Free Catnapped! by Elaine Viets Page B

a long, bloody scratch down Phil’s arm. “You’re hurt,” she said.
    “Justine has a set of steak knives on her paws,” Phil said. “Arthur has a screened-in cat run in the backyard, with a cat door so his pets can come and go as they please. The people door on the run wasn’t locked, so I walked in. The big, fluffy brown cat was asleep in the corner. Little Justine put up a fight, but I threw the towel over her and legged it out of there. Nobody saw me.”
    “Thank goodness,” Helen said.
    “Ouch!” Phil said. She heard a loud, snaky hiss.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “I opened the cage to take the towel off Justine and she clawed me again.” He wrapped his pocket handkerchief around his wounded hand.
    Phil insisted on carrying the pet carrier into Nancie’s office, even though he’d bled through his handkerchief.
    “I want her to see I was wounded in the line of duty,” he said.
    “Your blood, your story,” Helen said.
    Phil made a dramatic sight with his bloody, bandaged hand and the blood-spattered carrier. Nancie listened patiently to his story, then said, “If Trish is in on the catnapping, I won’t represent her if there’s a criminal case. Let’s see Justine.”
    She cleared her papers off the desk, then opened the carrier door. An indignant gray kitten tested the desk with one paw, then eased out its round gray head, and finally its whole body.
    The cat hissed, lifted its leg and whizzed all over Nancie’s black leather desk pad.
    Helen and Phil couldn’t understand why Nancie was laughing. “That’s no Justine,” she said. “This angry gentleman is an unneutered Russian blue. I believe Phil’s kidnapped Arthur Goldich’s kitten, Misha. I’d get him back before the lawyer has you both arrested.”
    “I—I thought Russian blues would be blue,” Phil said.
    “They’re slate gray,” Helen said, using her newfound knowledge.
    “And they have green eyes,” Nancie said. “Justine’s eyes are copper. Now get this cat out of here, will you? Cat pee stinks. I have to clean up my desk. I’ll deduct the new desk pad from your bill.”
    Phil shoved the snarling, hissing kitten back into the carrier and earned another vicious scratch. “Ow!”
    “Hurry!” Nancie said. “Get him back home before I have to bail you two out of jail.”
    As they ran for the Igloo with the furious feline, Phil said, “Don’t say it.”
    “Say what?” Helen asked.
    “I told you so.”
    “Don’t have to,” Helen said. “You just did.”

CHAPTER 9
    Wednesday
    “S o far, the police have made no arrests in the brutal murder of Peerless Point financial advisor Mortimer Barrymore,” said Channel 77 investigative reporter Valerie Cannata.
    Helen and Phil had flipped on the TV in Phil’s living room to catch the morning news over a hasty breakfast. Mort’s murder was still the lead local story.
    “Damn, she looks good at seven in the morning,” Phil said.
    Helen felt a sharp sting of jealousy. Phil and Valerie had had a fling years ago. Helen knew it was over. She also knew Valerie was exceptionally well turned out. The reporter’s yellow dress hugged her curves, and her dark red hair glowed in the morning sun.
    Helen felt frumpy in shorts and a T-shirt that would soon be covered with cat hair.
    “Full makeup,” Helen said. “I’m impressed.”
    Lock away the green-eyed monster, she thought. Phil’s no hound, and Valerie brings Coronado Investigations lots of business when she covers your cases.
    Onscreen, Valerie was standing outside Mort’s wrought-iron gate. The TV camera panned the marble statues and thebougainvillea-draped mansion, then focused on the front door. “Mr. Barrymore was battered to death inside this historic mansion, where he had been living since separating from his estranged wife,” the reporter said. “We are expecting a development later today. Peerless Point Crimes Against Persons detective Lester V. Boland has called a press conference for three o’clock this