by Nic Saint
We’d arrived at the General Store and I saw that Kingman wasn’t occupying his usual perch on the checkout counter inside the store but instead sat holding court outside. And just like his owner, he seemed awfully interested in the happenings across the street.
“Hey, Max, Dooley,” he said, never taking his eyes off the Hampton Cove Star.
“We need your advice, Kingman,” I said by way of greeting.
Before he could respond, Kingman suddenly broke into a strange breakdancing movement, his body shivering and convulsing while he tried to scratch a spot on his lower back. I could have told him this was impossible. There are spots even the most agile of cats simply cannot reach, and Kingman, an impressively fat piebald, was never the most agile of cats, even in his prime. He finally seemed to realize this and resorted to applying his tongue to the area, licking up a storm. Finally he gave up and said in a low voice, “Stupid critters.”
And then I got it. Kingman had fleas!
“Oh, no,” said Dooley, who’d come to the same conclusion. “Kingman!”
“Yeah, I got ‘em. Everybody’s got ‘em.”
In that moment, as if to confirm his words, both Dooley and I broke into an equally spastic version of the flea breakdance. When Kingman raised an eyebrow, I confirmed the sad news. “We got ‘em, too.”
“Sure you do. Like I said, everybody’s got ‘em. Every single cat in Hampton Cove. From the hoity-toity to the lowliest street cats, they’re all doing the flea dance today.”
“But how?” asked Dooley. “Where? I mean, who is patient zero?”
Kingman frowned. “Huh? What are you talking about?”
“The first one to get the fleas,” I explained. “He or she must have infected the others.”
“Who cares! We got ‘em. Now we gotta get rid of ‘em!” He leaned in. “Little piece of advice. Free of charge. Whatever you do, don’t tell your human. Never tell your human.”
We also leaned in, Dooley pricking up his ears, his eyes wide. “Why?” he asked.
Kingman slowly raised his paw, equally slowly extended a single claw, and tapped a strange contraption located around his neck.
It was… a collar!
Dooley and I both gasped.
I hadn’t seen the collar until now, buried as it was between Kingman’s multiple layers of skin and flab and hidden beneath his bristly white-and-black fur.
Kingman gave us a sad nod. “Take a good look, fellas. This is what happens when you tell your human you got fleas. They put the collar on you!”
I stared at the thing in abject horror.
“But-but-but collars are for dogs!” Dooley cried. “Not cats—never cats!”
“Until we get fleas,” growled Kingman. “So don’t be like me, boys. No matter how much it itches. No matter how much they bite. Don’t scratch yourselves in front of your human. They will inspect you. They will discover the fleas. And they will give you the collar.” He shook his head. “You can’t imagine the humiliation. The howls of derision I get from every single canine that passes my store. Laughing in my face. Calling me names. Let me tell you—better to grin and bear those damn fleas than to be subjected to this—this agony!”
Dooley gasped, and turned to me. Our eyes met and I could see my own terror reflected in his widening pupils.
Chase knew.
Chase would tell Odelia.
Odelia would take us to Vena.
And Vena would give us the collar!
Dooley was right. We were dead. Dead!
Chapter 8
While Grandma and her nemesis Scarlett Canyon fought over the affections of Philippe Goldsmith, Odelia decided to drop by the house. Her uncle would deal with Gran and the fallout of this Goldsmith business. Chase would deal with the police investigation into the death of the old man. But no one would deal with perhaps the more urgent business of four cats left to their own devices and suffering from a painful attack of fleas.
She walked out of the hotel lobby and out into the street, her phone pressed to her ear. Vena picked up within seconds and when she explained about her felines’ predicament, the veterinarian was only too happy to squeeze her in between her other appointments.
“I don’t mind telling you it’s been one hell of a morning, darling,” said Vena. “It’s almost as if the entire cat population of Hampton Cove has been infested with this pest overnight. I’m almost out of drops and it’s not even noon yet! But drop by with your cats and we’ll get rid of those pests ASAP!”
