing and had to grab onto the door frame to keep from falling. Standing there with his hands in his pockets and grinning was one of the most interesting men I had ever seen. He was well over six feet tall and built like a swimmer, broad across the shoulders but lean everywhere else. His hair was a flaming red that Lucille Ball would have envied, and he wore it long. It gently curled and waved around his head like a red halo. His face was so covered with freckles that it looked like he had just returned from a beach holiday and had applied sunscreen haphazardly with a squirt gun. His eyes were an emerald green and, oddly enough, surrounded by thick black lashes that any woman would die for. His smile was warm and lit up his whole