In a Cat’s Eye

In a Cat’s Eye
Kevin Bergeron

‘Curious Incident’ meets ‘Catcher in the Rye’ in this crime-noir debut.The police said Nancy OD’d and she was a tramp. But she wasn’t; she was my friend. I didn’t see her Virgin Mary statue in her room, and I said some guy killed her and took it. Mr. Winkley was in the hallway meowing. The Colonel knew all about crimes. He said, Okay Willy we’ll conduct an investigation… There were a lot of suspects in that hotel.When a young woman in her locked room is found dead with junk in her veins, three friends follow a twisted trail of clues through the Morpheum – a seedy, crumbling hotel, home to the lost, the forgotten, the dreamers, and a killer.

IN A CAT’S EYE

KEVIN BERGERON

Authonomy by

HarperCollinsPublishers

Table of Contents

Cover (#u7d72472e-75a2-5e31-ae38-4673bb0790f7)

Title Page (#u8ff4f983-47cc-5b10-945d-f2776d45c6fe)

Chapter 1 (#u78230107-1099-54c5-9475-846f19e281a7)

Chapter 2 (#u39bdbdea-c6eb-5323-8738-877a77279c65)

Chapter 3 (#u0bc5392d-bb2e-5ede-8a29-395b586a99b0)

Chapter 4 (#uabeff198-6add-58fc-9ffe-a315a66bf39c)

Chapter 5 (#u64080302-db93-5517-ac64-6087f5fd1fa1)

Chapter 6 (#u66f614ba-af87-59ac-a8f2-46bab277932b)

Chapter 7 (#u856ee570-11bf-5d2c-a2fe-4889b63ddc17)

Chapter 8 (#u1ac5c1aa-be1a-5f9a-a612-e5edb430a635)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About Authonomy (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1 (#ulink_a1c757fb-a344-573a-894a-b4c8b4ab9ac6)

The day before I found her dead started like any other day. I’d been at The Morpheum for about a year. It was a nice hotel and I had a lot of friends there. Sometimes you think some guy’s your friend but he might not be, so you have to be careful, because that guy might get you in trouble.

You always had to go by Elsie to get in or out. She kept her door open in the daytime so that she could see out into the hallway, and she always sat in this stuffed chair with her feet up on a card table that I’d cut the legs down for her because her ankles got puffy. I liked to help her and she said I was handy and I could fix things. I had a key to the supply closet and nobody else did, and I had tools.

She had her feet up on the table I fixed for her, and she had furry slippers, and nylon stockings rolled down just below her knees. She was the landlady. She sat in that chair every day, all day long, and she didn’t miss much. Nothing got by her, not in the daytime anyway. Sometimes things happened at night, and she didn’t see any of that.

Anyway, I had just made it down the hallway past her parlor, thinking she hadn’t seen me, and I was turning the door knob when she called my name.

“Willy!”

I figured either she had a job for me or she wanted my back rent. It was a sunny day and was going to get hot later, and I wanted to go out.

“Willy!”

I smelled soup cooking on her hot plate. I had a lot of things to do outside, but I hadn’t eaten yet, either.