Purrfect Murder (The Mysteries of Max Book 1)

Chapter 18

I think I’d been a little too optimistic when I told Odelia I’d solve this mystery in a heartbeat. Dooley and I had been traipsing all over town, talking to any cat we could find, and so far had nothing to show for our efforts. None of them had an inkling of who Chase Kingsley was, or the commissioner of the NYPD, or even the mayor’s wife for that matter, nor did they care.

Instead, they all shook their heads, convinced we’d both gone off our rockers. I should have known, of course. Cats, as you may or may not know, like to stick close to home. They like to wander around, preferably at night, when the world is asleep, in search of mice or other little snacks, but never stray far, for they like to be home before dawn, curl up at the foot of a warm, soft bed, and wait until their human wakes up to fill up their bowl of kibble.

We used to be proud hunters once upon a time, but centuries of being fed and nurtured by humans have made us lazy and complacent. New York is another continent, as far as we are concerned, and rarely do we even venture outside of Hampton Cove these days. Why should we, when all we need is right here at home?

Even my theory that we might run into a cat who’d met a cat who’d talked to a cat who’d witnessed the commissioner and the mayor’s wife in the act was pretty far-fetched, I now saw. Cats rarely travel. Dogs love to ride in cars, their heads stuck out the window, tongues lolling in the breeze, but then we all know dogs are a bunch of dummies. Cats are dignified creatures. We wouldn’t be seen dead with our tongues hanging out and our faces flapping.

And then there was the fact that both Dooley and I were bone-tired. Daytime is sleeping time, and we’d skipped nap time to go out hiking in the woods, and to play detective across town. It also explained why there weren’t all that many cats around, and those that were, didn’t want to be disturbed. The best time to do this was at night, Dooley reminded me as we dragged our weary bodies along the strip mall, on the edge of town.

“You’re right,” I admitted. “Let’s call it quits and do this again tonight, when there are more cats around. Maybe we’ll have better luck then.”

“I kinda doubt it, Max,” said Dooley. “Considering all the cats we talked to laughed in our faces, I think our chances of finding the one cat that saw the mayor of New York having relations with the commissioner are slim.”

“Mayor’s wife,” I corrected him tiredly. “The mayor’s wife is having relations with the commissioner, not the mayor.”

“Who cares?” Dooley cried. It was obvious he was getting cranky.

And we were just about to call it a day and return to our cozy home, when I happened to glance at a set of dumpsters located behind the mall and recognized a familiar figure snooping around in there.

“Don’t look now, but I think I just saw Clarice,” I whispered, even though she probably couldn’t hear me from this distance.

“Clarice? Where?” Dooley asked, immediately starting to look around like a tourist on a tour bus.

“I said, don’t look now,” I hissed. “She’s over there by those dumpsters.”

I watched as the scrawny feline dove into one of the dumpsters, obviously fishing around for something edible.

“Poor creature,” Dooley said ruefully. “No home, no hearth, and no food.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she’s luckier than us. At least she gets to choose her food. I’ll bet there’s some choice stuff in those dumpsters.”

“I see what you mean,” he said. “Do you think there’s raw meat in there?”

“Raw meat, pizza, lasagna, a nice beef burger. You name it, they got it.”

“Maybe we’ll have a peek?” he suggested. “I need me some raw meat.”

“What’s with this sudden raw meat obsession?”

He shrugged. “I can’t help it that Brutus gets fed raw meat and I don’t, can I? And that because of that he’s better looking and more attractive.”

“Well, I’m not so sure about that,” I intimated.

“What do you mean?”

“What if he’s lying? He wouldn’t be the first cat to turn out a liar.”

“You mean he’s lying about the meat?”

“Why not? There’s no way for us to check.”

“He’s just messing with us!” cried Dooley. “And deceiving poor Harriet.”

“Don’t feel sorry for Harriet. If she chooses that brute it’s her funeral.”

“Funeral!” he cried, his voice skipping an octave. “Do you really believe that horrible creep would hurt her?”

“It’s just an expression, Dooley,” I said irritably. The longer I was up, the more cranky I was becoming as well. I needed a nap and some food and I needed it an hour ago. First things first, though. “Let’s have a chat, shall we?” I suggested, and started tripping over to the dumpsters.

“A chat?” he asked, falling into step beside me. “With who?”

“With whom,” I corrected him. We might be cats, but that was no excuse for a lapse in grammar. “Who do you think?”

