"Lawrence Watt - Evans - Something To Grin About" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

Something to Grin About
Lawrence Watt-Evans
When the doorbell rang Melody dropped the phone, tossed the stack of bills on the table, and ran
to answer it, expecting to see Todd there in the hallway with some new argument. She'd had the last
word before he stormed outтАФshe already regretted that, and he wasn't likely to let it stand. Sooner or
later he'd be back to shout at her some more.
But it wasn't Todd; it was a uniformed deliveryman, not UPS or FedEx or any she'd seen before,
but some courier service with a fancy, unreadable red-and-blue logo that was blazoned across the man's
breast pocket and the back of his clipboard. On the floor by the deliveryman's feet was a large plastic
box.
"Melody Duke?" he asked. Before Melody could reply, he held out the clipboard. "Line 8," he said.
She signed, and while she did he lifted the plastic box by a handle on the top and set it inside her
door. When she was done she handed the clipboard back and looked down at the box.
"Where's it from?" she asked, but he had already turned away and gotten halfway down the stairs.
She shrugged, started to bend down for a look at the tag wired to the handle, then remembered the
phone. She gasped, ran back to the kitchen, snatched up the receiver, and said, "Mother?"
The line was dead; her mother had hung up.
"Oh, poop," she said. Not that the discussion had been going anywhere; her mother still didn't like
Todd and still didn't think she was safe living there, and Melody had been through all that with her
parents any number of times without any minds changing.
She glared at the phone for a moment, then hung it up. Then she realized she had left the apartment
door standing open with the mysterious package just inside, and despite what she told her parents, this
was not really a completely safe neighborhood, especially with Todd gone for the momentтАж
She dashed back to the living room, hauled the plastic crate inside, and slammed the door. For
good measure she threw the deadbolt, then flopped down cross-legged on the floor to look over her new
acquisition, whatever it was.
The tag on the handle had her name and address in the TO portion; the FROM read, "Abigail
Duke, 7 Little Moreton Lane, Chester CH6 Ell, ENGLAND."
Her British grandmother.
Her grandmother who had just gone into the nursing home.
Her grandmother who owned a cat Melody had promised to look after, a promise that Melody,
eight thousand miles away, had not until this moment taken seriously. Now, however, she looked at the
plastic crate and realized that yes, this was a pet carrier.
"Ohmigod," she said. She turned the crate around, and yes, there was the door, with rows of little
airholes punched in it. She bent down and peered through the holes.
The crate was empty.
Melody blinked and sat up.
Had her grandmother's cat escaped somehow? How could it have? The door was still latched. Had
someone stolen it? She'd heard about people who stole cats and sold them to testing laboratories. Or
had Grandma Duke maybe gotten confused and sent the crate empty? She'd always been a little dotty, as
Melody's father put it, and now she was so oldтАж
Melody had only met her grandmother three or four times, but the old lady had never seemed that
dotty.
Of course, Todd would never stand for a cat around the place, so it would be just as well if there
was no cat, but maybe the cat had just found some corner to hide in. Maybe if she took a closer lookтАж
Melody untwisted the wire from around the latch and popped the door openтАФand out stepped the
cat.
It was a very large cat, with splendid stripes and a long graceful tail that swayed elegantly as it
strolled daintily away from the pet carrier. It was rather plump, but not actually fat. Dark tufts projected
from the tip of either ear, and it moved in utter silence, its broad and well-furred paws soundless on the