The Mysteries of Max: Books 31-33

by Nic Saint

  “Thank you so much, Clarice,” I said. “You did a good thing today.”

  She eyed the five cats a little bleakly, and grumbled, “I’m not so sure about that.”

  And before I could say any more, she suddenly disappeared into the undergrowth, presumably to see if James Patterson had found some more liver pâté he had no use for.

  Chapter 6

  Odelia felt happy that she was finally in a position to bring a ray of sunshine into a person’s life. And that was exactly what she anticipated to do just now, as she parked her car outside the home of the Bunyons, their precious fur baby in the backseat next to Max and Dooley, who were as proud as she was feeling that they’d made the impossible possible: in the space of only a couple of hours they’d found the missing cat and were about to deliver the missing Chouchou back to her proud owners.

  “Great job, you guys,” said Odelia, not for the first time. “I’m pretty sure you just broke some kind of sleuthing record. I’ll have to call the Guinness Book of Records.”

  “It wasn’t really us,” said Max deferentially.

  “Yeah, Clarice did most of the work,” said Dooley.

  “Who’s Clarice?” asked Chouchou.

  “The scary cat who was with us when we found you,” Max explained.

  “Oh, right,” said Chouchou, but clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

  “This is a great day,” said Odelia, “and even though I can’t tell the Bunyons about the exact role you played in finding Chouchou, I’ll make sure they know you were involved.”

  “You really don’t have to do that,” said Max. “I understand that you need to keep Mrs. Bunyon in the dark about us.”

  “No, but I will tell her that you’re actually the ones who found Chouchou.” She turned to the Maine Coon. “Can you tell me again how you got out there?”

  “Well, first I was snatched,” said Chouchou, “by some terrible catnapper person, and then I was put in a large bag, and then I was left in those woods to fend for myself.”

  “That’s so terrible,” said Odelia feelingly. “Absolutely awful, Chouchou.”

  “And then there was another person—or it could have been the same person—who was digging a hole and burying something.”

  “I won’t tell Mrs. Bunyon about that,” said Odelia. “She might start to worry, and we don’t want her to worry unnecessarily.”

  They all got out of the car, and Odelia rang the bell, instructing Chouchou to hide behind her for a moment, to make the surprise even bigger, and therefore the subsequent relief. “I want you to pay attention to the look on her face,” said Odelia with a smile. She felt a little like Santa Claus bringing tidings of joy and good cheer, and a bag full of presents.

  The door opened, and a man appeared. He blankly stared at Odelia. “Yes?” he said.

  “Mr. Bunyon?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s me.”

  “My name is Odelia Poole and your wife dropped by my office this morning, to ask me to look for your missing cat Chouchou?”

  “Oh,” said the man blinkingly. “She did?”

  “Yes, sir. And I’m happy to announce that I was successful, and I’ve found your precious baby for you.” And with these words, she stepped aside, and revealed Chouchou’s presence to Mr. Bunyon, her proud and happy owner. She didn’t exactly say ‘Ta-daaah,’ but the meaning was clear in her gesture.

  But if she’d expected the man to yip with joy, she was disappointed. Rather than yip, he merely goggled at Chouchou, an expression on his face that was hard to read. It could have been stunned surprise, or it could have been dismay. “You did what now?” he said.

  “Well, I found her,” said Odelia, then glanced down at Chouchou, then up at Mr. Bunyon again. “This is your cat, isn’t it?”

  “Um…” said the man, and for a moment he seemed on the verge of denying being even faintly acquainted with Chouchou.

  But then Kathleen Bunyon suddenly appeared in the door. “Who is it, Karl? Oh, hi, Miss Poole—Chouchou!” she screamed, and contrary to her husband she did seem overjoyed by this sudden re-emergence into her life of her precious pet. “Oh, my sweet, sweet, sweet little…” She picked Chouchou up and hugged her with extreme fervor.

  Odelia watched the scene with a sense of relief, and a big smile on her face.

