by Nic Saint
Finally, that inscrutable expression seemed to thaw. “Home,” she muttered.
“Uh-huh.”
“My own bowl.”
“Yup. And your own bed.”
The silence stretched on for a moment while she pondered this. She gave me a skeptical look. “You’re not pulling my paw, are you, cat? Because you know what I can do with even one paw tied behind my back. Or three.”
“Oh, no! I would never pull your paw.”
“Fine,” she growled. “I’ll take it.”
“Great!” I cried, much relieved.
“Not that it matters much,” Dooley decided to put in his two cents. “Since the world is ending in a couple of days you won’t have much time to enjoy your new home anyway.”
Clarice decided to ignore this outburst. “Follow me,” she snarled.
We followed her. She took us around the corner to a row of large round trash cans with lids. She walked up to the third can in the row and reached up to give the lid a shove. It clattered to the ground. Then she stood to the side and casually started to lick her paw.
“Look inside,” she said.
I looked inside. And there it was. The holy grail. The clue I’d been looking for.
Chapter 40
Odelia woke up and wondered why it was still dark out. She blinked confusedly and looked around with a heavy heart. Realizing it wasn’t her heart that was heavy but that something was pushing down on her chest, she realized it was Max sitting on top of her.
“Odelia!” he was saying, trying to keep his voice down. “Wake up! We found it!”
“Found what?” she muttered, still sleep drunk.
“The proof we need to take down Chris Ackerman’s killer!”
At these words, she was suddenly wide awake. “What?”
“We found it!” he repeated. “In a trash can!”
“In a trash can,” Dooley echoed from the floor next to the bed.
Odelia sniffed. There was something rancid about the air in her room.
“Do you smell that?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s us,” said Harriet, seated next to Dooley.
“We’ve been dumpster diving,” explained Brutus, also part of the small troupe.
“It was Max’s idea,” said Dooley.
“But I showed them where to find the thing,” said a fifth cat.
Odelia stared at this newcomer. She was small, she was scruffy-looking, and she looked vaguely familiar in the moonlight streaming in through the window.
“You remember Clarice,” said Max. “I said she could stay here if she wanted to.”
“Only as a last resort,” said Clarice. “And only in case I run out of fresh rats.”
Odelia wrinkled her nose. “Um… Guys? Could you tell me what’s going on exactly?”
Next to her, Chase stirred, then murmured, “What’s going on with your cats, babe?”
There was a momentary silence, then Max asked, “What is Chase doing in your bed?”
“Yes, what is Jesus doing in your bed?” asked Dooley.
“We decided to move in together,” she said.
“Are you talking to your cats?” asked Chase. “Cause it sounds to me like you are.”
“Go back to sleep, honey,” she said soothingly. “I’ll go and give them some… milk.”
“You do that. And tell them to shut up and let us sleep,” Chase mumbled.
Odelia threw off the duvet and swung her feet to the floor. “Follow me,” she whispered, then tiptoed out of the room, the small clowder of cats following in her wake. Once downstairs, she flicked on the light in the kitchen and plunked herself down on the couch, yawning freely. “Now tell me all about it.”
And Max and the others did. “First off, I promised Clarice a cat bed and her very own bowl,” he said.
“Done,” said Odelia.
“She’s the one who found the thing,” he explained.
“Great work, Clarice.”
“Thanks,” Clarice said grudgingly. She directed a suspicious look at Odelia. “But don’t think for a minute that this means I’m domesticated. I’m a wild cat and that’s the way I’ll stay.”
“Fair enough,” said Odelia, conceding this point. “What else?”
“My spots are practically gone,” said Brutus happily.
“Nobody cares about your spots, Brutus,” Harriet snapped.
“Great news, Brutus,” said Odelia, wondering if this was the reason they’d dragged her out of bed. “Cat bed for Clarice and spots are clearing up. Super duper. That’s it?”
“Tell her about the thing!” Dooley said.
“I am telling her!” said Max. “Though I probably better show you,” he added.
“Show me? Show me what?”
Max hesitated. “Are you up for a little drive?”
When finally Odelia found herself looking down the trash can Max had singled out for her attention, she had to admit he’d outdone himself this time.
“Amazing,” she said. “Are you sure about this?”
“Pretty much,” said Max. “It was the fake hamburger, you see.”
She didn’t, but she nodded anyway. Then she took out her phone. “I better wake up my uncle. He’s going to want to check this out.”
“What about Chase?” asked Max.
“There’s no way I can tell Chase that my cats found the key piece of evidence in Chris Ackerman’s murder investigation,” she said.
“So what are you going to tell him?”
She smiled. “I’ll think of something. Uncle Alec! Sorry to wake you. You’re not going to believe this…”
As it was, Uncle Alec did believe it. Long association with Odelia and her cats had taught him that nothing was impossible when it came to their powers of observation and keen deduction. He arrived five minutes later, looking as if he’d just rolled out of bed, which probably he had, his shirt untucked and the few remaining hairs on his head standing up.
“Where is it?” he asked, and when Odelia gestured to the trash can, he took out an evidence baggie and stared down at the piece of evidence Max had unearthed—or Clarice. The story was still a little fuzzy to Odelia.
