by Nic Saint
“Yes,” said Chase.
“No,” said Odelia.
The publisher looked from one to the other. “Um, so what is it?”
Chase threw up his hands and walked out. Odelia gave Alpin her best smile. “You’re free to go, Mr. Carré. But if I could make a suggestion, maybe next time try not to hit a cop. They don’t like it.”
He returned her smile. “You are by far the nicest cop I’ve ever met.”
“Oh, but I’m not a cop. I’m just a consultant.”
“That explains everything,” he said, and shook her hand warmly. “Seriously, though. Look into Ransom Montlló. The guy had a serious grudge against Donna.”
“Even more than you?”
“I might hold a grudge but I would never kill a person.”
“And Ransom Montlló would?”
“Well, the guy was a green beret. He’s got the skills.”
“How come you know so much about him?”
“He used to live two doors down from me. But that was before Donna came into his life.”
Chapter 8
We were finally on our way to Vena Aleman. Me and Dooley had fought Odelia tooth and claw, but there was no use. We were going to the vet no matter what. At least Brutus and Harriet had been saved—for now. They were going next week, as Vena was too busy to see four cats at once. But for Dooley and I there was no reprieve.
On the drive over, we discussed the case. When Odelia mentioned the producer and the publisher and the ex-husband who had it in for Donna, I thought it was starting to look like Donna Bruce was one of those people who had rubbed everyone the wrong way and had made a lot of enemies on her way to the top.
“So either one of them could have done it?” I asked.
“Well, except for the publisher. Chase talked to some of the neighbors and they all swear up and down that Alpin couldn’t have done it.”
“What about the bees?” I asked. “How did they get the bees?”
“Good question,” said Odelia, unhurriedly steering the pickup out of town. “The beekeeper the bees were stolen from had equipped his hives with a GPS tracker. So when he got the message one of his hives was on the move, he immediately contacted the police. This happened around six this morning. He found his pallet discarded behind Donna’s house, the bees in the sauna cabin—at least the ones that survived.”
“Did he get his bees back?” asked Dooley, sounding worried.
“Yes, he did. Though a lot of them died. When a bee stings they usually don’t survive the sting. And the heat of the sauna didn’t do much for their wellbeing either.”
“But who would do such a thing?” asked Dooley, aghast. “To harm those innocent creatures like that?”
Odelia shook her head. “No idea, Dooley. But whoever it was, they must have had some knowledge about handling bees. At least that’s what the beekeeper told Chase.”
I thought about this for a moment. “Do you think there’s a significance to this? I mean, why not simply shoot the woman, or hit her over the head with a mallet? Why go to all the trouble of stealing a bunch of bees—”
“More like thousands of bees,” Odelia interjected.
“—and running the risk of being found before you can carry out your plan?”
She smiled. “And that’s why I want the four of you to work together. You all bring something unique and special to this investigation.”
“So you agree Harriet wouldn’t be able to handle this on her own?”
“None of us can handle this on our own, Max. Though I would like you to give Harriet a chance. Let her run with this for a while. See where it takes you guys.”
I frowned. This wasn’t what I’d wanted to hear. “But I’m in charge, right? I’m the one who takes the lead.”
“Not this time. Harriet is going to be running point,” Odelia said. “And you follow her lead. I want to see where she will take the investigation.”
“But I thought you said she couldn’t do this on her own.”
“She can’t. She needs you, Max—and Dooley, of course. I want you to work as a team. Can you do that for me?”
“I suppose,” I said reluctantly. “But I still don’t see—”
“Harriet needs you, Max. She needs your intelligence and your skill. The thing is, I want to see her blossom. Reach her full potential. Harriet has a lot to offer. But, like I said, she can’t do this all by herself. And that’s where you come in. You and Dooley.”
“Me, too?” asked Dooley, delighted.
“Of course! You guys are my A team. My main sleuths.”