  “Oh, Miss Poole—you found her!”

  “Actually,” she said, launching into her rehearsed spiel, “my cats found her. Max and Dooley? Come here a moment, will you?”

  Max and Dooley stepped into the limelight, and basked in the gratitude of Mrs. Bunyon. “Oh, you found my sweet, precious baby!” she said. “This is a miracle! Isn’t this a miracle, Karl?”

  “Yeah, a real miracle,” Karl muttered, though he continued to look not too well pleased by the return of the prodigal daughter to the bosom of his family.

  “Where did you find her?” asked Kathleen.

  “In the woods just outside of town,” said Odelia. “Deep in the woods, in fact.”

  “In the woods! How did you end up in the woods?” asked Kathleen. “You were probably playing with your friends, weren’t you?” She squeezed her precious Maine Coon some more, even going so far as to press a loving kiss to Chouchou’s furry and puckered brow, causing her husband to visibly wince. “You probably lost track of time and before you knew what happened you had lost your way.”

  “Well, you know what cats are like,” said Odelia, who didn’t want to trouble the woman with the whole disturbing story if it wasn’t necessary. “Though if I were you I’d keep her inside for the next couple of days. Make sure she doesn’t run off again.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that,” said Kathleen. “I won’t let her out of my sight for even one second! Now that I have her back, she isn’t going anywhere!”

  “Thank you, Miss Poole,” intoned Karl Bunyon curtly, then carefully closed the door, ending this episode in Odelia’s life—at least for now.

  Chapter 7

  Chouchou having been delivered into the arms of her loving human—or at least one loving human, Odelia decided to take us back to where we’d found Chouchou and the others, and to look for that place where digging had been going on. Frankly, she was as intrigued by this digging thing as we were, and to show us she meant business, she brought her husband along.

  Chase Kingsley, if you didn’t know, is a local cop, and looks like a prizefighter. So with him by our side I have to say I wasn’t the least bit worried about what might happen if we encountered the person who’d catnapped those cats, and had engaged in a little digging to while away the time. The man is built like a brick outhouse, if you’re familiar with the expression, and even though my sense of direction perhaps isn’t as keen as Clarice’s, and neither is Dooley’s, we managed to lead our two humans to the right spot.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Chase when we got there. They say the proof is in the pudding, and since Chase had been skeptical about the story, this time the proof was in the digging. Chase had brought a spade, and so had Odelia, and before long the two of them were digging to their heart’s content, really putting their backs into it.

  “I think I’ve got something,” said Odelia suddenly.

  “Gold!” said Dooley excitedly. “I think it’s a treasure, Max.”

  “Why would anyone kidnap five cats and then bury a treasure in the woods?” I asked.

  That had him stumped, and so we simply waited with bated breath to see what exactly, if anything, was buried there.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Odelia murmured as she carefully removed some of the overturned earth and deposited it next to the hole she and Chase had succeeded in digging now.

  “It’s a person,” suddenly Chase announced.

  “A person!” Dooley cried. He looked at me, as if wanting answers and wanting them now. I couldn’t give him any, of course, apart from an equally stunned look in return.

  “I’ve got feet,” Odelia announced.


  “And I’ve got a head,” Chase grunted, and suddenly as the full picture became clear, I discovered that they were right: a person was buried there, not a cat.

  “Do you think it’s a dead person, Max?” asked Dooley.

  “Um… I think so, Dooley,” I said. “I’m not an expert but usually when people have been buried underground for a while, that means they’re dead. Goes with the territory.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Dooley, taking the words right out of Odelia’s mouth.

  We looked on as Chase removed some of the dirt from the person’s face, and we now saw that it was a bearded person.

  “I think it’s a man, Max,” said Dooley in a breathless whisper.

  “Unless it’s a bearded woman,” I suggested, trying to keep the atmosphere light and pleasant. We were, after all, in the middle of the woods, and a murderer had apparently engaged not only in the kidnapping of cats, but also in the unlawful snuffing out of the life of another human being. Not exactly the best circumstances to find ourselves in!

