by Nic Saint
“Or you killed him and blocked it out,” said the Chief gently.
Gabriel blinked. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I guess that’s also possible.”
Chapter 14
Odelia arrived home a little after six. She’d written the biggest chunk of her article for the paper but there were still a few gaps in the story she needed to patch up. She hoped Max and the others would have sniffed out a few choice tidbits of intel, straight from the horse’s mouth, or, if a horse hadn’t been available, some other animal. The petting zoo should have supplied plenty of material to work with. Those little details that give a story oomph and that je-ne-sais-quoi your average reader is looking for when picking up his morning paper or checking his morning website, as nowadays was more the habit.
The Hampton Cove Gazette had been around for such a long time it had become an institution in the home of Hampton Covians, and with a little help from the newspaper gods it would remain that way for a good long time to come. Even though Dan was getting on in years, he wasn’t about to retire any time soon, and even if he was, his succession was assured in the form of Odelia, his number-one lieutenant.
Thinking about succession, Odelia suddenly wondered what the deal with Pussy would be now that she was officially the head of the company. And with Gabe in jail, who the person in charge of her care would be. She’d been searching online but had found precious little information in that regard. Vowing to talk to her future hubby, who had, no doubt, in the course of his fireside chats with Flake’s killer, gleaned that morsel of info and then some, she hurried into the house, eager to interview man and beast in the service of her article.
The first living form she met was Chase, draped across the sofa and reading on his phone.
“Hey, babe,” he said as she came hurrying in. “Did you finish your article?”
“Not yet,” she said as she took a seat across from him. “Now tell me all about what happened with Gabriel. Did he do it, and if he did, why did he do it, and if he didn’t, why was he standing over his lover’s dead body with a bloodied knife in his hand and a murderer’s dazed look in his eyes?”
“Well, he claims he didn’t do it, though he’s not entirely sure, and he concedes that it’s not looking too good for him,” Chase revealed, with the easygoing manner of the first party who knows all and is about to impart some of his secrets to a deserving second party.
“So he thinks he didn’t do it but he admits he might have done it?”
“Something like that. Your uncle went full bad cop on him but instead of folding the man simply burst into tears and stuck to his guns. He has no recollection of what happened. One minute he was sound asleep in his bed, and the next he was standing there, the image of the crazed killer.”
“Huh.”
“It’s possible he’s lying, of course, though he didn’t give me that impression. “
“He could have done it and then blocked out the memory.”
“Possible, though it will probably take a psychologist to dig that out of his subconscious.”
“Is it possible he didn’t do it? That someone else planted that knife in his hand?”
“How? The man was there. He wasn’t sleepwalking.”
Odelia thought about this. “He could have been. Or someone could have put something in his drink that made him lose consciousness.”
Chase shook his head. “In my experience the most plausible explanation is usually the right one, babe. The man was there, and he more or less confessed, and even if he doesn’t remember we have enough evidence to get a conviction.”
“So case closed?”
“As far as your uncle is concerned, case closed, and I doubt whether a judge will think otherwise.”
She glanced around. “Where are my cats?”
He picked up his phone again. “Haven’t seen them, actually.”
She got up and went in search of her feline brood. “Maxie,” she said, checking the kitchen, then shouting up at the bottom of the stairs, “Max? Dooley? Are you guys up there?”
When no response came, Chase shouted from the living room, “Maybe they’re outside. I think I saw Harriet in the backyard when I got home—or at least a flash of something white and fluffy.”
She walked to the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the deck. “Max? Dooley? Harriet? Brutus? Anyone?”
Suddenly a white head came peeking from beyond the tulip tree at the back of the garden. It was a favored spot for her cats, especially Harriet and Brutus, who’d turned it into some sort of lovers’ lane—minus the lane.
The white head immediately retracted but Odelia headed over there, wondering about the sudden coyness of her cats. Usually when she arrived home they were at the door, welcoming her, or complaining loudly that she’d arrived so late and had left them to their own devices.
“Harriet?” she said. “Is that you?” When no response came she went down on hands and knees and checked underneath the foliage. “I know you’re in there, honey. Is Max with you?”
Finally, realizing the gig was up, and playing hide and seek would no longer serve her purpose, whatever it was, Harriet emerged, followed by Brutus. “No, Max isn’t here,” she said, a little coldly. “Nor will you find him on the premises. At least not as long as he doesn’t want to be found.”
This was getting curiouser and curiouser. “What do you mean? Why would Max not want to be found?”
“We’re on strike,” said Brutus.
“Shush, Brutus, “said Harriet.
“Oh, I didn’t know it was a secret,” said Brutus.
“It’s not a secret, per se,” Harriet admitted, “but it’s better Odelia finds out for herself.”
“You’re on strike?” said Odelia, wondering what her cats were up to this time. “Why?”
“That’s for us to know and for you to find out,” said Harriet, acting her usual prissy self.
“Not enough attention,” said Brutus, who seemed more forthcoming with information than his mate.
“Brutus!”
“What? She’s going to find out soon enough anyway, so why not tell her what’s going on?”
“She knows perfectly well what’s going on. She simply prefers to play dumb,” said Harriet, giving Odelia a nasty look.