As she was talking to Vena, Odelia’s eyes drifted across the street and who would she see but the very cats she was discussing! They were gabbing with Kingman, Wilbur Vickery’s chubby piebald, and judging from the expression on Dooley’s face the conversation had just turned deadly serious.
After assuring Vena she would be there within the half hour, she quickly crossed the street and joined her two felines.
“Hey babes,” she said as she crouched down next to Max and Dooley and tickled their necks. “I heard what happened. Are you in a lot of pain?”
Max gave her a hesitant look—not the kind of look he usually directed at her. Almost as if he were… afraid of her. Hard to believe, of course. She was the kind of pet owner who was adored by her pets. Always doing what was best for her little darlings—giving them the best chow on the market—allowing them to sleep at the foot of the bed—giving them cuddles and lavishing all her attention on them at every possible occasion.
“It’s not that it’s painful, Odelia,” said Dooley with a shaky voice, as if he’d just learned a terrible truth. “It’s that it’s so incredibly itchy.”
And to demonstrate the truthfulness of his words, he broke into a complicated set of movements, scratching pretty much every surface of his body that he could reach with his hind paws and applying tongue and teeth to the rest.
“Oh, you poor darlings,” she said, getting up. “Let’s go, shall we? I made an appointment with Vena. She’s waiting.”
Max and Dooley’s eyes turned to Kingman, who gave them an ‘I told you so’ look and then shook his head sadly, returning indoors. She now saw he was wearing a flea collar. So he had caught the affliction, too. If what Vena said was true, every local cat had. She wondered what had started the infestation. Who, in other words, was Hampton Cove’s patient zero? Probably some street cat like Clarice, who liked to roam the streets and snack from garbage dumps all across town.
“Do we have to go to Vena, Odelia?” asked Max.
“Yes, you do. You don’t want to suffer these fleas forever, do you?”
“Maybe they’ll, you know, get tired of me and jump ship?”
“No, they won’t. They’ll lay eggs and more fleas will come and you’ll never get rid of them.”
He slumped and she decided to cut all this back-and-forth short and picked both him and Dooley up. People were already stopping and staring at the crazy lady talking to her cats. She knew the Poole women had a reputation in town for being cat ladies, and she didn’t want to make it worse by becoming a public display of crazy. Although her grandmother probably cornered the market in that particular area.
She carried both cats to her beat-up old pickup, which she’d parked in front of her dad’s office, and deposited them inside.
They looked remarkably glum, which was only natural, of course. Poor darlings.
She got behind the wheel, managed to make the car’s engine cough and purr, and navigated the old thing into traffic. “Are Brutus and Harriet at the house?” she asked.
Max and Dooley both nodded automatically, still looking sandbagged.
“Don’t worry, you guys,” she said in an attempt to cheer them up. “Vena will get rid of these pests in no time. You’ll see. She told me she’s seen half of Hampton Cove’s cat population already and she’s expecting the other half this afternoon. It would seem everyone and his tabby has caught this affliction today.”
“What were you doing at the hotel?” asked Max, showing the first signs of animation sin
ce she’d picked him up at Vickery’s store.
“I was going to tell you about that. Do you remember those beer commercials? The Most Fascinating Man in the World ones?”
“The old bearded man with his funny stories and the two pretty ladies?”
“That’s the one. His name is Burt Goldsmith, and I was going to interview him this morning. Only turns out he got blown up.”
Max did a double take. “Blown up?”
“Yeah, his hotel room exploded and he along with it.”
“Maybe he was filming one of his commercials and something went wrong?”
“I don’t think so. Either he killed himself—by accident or on purpose—or…” Her expression turned grim and she clutched the steering wheel a little firmer. “He was killed.”
“Do you want us to snoop around?” asked Max.
“If you could, that would be wonderful,” she said.
