Purrfect Sidekick. Purrfect Wedding. Purrfect Deceit. Purrfect Ruse

31. PURRFECT SIDEKICK

Chapter 1

The day started like most days, namely with me waking up from a well-deserved and refreshing nap. The difference was that I woke up on the couch. I’d relocated there as a consequence of Odelia’s habit of lashing out with her feet. I don’t know why she’d gotten into this habit, as it was extremely annoying to say the least. Just imagine dreaming one of those nice dreams us cats like to indulge in, for instance about a lifetime supply of Cat Snax being delivered on your doorstep, or being the star of cat choir and being lauded and applauded by your peers, when all of a sudden you’re rudely awakened by a kick or shove from your human’s leg to one of the more sensitive and vulnerable parts of your anatomy. It’s not a barrel oflaughs, let me assure you, especially when as a consequence of this intervention you are sent plummeting to the floor in a jumble of flailing limbs.

Lucky for us we always land on our feet, and so far Odelia’s strange new habit had not caused me any physical harm. But it can’t be healthy, these interruptions of the natural process of sleep. Not unlike a computer suddenly losing connection with an external hard drive. If this keeps happening something has to give, and that hard drive will eventually break down. And so it was that I decided, after the third night in a row where I’d been thusly treated by my erstwhile favorite human, to beat a strategic retreat to the couch downstairs. Like a husband being relegated to the couch after having misbehaved, with the main difference that I hadn’t misbehaved in the slightest, or that I am Odelia’s significant other. That honor is reserved for Chase Kingsley, a local cop.

Chase Kingsley isn’t merely Odelia’s boyfriend, he’s also her fianc?, and since the day of their nuptials was almost upon us, I surmised that this was presumably the reason she kept lashing out in the middle of the night, perhaps in the throes of some nervous spasm.

I awoke when Dooley joined me. It was still dark out, so dawn hadn’t yet arrived. My friend, a smallish gray ragamuffin, looked a little frazzled, and when I asked him about it, he said, “She kicked me! Odelia kicked me off the bed, Max. Can you imagine?”

I said I could imagine. In fact I could do more than that. I could commiserate, and so I did, to my heart’s content. “I think it’s this upcoming wedding,” I said with a yawn.

“The wedding?” said Dooley, glancing back to the staircase where presumably he expected Odelia to come rushing down after him. Belying her nocturnal exercise regimen, though, Odelia was fast asleep, and so was her future husband.

“The wedding of Odelia and Chase?”

“Oh, that wedding,” he said, as if multiple weddings were about to take place. He was, of course, still flabbergasted by recent happenings, nor could I blame him. My friend shook his head. “Why would a wedding make her kick me off the bed, Max? I don’t get it.”

“I think the whole wedding thing is making her extremely nervous,” I explained, “and so she’s been having a tough time getting her regular eight hours in.”

“But why? Isn’t a wedding supposed to be fun? Joy and laughter and all that stuff?”

“It is, but it’s also a huge undertaking. A lot of arrangements have to be made. We’re not talking about a modest affair here, Dooley. This wedding is the mother of all weddings. A monster matrimony future generations will talk about in hushed tones.”

If you think I’m exaggerating, I can assure you that I am not. Odelia and Chase had set out to organize a smallish affair, just a couple of friends and family, but gradually the thing had blown up to epic proportions, and the guest list now included the entire population of Hampton Cove—or so it seemed. You know how it is. You invite an uncle, but then you also have to invite his wife and all of your cousins. You invite a friend, and she decides to put all ofher friends on the list, lest they feel slighted and she gets lonely. And you can’t invite just one colleague—you have to invite them all, kids and partners included. And since Odelia and her family are pretty much fixtures in Hampton Cove, they probably know everybody who’s somebody and a whole bunch of nobodies, too.

Dooley placed his head on his front paws, still keeping an eye on that staircase, just in case Odelia came stomping down to mete out some more kicks to an unsuspecting pair of felines.“I wish this wedding was over already, Max. I thought it was going to be a lot of fun, but if it makes Odelia kick us off the bed, I don’t mind telling you that I just wish it was all over with already.”

“That’s all right, Dooley,” I said. “I’m sure Odelia will relax once the fateful day is finally upon us and she’s standing in front of her future husband and saying, ‘I do.’”

“Do you think we’ll be invited, too?” asked my friend.

“Oh, sure. What kind of wedding would it be if we weren’t? I’m sure she’ll give us the best seats in the house.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” suddenly a voice sounded from the kitchen. It was Harriet, and she was licking her mustache, a clear sign she’d just eaten her fill. I hadn’t even heard her enter, but then that’s cats for you: they tread ever so lightly on feet of fur.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Surely Odelia wants us to be there on her big day.”

“Look, personally I wouldn’t mind being invited,” said the white Persian as she trotted up and joined us on the couch. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind if I wasn’t, either, but just suppose she does invite us, it’s going to be a nightmare, you guys.”

“A nightmare?” said Dooley, darting another quick look at the staircase. “You mean, like what Odelia’s been having for the last couple of nights?”

“Exactly. I was talking to Shanille last night and she said it’s going to be one of those occasions best avoided. Can you imagine all of Hampton Cove crowding into that church and creating a big pileup? There’s going to be trampling, there’s going to be stomping, and gnashing of impatient teeth while they all fight to file in. And whose tails do you think are going to be crushed and mangled?” To show us she meant what she said, she carefully folded her tail around her buttocks and gave us a meaningful look.

Both Dooley and I winced at the word picture she was painting. Our tails may look like useless appendages merely added to increase our cuteness factor times ten, but they are sensitive and dislike being indiscriminately trampled on by big and clumsy feet. It was a potential disaster that gave me pause. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate humans as much as the next cat, but they do have a tendency not to look where they step, especially when fighting for a good spot—like at Macy’s when they organize an end-of-season sale.

Or Odelia’s upcoming wedding.

“So you think we better steer clear,” I said, nodding in full comprehension and agreement. I had entertained the same thought myself, to be honest. Wherever hundreds of humans get together, it’s best for cats to go into hiding, as it can only lead to trouble.

“And the other thing—I didn’t want to bring this up, as I don’t want to heap more pressure onto Odelia—but you guys, we haven’t even been invited yet! So I think it’s safe to say we’re not going to.”

“Not going to what?” asked Brutus, the fourth member of our fearsome foursome as he walked in through the kitchen pet flap.

“Harriet just said we’re not going to be invited to the wedding,” said Dooley. “And how that’s probably a good thing?”

“Oh, right,” said Brutus, who’s a big, butch black cat and also Harriet’s mate. “Can’t say I’m surprised,” he said as he inspected his food bowl and then hunkered down to gobble up a few random nuggets.

“Why do you say that?” I asked. “I thought we were definitely going to be included in the festivities. We are Odelia’s pets, so why wouldn’t she invite us to share the most beautiful day of her life?”

“About that,” said Dooley. “Why does everyone keep saying that, Max?”

“Saying what?”

“The most beautiful day in Odelia’s life? I thought the most beautiful day in her life was the day she was born. If she hadn’t been born, she wouldn’t even be here, right?”

“It’s just something people say,” I explained. “It means that Odelia finally gets to tie the knot with the person she loves the most in all the world.”

“But… doesn’t Odelia love her mom and dad the most in all the world?” asked Dooley, still in the habit of asking those tough questions, like he usually does.

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “But, once again, it’s just something people say.”

“But why do they say things that aren’t true? Isn’t that the same thing as lying?”

“Look, Dooley, it doesn’t matter,” said Harriet, clearly tiring of Dooley’s interruptions. “We’re not invited, so it doesn’t matter if it’s the most beautiful day of her life, or the second-most beautiful or whatever. We’re not a part of it, see? We don’t feature into the thing at. At all.”

Dooley blinked.“But surely—”

“Surely we should consider this a lucky escape. And that’s all there is to it. Now why are you guys sleeping on the couch and not upstairs on the bed where you belong?”

Dooley made a face.“Odelia kicked us off. First she kicked Max in the tush, and then when I took his place she kicked me off as well. Also in the tush. My tush, not Max’s.”

“She did what?” said Harriet, clearly shocked at this egregious example of gross misconduct on the part of one who’d always professed to be an animal person.

“She didn’t mean to kick us off,” I hastened to say. “She was having a bad dream and inadvertently happened to lash out with her feet. Both feet, I should probably add.”

“Hitting us where it hurts,” Dooley added sadly, and rubbed his tush for good measure.

“This is too much,” said Harriet. “First she neglects to invite us to her wedding, and now she’s causing you grievous bodily harm? What’s wrong with the woman?”

“Nothing is wrong,” I said. “She’s just nervous about the wedding, that’s all.”

“Well, she shouldn’t be,” said Harriet. “It’s the most beautiful day of her life. She doesn’t have anything to be nervous about. She should just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

“I think she would like to be uninvited,” said Brutus. “Just like us.”

Dooley smiled at this.“Imagine if Odelia decides to skip her own wedding. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“If Odelia skipped her own wedding there wouldn’t be a wedding, Dooley,” said Harriet.

“What do you mean?”

Harriet gave an exasperated groan.“How can there be a wedding when the bride is missing? Think, Dooley,” she added, tapping my friend on the noggin. “Think hard!”

Dooley gave himself up to thought, and judging from the frown that appeared on his brow, and the steam that gently started pouring from his ears, he was indeed thinking very hard. Finally he gave up.“No,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

“Oh, Dooley,” said Harriet, and Brutus grinned, thinking the whole thing hilarious.

Just then, the sliding glass door that offers such a nice view from the living room straight into the backyard, opened and closed and Gran walked in. Odelia’s grandmother is one of those early risers. In fact she often gets up before we do, which is saying something, as we’re usually up at the crack of dawn. Though in our defense by that time we’ve usually been up half the night. She looked her usual energetic self: blue tracksuit lined with pink, little white curls topping her head like cotton candy and a cheeky grin.

“Heya, fellas,” she said. “Wanna hear the latest?”

“The latest what, Gran?” asked Dooley.

“The latest news, Dooley. Some truck just lost its cargo on the road into town. Ten tons of grade-A potatoes, if you please. Wanna go and have a look-see?”

“What’s there to see about a bunch of potatoes lying in the road?” asked Harriet, who clearly wasn’t in the mood for the introduction of this agricultural theme.

Gran shrugged.“Nothing much, except this.” And she spirited a large canvas bag from behind her back. It was the kind of canvas bag that can easily hold a very large quantity of grade-A potatoes. A slow smile spread across her features when she saw the light of understanding appear in three pairs of cat’s eyes: mine, Harriet’s, and Brutus’s.

“You’re going to steal a bunch of potatoes,” I said, nodding.

Gran’s smile disappeared. “Who’s talking about stealing? I’m just going to help that poor truck driver clean up the road. And if a couple of spuds end up in the trunk of my car, then so be it. My reward for being a good Samaritan, right?”

And so we set out for this kind intervention. Nothing too exciting, mind you, simply four cats helping out their human, and getting away from Odelia’s new kicking habit.

And as we made to follow Gran out the door, Dooley said,“I don’t get it. Where are we going, Max?”

“We’re going to help Gran help a potato truck driver,” I explained.

“Oh, okay,” he said, though he didn’t look convinced.

He had a point, of course. Potatoes aren’t exactly a staple of a cat’s healthy diet. Then again, they are a staple of our humans’ diet, and cats might not have a reputation for being charitable, some of us do have an altruistic streak. Besides, if we helped Gran bag a couple of nice potatoes, I’m pretty sure she’d fill our bowls to the brim come dinnertime.

How does that saying go? You scratch my back and I scratch yours?

Though I’m not sure Gran would like it if we scratched her back. Oh, well.

Chapter 2

Odelia wasn’t having a good time. She knew she should be ecstatic, over the moon, delirious with happiness at the prospect of finally tying the knot and engaging in matrimony with the man currently snoring away to his heart’s content right next to her. But as she lay there, wide awake, even though it was still dark outside, she couldn’t help experiencing a powerful twinge of concern. The worst part was that she had no idea why. When she thought things through logically there was nothing to be concerned about: the wedding had been arranged and would soon be taking place at St. John’s Church, officiated by Father Reilly. The invitations had all been sent out, the reception nailed down, as well as the wedding dinner and party, the caterer and the DJ booked and paid for, and the jamboree promised to be a big hit with those guests lucky enough to have snagged an invitation to what promised to be the social event of the season.

So maybe that was what was troubling her: she hadn’t planned for her wedding to become an event. Somehow, though, it had quickly ballooned into this big thing and now she had a hard time reconciling the shindig as planned with the one she’d had in mind.

Chase, too, was a little overwhelmed with the response. He hadn’t planned to invite his entire precinct but that was what had happened, and the poor guy even had all of his former NYPD colleagues busing in on the day, eager to put their feet under the table. They viewed the wedding of their ex-colleague as an opportunity to organize a reunion of sorts, and even though Odelia was happy for the opportunity to have a meet and greet with all of his brothers and sisters in blue—all one hundred and fifty-four of them—she wasn’t sure this was what Chase had in mind when he told her, only two weeks ago, that he was looking forward to their nice little wedding, just them and a couple of guests.

She closed her eyes, eager to catch a few more winks before dawn, but unfortunately sleep refused to come. So it was with a slight sigh that she finally decided it was no use and got up. Careful not to wake her snoring future better half, she tiptoed into the bathroom for a quick bathroom break, then tiptoed down the stairs to get some work done on an article for the newspaper. Much to her surprise, of her cats there was no sign. But figuring they were probably out and about, she took a seat at the kitchen counter, opened her laptop, and was soon typing away. It wasn’t exactly a Pulitzer-winning article she’d been handed by her editor, having been given the dubious honor of chronicling the upcoming ceremony awarding the keys to the city to Lord Hilbourne, but it effectively took her mind off the wedding, which was exactly what she needed right now.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Vesta parked her car across the street from where the terrible accident had occurred. As it turned out she wasn’t the only one who’d heeded the call and had decided to lend a helping hand. The truck driver was talking to a familiar figure, and as Vesta walked up, this familiar figure rolled his eyes and said: “I should have known you’d show up.”

“Is that the way to greet your beloved little mother?”

For it was indeed Alec Lip, her son, and coincidentally also Hampton Cove’s chief of police, who stood, notebook in hand, chatting to the driver. A driver who’d taken off his ball cap and stood scratching his scalp as he watched the entire contents of his truck now spread out across the road. In both directions traffic was blocked, and long lines of cars had formed.Luckily it was still early, and not that many people were out and about.

“So you say you saw a deer and you swerved and…” Alec reiterated.

“Yeah, the deer, it just jumped right in front of me, stared at me for a moment, then took off again. So I stomped on the brakes and in a reflex action turned the wheel and…” He gestured to the tons of spuds on the tarmac. “And then this happened.”

“At least you’re fine,” said Alec, patting the dazed driver on the back.

“Yeah, and so is the deer.”

“You didn’t hit it?”

“No, it made a clean break. Walked off cool as dammit, the white-tailed rascal.”

“As soon as the road is cleared of your cargo, we can lift your truck and assess the damage,” said Alec.

“Think it’ll still run?” asked the driver with a hopeful look at his capsized vehicle. It lay on its side like a wounded animal, smoke wafting from under the hood.

“Let’s wait and see,” said the Chief. “And if not, you are insured, right?”

“Oh, sure,” said the guy. “But I’m supposed to take these taters to Philadelphia by noon.” He checked his watch. “I guess I could still make it. If my truck is fine.”

“And if it’s not, I’m sure the good people of Philadelphia will find some other way to satisfy their tater appetite,” Alec concluded, ending the interview on a cheerful note.

Vesta, even though she’d hoped to collect a few potatoes for her personal consumption, now felt sorry for the driver, and decided against her initial plan of campaign. And so as she joined the rescue workers who were busily removing the potatoes from the road and placing them on large tarpaulins a helpful hand had placed on the road’s shoulder, she suddenly saw that a member of the public had decided to take a nap. Presumably the prospect of spending the next hour picking up potatoes had become too overwhelming, and he’d chosen the exact spot Vesta had selected to showcase her skilled spud-saving activitiesto have a lie-down.

The man was dressed in a nice powder-blue suit, and was on his back. And as the sun shimmered across the horizon, pulling up its pants and spitting into its hands to start another day on the job, Vesta suddenly noticed, as a stray ray flickered across the man’s visage, that he looked very pale indeed. Also, when she stepped a little closer, she saw that his eyes were wide open and that there was a smudge of blood on his chest.

And that’s when she realized this wasn’t a rough sleeper or tired rescue worker.

This man… was dead!

Chapter 3

“There’s something sticking out of the potatoes, Max,” said Dooley suddenly.

I hadn’t really paid attention to the potatoes, to be honest. Potatoes, as I’ve already indicated, aren’t designed to inspire excitement in a feline, and on top of that, these particular potatoes, having spent a considerable amount of time lying on the tarmac and thus having had the dubious benefitof being thoroughly marinated in a sauce of exhaust fumes, oil, road paint, tire remnants and asphalt that exists wherever thousands of cars travel across a stretch of road on a daily basis, didn’t look all that appetizing to me.

But Dooley was right. There was, indeed, something sticking out amongst the sea of potatoes that didn’t look very potato-like to me. And judging from the way Vesta was staring at the object in question, and loudly calling her son to come and take a look, it was clear something was amiss.

“Do you think it’s the driver of the potato truck?” asked Dooley.

“The driver is standing over there,” said Harriet, gesturing with her tail to an unhappy-looking man who stood tapping away on his smartphone, presumably giving either his boss or his significant other an update on his (lack of) progress.

“Probably the person responsible for the accident,” Brutus suggested. “Guy standing in the middle of the road for some reason, or a pedestrian trying to cross the road and not realizing he should have waited until the light turned green. Ouch!” he added.

This last part of his contribution followed the smack on the head Harriet gave him.

“There are no traffic lights out here, Brutus,” she said. “Besides, the reason the truck driver had the accident is because a deer crossed the road, not a person.”

Clearly while the rest of us were wondering why this potato rescue mission had sounded like a good idea when Gran had suggested it, Harriet had been busy collecting the facts pertaining to the case and getting up to date on what had actually happened.

“I think that man is dead,” Dooley suddenly announced.

“Are you sure?” said Brutus. “He could just be taking a nap.”

“Gran just told Uncle Alec the man is dead,” Dooley explained.

It seemed to cinch things, and the four of us, as one cat, moved forward in the direction of what could now only be described as a crime scene. And as we approached the person lying flat on his back on the road, surrounded by a sea of potatoes, it soon became clear that Dooley was right: this man, whoever he was, was most definitely dead.

“Poor guy,” Gran was saying. “He must have been hiding between the potatoes, and when the truck flipped over he must have hit his noggin on the tarmac. Freak accident.”

“Do you think it’s one of them asylum seekers?” asked one of the other potato collectors, who’d joined the small throng that had gathered around the dead man.

“Pretty sure he is,” said a man. “Like the old lady says, must have been hiding in the back of that truck, hitching a ride to who knows where.”

“Please stay back,” said Uncle Alec, gesturing to the chattering crowd. He was gripping his phone in one hand and gesturing to the potato pickers with the other, presumably calling in backup for what had escalated from a mere traffic accident to a mysterious death.

“He looks like a nice person,” said Dooley.

“And what makes you say that?” asked Harriet with a touch of skepticism.

“He has a nice face,” Dooley explained.

He was right. It’s hard to determine what makes a face fall into this particular category, but this man’s face most definitely did. It was one of those round faces, which in life I would imagine had been pink and jolly. Even in death there was a touch of cherubic pleasantness about it.

“If he’s an asylum seeker,” said Brutus, “then why is he wearing a blue suit?”

“Why can’t an asylum seeker wear a blue suit?” Harriet challenged her boyfriend. “As far as I know there isn’t a dress code for asylum seekers, now is there?”

“No, I guess there isn’t,” Brutus allowed. “Still. It’s a very ugly suit.”

“What do you find ugly about it?” I asked.

