The Mysteries of Max: Books 25-27

Chapter 11

Odelia got to the place where it happened in record time. The moment her uncle had called her to tell her the news, she’d been up and ready for duty with not a single second lost. The summer months are often described as the slow news season for your news-hungry journo, and the last couple of days had seen an absolute dearth of newsworthy facts and factoids to report. In fact Dan, Odelia’s editor, had already complained that they were going to have to fill the next edition of the Gazette with interviews with farmers complaining about the heat. Farmers were always a popular subject when there was nothing else to write: they always had something to complain about. The weather was too wet, too hot, too dry, too cold. Unfortunately readers often skipped these stories, and if the dry spell went on for too long, they might end up skipping the Gazette altogether.

“How do you know it’s a murder, Odelia?” asked Dooley from the backseat, where he and Max had asked to be strapped in before she roared away from the curb.

“Because my uncle said so,” she explained.

“So Uncle Alec is the one who decides if something is a murder or not?” asked Dooley a follow-up question.

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, weaving in and out of traffic at breakneck speed. She’d turned up her airco, as the day was already growing unbearably hot again, and the cold air was blasting her face.

“And what made him decide that this particular dead person was murdered?” asked Dooley, still not fully satisfied.

“I’m not sure, but I guess we’ll find out in….” She checked her watch. “Five minutes.”

“Did you know that Charlene Butterwick is going through an extreme makeover?” asked Max, expertly changing the subject.

“No, I didn’t know that. Who told you?”

“Buster. Charlene was in there yesterday, and asked for an entirely new coiffure.”

“She’s also having her face replaced,” said Dooley. “But won’t Uncle Alec be upset when he sees his girlfriend with a completely new face, Odelia? He might not even recognize her anymore.”

Odelia laughed. “I’m sure it won’t be so bad. She probably wants to have her eyebrows done. Busy woman like Charlene doesn’t always find the time for that kind of thing, and seeing as she’s always in the public eye, she wants to look presentable.”

“Oh,” said Dooley, thinking about this.

“Have you found out anything about Vicky Gardner?” asked Odelia now. The missing woman was of more concern to her than Charlene Butterwick’s eyebrows, to be honest. She’d talked to Dan about Vicky’s disappearance, and he was most interested. Missing persons cases, especially when they concerned the wife of one of the richest men in town, always capture readers’ imagination, even after twenty years. And Vicky’s case was one of those cases that had never really gone away. The mystery was so great and so enticing people had speculated about it ever since.

“Not yet,” Max said. “Kingman was too busy, and Buster was, um, preoccupied.”

“He showed us his new fan,” said Dooley. “We were blown away.”

“Literally,” Max muttered with an eyeroll.

They’d arrived at the outskirts of town, and Odelia’s foot stepped on the accelerator until they were traveling at a respectable speed. There was almost no traffic as they left the town proper and soon were cruising along country lanes, surrounded by miles and miles of fields. Sprinklers were providing the crops with the necessary hydration, and before long they were at their destination, indicated by three police cars parked along the shoulder. She parked right behind her uncle’s squad car and got out, but not before unbuckling her feline passengers and watching them quickly hop onto the grassy side of the road. The asphalt was too hot for their tender paws, and she wondered when this heatwave was going to subside and more regular climes would return.

The field where Ted Trapper had discovered the body belonged to Farmer Giles, as did most of the surrounding ones. The farmer himself, a stocky figure with a raggedy cap, raggedy shirt and raggedy pair of dungarees, stood scratching his ear and staring down at something Odelia couldn’t see from this distance. As she got closer, though, she saw that it was the body of a young woman, and at the sight of her, she took in a quick breath.

“What is it, Odelia?” asked Max, who was trotting along in her wake.

“But that’s…” she murmured, then got out her phone to be sure. She’d been googling Vicky Gardner just that morning, which was why the missing woman’s features were still so clear in her mind. And this woman—the dead woman—was Vicky’s spitting image.

“Impossible,” she said as she compared the dead woman to the smiling one in the picture she had on her phone.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” asked her uncle, who stood gazing down at the victim. “I knew Vicky, you know, and this woman right here looks just like her.”

“Maybe she was abducted by them aliens,” Farmer Giles suggested, “and they put her in one of them cryogenic machines they got and now they dumped her back on earth.”

“I very much doubt if that’s even possible,” said Chase, who was standing next to his commanding officer, hands on his hips and looking grim-faced, as he usually did when faced with murder and mayhem like this.

The county coroner, Abe Cornwall, who’d been bent down over the body, now got up with a groan. He was a rotund man in his late fifties with grizzled features and a breezy attitude towards death.

“I’d say she’s been here at least two or three days. Broke her neck, as far as I can tell.”

“Vicky Gardner as I live and breathe,” said Farmer Giles, who’d taken off his peaked cap in deference to the dead woman and rocked back on his heels. “I had a thing for her back in the day. We went out once but she said I was a lousy kisser and so I never asked her out again.” He shook his head. “Damn aliens. There should be a law against that kind of thing.”

“I don’t think this is Vicky Gardner,” said Abe. “Though I have to admit she’s Vicky’s spitting image.”

“You knew Vicky, Abe?” asked Chase.

“Oh, sure. I used to do some teaching back in the day, and Vicky was always quick on the uptake—as was your mother, Odelia. They were in the same class, if I remember correctly.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my kissing technique per se,” said Farmer Giles, pursing his lips. “I mean, I’ve never had any complaints since. She said I used too much tongue.” He shrugged. “All the men in my family got a thick tongue, so maybe that was the problem.”

“So how old is she, you reckon, Dan?” asked Uncle Alec.

They all looked down at the woman. “Definitely not in her forties, which is how old Vicky would be now,” said Abe.

“Forty-eight,” Uncle Alec grunted. “Marge’s age.”

“She looks early twenties to me,” said Chase.

“Which is exactly how old Vicky was when she disappeared,” said Odelia.

“See?” said Farmer Giles. “Aliens. They abducted her twenty years ago and dumped her when they no longer needed her for their experiments.” He stuck out his tongue. “Look, Chief. Do you think my tongue is too thick?”

“Oh, for God’s sakes put that thing away, Giles,” Uncle Alec growled, then took out a big white handkerchief and mopped his brow. “Murdered,” he muttered. “And of course it had to happen on the hottest day of the year.”

Odelia glanced around, concerned about her cats, who could stand the heat even less than she could. To her surprise, they were nowhere to be found.