  “Does he look familiar?” asked Odelia as they both studied the person’s face.

  “Not… exactly,” said Chase as he shot a couple of pictures, perhaps to post on his Facebook.

  “He looks like a bum,” said Dooley after a moment’s consideration.

  And I could see why he would think that. The man was raggedly dressed, and had a soiled face, though that could be because of the being buried thing, of course.

  “He does look like a homeless person,” Odelia agreed.

  “I better call it in,” said Chase, and stepped back to place a phone call to the precinct.

  “How about that?” said Odelia as she placed her spade against a nearby tree, and cut a questioning look in our direction. “You do realize people will want to know how I came to find this guy out here,” she said.

  “You could tell them you followed your cats’ trail into the woods, where not only did you find Chouchou and the other missing cats, but also this dead person,” I told her.

  “And here I thought this was going to be one of those uneventful days.”

  “Think again.”

  “So… why would a person kidnap five cats and then bury a body in the woods, Max?” asked Dooley.

  “Now that,” said Odelia, “is exactly what I’d like to know.”

  “We’re not sure this is the same person,” I said. “Could be just a coincidence.”

  Within a reasonably short time of Chase ‘calling it in,’ the place was crawling with cops and crime scene people, and Dooley and I were forced to take a backseat. When Odelia finally turned to join us, she announced, “Yeah, he’s definitely been murdered. Shot through the head with what looks like a .38 caliber firearm if you please.”

  “Shot!” I cried. I don’t know why I was surprised. If a person takes the time to bury a body in the woods, it’s highly unlikely that the victim died of natural causes.

  Odelia nodded as she took in the strenuous activity surrounding the burial site of the dead man.

  “And who is he?” asked Dooley.

  “We don’t know, Dooley,” said Odelia. “He had no ID on him. No wallet, no phone, not a slip of paper. They’ll take his fingerprints, of course, and see if he’s in the system.”

  “What system is that?”

  “The police database.”

  “Is everybody in the police database?”

  “Only if you’ve ever had a brush with the law,” Odelia explained.

  “And if he hasn’t?”

  Odelia shrugged. “Then it looks like we’re dealing with a John Doe.”

  “Oh, so you do know his name.”

  “A John Doe is just a name for a person whose identity is unknown,” I explained for my friend’s information.

  “So his name isn’t really Mr. Doe?”

  “No,” said Odelia. “His name isn’t really John Doe. One thing we do know. This is a man who’s lived rough for a long time. He definitely shows signs of having lived life on the street for at least a number of years.”

  “So he is a bum?” asked Dooley.

  Odelia smiled a tight smile. “Yes, Dooley. Looks like our John Doe is a bum.”

  Chapter 8

  While the police handled the investigation into the mysterious death of a homeless person, it was back to our regular lives for us cats. Important things had been happening at the home of Marge and Tex, Odelia’s parents, and it was time we pulled our attention from recent events as they’d unfolded, and returned it to what was really important, namely the picking of the right kitchen design for Tex and Marge’s new kitchen.

  The old kitchen had been there since Odelia’s folks had bought that house many years ago, and Gran had felt for a long time that it was time to retire it and put in a new one, and that she had to have the last word when it came to picking the new design. Marge, of course, felt differently, and so did Tex, and that was where matters now stood.

  Our humans had at least agreed on one thing: where to buy the kitchen, and so we found ourselves in the showroom of Kramer Kitchen Kreation, the company owned by Fred Kramer, also known as the Kitchen King, faced with an impossible choice.

  “So many kitchens, Max!” Dooley said with words of hushed awe.

  He was right. I don’t think I’d ever seen so many kitchens in the same room, and a big room it was, too. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to reconstruct dozens of different kitchens in one big showroom, and plenty of people were milling about, potential customers all in the same position as our own humans: faced with the near impossible task of picking just one of these gorgeous kitchens.

