Read Online The Cat Sitter's Whiskers by Blaize Clement - Free Book Online Page B

landing.
    Just past that trailer the asphalt ended abruptly and turned into a dusty narrow road with wheel ruts down the middle. It led about a hundred feet through a stand of pines, eventually widening into a weedy clearing where there was a sky-blue trailer shaped like a boxcar. It was faded, with what looked like coffee stains spilling down its corrugated metal siding.
    I inched the Bronco forward a bit, just parallel to a sign that read PRIVATE PROPERTY , and whispered to myself, “What in the world am I doing here?”
    A voice in my head said, Nothing good. Turn around.
    I ignored it. Putting aside for the moment that my mask-wearing assailant was probably a figment of my imagination, if it turned out there was even the slightest connection between that and the fact that Levi hadn’t finished his paper deliveries that morning, I’d never have been able to forgive myself if I didn’t at least make sure he was okay.
    The closer I got to the trailer, the more certain I was that this was the right place. There was a sad stack of old tires about five feet high in the middle of the weedy yard, and parked at a forty-five-degree angle between that and the trailer, its front bumper practically touching the front door, was Levi’s dark brown Buick LeSabre convertible.
    I breathed a sigh of relief as I pulled over to the side of the yard and shut the engine. At least he’d made it home, which meant I could rule out some of the other possible scenarios I’d come up with since I’d left the diner: that shortly after he’d pulled away from my driveway that morning, Levi had been run off the road, tied up, and thrown off the bridge into the bay, or he’d been locked in a basement chamber somewhere, all to keep him from coming forward as a witness after the Kellers returned from their vacation in Italy to find my lifeless body in their laundry room.
    Like I said, my imagination can get a little unruly sometimes.
    I dropped my keys down into the Bronco’s center console and stepped out into the weedy yard. The sun was in her full midday glory now, and the heat bouncing off the front of the trailer made me feel like I’d walked into a giant rotisserie oven. To the right of the front door was a single window about four feet square, covered with a flimsy sheet of plastic held to the casing with a double-wide framing of gray duct tape. A lime-green fitted bedsheet was tacked up behind the glass, blocking the view inside except for one spot in the lower left corner where the sheet was balled up in a knot. As I squeezed myself around the front of the LeSabre and climbed up the few steps to knock on the front door, I had the distinct feeling I was being watched.
    â€œExcuse me, can I help you?”
    I spun around to find a squat, pasty-faced woman in her early twenties, with crispy, dyed-red hair and puffy eyes, looking up at me with her head cocked snottily to one side.
    â€œOh, hi,” I blustered. “I didn’t hear you come up.”
    â€œNo kidding. This is private property, you know.”
    â€œYeah, sorry. I was just looking for Levi.”
    She gave me a once-over. “Oh, yeah? What do you want with him?”
    â€œWell, it’s a little weird. He was parked outside my house when I was leaving for work.”
    â€œOh, he was, was he?”
    She was wearing flip-flops and a grubby white button-down with a black silhouette of Mickey Mouse across the front, buttoned all the way up to her neck. It was either a nightgown or an extremely large man’s dress shirt, because it fell halfway down her bare legs.
    I said, “Yeah, so I just wanted to know if maybe he’d seen anything unusual.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter. Can’t you read?”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    Folding her arms across her chest, she said, “The sign clearly says NO TRESPASSING .”
    I thought about saying that, actually, the sign clearly said PRIVATE PROPERTY , but I