The Mysteries of Max: Books 31-33

by Nic Saint

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Gran said reluctantly. She sighed. “I should have known it was too good to be true.”

  And as Odelia assisted in the taking down of the temporary stand, I glanced in the direction of the street, and just caught how a bike messenger was hit by a speeding car.

  The bike messenger flew across the hood of the car, then tumbled to the ground, his bike tossed into the air and landing on the sidewalk. The car pulled to a stop a couple of meters further, and immediately the driver got out and hurried over to lend assistance.

  Gran, Scarlett and Odelia, alerted by the sound of the impact, all raced to the scene, but by some miracle the bike messenger simply got up, looking slightly dazed, took stock of his possible injuries, and then declared, surprise clear in his voice, “I think I’m fine.”

  What wasn’t fine was his bike, though, which was pretty much banged up, and wouldn’t work anymore. Across the hood of the car that had hit him, a big dent had appeared, along with a nice set of scratches where the handlebars had impacted.

  And as driver and messenger arranged things amongst themselves, exchanging phone numbers and personal information, and soon a police officer emerged from the precinct to see what was going on, I took a good long look at that bike, and then it hit me.

  Now I know that it’s one of those clichés in mystery stories to say that the lead detective suddenly ‘sees all’ in a flash but I can promise you that at that moment I really did ‘see all.’ I saw who’d killed Pete the homeless person, and I also saw who killed Darryl Farmer. Or I should probably say I had a hunch I just might know who had.

  So I turned to Odelia and said, “Have you talked to those ravers yet?”

  “Not yet,” she admitted.

  “I’d like you to check something for me first,” I told her. “Something important.”

  She gave me a look of significance. “What did you have in mind?”

  Chapter 30

  Except for the intermittent hooting of an owl, all was quiet in the woods that night. Dooley and myself were there, of course, and so were Odelia and Chase, but apart from the four of us, no creature stirred or made itself heard. Except, that is, for the person who was busily trying to remove an object from a hollowed-out tree nearby.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Chase muttered.

  “Shh!” Odelia whispered back.

  The man, for it was a man, had stuck his arm into the tree all the way up to his armpit, and was rooting around, his face illuminated by the flashlight he was carrying. It was a familiar face, and even Dooley seemed surprised when he recognized it.

  “Let’s move in,” said Chase now.

  “No, we have to wait,” said Odelia. “Are you filming this?”

  “Absolutely,” said her partner.

  And then the moment was finally upon us: the man had found what he was looking for, as his face lit up with a smile, and he retracted his hand, removing a gun from the recesses of that tree trunk. “Gotcha!” he said as he studied the lethal little gizmo.

  “You called it,” said Chase, stepping to the fore and holding up his own gun and pointing it at the man. “Gotcha. Drop the gun, Mr. Kramer. Now!”

  And so Fred Kramer, for it was he, immediately dropped the gun, and simultaneously his jaw dropped a few inches, too.

  “How–how did you know?” he blurted out.

  “Don’t mind about that. Turn around, hands behind your back. Fred Kramer, you’re under arrest for the murder of Pete Jessup and Darryl Farmer.”

  “No, but seriously,” said Mr. Kramer. “How did you know?”

  But Chase wasn’t deterred: he kept reciting the Kitchen King’s Miranda rights, and soon the man had been placed under arrest and was being led back to the clearing where he’d parked his car, and as Chase removed the branches from the hood of his own car, which he and Odelia had used to conceal the vehicle just in case my hunch was right, he led the fallen king into the squad car and took off with his arrestee, while Odelia and Dooley and I walked the couple of hundred yards to her car, also neatly concealed.

  Everything so we could nab a killer— and it had been worth it, if only for the stupefied expression on the man’s face.

  “Looks like Gran will have to choose a different kitchen supplier,” said Dooley.

  “Yeah, looks like,” Odelia agreed. “And now,” she added, as she put the car in gear, “you’re going to tell me exactly how you figured it out, Max.”

