The Mysteries of Max Box Sets 3

by Nic Saint

  “Oh, I think he works with any publication that will sing his praises.”

  “But he was very chummy with Dick Dickerson, wasn’t he?”

  “He used to be,” Brettin acknowledged.

  Dua Lipa demanded Odelia’s attention by belting out her signature tune and she was surprised to see it was her uncle.

  “Uncle Alec?”

  “Hey, honey. Look, there’s some kind of fracas going on downtown.”

  “Downtown? You’re back?”

  “Just arrived. It’s your cats, Odelia. They’re trying to tell me something but you know I don’t speak feline. You better get down here ASAP. It looks serious.”

  Chapter 45

  Milo had just dozed off when Harriet came in, all atwitter. She motioned for me and Dooley to meet her in the backyard. The moment we set foot outside, convening amongst the mounds of dirt Grandma had dug up, she cried, “It’s Brutus! He’s gone!”

  “Gone? Gone where?” I asked.

  She gave us a pained look. “The pound!”

  “Why would Brutus go to the pound?” asked Dooley. “Does he know cats there?”

  “No, he doesn’t know cats there, Dooley! He just kept telling me the pound is paradise and how I should come with him—to escape Max’s reign of terror!”

  “My reign of terror?” I asked. “I don’t have a reign—and definitely not one of terror.”

  “He seems to think you’re some kind of dictator. And that we’re your slaves. He said the only way to escape this prison camp is to head down to the pound—where cats are cats and are free to live their lives untethered by the chains you bind us with.”

  This was all news to me. I didn’t even know how to lay my paws on a pair of chains. “This all sounds very suspicious to me,” I told Harriet. “Where would I even get chains?”

  “He’s gone completely bananas,” Harriet agreed, giving us an imploring look. She would probably have wrung her hands if she had hands. Instead, she merely screwed up her face into a pitiable expression. It was obvious she was in the throes of extreme emotion. “We have to save him, Max. If he sets paw inside that pound they’ll lock him up and throw away the key.”

  “Why would they throw away the key?” asked Dooley, intrigued. “Wouldn’t they need it to open his cage so they can feed him?”

  “Cage!” Harriet cried. “Can you imagine Brutus locked up in a small cage?!”

  I could, and the thought frankly made my stomach turn. I’m not claustrophobic, per se, but I definitely don’t like small spaces. Or cages, which are a form of small space, I guess.

  “What if they want to clean out his cage?” asked Dooley, still pursuing his own line of thought. “Wouldn’t they need a key to open it? Or do they install new locks each time? That just seems wasteful.”

  “Please, Max,” Harriet said. “Let’s save Brutus. I know you two haven’t always seen eye to eye but you’re friends now, aren’t you? You don’t want him to languish in some cage?”

  No, I certainly didn’t. What was more, I had a fairly good idea who was responsible for Brutus’s sudden wish to escape my so-called reign of terror. Only Milo could have planted such a ridiculous notion into his head. “Let’s go,” I said therefore. “Maybe we can catch him before it’s too late.”

  And so our mission to save Brutus commenced. Dooley was still brooding on locks and keys, Harriet looked as if she was ready to call in SEAL Team Six to save her mate, and I wondered how we were ever going to get this Milo menace out of our lives before he did more harm. Yes, I know he was leaving in two weeks, but considering how much damage he’d done in just a few days, I could only imagine how much worse things could get.

  It was quite a long walk to the pound, and Brutus had a nice head start, so we broke into a trot and put some haste into our mission. Once Brutus entered the pound it was game over for the black cat.

  It was a testament to Harriet’s despair that it only took us twenty minutes to reach destination’s end, and the horrible building soon loomed up in our field of vision.

  It wasn’t one of those places I enjoyed visiting. In fact the further away from the pound I stayed the better I felt. But our friend was in need, and so there we were.

  “I don’t see him,” said Harriet nervously as we surveilled the squat gray-brick building from across the street. It looked like an army barracks, or a prison, or even a police precinct.