I thought about this for a moment, and then I saw what Odelia was trying to say. Officially, she was putting Harriet in charge, but in actual fact I would be the one in charge, as usual. She just wanted Harriet to think she was in charge, to boost her self-confidence and to give her something to do other than run around with Brutus and make a total fool of herself. So I winked at Odelia. “I get it,” I finally said. “Harriet is in charge, but really I’m in charge, huh?”
“No, Harriet is in charge, Max.”
I laughed. “Sure. She’s ‘in charge’ but I’m in charge. Gotcha.”
“Whatever you say, Max,” she said, and parked the car. “And here we are.”
My smile vanished. “Eep.”
Odelia had brought along our cat boxes, though I’d assured her this wasn’t necessary. We would walk into Vena’s on our own four paws, head held high, pride intact. But Odelia didn’t seem to trust my word or Dooley’s, for she shoved us into our respective carriers and then we were off. God. This was so humiliating…
Once inside, she parked us on the floor and went off in search of Vena.
“I don’t like this, Max,” said Dooley as he looked out at me through the slats. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Me neither,” I intimated. “It’s like we’re prisoners all of a sudden.”
“We are prisoners. About to be prodded and poked and stabbed with needles.”
I closed my eyes. I hated needles so much just the thought made me weak at the knees. Not that I had any chance of standing up in this cramped box. Dooley, who’s a lot smaller than me, at least had some wiggle room, while I filled out this entire box. My butt was pushed up against the back, my nose against the front, and I could hardly move. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic! And to think Odelia said she got me the biggest carrier she could find. I’d already told her she should have gotten me a dog carrier. They come in the bigger sizes. But she said she still had to be able to carry me.
Just then, another person came in, carrying a box containing a scared-looking cat. I knew that cat. It was Shanille, the conductor of cat choir, and the person carrying her was none other than Father Reilly himself.
“Hey, Shanille,” I said. “So you’re up for it, too, huh?”
“Hey, Max,” she said softly. “Dooley. Yeah, I fought hard, but to no avail.”
“You’re not sick or anything are you?”
“Sick? Why would I be sick? I’m the healthiest cat alive. No, I’ve got a tick.”
I frowned. “A tick? What’s a tick?”
“Beats me. Father Reilly says I have a tick, so we had to come to Vena to get rid of it.”
“It’s a heart condition,” said Dooley. “Has to be. Humans call the heart the ticker. What Father Reilly probably meant to say was that you have a problem with your ticker.”
“I don’t have a problem with my ticker! My ticker is just fine. He said tick, not ticker.”
“Yeah, Dooley,” I said. “If it was her ticker they wouldn’t want to get rid of it, would they?”
“Unless her ticker is broken. They’d want to replace it with another ticker.” His eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh, God. Is that why I’m here? They’re going to remove my ticker and put it in Shanille? But I don’t want to die! I’m too young to die!”
“Tick, not ticker,” I reminded him. “A tick is obviously not a ticker, so your ticker is perfectly safe.”
He d
idn’t seem to buy it, still looking worried. “We should Google it,” he said. “The Google knows everything. The Google knows what a tick is.”
“It’s not the Google, Dooley,” I said. “It’s Google, without the article.”
“What article?”
“Forget about it.”
“So what are you guys here for?” asked Shanille.
“Me, to have my tick removed and implanted in you,” said Dooley dully, “and Max to have his morbid obesity taken care of.”
“I’m not morbidly obese! I’m big. It’s genetic.”
“You have gained a lot of weight, Max,” said Shanille. “You should probably go on a diet.”
“I’m not going on a diet! I hate diets! And I’m not overweight. I’m just big, that’s all.”
“You don’t even fit in that cage. You’re pressed up against the sides like a balloon. You look like something that exploded inside that cage and is now sticking to the sides.”
“Nice, Shanille. And here I thought you were my friend,” I grumbled.