“The color. A suit should be dark gray or black. Gray and black are forgiving colors. You can wear them for a long time without noticing all of those smudges. Not blue.”

“Oh, you’re such a snob,” said Harriet, shaking her head. “If this man wants to wear a blue suit, he can wear a blue suit. It’s a free country.”

“But look at those smudges. That wouldn’t have happened if he’d worn black.”

“I don’t think he cares about the smudges, Brutus,” Harriet said. “He’s dead.”

“Maybe he comes from a country where people are persecuted for wearing blue suits,” was Dooley’s suggestion. “So he came to America, where people can wear whatever they want.”

Brutus had a point, though. If this man was hiding in the back of a truck filled with potatoes, which, as a rule, aren’t exactly the cleanest vegetable to hide amongst, his choice of outfit was ill-advised. Now if he’d picked a truck carrying a load of bell peppers, a suit would have been fine, and the blue would go well with the red, yellow and green.

Moments later, the sound of a police siren cut through the early morning air, followed by that of an ambulance, and soon both arrived on the scene.

“Looks like it will take a little longer before the road is cleared,” I said.

“Poor Gran,” said Dooley. “She was hoping to steal a couple of potatoes and instead she ended up being a witness to murder.”

“Murder!” I said, surprised. “What makes you think this was murder?”

“Well, the man probably didn’t kill himself, did he?” said Dooley. “So if he didn’t kill himself, he must have been murdered.”

Harriet scoffed a little at this.“And who do you think killed him? A potato?”

“I think Gran called it,” said Brutus. “The guy must have hit his head on the asphalt when he tumbled from the truck. So it’s not murder, Dooley. It’s an accident.”

We looked on as the paramedics muscled a path to the dead man, the throng of rubberneckers splitting like the Red Sea. But since there was nothing the medical boys and girls could do, they quickly gave way to the police officers, who proceeded to cordon off the area. And by the time the coroner arrived, and started doing his thing, Gran took us back to her car, and soon we were once again homeward bound—without potatoes.

Chapter 4

Suppo Bonikowski was busy soldering a small piece of hardware in place. Under his magnifying glass the watch he’d selected for this delicate operation lay gleaming. The tip of Suppo’s tongue was sticking out of his mouth in sheer concentration, and he was so focused on the delicate operation he was conducting that he hadn’t even noticed the door to the hotel room had opened and closed.

“Almost finished?” suddenly a voice rang out behind him.

He almost dropped the soldering iron, which was producing strange-smelling fumes. Lucky for Suppo the most vital part of the procedure had already been concluded and so he quickly put down the instrument and raised his head to direct an irate look at the new arrival.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Wim? Don’t talk to me when I’m working.”

“All right, all right,” said Wim, who was a thickset individual who hadn’t been blessed with a neck to speak of. He was also the proud owner of a white-blond buzz cut which had earned him the nickname Whitey Wim early in life. “So is it done?” he asked, gesturing with his head to the watch.

“It is done,” said Suppo proudly. Contrary to his cousin Wim he was reedy and tall, though a little thin on top, which he compensated for with a black beard that covered the lower strata of his face.

“So when are we going to deliver this little beaut?” asked Wim, admiring the object under discussion.

“Soon,” said Suppo. “You do realize that if we pull this off we’re home free?”

“You think it’ll work?” asked Wim, freely expressing his reluctance to embrace the scheme. The only reason he was on board, in fact, was that he was the son of Wim’s mother’s brother. Which didn’t stop him from pointing out the obvious and many flaws in Suppo’s scheme. Not that that, in turn, stopped the latter from pursuing it anyway.

“Look, if I didn’t believe we could pull it off I wouldn’t be here,” said Suppo as he picked up the watch and slid it on his wrist. It looked pretty cool, he thought. Cool enough to make sure its wearer would very rarely take it off—which was the point.

The sudden sound of a police siren had both men look up in alarm and move over to the window. They watched on as a police car passed by the hotel where they were currently holed up, then breathed a sigh of relief as it simply zoomed past and soon rounded a corner and disappeared out of sight.

“If this scheme of yours lands my ass in prison…” Wim said, wagging a finger in his cousin’s face.

“It won’t,” Suppo assured him.

“But if it does…”

“But it won’t!” he said laughingly.

“Well, if it does, the police will be the last of your problems,” Wim finished the sentence.

Suppo gulped a little. He knew exactly what his cousin was referring to—or rather, who. Wim’s blushing bride Sandy, a recent addition to the Bojanowsky family, was one of those women who took the expression ‘stand by your man’ very literally indeed. If Wim ever got sentenced to prison because of something Suppo got him involved in, Sandy would personally make sure Suppo suffered the consequences of his rash actions. And since Sandy’s most treasured possession in the world, aside from Wim himself, was a small menagerie of tigers, there was every chance in the world Suppo’s body would never be found—or what was left of it after she’d fed him to herprivate zoo.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

“So what was that man doing hiding between those potatoes, Max?”

“I don’t know, Dooley. But I’m sure Uncle Alec will find out.”

Dooley gave me a pensive look. He’d clearly been brooding on this vexing problem ever since Gran had ushered us back into her car and had driven us home.

“I think he was hungry,” my friend said finally. “So hungry he didn’t notice the truck was moving and before he knew what was happening he was crushed to death by all of those potatoes.”

“I very much doubt whether a person who’s hungry would try and find nourishment in a truck full of potatoes,” I said. “Those potatoes are raw potatoes, Dooley. In the sense that they haven’t been baked or cooked or fried or whatever people do with potatoes.”

He merely stared at me, clearly not comprehending why this would negate his theory.

“People don’t eat raw potatoes,” I explained. “They’re not tasty, and also, they can be poisonous, especially when—”

“That’s it!” Dooley cried. “You solved the case, Max! You and me both.”

“Um…”

“Don’t you see? I solved the part on how he got onto that truck, and you solved the part where he ate a bad potato and died! We have to tell Odelia. She’ll be thrilled.” And before I could stop him, he’d wandered off in search of our human.

I could have told him that Odelia was at the office, busily writing her articles, but Dooley had already disappeared from view, and so I decided not to bother. I’d picked a nice spot in the backyard, the grass was tickling my belly, and frankly I was feeling very comfortable, thank you very much. Too comfortable to bother about some stranger who met an untimely death surrounded by a large collection of potatoes. Dooley might think there was a case to be solved, but I wasn’t convinced. Not every person who dies ends up that way through malice, do they? And I was pretty sure this particular death was an accidental one.

And so I rolled over onto my back and allowed a few precious rays to tickle my tummy. And I’d just started dozing off when a pshh-ing sound told me someone desired speech with me. I opened one eye and saw that a small snail had crawled all the way up to my face and was eyeing me with a distinct sense of curiosity.

“Are you Max?” asked the snail.

He or she was one of those snails that like to carry their own home on their backs. I yawned then said,“Yep, that’s me.”

The snail looked left, then it looked right, and finally it lowered its voice and said,“There’s something very important I need to tell you, Max.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?” I said with an indulgent smile.

“A truckload of potatoes was left lying on the tarmac of the main road into town this morning,” he announced, as if conveying some world-shattering news.

“I know,” I said. “I was there when it happened.” I yawned again.

“Oh,” said the snail. “Well, it may interest you to know that a man was found dead amongst those very same potatoes.”

“Old news, I’m afraid, Mr. or Mrs…”

“Mr. Ed,” said the snail. He seemed to relax a little. “I was told you were a smart kitty, Max. And I can see they weren’t lying. You are exceptionally well-informed.”

“Just a coincidence,” I said. “Gran—that’s my human’s grandmother—just happened to be in the neighborhood.” I decided not to mention she’d been on a potato-hunting expedition at the time. No sense in washing the Poole family’s dirty laundry in public.

“The thing is, Max,” said Mr. Ed, “that the man was a crook. And not just any crook either. He’s the crook that ripped off my human to the tune of no less than seventy-five thousand smackeroos last week.”

Now this was news to me, and I stared at the snail, trying to figure out where his eyes were.“Your human? What do you mean, your human? You’re a snail. Snails don’t have humans. You guys roam wild and free, not a care in the world except where to find some delicious leaves to munch on.”

“That’s what you think,” said the snail, making a gentle scoffing sound as he shook his tiny little head. “It’s not just cats and dogs that have humans that care for them and love them, Max. Snails are lovable creatures, too, you know. Or don’t you think we deserve to be loved as much as some of the bigger pets do?”

“Oh, sure,” I said quickly, now rolling onto my tummy and giving the snail an apologetic look. “Of course you do. I think you’re absolutely worthy of love… Mr. Ed.”

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” he said with a shrug, which involved hoisting his entire shell into the air and then lowering it again. “You think I’m hideous, don’t you? Disgusting. Just a slimy, weird-looking creature who for some reason drags his cozy little home along with him wherever he goes, leaving nothing but a trail of gooey goo behind.”

“No, no,” I assured Mr. Ed. “That’s not what I was thinking at all, Mr. Ed.”

“Oh, yes, that’s exactly what you were thinking. But that’s all right, Max. It’s not often cats and snails mix in a social setting, and I for one felt hesitant to approach you like this. Out of the blue, I mean. But I figured I owe it to my human to get the word out, and I can’t do it on my own. For some reason my human is reluctant to involve the cops.”

“But why? What happened?” I asked, now thoroughly intrigued by this unusual tale.

“Max!” suddenly Dooley’s voice sounded in my rear. “I can’t find Odelia anywhere! I hope she hasn’t touched those poisoned potatoes! Who are you?” This last question wasn’t directed at me but at Mr. Ed. “Hey, you’re a snail.”

“Excellent powers of observation, cat,” said Mr. Ed.

“Dooley, meet Mr. Ed,” I said. “Mr. Ed, this is Dooley, my best friend.”

“I know who you are,” said Mr. Ed. “You and Max work together, don’t you? You’re like a team. Well, I’m glad you decided to drop by, Dooley, since I only intend to tell this once. So listen carefully.” And then he took a deep breath and said, “It all started two weeks ago…”

Chapter 5

Harriet and Brutus had also joined us, and after making the necessary introductions, and getting Brutus to stop grinning at the notion of a snail regaling a couple of cats with the woes that had befallen his human, Mr. Ed resumed his tale. And a tall tale it was, too.

“Evelina is one of those humans who has a hard time bonding with another human of the opposite sex,” the snail explained, his tentacles waving in the air to emphasize his words. “She’s forty-two now and has never married. Oh, she’s been in relationships, but never one that lasted more than a couple of weeks. Lately her sister Emma expressed concern that she will never find a man to settle down with, and experience the joys of having a family of her own. And so Emma made it her mission to get Evelina hooked up with a significant other. She arranged a number of dates, keeping a close eye on her progress. Unfortunately the first ones were all duds, and Evelina was frankly prepared to give up when one day Emma hit upon Mr. Right.”

“I thought your name was Ed?” said Brutus, still grinning.

Mr. Ed ignored our friend’s barb, and continued. “This man, his name was Bob Rector, though she liked to call him Bobby, scored a fulsome ten on Evelina’s scorecard.”

“Evelina kept a scorecard?” I asked.

“Well, actually this was Emma’s idea. She’d read somewhere that it is advisable to score your dates, and so every time Evelina had gone out on a date they made it a point to sit down for a moment of reflection. You know, like a performance review? Evelina owns her own business, and so does Emma, so I guess the idea appealed to them.”

Brutus’s grin was widening, and I could tell he had to tamp down the urge to utter some ill-advised crack. A glance from Harriet shut him up, though. I think she was as eager as the rest of us to get to the heart of this curious little story.

“So Evelina and Bob went on a second date, and then a third, and by the time their fourth date rolled around Evelina was already talking wedding plans and had selected a list of potential names for their firstborn. Marie if it was a girl, Perry if it was a boy.”

“What a coincidence,” said Dooley. “Our human is about to get married, too. But we’re not invited,” he added with a touch of sadness.

“Well, anyway,” said Mr. Ed, “things were going really well, and everyone said that Evelina looked twenty years younger, and that she’d never seemed happier. Even her work colleagues all said she was one lucky lady to have met such a fine gentleman.”

“What does she do for a living?” asked Harriet.

“She owns a very successful party supply store. She sells everything from costumes to cakes and decorations—the works.”

“So she’s rich,” I said.

“Oh, yes. Evelina is loaded.”

“Oh, boy,” I said. “I think I can guess the rest.”

“You can?” said Dooley. “But how, Max?”

“Look, do you want me to tell the story or not?” asked Mr. Ed, who was getting a little annoyed by all these interruptions.

“I want you to tell the story,” said Dooley, sobered.

“Well, so one day disaster struck. Evelina and Bob had planned to meet, when all of a sudden she received a message announcing he’d been taken.”

“Taken?” asked Dooley. “Taken where?”

“Who cares!” said Mr. Ed, growing a little hot under his collar—if snails have collars, that is. Hard to tell. As it was, his face took on a slightly darker tinge of green, and he spat, “I’m starting to think the stories of Max and Dooley, phenomenal sleuthing team, are highly overrated.”

Brutus cleared his throat.“You probably meant to say ‘Harriet and Brutus, phenomenal sleuthing team. Or maybe HARRIET& BRUTUS (WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF MAX& DOOLEY).”

Mr. Ed gave him a stoic look—by this time I’d located his eyes—they’re on stalks—and went on. “So turns out Bob had been kidnapped, and the ransom fee was a cool seventy-five thousand dollars,” he said, keeping Brutus under close observation lest he shot off his mouth again.

“So did she pay?” I asked.

“Yes, she did. The scheduled ransom drop was last night. Seventy-five thousand in unmarked bills, to be delivered by her, without the involvement of the police. So she did as instructed and dropped the money in a trash container located at the canal lock near McMillan Street and then waited in vain for news from the kidnappers. They were supposed to let Bob go as soon as they got their hands on the money. But much to my dismay I discovered that Bob’s body has been found, having fallen off a potato truck.”

“So thekidnappers killed Bob!” said Dooley. “The potatoes are innocent!”

“And you think Bob was behind his own kidnapping,” I said, “and something went wrong and he ended up dead instead?”

Mr. Ed nodded, his tentacles dangling freely as he did.“I never trusted this Bob fellow. Too good to be true. Plus, he almost stepped on me when he came over for dinner one night. And even though he later claimed it was an accident, I could see the look in his eyes after he almost crushed me.” He paused for effect. “It was the look of a killer.”

“A snail killer,” said Dooley, a little breathlessly.

“Exactly. So your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find out what happened to my human’s money—and to prove to her once and for all that Bob was a bad ‘un.”

“Don’t you have something more tangible to go on?” asked Harriet, who clearly wasn’t fully convinced by Mr. Ed’s story. “I mean, just because the guy almost stepped on you doesn’t make him a bad person.”

“Yeah, my human has stepped on my tail plenty of times,” said Brutus.

“Let me tell you something,” said Mr. Ed, wagging a tentacle in Brutus and Harriet’s direction. “When you’ve lived with humans for as long as I have, you get a feel for the species. And I know that guy was up to no good. I could see it in his eyes.”

“Oh, my God,” said Harriet, rolling her own eyes at this. She then turned to me. “Max, you’re not seriously going to accept this case, are you?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, musing on Mr. Ed’s story. “It is entirely conceivable that Bob was behind his own abduction, and that the only thing he was interested in was the money, not Evelina’s hand in marriage.”

“Well, I’m not buying it,” said Harriet.

“Me neither,” said Brutus. “I think you were jealous, Mr. Ed. You were afraid that Evelina was going to get married and that once they moved in together you’d get kicked out. So you concocted this cockamamie story trying to paint Bob as the bad guy, when it’s pretty obvious the poor guy is the victim. Max, just skip this one. The client is biased.”

“I’m not a client!” said Mr. Ed. “I’m just a snail, who’s concerned about his human, and who’s turning to you, Max and Dooley, to help out a fellow pet.”

“A fellow pet!” said Brutus. “Everybody knows snails aren’t pets. They’re pests.”

Mr. Ed was shaking with sheer indignation at this slur.“I beg your pardon!” he cried.

“No human takes a snail as a pet,” said Brutus. “It’s pretty obvious you’ve made this whole story up, buddy. Is your name even Ed? We only have your word for it.”

“I’ll drag you to court for slander and defamation of character!” said the tiny snail.

“What court?” said Brutus, then made a throwaway gesture with his paw. “Oh, forget about it. I’m out of here. I don’t have to listen to this. Are you coming, sweet pea?”

“Absolutely, smoochie poo,” said Harriet.

Once our friends had disappeared through the hedge, Mr. Ed gave me and Dooley a pleading look.“I’m not lying, Mr. Max. I promise you that everything I just told you is the God’s honest truth.”

“I believe you, Mr. Ed,” I said, and I meant it, too. Due to the limited size of his cranium, I frankly didn’t think Mr. Ed could have made up such an elaborate story. Besides, why would he?

“So will you help me? Please?”

I shared a smile with Dooley and the latter said,“I’m happy to announce that Max will take your case, Mr. Ed. And so will I. Now tell me everything you know about those potatoes, because I have a feeling they’re the most important clue here.”

Chapter 6

“Can you believe how gullible Max and Dooley are?” said Brutus as he and Harriet moved into the house to see if Gran or Marge had managed to fill up their food bowls since the last time they checked—about twenty minutes ago. “Nobody keeps a snail as a pet, and definitely not some rich businesswoman.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” said Harriet. “We all know humans are eccentric, and especially the rich and famous.”

“Yeah, I know, but most of those keep pet snakes or lemurs or alpacas. Surely snails are pets non grata for that set.”

“Like I said, I wouldn’t write off the possibility,” said Harriet. “But where I do follow you is that this story of this Bob seems highly unlikely. We both saw that potato guy. Did he look like the kind of guy anyone would pay seventy-five thousand for?”

“More like the kind of guy you’d pay to get rid of,” Brutus agreed. “With his silly suit.”

“Well, it’s none of our business,” said Harriet. “If Max and Dooley want to waste their time running all over town because some snail told them to, Godspeed.” And she frowned at her bowl, which was empty, a sight she obviously didn’t enjoy. “Why is it that humans work so hard?” she lamented. “Gran is always sitting behind that desk saying hi and how are you to Tex’s patients, Marge is always giving or receiving books at that library of hers and Odelia is always writing articles about things that happened to other people. I mean—when are they finally going to start living, Brutus?”

“What do you mean?” asked Brutus, who’d also noticed that his bowl was empty, and didn’t like it any more than Harriet did. They could, of course, dig into Max or Dooley’s bowls, which were still pretty full. But the sacred code between the four cats that made up the Poole household strictly forbade that kind of behavior.

“Our humans,” said Harriet. “They work so hard, and for what?”

“Um… so they can buy food for us and for themselves?” Brutus suggested.

“Exactly! There should be more to life than working your fingers to the bone just so you can put food on the table for your family, right?”

Since both his and Harriet’s bowls were pretty much empty, Brutus would have suggested their humans didn’t work hard enough, since they had obviously failed in their most important task. “I wouldn’t say they work their fingers to the bone, exactly,” he said, still eyeing Max’s bowl with a keen eye. “You know… I was thinking that maybe, just this once, we could dip into one of the other bowls.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Max and Dooley’s bowls,” Brutus clarified.

Harriet turned to him.“Oh, no. No, no, no.”

“Just this once.”

“We can’t break the code, Brutus. You know we can’t.”

“But…”

“No. Absolutely not. No way.” Though Brutus could see she was slowly warming to the idea. She was taking in those bowls and soon her tongue stole out and she was licking her lips.

“We could tell them one of the neighbors snuck in and stole all of our food,” Brutus suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time either.”

“But that would be lying,” said Harriet, giving him a startled look.

“So? You know as well as I do that it’s not fair that Max has a food bowl here while he spends all his time next door and almost never sets paw in here.”

“It would be a pity for that lovely food to get stale,” Harriet agreed.

“Stale food is the worst.”

“Marge was complaining to me just the other day how she’d had to throw out some of Max’s food, as he hadn’t touched it in days and she was sure it had gone bad.”

“See? We’d be doing Marge a favor.”