“Is this a trick question?” he whined. “Don’t do this to me, Max. Not when I’m tired. Just tell me already. Whommmm are we going to chat with?”

“Clarice, of course.”

He gulped. “Clarice? Are you nuts? She’ll just tell us she saw nuthin.”

“Well, maybe she will, or maybe she won’t. But it’s definitely worth a try.”

Of all the cats I knew in Hampton Cove, Clarice was the one who’d traveled the most and traveled the farthest. She had to, to find food and shelter, as she didn’t have a human to take care of her. Once upon a time, the rumor went, she’d had a human, but he’d abandoned her. Some tourist who came to Hampton Cove for the holidays, and then tied her to a tree out in the woods and took off. The same rumor held that she’d gnawed off her own paw to escape, like James Franco, though from what I’d seen her limbs were still present and accounted for, so that story might just have been a fabrication.

“Clarice,” I called out as we approached the dumpster she was currently holed up in. “Clarice, we’d like to talk to you.” The small collection of dumpsters was where the stores the mall was comprised of dumped their garbage, and was always a place where all manner of critters gathered.

When Clarice’s head popped up out of the dumpster, looking shifty-eyed and ready to flee, Dooley chimed in, “Hey, Clarice. So we meet again, huh? What are the odds?” He looked a little afraid, and with good reason. Clarice had been known to lash out when she was approached without invitation.

“We were just wondering—” I began.

“I know nuthin,” she muttered, repeating her usual mantra.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, a little gruffly. I wasn’t in the mood for games. I was tired and hungry and my paws hurt. “Look, all we need to know is whether you know a cat who knows a cat who might have seen a cat who…”

“I know nuthin,” Clarice repeated.

“See? I told you this was a waste of time,” said Dooley. He’d planted himself on his rear end and was sniffing the air, probably looking for meat.

“Look, we just want to know—”

“I know nuthin!” she repeated, and jumped out of the dumpster, giving us both the dirtiest of looks and starting to walk away.

“Now hold it right there!” I cried. “All we want is information. Is that too much to ask? If you tell us what we need to know we’ll even share our kibble with you next time you’re in the neighborhood. Isn’t that right, Dooley?”

Dooley stared at me. He obviously didn’t agree. If anyone was going to share his kibble, it was going to be me. Well, that was fine by me. From experience I knew that fresh kibble was only a trip to the store away.

I panted a little, because Clarice was giving me her best stare. Locked in a stare-down with the most feral cat in Hampton Cove. If she lashed out now and scratched my nose, that would set the seal on this day. To my surprise, she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Oh, all right, Max, you annoying little weasel. What do you wanna know?”

Relieved, I told her about the murder of Paulo Frey. It turned out that the Writer’s Lodge was like a second home to her. Which, now that I thought about it, wasn’t surprising. Writers are an easy mark for a cat’s affections, as a lot of them genuinely like us. Most of them got cats at home, and when they come out to the woods to write they miss their little furballs. So when they see Clarice lurking in the woods, they try to lure her by offering her the best treats. I now saw what her MO was, and with it came a newfound respect.

“Well, I don’t know anything about that Chase Kingsley affair,” she finally said, “and I don’t care one hoot either. What humans do is none of my business. What I can tell you is I saw someone drag the body of that writer out of the lodge a year ago, so I’m guessing that might have been your killer.”

Dooley and I exchanged excited glances. “You saw the killer?” I asked.

“Sure, sure,” she said, studying her nails, which were razor-sharp. “They dragged the body of that Frey guy out of the lodge and dumped it where they like to do their business. Made a nice big splash, too. Then they came out again and dumped a bunch of other stuff in there.”

“A laptop and a couple of suitcases,” I said.

“Sure, sure,” she said, rolling her eyes, already bored with the conversation.

“So?” I asked when she was silent for a beat. “Who was it?!”

“Yeah, Clarice,” Dooley huffed out. “Who’s the killer?”

“What’s it worth to you?” she asked, removing a fishbone from between her teeth and giving it a tentative nibble.

“Whatever you want,” I said excitedly.

“I’ll take a twenty-pound bag of fish kibble. The expensive stuff. And a couple bags of that party mix you guys seem to like so much. Mixed grill.”

“Deal!” I cried.

Clarice gave a chuckle, spit out the fishbone and suddenly, fast as lightning, flicked a paw beneath the dumpster and came away with a mouse, dragging it out by its tail. And then, before our horrified gaze, she gobbled down the mouse, hair and hide!

