The Mysteries of Max: Books 31-33

by Nic Saint

“Oh, so now all of a sudden this doomsday device is a nice new tracker, is it?” I grumbled. Even though I, too, had enjoyed the sudden attention, I wasn’t used to a collar.

  “You know what your problem is, Max?” said Harriet.

  “No, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

  “You’re stuck in the past.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Stuck in the past! You have to move with the times, Max, if you don’t want to be left behind. These trackers are what it’s all about. In fact pretty soon I’m sure they’ll implant a chip in our necks that will act as a tracker and maybe even as a mini-computer!”

  Dooley shivered. “A chip in our necks!”

  “Some pets already have chips implanted in their necks,” I said, “but they’re not computers at all. They’re simply RFID devices. And all they tell you is the name of the pet, and the owner’s data, like their address and stuff. That way a lost pet can easily be traced to their owner, and returned to same.”

  “Well, in the future I’m sure these chips will be able to do a lot more,” said Harriet. “They’ll be implanted in our brains, and that way we can even surf the internet, or google stuff. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

  Now it was my turn to shiver. “I don’t want a chip in my brain, thank you very much,” I said. “I like my brain just the way it is!”

  “I told you. You’re an old fogey, Max,” said Harriet with a slight grin. She glanced around with a frown. “Now where is that catnapper? I’ve got better things to do than to wander around here all night, you know.”

  And as if her words had summoned the catnapper, suddenly a car pulled over, a door was opened, and before we knew what was happening, we were all grabbed by the scruff of our necks and stuffed into a large canvas bag!

  Chapter 12

  Being inside a canvas bag is not a fun experience. It’s cramped, it’s dark, and the fabric tickles your nostrils. So all in all I can tell you with conviction that I’m happy to be a cat and not a potato, for potatoes probably spend quite a large portion of their existence inside just such a bag—before being chopped up, boiled and eaten, a fate which I fervently hoped we’d escape!

  “I don’t like this, Max,” said Dooley, cooped up inside that bag along with the rest of us.

  “I don’t like it either, Dooley,” I admitted.

  “When is Odelia going to save us?” asked Harriet, who didn’t sound entirely happy either.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but soon now. Very soon.”

  “I hope she gets a move on,” said Brutus, whose voice was tooting in my ear, a clear sign he was right next to me. “Cause I’m starting to feel a little claustrophobic in here.”

  “I’m sure she’s on the verge of pulling this guy over and saving us,” I said, more in an attempt to comfort myself than my fellow cats.

  But the car was still hurtling on at a high rate of speed, and of our saviors there still was no sign. Finally the engine was cut and we rolled to a standstill. Moments later the bag was grabbed from wherever it had been dumped, and soon after we were released into the wild, the bag unceremoniously being relieved of its contents. And even as we got accustomed to our new surroundings, a big cloud of exhaust fumes drifted over us, and the car took off again, leaving us in what looked like the exact same place we’d been before, smack dab in the middle of the woods.

  “So where’s Odelia?” asked Harriet, reiterating her earlier question. “Isn’t she supposed to save us and catch this catnapper? Wasn’t that the whole point of this pointless exercise!”

  She sounded a little overwrought, and frankly I sympathized with the sentiment.

  “I have no idea,” I said as we all glanced at the retreating taillights of the catnapper’s car as it disappeared from view.

  “These trackers are useless,” said Brutus moodily. “Either they’re broken or Odelia and Chase fell asleep.”

  “Or this guy slipped them a fast one,” said Harriet. “Whatever the case, we lost him.”

  “I did smell the catnapper,” said Dooley suddenly. “I mean, I got a good whiff.”

  “And what did you smell?” I asked.

  “Well, he smelled exactly like Mrs. Bunyon,” said Dooley surprisingly.

  “Mrs. Bunyon!”

  “Yeah, didn’t you notice, Max? The bag, and the person who took us, they both smelled exactly like Mrs. Bunyon.”