  Dark, ominous, and absolutely evil, it didn’t look like no paradise to me.

  “Let’s check the back,” I said. “Maybe we can look in through the windows.”

  “If this place has windows,” said Dooley, and he had a point. The only windows I could see had either been bricked up or were covered with the kind of thick safety glass that is impossible to see through.

  Still, we’d come this far, so we needed to see our mission through. So we crossed the street—after checking left then right then left again, like our mama taught us—then stealthily moved around the building. There was nothing but a strip of wasteland behind the pound, which neighbors had happily used to dump their rubbish: broken bicycles, old couches, mattresses, even a car wreck provided a backdrop to Hampton Cove’s scariest building.

  “There!” Harriet cried suddenly. “It’s Brutus!”

  I half expected her to be pointing at the mangled body of the former butch cat, but Brutus looked fit as a fiddle, staring into the only window that seemed to offer a glimpse of the pound’s innards. We quickly joined him but he barely looked up when we did.

  “Brutus!” Harriet said. “What has gotten into you!”

  He shrugged, still staring intently through the grimy window. “Milo told me that the pound was paradise,” he said in a low, dispirited voice. “Look at that. Does that look like paradise to you?”

  We all looked where he was looking. And I knew I was looking at hell when the scene unfolded before my eyes: rows and rows of cages, with dogs of every variety locked up inside. Most of them looked absolutely listless, huddled up near the back of the cage, lying on the concrete floor. Some of the dogs were barking up a storm.

  “Newcomers, I’ll bet,” said Brutus softly. “Listen to them.”

  We listened. “Let me out!” a Labrador was yelling. “This is a mistake! I don’t belong here! I have a family! Let me out!”

  “All I did was root around in the trashcan,” a Poodle was lamenting. “I like trashcans. What’s wrong with that? There’s always something new to be found in a trashcan. So when will this punishment be over? And what are all these other dogs doing in here? Are they all punished, too? What is this place? A prison for dogs?”

  “More like a concentration camp for dogs, buddy,” said a Beagle sadly.

  “Where are the cats?” asked Dooley. “Maybe they’re treated better?”

  “You wish,” scoffed Brutus. He tracked a path to the right side of the building, and sank down in front of another grimy window, affording a glimpse inside.

  This was obviously the feline part of the pound, with dozens of cats locked up in cages, looking equally demoralized and unhappy.

  “Oh, this is just terrible,” said Harriet. “Poor cats!”

  “Milo tried to convince me this was paradise,” said Brutus. “Now I see he was just lying, as usual.” He directed an apologetic look in my direction. “I’m sorry, Max.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “He said you were a dictator. That I was your minion, having to kowtow to you. I should have known he was full of crap. When did I ever kowtow to you? We butted heads so many times we both have the bruises to prove it.” He placed a paw on my shoulder. “I’m sorry for believing those lies about you, buddy. I feel like such an idiot.”

  “Well, if the shoe fits…”

  He laughed. “I deserved that.”

  Dooley was still looking through the glass. “You guys. Do you think this is where Milo lived for the first part of his life?”

  “Yeah, I think he wasn’t lying about that part,” said Brutus. “His huma
n probably picked him up here.”

  “Don’t you think… this is why he turned into the cat he is now?” asked Dooley. He looked up. “This could all be some kind of… survival mechanism.”

  We were all so surprised that Dooley would even be aware of such a big word that we simply stared at him.

  He went on, “I mean, this place is like prison for cats and dogs, right? So maybe this is why he lies so much—to protect himself from the harsh realities of life? And why he sets cats up against each other. So they wouldn’t pick on him?”

  “Direct their attention away from himself. Divide and conquer,” I said, nodding.

  “Dooley, you’re a lot smarter than you look,” said Brutus.

  “Hey, thanks, Brutus,” said Dooley, suddenly chipper.

  “It’s no excuse for Milo’s behavior, though,” said Harriet sternly.

