Purrfectly Deadly (The Mysteries of Max Book 2)

Chapter 7

After sitting in on a few interviews, Dooley and I’d had enough, so we hopped down from the windowsill and made to leave. Brutus, who had been an attentive guest throughout, along with Harriet, seemed to find our retreat funny, for he scoffed, “Leaving already, boys? Talk about lack of stamina!”

“We know when we’ve seen it all,” I said.

“Well, I’m sticking around,” he announced. “It’s only starting to get good.” And he returned his attention to the room behind the window, where Chase was interviewing one of what seemed like hundreds of escorts Johnny had gone through in the weeks leading up to his death. You could say whatever you wanted about the guy, but not that he didn’t have the stamina Brutus was referring to. In spite of his age, he’d been up all night every night, partying like there was no tomorrow and entertaining up to a dozen men.

“I wonder how much of his behavior was Johnny and how much the drugs he took,” I said as we started toward the patch of lawn in front of the police station. An American flag waved over a small plaque reminding Hampton Cove that here resided the long arm of the law. Though Uncle Alec’s arms weren’t really all that long, he was doing a great job interviewing a long line of witnesses testifying to Johnny’s daily and nightly habits. It was obvious that the so-called recluse hadn’t been all that reclusive after all.

“I think it was the drugs,” said Dooley. “No man can be that voracious and that…” He struggled to find the right word.

“Enduring?” I supplied.

“Yeah. It’s almost a miracle how enduring the guy was.”

“I think the right word is addicted. The guy was simply addicted to sex.”

“Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Talk about a walking cliché.”

We padded along the sidewalk, wondering where to go from there. Chief Alec and Chase had interviewed dozens of young men and the picture of Johnny that emerged was clear: each day he’d call the agency to send him a selection of boys, all sharing the same traits. They had to be young, handsome and buff. The agency would make a selection and send over a dozen candidates. The first part of the evening would consist of Johnny entertaining them with his old video clips displayed on a big screen, and there would be lots of drinking and eating going on. As a dessert, drugs would be passed around like candy. They’d smoke pot, get high on coke and G, and things would heat up considerably. By the time midnight rolled around, the scene would look like something straight out of Caligula. The long version.

At some point Johnny would pick the boy whose exploits had impressed him the most, and invite him up to his room to spend the night. Throughout these wild parties there would be no trace of Jasper, either because he’d refuse to leave his private quarters—apparently Johnny and Jasper occupied separate wings—or he’d have stormed off after yet another row with Johnny.

Chico Fletcher, boy toy of the month, hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary last night. But then he’d been pretty high on illegal substances. He also didn’t have a motive to harm Johnny, especially seeing as he’d been hoping to replace Jasper as Johnny’s new queen. You can’t become queen of a dead man, so Chico was very disappointed with the way things had turned out. All he had to show for his efforts were the exorbitant fees he’d been paid.

So far the only one with an obvious motive was still Jasper, who remained firmly in the picture as the most likely suspect in the murder.

“So who do you think did it?” I asked Dooley.

“The butler, of course,” said Dooley, then laughed loudly at his own joke.

“Hey, you guys!” suddenly a voice sounded behind us. “Wait up!”

She sounded a lite out of breath, as if she’d been running, and when we both turned in surprise, we saw we’d been joined by none other than Harriet.

I checked around, but could see no trace of Brutus. “Where’s your boyfriend?” I asked.

She made a gesture with her tail. “Still glued to the police station window.” She rolled her eyes. “If I have to listen to one more boy toy talking about how hot and sexy John Paul George was I’m going to be sick.”

We walked along the pavement together, and Dooley asked, “So how’s Brutus’s investigation going?”

“Very well, thank you, Dooley. I think Brutus has a definite lead on the killer, and it won’t be long before he shares his observations with Chase.”

I gave her a sideways glance. “You do know that Brutus can’t talk to his owner, right?”

“Of course I know, silly,” she said. “But he’s promised me he’ll fix that.”

“By using sign language?” I asked. “No, seriously though. How does he hope to find the killer and help the investigation? He’s a policeman’s cat, not a police cat. There’s a difference.”

That was the rub right there: just because you were the cat of a policeman that didn’t magically transfer the man’s sleuthing powers to you. Dooley and I had been doing this with Odelia for a very long time, so we knew how to proceed. Brutus was a complete newbie at this sleuthing business, though, and I’m sure that Harriet knew this but was too proud to admit it.

“Hey, I know what you’re doing,” said Dooley now.

“I’m walking along the street with my friends, that’s what I’m doing,” said Harriet.

“No, you’re not. You’re spying on us. Brutus doesn’t know which way to turn so he instructed you to spy on us and hope to find out what we know.”

“That’s just ridiculous,” she said primly. “You know as well as I do that all I want is for us to be friends, just like in the old days.”

“Only that will never happen if you keep hanging out with Brutus,” I said.

“Oh, God, you’re being melodramatic again, you two,” said Harriet. “Can’t you simply accept that Brutus is part of the gang now?”

“Never,” I said adamantly.

“No way,” Dooley agreed.

“You guys,” she said, sounding exasperated, “Brutus is a really nice cat, once you get to know him. In fact he’s just great. He’s strong and generous and sweet and caring… He’s a great friend. He really is.”

“A friend who likes to tell us what to do, where to go, who we can and cannot meet? That doesn’t sound like a nice cat to me. More like a despot.”

“Brutus is simply set in his ways,” Harriet argued. “I’m sure that if you give him time, he’ll come around to the way we do things around here. You have to remember he’s a big city cat, and they do things different over there.”

“Oh, I’ll say they do,” said Dooley.

We walked on in silence for a moment. Even in spite of Harriet’s recent betrayal, it still felt good to be just the three of us again, just like old times, and I could sense that Dooley, too, was secretly glad that Harriet was trying to be our friend again. This whole Brutus business had hit him hard.

“So what do we do now?” asked Harriet. “What’s our next move?”

Dooley’s eyebrows rose at her use of the term ‘we’. “We were just going over to the general store, to see what the word on the street is,” he said.

“Yeah, we wanted to pick Kingman’s brain. See what he has to say.”

Kingman was the cat of Wilbur Vickery, owner of Vickery General Store on Main Street, and a great source of information on what was happening in this town and what people were talking about. Along with the barbershop and the doctor’s office, the store was among our favorite places to hang out.

Kingman slept all day on Wilbur’s counter, and even though it looked like he was out of it, he was actually acutely aware of everything that went on around him, which made him such a great source of information.

“Good idea,” said Harriet cheerfully. “Let’s go talk to Kingman.”

I had my qualms about Harriet being an agent for the enemy, like Dooley had said, but decided to let her tag along anyway. It would have been sad to have to send her away, especially as she’d been our friend for as long as the three of us had been alive on this planet. I guess I was just being sentimental.