The Mysteries of Max Box Sets 3

by Nic Saint

  Alec didn’t laugh. “Maybe you are, maybe you ain’t. Too soon to tell.”

  He gulped a little. “But she likes me, right?”

  The chief wiggled his head. “Eh. I guess she does. The thing you need to know about Odelia is that she’s been through a lot, son. She’s been with plenty of fellas in her time and none of them turned out the way she hoped. She’s taking a mighty big leap letting you sleep over. As far as I know that’s a first for her.” And there was that finger again, poking his chest. Alec was leaning in now, too, his face inches from Chase’s. “So don’t you go and break that girl’s heart now, you hear?”

  “You know I won’t.”

  “Cause if you break my favorite niece’s heart, I’ll break your neck, understand?”

  “I thought Odelia was your only niece?” he quipped.

  But Alec didn’t crack a smile. The man was serious. “Promise me.”

  “I promise, I promise. I will not break your favorite niece’s heart.”

  “Fine.” He relaxed a little. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I don’t think it’s too much to say that you’re by far my favorite of Odelia’s many boyfriends so far.”

  “That’s… great to hear. I guess.”

  Alec slung a hand around his shoulder and gave him a fatherly squeeze. “Keep this up and you might even marry into the family.” Just then, Grandma Muffin came stalking through the lobby, shouting a few carefully chosen obscenities at Scarlett Canyon, who was teetering on high heels in front of her and shouting right back. “Not sure that’s such a good idea, though, considering this family of mine is batshit crazy,” Chief Alec added with a sigh.

  Chapter 10

  Vena’s was bustling like never before. In fact I don’t think I’d ever seen so many cats squeezed into the tiny waiting room before. All of them were glancing around morosely, and all of them were in a plaintive mood, the topic of fleas dominating every conversation. Even Shanille was there, the leader of cat choir and Father Reilly’s cat. Father Reilly himself was looking glum, possibly not used to taking time out of his busy schedule to take his cat to the vet.

  Since it was standing-room only, Odelia leaned against the wall, the four of us nicely bundled at her feet.

  “Your cats are so well-behaved!” a woman remarked, referring to the way we were the only cats not cooped up in those plastic cage contraptions. “How do you manage?”

  Odelia shrugged. “I tan their hides if they step out of line. Nice crack of the whip.”

  The woman pressed her lips together and shook her head. No sense of humor.

  Odelia didn’t need to ‘tan our hides’ to make us behave. We were so terrified to visit Vena’s that we didn’t stir an inch from the spot where Odelia had plunked us down. And so were the other cats. You may think that cats love going to the vet. Think again. We hate the vet. We hate to be prodded and pricked and having our gums checked and our tummies measured. It’s degrading. It’s humiliating. It’s very anti-cat. Sure, it’s supposed to be good for us. I don’t care. I still hate it. Now, though, with the notion that Vena would rid us of our flea infection, I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Not the other cats, though. They were all plaintively meowing up a storm.

  Dooley, meanwhile, seemed to have other interests. He’d been brooding a lot on the drive over, and now it became clear about what. “So you said that the fact that Chase has moved in has something to do with babies, right?” he asked Harriet.

  “Oh, Dooley,” she said, exasperated. “Are you still going on about that?”

  “What did you mean when you said that?” he insisted stubbornly.

  “Isn’t it obvious? When a human male and a human female move in together it’s because they want to make human babies.”

  Dooley uttered a shocked gasp. “Odelia is having babies?”

  “Of course she is. She’s a human female and human females need to have babies before a certain age. Something really old, though. Probably like twenty or something.”

  Dooley turned to me. “How old is Odelia now?”

  “No idea. Ten? Fifteen maybe?”

  “That sounds about right,” Brutus agreed. “Chase is probably the same age as Odelia and I’m six and I know Chase is a lot older than me so he’s probably ten years old by now. Fifteen at the outside,” he allowed.

  “That means Odelia still has oodles of time to have human babies,” said Dooley. “Years and years and years. So why have them now?!”

