by Nic Saint
“Oh, help,” said Dooley, wide-eyed. “We need a doctor!”
“Tex is a doctor, Dooley,” I reminded him.
“But Tex has his head stuck! He needs a second doctor to remove it!”
I craned my neck to see this medical miracle. How does a human manage to get their head stuck in such an awkward position? But when Tex walked in he looked fine. His head was a little red, but not stuck anywhere, and definitely not up his own bottom.
“It’s a miracle!” Dooley cried. “A medical miracle!”
“What is it now?” asked Marge, not all that excited about this miracle.
“Your husband objects to my plans to keep this family safe from harm!” Gran said.
“Of course I do!” Tex cried, his head reddening even more. “Has she told you about her crazy plan?”
“What plan?” asked Marge in an even tone. She had poured water from the bucket into a small basin and was now rinsing tomatoes and a head of lettuce.
“She wants to turn our basement into a bunker. A nuclear bunker!”
“Not a nuclear bunker, you mug. A regular old bunker that can withstand anything. A nuclear blast, tsunami, hurricane or even Yellowstone going and blowing up on us.”
“And why do we need a bunker like that?” asked Marge in the same dispassionate tone as she took a pot roast out of the fridge and sniffed at it.
“Because winter is coming, if you hadn’t heard, and we need to protect ourselves.”
“Winter is coming but we don’t need no nuclear bunker to ride it out,” said Tex.
“The nuclear winter is coming,” Gran specified. “And we do need a bunker to protect us from the blast. Why do you think Mark Zuckerberg is buying up half of New Zealand? Or those other tech billionaires? These guys know stuff we don’t, and they’re ready. So do you really want to be the chump that has to watch how his family is blown away by a nuclear explosion because he was too stubborn to listen to his whip-smart ma-in-law?”
“Where do you get all this nonsense?” Tex demanded.
“The YouTube, where else? Because the YouTube knows. The YouTube never lies.”
“Oh, God,” said Tex, and reached for the fridge.
“What are you doing?” asked Marge.
“I need a yogurt.”
“Not before dinner, you don’t. You know sugar spoils your appetite.”
“Your mother spoils my appetite.”
“The nuclear winter will spoil your appetite. In fact it will spoil your life. In that it will an-ni-hi-late you!” said Gran, wagging a bony finger in her son-in-law’s face.
I glanced to Dooley, and he glanced at me, and then we moved, as one cat, in the direction of the door. A couple of plaintive meows later and Marge was dutifully opening the door again and we were both walking out of the house. Even though winter was coming and it was chilly out, and pouring rain, it was still preferable to being inside.
Usually I don’t mind some light entertainment from the Gran-and-Tex show, but I’d had a rough day, what with finding out I needed to diet again, and getting stuck in the pet flap a couple of times, so my tolerance levels were low and about to hit rock bottom.
We walked through the hole in the hedge and into the next garden and then up to the house. No lights were on inside, so Odelia hadn’t arrived home yet. I gave the pet flap a sad glance and hunkered down on the deck, while Dooley ventured inside to see if he couldn’t wrangle up a human to act as my butler. Meanwhile, I took a well-deserved nap. What? Do you think cats would be as gracious and strong and flexible and overall fantastic if we didn’t get our eighteen hours of sleep? Sleep is good for you, you should probably try it sometime, young Padawan. And then I nodded off. Odd, though, but the last sounds that reached my ears were the sounds of Harriet and Brutus shouting.
Chapter 19
“What are you doing here?” asked Chase when Odelia walked out of the building just as he and Uncle Alec were walking in.
“Oh, this and that,” said Odelia. “Working on a new piece for the Gazette.”
Uncle Alec narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re investigating the skeleton case, aren’t you?”
“And what if I am? If I had to wait for you guys to share information I could have waited a long time.”
“Alec thought it best not to involve you,” said Chase, happily throwing his boss under the bus.
“That’s not what I said, Chase. What I said was that since Odelia is so closely connected to the case, the body being found in her mother’s basement, we probably should keep her out of it.”
“It’s okay,” said Odelia. “Maybe by working separately we’ll discover a lot more.”
“But I don’t want you to work separately,” said Uncle Alec, looking pained. “I want you not involved in this case at all, you understand?”
“I do understand,” she said. “But you have to understand that when my editor gives me an assignment it’s a little hard for me to turn him down. Him being my boss and signing my paychecks and all.” She gave her uncle a smile which he didn’t reciprocate.
“So that’s how you want to play this, mh?” he finally asked.
“It seems I don’t have a choice, as you decided for me what role I should play.”
“I should have known you’d get involved somehow,” said her uncle, raking his meaty paw across the few remaining strands of thinning hair on top of his scalp.
“See?” said Chase. “I told you.”
“No, you didn’t,” Alec grumbled. “Well, fine. What did you find out?”
She feigned ignorance. “Find out? What do you mean?”
“Look, if we’re going to do this, we better join forces.”
“But that’s just it. You don’t want to join forces.”
He raised his eyes heavenward and emitted a rumbling groan. It had started raining, and his groan competed nicely with the sounds of thunder shaking the earth.
