Hamlet’s fault that it happened. You’ve seen that game he plays, running between people’s legs on the stairs. If that had something to do with Curt falling, then I’d rather live with knowing my cat is guilty of—”
“Involuntary cat-slaughter?” Jake interjected with a hint of a smile.
Darla shot her a sour look but let that last good-natured jibe go unchallenged, knowing there was more to come. “—of causing a fatal accident, than always wondering about it. If you know what I mean.”
Darla took a deep breath before continuing. What she was about to say would doubtless make her sound like a crazy cat lady despite the fact that (a) she wasn’t crazy and (b) she wasn’t that much of a cat lover. Wincing a little, she forged on. “If Curt was murdered, and we can prove that Hamlet was a witness, maybe he can help identify the killer.”
Jake’s lips twisted in what was an obvious effort to hold back a laugh, but to her credit she merely said, “Okay, okay. What do you want me to do here?”
“Thanks, Jake,” Darla replied with genuine gratitude. “I figured maybe you could do one of those CSI things like you see on television and test Hamlet’s paws for blood.”
“Jeeze, they ought to outlaw those shows,” Jake said with a shake of her head. “You civilians watch that stuff and come away thinking every crime can be solved in under sixty minutes, counting commercials, just so long as you have a full lab at your disposal. Well, that ain’t the way it works, kid.”
“I know that, but isn’t there some sort of home test you can do?”
“Like a home pregnancy test?” Jake asked with a grin. “Yeah, actually, there is. Let me see what I have in my bag of tricks. Wait right here.”
She headed off in the direction of her bedroom while Darla waited at the table, virtuously resisting the temptation to do a little upside-down reading of the open file on the table. She could see the preprinted tab on the folder with its big “A” and assumed this was Hilda’s file. So much for Jake’s first official case.
“Here you go,” Jake said, returning to the room with a smaller version of the tackle box the crime scene investigators had carried. “Ye olde evidence-collecting kit,” she explained, “aka my bag of tricks.”
Popping it open, she pulled out a screw-top cylinder that resembled a skinny plastic vitamin bottle. “We can swab Hamlet’s paws with these test strips and see if they detect any blood residue,” she went on. “They won’t distinguish between animal or human blood, but for some quick and dirty results, they’ll do the job.”
Then she frowned. “Wait. We’re talking maybe eight, ten hours since he would have stepped in the blood. And then he walked a couple of blocks through God knows what kind of crud on the streets to get back home again? If there was any blood left behind after all that, he probably licked it off.”
Darla felt her stomach roil at the mental image that statement conjured and was abruptly glad she’d missed lunch. Even considering everything else that had happened today, the idea of Hamlet casually licking Curt’s blood from his paws somehow seemed more ghastly than the rest. “Ew, Jake!” she exclaimed.
Jake snorted. “Darla, he’s a cat. What did you expect him to do, grab himself a pawful of hand sanitizer and tidy up? He probably ate a few nasty little mice while he was out, too.”
“Stop!”
Now it was Darla’s turn to raise a warning hand, even as a giggle bubbled up in her throat. Despite her best efforts, the giggle ballooned into a laugh. The mental picture of Hamlet pumping a few squirts from the industrial-sized container she kept by the store register was ludicrous enough to counteract the unpleasant images of Curt that had been drifting in her mind since that morning.
Finally regaining her composure, she conceded, “You’re right, I didn’t even think of that—I mean, the part about it being so many hours and him walking around. Bad idea, I guess.”
“Not necessarily. The pad on a cat’s paw has creases just like your skin does, so there is a chance some blood residue might be left. If you want to bring him down, we can give it a try.”
“Actually, I was hoping you could come up to the store. The only way to get him down here is in his cat carrier, which means any blood you’d find on him would probably