  I had to admit that I hadn’t paid any attention to any smells. I was frankly too panicky and way too nervous about being sliced and diced by what was obviously some crazy person to pay any attention to minor details like that.

  “Are you sure, Dooley?” I asked therefore.

  He nodded seriously. “Absolutely.”

  And as if to add credence to his words, suddenly a loud lament sounded from the other side of the clearing where we’d been dumped: and before our very eyes, five more cats came walking up. They were the exact same cats we’d helped save that very morning, chief amongst whom was… Chouchou!

  “Looks like they caught us again,” said Chouchou in somber tones, “only now I think I know who took us.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “My very own human,” she said, sounding down in the dumps. Nor could I blame her. If I discovered that Odelia was my catnapper, and had decided to leave me in the middle of nowhere, presumably hoping never to see me again, I’d be a little disappointed, too!

  “Where did they grab you?” I asked.

  “Same place they took us yesterday,” said one of Chouchou’s friends. “We’d just left cat choir and were walking along Main Street, when suddenly a car pulled up, and we were all grabbed and put in a bag, then dumped in the trunk of a car.”

  “How do you know it was the trunk?” Brutus asked, always interested in the telling detail.

  “Because the wheel of the car was right next to my ear,” said the cat. “And the only place where the wheel is right next to your ears is either the trunk or next to the engine. But since there isn’t enough space next to the engine, it must have been the trunk.”

  “I like your thinking,” Brutus agreed.

  “We must have been in the backseat, then,” said Harriet. “Of the same car that picked you up, for I didn’t hear no wheels.”

  “The catnapper is getting more brazen,” I said. “Escalating. Last night he took five cats and tonight he took nine. That’s…” I made a quick calculation in my head. “Almost twice as many. If this keeps up he’ll take over a dozen tomorrow night.”

  “It’s not a he, though, is it?” said Harriet. “If Dooley and Chouchou are correct, the catnapper is a woman!”

  “So… why would your human grab us and then dump us?” I asked.

  “Because she doesn’t like cats,” said Chouchou sadly. “Even though I always thought she was crazy about me.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I think she secretly hoped I wouldn’t come back,” said Chouchou.

  “But then why ask Odelia to go and find you?”

  Chouchou shrugged, then sighed. “At least this time we’ll be able to find our way home again.” She eyed me hopefully. “You do know the way home, don’t you, Max?”

  “Um…” I said, glancing around.

  But lucky for us, just then Odelia’s car suddenly turned up out of nowhere, the headlights of the aged pickup she still likes to drive sweeping across the clearing. She and Chase got out, and she seemed almost frantic with worry as she hurried over to where we were holding our impromptu meeting.

  “You guys!” she cried. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”

  “No, we’re fine,” I said.

  “We might be suffering from PTSD after being stuck inside a bag, though,” said Harriet, giving Odelia a not-so-happy look.

  “I’m so, so sorry! By the time we realized what was going on, you were already traveling fifty miles an hour in this direction!”

  “Bastard gave us the slip,” Chase grunted, looking
disappointed.

  “Well, at least we know who it is,” I said, and saw how Odelia’s worried expression morphed into one of suspense.

  “Who? Who did this to you?”

  “Mrs. Bunyon,” Dooley announced. “I clearly smelled her.”

  “Me, too,” said Chouchou. She sighed. “My own human wants to get rid of me—can you imagine a sadder thing?”

  Chapter 13

  “So what is it you wanted to do?” asked Scarlett. The two neighborhood watch members were watching how Scarlett’s grandnephew was tapping on his laptop, pulling up weird-looking data on the screen and generally doing all kinds of complicated things. They were in the living room of the Poole residence, Marge and Tex having gone to bed.

  “Don’t you worry about what I want to do,” said Vesta. “As long as Kevin knows what I want to do, that’s what matters.”

  “Do you know what she’s talking about, Kev?” asked Scarlett.

  Kevin, a string bean of a kid who, at sixteen, was already a full head taller than his great-auntie Scarlett, grinned and nodded. “Oh, absolutely, I know what Vesta wants. I’m not so sure she will like what she gets, though.”