“Fine,” he finally said. “Have it your way.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll crack this case while you run around in circles.”
Chase grinned. He was effectively caught in the middle of this inter-family competition. He didn’t seem overly troubled, though.
Alec waved a finger in his deputy’s face. “If you so much as breathe a single word about this investigation to my niece, you’re off this case, Kingsley. Is that clear?”
“Crystal, sir,” said Chase.
“Are you people coming up?” suddenly a voice shouted down from the second floor. Rita was leaning out the window and giving them a wave.
“We better go in,” Alec muttered and stomped through the door and into the hallway.
Chase gave Odelia a quick peck on the lips. “See you later, babe. Don’t wait up for me. When he’s in this mood it could take a while.”
“So did the skeleton belong to Boyd Baker?”
“Uh-huh,” said Chase. “Dental records confirmed it.”
“And the brooch?”
“Still haven’t been able to figure out who it belonged to.”
“Are you coming or what?!” Uncle Alec shouted from inside, holding the door.
“I better don’t keep the big guy waiting,” said Chase. “He might pop a vessel.”
I’d been lounging out on that deck for what felt like an eternity when Dooley finally returned from his expedition.
“And?” I said, though I could see from the look on his face that his mission had been for naught.
“No, Odelia isn’t home,” he said, confirming my suspicions. “And neither is Chase. In fact there isn’t any human activity in the house.”
“No human activity? You mean there is…”
“Yes, there is feline activity, though I’m not sure what it’s all about. I thought I heard voices so I went in search of their source and discovered they came from the basement. But when I put my ear against the door I heard Harriet shouting, ‘Push harder. Harder!’ ‘I’m pushing as hard as I can!’ Brutus replied. ‘Now pull! Pull as hard as you can
! Harder!’ ‘I’m pulling as hard as I can,’ Brutus responded. And then Harriet said ‘Push! Push as hard as you can. Yes, yes, that’s it! That’s it! Oh, that’s the spot, Brutus!’”
I cleared my throat. It was obvious to me what was going on here. Brutus and Harriet had decided to take advantage of this lull in the proceedings—a house devoid of humans and pets—to take their relationship to the next level. Though why they’d chosen an inhabitable place like the basement was momentarily beyond me. But then I saw what must have happened. They’d gone down there to chase away those mice, and having done that must have decided to stick around, Harriet falling for Brutus’s fatal attraction, and Brutus falling for hers, and the rest, as they say, was history.
“What do you think they’re doing, Max?” asked Dooley, looking worried.
I cleared my throat again. It was imperative to protect Dooley’s innocence in these times, when unbridled sensuality seems to be all the rage. “Oh, nothing special,” I said.
“Is that what they call hanky panky?” asked Dooley, and I stared at him.
“How do you know about hanky panky?”
“Someone from cat choir told me last week. Brutus and Harriet were in the bushes during a break and when I asked Missy what they were doing, she said they were doing hanky panky. But when I asked what hanky panky was, she refused to explain it to me, and said I had to ask someone else.”
“So did you?” I asked nervously. “Ask somebody else?”
“Well, I asked Shanille, and she said it is a form of entertainment grownups like to engage in. She was a little fuzzy on the details, though. So then I asked Milo, because Milo always knows his stuff, and he said hanky panky is when two people, or two cats like in this case, are in love and pull each other’s tails. So Brutus pulls Harriet’s tail and then Harriet pulls Brutus’s tail. He said it’s a game they like to play and they derive a lot of pleasure from it. But when I asked Misty to pull my tail she slapped me. So then I told her all I wanted to do was some hanky panky with her and she slapped me again.”
“You can’t just walk up to a cat and ask to do hanky panky with them, Dooley.”
“No, I guess I learned that the hard way.”
“It’s like Milo said, you have to be in love.”
“So is that what Brutus and Harriet are doing down there?”
“Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what they’re doing,” I said. “Brutus and Harriet love hanky panky, and I think we better leave them to it and make sure we don’t disturb them when they’re in the middle of… pulling each other’s tails.”
“That’s what I thought. And that’s why I didn’t even bother knocking or asking if they were all right down there.”
“You did the right thing, Dooley. Never disturb two cats when they’re in the middle of hanky panky. Simply stay away and leave them to it.”
“Do you think they managed to chase those mice away, though?”
“Well, if they’re having fun they must have gotten the job done. Responsible adults always finish the job first, and then engage in some light entertainment.”
Dooley smiled. “Good. I wouldn’t have slept tonight knowing there were all these mice traipsing all over the house. Not that I have something against mice, but this is our house, Max, and mice have no business here.”
“Exactly right, Dooley,” I agreed. “It’s our house and anyone who dares to enter is what we call an intruder. So when you see a mouse—even though I’m sure Brutus and Harriet managed to convince them to move out—simply yell stranger danger as loud as you can. Then me, Odelia or Chase will come running and we’ll chase the intruder away.”
He smiled a happy smile and we both lay down and stared out at the rain lashing the backyard. The grass was completely wet, with puddles forming everywhere, and the sky was a nice pitch black. The only lights we could see were those of the neighboring houses, and I could even see smoke wafting from the chimney of the house next door.