For a moment, they both studied Max and Dooley’s bowls, then, as one cat, they descended upon the neglected delicacies and attacked those poor neglected nuggets.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Vesta was in a bad mood. She’d gone out to get some free potatoes and instead had found a dead man. Not exactly the kind of thing a person looking for a bargain hopes to find. Her conscience told her this is what you get when you try to get something for nothing, and of course in a sense her conscience was absolutely right.Then again, who wouldn’t like to fill up their pantry without cost when given the opportunity?

She took her place behind the desk at her son-in-law’s doctor’s office and picked up the phone, which had been ringing off the hook.

“Doctor Poole’s office,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“Well, aren’t you the consummate professional?” a familiar voice said on the other end of the call.

She smiled.“Scarlett. Don’t tell me you need to see Tex.”

“I heard you found a dead body this morning?”

“I didn’t find it. A truck driver did. I just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“Of course you were. So what do you reckon? Neighborhood watch business?”

“I don’t think so,” said Vesta as she powered up her computer. “He was found just beyond the town limit, way past the town sign. Now I know we of the watch like to take the broad view when determining our purview, but even for us that would be stretching things. Besides, as far as I can tell there was no foul play involved. Just some poor schmuck who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“So he wasn’t dead when he got onto that truck?”

Vesta paused. She hadn’t thought that far. “Do you know something I don’t?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“How did you know I was out there this morning?”

“I saw you. On the news. They were interviewing your son and I caught a glimpse of you and your cats rummaging around those potatoes.”

“For your information, I wasn’t rummaging. I was trying to find out if there were more dead people hiding in that cargo. One of the onlookers had the bright idea there was a load of illegal aliens hiding in the truck.”

“To do what? Cross the border? Mexico is two thousand miles away.”

She grinned.“I think you better get off the phone now, honey. I’m sure there are people who need to call in—actual patients?”

“See you at the usual place?”

“At the usual time,” she confirmed, and hung up. After she’d replaced the phone on the charger, she sat there thinking. What was the guy doing in that truck anyway? Hitching a ride? The more she thought about it, the more she smelled a rat. A smelly one.

Chapter 7

“Evelina must be very proud to have a pet like Mr. Ed,” Dooley said as we traversed the sidewalk on our way into town. “Not many pets would have their human’s back like Mr. Ed does. Don’t you think so, Max?”

“No, you’re absolutely right, Dooley. Mr. Ed is a credit to his owner. In fact he’s probably a better pet than most pets I know.”

We’d walked the distance to Main Street, and I had a vague plan in mind to talk to Odelia first. She is, after all, the real sleuth in our modest little outfit of amateur sleuths. Now I know what you’re thinking. Shouldn’t we head on down to the police station and inform the proper authorities about these new and frankly sensational developments? Unfortunately our local law enforcement personnel has but one flaw, and it is a doozy: they don’t talk to cats. And you can see how that would hamper a conversation. It would get awfully one-sided, and presumably cut very short indeed. Uncle Alec would smile affectionately while I tried to educate him on the finer points of Bob Rector’s recent past, and offer me a dish of milk. Chase would probably frown intelligently and nod equally intelligently and would give us a pat on the back and a ‘That’s just swell, you guys. Now run along and go and catch a mouse or something.’

Sherlock Holmes probably never had to put up with stuff like that when he talked to Inspector Lestrade. Then again, Sherlock Holmes wasn’t a cat, of course.

“What are you going to tell Odelia?” asked Dooley.

“I was thinking we tell her everything,” I said. “After all, she’s the one who should lead this investigation, not us.”

“But why? We’re the ones Mr. Ed hired to take on the case. He’s our client and we’re the detectives officially assigned to the case.”

“I know, but sometimes it helps when you’re human,” I explained. “Especially when dealing with other humans.” I shrugged. “It’s just easier this way. Trust me.”

“I don’t think it’s fair,” said Dooley, giving me some lip. “We should be in charge of the case and Odelia should be our loyal sidekick. The one who does all the legwork. Like Archie Bunker did for Mr. Nero Wolf.”

“I think the person you’re thinking of is Archie Goodwin. But you’re absolutely right, Dooley. We should be the ones running point on this case. But unfortunately this is still a man’s world, and so it’s man, not beast, who’s mostly in charge.” I gave him a wink. “Though we all knowthat behind every great woman is a great cat, right?”

We’d arrived at the offices of the Hampton Cove Gazette, the place Odelia calls home—when she’s not home, at least. We entered through the front door, which is always ajar, as Dan Goory, Odelia’s editor, adheres to a strict open-door policy, just in case a member of the public drops by with some killer scoop or front-page breaking-news story.

We walked straight through to Odelia’s office and found our human hard at work, bent over her laptop, eyes focused on the screen, looking the epitome of the hard-working newshound.

“Stop the press,” I announced. “We have some breaking news for you.” It was something I’d always wanted to say, even though nowadays the Gazette is mostly an online affair, and as far as I know the internet isn’t powered by a printing press.

Odelia looked up and rubbed her eyes.“Oh, hey, you guys. What’s going on?”

“A snail asked us to investigate the abduction of his human’s boyfriend,” Dooley explained, getting down to brass tacks without delay—a practice that he probably learned at our human’s knee. Reporters like to get to the juicy stuff ASAP.

Odelia frowned.“A snail asked you to do what now?”

I decided to take over from my friend.“Mr. Ed, who is a snail—”

“One of those creatures that like to carry their homes on their backs,” Dooley added helpfully.

“—has asked us to look into the kidnapping and death of his human’s boyfriend.”

“Oh, so it went from a kidnapping to a death in less than five seconds now, did it? That’s fast work, Max.”

“First he was kidnapped and then he was killed,” Dooley said. “Not the other way around. At least I don’t think so,” he said, giving me a questioning look.

“Usually people get kidnapped before they’re killed,” I confirmed. Though of course there are always kidnappers who abduct dead bodies, for whatever reason. But I didn’t think we were looking at such a case here.

“So… a snail’s human’s boyfriend was kidnapped then murdered? Am I getting this right?” asked Odelia, blinking a little now.

“His name was Bob Rector,” Dooley went on. “Though she liked to call him Bobby. They met on a dating site. They hit it off but then he was taken and the kidnappers wanted seventy-five thousand dollars for him. She paid the money but he wasn’t released.”

“Well, he was probably released,” I said. “Only by that time he was already dead.”

“Death by potato,” said Dooley, nodding. “Very sad.”

Odelia’s face betrayed a sudden animation. “Wait, you’re not telling me that this Bob, this guy who was kidnapped, is the same guy who was found this morning?”

“One and the same,” I confirmed cheerfully. I quickly tamped down on my cheerfulness, though. It doesn’t suit a serious-minded detective like me to be flippant when dealing with death. So it was in grave tones that I continued, “Mr. Ed thinks there’s something fishy about Bob’s death. In fact he thinks Bob was in on the whole thing. That the only reason he got involved with Evelina was to get his hands on her money.”

“So Mr. Ed—your snail—thinks Bob Rector set up his own kidnapping?”

“Mr. Ed isn’t our snail, Odelia,” said Dooley with a laugh. “He’s Evelina’s snail.”

“Uh-huh,” said Odelia pensively. I could see her little gray cells were working hard now, trying to grasp the salient facts. “So this Bob Rector sets up his own kidnapping, he collects the money, and then he disappears… only to turn up dead on a potato truck.”

“That is a very succinct and accurate summary,” I said admiringly.

“Oh, and Brutus and Harriet don’t believe Mr. Ed’s story,” said Dooley. “But Max and I do. Just so you know. In case they try to convince you that Mr. Ed is full of manure.”

“Full of crap,” I corrected automatically.

“I think maybe we should go and have a chat with Evelina,” I suggested. “And Evelina’s sister, too. Because as far as I understand, it was the sister who set things in motion. So she’s the one who could possibly tell us more about Bob and his motives.”

Odelia was still assuming the position of Rodin’s Thinker, though without taking off her clothes, of course. “I think I’ll go and talk to my uncle first,” she said, immediately countering my suggestion with a suggestion of her own.

That’s the trouble when you work with humans: they always have their own opinions—and more often than not what they say goes. What can I say? That’s the life of a cat.

Chapter 8

“What were you working on, Odelia?” asked Dooley as we set paw—or at least we set paw, while Odelia set foot—in the direction of the police station.

“It’s an interesting story, actually,” she said. “Wilfred Hilbourne, who’s an actual English lord, is coming to visit. He’ll be in town for a week or so, and Mayor Butterwick is going to give him the keys to the city. Or one of the keys, at least,” she added with a smile.

“Keys to the city?” asked Dooley. “What does he want with the keys to Hampton Cove?”

Odelia laughed.“It’s an honor bestowed on people the town feels have made a big contribution in some way. Lord Hilbourne’s mother actually grew up in Hampton Cove, before she met Wilfred’s dad, and followed him to England, where they live in a castle.”

“Lord Hilbourne,” I said musingly. “So he’s a lord, is he?”

“What’s a lord, Odelia?” asked Dooley.

“A lord is a man of noble rank or high office,” Odelia explained. “A peer.”

“A pear?”

“Not a pear. A peer. A member of the nobility like a duke, or an earl or a baron. Collectively they’re members of the House of Lords—part of the British Parliament.”

“So… he’s a politician?”

“Well, not really. It’s more of an honorary position. They don’t actually do a lot of the real decision-making as far as I understand. But it is a very prestigious title, and Mayor Butterwick, and the rest of the town council and many people in Hampton Cove, feel it’s an honor to have a son of the city who’s now a lord.”

“When is he arriving in town, this Lord Hilbourne?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s here already. He’s staying at the Hampton Cove Star. In fact I’m scheduled to meet him in… one hour,” she said as she checked her watch. “Dan asked me to conduct the interview. It’s going to be tomorrow’s front page.” She smiled down at us. “Unless your story of Bob and Evelina bumps Lord Hilbourne to the second page, of course.”

We’d arrived at the police station and trudged into the vestibule, where Dolores Peltz, the dispatcher and desk sergeant who presides over these hallowed halls, gave us a curious eye. “One of these days you have to explain to me why every time I see you you’re surrounded by a flock of cats,” she said in her customary raspy tones.

“It’s a clowder of cats,” I corrected the blond-haired dispatcher with a penchant for mascara, even though she probably couldn’t understand me.

“Well, you know how much I like my cats, Dolores,” said Odelia with a smile.

“Oh, I know, honey. You’re probably here about that potato truck incident?”

“You heard about that?” asked Odelia, approaching the woman’s desk.

“Heard about it? Phone’s been ringing off the hook. People wanna know what happened. They figure there must have been more dead bodies—a massacre. I keep telling them it was just the one guy, but they don’t believe me. Figure we’re trying to keep the whole thing under wraps.” She shookher head. “Damn conspiracy wackos.”

“Was it an accident, you think?” asked Odelia.

“I doubt it,” said the receptionist with a growl. “I think the guy was probably murdered and dumped on that truck.” She leaned a little closer and lowered her voice. “If you ask me this thing’s got mafia written all over it. Wouldn’t surprise me if the guy was a mobster and either some rival gang took him out or he was whacked by his own people for shooting his mouth off—or stealing from his crew. Take your pick.” She tapped her nose. “Trust me—when the truth comes out you’ll see I wasn’t far off. I got a nose for this stuff.”

We quickly resumed our trek through the police station’s inner sanctum and soon found ourselves in Odelia’s uncle’s office. Uncle Alec, who’s also the chief of police of our small town, was sitting behind his desk, quietly pulling at those few remaining strands of hair on his head. In front of him sat Chase, and he looked just as frustrated ashis boss.

“Everything all right?” asked Odelia when she took a seat in the last remaining chair and made herself comfortable. “You both look a little… flustered?”

“Flustered is right,” the Chief grumbled. “Turns out the guy on that potato truck was murdered. Can you believe it? For once I would have liked one of those open-and-shut cases you always hear so much about to land on my desk, but instead it’s one homicide after another.” He shook his grizzled head. “If this keeps up I’m going to apply for early retirement. I never signed up to be the chief of police of the homicide capital of America. I signed up to be in charge of a pleasant little town, at most having to drag in a couple of drunk and disorderlies on a Friday night, and otherwise enjoy the peaceful life of a small-town cop.” He gave his deputy a scathing glance. “I blame you, Kingsley.”

“Me!” said Chase, extremely surprised. “What did I do?”

“Ever since you joined up the number of murder cases has been on the rise. You’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you? To pester me.”

“Honestly, Uncle Alec, you can’t be serious,” said Odelia with a smile. “Now tell me more about this Bob Rector guy, and how he ended up on that truck.”

Uncle Alec stared at her in surprise.“Bob Rector? How do you know his name?”

“Oh, I have my sources,” she said as she patted my head. I’d assumed my position next to her chair, with Dooley inspecting the room and sniffing around to make sure nothing had changed since the last time we were in there. Cats like to make sure, you see. We like to be in the know.

“Well, by all means enlighten us,” said Uncle Alec, spreading his arms.

“Yeah, what do you know that we don’t?” asked Chase, giving me a look of appreciation—or at least I thought it was appreciation. With humans you never know. It could have been a look of frustration that we had discovered certain aspects of the case that the cops hadn’t. Then again, I doubted it. Chase is not one of those people who dislike cats. On the contrary.

“Well, Max and Dooley had a long talk with Evelina Pytel’s pet,” Odelia began.

“Evelina Pytel? Who’s Evelina Pytel?” asked Uncle Alec.

“Bob Rector’s girlfriend.” She took a deep breath, then proceeded to recount the story to her uncle and fianc?, who both sat riveted, hanging on her every word. “So you see,” she said in conclusion, “Mr. Rector’s kidnapping probably had something to do with the fact that he’s now dead.”

Uncle Alec and Chase shared a look of consternation.

“And this Evelina Pytel’s dog told you all this?” asked Odelia’s uncle.

“Dog!” I cried. “Why do humans always assume that if it’s a pet it has to be a dog?!”

Both cops looked down at me, their attention no doubt attracted by my loud meows.

“What is he saying?” asked Chase, crooking a quizzical eyebrow.

“He’s taking offense at your assumption that Evelina’s pet is a dog,” Odelia said. “But that’s neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is—”

“So it was a cat?” asked the Chief, like most cops unable to let a mystery go without having been supplied a satisfying answer.

“Actually it was a snail,” Odelia muttered quietly and almost inaudibly. In fact even to my trained cat’s ears I had to prick up those ears to pick up the sound of her voice.

“See? It was a cat,” said the Chief. “I knew it,” he added with a wink in my direction, which only managed to allay my pique to some extent.

“I don’t think she said cat, Chief,” said Chase, whose ears apparently are almost as good as mine.

Odelia sighed.“Okay, so it was a snail.”

Uncle Alec stared at her.“A…”

“Snail. The slimy creatures? Who carry their homes on their backs?”

The chief blinked a couple of times, then burst into raucous laughter. After a few moments he caught onto the fact that neither his deputy nor his niece were joining in, and he stopped the frolicking rollicking display of mirth.“You’re serious?”

“Yes, Uncle Alec. A snail hired Max and Dooley’s services to try and find out what happened to Evelina’s money, and whether Mr. Ed’s suspicions that Bob engineered his own abduction are true.”

“Mr… Ed?” said the Chief, and for a moment I was afraid he would once more become the victim of a laughter attack. He managed to tamp down on his merriment, though judging from the tinge of crimson that crept up his cheeks a not inconsiderable effort was required to achieve this superhuman feat. “So let me get this straight. A snail called Mr. Ed thinks Evelina Pytel’s boyfriend set up his own abduction to get his hands on seventy-five thousand of Mr. Benjamin’s crispiest and then ended up dead. Next you’re going to tell me this Mr. Ed killed the guy, out of spite.”

“No, I don’t think Mr. Ed had a hand in Bob’s demise,” said Odelia stiffly.

“Not a hand—a tentacle!” said Uncle Alec with another guffaw. He wiped tears from his eyes. “I’m sorry. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, along comes a crazy story like that.”

“Well, crazy or not, it’s the truth,” said Odelia. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“How did Bob die?” I asked from my perch on the floor.

I felt it was a little unbecoming for the lead detective in the case to have to sit on the floor, while his deputies were all high up on chairs. Then again, that’s the world we live in, unfortunately: a cat-eat-cat world, so to speak.

“Max wants to know how Bob died,” said Odelia, transmitting my question.

“Shot through the heart. Single bullet, perfect aim,” said Chase.

“How long ago was this?” asked Odelia.

“Abe is still working on his report,” said the Chief. “But he figures he must have been shot late last night, somewhere between eleven and one o’clock.”

“So how did he end up on that potato truck?” asked Odelia.

“That, my dear,” said Uncle Alec, “is the seventy-five-thousand-dollar question.”

Chapter 9

“So you know what to do, right?” said Suppo Bonikowski as he glanced out of the window of their hotel room.

“How many times are you going to ask me?” said his cousin Wim. “Of course I know what to do. You’ve only told me about a million times already.”

“It’s just that timing is everything,” Suppo said as he turned away from the window and walked over to his laptop which he’d positioned on a small side table. “We only got one shot at this, Wim. And if we blow it—”

“I know! So stop pestering me and make sure you’ve got things all set up on your end, all right?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. The technology is sound. In fact I can’t imagine why it’s taken people so long to discover the wealth of possibilities.”

“What do you mean?”

“What we’re doing is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Suppo as he held up the watch. “We can do so much more. In fact I like to think of this as a test run. If things work out as planned, I suggest we take this show on the road and start working our way through the entire supply of—”

Just then, a tap on the door interrupted his speech. Both cousins shared a look of alarm.

“Probably room service,” said Wim, as he pointed to the computer.

Suppo quickly closed the laptop and slipped the watch into his pocket, then glanced around to see if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Meanwhile Wim had moved over to the door and yelled,“Who is it?”

“It’s your neighbors!” a loud voice announced.

Once more both cousins shared a look of concern, then Suppo nodded, and Wim opened the door a crack.“What do you want?” he asked, not at all in a neighborly fashion. The milk of human kindness that usually flows from one neighbor to another was distinctly lacking in his speech.

A smallish man was standing on the threshold. His face was contorted into a kind of ingratiating leer. Next to him, a large and burly specimen stood. Whereas the first guy looked like a ferret, this second one was large and looked like an oversized gorilla. He had one of those faces only a mother could love, and then only with her eyes closed.

“Hi,” said the ferret. “My name is Jerry and this is Johnny. We’re your neighbors.” He vaguely gestured to his right. “We’re over there,” he clarified. “Now this may sound like a strange question but—”

“We wanna change rooms,” said the big one in a booming voice. “Cause we don’t like the room we’re in and so we wanna change.”

“Shut up, Johnny,” said the one who called himself Jerry. “He’s right, though,” he added. “We would like to change rooms. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with the room we’re in, mind you,” he hastened to say. “In fact it’s a great room. Tip-top. It’s just that… my friend here suffers from vertigo, see, and our room’s got a balcony. And every time he steps onto that balcony he gets dizzy.” He glanced past Wim into the room and his face cleared. “I knew it. No balcony,” he explained. “Perfect.”

“I told you, Jer. I told you this room didn’t have no balcony.”

“Shut up, Johnny. Let me do the talking.” He turned back to Wim. “So how about it?”

“Why don’t you just stay off the balcony?” Suppo suggested. He’d joined the conversation at the door.

“Um…” said Jerry, who clearly hadn’t thought of this possibility.

“It’s the thought that counts,” said Johnny. “See, I don’t even have to go on the balcony to know that the balcony is there and Icould go on the balcony if I wanted to go on the balcony, which I don’t. But knowing that that balcony is out there just gives me the—”

“Shut up, Johnny. I’ll do the talking.”

“Sure, Jer.”

“Look, we don’t want to swap rooms,” said Wim, who had had enough of this pointless conversation with two guys who were obviously morons. “So buzz off, will you?”

“What my cousin means to say is,” said Suppo, plastering a polite smile onto his mug, “that you should ask reception for a different room if you’re not happy with yours.”

