I got down on the floor and rolled King over. He had been stabbed with the same knife used on Bradley. I didn’t remove the knife because I didn’t want to tamper with evidence, but guess I should have. I must move King, though I guess I could just leave him here, but no, I’ll take him down to Bradley’s room. The cats returned just then and I told them to go get the girls right away. They quickly returned with Jennifer and Annelie. Jennifer checked for finger prints on the knife. I told her there would be two sets, Bradley’s and mine, and I was right. “That doesn’t look good Steve,” said Jennifer.

“A minor point at the moment,” I said, “first let’s move the body.” So we carried him down to Bradley’s room and laid him on the bed. “My two prime suspects,” I said, “it doesn’t make sense.” “It does if someone doesn’t like men,” said Annelie, “just like Katrina would do.” “Interesting thought,” I added, “several of the girls are out on bail right now. I’m going to sleep up in the sitting room on the third floor. There’s something about that room that will give us a clue.” “Okay,” said Jennifer, “but we’re going with you.” So we all moved up to the sitting room, and there was a bedroom directly across the hall so the girls decided to use that, but left the door open.

The cats and I stayed in the sitting room. When I talked to the cats, it was in their meow language so no one could understand us. I told Muffin to really think about this room, there must be a clue here, or why would someone go to all the trouble of duplicating the room so exactly. I walked around the room looking at everything, but nothing seemed to make sense or give a clue for this case. Meow,meow.=Look here, this different. I go over to where she was looking at some books on a little shelf. One book was sticking out from the others.

Muffin remembers details better than me. I look at the book, it was small and on the cover was a drawing of a house, but not any house, it was this house! It was given to a young girl for Christmas in 1921. One hundred years ago, that’s interesting in itself. Then I heard Tracy Kendall calling up the stairs for me. I knew it was her, she had a rather unique high pitched voice. The cats and I went running down quickly and went to their room, but when I opened the door, they were both asleep in bed. Even my opening the door didn’t wake them up. I closed the door quietly and as we came back to the kitchen I heard the front door close.

The cats and I went quickly out on the porch and I looked all around with my flashlight, but there was nothing. I told the cats to look under the porch, but to be careful. They came back and said there was a window under there. Meow.=Window open real easy, we do it. “That’s good,” I said, “that’s how someone disappears so fast. We’ll check that out better in the morning.” Going back in I suddenly realized that perhaps someone just wanted to get me downstairs. We ran back up and checked on the girls, but they were okay and awake.

They heard the voice too and were getting ready to follow after me. And Jennifer now looked just like…Kat! Amazing how much they look alike. We close the door and put on our scrambling devices. “I figured that if they went after Kat once, they might try again,” said Jennifer, “so maybe we can confuse them a bit. I already talked it over with Kat, we’ll just try not to be seen together. So for now you’ll have two wives Steve.” So we all went over to the sitting room, Kat and I sat on the love seat. Meow?=Why they do kissing thing? Meow,meow.=That not real kissing, it pretend kiss to fool bad guys.

Meow.=Look like real kissing to me. Meow,meow=Naturally, pretend kiss must look like real kiss because if only pretend kiss it will look like pretend kiss and won’t fool bad guys like pretend kiss that look like real kiss can do. M.C. just looks at Muffin and blinks. Meow.=That not make sense. If it look like real kiss it is real kiss. Meow,meow.=No, no, you not understand, it pretend that look real because a real pretend is needed to look like a pretend real. Then she stops. Meow,meow?=Now you have me mixed up, you want me to bite tail? M.C. flips his tail around the other side of him. Just then we heard Susan screaming and crying…

To Be Continued.

©2021 Steve McLeod.