  “Yeah, I think I’d like to know, too,” said Dooley.

  I settled in comfortably on the backseat. “The trouble for our Kitchen King started back when he wasn’t a king yet, but merely a prince. You see, Fred Kramer didn’t start out a kitchen mogul. Fifteen years ago he worked for one, as sales manager for a kitchen supplies company in Colorado. And guess who also worked for the same company?”

  “Our John Doe—or Pete Jessup as his real name turns out to be,” said Odelia as she expertly steered the car back onto the dirt track leading out of the woods. “When you asked me to dig a little deeper into Fred Kramer’s background, and especially his work history, it didn’t take me long to get a positive ID from the CEO of the company he used to work for,” she explained. “He told me that before he’d terminated both their employments, Fred Kramer and Pete Jessup had worked for him, respectively as head of sales and chief accountant, both accused of embezzlement and both asked to leave.”

  “Fred landed on his feet, and left the past behind, but Pete didn’t. He hit rock bottom and lost not only his job and his marriage, but also his self-respect, all of his friends and his house. So he ended up living on the streets—no money, no future, no prospects.”

  “That must have been tough,” said Dooley feelingly.

  “Well, he only had himself to blame,” I said. “If you steal from your boss, you probably shouldn’t expect any favors.”

  “So how do you think Pete happened to end up in Hampton Cove?” asked Odelia.

  “Coincidence,” I said. “I’m sure he had no idea that his former partner in crime had built up a new successful kitchen business out here, and it must have been a big shock for Fred to bump into his former associate.”

  “Who immediately put the squeeze on him,” Odelia said, nodding. “Probably wanting money in exchange for his silence.”

  “So Fred decided that the only option that would give him peace of mind was to get rid of Pete once and for all. So he told him to meet him out here in the woods, and he shot and buried him, knowing no one would come and look for the guy. But then of course Karl Bunyon’s catnapping shenanigans rode roughshod over Fred’s plans.”

  “So… how did Fred Kramer get a hold of Karl’s gun?” asked Dooley.

  “Well, from time to time it was Fred who’d drop the kids off at the Bunyons, not Grace,” Odelia explained. “And he must have gotten wise to his former employee’s gun safe—maybe Karl even showed it to him, and opened it in his presence—and that’s when the idea must have hit him.”

  “To steal Karl’s gun?”

  “Not steal it,” I said. “To switch it with his own gun, the one he picked out of that tree just now. The plan was to switch guns with Karl, kill Pete, then return the gun to Karl’s safe, something he could easily do when he picked up Grace’s kids or dropped them off. So just in case Pete’s body was discovered, which was a remote contingency, but still a contingency he needed to consider, the bullet would lead the cops to Karl, not Fred.”

  Odelia nodded. “And so when you told me to let it be known that the bullet we found in Pete wasn’t a match for Karl’s gun, you secretly hoped…”

  “That Fred would figure he’d made a mistake, and had accidentally put Karl’s gun in that tree, and had placed his own gun in Karl’s gun safe,” I confirmed. “And so just to make sure, he came out here to look for the gun, and—”

  “Walked straight into our trap,” said Odelia.

  “So how about this other man?” asked Dooley. “The DJ? Was that an accident?”

&n
bsp; “No, it wasn’t,” I said. “It was a case of Darryl Farmer being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d gone to the rave that night, playing his set, and was returning home on his bicycle around the time Fred Kramer was also returning from his grizzly business in the woods. Kramer hit him with his car, knocking Darryl off his bike and into a ditch, and since he didn’t want the police to know, gave him a large amount of cash in hand to buy himself a new bike, and keep his mouth shut about the accident.”

  “Only Darryl got greedy,” Odelia explained. “He must have read about the dead body being found, and thought that Mr. Kramer just might be involved, explaining his reluctance to involve the authorities, so he decided to milk him for some more cash.”

  “Kramer agreed, and told Darryl to meet him at the construction site.”

  “And shoved him down that elevator shaft, getting rid of another drain on his cash flow,” Odelia finished the sordid tale.