“But we asked, and they said they got no more rooms available,” said Johnny.

“Well, I guess there’s nothing we can do about that,” said Wim.

“But…” Johnny said.

If Wim would have had a neck, the veins in that neck probably would have stood out at this point. Instead, he raised his voice and repeated,“Nothing we can do about it.”

“But we…” Jerry began. But before he could say anything the door was slammed in his face.

“Stupid people with their stupid ideas,” Wim muttered, shaking his head.

“Best to stay polite,” Suppo admonished him. “We don’t want to get in trouble with the neighbors.”

“I’m not going to stand here and listen to this nonsense about vertigo. If the guy’s got vertigo why did he take a room on the third floor anyway?”

“Let’s not get into this,” Suppo suggested. “Instead let’s go over the plan once more.”

“To hell with the plan! I know the plan backward and forward. So let’s just order lunch and get this thing done.”

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Over in the next room, Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale had closed the door and were evaluating their recent performance.

“You just had to go and shoot your mouth off, didn’t you?” Jerry grumbled.

“I just wanted to make sure they understood, Jer.”

The big oaf was standing there looking at that balcony as if it was about to kill him. It kinda pained Jerry just to look at him.

“We gotta switch rooms,” said Jerry. “There’s no way around it.”

“Maybe we can knock em over the head and stuff em in the closet?” Johnny suggested.

“Not a bad idea,” Jerry admitted. But then he decided against it. “Too risky. What if they start raising Cain?” No, they needed to find a better solution.

“We could truss ‘em up, stuff a gag in their mouths and make sure they won’t talk.”

“Still too risky. If we could just make them change their minds. We need that room.”

“I thought the thin one was nice,” said Johnny as he carefully took a seat at the table in front of the window, still darting nervous glances in the direction of that balcony. “The fat one wasn’t nice. He was very rude to you, Jer. I wouldn’t mind knocking his block off.”

“He was pretty suspicious,” Jerry agreed. “If it had just been the thin guy I think he would have gone for it. But that big guy clearly wasn’t willing to play ball.” Jerry thought for a moment. Then, as was his habit, he arrived at one of those sudden reversals. “All right. We’ll do it your way.”

Johnny’s face lit up with a goofy smile. “We will?”

“Sure. But let’s not hit them too hard. We don’t want them to get hurt. Well, maybe a little, just for being rude.”

“I’ll take the fat one, you take the thin one.”

“Deal.”

Sometimes when you wanted to get things done, you just had to improvise.

Chapter 10

Tex glanced into the waiting room and saw that his loyal receptionist had left already. Early lunch, probably. Fortunately there was only one patient left, so he beckoned her in. As the town’s foremost medical doctor, he knew pretty much everyone who lived in Hampton Cove, but this particular patient he’d never seen before. She was a handsome woman in her late twenties or early thirties, with a blond bob and the most striking blue eyes he’d ever seen. He bade her to take a seat and assumed his position of attentiveness on his side of the mahogany desk he’d inherited from the doctor who’d operated this office before he was lucky enough to take it over when the old man retired.

“So what can I do for you, Miss…”

“Mrs. Bezel,” said the woman. “Emma Bezel.”

“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of making your acquaintance,” said Tex as his hands inadvertently flew up to his white helmet of hair to make sure everything was in place. He might be a doctor, and as such viewed by most people as some kind of sexless being, but when in the presence ofa gorgeous woman like Emma Bezel he was also a man, eager to make a good impression on Beauty when it happened to drift into his ken.

“No, I only moved to town a couple of months ago,” said the woman with a timid little smile. She’d cast down her eyes and was wringing delicate hands that lay in her lap. She was dressed in a white blouse, a pink ankle-length skirt and white leather mules. The ensemble became her well. “Thething is, Doctor Poole, that you come highly recommended by my sister. Evelina Pytel?”

“Oh, right. I know Evelina, of course. She never mentioned she had a sister.”

“I’m actually not here for myself, doctor, but for her. You see, Evelina has recently received a great shock, and she’s not been feeling well.”

“Oh,” he said, concern making him frown. “What happened?”

“Well, the man she was seeing has betrayed her in the most awful way possible. He really did a number on her, and she’s been in a terrible state ever since she found out…”

“Found out what?”

“Well, he disappeared, you see. They were dating and things were going really well, and then suddenly he didn’t show up for one of their dates and he hasn’t been answering her calls.” She threw up her hands. “He simply vanished from the face of the earth. Gone without a trace. Obviously she’s taken it very badly. She thought he was the one, you see.”

“I see,” said Tex, nodding and wondering why this should concern him. He was, after all, the town physician and not the town’s matchmaker.

“So now I was thinking…”

“Yes?” said Tex, his demeanor more kindly than his thoughts. He didn’t mind when patients brought their stories of life’s little vicissitudes to his door, but often felt that they attributed qualities to him he simply did not possess. He could mend broken bones, but unfortunately the healing of broken hearts was beyond his professional capabilities.

“The thing is,” said the woman, starting again as she seemed to be having trouble getting the words out, “well, I actually feel that I’m to blame, Doctor Poole. It was me who brought the two of them together, you see. Evelina had been single for far too long, and so when I saw an opportunity to set her up with a man I thought was considerate, kind and potentially a wonderful partner, I didn’t hesitate. I made his acquaintance standing in line at the General Store, and when he told me he was single, I thought he’d be perfect for my sister. And now I feel absolutely terrible about what happened.”

“I understand,” Tex said, still not quite catching on. “Do you want me to pay your sister a visit? Perhaps give her something to dull the pain?” He could think of a couple of things that would relieve some of that anxiety, if that’s what Mrs. Bezel was after.

“Doctor Poole,” said the woman, adjusting her position on the chair, “you should know that Evelina speaks very highly of you. In fact she’s told me on numerous occasions how much she has come to rely on you.”

“She does, does she?”

“Yes, so I just thought… I just figured… well, I hoped…” A blush had settled on the woman’s cheeks, and Tex was more in the dark now than ever.

“I could always give her a mild sedative,” he suggested. “Something to make her sleep a little better? Nothing too strong, of course.”

“I was actually thinking more along the lines of…” Emma Bezel seemed to steel herself, then blurted out, “Doctor Poole, I would like you to date my sister.”

“What?!”

“At least take her out a couple of times.”

“But…”

“Make her feel that she’s still desirable, you know.”

“But, Mrs. Bezel!” said Tex. Whatever he’d been expecting, it most certainly wasn’t this! “I’m a married man,” he said, for good measure displaying his wedding ring.

“I know,” said Mrs. Bezel, nodding as she took in the gold band, “and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t want you and my sister to actually become a couple or anything. I just want her to go out a couple of times with a good man. A man she respects, and a man I can trust not to break her heart like the previous fellow did.”

“Surely you can’t be serious,” said Tex, taken aback by this extraordinary suggestion.

“I know it’s a little unorthodox, perhaps, but…”

“Unorthodox! It’s unethical, Mrs. Bezel, not to mention my wife would probably kill me if I started dating a patient.”

“She wouldn’t have to know, Doctor Poole,” said Mrs. Bezel with a hopeful look. She’d scooted to the tip of her chair and was now pleading with a passion that became her. Her blue eyes were ablaze, and her cheeks were flushed. “You can take her on a few dates—two or three perhaps, and then you simply let her down easy. You could take her to dinner in Happy Bays, where people don’t know you so there won’t be any gossip.”

Tex was shaking his head throughout.“My dear Mrs. Bezel, I can tell that you love your sister dearly, for you to come up with a solution like this, but I can assure you—”

“I’ll pay you!” suddenly the woman said, and took out her purse.

“Oh, no, please,” said Tex. This was simply too much.

“How much do you want? I have money. I can pay you… a thousand?”

“Please, Mrs. Bezel.”

“Two thousand? I’ll pay youten thousand… per date. Let’s say three dates at ten thousand each, that’s thirty thousand. Even you wouldn’t say no to that kind of money, would you, Doctor Poole?”

“But, Mrs. Bezel!”

“Please,” said the woman, folding her hands now in a gesture of supplication. “I’m desperate. Evelina isn’t eating, she isn’t sleeping, she’s been crying non-stop since that awful man stood her up. I’m afraid that if this continues she will harm herself.”

“Have you considered taking her to see a professional?”

“I thought I was doing that right now?”

“I mean a psychologist. Someone at whose feet she can lay all of her troubles.”

“She’s been laying all of her troubles at my feet, and now I’m laying them at yours, Doctor Poole.”

“I really can’t…”

“But I’m begging you!”

“I’m sorry.”

“She’s your patient, doctor. If she takes her own life, wouldn’t you wish that you had done everything in your power to save her?”

“Of course, but…”

“Well, then? You can save her now. It’s your duty—your sacred duty to save my sister’s life. You swore an oath, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. But I think you’ll find that your interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath is a little… original.”

“Look, like I said, I don’t expect you to actually date my sister. I’m not crazy. I know you’re married. That you have a family. And that’s exactly why I chose you. You’re probably the only man left on this planet that my sister trusts and respects, except maybe for our dad.”

“Okay, suppose I say yes.”

“Oh, please!”

“Just supposing, I’m not saying I will do it. But what happens when after the third date I tell your sister I don’t want to see her anymore? How do you think that’s going to affect her? Another blow, so soon after the first one might very well be the final nail in the coffin of her faith in mankind.”

“By that time I’ll have arranged for her to go on a long vacation with me—far away from here. The only problem is that our cruise isn’t sailing until next month, and thirty days is too long for her to be left alone, wallowing in heartache.”

“So you want to use me as a kind of stopgap until your sister can go on a cruise?”

Emma Bezel smiled shyly.“I wouldn’t exactly put it in those terms, Doctor Poole, but yes, I want you to take her mind off things for a while. Until I can get her away from here—away from the place where everything reminds her of her failed affair with Bob Rector.”

For some reason the name seemed familiar to Tex, but then he discarded the notion.

“Look, I’m not asking you to engage in some kind of torrid love affair with my sister. Just go out with her a couple of times. Distract her. Make her smile again. Make her feel that the world isn’t all dark and gloomy. That there still are decent people living in it.”

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head and idly fingering his wedding band.

“Simply be a friend to her. A doctor and a gentleman.”

“All I’d have to do is take her to dinner?”

“Or lunch. No romance involved whatsoever.” Mrs. Bezel took a deep breath, and looked willing to stake it all on one final plea. “My sister doesn’t need your medicine right now, doctor. She doesn’t need your pills. What she does need is your kindness. Your humanity. Your friendship and your compassion. And right now you’re the only person I can think of who fits the bill.” She directed another one of those pleading glances in his direction that did so much to weaken his resolve. “Please?” she added in a small voice.

Chapter 11

“So what do you think?”

“What do I think of what?” said Vesta as she took a tentative sip from her chamomile tea. She preferred hot chocolate, but her doctor, who also happened to be her son-in-law as well as her boss, had recently advised her not to consume so much sugar as it was bad for her. Also, all that chocolate made her hyperactive, which apparently was a bad thing, too. She made a face. “This stuff is probably going to kill me even faster than my regular hot chocolate.” She raised her hand. “Waiter! Hey, waiter!”

Dutifully the young man whose task it was to keep the customers frequenting the Hampton Cove Star’s outside dining room happy, eagerly came hopping over.

“Please dump this in the nearest toilet where it belongs,” she said, handing him the terrible brew, “and give me my usual.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the kid, who had yet to outgrow his pimple-faced phase, and quickly hurried to fulfill this treasured customer’s order.

Scarlett, who’d ordered her usual high-caffeinated drink, was grinning throughout the scene. “I don’t understand why you insist on torturing yourself with those herbal concoctions, Vesta. You know you hate them, and still you insist on trying them all out.”

“It’s my son-in-law,” she lamented. “He says chocolate isn’t good for me. The sugar does something to my liver, the caffeine does something to my heart and the rest isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be either. Though if I listened to him I wouldn’t be allowed to eat anything I like. He frowns at meat, cheese, coffee, chocolate, cake…”

“That’s doctors for you. Their only joy in life is to make life for the rest of us miserable. That’s why I never go to them.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. You go to them all the time. In fact you’re probably Tex’s most loyal patient.”

“I humor him. He likes to prescribe me stuff, and I like to throw away his prescriptions. That way we’re both happy.”

“You’re crazy,” Vesta said. “Now what were we talking about?”

“Bob Rector,” said Scarlett as she took a nibble from one of those miniature pastries that Tex had told Vesta were pretty bad, too. “Also known as Mr. Potato Man.”

“Look, I talked to my son and he says he’s got the thing well in hand. In other words, he told me to stay out of it.”

“And when have you ever allowed yourself to be told off by your own son?”

“You’ve got a point,” Vesta admitted as she watched the pimpled kid return, carrying a tray with an extremely delicious-looking hot chocolate.

“Extra-large hot chocolate, with extra cream and marshmallows,” the kid announced in a high-pitched voice, then placed the order on the table and blinked a couple of times in quick rapidity before asking, “Is it true that you’re Chief Alec’s mom, ma’am?” His pimpled face had taken on a dark hue. It made his pimples practically light up like so many little Christmas lights.

“That’s right,” said Vesta as she licked her lips at so much gooey goodness standing at attention at arm’s length. “Why do you want to know?”

“The thing is, ma’am,” said the kid, gulping a little, and in the process giving his Adam’s apple a thorough workout, “that currently we have a VIP guest staying with us. At the hotel,” he added to make his meaning perfectly clear, “not the dining room.”

“Is that so?” said Vesta, taking an extra-large sip from her extra-large drink and savoring the extra-delicious taste as it flooded her taste buds. Whatever Tex said, something that tasted so absolutely divine couldn’t possibly be all bad, now could it?

“The thing is, this VIP guest has expressed a desire to invite a guest to his suite—and he did. Last night. I know it’s not really allowed, but sometimes when guests ask, we provide, you know. Even though we might, um, like, frown upon the practice?”

Vesta rolled her eyes.“Just spit it out, buddy. What are you trying to tell us?”

“I think what our hot cocoa-pushing friend here wants to say,” said Scarlett, “is that this VIP guest invited a lady of the night to accompany him in his room, and even though the hotel officially doesn’t allow that kind of thing, they supplied him with just such a lady. Isn’t that right,son?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the kid, visibly relieved at Scarlett’s assistance.

“So?” said Vesta, who still didn’t see what Dr. Pimple Popper’s next victim was driving at.

“Well, the young lady never seems to have left the gentleman’s room,” said the kid as he rubbed his nose nervously, polishing it to a shine. “The night clerk never saw her leave, and neither did the day guy, and the cleaner who went in just now to do the room saw no sign of her either. The thing is—we don’t want to call the manager otherwise he’ll call the cops, and my colleagues will probably get fired for breaking hotel policy.”

“So you don’t want to call the cops and you don’t want to tell management,” Vesta summed up the affair succinctly. “But the girl is missing and you worry that your VIP guest did—what, exactly?”

“I think he may have d-d-done something to h-h-her?” the kid stammered.

“You mean like, killed her?” asked Scarlett.

“Yeah?”

“Who is this VIP guest, exactly?” asked Vesta.

“Oh, don’t you know, Vesta?” said Scarlett. “There’s only one VIP guest staying here at the moment and that’s some English lord or something. Lord… Hillbilly?”

“Lord Hilbourne,” said the kid, once again much relieved by Scarlett’s perspicacity. “The thing is… I know this girl, ma’am. She’s not usually into this kind of thing, but I guess she needed the money, and so…”

“What’s the name of this girl?” asked Vesta.

“Cody. Cody Sorbet. So I thought maybe you could make some discreet inquiries? I know you run the neighborhood watch? And you’re probably used to this kind of thing?”

“Sure, I’ll ask around,” said Vesta, gratified that her reputation was slowly spreading.

“And you won’t tell your son? At least not in an—in an… “ His Adam’s apple did some more somersaults. “In an official capacity?”

Vesta smiled.“I get it. You want me to tell Alec, but you don’t want him to get involved—not officially at least.”

“Exactly, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” And with these words, he suddenly turned on his heel and was gone, hurrying back inside as if his rear end was on fire.

“See?” said Scarlett. “The neighborhood watch is becoming a force to be reckoned with.”

“You know what? I don’t think I’ll tell Alec. I think we’ll handle this ourselves.”

“But if this Lord Whatshisface really hurt this girl Cody…”

“Then we’ll tell the cops. But first we need to find out what happened. For all we know the night clerk fell asleep at the job and Cody is safe and sound at home.”

“So now we have two cases to work on,” said Scarlett, as she held up her coffee cup.

Vesta raised her own cup and they clinked.“To the neighborhood watch. May the sleuthing forces be with us.”

Chapter 12

“I’m sorry, you guys,” said Odelia as we walked out of the police precinct, “but before I can go and interview Evelina Pytel I have an interview with Lord Hilbourne scheduled.”

“That’s all right,” I said cheerfully. “We’ll join you. I’ve never met an English lord before.”

“Me neither!” said Dooley. “I wonder what he looks like. Probably very distinguished. Like those people in Downton Abbey.”

Recently the Pooles had been on a Downton Abbey kick. Well, more Odelia and her mother and grandmother, actually, with Chase, Tex and Uncle Alec reluctant bystanders.

“Do you think he has a butler and maids and all that?” asked Dooley.

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Odelia. “And I’m going to have to disappoint you again, I’m afraid, as I can’t take you along on my interview. Lord Hilbourne’s rider specifically states he doesn’t want any pets present at the interview. He must have heard about you.”

“A rider? You mean he brought along his horse all the way from England?” asked Dooley.

“No, a rider is a list of stipulations for interviews,” Odelia explained, “and the rider I got from Lord Hilbourne’s people clearly stated I should leave my pets at home.”

“Too bad,” I said. “I would have loved to meet the guy.”

“I don’t,” said Dooley. “If he doesn’t like cats, I don’t want to meet him.”

Odelia smiled and crouched down to pat us both on the head.“While I go and talk to Lord Hilbourne, why don’t you ask around to see if anyone has heard something about what happened to Bob Rector? And while you’re at it, maybe you can ask about Evelina Pytel, too. A woman who loses seventy-five thousand dollars in a botched handover and doesn’t callthe police just may have something to hide.”

So Odelia went one way, while Dooley and I went the other.“Do you think Evelina had something to do with the death of her boyfriend, Max?” asked Dooley.

“I’m sure I don’t know, Dooley. Though it’s entirely possible, of course. At this point we don’t know very much, do we?”

“No, we don’t,” he said. “All we really know is that Lord Hilbourne doesn’t like cats.”

“Pets,” I corrected him. “He doesn’t like pets.”

“So weird. I thought all those English lords loved pets. Like that guy in Downton Abbey. You practically never see him without his dog. As if they’re attached at the hip.”

“He probably left his dog at home,” I said, “and now he doesn’t want to see any other dog because he misses his own dog so much and other dogs remind him of his own sweet mutt.”

Dooley sighed an exaggerated sigh.“Max, you always think the best of people, don’t you?”

Soon we’d arrived at our destination, which was the General Store, where our friend Kingman resides. He belongs to the General Store’s owner and proprietor Wilbur Vickery. The impressive piebald was sitting in his usual place: out in front of the store, greeting passing pets and people, and generally being true to his reputation as Hampton Cove’s unofficial feline mayor.

“Max! Dooley!” he cried when he caught sight of us. “I was just thinking about you guys!”

“You were?” I said, greatly surprised. Kingman isn’t all that fond of male cats. He’s more into the female of the species. In fact whenever he sees a female feline he gets all giddy and starts putting the moves on her—rarely though his seduction techniques bear fruit. In that sense he’svery much his owner’s pet. Wilbur is crazy about the ladies, too, but only very rarely—or ever—succeeds in dragging one back to his cave for some much-desired nookie.

“Shanille was here just now, and she told me you’ve made friends with a snail? I told her that couldn’t possibly be true. No friends of mine would ever lower themselves to the level of the slimiest of bottom-dwellers, the creepiest of crawlies.”