  “I’ll like it,” said Vesta. “What I want to know is if you can get me what I want.”

  “I can get it,” said Kevin with the cocky self-assurance of a teenage computer nerd.

  “And you’re sure they can’t trace it back to you?”

  “Absolutely. I’m masking my IP address. If they try to find it they’ll end up in Hong Kong or Tokyo, depending on when they look.”

  Scarlett shook her head. “All this for a new kitchen.”

  “Hey, kitchens are important!” said Vesta. “We spend a large portion of our lives in our kitchens.”

  “I thought that was the bedroom?” said Scarlett, quirking a perfectly penciled eyebrow.

  Kevin glanced up at his auntie with a grin. “Isn’t it possible that you spend half your life in the bedroom, Auntie Scarlett, and Vesta spends half her life in the kitchen?”

  “Shut up and keep working, you,” Vesta snapped, and Kevin shut up and directed his fingers to nimbly dance across the keyboard again, doing whatever it was he was doing. “Look, I want this kitchen, and Marge wants this kitchen. Now we just need to find a way to make Tex pay for this kitchen. And I’m pretty sure with this price he’ll never agree to pull his wallet, so we need to bring what he’s willing to pay and what Fred Kramer of Kramer Kitchen Kreation is asking closer together. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “Um,” said Scarlett, skeptical still, “you know when you told me you had a very important mission for the neighborhood watch planned, and you needed Kevin’s help, I never expected you were going to try to rip off the Kitchen King’s outfit.”

  “Look, the Kitchen King is rich enough. He’s not going to miss a couple of bucks.”

  “This is weird,” suddenly Kevin muttered.

  “What is?” asked Scarlett, her heart rate suddenly spiking. Somehow whenever she and Vesta were out and about, the prospect of doing something entirely illegal always seemed to loom large on the horizon.

  “I’m not the only one who’s trying to hack the Kitchen King. In fact it looks like there’s at least one other hacker trying to get into the company computer system.”

  “So? Plenty of people are probably not willing to pay these ridiculously inflated prices,” said Vesta.

  “They’re not trying to mess with the prices, though,” said Kevin as he stared intently at a bunch of weird code on his screen.

  “So what do they want?” asked Vesta.

  “I’m not sure, but it looks as if…”

  “As if what?”

  “Well, it looks as if they’re trying to lock down the entire company.”

  “You mean… what do you mean, exactly?” asked Scarlett, who’d never understood a thing about computers and the more her nephew talked about what it was he did the more her eyes glazed over and the less she understood.

  Kevin looked up, his own eyes glittering excitedly. “I think I just caught one of those ransomware hackers, Auntie Scarlett.”

  “What’s a ransomware hacker?” asked Vesta, who was as computer illiterate as her friend, or even more so.

  “You know. They put a bunch of viruses on your computer system, effectively locking the whole thing down, so you can’t do anything, and then they get in touch and tell you that they’ll unlock your systems in exchange for let’s say a million bucks, payable in bitcoin. If you don’t pay, you can kiss your company goodbye, for you’ll have to reinstall everything. And if you do pay, they’ll unlock everything and you can carry on like before.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?” asked Scarlett.

  Kevin gave her one of his looks that said: are you serious? “Yes, Auntie Scarlett, it’s completely illegal. These people are criminals, only instead of putting their hands in your pockets, they do it online.”

  “Well, that’s not very nice,” said Scarlett, eliciting a guffaw from her geeky nephew.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” asked Vesta.

  “Do? I’m not going to do anything.”

  “Can’t you stop them?” asked Scarlett.

  “Um… I guess I can do that… if that’s what you want me to do.” He dragged his eyes away from the screen. “Is that what you want me to do?”

  Vesta thought for a moment, then finally nodded in the affirmative. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s exactly what I want you to do.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” said Scarlett, even though she still didn’t understand exactly what Kevin was talking about. “We are the neighborhood watch, after all, so we should fight crime, whether it takes place on the street or on the internet. Right?”

