Murder Has Nine Lives by Laura Levine Page B

passed Lydia’s townhouse and saw her taking out her trash. And she had a mighty shifty look in her eyes when she was doing it.
    Â 
    Dollars to doughnuts my thinking cap is sitting there in her garbage, along with her prune pits, dental floss, and empty Metamucil jars.
    Â 
    And I intend to rescue it ASAP!
    Â 
    Love ’n’ snuggles from
DaddyO
    Â 
    Â 
    To: Jausten
From: Shoptillyoudrop
    Â 
    Good heavens!
    Â 
    Daddy thinks Lydia has tossed his Lucky Thinking Cap in her garbage can. Did you ever hear of anything so idiotic?
    Â 
    XOXO,
Mom
    Â 
    Â 
    To: Jausten
From: DaddyO
Subject: A Tad Disappointed
    Â 
    Dearest Lambchop—
    Â 
    For some unfathomable reason, your mother is being very unsupportive. She thinks the battle-axe walks on water, and refuses to believe Lydia had anything to do with the disappearance of my Lucky Thinking Cap. Moreover, she says she refuses to cook me dinner if I go looking for my cap in Lydia’s garbage.
    Â 
    I must admit I’m a tad disappointed in her.
    Â 
    Oh, well. Mom’s planning to make meat loaf tonight, and you know how I feel about your mother’s meat loaf. So I’ll just wait until after she’s asleep to go out on my garbage raid.
    Â 
    Love ’n’ hugs from
Your determined
DaddyO

Chapter 12
    I had a hard time digesting my cinnamon raisin bagel the next morning, having been foolish enough to open my e-mails and read about Daddy’s plans to go rooting around in Lydia Pinkus’s garbage.
    Honestly, I was so distraught, I could barely finish my second bagel.
    But eventually, I regained my equilibrium and called to make an appointment with Emmy, the Reiki healer, who agreed to stop by my apartment later that week.
    I did some heavy-duty gulping when she told me her fee—a hundred bucks an hour—but at that stage I was willing to try anything to get my forlorn furball back in good spirits.
    â€œGood news, Pro,” I said when I hung up. “The Reiki healer is coming to see us.”
    Prozac just stared down at a spot under my chintz armchair.
    Kill that dust bunny for me, will you? I don’t have the energy.
    If left to my own devices, I would have spent the rest of the day giving Prozac belly rubs. Or primping for my upcoming date with Jim. Or perhaps shopping for some strappy sandals to wear on my Hawaiian vacation. But I had to focus on the murder and clear my name if I intended to actually go on said vacation.
    So I decided to pay a visit to Linda.
    I hadn’t forgotten how angry she’d been during her dramatic face-off with the Pink Panther at Dean’s funeral reception. Angry enough, I now wondered, to have doctored her husband’s cat food with a fatal dose of Raid?
    It was time to find out.
    I drove over to Linda’s place in Westwood, hoping she’d be there when I showed up.
    But, alas, no one came to the door when I rang the bell.
    So I settled down to wait for her in my Corolla with a free copy of War and Peace I’d downloaded on my phone. It was going to be quite a challenge reading War and Peace three sentences at a time on the phone’s tiny screen, but I was up for it. It was a book I’d always meant to tackle. And now was the perfect opportunity.
    I clicked open the book and began to read:

    War and Peace
By Leo Tolstoy

    I was really quite proud of myself, using this otherwise wasted time to expand my mind, to broaden my horizons, to stretch my literary muscles—
    â€œJaine! Are you okay?”
    Someone was tapping at my car window.
    My eyes flew open, and I felt drool on my chin. Good heavens. I must’ve dozed off somewhere on the copyright page.
    I looked up to see Linda standing outside my Corolla, peering down at me through her harlequin glasses.
    â€œI saw you lying there with your mouth open, and I thought maybe you’d passed out.”
    â€œNo, no. Just resting,” I said, surreptitiously wiping away my chin drool.