“Well, for your information Shanille was correct,” I said. “We have indeed made friends with a snail, and he’s told us a lot of very interesting stuff, too.”

“Impossible,” Kingman sneered. “Look, you guys, I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but there’s a strict order in this world we live in. At the top of the food chain, of course, there’s our humans, then just below there’s cats and dogs—and maybe horses, too. And then you get the lesser mammals like cows and goats and sheep and the like. Even lower you have your chickens and your birds, which serve only one purpose and that is to be eaten by us. And at the bottom you’ll find such slithery creatures as worms and… snails.” He laughed a deprecating laugh. “Now you’re not seriously going to lower yourselves by getting chummy with the scum of the earth, are you? Seriously!”

“But aren’t we all creatures of God, Kingman?” asked Dooley. “The fishes in the sea, and the crickets in the field, and the birds in the trees? We’re all part of this same beautiful world, aren’t we?”

“Oh, Dooley, Dooley, Dooley,” said Kingman, shaking his head at so much naivet?. “You really have a lot to learn about the way the world works. Look, let me give you this one piece of advice: don’t talk to this snail again, and if anyone asks you, simply tell them it’s just a load of filthy gossip. No truth to the rumor whatsoever. You never saw this snail, you never talked to this snail, you never laid eyes on the foul creature!”

“But we did lay eyes on Mr. Ed,” said Dooley. “And we did talk to him. And he hired us to find out what happened to his human’s boyfriend Bob.”

Kingman gave Dooley an appalled look, and swallowed.“A snail, being kept as a pet by a human. But that’s an abomination!”

“Still,” I said, satisfied to see Kingman’s belief system being jerked around like this. “Evelina Pytel has a snail for a pet.”

“And Mr. Ed is a very clever snail, too,” said Dooley. “He immediately saw that Max and I are the perfect cats to solve this case. Isn’t that right, Max?”

“Yeah, he hired us—I mean, no money exchanged paws, obviously, but it’s clear that he heard great things about us and wanted to retain our services.”

“He’s going to spread the word,” Dooley pointed out. “So when we manage to pull this off I’m sure other pets—whether vertebrate or invertebrate—will soon come crawling out of the woodwork, or from under a flat stone, to ask us to do what we do best: play detective.”

“Oh, dear Lord,” said Kingman, closing his eyes and looking absolutely horrified. “This is too much for me. My best friends. Getting involved with a snail.” And with these words, he slunk back inside the General Store and out of sight, a broken cat.

We watched him leave, and Dooley turned to me with a questioning look on his face.“I didn’t know Kingman was a snail hater, Max,” he said.

“It’s news to me, too, Dooley.”

“I just hope he’ll still want to talk to us.”

“I’m sure that once he gets over his initial shock, he’ll be fine,” I assured my friend.

The whole thing brought home to me the fact that some species are clearly better positioned than others, as far as reputations are concerned. And as Dooley and I walked on, he said,“Do you think Kingman hates spiders, too? Spiders are very useful creatures, Max. And they don’t deserve the bad reputation they have.”

“I know, Dooley. Spiders are great. And so are snails. No matter what Kingman says.”

“And birds aren’t there just to be eaten by cats, are they, Max?”

“Of course not. Birds have every reason to inhabit this world. Just like the rest of us.”

We’d arrived at the barbershop and traipsed inside. Buster, Fido Siniawski’s Main Coon, can usually be relied upon to supply those precious few nuggets of gossip straight from the horse’s mouth—though in this case those horses are in fact Fido’s customers, who like to gossip to their heart’s content while Fido works on perfecting their hairdo.

Buster wasn’t anywhere to be found, though, and so we walked through to the private part of the barbershop, where Fido lives, and where Buster likes to pretend he is in charge. Cats often suffer from that delusion, though not as much as dogs, of course.

We passed through the living room, where a TV stood blaring in a corner, even though there was no one around, then took a peek in the kitchen, where a second TV stood spreading its festival of noise and colorful images, and finally, after Dooley took a sniff from Buster’s kibble bowl and resisted the powerful urge to take a sampling, we passed through the backdoor and into the backyard.

“Buster?” I called out when I couldn’t see a sign of our friend. “Buster, are you here?”

Fido’s backyard is just a small strip of city garden, but the man who likes to work wonders with people’s hirsute appendages has done his best to make it a gorgeous plot of floral delight. A riot of color greeted us, and there was even a pergola, also bedecked with an abundance of flowers. A wrought-iron bench had been placed next to a gurgling, burbling little fountain, and it was as if we’d suddenly gone from the hustle and bustle of midtown to an oasis of peace and quiet. I mean, we could still hear cars hooting and tooting in the distance, but the greenery and the colorful splendor mademe feel right at home. There was even a tiny red-chested bird tweeting away to its heart’s content, not a care in the world. He probably was aware that both Dooley and I have signed a strict no-bird-eating policy, and so has Buster, who appreciates all creatures under the sun.

“Here, you guys,” suddenly Buster’s voice sounded, and when we both trotted over, we found our friend lounging in the sun, next to a birdbath, where more birds were enjoying a feathery good time, dipping their little beaks into the crystal-clear water.

“Nice to see that at least one cat doesn’t think birds’ only purpose is to serve as food for cats,” said Dooley, a touch of rancor in his tone that I’d never heard there before.

Buster gave my friend a wide-eyed look of shock.“What did you just say, Dooley?”

“Kingman just propounded his world view,” I explained. “He seems to feel that there’s an order to the natural world, with cats near the top, and other species near the bottom. Birds, I’m sorry to say, don’t feature very high on Kingman’s list, except as food for cats.”

“I would never eat a bird,” said Buster earnestly, as he placed a paw on his furry chest. “Never, never, ever! I love birds—and not as a source of nourishment, either.”

“Me, too,” said Dooley. “I think birds are the best. They can fly and they look so nice.”

“What are you doing out here?” I asked as both Dooley and I took a load off and settled in next to our friend. I like the sensation of grass tickling my belly, and it was tickling my belly now to a great degree. I also like the smell of grass, and I don’t mind admitting I was soon chomping down on a few blades. It helps with my digestion.

“Things got a little hectic out there,” said Buster. “A woman dropped by with two great, big dogs, and the moment they saw me they started chasing me around the shop. So Fido figured it was probably safer for me back here than out in front.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why some dogs think it’s okay to pick on the little guy like that.”

“Some dogs are bullies,” I admitted.

“We’re actually here because of our investigation, Buster,” said Dooley, who clearly felt we’d spent enough time chit-chatting and needed to get down to business. “A snail asked us to look into the death of his human’s boyfriend, and we were hoping you could tell us some more.”

To his credit, Buster neither burst out laughing nor gave us a look of abject disgust. The only thing he said was,“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. The only chatter I’ve picked up these last couple of days has revolved around this Lord Hilbourne character and his visit to Hampton Cove. It seems everyone and their grandmother can’t stop speculating about the man, though truth be told the grandmothers are mainly wondering if he’s single and if he’d be interested in dating their granddaughters.”

“Is Lord Hilbourne still single?” I asked, for it was something I’d been wondering myself, to be honest. Okay, all right. I may be a first-rate sleuth, but I’m not above spreading some lowly gossip and neither is Dooley.

“Uh-oh,” said Dooley. “Odelia has just gone to meet the guy, and she specifically told us not to come.” A look of concern had come into his mild hazel eyes. “That can only mean one thing, you guys.”

“What?” asked Buster, having that breathless air about him that your true spreader and receiver of gossip often gets.

“That not only is Lord Hilbourne still single, but that our Odelia is susceptible to the man’s charms.”

“Nonsense,” I said immediately. “Odelia would never, ever cheat on Chase.”

“Not even with an English lord?” asked Buster. “I don’t know, Max, but Fido has been busier than ever this week, and practically all of his clients have been women wanting to look their best for the big ceremony at Town Hall this afternoon. Secretly they all seem to hope they’ll be able to snag the man’s attention and that before long he’ll whisk them away with him to his ancestral castle to live the life of the lady of the manor.”

“Not Odelia,” I insisted. “She loves Chase. They’re getting married on Saturday!”

“She wouldn’t be the first woman who’s suffering from those pre-wedding jitters and whose eye is turned by a handsome young royal,” Buster pointed out.

“First off, Odelia is not suffering from pre-wedding jitters,” I said. “And secondly, Lord Hilbourne is not a royal. Or is he?”

“I bet he’s the Queen’s cousin,” said Buster. “Twenty-first in line to the throne or something, which are odds good enough to make quite a few of our local ladies spend a fortune on a new hairdo and a new dress.”

“And Odeliais suffering from pre-wedding jitters, Max,” said Dooley. “Or why else has she been kicking us both off the bed lately?”

“That’s true,” I admitted. “She is nervous, but that’s normal. Odelia hates all the fuss that is involved with her upcoming wedding. She told me so herself. She’d much rather have a small wedding—just her nearest and dearest. Not this big production her wedding has turned into.”

“Is it true that the Mayor is going to give a speech?” asked Buster eagerly.

“I guess so,” I said. “She is the bride’s uncle’s girlfriend, after all.”

“Poor Odelia,” said Buster. “Looks like she wants to get married, but doesn’t want to go through the ordeal of having to stand in front of the entire town and say ‘I do.’”

“She’ll be fine,” I said. “Chase will get her through it. And so will her mom and dad and Gran.”

“Buster, do you think that there’s a natural order to the universe, with some species that are higher and others that are lower?” asked Dooley now.

“Of course not,” said Buster. “It’s like Fido always tells me: there’s people with hair and people with no hair, and lucky for him there’s more of the former than the latter.”

Chapter 13

Odelia had just entered the Star hotel when her attention was drawn to two familiar figures seated in the lobby, talking animatedly and with wide gestures of the limbs. She smiled and walked over.

“Hey, Gran,” she said. “Scarlett. What are you doing here?”

The question was moot, of course. When not spending time at her dad’s doctor’s office, Gran liked to sit in the outside dining room of the Star with Scarlett. Watching the world go by and doing some intense people-watching. It was all part of the activities of the neighborhood watch the two friends were a part of. In fact as far as Odelia could ascertain the watch was pretty much an excuse for these two elderly ladies to stick their noses where they didn’t belong, and spend their time prying into other people’s affairs. At one time there had been four members of the watch, but ever since they’d kicked out the male members for lack of cooperation only Gran and her friend remained.

“What areyou doing here?” Gran countered immediately, then a keen look came over her. “You’re going to interview that English lord, aren’t you? Say, mind if we tag along?”

“Tag along? Why?”

“There’s something we need to find out.”

“Lord Whatshisname is suspected of hiding a girl of ill repute in his suite,” Scarlett explained. “And the hotel staff would like to know what he’s planning to do with her before hotel management finds out.”

“Oh, dear,” said Odelia. “I don’t know. Lord Hilbourne’s rider specifically stated I had to come alone for the interview. No pets and no—”

“We’re not pets, though, are we, honey?” said Scarlett. “Look, I promise we’ll be very discreet.”

“Discreet is our middle name,” Gran agreed.

Odelia’s grandmother and her friend were anything but discreet. Then again, if this Lord Hilbourne really was hiding a girl in his suite, she didn’t see the harm in bringing two members of the neighborhood watch along with her to make inquiries. “Look, just make sure you don’t do anything to getme kicked out,” she said, finally relenting.

“We’ll be quiet as church mice,” said Gran.

“Quieter even,” Scarlett said, judging from the look on her face well pleased, which was the exact same look a cat wore after he’d spotted a mouse. Well, any cat except Odelia’s own cats, which were too kindhearted to bother with catching mice. They’d rather make friends with the critters. Or with snails, apparently.

“Let’s go,” she said. “I don’t want to be late. He only gave me twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes! How are you going to conduct an entire interview in twenty minutes?” asked Gran as they hurried through the hotel lobby, their feet sinking into the plush carpet, and proceeding in the direction of the elevator.

“Plenty,” said Odelia, who was a seasoned reporter and could extract a front-page article out of twenty minutes’ worth of conversation. As the elevator rode up, she asked, “Have you found out anything new about the Potato Guy?”

“Potato Guy,” said Scarlett with a laugh. “Is that what you’re going to call him in your newspaper?”

“Not exactly,” said Odelia with a smile. “His real name is Bob Rector, and according to Max and Dooley he was recently kidnapped. His girlfriend paid seventy-five thousand dollars in ransom money for his safe release, but all she got back was his body, shot through the chest and dumped in a potato truck.”

“That’s more than we knew,” said Gran, cutting a quick look of surprise to her co-watch member.

“Yeah, I had no idea he’d been kidnapped,” said Scarlett. “Who’s the girlfriend?”

“Evelina Pytel.”

Gran whistled through her teeth.“The queen of party supplies. I know Evelina. Seventy-five thousand is chump change for her. And you say she paid and they still shot the boyfriend?”

Odelia nodded.“Looks like a kidnapping gone wrong to me. Now all we need to do is find out who kidnapped Bob and why they killed him, even though the ransom was paid. Though I have to say that Max and Dooley’s source seems convinced Bob arranged his own kidnapping so he could lay his hands on the money.”

“Really,” said Scarlett, arching a perfectly stenciled eyebrow. “Who’s the source?”

Odelia swallowed.“Evelina’s pet… snail.”

Both ladies’ eyes went wide as saucers. Luckily the elevator had jerked to a stop and the door opened before Odelia had to explain the finer points of this peculiar new friendship that had formed between two cats and a snail.

A young woman with a clipboard was waiting for them when the elevator door opened. She was wearing glasses and a look of professionalism.“Odelia Poole?” she asked. She then frowned at the two older ladies. “And you are…”

“My two assistants,” Odelia hastened to explain. “Vesta Muffin and Scarlett Canyon.”

The woman’s eyes traveled the length of Scarlett’s body. As usual, Gran’s best friend was dressed to impress, with an ultra-short skirt, fishnet stockings, and a crop top that did much to emphasize her sizable bust.

“Um… I’m not sure…” said the woman, glancing down at her clipboard.

“It’s all right,” said Gran. “We’ll be quiet as church mice.”

“Quieter!” Scarlett added cheerfully.

The woman blinked and nodded, then walked them to the door of the Presidential Suite and gave it a gentle tap. The door opened and a young man with sizable sideburns tapering to a point at the corners of his mouth and a narrow face stood in the door.“Your two o’clock, sir,” said Clipboard Girl, and the guy gave a curt nod, then walked away. “Remember, you’ve got twenty minutes,” said the girl, and closed the door behind them.

The suite was impressive. The walls were all velvet wallpaper with a flower motif, and the carpets were even more sumptuous than the ones downstairs in the lobby. The room they were in was only one part of the multi-room suite but it was lavish enough, with a salon that looked both opulent but also cozy. “Please take a seat,” the young man with the funky sideburns said. He gesturedto an overstuffed sofa and took a seat himself. “I hope this won’t take long. I have a busy afternoon, and I need to get ready.”

“I only need a few minutes of your time,” Odelia assured the man.

He gave a serious nod and placed an arm across the back of the sofa and balanced a leg on his knee, showcasing a black patent leather brogue and orange Burlington socks.

“A bold choice,” said Gran, indicating the man’s socks.

He glanced down at the vestimentary fashion statement and displayed a slight smile.“If I have to wear conservative clothes the least I can do to offset them is my choice of socks,” he said. “I have them in every available color. And you are?”

“Vesta Muffin,” said Gran. “I’m Odelia’s grandmother.”

The man’s noble brow furrowed. “Grandmother. I didn’t know you American reporters liked to bring your grandmothers along on your interviews. And who are you?” he asked, addressing Scarlett. “Miss Poole’s aunt, I presume?”

“I’m Vesta’s friend,” said Scarlett. “Though Odelia has always considered me an honorary aunt.”

“Auntie Scarlett,” said Gran with a grin. “Now those were the days.”

“Is it true that you invited a girl up here last night?” asked Scarlett, earning herself a reproachful flash of the eyes from Odelia and blithely ignoring it.

The young man shuffled a little uncomfortably in his seat.“And what if I did?”

“She didn’t come out this morning and the hotel staff is worried something might have happened to her,” said Scarlett, whose definition of ‘quiet as a church mouse’ was a very unorthodox one.

The young man grinned.“They can relax. She didn’t leave. In fact she’s still in my bed, right now, fast asleep. Though we did share breakfast together.”

“Oh,” said Scarlett. “So when the cleaner came in…”

“Oh, God,” said Lord Hilbourne, his eyes raking the ceiling in a look of exasperation. “I should have known she was up to something when she insisted on changing the sheets. Well, she was hiding in the closet at that point, obviously. You see, she snuck in here through the service elevator, courtesy of a very open-minded night receptionist—though I’m inclined not to give him that generous tip I promised now that apparently he’s blabbed all over town about my recent conquest.”

“You do know that she’s a lady of pleasure, don’t you?” asked Gran.

“And I can assure you she earned the moniker.” He turned to Odelia. “What is this? Are you all members of the local League Against Moral Turpitude? If I’d known you were going to make such a big fuss about this I wouldn’t have come to Hampton Cove.”

“I can assure you we don’t care one way or the other what you do in the privacy of your own suite,” said Scarlett. “Though we did wonder what happened to the girl.”

“Do you want proof of life?” asked the young man. “I can give you proof of life.” He swiftly got up.

“That won’t be necessary,” Odelia hastened to say.

“Cody!” Lord Hilbourne bellowed. “Come out here a moment, will you? There’s some people here who think I murdered you and flushed your body parts down the toilet.”

He seemed to think the whole thing was extremely entertaining.

The door to what Odelia presumed was the bedroom opened, and a smallish young woman with an abundance of dark curls stuck her head out. She looked sleepy.“What is it?” she asked. Then, when she caught sight of the three guests seated on the sofa, she uttered a startled cry and immediately retracted her head and closed the door.

“See?” said Lord Hilbourne. “I didn’t kill her. In fact she has assured me she’s enjoying my company to such an extent she would like to stick around a little while longer.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Odelia, feeling mortified now. If her editor found out that this was the way she’d conducted this very important interview, there would be hell to pay.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to get away with this. People talk, and especially the staff at small hotels like the Star.” He took a seat again and draped his languid form across the sofa. “Now please tell me you have more questions for me—and not merely a burning desire for me to prove I’m not an ax murderer.”

Odelia directed a scathing look at her grandmother and Scarlett, who both shrugged and gave her their best look of absolute innocence.

Chapter 14

“So maybe we exaggerated,” said Harriet as she surveyed the four empty bowls, positioned neatly in a row. Even the few kernels of kibble that had fallen by the wayside in the process of eating had been snapped up, and the part of the kitchen devoted to the cats’ dietary needs was now so neat and clean it looked as if a cleaner had dropped by to give it a good once-over.

“Do you think Max and Dooley will notice we’ve eaten all of their food?” asked Brutus sheepishly.

They’d first emptied out their friends’ bowls at Marge and Tex’s place and then, when they got bored sitting at home waiting for their humans to show up, had moved over to Odelia’s home and finished the job there.

“Of course they’ll notice,” said Harriet. “So you’ll do well to stick to the story, all right?”

“The story?” asked Brutus, who’d already forgotten what excuse he’d dreamt up for this culinary carnage.

“That the dogs snuck in and ate everything.”

“What dogs?” asked Brutus, who liked to get his lies nailed down in all their stark specificity. Someone who was good at lying had once told him that the secret to a good lie is the telling detail, and it had stuck in his head ever since.

“Who cares what dogs? We don’t know, and nor will they. Any dog can sneak in here and clean out those bowls.”

“It would have to be a small dog,” he said as he eyed the pet flap with a critical eye. “No way Rufus, for instance, would ever be able to sneak in here through that pet flap.”

Rufus was Ted and Marcie Trapper’s sheepdog, who lived right next door. And judging from his size he had inherited some DNA from the woolly mammoth.

“So it was Fifi, then,” said Harriet, referring to their neighbor Kurt Mayfield’s Yorkie.

“Fifi would never come in here and steal our food,” said Brutus. “She’s too straight-laced. Besides, I’m sure she gets plenty of food at home. Kurt spoils her rotten.”