  “No, it’s not, but it definitely explains a lot,” I said. I thought I understood our new housemate a little better now. And even though I didn’t approve of what he did, I was beginning to see things from his point of view. Entering a potentially hostile environment, with four other cats to contend with and one human to dole out punishment and reward, he must have automatically reverted to his old ways of sowing discord and making fantastical statements.

  Poor cat. Suddenly I felt Milo was to be pitied more than to be censored.

  And I would have had a lot more to say on the subject if a stray cat hadn’t suddenly been streaking past us, looking extremely excited about something.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Big to-do in town!” he yelled. “Kit Katt’s been spotted! Kit Katt and Koh!”

  Chapter 46

  We didn’t linger at the pound. Instead, we hauled ass in the direction the other cat was going and soon we were going well and going steadily, as more and more cats joined the stampede.

  “Looks like every cat in Hampton Cove will be there!” cried Dooley excitedly.

  “Who doesn’t want to meet Kit Katt and Koh?” I said, equally excited about the prospect of meeting our heroes in the flesh.

  “What are they doing in Hampton Cove?” asked Harriet.

  “Probably filming new episodes for their show,” said Brutus.

  “Maybe they’ll let us guest star!” Dooley said.

  “To guest star on a show you have to be exactly that, Dooley,” I said. “A star.”

  “We could be extras,” said Harriet, the prospect clearly enticing.

  By now it looked like a minor migration was taking place, and I saw and nodded a greeting at many a familiar face. The closer to the town center we got, the bigger the crowd. Almost like going to a rock concert, if rock concerts weren’t so terribly loud and rock music so perfectly horrible to listen to. Nope. Cats do not like rock music. Let me be clear on that.

  The action seemed to be taking place near the old industrial zone, on the other side of town. A few deserted factories awaited demolition, to be replaced with a commercial park. The factory where all activity was centered was the old Beluga Watchcase Factory.

  The brown-brick five-story structure was derelict, with windows shattered and ivy covering a big part of the building. Cats seemed to have converged on a window on the ground floor, and sat staring inside, much the same way we’d been trying to get a peek at the pound innards just before.

  “Why would Kit Katt and Koh be filming their show in such a horrible place?” asked Harriet, regarding the decaying factory building disdainfully. “It will show our lovely little town in a very unfavorable light.”

  Like any town, Hampton Cove has its eyesores, and these remnants of the past are never featured on the brochures doled out by the local tourist board. Harriet was right. Why would the production team of our favorite show pick this horrible spot to film the new season’s episodes?

  “Maybe Kit Katt is trapped here by a gang of crooks,” Dooley suggested. “And it’s Koh to the rescue as usual.”

  That was a great explanation, and I perked up. But when we approached the heart of the hubbub, we encountered nothing but irate cats, all screaming at the top of their lungs about something.

  “It’s an outrage!” one Exotic Shorthair was yelling. “An absolute outrage!”

  “I knew she was too good to be true!” a Maine Coon screamed. “I said so from the start!”

  What it was they were so upset about was difficult to determine, as they were all screaming and venting their anger but hard to pin down to the particulars of their outrage.

  We moved to the front of the milling masses and finally made it all the way to the source of the uproar. A window offered a look at what had once been the factory floor where diligent workers had manufactured watchcases by the thousands, to be used in the famous and elegant Beluga watches. Now all that remained was a cement floor and a bunch of furniture.

  “Looks like someone lives here,” said Harriet over the din of the other cats.

  She was right. There was a bed, visibly slept in, a table with pizza boxes and Chinese food cartons scattered on top of them, a couple of chairs, and a couch where two men were watching television, unconcerned about being watched by Hampton Cove’s cat population.

  On TV, a CNN breaking news story was unfolding, with footage of Virginia Salt being shown. The actress who was now better known as her alter ego Kit Katt, was being hounded by a camera crew as she made valiant attempts to walk from her car to her house.

  “What’s going on?” I asked anyone who would listen.

  Next to me, suddenly Shanille materialized. “Oh, hey, Max. Haven’t you heard? Kit Katt hates cats! Can you believe it? She’s been secretly filmed kicking a cat!”

