by Nic Saint
“Yeah, no doubt about it,” Brutus confirmed. “He took us and bagged us and then dumped us—he’s the Hampton Cove catnapper, all right!”
“Karl, did you really take Miss Poole’s cats and dump them in the woods? Tell me the truth.”
Karl blinked a couple of times, now subjected to the combined scrutiny of four cats, one police detective, one reporter-slash-sleuth and his own wife and cat lover. “I-I can explain,” he finally said, a little lamely, Odelia thought.
Kathleen’s eyes went wide. “You did this?! You kidnapped my precious Chouchou?”
“Maybe we should take this inside,” Chase now suggested. “No sense in talking this thing through out here on the porch.”
And so the discussion proceeded inside, where they gathered in the living room. Chouchou sat eyeing her master with wide-eyed consternation. “I thought I smelled something familiar when he took me,” she now explained. “But I would never have believed it possible—my very own human! Kidnapped me and left me to die!”
“Well, not to die, exactly,” said Harriet. “You had plenty of food out there in the woods, Chouchou, so let’s not get overdramatic, shall we?”
“Okay, so…” Karl began, as his wife regarded him with unmitigated consternation. “So look, Kathy. The thing is…” He sighed deeply, then finally blurted out, “I’m allergic to cats, all right!”
“Allergic!”
“Yeah, I just didn’t want to tell you because… Well, you know how it is. You meet someone and you try to make a good impression on that person, and so when she asks you if you love and adore cats as much as she does, you obviously say yes, because you don’t want to make her think you’re some kind of cat-hating freak. And then one thing leads to another and…” He suddenly sneezed and said, “I’ve been allergic to cats all my life. It’s not that I hate the creatures, though I’m not terribly fond of them as you can imagine, but they make me sick—and I mean that in the kindest way possible,” he hastened to add.
“You are allergic to cats…” said Kathleen, sounding skeptical.
“I am! Always have been.” He sneezed again.
“So is that why you’re always sick?”
“Partly, yeah,” he said. “I have other allergies, too, but mainly it’s cats.” He shrugged. “I probably should have told you from the beginning, when we first started dating, but I fell for you like a ton of bricks, and I had a feeling this whole cat thing was kind of a deal-breaker, so…” He gave her a sheepish look.
“So you decided to lie to me.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.”
“But how did you go from being allergic to cats to prowling around at night collecting them off the streets and dumping them in the woods?” asked Odelia.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Max said at her feet.
“Well,” he said, giving Chouchou an uncertain glance, “the thing is, I just thought at some point that the best solution would be to simply get rid of Chouchou once and for all. And I’d read an article that cats are never happier than when in their natural habitat, so I just figured…”
“You just figured you’d take my sweet precious baby and dump her in the woods,” said Kathleen, her anger still building.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, hanging his head. “And to make sure you wouldn’t suspect me I just thought I’d collect a few of those creatures and put them all in the same place.”
“So we would think a catnapper was on the prowl,” said Odelia, understanding dawning.
Karl Bunyon shrugged. “It sounded like a good idea at the time.”
“Karl, it’s the worst idea possible!” Kathleen screamed, and gave him a good whack on the arm.
“I’m sorry, all right!” he wailed. “I just didn’t know what else to do! My allergies were getting worse and worse, and I had to do something!”
“What you should have done is to come clean and then we could have taken the necessary steps,” said Kathleen.
“You mean give Chouchou away to your folks?” he said hopefully.
“No! To take you to a doctor and get you the proper medication to treat those allergies of yours!”
“Oh, God,” he said, burying his head in his hands. “I’m a horrible person, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are, Karl,” said Kathleen with grim-faced annoyance. “God! And you tell me he’s gone and kidnapped your cats, too?”
“All four of them,” Odelia confirmed.
“Karl!” Kathleen cried and gave her husband another well-deserved whack.
“I’m sorry, all right! How was I supposed to know those cats belonged to someone?”
“Hello—they’re all wearing collars!”
