The Purrfect Murder

in.”
    Her eyes misted over. “I’m lucky. I have good friends.”
    “You are a good friend.” Harry changed the subject. “Herb’s called a vestry-board meeting. Marvin’s back but I don’t know if he’s going to be there, because Penny’s been missing since Tuesday. Penny, according to her husband, could go off on a shopping toot and forget to call, but she’d call if she would be late getting home.”
    Tazio’s eyes widened. “Another client of mine. Harry, what’s going on? Penny and Carla were friends, sort of.”
    “I don’t know. Could be she’s fine or she’s not fine. If she had a stroke she might not be able to tell people who she is. What if she fell over at a mall? Someone could have stolen her purse. You never know. Stranger things have happened.”
    Tazio twisted her fingers together nervously. “She’d be in a hospital. Given the call of her disappearance, someone at the hospital would notify the sheriff. No, Harry, something is wrong.”
    “Both women used you as their architect.”
    She leveled her eyes at Harry’s. “Both had to put up with Mike McElvoy, too.” She sighed. “He’s not going to kill anyone. He’d be killed first.”
    “You never know.”
             
    When Harry left, she drove straight to Poplar Forest. On the way she told her four-legged friends of the conversation with Tazio. They appeared interested. At Jefferson’s summer home, Robert Taney told Harry she could come inside, but she declined. The killer just couldn’t have been that stupid to go back into the house with Melvin Rankin in there. They may have lurked in some part of the house, initially slipping by Melvin when he was elsewhere, but they surely wouldn’t go back in after the dirty deed. Harry felt certain about that.
    “Let’s see if we can find the rats.”
Mrs. Murphy bounced across the lawn, tail to the vertical.
    The three trotted around the house to the south portico.
    Tucker called out in a loud voice,
“Randolph, come on out.”
    “Randolph, Sarah.”
Pewter meowed.
    Mrs. Murphy, hearing footsteps above, said,
“They can’t come out from the west window. People are up there.”
    “Drat!”
Tucker sat down, looking around.
    A minute later a deep voice called from the west side of the arcade under the south portico.
“You again.”
    Two bright dark eyes appeared by the edge of the arcade. Then two more. The rats, half obscured, could duck back in if people walked outside. The last thing they needed was someone squealing about rats. They belonged here more than the humans, those two-legged twits.
    “Did you find a bloody towel last Saturday?”
Mrs. Murphy drove right to the point.
    “What’s it to you?”
Randolph twitched his whiskers.
    “Our mother thinks—well, her friend in prison thinks—maybe the killer used a towel. The lady in prison is a nice lady. The one killed was nasty. Think of her as rat poison. But if we can’t find the real killer, our friend may well spend the rest of her life behind bars.”
    “You ask a lot of questions, and you don’t bring treats.”
Randolph stalled, sorry that he and Sarah had initially offered information about the cigarette without exacting a price.
    “Wait.”
Mrs. Murphy, lightning-fast, ran to the truck.
    The open windows were high, but she jumped into the truck bed, onto the cab roof, then insinuated herself through the open window. She clamped her jaws around a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, Harry’s favorite candy, and leapt out the window onto the ground below.
    “Fast,”
Sarah observed.
“We’d better remember that.”
    Randolph boasted,
“We’re almost as big as she is.”
    Mrs. Murphy dropped the candy before Randolph.
    “These are good!”
He pushed it toward his spouse.
“Half for you, my sweet. You’re sweeter than the candy.”
    Pewter looked nauseated at this, but Tucker shot her a “behave” look.
    “Your mother doesn’t smoke, does she?”
Sarah was hopeful.
    “No, sorry.”
Mrs. Murphy prayed the candy would do the trick.
    “We found a bloody towel, soaked, under the front steps.”
    “Could we have it?”
Tucker panted expectantly.
    Randolph laughed.
“We ate it, you ninny.”
    “Tasty. Fresh.”
Sarah licked her lips as she admired the bright waxed candy wrapper, just waiting to rip into it.
    “Ah.”
Tucker understood.
“We hoped to use it as evidence. It was the murdered woman’s blood.”
    “You think I don’t know that?”
    “Randolph, Sarah, are you sure you didn’t