“So it was some other dog,” said Harriet. “It doesn’t matter what dog it was, Brutus,” she stressed. “In fact the less we know the better. Any dog could have snuck in from the street. All we need to do is pretend that we got home, saw that our bowls were all empty and keep a straight face! Now this is very important. Show me your poker face.”

Brutus blinked.“My what face?”

“That’s just about the worst poker face I’ve ever seen. Try again.”

Brutus frowned.“Um…”

“Big fail! Brutus, if you don’t get your act together you’re going to get us both caught. Okay, so I’ll pretend to be Max.” She lowered her voice an entire octave. “Oh, dear goodness me, Brutus, will you look at that. Someone cleaned out our bowls. Now I wonder who that could have been—why are you laughing?”

“Max doesn’t sound like that!”

“It doesn’t matter! So what are you going to say?”

“Um… I don’t know what dogs were in here and besides, it doesn’t matter?”

“No! Just repeat after me, ‘I know nothing.’”

“I know nothing.”

“I know nothing.”

“I know nothing.”

“Now keep repeating that to yourself so that by the time Max and Dooley come home it will roll from your tongue like the most natural thing in the world.”

Brutus nodded. These were simple instructions. In fact they were so simple he figured even he could commit them to memory. He was terrible at lying. It was one of the areas of improvement he needed to work on.“I know nothing,” he murmured.

“Exactly. And whatever they say, you just keep repeating the same thing over and over again, like a mantra. Is that clear?”

“Uh-huh. I know nothing.”

“Which dog stole our food, Brutus?”

“I know nothing.”

“Was it Fifi, you think? Or Rufus?”

“I know nothing.”

“Or maybe it could have been some neighboring cat?”

“I know nothing.”

She smiled and patted her mate on the back.“Excellent, my snickerdoodle. I think we’re just about ready to face the firing squad.”

Brutus gulped.“The firing squad! Y-y-you don’t think—”

“Just a manner of speech, sugar bear. Cats can’t handle a firearm. Everybody knows that. But they will grill us to within an inch of our lives, so we need to be ready.”

“I know nothing,” he murmured.

“Make that your life’s motto from now on,” Harriet advised, “and I will do the same. Now let’s get going. I don’t want to miss the social event of the season, just because our humans are too lazy to drop by to feed us—or to pick us up.”

“You mean Odelia’s wedding? But I thought that was next Saturday?”

“Not Odelia’s wedding, doodle bug. Lord Hilbourne being handed the keys to the city.”

And so they set off on their journey into town. Max and Dooley might have bought into some delusional snail’s crazy ramblings, but Harriet and Brutus were going to collect those precious few nuggets of information that have your star reporter yipping with delight: not a snail’s folly, but actionable intel, straight from the horse’s mouth.

In other words: they were going to mingle at the reception Mayor Butterwick was throwing in honor of her distinguished guest and keep their eyes open and their ears peeled. Harriet, who’d always had a competitive streak, had vowed that they’d be the ones to deliver Odelia a few tasty morsels of gossip and that was exactly what they were going to accomplish, blowing Max’s silly Potato Man story straight out of the water.

Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to be on Odelia’s good side, considering that as soon as the Poole family arrived home and discovered someone had emptied all of their cats’ bowls, all hell would break loose.

Chapter 15

Dooley had his own thoughts about the investigation he and Max had recently become involved in. If others thought it was unusual for two cats to accept an assignment from a snail, he most certainly didn’t. After all, if Odelia accepted assignments from all sorts of people, why couldn’t he and Max do the same thing? Not many people were aware of this—in fact as far as Dooley knew only the members of the Poole family were in this unique position—but Max had a rare talent for spotting clues and making those complicated conclusions that left others—not least of which Dooley himself—baffled and speechless with abject admiration.

Dooley thought it was an honor that Max had chosen him as his loyal sidekick, and not a day went by that he didn’t have to pinch himself for being in this position. Some cats said he was the perfect sidekick, too: after all, Captain Hastings usually was the most dimwitted part of the Poirot stories. The comic relief. Likewise Doctor Watson fulfilled that role to perfection as Sherlock Holmes’s peabrainedstooge. What this said about Dooley, Dooley did not know, but he figured it was probably some kind of compliment, and that was how he had decided to treat these remarks, which often were accompanied by a good deal of suppressed snickering for some mysterious reason.

And so it was that he and Max were on the trail again, like bloodhounds, but without the hound part. And probably without the blood part, too, as they usually preferred to figure things out intellectually rather than by following a trail of blood left by the killer.

“Where are we going, Max?” he asked when they’d left the barbershop and were on their way to a destination or destinations unknown.

“I’m not sure,” said the great detective named Max. “We should probably catch up with Odelia, though. She was going to interview Evelina Pytel, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Absolutely,” said Dooley, who knew from experience and close association with Max that the stout blorange cat was never mistaken.

And just as he’d expected, suddenly Odelia hove into view, accompanied by Gran and Scarlett, as the trio walked out of the Hampton Cove Star hotel.

Dooley, even though he was used to these flashes of deductive brilliance from his friend, still gasped in amazement.“Max, how did you know Odelia would suddenly show up like this?” he asked, always ready to learn from the master sleuth.

“I didn’t,” said Max curtly, and set paw for the three humans.

Odelia, when she spotted her two cats, smiled and crouched down to tickle them behind the ears. Max purred, and so did Dooley. Max might perhaps be the greatest cat detective that had ever lived, and Dooley his loyal sidekick, but they were still cats, and enjoyed these expressions of affection from their human as much as the next feline.

“We just talked to Buster,” Max announced, “but unfortunately he couldn’t shed any light on the death of Bob Rector, and neither could Kingman.”

“We better go and have that chat with Evelina Pytel now,” Odelia said. She glanced up at her grandmother and Scarlett, who stood convening on the sidewalk, presumably also very busy trying to solve this most baffling case of the potato truck victim, and said, “Do you guys want to join me? I’m going to interview Evelina Pytel. The victim’s girlfriend.”

“No, you go ahead,” said Gran, quite surprisingly, Dooley thought. “Scarlett and I are following a different trail. Isn’t that right, Scarlett?”

“Absolutely,” said Scarlett, who was dressed very nicely, Dooley thought, in an outfit that left plenty of opportunity for air to reach all the different parts of her body. Like cats, she seemed averse to the wearing of clothes, and Dooley had the distinct impression that if given the opportunity she would prefer not to wear any clothes at all. A very wise choice, Dooley felt. After all, clothes were nothing but a hindrance.

“What trail?” asked Odelia, getting up again and in doing so halting her tickling activities, which Dooley felt could have gone on just a little bit longer. Like maybe for another hour—or four.

“Look, I think it’s best if we split up into two teams,” said Gran. “You go and interview Evelina, and Scarlett and I will… follow a different avenue.”

“What avenue? What are you talking about?”

“I think it’s best if we keep this information under our hats for now, wouldn’t you agree, Scarlett?”

“Absolutely,” Scarlett said.

It was a conversation fraught with mystery, as so many human conversations are. For one thing, as far as Dooley could tell neither Gran nor Scarlett were wearing a hat, so how could they keep any information under this non-existent head adornment? Also, how do you keep information under a hat? It seemed like a tough proposition. Then again, humans are often capable of amazing feats, and perhaps this was one of them.

“Okay, have it your way,” said Odelia, sounding a little peeved. “Max, Dooley, let’s go.”

And then they were off, Odelia walking so briskly that Max and Dooley were forced to break into a mild trot to keep up. Cats’ legs are, after all, a lot shorter than human legs, a fact which Odelia seemed momentarily to have forgotten.

“Why is she hurrying so much, Max?” asked Dooley, panting.

“I think she’s upset with Gran,” said Max, who had, of course, managed to grasp the significance of the conversation perfectly, reading Odelia’s mood with a single glance.

“Upset? Why is she upset?”

“Because Gran is refusing to share information about the case with her. Vital information, from what I could gather. And that kind of thing goes against everything Odelia believes in when it comes to handling an investigation.”

“She doesn’t like it when Gran refuses to share information?”

“She hates it. The only way to solve a case, in Odelia’s view, is to share information, not keep it hidden from your fellow sleuths.”

“But why wouldn’t Gran want to share this vital information, Max? Is she angry with Odelia?”

“I don’t know, Dooley. She must have her reasons. And I’m sure we’ll soon find out.”

They’d arrived at Odelia’s car, which was still parked in front of the Gazette offices, and Odelia ushered them both into the backseat before taking her position behind the wheel.

“I don’t understand,” she was grumbling as she inserted her key into the ignition and turned it clockwise, drawing a smoker’s cough from the engine before it wheezed to life. “Gran being so secretive, I mean. Almost as if she doesn’twant me to solve this case.”

“I think Gran has a secret,” Dooley piped up. “And if you want I can find out for you what that secret is.”

Odelia smiled.“Thanks, Dooley. That’s very sweet of you.”

After all, Gran and Dooley habitually sat on the couch at night to watch a number of television programs, and invariably Gran liked to blab about her day while they were watching. The old lady simply couldn’t help it. Often when there was a lull in the programming, like a commercial break or a moment when there wasn’t much happening on the screen, she would talk incessantly about every single thing she’d been up to that day. Dooley liked to think that Gran used to do the same thing when her husband was alive, and now that he had passed she talked to Dooley instead. Dooley didn’t mind. He cherished those moments with Gran on the couch, and told her all about his day, too.

“Before the day is through,” he said therefore, “I’ll know exactly what Gran is up to. Just you wait and see.”

He might just be the silly Doctor Watson or Captain Hastings to Max’s brilliant Sherlock or Hercule Poirot, but he also had a part to play, and he enjoyed playing it.

But then Odelia stomped on the accelerator and the car gave one more wheezy cough then reluctantly lurched forward and so did Dooley’s stomach.

No matter how many times he’d spent in this car, he never could get used to the terrible noise the engine made, or the weird motions of the car. It was unnatural for cats to ride in cars. And so he closed his eyes and started to count pieces of kibble until the moment the car came to a stop again and he could finally leavethis monstrous machine.

Hopefully still in one piece.

Chapter 16

We arrived at Evelina Pytel’s house just in time—or just too late, depending on how you look at it. Evelina had just closed the front door and was walking to her car, car keys in hand, and clearly was on the point of getting into her vehicle and taking off somewhere.

Odelia had slowed down her car and when she saw that Evelina was about to take off, immediately braked her aged pickup, cranked down the window and yelled,“Miss Pytel! Miss Evelina Pytel? Hi! I’m sorry to trouble you like this, but could I have a quick word?”

And to show Miss Pytel she meant what she said, she pulled up the handbrake and got out. Dooley and I also hopped down from the trusty old vehicle, Dooley a little queasy and unsteady on his paws, and then we hurried after our human, not wanting to miss this most important interview, of which I must confess I had high expectations.

“Yes?” said Miss Pytel, looking a little confused. “Who are you?”

“My name is Odelia Poole,” said Odelia. “I’m a reporter for the Hampton Cove Gazette, and I’m also a civilian consultant with our local police department.”

“Okay.” Miss Pytel clearly was eager to get going, but politeness compelled her to put her plans on hold for just a moment while she heard Odelia out.

“I’m investigating the death of Mr. Bob Rector,” she said, and I watched as Miss Pytel blinked in confusion.

“Death? What do you mean? Are you telling me that Bob… died?”

“Oh, you didn’t know? I’m so sorry, Miss Pytel. I thought…”

There was a momentary lull in the conversation, as Odelia tried to figure out how to overcome this faux-pas on her part, and Miss Evelina Pytel tried to come to terms with this unexpected and frankly shocking development. She was still blinking rapidly, and I could see that tears had formed in her eyes. She was a handsome woman, with striking blue eyes and long flaxen hair. She was dressed in a pink pantsuit and looked every inch the successful businesswoman she reportedly was.

“I’m sorry you had to find out like this,” said Odelia at length. “I thought you knew.”

“No. No, I didn’t. How—how did he die?”

“He was found on a potato truck this morning. He was shot to death.”

“Shot!”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Do you… do you want to go inside for a moment?”

“Yes. Yes, I think I do,” said Evelina, and suddenly staggered. Odelia, quick as a flash, was there to lend her a helping hand, and together both women entered the house, Dooley and I right on their heels.

“She looks genuinely surprised, Max,” said Dooley.

“Yes, she does,” I agreed.

“So she probably didn’t kill her boyfriend,” was my friend’s immediate conclusion. “If she had, she wouldn’t have looked so surprised.”

“Unless she’s an accomplished actress.”

“I don’t think she’s an actress, Max. Mr. Ed said she runs a company in party supplies. People who run companies selling party supplies usually aren’t actors. Or vice versa.”

I smiled. Dooley often applies his unique brand of logic and brings it to bear on the situation, and it’s both refreshing and often extremely apt, as it was now.

We’d entered Miss Pytel’s living room, and I saw that it was both modern and cozy. Plenty of straight surfaces and lots of beige and muted pinks and yellows. I liked it immediately. It was all very homely and very pleasant to the eye.

Evelina had collapsed on one of the chairs, and Odelia had disappeared into the kitchen to fill a tall glass of water from the tap. She soon returned and offered it to the stricken woman, who was staring before her, a horrified look on her face.

“Are you all right?” asked Odelia. A silly question, I thought, as Miss Pytel clearly wasn’t all right. Then again, it’s one of those things people say, just to say something. Better than having to proceed in strained silence. “I’m really sorry to spring this on you like this,” Odeliasaid, as she took a seat next to the woman and gently rubbed her back.

“Bob was… Bob and I were dating, you know,” said Evelina, her voice thick with emotion. “We’d just gone on our fourth date when suddenly he was…” She glanced up at Odelia.

“When he was kidnapped,” said Odelia.

The woman’s eyes widened. “How did you know? I didn’t tell anyone. The kidnappers, they…”

“They didn’t want you to go to the police,” Odelia completed the sentence. “You better tell me everything. It’s all right. The kidnappers can’t harm your boyfriend anymore.”

“Do you think they’re the ones… that killed him?”

“I don’t know,” said Odelia. “Have they been in touch since you made the drop?”

“You know about that, too? But how?”

“Let’s just say I have my sources,” said Odelia.

Evelina took a deep and tremulous breath and gratefully accepted a paper tissue from Odelia.“I should have known something was wrong,” she said. “When I didn’t hear from the kidnappers. I’d just dropped off the money, exactly like they told me to, and I waited for them to call me with instructions on how to get Bob back—and I just waited and waited… And finally it was my sister who told me that Bob had probably stood me up. That he’d probably been the one behind the whole thing. A crook. A gangster. A cheat and a swindler. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but as the days went by, I finally had to agree that she was probably right, and that I’d been taken fora fool.”

“So your sister was the only one who knew about this?”

“I tell my sister everything,” said Evelina simply. “She’s the one who helped me negotiate the release of the money from the bank. They were very reluctant to part with so much cash, you know. Seventy-five thousand dollars is a lot of money.” She glanced up at Odelia. “Did you—did youfind the money? Did Bob still have it on him?”

“No, Bob didn’t have any money on him,” said Odelia. “So your sister thinks Bob’s the one who organized his own kidnapping? So he could get his hands on your money?”

“That’s her theory.”

“Because after you made the drop you didn’t hear from the kidnappers or Bob?”

Evelina nodded.“Also, the whole thing felt off. Bob and I had only been dating for a very short while. If these people wanted money, why didn’t they kidnap me instead? Or my sister? Why Bob, a man who, by all accounts, probably meant nothing to me at that point? At least that’s the argument my sister made. Frankly she was wrong. Even in that short time Bob had come to mean a great deal to me, and so when they made that ransom demand…”

“How was the demand made? By phone or letter or…”

“I received a video message on my phone.”

“A video of…”

“Of Bob,” said Evelina, nodding. “He looked very frightened in the video, and had a gun pressed to his head by a person who was out of frame. He said they’d kill him if I didn’t do as they said. It all looked very convincing, and by the time I told my sister, I’d already started the procedure of getting the money together. Emma tried to talk me out of it, but I didn’t want to take any chances with Bob’s life.”

“Even though Emma half-convinced you it was Bob himself who was behind the thing?”

“That was later, after I made the drop and didn’t hear from the kidnappers—or Bob. She figured he’d been in on it from the start. Frankly I didn’t know what to think. Seventy-five thousand is a big sum, but my company turned over thirty million last year, so it’s not as if the money will be missed. It just seemed like a small price to pay for Bob’s safety.”

“Thirty million dollars,” said Dooley. “Is that a lot of money, Max?”

“Yes, Dooley. Thirty million dollars is a lot of money.”

“Poor woman,” my friend said. “Being so rich and so unlucky in love. And then when she finally finds the man of her dreams he’s kidnapped and killed.”

“We still don’t know what really happened, Dooley,” I pointed out. “Evelina’s sister may very well be right, and Bob may be the one behind this whole thing.”

“But then why did he end up dead?”

“He must have had a partner,” I said. “And maybe this partner got greedy and decided he wanted the money for himself and so he shot and killed Bob.”

“Or maybe Bob was innocent and he was shot because the kidnappers got what they wanted and didn’t need him anymore.”

“What happened to Bob?” asked Evelina now. “How did he end up on that potato truck?”

“We’re not sure yet,” said Odelia. “The investigation is still ongoing. When was the last time you talked to the kidnappers?”

“I never actually talked to them. They sent me messages on my phone, and I messaged them back.”

“Can I see your phone for a moment?”

“Sure,” said Evelina, and handed Odelia the gadget. “They used WhatsApp. Under Bob’s name. Another reason for Emma to suspect him.” She clicked open the app to show our human.

“I think it would be best if you gave this phone to the police,” Odelia finally said, after checking some of the messages. “Maybe they can try and find out who sent them.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Miss Poole,” said Evelina. “You’re thinking I should have gone to the police. But they specifically told me not to, and I didn’t want to jeopardize Bob’s safe return. It was much easier for me to just do as they said, and pay off the ransom demand, than to risk Bob’s life. So I went along with the whole thing.” She burst into tears once more. “And now they killed him anyway.”

Dooley, who’d been studying the woman closely, finally said, “No. Definitely not an actress, Max. I think she’s for real.”

I patted my friend on the back.“Any other thoughts you’d like to share?”

“I wonder where Evelina keeps Mr. Ed. Odelia should talk to him, too. Get his interview on tape.”

“I think that might prove a little hard,” I said. “But I agree with you that we should probably have another chat with Mr. Ed.”

And since as far as I know snails usually live outside in the garden, where they like to nibble on assorted plants and vegetables, we made our way to the kitchen, where some high-pitched meowing and earnest scratching earned us free passage into the backyard.

Chapter 17

“Finally!” suddenly a voice spoke in our vicinity.

When we glanced over we saw that it was none other than our slimy friend the snail.

“Mr. Ed!” said Dooley, who’d clearly taken a liking to the small pet.

“I thought you’d accepted the case?” said Mr. Ed, a touch of pique in his voice betraying his annoyance. “I’ve been waiting for a progress report for what feels like forever!”

“It took some time to relay the information to our human,” I said. “And then there’s a big hullabaloo in town today that caused Odelia to have some prior commitments.”

“What hullabaloo? There’s only one hullabaloo that counts,” said the peeved snail.

He wasn’t in the backyard as we’d surmised but in a large glass tank that had been outfitted especially for his needs. The tank had been placed half inside, half outside the home, with a means of access and egress on both sides so he had the run of the house and the backyard. He obviously made full use of this luxury position, as trails of slime ran all over the sides of the glass tank and also led to and from his fancy little home.

Inside the tank he had plenty of iceberg lettuce to munch on, as well as some kale, sliced-up blueberries, butternut squash, cucumber, mango and even turnip. Clearly Mr. Ed was a much-loved pet, and as a champion to Evelina’s cause the affection was mutual.

“How long did it take you to crawl all the way back from our backyard to here?” asked Dooley, watching the small snail with open-mouthed admiration.

“A long time, if you have to know,” said Mr. Ed. “But it will be worth it if you manage to solve this case and put my human’s mind at ease.” He fixed us with a meaningful look.

