The Mysteries of Max: Books 25-27

Chapter 29

“Are you sure this is the right way?” asked Brutus.

“Of course I’m sure,” said Harriet. “Don’t you trust me, sugar pumpkin?”

“Um…” Brutus couldn’t really come out and say what he really thought about Harriet’s sense of direction so he prevaricated. “Max seemed to know where he was going. Maybe we should have gone with him.”

“Well, it was you who decided to go our separate ways,” Harriet pointed out.

“Only because Max gave me such a nasty look. Almost as if he doesn’t like me anymore.”

“You probably shouldn’t have made fun of his sixteen-pack. You know how sensitive Max is about his weight.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. He didn’t like to admit it, but this situation with Max was kinda weighing on him. He liked Max, and he liked Dooley, and he hated being in a fight with them. “I apologized, and you apologized. What more does he want?”

“I don’t know, Brutus. Can you please stop thinking about Max and focus on the mission? We’re here to find out what happened to Vicky Gardner, remember?”

“Yeah, of course,” he muttered, and slouched behind his mate, hoping she knew where she was going, in this maze of corridors, where one door looked exactly the same as the next.

“I’m sure that if we simply trust our instincts, we’ll arrive exactly where we’re supposed to…. A-ha! What do we have here?”

They’d arrived at an open-space office, where dozens of desks had been arranged like office islands, and where dozens of people were busily working on computers.

“Looks like an office,” he said. He didn’t like to admit it but Max usually had better instincts when it came to sleuthing than either he or Harriet had.

“I’ll bet we’ll be able to find out everything there is to know about Garibo Enterprises and its nefarious business practices,” said Harriet. “Including but not limited to the kidnapping of innocent women like Vicky Gardner, and her subsequent murder twenty years later.”

“So you think that dead girl was Vicky, do you?” he asked, not surprised. He thought that the coincidence of a dead woman looking exactly like a missing woman was probably too big to ignore.

“Of course they’re one and the same,” said Harriet. “Haven’t you been paying attention? Vicky was probably murdered twenty years ago, soon after she was kidnapped, and kept on ice all these years.”

“On ice?” he asked, intrigued by this novel theory.

“On ice,” said Harriet decidedly. “That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. Now all we need to find out is who ordered the abduction and the murder, and how come they decided to dump her body two decades later.”

“Probably because they forgot to pay the electric bill,” ventured Brutus.

Harriet gave him a curious look. “You know, Brutus, that’s not such a crazy idea. The freezer they kept the body in must have lost power and so the body thawed out. And instead of burying her, they simply decided to get rid of her.”

All around them, people were busily gibbering into their phones, or tapping the keys of their computers, and as Brutus listened for a moment, he thought he knew what this was: the nerve center of Garibo Enterprises, or in other words the sales division, where customers could place large orders of the kind of candy Garibo excelled in, and that were shipped across the country.

“Your shipment will be arriving in two days, Mr. Franklin,” a young woman announced in an exaggeratedly chipper tone of voice. “Yes, that’s right! Two hundred boxes of Garibo Candy Mix to place in your store display. You’re welcome, sir!”

Unless Vicky Gardner’s body had been kept in the company freezer, and shipped out by the company dispatchers, Brutus didn’t really see the point of hanging around there.

“Let’s go,” he said therefore. “We’re never going to find out what happened to Vicky by hanging around this place.”

“But, sugar bear,” Harriet protested. “I’m sure we’ll find the vital clue soon!”

“Nah,” he said morosely. “We should have stuck close to Max. Max knows. I don’t know how he does it, but he always does.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” said Harriet finally, after watching a man draw a line with a Sharpie on a sales number board and screaming, “People, I just shifted my three-hundredth shipment this month. Huzzah!”

“Huzzah!” his colleagues all yodeled, then immediately hunched over their phones again, eager to break the man’s record by shifting their three-hundred-and-first shipment for the month.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” said Harriet finally, and the two cats shuffled out of there without much pep in their step, this time in search of another clue: where was the exit?

And as they passed the water cooler, a young man and a young woman were chatting.

“So you think old man Gardner will finally hand the reins of this place to Garibaldi?” asked the young guy.

“Nah, I think he’ll hang on until they pry them from his cold, dead hands,” said the young lady.

“I heard Quintin is planning a coup.”

“A coup?”

“Yeah, bringing in a new guy.”

“To replace Garibaldi? He wouldn’t dare.”

“He’s never liked Garibaldi. Thinks he’s too soft to run a million-dollar business.”

“Garibaldi’s done a great job so far—even the old man can’t deny that,” said the woman, who was gripping a plastic cup and taking sporadic sips.

“No, I guess he can’t. But you know what Quintin is like. Stubborn to the core.”

“If he tries to dump Garibaldi there will be hell to pay. Marcia will never allow it.”

“I’d love to be a fly on the wall when those two get together,” chuckled the young man. “I’ll bet there’ll be blood in the water.”

Harriet’s eyes were gleaming, Brutus noticed, and he smiled. “Looks like we found our clue after all, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, looks like,” said Harriet with a note of triumph in her voice. “See, Brutus,” she said as they walked on. “It’s not just Max who’s a super sleuth. We’re not so bad ourselves.”

“Blood in the water,” he said. “Interesting turn of phrase.”

“Very interesting indeed…”