  “It’s an urge,” Harriet knew. “Humans get this inexplicable urge to make babies. I think it’s very strange but there you are. Urges. They get them and Odelia is no exception.”

  Odelia would have commented but the other humans in the room would have looked at her strangely if suddenly she broke out into meows. So she kept her mouth shut. It was hard for her, though, judging from the scarlet blush that had crept up her cheeks. Her lips were trembling, too, and if I hadn’t known any better I would have thought she was trying to keep from bursting out laughing. Which was impossible, of course, as we were having this very serious, very adult conversation right under her nose.

  “She needs to control this urge,” Dooley said. “She needs to know that we’re her babies and she doesn’t need human babies so she needs to control this urge and she needs to control this urge now, before Chase does…” He turned to Harriet again, whom he seemed to consider the expert on all things human all of a sudden. “What part does Chase play in this whole baby making thing?”

  Harriet frowned. “Well, he’s the one who needs to put the baby in her, obviously, so at some point he’ll probably…” She flicked her eyes to Dooley and then to me. “Has Dooley ever had The Talk?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I never gave him The Talk.”

  “What talk?” asked Dooley.

  “The Talk,” Harriet clarified.

  “I don’t get it,” said Dooley.

  Harriet sighed exaggeratedly. “Brutus. Please give Dooley The Talk.”

  “Why do I have to give him The Talk? Why can’t you give him The Talk?”

  “Because you’re a male and Dooley is a male and only males should give other males The Talk. It’s a rule.”

  “It’s not a rule.”

  “It’s a rule. I didn’t invent it.”

  “There’s no rule about that. There’s no rule that says only males can give other males The Talk,” Brutus protested. “In fact I think it’s much better coming from you.”

  “Guys!” Dooley cried. “What is The Talk?!”

  “Look,” I said, deciding to get this over with. Like a band-aid, you just had to rip it off. “You know how a male cat and a female cat get together and a couple of months later lots of kittens come out?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “With humans it’s the exact same thing. The male of the species and the female of the species, um, lie together, as they do, and then a couple of months later babies pop out.”

  “How many babies?” he asked, darting curious glances at Odelia, as if expecting a litter of babies to suddenly emerge from our human.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said vaguely. “A few, probably.”

  “One,” said Brutus. “Usually humans have the one baby.”

  “That’s it?” I asked, frowning. “That can’t be true.”

  “It’s true. Humans are stingy. They just have the one baby.”

  “Sometimes they have two,” Harriet said. “Or three or four. But it’s rare. So rare that when humans have, like, eight babies in a single litter, they get their own TV show. It’s true.”

  “Humans are weird,” Brutus agreed.

  “So… how long before these babies arrive?” asked Dooley, still staring at Odelia, who was still having trouble keeping a straight face.

  “Oh, maybe like three months?” I said. “Two?”

  “You guys!” Dooley said. “Odelia and Chase have been lying together for weeks now, so these babies might pop out any moment now!” He
buried his face in his hands. “Oh, no.”

  “Relax, Dooley,” I said. “Humans don’t always have babies when they lie together. They have to… do stuff.”

  “Yeah, and then sometimes they take a pill and then they don’t have the babies,” Harriet explained. She seemed to know an awful lot about this stuff. Then again, at her house they watched the Discovery Channel all the time, which was probably where she got her information.

  “They take a pill?” asked Dooley, looking up. “What pill?”

  “Yeah, what pill?” I asked. This was news to me, too.

  Harriet shrugged, studying her fingernails. “I dunno. Some pill.”

  Dooley turned to me, and I could see the question in his eyes before he formulated it. “Does Odelia have this magic anti-baby pill, Max?”

  Ugh. “How should I know?”

  His face took on a determined look. “We need to find out. This is life or death, Max.”

  I was afraid to ask. “Why is this life or death, Dooley?”

  “Because the moment Odelia has her babies she’ll get rid of us!”