  “He’s not a very nice man, is he, this Fred Kramer,” Dooley determined.

  “No, he is not,” I agreed.

  “So how did you figure it all out, Max?”

  “Well, you’ll remember that Kramer’s Tesla had a big dent and some scratches across the hood—we saw it that day Gran hit him with her car. And today, when that bike messenger got hit, I saw the exact same damage done to the car of the man who drove into him: a dent and then some scratchings from the bike’s handlebars.”

  “He could have gotten that dent and those scratches anywhere,” said Odelia. “How did you connect that to Darryl Farmer?”

  “It was the brand-new bike we saw in Darryl’s ex-girlfriend’s place, Lucy Vale. It was a very expensive-looking bike. But then she said something that should have made me think: she said that Darryl was as poor as a church mouse. So if he really was as poor as all that, where did he get such a nice new bike? With the money Fred Kramer gave him.”

  “You did a great job, Max,” said Odelia, well pleased. “You saved an innocent man from going to prison.”

  “And from losing his kids,” I added.

  “Yeah, Karl’s ex-wife has no excuse to yank his visitation rights now.”

  “Except for the business with the cats,” I said. “Which lucky for him nobody knows about.”

  “You know what I don’t understand, Max?” said Dooley.

  “No, what?”

  “Why would Karl allow his ex-boss into his home? Mr. Kramer fired him, and he also stole his wife.”

  “Karl had to allow Fred into his home, Dooley, and his ex-wife, too, if he wanted to see his kids. And also, I think Karl is one of those people who tries to let bygones be bygones.”

  “Also,” said Odelia, “Karl didn’t know that those embezzlement charges were bogus. All he knew was that Fred fired him. Karl believed that someone embezzled that money. He knew it wasn’t him, but he also accepted that Fred couldn’t be sure about that.”

  “He should have blamed him for stealing his wife,” I said.

  “Karl didn’t see it that way. He thought Grace had left him, not that Fred had framed him so he could steal Grace away from him.”

  “Karl is really one of those people who are too good for this world,” I said with a shake of the head.

  “Yeah, he sure is,” Odelia said. “And if we hadn’t intervened, Fred wouldn’t have just framed him for embezzlement, stolen the man’s wife, but also set him up for murder!”

  “Talk about a lousy boss,” said Dooley with a sigh.

  Epilogue

  It was that time of the week again, when the Poole clan all comes together and enjoys a family moment: when they sit down for dinner and the paterfamilias prepares food for the entire clan. In the olden days that paterfamilias probably first killed a bison or two and caught a shoal of fish to serve his famished relatives, but in these modern times Tex had simply gone down to the supermarket to get his offerings wholesale. It was necessary for him to buy his meats wholesale as he wasn’t exactly the best chef in the world, and things often tended to go wrong at the food prep stage of the proceedings.

  Tex was slowly improving, though, and every week his barbecue moment was a little less disastrous than the week before. At this rate I figured it wouldn’t take more than another couple of years before he managed to serve us all an edible and enjoyable meal.

  The meal itself was being served in Odelia and Chase’s backyard for a change, as the backyard of the chef himself was the scene of an extensive home renovation project—or you might call it what it was: erecting an entirely new home practically from scratch.

  “So you did it again, Max,” said Harriet as the four of us were all lying next to one another on the porch swing. “You caught yourself another killer.”

  “I guess I got lucky again,” I said modestly.

  “Or smart,” said Dooley.

  “So the Kitchen King is actually a killer king, huh?” said Brutus. “I should have known. He looked like a crook to me.”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Harriet. “In fact when you first saw him you said he looked like a great guy—the kind of guy you could imagine yourself being adopted by.”

  We all stared at Brutus. “You’re looking for another home, Brutus?” I asked.

  “Well, no—or yeah, maybe. Look, this family is lovely and all, but it’s always something, you know. Like with this house falling apart. I mean, it’s all very stressful, you guys. And yesterday I spotted my first gray hair. Can you imagine? Me! A gray hair!”