“I’m just looking out for you. At the rate you’re going you’re going to have trouble with your ticker soon. I know because Vena told me last time I had an enlarged heart and I had to go on a diet.”
“You don’t look overweight,” said Dooley. “In fact you look just fine.”
“I know, right? That’s because I went on the diet.”
“Look, my ticker is fine,” I insisted, not liking the direction this conversation had taken.
“Oh, my God!” Dooley screamed. “They’re going to take my ticker and implant it in you, aren’t they?! Because your ticker is on the fritz. That’s why I’m here! I’m gonna die!”
“Nobody is going to have their ticker removed, Dooley,” I said with an eyeroll. “My ticker is fine, your ticker is fine, and Shanille’s ticker is fine. See? We’re all fine.”
“Except that I have trouble with my tick,” said Shanille.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a life-threatening thing,” I said.
“You never know,” said Dooley, still panting hard. He was looking around nervously, at the posters on the wall warning pet owners about the various diseases they needed to monitor their dearly beloved pets for. “I could have rabies, or an upper respiratory tract infection, or kidney failure, or ringworm or zoonosis or hookworm infection or toxocariasis or gingivitis or giardiasis or sporotrichosis or bartonellosis—”
“Stop, stop!” Shanille yelled. “You’re making me sick.”
“I know! That’s because we are sick! Why else would we be at the vet?!”
“We’re just here for our annual checkup,” I reminded him. “Just like humans have to visit the dentist once a year, we visit Vena once a year. That doesn’t mean we’re sick or dying. That just means Odelia wants to make sure we’re fine, all right? She loves us and wants to take care of us.”
“All right,” he said, settling down somewhat. Then his eye fell on one particular poster and he gave a loud yelp. “Tick—tick—tick!” he cried, pointing his paw.
Shanille and I looked in the direction indicated and saw a large picture of the most horrible creature I’d ever seen in my entire life. It looked like a giant red spider, and it was burrowing into the skin of some poor hapless pet. “Oh my God!” I squeaked.
But Shanille shrieked the loudest. “Get it off me! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!”
“Get away from me!” Dooley squealed, trying to shift his cage further away from Shanille’s by rocking back and forth. “Help! Help! It’s gonna jump on me—I can feel it! Help me!” Finally, he managed to overturn his cage, toppling to the floor. Unfortunately, it toppled the wrong way, and now he was right next to Shanille and screaming even louder. “It’s crawling all over me!” he screamed. “I can feel its claws digging in! Heeeeelp!”
Suddenly Odelia, Father Reilly and Vena appeared in the doorway, alerted by the loud cries of three felines. Only Odelia could understand us, of course, and when she did, she had to suppress a chuckle. To her credit, she took immediate action. She righted Dooley’s carrier, then lifted mine, and carried us both into Vena’s consultation room. Off we were, into the lion’s den…
Chapter 9
“They’re dying to see you,” Odelia told Vena. “In fact they were so anxious they were meowing up a storm.”
“Liar,” I said, but she ignored me.
Dooley was still frantically scratching himself all over. “The tick!” he cried. “The tick is on me! It’s got me!”
“There is no tick on you,” I said. “If that tick has dug itself into Shanille it’s not going to jump ship. Shanille is way tastier than you.”
“She is not!” Dooley said indignantly, but he seemed quietly relieved. I think he probably knew that if a tick has a choice between Shanille and him, there’s no question.
“So. My two favorite cats!” Vena said, planting her hands on her sizable hips. Vena is a big and powerfully built woman, cast from the same mold that has produced the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Cena. Then again, if you’re going to pull calves from cows you probably have to have superhuman strength.
“Hi, Vena,” I said quietly.
She grunted approvingly. “I think he likes me, Odelia.”
“Oh, he loves you. They both do. In fact they can’t wait to come and see you.”
“And with good reason! They know I’ve got their best interests in mind!” She laughed loudly, and snapped the latches on our carriers, then picked me up and placed me on the examination table.