“I think you’re going to need a bigger bag,” she said.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “Your cats found this?”
“My cats found this.”
“Huh. I guess I won’t be putting that in my report.”
“Not if you don’t want to freak out my new live-in boyfriend you won’t.”
Alec grinned. “I knew he’d pull it off.”
“He told you about the Ed Sheeran thing?”
“Are you kidding? He practiced on me first. The kid’s got crazy singing skills.”
Odelia decided not to dissuade her uncle from this conviction.
Chase had a lot of skills, but singing wasn’t one of them.
“So what happens now?” she asked.
“Now we send this off to the lab and see what comes back.”
“You better check all the CCTV cameras in the area.”
“Oh, I’m going to—don’t you worry about that.”
He took out a bigger baggie, a pair of tweezers, and plucked out the item, then deposited it into the baggie with a look of satisfaction on his face. “Nailed it,” he grunted.
“Not yet. We still have to identify—”
“Trust me, I will. You go on home. You’ve done enough.”
“But—”
“Go home, Odelia. Give your boyfriend a wake-up kiss. I’ll handle the rest.”
And he stalked off, an officious swagger to his hips, got into his car and drove off.
“That’s it?” asked Max.
“That’s it,” said Odelia.
“But… who did it?”
“I think I have a pretty good idea. And I’m going to prove it.”
Of course she could have let her uncle take care of things, as he’d indicated, but where was the fun in that? Besides, this was her investigation, and she wa
s going to see it through to the end—whatever her uncle said.
Chapter 41
Chase woke up in an empty bed, his hand touching the spot where Odelia had been when he went to sleep. The spot was cold. He rubbed his eyes and groaned. He vaguely remembered some middle-of-the-night cat emergency, and Odelia slipping out of bed to feed them milk. So had she stayed up and gone straight to work? Or was she downstairs, still officiating the cat’s convention? To be completely honest, he wasn’t all that big on cats. Not that he was a cat hater, per se, but he’d never understood the extreme lengths cat lovers would go to to appease their furballs.
When he felt movement near his feet, he glanced down and saw that those furballs were fast asleep at the foot of the bed: four cats lying in a row. He had to admit, when they were sleeping like this they looked peaceful enough. Cute, even.
“So where’s your master, huh, cats?” he asked.
Max opened his eyes and he could have sworn the big red cat not only understood the question he’d posed him but was actually answering in lazy tones! Huh. Weird.
He got out of bed and sauntered to the staircase. “Odelia?” he yelled from the top of the stairs. “Are you down there?”
When Max suddenly appeared next to him and meowed some more, he started.
“What are you trying to tell me, buddy?” he said, then laughed at his own silliness. Cats were dumb creatures. Mousers, by and large, with some minor capacity for entertainment. He picked Max up and carried him down the stairs. “Are you hungry?” he asked, setting him down in the kitchen. A row of bowls sat on the floor, five in a row, and all of them featured names and were filled to capacity. So Max was definitely not hungry.
The little guy kept meowing up a storm, though, and since Chase had no way of determining what the heck he was trying to tell him, he merely grinned and decided to take a shower and start his day. Arriving upstairs, he saw that Chief Alec had left him a voice message. As he listened, his eyebrows rose. “What the…” he muttered.
There had been a breakthrough in the case, and he’d slept right through it!
“Christ,” he said.
This seemed to attract Dooley’s attention, who looked at him almost reverently.
“Hey, buddy,” he said. “Max is downstairs, Odelia is nowhere to be found, and I gotta run. Think you’ll be able to take care of yourself?” Then he laughed. “You big dummy! Now you’re talking to cats!”
He walked into the bathroom. Time for a quick shower and then he was off. He actually felt pretty excited about moving in. Time to put this relationship with Odelia on a more permanent footing. Soon he was enjoying the cascade of water and loudly singing the only song he’d ever memorized in his life. Ed Sheeran’s Perfect.
I was truly worried about Odelia. She’d given us the slip and now she was out there somewhere, chasing the bad guys with no backup from her legion of felines. I just hoped she would be careful. Odelia has a tendency to go all gung-ho without considering the consequences. When she’s on the hunt she sometimes forgets that the people she’s hunting are dangerous killers and creeps and would just as happily turn on her if it suited them.
And I’d just settled down in front of my bowl and gulped down a few tasty morsels when a loud panting sound reached my ears. Fully expecting Brutus, I didn’t even look up. But when the panting sound was replaced with stertorous breathing, I said, “Try to breathe through the nose, Brutus, not the mouth.” I hate mouth-breathing cats, don’t you?
“Huh?” said Brutus, only when I didn’t recognize his gruff voice I finally looked up and discovered it wasn’t Brutus but Big Mac breathing down my neck!
“Big Mac! What are you doing here?”
Probably all the pizza we’d fed him had led to him coming back for more.
“It’s your human!” said Big Mac. “I think she might be in big trouble.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was downtown just now, staking out the Hampton Cove Star hotel, when suddenly I saw your human head inside. So I went in after her, and followed her all the way upstairs. She went into a room and never came out. Also, when I put my ear against the door, I heard people arguing and I heard your human yelling. And then she went quiet. Too quiet!”
