The Tell-Tail Heart: A Cat Cozy (Cattarina Mysteries) Read Free Page A

about?"
Sissy asked.
    Eddie reached across and cupped Sissy's face. "We
mustn't talk of such things around your delicate ears, Sissy. Serve the soup,
won't you, Muddy?" He snatched the object from his wife's palm and stuck
it in his pocket.
    At once, Muddy sat her daughter on stool near
the stove and began dishing stew into little china bowls painted with blue dragons.
Anticipating the feast to come, I riveted my gaze to the dragon bowl on the
floor, the one with the chipped rim. I longed for a big chunk of mutton, not
just broth and a cooked carrot that looked like a shriveled finger. How I hated
carrots. When Eddie scooped me up, it was clear the contents of my bowl would remain
a mystery a while longer. He carried me to the front room, a small, spare area that
served as parlor, keeping room, and office. Eddie may have liked his damned stories,
but they never amounted to a check-in-the-mail, something I suspected correlated
to the size of our home. Though I couldn't be sure since the inner workings of
human commerce were more confusing than a butterfly's drunken flight path.
    Eddie set me on his desk, hooked his thumbs in
the pockets of his vest, and gave me a long look. The dying embers of the
fireplace glowed behind him. "It's clear to whom the eye belongs…rather, belonged
to, Catters. Anyone with a copy of the Gazette could deduce that. But where
did you find your treasure? Along Coates? Near the razed tannery?" He took
my toy from his pocket and tossed it in the air, catching it. "And, most
importantly, did you see the fiend who dropped it? So many questions, so many murders."
    There it was again, murder . It looked as
if he wanted me to talk about my discovery. While eager to tell him everything
I knew, I couldn't find the words.
     
    * * *
     
    My eyeball became Eddie's eyeball following our
little chat. He set it on the mantel before we left for dinner and shut the
door, sealing the room from further investigation. Throughout the meal, I plotted
how to recover the lost item, deciding at last on a midnight caper. Once the
Poe family fell asleep, I would trip the latch on the door and take back my
property. Easy as mouse pie. After we feasted—they on stew and bread, me
on a chunk of mutton and crust soaked in broth—we retired to our separate
chambers.
    While I longed to sleep at the foot of Eddie's
bed, my place was with Sissy. I assigned myself that duty after she fell ill
one winter's afternoon in our old house. We'd gathered in the parlor to listen
to her sing when, in the middle of a high-note, she caught her breath, looked
at Eddie with surprise, and coughed blood onto her gown. Ghastly. I'd smelled sickness
on her that fall but had been unable to alert the household due to my verbal
shortcomings. As penance, I provided the one comfort I could: warmth. Since
then, we'd moved again and again. But try as Eddie might, he could not outrun
her illness.
    The eyeball still pressing my thoughts, I
accompanied Sissy to the bedroom she shared with Muddy and waited for them to peel
away layers of dresses, slips, and corsets down to their chemises. I snoozed on
the dresser between the tortoiseshell comb set and the hair cozy, eyes half-closed,
for their routine. In my opinion, humans attached a distasteful amount of
pageantry to covering their skin. Still, I pitied their lack of fur.
    Sissy slipped into her bed. "What were you
and Eddie talking about in the kitchen, Mother? Before dinner? You spoke of a woman
named Eudora."
    Muddy took her own bed against the opposite wall
and pulled the quilt to her chin.
    "Mother?"
    "Don't trouble yourself, dear."
    "I know I'm ill, but I—"
    "Virginia," Muddy snapped, "you
are not ill. You are under the weather."
    Sissy gritted her teeth. I heard it across the
room. "Yes, Mother." She blew out the candle and called to me. "Cattarina,
come."
    I alighted from the dresser and took my place on
her chest, curling myself into a ball. As it did each night, her body trembled
beneath me,