“Collars with trackers,” Chase specified. “Which is how we knew they’d been taken, and where they’d been taken.”
“Trackers,” Karl murmured as he studied Odelia’s foursome. “I should have known.”
“So now what?” asked Kathleen, as she regarded Chase with a touch of trepidation. “Are you going to arrest my husband?”
“Are you pressing charges?” Chase shot back.
Kathleen stood regarding her husband for a moment, then said, “Karl, go upstairs for a moment will you?”
“But why?” asked her catnapping other half.
“Because there’s something I want to discuss with Miss Poole and Officer Kingsley.”
“Oh, all right,” said Karl, and repaired upstairs.
“Look, I know this looks bad,” said Kathleen once her husband was out of view and out of earshot, “but there’s something I need to explain to you about Karl.”
“We already know about his allergies,” said Odelia. “And we already know he did a very stupid thing here, Kathleen.”
“I know, and I’ll deal with him in my own way. But here’s the thing about Karl: he’s been through the wringer and I think it’s taken its toll on him—no, I know it’s taken its toll on him. See, when I met him he was really down in the dumps. He’d just gone through a terrible divorce, and he was feeling at a very low ebb in his life. So even though it sounds odd that he would lie about his allergies, when you know what he was like back then it’s actually almost understandable why he did what he did.”
“How come?” asked Chase. “Why was he in such a bad way?”
“It’s a long story, and I’ll save you the details. But let’s just say that Karl used to be something of a big shot at Kramer Kitchen Kreation, Fred Kramer’s outfit?”
Odelia shared a look with her husband. “Isn’t that where Mom and Gran went to pick out a new kitchen?”
“I think so,” Chase said.
“Well, Karl was their chief accountant—Fred Kramer’s go-to financial guy. Karl’s then-wife Grace was Fred’s secretary, and for a while things were going great. Until Fred started an affair with Karl’s wife, and Fred accused Karl of embezzlement and had him kicked out of the company. So suddenly Karl not only lost his marriage, but also his high-flying job and his social esteem. He went from being the cat’s meow to being a nothing.”
“Did Fred press charges?”
“Oh, no. And according to Karl there never was any embezzlement and I believe him. I think the embezzlement charge was just an excuse to get rid of Karl, and to convince Grace that her husband was a crook so she’d leave him for Fred, which she did.”
“But that’s terrible,” said Odelia.
“And you haven’t even heard the worst part. Karl and Grace had two kids, and ever since the divorce Grace has been trying to take the kids away from him. She got custody of the kids, based on those embezzlement charges, which were all dropped, by the way, a clear sign they were bogus, and now she’s trying to take Karl’s visitation rights away.” She gave Odelia a knowing look. “So you see, if it gets out that Karl has been grabbing cats and dumping them in the woods, Grace is sure to use it as more ammunition in the divorce battle against her ex-husband, and he’ll almost certainly lose his kids for good.”
“So I take it you’r
e not going to press charges,” said Odelia, getting the gist.
“Look, I think what he did is terrible, and he should never have touched my cat or your cats, or any of those cats, but Karl has been under a lot of pressure lately.”
“The custody battle.”
Kathleen nodded. “It’s really taken a toll on him, and he’s not thinking straight at the moment.”
“Okay, all right, I get that,” said Odelia. “But the thing is, close to the place where your husband dumped the cats—yours and mine—a man was found. A dead man.”
“Oh, I saw something about that,” said Kathleen, nodding. “A vagrant, wasn’t he?”
“We’re not sure yet,” said Chase. “But we were actually looking for the catnapper because we figured he might be involved with this murder business.”
Kathleen’s eyes went wide. “Karl? A murderer? You must be joking!”
“I’m afraid I’m dead serious.”
“At the very least he’s a potential witness,” said Odelia. “So can you perhaps tell him to come back down so we can ask him if he saw something when he was out there?”
Kathleen had gone a little white around the nostrils, and looked even more distracted than before. “Karl!” she yelled. “Come down here a minute, will you?”
