Purrfect Murder (The Mysteries of Max Book 1)

Chapter 3

I resisted the temptation to take a long nap on my favorite blanket, the one Odelia had put on the couch to protect it from my habit of digging my nails into any soft tissue I encountered. I needed to check out this cop character first. If this guy decided to put the moves on my human and foist Brutus on me, I needed to stop him dead in his tracks before that happened.

So I bade goodbye to Dooley and waddled out the pet door and into the backyard. After sniffing at a couple of trees, just to make sure no one had dared trespass on my domain, I set out along the road, slowly making my way into town. It didn’t take me long to reach the police station, which was just around the corner. I knew it as the place where cops liked to gather to snack on glazed donuts and coffee before starting their job of catching bad humans.

Not that there are a lot of bad humans in Hampton Cove. In fact it’s probably the most peaceful town on the North Shore. Apart from your occasional rowdy tourist collapsing on the beach or wrapping his car around a tree, it’s a pretty peaceful little town, and we like to keep it that way.

I hurried across the road, narrowly being missed by a speeding car, past the doctor’s office where Odelia’s dad Tex works, and the library, where her mom works as a librarian, and finally reached town square, with the giant clock the mayor had installed a couple of years ago and which has proved such a hit with locals and tourists alike, and then I was homing in on the police station. A squat one-story building, it sported the letters ‘Hampton Cove Police Department’ above the entrance. Behind those double doors, Dolores sat, presiding over the vestibule and always ready to take note of any complaint the citizenry might have. Since technically I wasn’t part of the citizenry, and couldn’t very well waltz in through the front door, I walked around back instead, and headed straight for the window of Chief Alec’s office, where I’d picked up many a private conversation over the years.

I hopped up onto the windowsill and once again praised Chief Alec’s good sense always to leave the window open a crack. Someone must have told him once that fresh air was good for him, and I could only agree wholeheartedly.

One peek inside the office of the good chief told me that I’d hit the jackpot. He was in there with a hunkish male I’d never seen before. His long limbs stretched out languidly, his athletic body casually draped across the chair, he was listening to Chief Alec intently. He was definitely a handsome guy. He had one of those square jaws and chiseled faces that were all the rage with the ancient Greeks. A lock of dark brown hair dangled down his brow, his hair a little too long for a cop, which gave him a rebellious look.

His white cotton shirt was stretched taut over bulging chest muscles, and his arms were all biceps and triceps and his belly was perfectly flat, unlike the beer belly Chief Alec had going for himself. If I’d had to venture a guess, I’d have pegged the guy in his early thirties, and never had the words ‘ruggedly handsome’ been a better description for any human male. Odelia was definitely in trouble, if my limited experience was anything to go on.

I hunkered down and pricked up my ears, hoping to find confirmation that this guy was, indeed, Chase Kingsley, and not simply a tourist filing a complaint about a stolen wallet, or a traveling salesman badgering the chief.

“So what do we know so far?” the guy was saying.

“I just called the ME’s office,” said Chief Alec, “and they told me they’re expecting the results from the autopsy sometime this morning.”

The chief, a mainstay in this town for over thirty years, was the embodiment of law and order. He was also a very large man, easily twice as big as the man seated across from him. Everyone knew him as a kind-hearted, fair-minded police officer, never one to throw his weight around. He liked to settle disputes with a smile and a kindly word, ever the courteous diplomat.

And then it dawned on me. Autopsy? Had someone died? I turned my antennae-like ears toward the window, my eyes narrowed in concentration.

“Good thing Adele Pun found the body. The poor guy might never have been found otherwise,” said the one I assumed was Chase Kingsley.

“You’re right about that, Chase,” grunted the chief.

Bingo! I stared at Brutus’s owner, and couldn’t resist uttering a growl.

“That body was never meant to be found, and if the Pun woman hadn’t gone snooping around, the killer would have pulled off the perfect crime.”

I blinked. Killer? Crime? Oh. My. God. They were talking murder!

“So how did Adele Pun discover the body?” asked Chase.

The chief barked a curt, humorless laugh. “Well, that’s a writer for you, Chase. They will go sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”

At this, the chief directed a long, lingering look at me, and I froze. Not that I minded too much. Chief Alec was Odelia’s uncle on her mother’s side, after all, and I was pretty sure he was aware of his sister and niece’s secret.

He looked away again, and continued his story. “She says she was taking a dump a couple of days ago and suddenly started wondering where the product of her bowel movements went. Curious, she went and got herself a flashlight, to examine the bottom of the well, and shone it down into the abyss where generations of Hampton Covians have done their thing.”