  Kevin was smirking again, so she gave him a light tap on the head.

  “As long as you’re sure,” he said with a shrug. “Though I might have to reveal my IP.”

  She and Vesta glanced at each other, giving each other a look that said that A) They had no idea what an IP was and B) They weren’t sure about any of this, but C) They were willing to go along for the ride. So they both shrugged and said in unison, “Go for it, Kev.”

  “Isn’t this exciting?” said Scarlett after they’d watched Kevin crack his knuckles and bring up even more code on his screen.

  “Just about as exciting as watching paint dry,” Vesta grunted.

  Chapter 14

  Even though it was the middle of the night, Odelia felt it incumbent upon her and Chase, as responsible pet parents, to confront the person who was guilty of the abduction and subsequent dumping of her precious cats in the middle of the woods.

  And so it was that she and Chase stood on the porch of Mrs. Bunyon and husband, eager to have a word with the woman, and find out what had behooved her to catnap Odelia’s cats—and her own cat, too, for that matter!

  It took a little while before the doorbell was answered and the sound of approaching footsteps could be heard. By then Odelia had already rung the bell three times and Chase had proceeded to pound on the door a couple of times for good measure.

  The door opened and a bedraggled-looking Karl Bunyon appeared, his wife right behind him, both looking wary and ready to engage in a heated discussion with the marauders who’d gotten it into their heads to disturb them at this time of night.

  “Miss Poole!” Kathleen Bunyon exclaimed. “What’s wrong?” She darted a quick glance behind her. “Is it… did Chouchou get taken again?”

  “Yes, she did,” said Odelia, “and so did my cats.” She wasn’t in the mood for beating around the bush. “And I have credible information that the person who took them is—”

  “Odelia!” suddenly Max exclaimed. “It’s not her—it’s him!”

  “Yeah, it’s definitely him,” Dooley chimed in. “I thought it was Mrs. Bunyon but now that I smell them both it’s definitely Mr. Bunyon!”

  Odelia’s eyes shifted from Mrs. Bunyon to Karl Bunyon, and her ire, like liquid fire already slosh
ing about her ears, increased even more. “As I said, I have credible intel—very credible intel, in fact—that the person who took my cats, and in fact took all of the cats that have been taken tonight, and probably all the other nights, too, is you!”

  And to make sure there could be no mistake she emphasized these words by pointing at Mr. Bunyon, who stood staring at her index finger with a look of consternation on his round features. Karl Bunyon was a man who not only suffered from a receding of the hairline, but also from a weakening of the jawline and a very marked expanding of the waistline. He now stood quivering like a blancmange.

  “Me!” he cried. “What are you talking about?” He turned to his wife. “Who are these people, Kathleen? And what are they doing here in the middle of the night!”

  “This is Miss Poole, remember? She was here yesterday. I asked her to find Chouchou when she went missing, and she found her.” She gave Chase an uncertain look. “And you are…”

  “Chase Kingsley,” said Chase. “Hampton Cove PD.”

  “Police!” Mr. Bunyon squeaked, and already was starting to show a certain moistness about the temples. He was dressed in his pajamas, and looked very ill at ease indeed.

  “That’s right,” said Chase, giving the man a steely look—the look he gave his most hardened criminals and which only rarely failed to make them tremble at the knees.

  “Are you here to… arrest me?” asked Karl Bunyon nervously.

  “We just want to know what’s going on,” Odelia explained. “Why you would kidnap these cats, Mr. Bunyon?”

  Kathleen turned to her husband questioningly. “Is this true, Karl?”

  “Of course it isn’t true! Darling, I would never—ever…” He swallowed uneasily.

  “I know of nine cats that have been taken and released in the middle of the woods,” Odelia said. “Four of which are mine, by the way.” She gestured to the foursome at her feet, who all stood staring up at Mr. Bunyon with fury in their eyes.

  “It’s him,” said Harriet now. “Dooley called it. It’s definitely him. I can smell it now.”