“We’re still in the early stages of our investigation,” I explained, “but there’s one thing I would like to clear up now, before we continue.”

“What’s that?”

“Evelina didn’t know that Bob was dead, and that his body had been found on that potato truck. So can you please explain to us how you knew?”

“That’s easy,” said Mr. Ed. “Evelina doesn’t watch the news. But I do.”

“You watch the news?” I asked, picturing Mr. Ed seated on the couch with the remote in his… what, exactly? Snails don’t have hands or feet. Well, they have the one big foot they use to crawl around. But definitely no digits, so they’re even worse off than cats.

“Yeah, she doesn’t like all the nastiness that’s on the news nowadays. All the mayhem. So she never watches the stuff. She figures that if there’s something she really needs to be aware of her sister will tell her, or her parents. But I like to watch, and she knows it.”

I was afraid to ask how Mr. Ed’s human could possibly know his likes and dislikes, so I didn’t.

“She installed a small TV for me over there, and keeps it going twenty-four seven.”

We looked over to where Mr. Ed was pointing with one of his antennae, and lo and behold, indeed there was a small TV set installed near his tank, and it was indeed tuned to one of our local TV stations. On the screen they showed images of a man with striking sideburns leaving the Star hotel. The crawler at the bottom of the screen announced that this gentleman was none other than Lord Hilbourne, on his way to Town Hall for his big‘Keys to the city’ ceremony. Which reminded me that we probably should be going soon, as Odelia, Hampton Cove’s premier reporter, couldn’t afford to miss the show.

“So when I saw that Bob had been found lying amongst a heap of potatoes I knew his plan to kidnap himself must have gone wrong, and that swift action was required to figure out what had happened and to get Evelina’s money back.”

I didn’t exactly associate swift action with snails but that could just be my prejudice talking, of course.

“So you still think Bob staged his own kidnapping?” I said.

“Absolutely. Who would want to kidnap that idiot?”

Clearly no love was lost between Evelina’s boyfriend and her pet snail. “But why? Why did you dislike Bob so much?” Apart from the fact he’d almost crushed him.

“Because he was sneaky. Very sneaky. I once caught him in the bathroom talking to himself, and he was saying things no boyfriend should be saying.”

“What was he saying?”

“’If I can just convince her, I’m home free,’” said Mr. Ed, his voice having taken on a grave tone. “Get it? Home free. Obviously he was only going out with her for the money, and when she wouldn’t give it to him straight away he decided to set up this elaborate abduction scheme. Onlyhis partner decided not to split the proceeds and killed Bob.”

“That’s what I said!” Dooley cried. “Isn’t that what I said, Max?”

“Yes, Dooley. You called it,” I said.

“So? Everything clear now?” said Mr. Ed, into whose voice had crept that note of peevishness again. “Now if you’ve done enough standing around with your tails in your paws I suggest you get moving and solve this case for me!”

Clearly our client was a demanding one, and so we said our goodbyes and returned to the living room, where Odelia had just finished her interview with Evelina and was getting ready to leave.“I’ve called my uncle and he’s asked if you could drop by the precinct so he can take your statement any time it’s convenient for you?” she said.

Evelina nodded.“Thank you, Miss Poole. I must admit that it feels good to get this off my chest. I’ve been keeping things a secret for far too long, and it was eating me alive.”

“It’s all right. You did what you thought was best.”

“Thank you,” Evelina repeated, and shared a hug with Odelia.

“That’s the advantage of not being a cop,” I pointed out to Dooley. “You don’t see Chase or Uncle Alec going around hugging people, but sometimes people need a hug.”

“So do you need a hug sometimes, Max?” asked Dooley.

“Of course. Like I said, we all need a hug sometimes.”

“Come here,” said Dooley, and proceeded to give me a hug.

Mr. Ed must have noticed, for he shouted from his tank,“Less hugging and more investigating! Now get going, you bunch of lazybones—you’re on the clock here!”

Chapter 18

“Are you sure we did the right thing by not telling Odelia?” asked Scarlett as she and Vesta hurried along the sidewalk.

“Of course I’m sure. She doesn’t need to see this. And franklyhe doesn’t need to seeher!”

“I just don’t get it,” said Scarlett with a shake of the head.

“Oh, but I do. He’s a guy, and guys are all the same. Haven’t you learned that by now?”

“Yeah, but not him. I thought he was special.”

“Why should he be the exception to the rule?” asked Vesta, and halted in front of the Cool Cucumber, one of a recent crop of new eateries that had sprung up in town.

“Are you sure it’s here?” asked Scarlett as she tried to glance in through the window.

“If my informer is correct—and I don’t see any reason why he would lie to me—this is the place.” She took a deep breath and shared a look with her friend. “Let’s do this.”

“Let’s do this,” Scarlett echoed. She wasn’t normally a big fan of these types of interventions, but it was Vesta’s call, and frankly she felt it was the right one. “What if he tries to escape?”

“Oh, he won’t try to escape,” said Vesta, and she sounded sure of herself. Frankly Scarlett wouldn’t try to escape either when she saw Vesta bearing down on her.

So they both entered the restaurant, and quickly glanced around to see if they could spot the guilty party. Scarlett still held out hope Vesta’s informer was mistaken, but then suddenly she spotted the man, and from the way he was behaving it was clear Vesta had been right on the money—unfortunately.

So they both walked up to the guy, who was seated all by his lonesome at a table for two, and while Vesta took a seat across from him, Scarlett took up position behind him, so he wouldn’t be able to escape should he try to make a run for it.

“Hello, Tex,” said Vesta.

Tex looked up at his mother-in-law and there was a hint of alarm in his voice when he said,“Vesta? What are you doing here?”

“I think the more important question is: what are you doing here?”

“I, um… well, I was hungry and I decided to try this new restaurant.”

“Bullshit,” said Vesta, and Scarlett credited her friend for staying so calm and collected under the circumstances.

Tex laughed uncertainly.“A man is allowed to eat, isn’t he?”

“Are you seriously telling me that if I go over to the guy at the reservation desk and ask him who your date is that he won’t give me her name?”

Tex twisted a little in his chair, and made a motion to move it back. Scarlett had placed her foot against the legs of the chair, though, so the good doctor was effectively trapped.“Look, I don’t understand what’s going on here,” said Tex. “I just wanted to have lunch, and you’re barging in here and accusing me of—of what, exactly?”

“I’m accusing you of cheating on your wife, Tex—my daughter.”

“Cheating on my wife! Are you nuts?”

“No, but you must be—to think that you can sneak around behind Marge’s back and start dating other women.”

“I’m not dating other women!”

“So when we sit here and wait, no woman will come walking in through that door over there, expecting to have lunch with you?”

“I don’t believe this!” Tex spat. “You’re really suggesting… you’re really thinking… you really expect me to…”

“I expect you to stop lying and tell me what the hell you think you’re doing, Tex Poole!” said Vesta, raising her voice for the first time.

“But I… I don’t… I don’t think…” the doctor stammered.

“Look, I know you have a date with Evelina Pytel, and I want to know why. Though scratch that. I know why. Because you’re a guy. Well, let me tell you why this is a very bad idea, Tex,” said Vesta, now wagging a menacing finger in her son-in-law’s face. “Because if you pull a stunt like this one more time I’m not just going to tell Marge, I’m also going to skin you alive, and I’ll start by boiling your stupid head!”

“You wouldn’t… you wouldn’t tell Marge, would you?”

“Not unless you keep lying to me.”

Tex finally relented, as Scarlett knew he would.“It’s Emma Bezel. She asked me to take her sister Evelina out on a date. Not a real date, mind you. Just a friendly lunch type of thing.”

“And you really expect me to believe you?”

“It’s the God’s honest truth! I didn’t want to go through with it at first, but she convinced me. She said Evelina is suicidal, and she respects me. She said that if a man showed her a kindness like this, it would mean the world to her. And it might help her get out of her funk.”

“Tex Poole,” said Vesta in measured tones, “you are either the dumbest man I’ve ever met, or the absolute worst. But looking at you now I’m going with the first option. You really thought this was a good idea?”

“Well…” said Tex, wavering a little. “Emma pointed out that as a doctor I have a duty of care toward my patients, and so… well, I figured she was probably right.”

“Oh, God,” said Vesta, and closed her eyes then pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. She then picked up the napkin that was lying on the table and proceeded to hit Tex over the head with it.

The waiter, who stood watching the scene from behind the safety of his station near the entrance, grinned at the sight of the altercation and gave Scarlett two thumbs up, clearly relieved he’d done the right thing by calling Vesta and spoiling Tex’s hot date.

Chapter 19

“Do you really think this is a good idea?” asked Brutus as he and Harriet sat watching the entrance to Town Hall from a safe distance.

“I’m not sure,” Harriet had to admit. She intensely disliked being trampled by a lot of humans, with their big feet and careless attitude. It was one of the reasons she’d planned to skip Odelia’s wedding, and now to put herself willingly in a similar position? “We could go in through the back,” she suggested. “And if it’s too crowded we immediately get out again.”

“Odelia won’t even be aware that we’re there,” said Brutus. “She’ll probably be too busy interviewing people and taking pictures. You know what she’s like when she’s on the job.”

“I know,” Harriet said, nodding. When Odelia was working she got into this ultra-focused mindset and seemed to forget that her cats were around—unless she needed them on that particular assignment, of course.

“Can you remind me why you wanted to come to this thing again?” asked Brutus, who clearly needed the extra motivation to go through with this.

“Because by mingling with the crowd we might get some of that extra information that Odelia might miss and then by relaying it to her we’ll get into her good graces.”

“Right,” said Brutus dubiously.

“Okay, if we’re going to do this, we better get going,” said Harriet reluctantly. “Oh, Brutus, if only we hadn’t eaten all of that food, then we wouldn’t have to conciliate Odelia, and we wouldn’t have to put ourselves in harm’s way like this.”

“I know,” said Brutus. “I know.”

And then they were on the move, rounding Town Hall and moving purposefully along the back in the direction of the service entrance where kitchen supplies were usually delivered when important get-togethers were organized, like today.

A waiter was smoking outside, and people were moving to and from parked vans, carrying what looked like large trays of finger food inside, and crates filled with bottles of wine and carton boxes of orange juice for the reception. Brutus and Harriet quickly snuck in and then they were in the kitchen, which was a regular beehive of activity.

“I don’t like this,” said Brutus as he sidestepped a waiter who seemed to want to step on his tail, and another who almost knocked him sideways.

“Let’s just keep going. We just need to find a safe place along the wall.”

“You lead the way,” said Brutus. “You’ve been here before.”

And so she had. On more than one occasion, actually, though never when so many people were out and about at the same time.

She led the way through the kitchen doors, then out into a wide corridor, where a nice burgundy runner had been placed on the hardwood floor, and past a large glass display case containing a few choice medals and mementos reminding the citizenry that before Charlene Butterwick had become mayor other people had filled the same position, and with distinction, too. Their portraits all decorated the walls, and a nice rogue’s gallery it was, too. Soon the hubbub of sound became louder, and as they streaked into the main reception hall, they could see it was already filling up nicely.

Immediately Harriet ducked underneath a chair and Brutus followed suit, and they hunkered down, keeping their digits crossed that no one would kick them out.

“Now let’s see if we can’t collect some neat little tidbits of information for our human,” said Harriet, well pleased that they’d gotten so far and without incident.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

“Are you going to tell Marge?” asked Tex as they walked out of the restaurant.

“What is there to tell?” said Vesta.

Tex almost felt teary-eyed at this.“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know what happened just now, but… thanks.”

“What happened is that you were led by a part of your anatomy most men allow to dominate their good sense,” said Scarlett. “And I should know, as I’ve played on that particular part myself plenty of times in the past.” She clapped Tex on the back. “You’re a good man, Tex, and sometimes people try to take advantage of good men like you.”

“I really thought it was a good idea,” he said sheepishly.

And as they walked on, Scarlett thought that if she’d received a dollar every time someone had said that to her, she would have a nicely filled savings account by now.

“Are you going back to the office?” asked Tex.

“No, I thought I’d see what the big fuss is about in Town Hall,” said Vesta.

“I guess I’ll tag along,” said Tex. “I’m curious to know what that Lord fella looks like.”

“Me, too,” said Scarlett with a smile.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Vesta.

“What did I say?”

“It’s not what you’re saying. It’s what you’re thinking.”

“How could you possibly know what I’m thinking. Are you psychic now?”

“You’re thinking that maybe Lord Hilbourne is as susceptible to your feminine wiles as Tex here is.”

“I’m not susceptible to Scarlett’s wiles,” said Tex. Then he caught sight of Scarlett’s wiggling d?colletage and rolled his eyes. “Okay, so maybe I am a little.”

“For your information, I’m not going to try and seduce Lord Hilbourne,” said Scarlett. “Besides, the man is already spoken for, judging from the scene we witnessed in his suite.”

“You were in Lord Hilbourne’s suite?” asked Tex.

“Yeah, your daughter had an interview with the guy, and we chaperoned her.”

“Oh, so that’s what we were doing,” said Scarlett with a grin.

“Of course. You don’t think I was going to allow Odelia to go up to the hotel room of a guy who likes to invite loose women into his suite, do you? And all by herself, too.”

“Loose women?” asked Tex, then waved a hand. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

And as they passed the Star hotel for the second time that day, Scarlett happened to glance up at the building’s frontage, and thought for a moment that she saw a familiar face appear in one of the windows. But when she shielded her eyes from the sun to have a better look, the face had disappeared.

It had looked a lot like the face of… Johnny Carew.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

“Will you get away from that window!” Jerry yelled.

“I’m just looking, Jer,” said Johnny. “I can look, can’t I?”

“No, you can’t. What if people see you? They’ll start sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”

“Nobody will recognize me, Jer,” said Johnny as he did as he was told and moved away from the window. “Though I did just see Tex Poole.”

“Tex Poole!” Jerry cried. “Did he see you?”

“Pretty sure he didn’t. Too busy chatting with his mother-in-law.”

“Oh, for crying out loud! You saw Vesta Muffin, too?!”

“Yeah, but like I said she was too busy chatting with her son-in-law to bother looking up. That friend of hers saw me, though. Hot babe? She’s always hanging around Vesta.”

“Scarlett Canyon,” Jerry growled, who by now knew pretty much everybody in the small town they’d adopted as their own.

“I don’t think she knows me, though,” said Johnny. “At least we’ve never been formally introduced.” He grinned. “Though I wouldn’t mind if we were. She’s very pretty.”

“She’s also old enough to be your mother.”

“She is? She looks real good for her age.”

“Will you get your mind out of the gutter and focus?”

“Yes, Jer,” said Johnny dutifully.

Jerry was considering a slight alteration to the plan. Though he firmly believed the best plans of campaign were the ones meticulously prepared ahead of time, and changing things up at the last minute was asking for trouble. And since trouble kept following them around wherever they went, this didn’t seem advisable. No, better stick to the plan.

“Maybe we can go to this reception thingy?” Johnny asked.

“And get Hampton Cove’s local PD breathing down our necks again? No, thank you very much, Johnny. I’ve seen the inside of their holding cell more than enough.”

He picked up the magazine he’d been reading and turned the page. It was one of those nature magazines, and the article described the mating ritual of the African red-eyed bulbul. He’d picked it up downstairs in the lobby, and he had to say it soothed him.

“You know, Jer,” said Johnny, “I was thinking we should consider a change of career.”

“Uh-huh,” Jerry said, as he read his article.

‘The call of the African red-eyed bulbul is a cheerful tillop, peep, peep, tiddlypop.’

“So I’ve got the perfect job lined up for us.”

“Is that so?” he murmured, only half listening to his partner in crime.

‘The red-eyed bulbul is a gregarious bird, often forming mixed flocks with other species.’

“Cops, Jer!” said Johnny.

He looked up from his magazine.“What?”

“Cops! We should be cops!”

“No, we shouldn’t.”

“I mean it, Jer. Who knows more about crime than we do? I’ll bet the cops would pay good money for our expertise.”

“I don’t think so, Johnny.”

“It’s like that show about that guy who likes to wear white collars. And then he starts working for the cops and he catches all those other guys with white collars. I think the show was called—”

“White Collar. Yeah, I remember. I don’t think the cops are interested in our expertise, Johnny,” he said. He hated to disappoint his friend, but sometimes it was necessary to put the big oaf’s oversized feet on the ground again, as his brain tended to float off into space.

“Look, when this job is over, why don’t you and I go and have a chat with Chief Alec? Make him an offer he can’t refuse?”

“I don’t think so,” said Jerry, as he picked up his magazine again, this time turning to an article on the mating ritual of the great hornbill.

“I think you’d make a great cop, Jer. Just look at this.” And he held out his phone. It displayed one of those photo apps where a filter can be applied to your snaps. Johnny had taken Jerry’s picture and applied a filter that showed him in a police uniform, complete with police cap and everything.

In spite of his misgivings, Jerry had to laugh.“Will you look at that! That’s not half bad!”

“See?” said Johnny, grinning from ear to ear. “And I’ve got one of the two of us together.” And he showed Jerry a picture of the both of them dressed as cops. “Starsky and Hutch!”

Jerry’s grin widened. “More like Laverne and Shirley.”

“So who’s Laverne and who’s Shirley?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“What are we waiting for, Jer?!”

“I’m waiting for you to stop talking crap,” he said, his mood making that swift change it often did. “We’ll never be cops, you and me. Not after the stuff we did.”

“But, Jer!”

“Pretty sure you gotta have a clean record to be a cop, Johnny.”

“Records can be expunged.”

Jer threw down his magazine.“I’m going to the can. You keep an eye out, will you? And stop messing around with those damn filters,” he growled and snatched Johnny’s phone from his hands and dumped it on the bed where it bounced a couple of times.

Johnny was a great guy, but sometimes he got carried away.

Becoming a cop. What a joke!

Chapter 20

Marge had arrived in Town Hall for the big reception and was surprised to see her husband walk in, accompanied by her mom and Scarlett. Marge had snagged herself a seat near the front of the large reception hall, right in front of the podium, and beckoned to Tex and her mom and her friend. They soon joined her and she asked,“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“I, um, put a sign on the door,” said her husband, but refused to meet her eye as he said this.

“A sign on the door? And what about your patients?”

“Oh, they’ll just have to wait with being sick,” he said airily, going all shifty-eyed on her now. Clearly something was up. You can’t be married to a man for twenty-five years and not notice when that man is lying to you.

“What’s going on, Tex?” she asked. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Acting like what?” he asked, trying to look all innocent but succeeding in making things even worse. He was sweating and his face was flushed and his head looked like it was about to burst into flame.

“You’re not cheating on me, are you?” she asked, taking a wild stab in the dark.

“Cheating on you!” he said, and laughed what was presumably supposed to be a careless laugh but sounded like the croak of an old rooster—a cheating rooster!

“Come on, Tex. Spill,” she demanded, turning to him and fixing him with a stern look. “I know you’re hiding something. I can tell.”

“Hiding something!” he said, still proceeding with that careless look on his face that made him look so silly. “I’m not hiding—”

“Better tell her, Tex,” Marge’s mom advised.

Tex gulped.

“Tell me what? What’s going on!” she cried, starting to feel a little hot under her collar herself now. “If you don’t tell me right this minute I’ll scream, you got that?”

“All right, all right!” said Tex, holding up his hands in an appeasing gesture that only served to get her more worked up. “Look, it’s such a silly thing. So silly in fact that it makes me laugh. Ha ha ha.”

“Tex!” she said warningly.

“Okay, so Emma Bezel came by this morning.”

“Who’s Emma Bezel?”

“Evelina Pytel’s sister.”

“The woman whose boyfriend was found on that potato truck?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I watch the news, Tex. So why did Emma Bezel come to see you?”

“Well, she suggested that I… take her sister out on a date.”

She stared at her husband.“You’ve been cheating on me with Emma Bezel?”

“Not Emma, Evelina,” he said helpfully.

“What?!”

“It’s not what it sounds like!” Tex hastened to say.