“You should have been a poet, Chief,” remarked Chase dryly.

“Thank you. Imagine her surprise when she discovered a laptop sticking out of the tranquil surface of the brown pool below. Being a writer, holed up at a writer’s lodge, she naturally wondered what that laptop was doing there.”

Chase made a disgusted face. “Don’t tell me. She retrieved the laptop?”

The chief grinned. “She most certainly did. Though I have no idea how she did it. I imagine she used a shovel or a rake or something. Then she put the garden hose on it and dumped it into a bucket of salt for three days.”

“And what? It booted up?”

“It sure did. Just goes to show those cheap Korean laptops are a lot sturdier than you’d give them credit for. Reminds me never to spend two thousand bucks on a computer ever again.”

“And that’s how she discovered it was Paulo Frey’s laptop.”

“Yes, sir. None other than the elusive Mr. Frey.”

“The missing writer.”

“The missing writer,” the chief agreed.

I almost fell off the sill at this point. Paulo Frey was a famous novelist who’d gone missing some time last year. He’d been in the habit of renting the Writer’s Lodge once a year, a fixed-up old cabin in the woods on the edge of Hampton Cove. It was popular with writers, as there were no distractions out there, and they could work on their masterpieces undisturbed. There was even an old-fashioned outhouse, which for some reason seemed to appeal to the writing classes. Many a writer confessed they got their best ideas while seated on the john and allowing nature to run its course. Weird but true.

Paulo Frey had been one of those writers who felt they could only write a decent novel while ensconced at the Writer’s Lodge, pecking away at his laptop. Until he’d mysteriously vanished. The owner of the lodge—Hetta Fried—a patron of the arts—had assumed he’d simply skipped town, but when he hadn’t shown up in New York, his relatives had sounded the alarm.

The cabin had been thoroughly searched, but Paulo hadn’t left a trace, so no foul play was assumed. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t pulled a stunt like this before. Once he’d upped and left and had shown up six months later in Zimbabwe, living quietly in a hut in the jungle, trying to cure a severe case of writer’s block. He was one of those eccentric writers, the ones they make movies about with Johnny Depp in the lead.

“So Adele notified the police,” said Chase.

“She notified me,” the chief acknowledged. “At which point we decided to take a closer look at that outhouse.”

Chase shook his head. “That must be the last outhouse on Long Island.”

“It may very well be,” the chief agreed. “It’s garnered a lot of praise from writers. Supposed to give them ideas. Kinda like a wishing well. You drop in a nickel and you get to make a wish. Only here you drop in something else.”

“So when did you get the idea to dredge the well?”

“Well, at first we figured Frey had simply hurled his laptop into the pit in a fit of rage or something. Which would fit with the writer’s block theory.” The chief shifted his bulk, making his chair creak dangerously. “But after poking around in there for a bit, something else came bobbing up.” He fixed Chase with a knowing glance. “An arm.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah. So we called in a cesspool pumping service and found—”

“Paulo Frey.”

“Along with all of his stuff, stuffed into three Louis Vuitton suitcases. All packed and ready to go… nowhere. Looks like whoever killed him wanted to make it look like he skipped town, while he was stuffed down there all along.”

“I wouldn’t like to be the ME on this one,” said Chase, wrinkling his nose.

“You said it,” said the chief, shaking his head. “This is one messy business.”

“When will you know more?”

The chief checked the clock over the door. It was one of those clocks that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a classroom. “Shouldn’t be long now. We don’t get a lot of homicides here, so they’ve given this their highest priority. I’m expecting a call before lunch.” He patted the desk. “So what about it, Chase? Are you ready to work your first Hampton Cove homicide case?”

Chase grinned. “Throwing me in at the deep end, huh, Chief?”

“Best way to learn, buddy.”

“What better way indeed?”

At this point in the conversation, I hopped down from the windowsill and landed gracefully on all fours on the flagged floor. I’d heard enough. A genuine homicide! In Hampton Cove! This was a scoop that needed to be on the front page of the next edition of the Hampton Cove Gazette. Pronto! And who better to break the story to our loyal readership than star reporter Odelia Poole herself? This would cement her reputation as the town’s best-informed reporter. Wait till I told her about this. She’d be over the moon.

And wait was exactly what I had to do, for as I made my way to the street, I found my passage blocked by a stocky, burly black cat with evil green eyes. Brutus!