A cold grip squeezed my heart. “What do you mean she went quiet?”
“Just that. First she was yelling and then she stopped. I think she might be dead.”
“Better lead the way, Big Mac,” I said, then hurried to the foot of the stairs and bellowed, “Dooley, Brutus, Harriet! Come quick! Odelia is in trouble!”
Cats have this amazing capacity to be awake and alert in an instant. No snooze button for us. When the game is afoot, our ears prick up and we’re ready to go at the drop of a hat. And so it was now. Seconds after I’d issued my cry for help, three cats came racing down the stairs. And even as Chase was murdering poor Ed Sheeran in the shower, we were shooting through that cat flap, Big Mac in the lead, the four of us right on his tail.
“How did you get to be at the Hampton Cove Star?” I asked as we hurried along through the backyard.
“Pigs,” he said, panting.
“Pigs?”
“Okay, I admit it! I love the McRib even more than the Big Mac! And since the McRib contains pork, I wanted to see those piglets you mentioned to see what my food looks like before I eat it!”
Yuck. Who wants to eat a piglet? “They’re teacup piglets, Big Mac,” I said. “They’re not fit for feline consumption.”
“You eat piglets?” asked Harriet censoriously. “You’re an animal, Big Mac.”
“I am!” he cried. “I admit it. I am an animal.”
We’d arrived at the house next door and I scooted in through the cat flap, then up the stairs and into Gran’s room.
“Gran!” I tooted into her ear. “Wake up!”
“Don’t hurt me, Captain Hook, I’m just an innocent virgin!” she yelled as she shot up and speared open her eyes. When she saw it was me and not Captain Hook, she grunted, “Max—what’s the big idea scaring me half to death?!”
“Odelia is in trouble over at the Hampton Cove Star!” I said urgently. “We have to save her!”
“Say no more,” she said, removing the hairnet she always sleeps in. She got out of bed and, still dressed in her flannel pajamas, followed me out of the room. Then she seemed to think better of it, returned to her room, and moments later came stalking out again, this time dressed in a pink nightgown tied around her bony frame with a golden sash. Her pale sticks for legs were bare, and she’d shoved her feet into her favorite lime-green Crocs. “Ready to rumble!” she exclaimed, and then we were off.
Chapter 42
Odelia had figured she’d have a nice civilized chat with the person she most suspected of murdering Chris Ackerman. She had a hunch, and as every good reporter knows, not to mention any halfway decent amateur sleuth, you need to follow up a good hunch with some spadework before you get where you want to be.
So she’d decided to ignore her uncle’s creed and head down to the Hampton Cove Star that morning, bright and early, and personally ferret out the truth. When her uncle had messaged her, even as she breezed into the hotel, that blood had been found on the item they’d retrieved, she felt stiffened in her resolve to finally get to the bottom of this thing.
‘Check DNA,’ she texted back.
‘Already on it,’ Uncle Alec returned promptly. ‘Will keep you in the loop.’
He’d better keep her in the loop. She was the one who’d landed this piece of evidence in his lap. Or actually Max had landed it in her lap before she’d clued in her uncle.
Speaking of Max, she suddenly became aware of a large cat trailing her into the hotel. And when she looked down, she saw that it was none other than Big Mac, the cat who’d provided them with the initial breakthrough in the investigation. He glanced up at her, then gave her a fat wink. She smiled, wondering what he was doing here all by himself.
“Are you by any chance visiting the pigs?�
� asked Big Mac.
“Um… yes, as a matter of fact I think I am,” she said.
“Can I join you? I’ve never seen a pig before. At least not a live one. I’ve seen pigs as the finished product—also known as the McRib—but they tell me it’s not the same thing.”
“Sure. Just follow me.”
As they rode the elevator up in silence, she wondered what Chase would say about her habit of chatting with cats. He’d probably think she was crazy.
“The meat is really succulent,” Big Mac was saying. “Pork, I mean. I’m sorry if I’m babbling. It’s just—I like food. A lot. I guess I’m one of those whatchamacallits—a connoisseur?”
“That’s fine,” she said. “We all love food.”
“Yeah, but I love love food,” he stressed. “Like, food is my main passion.”
She smiled. Big Mac was a little weird but he was also adorable. “You look a lot like Max,” she said.
“Yeah? I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
As the elevator halted to a stop, the thought briefly occurred to Odelia that maybe—just maybe—she should have told Chase what she was up to, but then her phone chimed again and when she read the new series of messages, she smiled knowingly. Yesss!
She knocked on the door and patiently waited. When Angelique appeared, she smiled a pleasant smile and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you at this early hour, Mrs. Ackerman, but I wonder if I might ask you a few more questions. This time it’s for my article.”
“Oh, sure,” said Angelique. “Come on in.”
The excitement of the hunt had her fully in its grip now, so when she closed the door behind her she totally forgot about Big Mac, leaving him languishing in the corridor.
“Miss Poole!” said Trey Ackerman. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
Only now did Odelia notice the paper-thin scar slicing the young man’s brow. It gave him a sinister aspect. “Just collecting some more background information for my piece.”