Free How to Paint a Cat (Cats and Curios Mystery) by Rebecca M. Hale Page B

multimillions—and both clung precariously to the side of the cliff, as if the slightest quake might send them tumbling all the way to the Embarcadero.
    Panting and nearly out of breath, the niece reached the summit of the last set of stairs and stepped over the curb onto the asphalt path leading to Coit Tower’s front drive. A chattering swarm of green parrots swooped through the mist as she walked the remaining hundred yards to the monument’s entrance.
    The center of the small parking lot was manned by a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus. Depicted with an (unlikely) tall, brawny physique, the tarnished green figure looked across the bay toward the Golden Gate, a place the explorer might possibly have heard of, but certainly never ventured.
    Despite being soaked from the rain, the niece was ready for a drink. She reached beneath her rain jacket for a zippered pocket sewn into the waistband of her leggings, pulled out a dollar, and headed for the tower’s front lobby to buy a bottle of water from the convenience store inside.
    A series of stone steps led up to the tower’s square base and an entrance marked by a concrete casting of a phoenix. The bird’s symbol of rebirth through flames had been enthusiastically adopted by fire-prone San Francisco, a city accustomed in its early days to the constant threat of flame-born disaster.
    The niece passed beneath the phoenix as she weaved through a small crowd gathered around the main door, waiting for a docent tour to begin.
    Slipping past the throng, she proceeded into the convenience store, a round room centered at the tower’s core. Bypassing the souvenirs and trinkets packed into the shop’s minimal square footage, the niece grabbed a bottle from a tiny refrigeration unit. After a quick stop at the cashier stand, she carried her purchase out of the store’s rear door and into a hallway that ringed the inner edge of the tower’s ground level.
    Behind her, a window of plated glass opened up the east-facing wall. The rest of the hallway’s vertical space was completely covered with painted murals.
    With an apologetic glance at a sign forbidding food and beverage in the mural area, the niece discreetly unscrewed the lid and took a long sip.
    Given the noise in the front foyer, it appeared that the docent for the morning tour had arrived. A woman’s voice echoed through the hallway.
    “Crowd around, ladies and gentlemen, and we’ll get this thing started. Congratulations are in order for everyone who made the trek up Telegraph Hill. As some of you may already know, the hill is named for the signal station positioned here back in the Gold Rush days. This was, in fact, the site of the first West Coast telegraph.”
    The niece nearly choked on a gulp of water. She recognized the voice at once. It belonged to one of her uncle’s comrades, the first of his crew to surface in over two months.
    After a difficult swallow, her eyes widened with intrigue. She tiptoed toward the edge of the group and whispered softly, “What’s Dilla doing here?”
    • • •
    A SHORT DISTANCE away, Spider’s soggy spirit staggered over the top step of a Telegraph Hill staircase and onto Coit Tower’s asphalt drive. His barely visible disturbance in the pattern of raindrops bent over, gasping for breath—or whatever substance it was that energized his supernatural being.
    With unaccustomed fatigue, Spider shook his head. The brown-haired woman had smoked him on the steep steps. Before his untimely demise, he routinely rode his bike straight up San Francisco’s most daunting hills, but his ghostly persona wasn’t in nearly as good a shape as his human form had been.
    Righting himself, he lifted his baseball cap to wipe his forehead. He then focused on the concrete structure at the end of the drive.
    Coit Tower.
    He suspected he knew what Oscar’s niece was doing there.
    The run, he reasoned, was just a ruse. She was taking the same path he had followed during his research in the