“Snooping around, are we, Max?” he asked in a sneering manner. At that moment he suddenly reminded me of Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter’s nemesis.

Oh, God. This was exactly what I needed right now. Not!

“Step aside, Brutus,” I told the cat. “This is none of your business.”

But Brutus didn’t make a move to let me pass. Instead, he walked right up to me and got in my face. “If anyone is getting involved in stuff that isn’t his business, it’s you, Max. I saw you, you know, spying on Chief Alec and Chase. So that’s how you do things in this town, huh? You’re Odelia Poole’s personal spy. I knew there was a reason she was always getting the best scoops. And now I know her secret. Wait till I tell Chase all about this!”

A chill suddenly settled around the base of my spine. “How are you going to do that, Brutus? You can’t talk to your human like I can talk to mine.”

Oh, crap. Had I just said that? Bad Max!

He grinned evilly, like Bruce the shark from that fish movie Odelia likes to watch when she’s babysitting one of her cousins.

“So you can talk to humans,” he said slowly. “I thought as much. I only arrived yesterday, but already I’ve heard the rumors this Odelia Poole person is a little… shall we say weird? And now you’ve confirmed my suspicions.”

“Well, you still can’t do anything with that information,” I challenged him. My claws were itching to get a piece of his fur, but I restrained myself. I may be big, but that doesn’t mean I’m all lean muscle like Brutus and Chase. My bulk mainly consists of, um, well, love handles. Lots and lots of love handles.

“Maybe I can’t talk to my human,” he conceded, “but I can make your life a lot more difficult. I can prevent you from snooping around and listening to conversations that aren’t intended for your spying ears.”

Horrified, I cried, “You can’t do that!”

“Oh, yes, I can,” he said, that nasty grin still firmly in place. He reared up to his full height, puffing up his chest like the nasty bully he was. “Listen up, Max. From now on the police station is off limits to you and your buddies.”

“What?! You have no right!”

“Oh, yes, I do. Chase Kingsley is the law in this town now, which, by extension, makes me the law, too. So I can do whatever I want and there’s not a thing you can do about it.”

“It doesn’t work like that! It’s not because your human is a cop that you’re also one. That’s just crazy talk!”

“I can assure you that’s exactly how it works, Max,” he grunted.

“No, it’s not. Harriet’s human is a doctor. That doesn’t make her capable of performing brain surgery, does it? And, and…” I cast around wildly. “Dooley’s human is this town’s biggest gossip. That doesn’t mean he’s a gossip, too. Oh, wait, actually it does. Dooley is a pretty big gossip. But that’s neither here nor there. You’re not a cop, Brutus. Cats simply can’t be cops!”

“Well, you can’t, obviously,” he scoffed. “You’re not trained to uphold the law. I, on the other hand, am. Chase used to be the NYPD’s biggest and baddest detective, and I learned a lot from watching him in action.”

“That’s just a load of—”

“Hey!” Brutus yelled, holding up a warning paw, claws extended. “Watch it, pal. You want me to arrest you for contempt of cop? No? Didn’t think so!”

“Contempt of cop? That’s not even a thing!”

“I’m sure it is,” he assured me, giving his nose a lick.

“Well, I’m sure it’s not. You’re simply making this up on the spot.”

I tried to sidestep the overbearing cat, but he got in my face again, and hissed, “You’re not trespassing again, Max. This is your final warning.”

“Oh? And what are you going to do about it?” I challenged him, my tail rearing up and puffing up while I arched my back menacingly.

“Don’t make me fight you, Max,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “You don’t want me to hurt you. I’m warning you.”

I backed down. What? Have you ever stared into the slitted eyes of the meanest, biggest, nastiest cat you’ve ever seen? Let me tell you, it’s scary!

“This was your final warning, Max,” he growled, and casually displayed three sets of razor-sharp claws and gave me a mock punch on the shoulder.

I gulped. Those claws looked very sharp indeed. So I decided not to get into a fight with this cat. I needed to figure out how to deal with him, but brute force wasn’t exactly my forte. That was obviously his department.

“Have it your way, Brutus,” I finally said.

“Always,” he said with a smug smile. “That’s something you will learn soon, Max. You and those other furballs that inhabit this stupid town.”

“Hampton Cove is not a stupid town!”

He merely grinned, and stalked off in the direction of the police station, presumably to find out what I’d found out.

Still shaking from the adrenaline rushing through my veins, I started heading for the Hampton Cove Gazette. Boy, did I have news for Odelia.