Somehow it gave me a cozy feeling, though it would have been even better if we’d been inside, nice and warm and dry, looking out through the window. Then again, beggars can’t be choosers, and cats with a little extra volume around the midsection can’t hope to fit through the pet flap without losing a couple of pounds.
“Do you think you’ll ever fit through that pet flap again, Max?” asked Dooley.
“Oh, I’m sure I will. In fact I have devised a plan that doesn’t involve dieting.”
“You have?”
“From now on I’m going to take more frequent strolls around the block. More exercise will burn those extra calories, and before you know it I’ll be as slim as you.”
“That sounds like a great plan, Max. So you won’t have to diet?”
“Nope. I can keep on eating exactly what I’m eating now, or maybe even a little bit more, and all the activity will burn those calories right off.”
“I like it. Only problem is, if I go on these walks with you, won’t I become too slim?”
“That’s why you need to eat more, buddy. Tuck in and don’t stop eating until you feel completely and utterly stuffed. Like a Thanksgiving turkey, right before the slaughter.”
Oops. I should probably not have said that.
He gave me a look of confusion. “Slaughter? What do you mean?”
“Um, nothing. Forget I said that.”
“Do they slaughter those nice turkeys?”
“No, they don’t,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “In fact what they do is bring the old turkeys—the ones that are very old and tired—to Vena and then Vena gives them a pill that makes them go to sleep, and then they simply never wake up.”
“That’s what I thought,” he said, looking slightly disturbed by my slip of the tongue. “And that’s what Odelia told me happened, and Marge, and Gran. Those poor turkeys are very, very old and so they decide to make the ultimate sacrifice by giving us the opportunity to live even as they go to heaven. Isn’t that right, Max?”
“That’s exactly right.”
“Well, I just hope that next time we visit Vena she won’t give us one of those pills by accident. I don’t think I want to end up on Marge and Tex’s Thanksgiving dinner table with a lot of stuffing in my belly and gravy poured all over me, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean, Dooley. And I’m here to tell you this will never, ever happen.”
Odelia had returned to her car, wondering about her next step. She needed to talk to the people Boyd Baker used to work for, if the company still existed, and get a feel for the man’s personality and habits. She realized this was probably the hardest case she’d ever worked on. A case that dated back fifty-five years. How would she ever figure out what happened to the man? When all the witnesses and the people who were around that time were probably all dead and buried?
She inserted her key into the ignition and moments later the engine of her old but trusty pickup truck coughed to life. And then she was moving through the driving rain back in the direction of the homestead. She wanted to talk to Max and Dooley and find out if they’d discovered something on their travels. She didn’t hold out a lot of hope, figuring that animals have an even shorter lifespan than humans, so there wouldn’t be any pets around from the time of the murder. Still, Max and Dooley had come through for her before, and they might very well do so now.
And as she parked her car in front of the house, she briefly wondered about the burgundy Toyota parked across the street from her house. She didn’t think she’d ever seen it around, then figured one of the neighbors must have bought themselves a new car. She got out and hurried to the front door, holding her purse over her head to protect her from this sudden and unexpected storm, and let herself into the house.
She searched around for her cats. It was only when she’d called out that suddenly Dooley’s head poked in through the pet flap and when he saw her let out a happy though slightly plaintive meow.
“Oh, hey, Dooley,” she said. “Where is Max? And where are t
he others?”
“Max is outside. He still doesn’t fit through the pet flap. And Harriet and Brutus are in the basement doing hanky panky so I decided not to bother them.”
She laughed. Dooley probably didn’t even know what hanky panky was.
“Are they, now?” she said, and thought about checking the basement to see what they were up to for herself. But of course she didn’t. She was a firm believer in giving her pets their space, and if Harriet and Brutus were indeed doing what Dooley said they were doing, they deserved to be left in peace and enjoy themselves. So she withdrew her hand from the basement door and went in search of Max. She could hardly wait to hear his report on all the things he’d discovered in the case of the mysterious basement skeleton.
While Dooley was inside greeting Odelia, and telling her to open the door so I could get in, I smiled before me at Dooley’s quaint conceit. It was a little tough sometimes having to tell Dooley all kinds of stories. Like telling a kid that Santa Claus is real, and that the tooth fairy will come and collect their tooth when they’re sleeping. Then again, it was also heart-warming that Dooley was still a baby in a lot of ways, and the responsibility of being both friend and surrogate parent was one I took very seriously.
The door behind me slid open, and I slipped inside. “Finally,” I said, immediately moving to the radiator to heat up my chilled bones.
“So what did you find out?” asked Odelia, not wasting time with preliminaries or how-have-you-beens.
“Well, we discovered that there is an animal living in Hampton Cove who’s probably the oldest animal alive. According to Kingman she might even be more than fifty years old, or possibly even sixty or seventy, so she was probably alive when the skeleton found its way into that wall.”
“Boyd Baker,” said Odelia as she put the kettle on for a cup of tea. “That’s his name. He used to live next door with his wife and two kids. He died fifty-five years ago, or at least that’s when he disappeared from home never to return.”