  “It’s only the one gray hair, Brutus,” said Harriet.

  “Where is it?” asked Dooley solicitously.

  “Here, on my ear,” said Brutus, bending his head to show us.

  “Yeah, that’s a gray hair all right,” I confirmed.

  “It’s very small,” Dooley said as he studied the hair.

  “It’s the beginning of the end, Dooley. Things can only get worse. And I know why this is happening to me. It’s the stress. Murderers and thieves and criminals galore, and now my own home collapsing, practically falling down around me. Imagine if we’d been inside when that thing fell down. We could all have been dead now!”

  “Every home has its advantages and disadvantages, Brutus,” I said. “I think all in all we can count ourselves lucky with humans like the Pooles.”

  “Yeah, I know, but why do they have to skirt danger all the time? Between Odelia who’s always getting involved with murderers and crooks, and Chase who’s a cop, and then of course Gran with her neighborhood watch?” He shook his head. “It’s all too much for me, and if you’re smart you’ll all join me in looking for another family to live with—a nice and peaceful family. A family like the Trappers, for instance.”

  He was referring to Marge and Tex’s neighbors Ted and Marcie Trapper.

  “The Trappers have a dog, Brutus,” Harriet pointed out. “I don’t think they’re going to take a bunch of cats.”

  “And why not?!” Brutus cried, getting a little worked up. “Rufus is a nice dog. He’s a cat-loving dog. I think I could live very happily side by side with a dog like Rufus.”

  “Well, if you want to get yourself adopted by the Trappers, go right ahead,” said Harriet. “But I’m staying right here.”

  Brutus frowned, grumbled something, then shut up. He might be willing to get rid of the Pooles, but he wasn’t ready to get rid of his lady love, that much was obvious.

  “Max is right,” said Harriet. “Every family has its advantages and disadvantages. I’m sure that the Trappers will have something that’s not so great, too. And it only takes one conversation with Rufus to find out.”

  But before we could have that conversation, suddenly there was the loud sound of an explosion, and when we looked up we saw that Tex had managed, through some inexplicable procedure, to blow up the entire grill!

  Pieces of fish and meat and veggies had been catapulted in all directions, and the grill itself was now a charred piece of twisted metal!

  “That does it!” Brutus declared as he jumped down from t
he porch swing. “I’m going over to the Trappers and ask if they’re willing to adopt a gorgeous black cat!”

  And with these surprising words, he was off at a trot, in the direction of the next-door backyard. Well, the next-door, next-door backyard if we’re being nitpicky, and I am—at least according to Harriet.

  “Brutus! Wait!” Harriet yelled, and before we could stop her, she was tripping after her mate.

  And then it was just me and Dooley.

  After a pause, in which we both tried to imagine life without Harriet and Brutus, Dooley said, “They’ll be back.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I mean, I can’t imagine they’d really move out. You, Max?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “So they’ll be back. Right?”

  “Well, I certainly hope so.”

  But five minutes passed, and then ten, and Brutus and Harriet still hadn’t returned.

  The Pooles were picking up pieces of the grill, and collecting the scattered foodstuffs, and so they weren’t paying any attention to us cats. Odelia probably hadn’t even noticed Harriet and Brutus had left, and neither had Gran or Marge, who’d been hit by a sausage, or Uncle Alec, whose practically bald pate had been scalded by a flying piece of steak.

  But when another half hour had passed, I had to admit the impossible had happened.

  Harriet and Brutus had gone over to the dark side: they’d gone to the dogs!

  THE END

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  Excerpt from Purrfect Swing (Mysteries of Max 34)

  Chapter One

  There was a commotion that seemed to center on the bathroom. Now don’t get me wrong: I understand perfectly well the important role a bathroom plays in the lives of humans. They use it for all kinds of things, many of them a little mysterious in my view, and most of them perfectly superfluous, too, but it’s clear that along with the kitchen the bathroom is at the heart of their existence.