Read Online Kilt Dead by Kaitlyn Dunnett - Free Book Online Page B

call the police. Instead, she’d apparently gone right in
after the thief. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that she might
be putting herself in danger?
    “There he is,” Pete said.
    Lumpkin stood in the doorway that led to the hall: all
twenty pounds of him. The big yellow tom blinked once
at them, then plopped himself down and began to lick his
tail.
    “Yeah, I’m fond of you, too,” Dan muttered. “Where’s
your carrier?”
    They found it in the hall closet. A cage that looked
much too small for a behemoth of Lumpkin’s proportions
sat on the overhead shelf along with a collection of ballcaps and other hats. Dan took it down, unlatched the front,
and advanced on the cat, who was still engrossed in grooming, pointedly ignoring the upstart humans who’d invaded
his house.
    “Gotcha!” Dan came up with the cat under one arm.
    Lumpkin took exception to being grabbed. Squirming,
kicking, and hissing, he tried to break free. The carrier
crashed to the floor when Dan had to use both hands to
hold onto the cat.
    “Good luck getting him inside that thing,” Pete said.
“Lumpkin doesn’t like to be confined”
    “He doesn’t much like being held, either.”
    Flat-eared, teeth bared to the gums, the cat snarled. Dan took a good look at that feral expression, swallowed
convulsively, and tightened his grip. Lumpkin kicked out
with his back feet, hard, claws extended. Dan grunted and
shifted position, holding both of Lumpkin’s front legs in
one hand and forcing the cat’s back end tight against his
chest.

    He was reaching for the carrier when Lumpkin bit
down hard on the soft, fleshy skin between Dan’s forefinger
and thumb. With a yelp, Dan dropped him.
    “Now you’ve done it.” Pete was trying not to laugh.
    “You want to give me a hand here?”
    “Sure. I’ll hold the carrier.”
    Lumpkin led Dan and Pete on a merry chase through
the house, but they finally cornered him in the small
downstairs room Mrs. Norris had called her library. The
walls were lined with tall bookcases. Seemingly without
effort, Lumpkin went from the back of a recliner to the
top of the nearest set of shelves. A looseleaf binder tumbled
to the floor as he launched himself from there to Mrs. Norris’s cluttered desk. A stack of computer printouts, a tissue
box, and a remote control scattered as he landed.
    “Close the door!” Dan yelled as the cat caromed off an
end table and headed that way.
    Pete slammed it shut, trapping Lumpkin in the room.
He was climbing the drapes when Dan pounced, recapturing him. Pete had the carrier ready, but Lumpkin managed to brace all four paws against the opening.
    Grimly determined, Dan pried them loose, claw by claw,
and gave one final push. Lumpkin flew into the carrier.
Dan closed and latched the grate on a yowl of protest.
    “Well, that was fun “” Pete surveyed the chaos, shaking
his head. “What a mess. If LaVerdiere sees the place like
this, he’s going to think somebody broke in and trashed
it.”
    After first checking to make sure the catch on the cat carrier was secure, Dan set about putting the room back
to rights. “The way I see it, there’s no need for Craig
LaVerdiere to know we’ve been here”

    Pete thought about that for a moment, then said, “I
need to get back outside. Can you finish cleaning up on
your own?”
    “No problem.”
    The fallen looseleaf binder had opened on impact,
freeing the contents. Dan scooped everything up and took
it over to the desk to line up the holes and put the pages
back in order. He glanced idly at the printed words as the
stack slid into place. He frowned as he recognized a name
or two, but didn’t take time to read more than a few sentences.
    Ten minutes later, Dan was back home and Lumpkin
had been freed from the much-hated cage.
    “Here. Console yourself.” Dan put a feeder full of kibble, also liberated from Mrs. Norris’s house, in a corner
of the kitchen. He filled a cereal bowl with