“Well, I don’t get it,” said Odelia, taking a seat on the lawn. She moved aside a rubber ball and a garden gnome Gran had put there for the cats’ entertainment. “Now tell me all, please, because I’m not getting it.”
“If you don’t get it, maybe you should think about it a little more,” said Harriet.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Odelia, throwing up her hands. “Tell me what’s going on already, will you?”
“Fine,” said Harriet, then pressed her lips together and gave her partner in crime a look that said, ‘You tell her.’
“We feel that you’ve been ignoring us lately,” said Brutus, taking the plunge.
“You told me about that in the car, remember? And I apologized and said I was sorry and you said you each needed twelve percent of my time and I was ready to agree to that in writing when we got interrupted.”
“Well, we feel you’re not taking our negotiations seriously so we decided to go on strike,” said Harriet. “So there will be no more sleuthing on your behalf until you tell us what you’re up to.”
“Up to?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb, Odelia!” said Harriet. “We know very well that you’re about to get married and as soon as you do you and Chase will move away—possibly to England, possibly to New York—and you’ll dump us!”
“Oh, honey, no!” said Odelia, part horrified, part amused.
“Max seems to think you’ll move to England,” said Brutus, “but for my money it’s more likely you’ll move to New York. Chase has family there, after all, so that would be the logical thing to do.”
“And it would suit your ambitions to become an ace reporter for an ace newspaper, and not the local rag you bust your gut at now,” Harriet adde
d.
“And Chase could join the NYPD again,” said Brutus.
“Oh, my sweet, sweet babies,” said Odelia, genuinely touched by this outpouring of concern. “No! Of course I’m not moving away.”
“You’re not?” asked Brutus, suspicious.
“No! We’re staying put, wedding or no wedding. Besides, it’s not that we’re anxious to tie the knot any time soon. It could be months or years before we finally get hitched.”
“But Chase proposed. In London,” Harriet pointed out.” So that has to mean something. Humans don’t just propose and then break it off again.”
“He proposed while under attack. I guess you could say it was one of those moments where you see your life flashing by, and you realize there are so many things you haven’t done yet.”
“Like getting married?”
“Like getting married,” she said with a smile.
“So Chase proposing was just a joke?” asked Brutus hopefully. “A fun little joke?”
“It wasn’t a joke. He meant it at the time, and I meant it when I said yes, but that doesn’t mean we have to rush into things. I’m sure that eventually we will get married, but we’re not in any hurry here. And we’re not planning to move away from Hampton Cove, or this house. I love it here, and I love living next door to my mom and dad.”
“And Gran,” Brutus supplied.
“And Gran,” she said after a pause. “So even after we’re married we’ll stay right here. This is your home, you guys, and we’re not about to take that away from you. And if I paid less attention to you than usual, I’m sorry. It’s just that, when you’ve gone through a terrible experience like the one we had in England, you realize how precious life is, so we decided to go on all the dates we always wanted to go on. But I think we’re done with that for a while.”
“So you’ll become homebodies again?” said Harriet. “I liked it when you were a homebody, Odelia.”
“Yeah, I kinda liked it, too,” said Odelia with a smile. “And lucky for me Chase feels the same way.”
“Chase feels the same way about what?” asked a voice behind her. Chase crouched down next to her and placed a hand on her back. “This is cozy.”
“Hi, Chase,” said Harriet coyly. She was a big fan of Chase, as were all of Odelia’s cats, which was a good thing.
“They feel we’ve been neglecting them lately.”
“Have we?”
“Yeah. We’ve been going out a lot, and they’ve missed spending time with us, huddling on the couch and watching silly shows and silly movies.”
Chase gave Harriet a sheepish look. “Well, I guess you’re right, Harriet. Odelia and I have spent a lot of time on the town. But that’s all over now, isn’t it, babe? We’re ready to kick off our shoes and become Netflix nerds again.”
“I like Netflix nerds,” said Harriet.
“Me, too,” said Brutus.
“And Max,” said Odelia. “He loves being a couch potato even more than the rest of us. So where is he?”
Harriet and Brutus shared a look of concern. “I don’t know,” said Harriet. “I haven’t seen him since we left him and Dooley at Chateau Leonidas.”
“You mean they’re still there?” said Odelia, concern lacing her voice.
“Who’s still where?” asked Chase.
“Max and Dooley are still at the Flake place.”
“What are they doing—oh, right. Interviewing pet witnesses, huh?”
“I hope so,” said Odelia. Though it wasn’t like Max not to come home after a day well spent hunting down clues and talking to pet witnesses. “Maybe we should go and look for them.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” said Chase, who had a lot of confidence in her cats’ ability to take care of themselves.
“I’m not so sure,” said Brutus. “He was pretty adamant about our strike.”
“The strike? Oh, right, the strike.”
“Yeah, he really ran with it. Said he would never help you investigate a crime ever again.”
“Oh, dear,” said Odelia.