  “Look, it’s very simple,” said Gran. “Just give me carte blanche and I’ll pick the right kitchen for us. In fact I’ve picked the right kitchen already, so you really don’t have to bother anymore.” She smiled, and added the magic words: “Trust me!”

  Magic in the sense that they worked on Tex like a red rag on a bull.

  “And how much is this going to cost me?” asked the good doctor as he eyed his mother-in-law with an expression that betrayed his lack of trust in her judgment.

  “Oh, not that much,” said Gran. “In fact it’s a real bargain, if you ask me.”

  “This is my kitchen as well as yours, Ma,” said Marge, glancing around and looking for a salesperson. “So excuse me if I’m going to have the final say in this.”

  “And since I’m the one who’ll have to pay,” said Tex, “excuse me for having final say.”

  A salesperson had come charging to, and he must have realized he had a couple of real buyers before him, and not just window shoppers, for he displayed the wide smile your real salesman likes to display when he’s about to make a killing. “Excellent choice,” he said, as he nodded at the kitchen we just happened to be standing in. It was all dark wood and gleaming new appliances, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Nancy Meyers movie, preferably starring either Diane Keaton or Meryl Streep.

  “We’re not buying this,” said Tex immediately. He’d taken a gander at the price tag which was displayed on a stand near the entrance, and there was a finality to his voice that told of his reluctance to pay through the nose for what he considered an exercise in futility. Tex had long argued that they didn’t need a new kitchen, that the old one was perfectly fine, that it had at least another fifteen years left in the tank, and he wasn’t budging from this point of view, juxtaposed with that of his wife and mother-in-law.

  “So what did you folks have in mind?” asked the salesman, smile still firmly in place.

  “Why is he smiling like that, Max?” asked Dooley, who’d been studying the man like one studies an animal at the zoo.

  “Because your true salesperson believes that a smile allays some of that sales resistance,” I explained. “A smile says: I have absolute faith in your ability and your willingness to pull your wallet and hand me your credit card so I can swipe it.”

  “Tex doesn’t look like he’s ready to pull his wallet.”

  “No,
he certainly does not.”

  In fact Tex looked like he was ready to pull a gun on the salesperson and make him go away, like a bad dream—or a highway robber.

  “We want a new fridge,” Tex explained. It was one point on which he was willing to concede.

  “We want a new kitchen,” Marge countered.

  “We want the whole enchilada,” said Gran, rubbing her hands. “And in fact I already have the perfect combination in mind, picked from your website.” And to prove she wasn’t lying, she took out her phone and showed them the design she’d picked.

  “Ma!” said Marge. “I told you I want light colors. Light and modern!”

  “This is a timeless design,” said Gran.

  “It looks like something from the forties!”

  “The forties are coming back,” said Gran. “In a big way.”

  “I suggest we sleep on it,” said Tex.

  “And I suggest we pull the trigger,” said Gran.

  Tex’s eyes narrowed, and his index finger twitched. It was clear he was definitely ready to pull the trigger—and then bury his mother-in-law in a shallow grave.

  “Why don’t I show you folks some of our more contemporary designs?” the salesman suggested, proving his mettle by focusing on the most important person here: Marge.

  And so for a while we moved from one kitchen installation to the next, while the salesman explained the ins and outs of every installation in great detail. And just when I thought I couldn’t take any more, the door opened and Harriet and Brutus walked in on the heels of more customers.

  “What’s the situation?” our Persian friend asked.

  “Tex doesn’t want to buy a kitchen, Marge wants something light and modern, and Gran wants something old and timeless,” I summed things up in a single sentence.

  “I think Tex is probably right,” said Brutus. “Why spend money on a new kitchen when the old one is perfectly fine?”

  “It isn’t fine,” I told him. “The wood is chipped and the fridge is broken and the whole thing looks like it’s seen better days.”