Undercover Cat

Начало книги

Patti Randall was slipping into a half world of drowsiness when the telephone aroused her. By the time she found the instrument on the floor, where her sixteen-year-old sister, Ingrid, had been using it earlier that evening, it gave one half-ring gasp and died.

Returning the phone to the night stand, she saw by the alarm that it was 12:30 a.m. She switched off the light and stretched to her full five feet seven. All evening she had been jangly note 1 hearing strange noises stirred up outside by a wind busy hustling leaves in the September night. At times she would find herself listening intently, trying to sort out the sounds and identify them. She blamed Mrs. Macdougall next door for her uneasiness. Mrs. Macdougall had taken it on herself to look after“those orphans” while the Randall parents were vacationing in Europe .

“If anything happens in the night,” she had told Patti, “just scream and I’ll hear you.” Patti could believe that. Drop a pin, and old Mrs. Macdougall would hear. She was better than a burglar alarm system. In the same breath Mrs. Mac­dougall had continued, “Terrible things are happening every night. Like that woman whose husband was away, and her and her old mother were murdered in cold blood at 2:23 a.m.”

Читать дальше →