Her cats were her secret weapon as a reporter. They gave her the kinds of scoops other journos could only dream of. And since they were plugged into the local feline network, they collected stories that were pure gold once they made it into print.
“Odelia?” asked Dooley, speaking up for the first time since he got into the car.
“Uh-huh?” she said as she turned down the street where she lived.
“Are we going to die?”
She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Oh, Dooley. Of course you’re not going to die. It’s fleas—not cancer. By this time tomorrow you’ll have forgotten about the whole thing.”
“But—remember the movie the other night? Where Rose from Titanic died?”
Max heaved an annoyed grunt. “Not Rose from Titanic again, Dooley!”
“Rose from Titanic died,” Dooley insisted stubbornly, “and so did Gwyneth and a whole bunch of other nice people, except for Matt Damon for some reason. And until they discovered patient zero and the bat and pig poop they had no way of stopping the disease.”
“This isn’t the same thing,” she assured him while suppressing a smile. Dooley had a flair for the dramatic, and for some reason always thought he was going to die. “It’s fleas, not some terrible virus. And you know that wasn’t Rose from Titanic, right? Kate Winslet is an actress. She simply played a part. She’s alive and well and probably still living in that nice English cottage from The Holiday.” Though that was probably only true in the movie as well.
“Oh,” said Dooley as he thought about this for a moment. It was obvious she’d given him food for thought.
“Odelia?” asked Max.
“Uh-huh,” she said, parking the car in front of the house.
“Is Chase going to be living with us from now on?”
She’d extracted the key from the ignition and now sat poised, not expecting this particular question. At all. “Um…”
“I mean, he’s been sleeping in your bed for the past four nights. And he’s got his toothbrush and his toothpaste up in the cup in the bathroom and his underwear on that shelf you cleared for him in the bedroom closet, so…”
She blinked and turned to face her cats. They both looked at her expectantly.
“Um…”
“He seems nice,” Dooley commented, that sandbagged look slightly waning.
“Yeah, he seems very nice,” Max added. “And he killed a flea.”
“Two fleas,” said Dooley. “He’s a hero. A flea-killing hero.”
“Truth is, guys, I don’t know. I like Chase. I like Chase a lot.”
“And he likes you,” Max offered.
“It would appear so,” she said with a laugh. “It’s just that… we’re taking things one step at a time. I wish I could tell you what the future will bring, but I can’t. You see, human relationships are like puzzles. Sometimes you know all the pieces will fit from the moment you dump those pieces out on the table. Other times? You just don’t know. Maybe things look good for a while, and then suddenly you discover the puzzle company decided to short you a piece and without it you can’t complete the puzzle. Other times you get bored laying that puzzle halfway through or things are just too hard and complicated and you give up.”
Max and Dooley were frowning seriously. The puzzle analogy probably wasn’t the best one she could have come up with, but there was some truth to it. She liked Chase, and she liked the way he made her feel. But it was early days, and she had no idea if he was a keeper or not. And neither, probably, did he. At any rate, things were going great, and she had no intention of taking them further by making big promises or launching big ambitious plans. Plans had a way of backfiring on her. Big time. So she wasn’t going to jinx anything at this point when everything was humming along fine.
She gave them both a poke in the tummy. “You guys sit tight and I’ll pick up Harriet and Brutus, okay?”
As she slammed the door, Max and Dooley were still brooding. She smiled to herself. Sometimes, she thought, her cats were almost more human than most humans she knew.
And a heck of a lot smarter, too.
Chapter 9
Chase and Chief Alec took a seat on one of those plush overstuffed chairs in the hotel lobby. With the fire marshals going over Burt Goldsmith’s room with a fine-tooth comb, trying to figure out what exactly happened there, the techies wrapping up Burt’s body and transferring it to their van, and Alec’s people talking to staff and guests, they took a respite.
“Do you really think your mom had Burt Goldsmith’s son?” asked Chase.