I gulped and so did Dooley. We weren’t necessarily mouse hunters, what with having such a cushy life and all, and watching this… massacre taking place in front of our noses reminded us we were as far removed from our feral ancestors as felinely possible.

“So, those are my terms,” Clarice said, spitting out the mouse tail and using it to pick her teeth. “I want the best stuff. Take it or leave it.”

“Sure! Fine! All right!” I cried. “I can get you all that and more.”

I was pretty sure that Odelia wouldn’t mind trading a couple of expensive bags of cat food for the identity of the Paulo Frey killer. It was a bargain!

Clarice held up her paw, then sliced it with the nail of her other paw. A small drop of blood dribbled down. I thought I was going to faint at the sight of the blood, and it was obvious Dooley was feeling the same way.

“Put it there, fellas,” she said in that gravelly voice of hers. “Let’s seal the deal with blood.”

“Is that really necessary?” asked Dooley in a choked voice.

“No blood, no deal,” growled Clarice.

“What is this, the Middle Ages?” squeaked Dooley. “I thought we were past all this nonsense.”

“All right, all right,” I said, fearing Clarice would change her mind. So I held up my left paw and made a small incision. A drop of blood appeared, and I suddenly felt queasy. That’s the curse of being a house cat: you lose those killer instincts.

“Now you, Dooley,” I said.

“Yeah. Now you, Dooley,” said Clarice in a mocking voice. “Put it there, pal.” She was simply taunting us, I realized. Playing with us, as if we were mice.

“I—I can’t,” he cried. “I can’t stand the sight of blood. And I—I hate the pain!” he added with a pathetic whiny voice.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Clarice grunted. “What are you, a cat or a mouse? Come here, you pansy-ass puss.” And with a vicious slicing movement, she scratched Dooley’s nose.

“Owowowowow!” he cried. “What did you do that for?!”

“Because you’re a whiny little pussy,” she said, and put her hand up to his nose, giving it a hearty pat. “Now you, Max. Slap one on this sissy’s nose.”

I put my paw against hers and Dooley’s nose, so that our blood mingled. It was a very unhygienic business, I thought, and as I did it, I winced. Dooley mewled with apparent pain, and obviously didn’t like his nose squeezed between my paw and Clarice’s. He bore it bravely, though, probably because he didn’t have any choice. If he ran for the hills now, Clarice would hunt him down and eat him alive, just like she’d swallowed down that mouse.

Clarice finally grunted her approval. “It’s not your regular blood oath,” she said as she gave Dooley a nasty glare, “but I guess it’ll do.”

And, as promised, she proceeded to put us on the scene she’d witnessed over a year ago, when Paulo Frey had lost his life. Both Dooley and I gasped when we finally learned the identity of the killer, and stared at each other in abject horror. All this time I’d figured that some outsider had done the terrible deed, and not one of our own, but now it turned out that evil had been much closer than we’d figured. We’d harbored a viper at our bosoms, and Hampton Cove would never be the same again after this startling revelation.

“So I’ll come and collect one of these days,” Clarice reminded me, and then seemed to take pity on us. “Cheer up, boys,” she snarled. “It’s a tough world. Kill or be killed. No need to get all mushy on me. You’re cats, for crying out loud, not pansies. Learn to love the pain! Love it!”

After dispensing these pearls of wisdom, she trotted off, leaving bloody paw prints behind. Long after she’d left, Dooley and I still sat there, staring into space, Dooley with blood dripping down his nose, which he occasionally licked, trying to heal the wound, and me holding up my paw and also licking it in a steady rhythm. I wasn’t going to go walkabout now, not with that cut. It just might infect and cause gangrene and then my entire leg would have to come off, and how would I look then? I know, I know. Dooley and I are not exactly feral. Sue us. We’re house cats, used to the good life. Used to being pampered and spoiled. At least we’d just solved the Paulo Frey murder.

After what seemed like the longest time, we set a course for the homestead, and Dooley was the first one to break the silence.

“Who would have thought?”

“Yeah, who would have thunk?”

We didn’t speak again. We were both bone-tired, and the moment we arrived home, we both dropped our weary bodies down, me on my favorite spot on the couch, and Dooley right next to me. He’d asked to crash at my place, as he didn’t want to risk coming across Harriet and Brutus, and I’d magnanimously agreed. Dooley and I are like brothers, and my space is his space. Besides, we’d just made a blood oath, so now we were blood brothers.

And then we both fell into a deep, healing sleep, dreaming of cruel killers and feral cats and big bags of the best kibble Odelia’s money could buy.