  And there it was. The crux of the matter. I had to admit I’d given the matter some thought myself. Our mailwoman Bambi Wiggins recently had a baby, and her cat Ellen had told us that there are three rules for cats when in the presence of a human baby: don’t scratch the baby. Don’t sit on the baby. Don’t bite the baby. But I could tell Ellen wasn’t entirely sanguine about her position in the Wiggins household herself now that this baby was born. She tried to put on a brave face, but there’s a long-held rumor amongst cats that the moment humans have babies those same humans’ cats get offered a one-way ride to the pound. And if there’s one place us cats fear even more than the vet, it’s the pound.

  “We have to stop her,” Dooley whispered, loud enough for the entire waiting room to hear. “Odelia can never have babies, Max. We need to stall her until she’s too old! Which is only…” He made a few quick calculations in his head. “Two more years!”

  “Ten,” Harriet corrected him. “She’s ten now, which makes her twenty in ten.”

  “Fifteen at the outside,” Brutus repeated. “Which gives you a window of five years.”

  He cut me an urgent look. I knew what that look meant: have you thought of some remedy or cure for my very delicate issue, Max? I gave him a look back that said: no, Brutus. I haven’t. But I was adamant to bring it up with Vena when I had the chance, whether he liked it or not.

  What? I’m not an expert on tomcat anatomy. Vena is. Which is why she gets paid the big bucks.

  Chapter 11

  Dooley, Brutus and Harriet were still discussing the baby thing, so I pawed Odelia’s leg until she picked me up. I had an important message to deliver and now was the time to do it.

  “Brutus has issues, Odelia,” I told her quietly, making sure the other members of our cat menagerie couldn’t overhear us.

  “I’ll say,” she said between unmoving lips. “You guys are so funny.”

  I had no idea how to respond to that, so I went on, “He’s having pee-pee issues.”

  This time a frown appeared on her brow. “Pee-pee issues?”

  I cut a quick glance down to the floor, but Brutus was still engrossed in the entire pill discussion so the coast was clear. “You need to ask Vena to take a look at his pee-pee,” I said. “But don’t tell her I told you, cause this is a very sensitive matter for Brutus and he’ll probably kill me if he found out I told you to tell Vena.”

  Odelia smiled. Cat drama. She knew all about it. “Fine,” she said, her lips still not moving, her eyes darting about the room to make sure nobody saw she was talking to her cat. I didn’t know how she did it. Each time I meow or mewl my lips have a tendency to part. Hard to keep them pressed together and still hold a well-enunciated conversation.

  I made to jump back down but Odelia held onto me. “Wait. Tell me more about this pee-pee thing.”

  “What more is there to tell?”

  “Does he have pain when he urinates?”

  Ugh. I so didn’t want to discuss this topic. “He urinates just fine. It’s the other thing that doesn’t work.”

  She frowned, confused. “What other thing?”

  I cocked a knowing whisker at her. And then she got it.

  “Oh!”

  “Yeah.”

  “The… Brutus and… Harriet.”

  “Yup.”

  “You mean his soldier refuses to salute.”

  Gah. “I think I’ve heard enough,” I said, and gracefully jumped down to resume my position at her feet. And it was then that the conversation really turned weird.

  “Did you hear about that explosion this morning?” asked Shanille.

  “Yeah, some old guy got blown up, right?” said Tom, the butcher’s cat.

  “Not just some old guy,” said Tigger, the plumber’s cat. “The Most Fascinating Man in the World. My human loves those commercials. My human loves beer,” he clarified.

  “Your human is a raging alcoholic,” said Shanille disapprovingly.

  “He is not. He loves beer, that’s all. And Scotch. And vodka. And—”

  “Kingman told me the guy’s cat is missing,” said Misty, the electrician’s cat.

  “The Most Fascinating Man in the World had a cat?” I asked.

  “Sure he did. The Most Fascinating Cat in the World. She was in some of those commercials. What’s her name again?” Misty clicked her nails annoyedly, then her face cleared. “That’s right. Shadow. Great name for a cat, huh?”

  Shadow, who belongs to Franklin Beaver, the guy who runs the hardware store, grinned. “I like it.”

  “I think he likes gin, too,” said Tigger, frowning, “though I’m not sure. He definitely likes his Martinis. Neat, not stirred or shaken. Poured straight from the bottle.”