But just then, Charlene Butterwick walked onto the stage and announced,“Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Hampton Covians, council members, it is my distinct pleasure to see so many of you gathered here today for this singular occasion.”

“You’re cheating on me with Evelina Pytel?!” Marge hissed. “The woman just lost her boyfriend and already you’re canoodling with her behind my back?!”

“No, it’s not like that!”

“Today we have a very special guest,” Charlene said. “And it’s none other than Lord Wilfred Hilbourne!”

“Honey!” Tex pleaded when Marge turned a stoic face away from her husband. “It’s not what you think!”

The room erupted in loud applause, and Lord Hilbourne, or at least Marge assumed that it was him, came walking up the stage and joined Mayor Butterwick.

“I can explain!” Tex tooted in her ear.

“Please don’t talk to me, Tex,” she said coldly.

“But—”

“Evelina Pytel!” she cried, and Evelina must have somehow heard her, for just at that moment she came hurrying up the aisle and took a seat right next to Marge.

“Did I miss anything?” the woman asked.

Marge slowly turned to her husband and said,“Do you want to switch seats?”

“Oh, God,” Tex muttered.

“I told you to come clean straight away,” said Marge’s mom.

“You told me not to tell her!” said Tex.

Marge leaned over.“You told my husband not to tell me he was having an affair?”

“No!” said Ma. “That’s not what happened!”

“Oh, Ma,” said Marge, shaking her head.

“I can explain!” Ma cried.

“Please be quiet,” said Marge, and turned a deaf ear to both her husband and her mother and focused on the happenings as they proceeded on stage.

“It’s a great honor for me to be standing here in front of you today,” said Lord Hilbourne, who was very young, Marge thought. Extremely young to be a lord. Then again, what did she know about English lords? They probably could be young or old or whatever. He was also very handsome, in spite of his weird sideburns. He had one of those floppy hairdos Hugh Grant used to have at the beginning of his career, before he chopped off his nice hair and opted for a regular haircut.

“Hampton Cove has been my favorite vacationing place for ages,” Lord Hilbourne was saying as he held up the key he’d just received, as well as a nice shiny watch. “Of course it’s much more than a place to go on holiday. As you all know my mom was born here, so it’s like a second home tome. And it was with distinct pleasure that I learned that the town council and its wonderful mayor decided to do me this singular honor and bestow the keys to the city on me. And if it means I can come and go as I please from now on I’m sure I’m tickled pink, for that’s exactly what I had in mind!”

And what Marge had in mind was to give her husband a piece of her mind the moment this baby Lord stopped gibbering.

Chapter 21

We’d arrived just in time—or just too late—for the big to-do at Town Hall. Odelia had snuck in quietly while the Mayor was giving her speech, and Dooley and I had followed suit. Glancing to my left, I suddenly saw, hiding under a chair… Harriet and Brutus!

“Look who’s here,” I told Dooley, and directed his attention to our two friends.

“Oh, let’s go over and say hi!” said Dooley, always the most sociable cat anywhere.

So we trotted over, hiding under the chairs and making sure no one kicked us, and soon came upon the prissy Persian and her butch male mate.

“Hey, you guys,” I said. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“And why not, may I ask?” said Harriet, clearly unhappy to be there.

“I thought you didn’t like crowded places?”

“I don’t, but I thought it was our duty to show up and provide Odelia with those important little nuggets of reporter gold that spruce up her daily columns.”

“We were thinking exactly the same thing, weren’t we, Dooley?”

“Oh, sure,” said Dooley. “Listen, we talked to Mr. Ed again, and he says he’s absolutely convinced that Bob Rector was a very bad guy, and that he set up his own abduction so he could swindle Evelina Pytel out of that ransom money. So you see, Brutus? A snail can be a good and loyal pet. Mr. Ed is being a very good and very loyal pet to Evelina, and will probably save her seventy-five thousand dollars—if Odelia ever succeeds in getting that money back from Bob Rector’s partner in crime, whoever he or she is.”

“Well, for your information,” said Brutus, “your friend Mr. Ed snuck into both of our homes while you guys were out and ate all of your food. So not so nice after all, is he?”

“Brutus!” said Harriet, clearly surprised by this denouement.

“It’s true, though, isn’t it?” said Brutus.

“Mr. Ed ate all of our food?” asked Dooley, looking flabbergasted.

“Yes, he did. Must have happened soon after you left,” said Brutus.

“I don’t believe this,” I said. “Are you sure it was him?”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Brutus, sounding and looking a little too pleased with himself for my taste. “We found trails of slime all over the place, didn’t we, snuggle pooh? Of course we cleaned them all off. Took us a long time, too. Difficult to get off, slime.”

Harriet was conspicuously quiet, but her eyes were blazing. Clearly there was more to this story than met the eye.

“How could a small snail like Mr. Ed, who doesn’t weigh more than a few grams, possibly eat four bowls of kibble?” I asked.

“Eight bowls,” Brutus corrected me blithely. “He emptied the bowls in both homes.”

“Even worse! Mr. Ed’s stomach isn’t big enough to even provide space for a single piece of kibble! In fact I’ll bet that if you gave him one nugget he’d be fed for weeks!”

Brutus stared at me. Clearly he hadn’t considered this.

“So how do you explain that, Brutus?” I repeated.

He clamped his mouth shut with a click of the teeth, then muttered,“I know nothing.”

“What?”

“I know nothing,” he said quietly, and the shake of the head Harriet gave at this surprising statement told me all I needed to know.

“You ate our food, didn’t you? And you’re trying to put the blame on Mr. Ed.”

“I know nothing,” the butch black cat repeated.

“Oh, Brutus, you’re such a terrible liar.”

“I know nothing?” he tried once more.

“Harriet, say something.”

“It was the dogs!” Brutus suddenly blurted out.

“Brutus!” Harriet yelled. “Shut up!”

“No, but it was the dogs, wasn’t it? Fifi and Rufus? They snuck in through the pet flap and ate all of our food. Must have been real hungry, too. I didn’t want to say anything cause I know how much you guys love Fifi and Rufus, but there it is. They should probably face the consequences of their actions. A crime like this can’t go unpunished.”

“Fifi would never steal our food,” I said. “She’s too well-bred.”

“And too well-fed,” Dooley added.

“Dooley is right. Fifi probably gets fed more food than even we do. And Rufus couldn’t have done it as he’s too big to fit through the pet flaps. Either of them.”

Brutus’s eyes shifted from me to Harriet and then back again. Then he blurted out, “I know nothing!”

“Oh, for crying out, Brutus!” said Harriet exploded. “You’re the absolute worst!”

“Harriet,” I said, my tail tapping the floor impatiently, “I think you have some explaining to do.”

“Oh, all right,” she said with a sigh.

“Harriet,you know nothing!” Brutus yelled nervously.

“Oh, shut up, will you? Look, we were hungry, all right? And Marge had forgotten to fill up our bowls before she left for work this morning, and so had Odelia. So we just figured…”

“You’d eat our food and blame it on the dogs,” I finished her sentence.

“Yeah, pretty much,” said Harriet, not meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry, Max. And I’m sorry for making up such a lame story. Though the thing about Mr. Ed is something Brutus came up with just now. I swear I had nothing to do with that.”

“A teensy tiny snail could never have eaten all of that food, Brutus,” I said. “If he had he’d be just about ready to explode now.”

“It’s all your fault, Max!” said Brutus.

“My fault!”

“If you hadn’t made such a big fuss about that silly snail I would never have felt the need to try and put him in his place. At the bottom of the food chain!”

I had just about had enough of this whole food chain business, and so I said,“Brutus, Mr. Ed is my friend, and so are you. But if you insist on disparaging him, you’re not my friend anymore.”

He just stared at me for a moment, then said,“Mr. Ed is your friend?”

“Yes, he is. He may be small, and he may be a snail, but he’s also a living, breathing creature, and all creatures, whether great or small, deserve our respect. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Max,” he said, much sobered by my little speech.

“And when I see Kingman next I’m going to tell him exactly the same thing. In fact I should have told him the first time he started spouting this food chain nonsense.”

“You know?” said Harriet as she gave me a tentative smile, “I was wrong and you were right, Max. Mr. Ed does deserve our respect. Especially since it’s obvious he’s been looking out for his human all along.”

“He’s got his own TV set,” Dooley said, “and he watches it twenty-four seven.”

“Yeah, I think Mr. Ed is probably the best-informed snail in snail history,” I said.

“Brutus?” said Harriet, addressing her mate with some bite to her tone. “What do we say now?”

“I know nothing?” Brutus tried, but when Harriet fixed him with a look that could kill, he added, “I’m sorry, Max. I should never have eaten your food. You, too, Dooley.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Brutus,” said Dooley. “You can eat my food any time you like.”

Brutus smiled.“No, I can’t. It’s your food, and I shouldn’t have dipped into it. Or lied about it.”

“It’s fine, Brutus,” I said. “I forgive you. So now that that’s settled, what have you guys discovered about the murder of Bob Rector?”

Two shamefaced looks from both Harriet and Brutus told me all I needed to know.

Chapter 22

Odelia sidled up to Chase, who was standing near the back of the room, looking bored.

“Hey, babe,” said the cop when Odelia joined him. “How was your interview with Evelina Pytel?”

“Embarrassing. She didn’t know that Bob was dead, so I pretty much put my foot in my mouth.”

“Oh, dear.”

“That’s what I said. She did confirm that she paid the ransom money, but then when she didn’t hear from the kidnappers or Bob, she figured she’d either been duped by Bob, or that something terrible had happened. Her sister convinced her it was the former, though I think in her heart of hearts she knew it was the latter.”

“The sister seems to feature into this story pretty prominently, doesn’t she?”

Odelia smiled.“Better have a talk to her?”

“You read my mind.” He gestured to the stage, where Lord Hilbourne was still speaking. The man simply couldn’t stop.

“Want to blow this thing?”

“Yeah, let’s,” she said. “Though there’s a good chance that Emma Bezel is here.”

“Yeah, looks like all of Hampton Cove has managed to cram themselves into this room.”

“I did see Evelina.”

“And I saw your cats—all four of them. They’re huddled underneath those chairs over there, the poor creatures.”

“Let’s at least get them out of their predicament,” said Odelia, and went in search of her four fur babies.

She found them huddled underneath the chair of Father Reilly, of all people, and they looked overjoyed to see her. And immediately followed her out of the reception, which looked like it was only getting started and could last much, much longer. Soon the champagne would come out, and things would liven up even more.

Once they were outside, Chase took out his phone and called Emma Bezel. After talking into his phone for a moment, he announced,“She’s at work. But she can see us now.”

“Where does she work?”

“Nail salon,” said Chase. “It’s only two blocks, so I suggest we walk and you tell me everything you and Evelina discussed.”

“Not much to tell, really. Evelina was really falling for Bob,” said Odelia as they crossed town square and passed the police station then moved in the direction of Myrna Loy Boulevard, where apparently Emma Bezel plied her trade.

Behind them, four cats trailed along in their wake.

“So the kidnappers sent proof of life in the form of a video, and that’s the last time Evelina saw Bob?”

“Yep. I told her to meet Uncle Alec at the precinct to make a formal statement but I don’t know if she’s done it yet.”

“I better get in touch with her and set up an interview,” said Chase. “And take a look at her phone while I’m at it.”

“Any idea how Bob got in the truck yet?”

“Well, the driver said he can think of only one place where Bob’s body could have gotten stashed in his truck, and that’s at a truck stop he spent the night at.”

“Did you check the truck stop?”

“Sarah did. She’s still wading through the CCTV footage—the truck stop has no less than four cameras covering both the inside and the outside of the place, ever since they were robbed last year. So far she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”

They’d arrived at the nail salon and walked in. Only one customer was present, a middle-aged lady having her nails done, and when they entered, the beautician looked up and said, “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

So they took a seat in the waiting area, and four cats dutifully settled down at their feet.

“If someone had told me a year ago that I would be conducting police interviews with a reporter and her four cats in tow, I’d have told them they were nuts,” Chase grunted as he bent over and tickled Dooley behind the ears.

“You’ve got to admit they’re a real boon for your investigation, though,” said Odelia.

“Oh, sure. If it weren’t for Max and Dooley we probably would never have known about this whole kidnapping thing.”

“Don’t you think Evelina would eventually have come forward? She lost a lot of money, and even though she claims it’s just small potatoes, I doubt whether she really feels that way.”

“Yeah, she probably wants the men that did this to her boyfriend caught as much as we do.”

“Unless Bob really is the mastermind behind the whole scheme, as her sister seems to think.”

“I ate all of Max and Dooley’s food and then lied about it,” Brutus suddenly announced, apropos of nothing. “Just thought you should know.”

“You did what?” Odelia asked.

“I was hungry!” Brutus lamented.

“Oh, dear. I forgot to fill up your bowls again, didn’t I?”

Brutus nodded shamefacedly.“And so did Marge.”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” she said. “It’s this whole wedding thing. It’s got me distracted.”

“Don’t blame Brutus,” Harriet piped up. “I ate from Max and Dooley’s bowls, too.”

“It’s all right,” said Odelia. “I won’t forget to feed you again, I promise.”

“What’s going on?” asked Chase.

“I forgot to feed the cats this morning,” she said, “and so did Mom.”

Her phone dinged, for probably the hundredth time that day, and she sighed deeply.

“Still getting messages?” asked Chase.

“All the time,” she said.

“You really should stop putting people on the guest list,” he said. “We simply can’t feed them all. It’s going cost us a fortune if this keeps up.”

“I know,” she said. “But these are all people I know.”

“Honey, this is a small town. You know everybody, and they all know you. But you simply can’t invite them all.”

“But how can I invite one and not the other? It’s impossible.”

Once again her phone dinged and she glanced at the message. It was from Ida Baumgartner, who was upset that she hadn’t received her wedding invitation yet.

“How many people do we have on the guest list?”

“Seven hundred and counting,” she said, and winced as he gasped in shock.

“Seven hundred people! But babe!”

“I know, I know. I keep telling Mom I’m going to start refusing people, but how can I?”

“You have to cut back. This is turning into some kind of monster wedding from hell.”

“And don’t I know it. I haven’t slept a good night’s sleep in weeks, and every time I think about the wedding I feel nauseous. Father Reilly is even talking about installing those big screens outside the church, so that the people who won’t fit inside can follow the service outside. Or else he suggested we move the wedding ceremony to the beach, so the entire town can come out and watch.”

“This is turning into a real circus.”

“I’m sorry, babe.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I mean, if this is what you want, I don’t mind. It is what you want, right?”

She gave him a sad look, and shook her head.“No, it’s not. All I wanted was to have a small ceremony. Just you and our respective families and no one else.”

“Oh, babe,” he said, and placed a comforting arm around her shoulder. “Maybe we should elope?”

She smiled at that.“Very funny.”

“At least you’ll have your cats there to give you support.”

“Oh, no, she won’t,” Harriet spoke at their feet. “We’ve discussed it and we’ve decided not to come to the wedding. Isn’t that right, you guys?”

They all gave her sorrowful looks.“I’m sorry,” said Brutus. “But it’s going to be too much for us. We’re going to get trampled. So we decided it’s best if we sit this one out.”

Odelia didn’t know why, but watching her four cats stare up at her with those big sad eyes suddenly broke something inside her, and before she knew what was happening, she suddenly burst into tears!

Just then, Emma Bezel announced,“I can see you guys now.”

But all Odelia could do was cry!

Chapter 23

“Why is Odelia crying, Max?” asked Dooley.

“I think it’s because Harriet and Brutus just told her we’re not coming to the wedding,” I said.

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes.”

“But… we can’t do that, Max!”

“Oh, yes, we can.”

“Yeah, can you imagine?” said Harriet. “Us and seven hundred people, all sharing the same space? We won’t survive.”

“You mean you suffer from hagarophobia?”

“Agoraphobia,” I corrected him. “No, Dooley. We suffer from being small and vulnerable. Besides, we see Odelia every day, so we can afford to miss seeing her for a couple of hours.”

“Yeah, we’ll simply stay home and when she gets back she’ll be Mrs. Kingsley,” said Brutus.

“But look at her,” said Dooley, and we all looked at her. She was currently being subjected to the comforting efforts of no less than two people, Chase and Emma the beautician.

“It’s all right,” said the beautician. “If you simply put some concealer on that no one will be able to tell you’ve been crying. Trust me. I’m a professional.”

“It’s not that,” said Odelia. “I don’t care if people see me like this. It’s just that… I’m getting married on Saturday.”

“Oh, of course. I remember now. Your mom was in here last week and she told me all about it. She invited me for the wedding and I said yes. So I’ll be there, don’t you worry.”

At this, Odelia burst into tears once more, and Emma cut a questioning look to the groom, who merely shook his head. I could tell he was thinking that this was not the way to conduct a police interview.

“We should reconsider, Max,” said Dooley. “Odelia is very, very sad that we won’t be there. We have to find a way to be there for her on the most beautiful day of her life.”

“Maybe we could sit on the balcony?” Harriet suggested. “Churches do have balconies, don’t they?”

“I’ll bet the balcony will be full of people, too,” I said. “Didn’t you hear what she just said? Father Reilly is going to put up big screens outside so that the people who don’t fit inside can watch. I’ll bet that place will be filled to capacity. Not an empty seat in the house.”

“Almost like a Beyonc? concert,” said Harriet with a smile. “Imagine that. Odelia selling out her first venue.”

“It’s not a rock concert, Harriet. It’s her wedding.”

“I know, I know. Just saying it’s pretty cool for her first show.”

“First and final show, I should hope.”

“Oh, for sure,” said Harriet. “I see a long and happy marriage in Odelia and Chase’s future. Just like the marriage of Odelia’s mom and dad.”

Just then, I happened to look out the window, and saw Marge stalk past, Tex trying to keep up and yelling,“Marge, wait! I would never cheat on you! Never!”

Bad sign!

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” asked Emma Bezel once Odelia’s flow of tears had lessened to a trickle.

“I talked to your sister this morning,” Odelia said, still sniffling a little but trying her darndest to put on a professional face. “About the death of Bob Rector.”

“Uh-huh,” said Emma, slumping a little in her seat.

“So you are aware that Bob Rector is dead?” said Chase.

“Oh, sure. I saw it on the news this morning.”

“Your sister didn’t know. It came as quite a shock to her when I told her,” said Odelia.

“I didn’t want to break the news to her over the phone,” said Emma. “I planned to pay her a visit later today, after I closed up my shop, and tell her in person.”

“How well did you know Bob, Mrs. Bezel?”

“Not very well. I met him a few times, but only briefly. Actually I was the one who introduced him to my sister. I’d been standing in line at the General Store for what felt like ages and Franklin was getting tired and had started barking—Franklin is my sweetheart. He’s a Shih Tzu. Well, Bob was so kind to help me out with Franklin and so we got to talking and turns out he was a dog person, too, and very sweet and gentle and it got me thinking about Evelina and the bad luck she’s had when it comes to men…”

“And so you set them up for a date,” Chase said, nodding.

“Worst decision of my life,” said Emma. “I should have known the man was too good to be true.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Odelia.

“Look, I’m the people person in our family, okay? I’m good at reading people. Evelina, on the other hand, is terrible at relationships but an amazing businesswoman. She took our parents’ company and turned it into a phenomenon. Amazingly successful. Money, and respect from her peers—the works. But she still sucks at creating a personal life that’s gratifying. That’s always been my department. So I figured I’d help her find happiness in her personal life as well. But Bob… You know what I think happened?”

“What?”

“I think Bob must have been targeting me specifically. That he must have investigated me and sought me out, knowing I’m Evelina’s sister. That he nudged me into setting him up with her. These people do that, you know. They’re very clever about how they set it up. Make you think it was your idea, but when you look back you realize it was their idea all along and you were set up. And that’s what I think happened.”

“You think he was after your sister’s money from the start,” said Chase.

“Absolutely.”

“So why didn’t he stay with Evelina?” asked Odelia. “If he was after her money a marriage would have made him a very rich man.”