“I don’t have a cat.”

“What do you have?”

“A hamster.”

“Are you sure?”

A little ripple of alarm raced through my chest. Rex! I rushed from the bedroom into the living room, where Rexy’s glass aquarium rested on an end table beside the couch. I halted dead center in the room and clapped a hand to my mouth at the sight of a huge black cat stuffed into the hamster cage, the mesh lid held tight with duct tape.

My heart beat with sickening clarity and my throat closed over. It was Mrs. Delgado’s cat, and the cat sat hunkered down, slitty-eyed and as pissed off as any cat could get. It didn’t look especially hungry, and Rex was nowhere in sight.

“Shit,” Morelli said.

I made a sound that was half gurgle, half sob and bit into my hand to keep from wailing.

Morelli had his arm around me. “I’ll buy you a new hamster. I know this guy who owns a pet store. He’s probably still up. I’ll get him to open the store—”

“I don’t want a new h-h-hamster,” I cried. “I want Rex. I loved him.”

Morelli held me tighter. “It’s okay, honey. He had a good life. I bet he was pretty old too. How old was he?”

“Two years.”

“Hmmm.”

The cat squirmed in the cage and growled low in its throat.

“It’s Mrs. Delgado’s cat,” I said. “She lives directly above me, and the cat lives on the fire escape.”

Morelli went into the kitchen and returned with scissors. He cut the duct tape, lifted the mesh lid, and the cat jumped out and bolted for the bedroom. Morelli followed after the cat, opened the window, and the cat scurried on home.

I looked into the cage, but I didn’t see any hamster remains. No fur. No little bones. No yellow fangs. Nothing.

Morelli looked too. “Pretty thorough job,” he said.

This drew another sob.

We stayed like that for a minute, squatting in front of the cage, numbly staring at pine shavings and the back of Rex’s soup can.

“What’s the soup can for?” Morelli wanted to know.

“He slept in the soup can.”

Morelli tapped on the can, and Rex rushed out.

I almost fainted with relief, caught midway between laughing and crying, too choked to speak.

Rex was clearly in the same state of emotional overload. He rushed from one end of his cage to the other, nose twitching, beady black eyes bugging out of his head.

“Poor guy,” I said, reaching into the aquarium, taking Rex in my hand, raising him up to my face for a closer look.

“Maybe you should let him relax a while,” Morelli said. “He seems pretty agitated.”

I stroked his back. “Hear that, Rex … are you agitated?”

Rex responded by sinking his fangs into the tip of my thumb. I let out a shriek and jerked my hand away, flipping Rex off into space like a Frisbee. He sailed halfway across the room, landed with a soft thunk, lay stunned for five seconds, and then scrambled behind a bookcase.