Dutifully her husband came pounding down the stairs, and within moments had joined them again. “And?” he asked, looking nervous and sweating even more than before. “What’s the verdict?”
Just then, a pink-haired teenage girl appeared behind Karl Bunyon, and said, “What’s going on? What’s with all the yelling?”
She was dressed in an oversized Minnie Mouse T-shirt and looked sleepy-eyed.
“Go back to bed, Suzy.”
“But, Mom!”
“Go back to bed! I’ll explain everything in the morning.”
“Oh, all right,” she grumbled, and stomped back up the stairs.
“There’s something I need to ask you, Mr. Bunyon,” said Chase.
“Of course, officer,” said Karl with a nervous chuckle.
“Not this night, but last night, when you took Chouchou into the woods the first time, along with several other cats, did you happen to notice something out of the ordinary?”
Karl frowned and looked from Chase to Odelia and back. “Something out of the ordinary? Like what?”
“Well…”
“They want to know if you killed that bum,” his wife now supplied. She’d crossed her arms in front of her chest.
Karl didn’t respond at first, then he blinked and said, “Killed that bum? What bum?”
“A bum was killed out in the woods and buried there,” Kathleen supplied. “It was all over the news, Karl! God, I can’t believe you didn’t see that. Anyway, Miss Poole and Officer Kingsley want to know if you had something to do with that.” She gave her husband an angry look. “More specifically they want to know if, apart from kidnapping cats, you’re also in the habit of murdering bums and burying them in the woods.”
A high-pitched whinny was Karl’s response, but when no one joined in, Karl seemed to realize this wasn’t a joke but serious business. “Of course not!” he finally exclaimed. “I’m not a killer. I only did what I did because of my allergies, and because I was afraid to admit to my wife that I’d lied about loving cats as much as she does. But murder!”
“Okay, all right, “said Chase, holding up his hands in an appeasing gesture. “Look, the body was found close to where you left those cats, and on the same night. So did you happen to see anyone out there?”
“No. No, I didn’t,” he said, and looked truthful enough as he said it.
“Okay, Karl,” said Chase. “I want you to come into the precinct tomorrow and make that statement official, is that understood?”
“But, officer…” said Kathleen.
“We’re not going to talk about the cats,” Chase said. “If you’re not pressing charges, we won’t press charges either. Isn’t that right, Odelia?”
“No, I’m not pressing charges,” Odelia confirmed. More than being angry with Karl, she felt sorry for him now, and didn’t want to add to the problems he was already facing.
“Okay, so as far as we’re concerned, the cat business is over and done with. But only on the condition that you don’t go out and start kidnapping cats again—are we absolutely clear on that, Karl?”
“Yeah. No, of course I won’t do this again. Absolutely.”
“Then I’ll consider this matter resolved,” said Chase with a touch of finality.
Though as they left the house, and judging from the look on Mrs. Bunyon’s face, it was clear the last word about Karl’s anti-cat initiative hadn’t been spoken yet.
Chapter 15
The next morning we were up early, and traveling along our usual haunts to collect those nice little tidbits of information and gossip our human likes to gather preparatory to writing her articles for the Gazette: usually we do the rounds of the whole town, starting with a visit to Kingman, then on to the barbershop, where another one of our contacts usually is able to supply us with some juicy bits hot from the lips of Fido’s clients, and then of course there’s the police station, where we like to spy on Uncle Alec, also known as Chief Alec, our town’s chief of police. Now I know that Uncle Alec likes to keep Odelia in the loop, but there’s always stuff that falls through the cracks, and it is for this reason that Dooley and myself found ourselves out on Uncle Alec’s windowsill, ready to do our bit for the furtherance of the information mill churning out fresh grist.
As luck would have it, Uncle Alec and Chase were engaged in a meeting, discussing recent events, and more in particular the discovery of the dead body in the woods.
“So I hear you caught your catnapper last night?” the Chief grumbled.
