Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood Page B

over and went straight back to sleep. Below, the city might wake and the Mouse Police pursue their avocation, but Horatio and I were fast asleep and firmly remained so until about ten am, when we felt that we had slept all that we could usefully sleep and got up in search of some breakfast and maybe a little look at a novel. I was giving up news for Lent. If it wasn’t Lent, I was giving it up for Passover. Or something. I had had enough of the world. It could go its way and I could go mine and we just wouldn’t notice each other, like two cats on the same roof.
    Besides, I had the grocery shopping to do, a little light housework to complete, and—eek!—clothes to choose for the evening. What on earth was I going to wear to dine at the Venetia with James? I’d ditched all my office clothes with cries of relief. A nice quiet suit with a flamboyant scarf or pashmina was the right thing to wear, and I didn’t have them. I owned a good collection of t-shirts and track pants, and it was almostworth wearing them to the restaurant in order to catch the maitre d’ as he fainted, but I am not a cruel woman.
    First, the breakfast of apricot jam, cafe au lait and someone else’s croissants (the French artisan boulangerie in Little Collins Street makes the best) and a few chapters of the newest Jade Forrester. Romances with a twist. She specialises in heroes who are small, blond and ugly, and she makes them desirable. There is a lot to be said for tall dark and handsome, however. The Mouse Police came upstairs for a conference with Horatio and they all adjourned to sleep in the sun on my balcony. Nothing is more soothing than watching cats sleep. I had a very comfortable morning.
    I was hauling home the grocery shopping (cat food weighs a tonne. I have pointed this out to the cats and they are not at all grateful), thinking of Daniel and approaching my own front door when Meroe caught up to me and relieved me of a canvas bag. Before I dropped the lot. It’s a matter of balance.
    ‘What have you been buying? Lead shot?’ she asked.
    ‘Cans of Kitty Dins,’ I said, opening the door. ‘A couple of packets of kitty meat and a big box of dry food. The rest of the stuff is for me,’ I added, stepping inside.
    Then I skidded on something, dropped an armload of stuff, and landed hard on my backside. With the noise of my fall, or even before, all available cats had vanished with a whisking noise. I greatly admire the way that they are never there when anything happens. I recall watching Mistinguette, the aged grumpy grey cat who preceded Horatio, walking along the mantelpiece and deliberately edging a big mirror towards destruction—just because she felt like it (as I said, grumpy). I actually saw that mirror fall and when it hit the ground, the lounge room had shattered frame, shards of broken mirror and seven years’ bad luck in it, but a completeabsence of cat. She emerged later from the kitchen, claiming that she had been there all the time, waiting for her inefficient staff to bring her afternoon milk, and was far too old to climb mantelpieces even if she should wish to do so. Which she didn’t. It was the most barefaced piece of cheek I had seen before or since, apart from the children overboard affair.
    And that was politicians. I groaned, sat up, rubbed various parts of my anatomy and started to gather up my scattered shopping. Meroe, luckily, had the eggs, the milk and the frozen peas. Frozen peas spread like lava and you keep finding them only after they unfreeze.
    What had I slipped on? I retrieved a tin of pineapple from under a chair and found it, a flat sheet of paper, which on my polished tiles had acted like an ice-skate.
    ‘Prepare to meet thy doom, unchaste woman!’ the paper said. ‘Corinna Chapman, you must die!!’
    I handed it to Meroe without a word. Now it was personal. And our very own pet lunatic knew where I lived. Meroe produced one which said ‘Witches must burn! Prepare to die, Miriam