  “What?!” cried Harriet. “That’s not possible. She’s Kit Katt! She loves cats!”

  “That’s only for the show,” said Shanille, eyeing Harriet with some trepidation. She clearly hadn’t forgotten the cat fight she and the feisty Persian had gotten into before. “In real life the actress who plays Kit Katt likes to kick cats for fun!”

  And as we watched, a rerun of the footage was shown. It was clearly shot with a smartphone, as the footage was shaky and the lighting was lousy. Filmed at night, it showed Victoria Salt stumbling out of her house, a garbage bag in hand. She was unsteady on her feet, and had probably been hitting the bottle a little too enthusiastically. Three cats were enjoying a leisurely evening atop the trash container when Victoria came upon them.

  First she seemed to hurl a few well-chosen insults at the cats, then she was throwing the garbage bag at them, and when one cat didn’t move fast enough, she kicked it so hard it flew through the air and landed ten feet away before skittering away as fast as it could.

  She then teetered back into the house, and that’s where the short reel ended.

  “Oh. My. God,” said Harriet. “Kit Katt hates cats!”

  “What if that had been Koh?” asked Shanille. “Can you imagine?”

  “I can,” said Harriet, and it was obvious the two lady cats were fast friends once more.

  “I don’t like this, Max,” said Dooley. “Kit Katt was my hero. And now she’s not.”

  “How the mighty have fallen,” Brutus grumbled, shaking his head. “What a mess.”

  All around us, cats were expressing their anger and disappointment, and it was obvious now that there probably wouldn’t be a new season of Kit Katt & Koh, filmed in Hampton Cove or elsewhere.

  And that’s when I saw it. One of the men had gotten up from the couch and now stood staring out the window, mouth agape, eyes wide, at the sea of cats gathered in front of the old factory building. He stirred his colleague, and now they both stood goggling at us.

  I was goggling, too. For one of the men was short with a strawberry nose and a purple spot on his upper lip. The other one was tall with a wispy little mustache.

  I’d found them. I’d found Dick Dickerson’s duck poop killers.

  Chapter 47

  Odelia drove at breakneck speed through Hampton Cove’s suburb, making
Chase grip the dashboard and admonish her not to kill any pedestrians or other vulnerable road users. She made it to the other side of town in what probably was some kind of world record, and parked her car right next to Uncle Alec’s in front of the old watchcase factory, now deserted.

  Or at least that’s what she thought. In front of the factory hundreds of cats had gathered, and on top of the hood of Uncle Alec’s car, Max, Dooley, Harriet and Brutus sat.

  Her uncle greeted her jovially. He looked healthy and rosy.

  “Hey, Uncle Alec,” she said, getting out of the car. “Where’s Tracy?”

  “Flew out to Paris two hours ago. Shooting another beer commercial.”

  “Hey, you guys,” she said to her four cats. “What’s going on here?”

  Chase, who’d joined her, gave her a strange look. “Dammit, Poole. You scare me sometimes. Do you know you sounded like you were talking cat just now?”

  She’d totally forgotten about Chase. So she laughed lightly. “And what if I was?”

  Now he laughed, then Uncle Alec also laughed, and then they were all laughing.

  Very funny.

  Max was talking, though, and she listened intently. Then she shot a quick look in the direction of the factory building. “I have a hunch we better check this out, Chief,” she said.

  “A hunch, huh?” her uncle said with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Check what out?” asked Chase. “I don’t get it.”

  “You know our Odelia,” said Uncle Alec. “Her and her hunches. We better take a look, son.” And he started in the direction of the small feline assembly. By now they were dispersing, moving in groups of twos and threes and fours, and they all looked outraged.

  She didn’t wonder. If what Max had just told her was true, a lot of Kit Katt & Koh fans would be extremely disappointed. It was the other thing he said, though, that was more important.

  “You better be careful, uncle,” she said as they approached the building.

  “Careful about what?” asked Chase, continuing being mystified.