Chief Alec patted at the few remaining strands of hair on his wide dome and groaned. “I don’t know what to think, buddy. You would imagine a woman would know if she popped out a second son at some point in the past.”
“She says she doesn’t remember. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
Alec gave him his best scowl. “Wipe that grin off your face, Chase. I’m begging you.”
Try as he might, though, Chase could not comply. The situation was simply too outrageous. “Could be that your mother is one of those women who don’t even notice they’re pregnant, then pop out a newborn without paying attention and go on about their business without a second glance.” At least that was the story Grandma had told them.
“I find that very hard to believe. And I find it equally hard to believe Scarlett Canyon would have the exact same story to tell. About the baby just suddenly… being there, I mean.” He waved his hands about a bit. “I mean—how can a baby just… pop?! That’s impossible!”
“And yet it happened, if your mother is to be believed.”
The Chief groaned some more. The big man was clearly in the throes of some extreme emotion. It’s not every day that a man discovers he has a secret brother who’s the son of the Most Fascinating Man in the World. “You wanna know what I think?”
“I definitely do, Alec. I definitely do.” Alec gave him an extremely dirty look and Chase laughed, clapping the older man on the back. “I’m sorry. It’s just funny is all.”
“Maybe for you it is. For me this is like a nightmare and I just can’t seem to wake up.”
“Tell me, big guy. What is it you think?”
Alec took a deep breath. “I think that Mom decided she wants some of those Goldsmith millions for herself, and by pretending to be Burt’s son’s long-lost mother, she just might get her hands on a big chunk of it.”
“You dare accuse your own mother of being a gold digger?”
“As a matter of fact I do. I think Mom is sick and tired of having to ask her son-in-law for handouts and now that she saw her chance clear to topping up her bank account with a nice fresh pile of cash she’s not going to let that golden opportunity slip through her fingers.”
Alec had a point. Grandma Muffin liked to spend money like water. If she wasn’t buying online beauty treatments she was being duped by scammer apps on the App Store and maxing out the credit cards Tex Poole kept giving her. The lady liked to live big, and since Tex had taken away those very credit cards, she wasn’t happy.
“I think this whole th
ing will shake out just fine,” Chase said, leaning back and watching the goings-on in the lobby of this fine hotel. His grandfather had stayed here, though not in Burt’s room, and as his thoughts turned to the old man, a sense of well-being spread through him. He might be a simple cop in a small town, but he had big plans. And those big plans involved starting a family with a particular feisty blond-haired reporter. If only this particular reporter felt the same way about him as he felt about her.
Alec must have sensed this shift in his mental processes, for he eyed him intently.
After a moment, Chase laughed and said, “What?”
“You haven’t been home a lot lately, have you?”
“No, sir, I haven’t.”
He’d been bunking with Alec since arriving in town, something for which he was still mighty grateful. In the process, he and the chief of police had struck up a fine friendship, and he had a feeling the older man was about to abuse that friendship by giving him a piece of advice. He didn’t mind. He could use all the advice Odelia’s uncle cared to dispense.
“Been sleeping over at my niece’s place?”
“Yes, sir, as a matter of fact I have.”
“You like that girl, don’t you, son?”
He smiled widely. “You got my number, Alec. I do like your niece. In fact I don’t think it’s too much to say that I love her.”
“Oh, bringing out the L word, huh?”
“Yes, sir. Only the L word will do for what I feel for Odelia Poole.”
“Well, let me give you a piece of advice, son.”
Here it came.
“The way to Odelia’s heart is those damn cats of hers.”
He looked up. Huh? “Say what?”
Alec poked a finger in Chase’s chest for emphasis. “Shower those cats with love and affection and she’ll look upon you differently. That’s my piece of advice for you.”
For a moment he thought the other man had lost it. “Odelia’s cats.”
“Max, Dooley and Harriet. Focus on those three. I don’t know about Brutus. He’s something of an interloper.”
“Like me.”