  “Maybe we should talk to this Shadow, Max,” Dooley suggested. “Find out what he knows.”

  “Shadow is a she,” said Misty. “Not a he. At least that’s what Kingman told me.”

  “I’m not a she,” said Shadow, a shadow passing over his face. “I’m a he.”

  “Well, she’s a she,” said Misty decidedly. “So there.”

  “And he likes his brandy, too,” said Tigger musingly. “Pear brandy, if I’m not mistaken. And apple.” He shrugged. “He’s not picky. Very happy-go-lucky guy, my human. Very easy.”

  I held up my paws. “Where can we find this Shadow—he or she?”

  Misty frowned. “Like I said, Kingman thinks Shadow went missing. Right after the explosion.”

  “Must have scared the living daylights out of her,” Shanille agreed. “I know I wouldn’t enjoy my human being blown up.” She darted a quick look at Father Reilly, ascertaining he was still there, and had not been blown up while she wasn’t looking.

  “None of us would enjoy our humans being blown up,” I said.

  “Speak for yourself,” a ratty little cat piped up. I recognized her as the landscaper’s tabby. “Wanna know what my human did? Accidentally stuck me in the washer. The washer! I wanted to have a look-see and the doofus closed the door on me! It’s a miracle I survived!”

  We all stared at the cat. She looked a little worse for wear but very much alive.

  She sighed. “At least I don’t got fleas, like you lot do.” She scratched a floppy left ear. “It’s this damn water in my ears that bugs me, though. Can’t get it out! Soapy water. Ugh.”

  “And then there’s wine, of course,” said Tigger, his face clearing. “Oh, he loves his wines. He loves his red wines, he loves his white wines, he loves his rosés—”

  “Will you shut up already?” asked Shanille plaintively. “I don’t care about your alcoholic human’s addictions and disgusting predilections.”

  “Practice some kindness, Shanille,” Tigger said, stung. “Isn’t that what your human teaches? Kindness and your basic Christian compassion?”

  Shanille tilted her chin. “I’ll have you know I don’t go in for all that religious stuff.”
>
  “Your human runs a church for a living!”

  “So? Your human unclogs toilets for a living. That doesn’t mean you have to.”

  “It’s not the same thing and you know it.”

  Pretty soon the whole thing erupted into a war of words, as it often does when a bunch of cats get together. I decided to do the smart thing and stay out of it. Instead, I turned to my compatriots, who sat following the back-and-forth with glittering eyes and clicking claws. Oh, cats do love a good cat fight. “You guys, we have to find this cat Shadow. Maybe she saw what happened to her human.” I looked up at Odelia who gave me a wink.

  “Sure, sure,” said Brutus, who seemed eager to jump into the fray.

  I sighed. “Harriet?”

  “Shush, Max,” the Persian said. “I think Shanille is about to implode.”

  I turned to my wingman. “Dooley?”

  “I’ll help you, Max,” he said. “On one condition.”

  “What?”

  “That you’ll help me find Odelia’s magic pills.”

  And we were right back where we started.

  Moments later we were finally called into Vena’s consultation room for our big inspection. I’ll spare you the details, but none of us came out unscathed that day. She applied some kind of weird-smelling gel to our necks, then handed Odelia an equally weird-looking comb with the advice to use it at least twice daily with a little soapy water, and finally gave our human the option to apply the dreadful collar or not.

  “Quite frankly I’m using them less and less,” said Vena. “I find that they produce a horrible rash or allergic reaction in some cats, while others get them snagged on tree branches and such, which is potentially dangerous, as you can imagine. Still others lick them and end up with a severe reaction from the poison. So what shall it be? You decide, Odelia.”

  All four of us looked up at Odelia, begging her to say no to the collar.

  She gave us her sweetest smile, then proceeded to say yes to the collar.

  Chapter 12

  Odelia stepped into her dad’s office. As usual, the outer office was filled with people waiting for their doctor’s appointment. The one thing missing, though, was Grandma, who usually sat at her perch behind the reception desk, directing traffic, taking calls, jotting down appointments and gossiping with her son-in-law’s patients.