“Yeah, but his wife isn’t going to press charges,” said Chase as he sat across from his superior officer, his long legs stretched out before him, his strong arms crossed in front of his muscular chest. “And since we’re not pressing charges either, it looks as if Karl Bunyon is off the hook.”
“And he’s sure he didn’t see anyone out in those woods?”
“Nope. Didn’t see anyone.”
“And you’re absolutely convinced he’s not the killer we’re after?”
“Pretty sure. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d go around murdering innocent vagrants, Chief. In fact you should have seen the guy. You would feel sorry for him, too. First dumped by his first wife, and now having to live with the cat of his second wife even though he hates cats.”
“I thought you said he’s allergic to them?”
“Pretty sure he simply hates cats.”
“Okay, all right,” said the Chief as he dragged his sausage-sized fingers through the few remaining strands of hair on his large dome. “So we got the coroner’s report and it takes us exactly nowhere.” He frowned darkly at his computer, as if it had personally offended him, and said, “Body of an unidentified male between fifty-five and sixty years of age, fingerprints not in the system. All we know is that he was shot through the head with a .38 caliber bullet, and that he’s been living rough for the past couple of years.”
“So basically a bum.”
“I don’t think that’s the politically correct term, but yeah, basically a bum. And so far we’ve got nothing.” Uncle Alec then happened to glance in my direction and rolled his eyes. “And if you’ve got any sense, Max!” he said, raising his voice, “You should be out there gathering clues for me, not spying on whatever I have to say in here, all right!”
I gave the chief a one-nailed salute, and said, “Come on, Dooley. Nothing to see here, I’m afraid.”
And we were just about to jump down from that windowsill when suddenly the door to Uncle Alec’s office burst open and a red-faced man stormed in and yelled, “I want to press charges, Chief. I want to press charges against your brother-in-law!”
Dooley gave me a curious glance. “I take it we’re going to stick around a little
longer?”
“Oh, you bet we are,” I said, and we both hunkered down again.
“What are you talking about?” asked the Chief indignantly.
“Tex Poole is your brother-in-law, is he not?”
“Yeah, he is. So what?”
“So he hacked my company’s computer system last night, and installed what is commonly termed ransomware on the entire system, and now he’s asking for one million dollars in bitcoin or else he’ll keep my company hostage!”
Uncle Alec and Chase shared a look of concern, then the Chief turned back to the red-faced man. He had one of those square heads you don’t see very often, and his neck wouldn’t have looked out of place on an old turtle, but otherwise he wasn’t as old as all that. I would have pegged him in his early fifties or late forties. He also had a large belly, one that stuck out from the vest of his dark blue suit.
“Who are you?” asked Chase.
“My name is Fred Kramer, and I run Kramer Kitchen Kreation,” said the man.
“Fred Kramer as in the Kitchen King?”
“One and the same. And as I just explained to you, I want to press charges against Tex Poole. I want you to make him release my system. I can’t do anything right now. Payroll, inventory, my list of customers, orders, invoicing, everything is blocked. I can’t do a damn thing! And if he really thinks I’m going to pay him a million bucks he’s nuts!”
“Okay, all right,” said Chase, holding up his hands. “And how do you know that Tex Poole is the one behind all this?”
“Because I’ve had my IT guy working on this since five o’clock this morning when we discovered the break-in, and he says the IP address connected with the attack is Tex Poole’s. And since I just happen to know a couple of people in this town, and I asked around, they all said he’s your brother-in-law!”
Uncle Alec nodded. “Look, Tex Poole is a doctor, all right? And he knows just about as much about computers as I do, which is to say zilch. So it’s impossible that he would be involved in something like this… ransomware attack you’ve got going on.”
“I’m just telling you what my IT guy told me: the IP address connected with the attack is registered to Tex Poole. And that’s all I need to know to file charges against the man, and to demand that you arrest him and force him to release my computer systems. And if you don’t want to take him down because he’s family, I’m going to the Mayor and I’m going to demand that she takes action. And if the Mayor won’t do anything, because she’s your girlfriend—oh, yes, I know about that, too—I’m going to the FBI!”