French Polished Murder Read Online Free Page A

around wildly, and I considered putting them in the oven on warm, but I had the vague idea that it might prove to be a bad move. So I did what anyone else would do. I figured they were too young to actually walk. They seemed to be wriggling around on their bellies. I’d put them in a shallow, oven-proof glass dish.
    I couldn’t quite bring myself to put the mess of bits of paper and dirty stuff in it, though, so instead I used kitchen towels. I moved the babies, one by one into the dish, atop the towels.
    Then I got my warming tray, put towels on top of it to mitigate the heat somewhat; set the dish atop the towels, and covered it with another towel.
    They continued to squeak, but it didn’t speed up or anything, so they were probably okay.
    I grabbed the paint tray and shook the mess of papers into the trash.
    And there, right on top of it all, a letter fell. It was so old that the envelope looked almost mustard yellow and the addresses were sepia-toned.
    But it was a letter, and I couldn’t throw a letter away. I fished it out of the trash and looked at it, realizing it was indeed very old.

CHAPTER 3
    Wildlife and Secrets

    The letter was addressed from someone named Almeria to Jacinth Jones, on Wisteria Court. I looked at the envelope a good long time, because Wisteria Court was just around the corner from me. Well, five blocks down, another of the neighborhoods populated almost exclusively by students living ten or twelve to a dilapidated Victorian. I guessed when the letter had been written the neighborhood was quite different.
    Temptation to open the letter and read it warred with hesitation to pry into the lives of others. I opened the envelope just enough to see that there was indeed a letter inside. The whole thing was so fragile, though, that I was afraid it would fall apart in my hands. I set it down on the table and told myself maybe I would take it to the library or the downtown historical society. Or I might try to track down the descendants of Jacinth Jones. Surely they’d be the appropriate people to give the letter to.
    Right now I had more important things to do. There was no wildlife rescue listed in the phone book, but the library gave me a name. I dialed it. And was met with incredulity. “Rats?”
    “I think so. They could be mice.” I thought about it a moment. “Large mice, with strangely shaped heads.”
    There was a long silence from the other side. “Rats aren’t wildlife you know?” the person said. He sounded uncertainly male, like boys do when they stop growing but their voice hasn’t caught up with their bodies yet. His kept cracking on the heights of incredulity. I thought he must be a high school student, putting in his required volunteer hours. “They are, in their own way, as domesticated as cats and dogs. That’s why we don’t advise taking them to the wild and setting them free.”
    I actually took the phone away from my ear and looked at it, to make sure it was indeed the phone and not some other sort of audio device of a prepared lecture. “I don’t want to release them to the wild. They’re babies!”
    A throat cleared impatiently at the other end of the line, and then the voice, nasally high, asked, “How old did you say they were?”
    “I have no idea,” I said. “They’re pink, they have no fur. Their eyes are closed. You tell me.”
    There was a long rustle, papers being shuffled and moved maybe. “They sound,” he said at last, “like somewhere between newborn and a week old.”
    I looked at the dish. The babies were still squeaking under the dish towel, and still moving but the movement was less frantic. I wondered if they were warm enough? Too warm? “Good to know,” I said impatiently. “But I really need to give them to someone experienced in looking after rats.”
    “We don’t have anyone,” he said. “Most people . . . er . . . kill rats.”
    Which I completely understood, given my reaction on finding them. I might even have brought myself to