Chapter 15
Unbeknownst to Odelia and Chase, or Harriet and Brutus, for that matter, their conversation hadn’t remained as private as they would have liked it to be. Behind the backyard was a patch of fallow land where no house had been built yet. It was generally used by neighborhood kids to play on, or sometimes by a local farmer to put his sheep, and save the owner the trouble of taking out his lawnmower. It had been a while since the sheep had grazed there, though, and so the grass was high—so high that two people could easily hide in there, and aim a camera and a microphone at the backyard of the unsuspecting Odelia Poole and her future husband and their cats. And by the time Odelia and Chase returned indoors, Lauren Klepfisch patted Zak Kowalski on the back and said, “Did you get all that?”
“Yeah, sure, but I’m not sure what it is I got.”
“Proof that Odelia Poole talks to her pets,” said Lauren triumphantly.
“So? Plenty of people talk to their pets. My mom talks to her Chihuahua.”
“Yeah, lots of people talk to their pets, but few people have their pets talk back to them, and are able to understand what they say.”
“And you think that’s what happened here?”
“Pretty sure it did. I’m not sure how it all works, but it was clear to me they were holding an entire conversation, and now we have everything on tape.”
“So? What does it prove? That Odelia Poole is a little nutty?”
“That’s for our viewers to decide. And I’m sure we’ll get great coverage.”
Zak got up and stretched his sore limbs. “I’m starting to understand what being a war correspondent feels like. Tough to have to lie in bushes.”
“This is not war reporting, you idiot,” Lauren snapped as she plucked a beetle from her shoulder. “For one thing, there are no snipers trying to kill us.”
“Except for my colleague,” he muttered darkly.
“So what did you think of Gabriel Crier? Do you think he did it?”
“How should I know? I’m not a cop,” the cameraman grumbled as he swiped at the knees of his jeans where two nice patches of green had appeared.
“I think he did it,” she said. “And a great story it is, too: Gay Lover Murders King Of Couture. It’s the Gianni Versace thing all over again. Right here in the heart of the Hamptons. Oh, this is going to be a smash. My big break. And then the Odelia Poole pet whisperer thing on top of that, it’s going to be the one-two punch that’s going to blow all my competition out of the water!”
Christopher Cross, the pet detective, was at that moment applying a slender finger to the buzzer of Chateau Leonidas and patiently waiting for the gates to swing open, which after a brief delay they did. He got back into the van and directed his vehicle along the long drive, his trusty feline sidekick next to him in the passenger seat.
“I wonder what she wants from us this time,” grumbled Tank.<>
“Probably to hand us our paycheck,” said Chris. “We cracked the case, didn’t we? So time to pay up.”
“We didn’t crack the case, Chris,” said the Siamese cat tersely. “The case cracked itself. Or should I say, Gabe cracked under the pressure and killed his lover.”
“The operative word being cracked. The killer was caught so we need to get paid. It’s as simple as that.”
“Yeah, though I’m not so sure.”
“Not so sure about what?”
“That they got the right guy!”
“He was caught red-handed. Why wouldn’t he be the right guy?”
“Cause those two idiots Max and Dooley are still hanging around the chateau, making nice with Flake’s flock of barnyard animals. And let me ask you this: would they bother if the case was cracked? Let me answer that for you: no, they wouldn’t!”
“Max and Dooley are idiots. They wouldn’t know how to find a clue if it stared them right in the face.”
“They may be idiots, but they still manage to solve a lot of cas
es, bud, or haven’t you been reading dear Odelia Poole’s articles?”
Chris had. In fact those articles were what had put him on this career path in the first place. He’d always had the knack of being able to communicate with his pets, even from a young age. And it had taken him a while to understand how unique this gift was. The truth had probably only dawned on him when his folks had sent him to his first shrink. Dr. Jinx had found nothing particularly wrong with him, apart from a childish belief he could talk to animals, which he described as the Dr. Dolittle Complex, a rare disease for which there was, alas, no cure. The advice Dr. Jinx had given Chris’s parents was to simply ignore the affliction, and it would go away all by itself as he got older.
It hadn’t gone away, but Chris had become hip to the fact that he was always going to be considered a weirdo if he kept insisting he could talk to animals, so from one day to the next he’d simply stopped mentioning the strange gift he had and that had elicited twin sighs of relief from his parents, not to mention the rest of his family. The revelation had come to him when Bethany Kernick, who was in his class, had told him he was a weirdo. Since he was deeply, madly in love with young Bethany at the time, he’d decided then and there that talking to animals was probably not the babe magnet he’d thought it was, and had decided to stop mentioning it to anyone. He’d even gone so far as to admit to Bethany that the only reason he’d told her he could talk to her pet hamster was to make an impression on her because he liked her so much. It had worked, and he and Bethany had gone steady for the rest of the semester, until she met Ernesto Hair and had declared him her boyfriend. It had been a valuable lesson for young Chris, though: don’t let the world know that you’re different, for it can only result in being bullied, or in girls like Bethany Kernick spurning your well-intentioned advances.
It had taken him well into his adult life to embrace his gift. Only when the rumor had reached his ear that Odelia Poole, of Hampton Cove Gazette fame, got a little help from her cats when researching her articles, did he finally realize his was a marketable trait, and so he’d gotten his PI license, hung out his shingle, and hadn’t looked back since.