I gulped as I plunked down. I knew I had no other choice. If I tried to escape she would simply grab me by the scruff of the neck and haul me back. And that’s when the prodding and the poking began, just like I’d anticipated.
“Shouldn’t she be doing me first?” asked Dooley. “The tick…”
“There is no tick!” I yelled, losing my patience. In my defense, I was under extreme duress, as Vena’s hands had just prodded me in the belly, one of my many sensitive areas.
She proceeded to pull my ears, check inside them with a flashlight—probably in search of hidden treasure—and wrench my mouth open to check my teeth. All the while, she made these low grunting sounds that scared the bejeezus out of me. Finally, she placed some kind of round metal object against my chest, stuck what looked like a pair of earphones into her ears and frowned thoughtfully.
“Ha ha!” I yelped as she dug that metal thing into my fur. “It tickles!”
She staunchly ignored me, Odelia’s hands firmly holding me down, Vena listening intently. I remembered from last time she was only trying to listen to my heartbeat but it was still scary.
“Myes. Myes,” the vet finally muttered. “Just what I thought. Your cat is fat, Odelia.”
“What?!” I cried. “Not true! I’m big-boned! It runs in the family!”
“I know,” said Odelia, gently stroking my fur. “I noticed this morning when he had trouble jumping up on the bed.”
“The mattress became bigger overnight!”
“Yep,” said Vena, patting my head. “That is one obese tabby.”
“It’s the breed! I’m a tiger cat. We’re big. We have to be, so we can prowl the jungle.”
“Is that true?” asked Dooley from the floor. “Are you really a tiger cat?”
“It’s something I read on The Google,” I said desperately.
“I thought it was just Google, without the article?”
“Shut up, Dooley! I’m fighting for my life here!”
“I indulge him too much, don’t I?” asked Odelia.
“Don’t beat yourself up, honey,” said Vena. “A lot of people do. But he has to go back on a diet, I’m afraid. If not, all that fat is going to start taxing his heart. I can hear a definite murmur, which tells me his heart has to work too hard. Over time, he might also develop diabetes and a host of other ailments. So if you want to keep your Max happy and healthy, you’re going to have to do the work.”
“I am happy,” I
said, though that stuff about diabetes and murmurs kinda gave me pause.
“Did you hear that, Max?” asked Odelia, bending down to look into my eyes. “If I want you happy and healthy I’m going to have to put you on a diet. And you know what that means.”
“Oh, God, not again,” I muttered.
“I love you, Max. I don’t want you to get sick on me, you hear? I need you fit and healthy.”
“I hear you,” I said resignedly. Murmurs and diabetes? Who needs that crap?
“Do you still remember what you gave him last year?” Vena asked.
“I think I kept the receipt.” And while she and Vena worked out my diet, I jumped from the examination table. I landed with a dull thud, and Odelia looked down, then nodded. “Yep. Too fat.”
“I’m sorry, Max,” said Dooley commiseratingly. “If you want, you can have some of my food.”
“No, I better not,” I said, plunking down on the floor. To be honest, I was starting to feel the strain of carrying all this extra weight around. Vena was probably right. I wasn’t as agile as I used to be, and it wasn’t a lot of fun. And I had an obligation as a feline sleuth to help Odelia, and I couldn’t do that if I couldn’t even chase suspects around now could I?
“So you’re actually going to do this?” asked Dooley.
“Yep. Looks like I am.” I heaved a deep sigh. “The things I do for my human…”
And then it was Dooley’s turn. He was picked up and subjected to a similar examination. When it was all over, he asked in a tremulous voice, “Am I going to die?”
Odelia smiled. “What’s the verdict, Vena?”
“He’s a little too scrawny for my taste,” said the doctor. “Not enough muscle tissue. I think he needs to go on a diet, too. Only a protein-building diet.”
“Oh, God—I don’t want to go on a diet!” Dooley cried. “I’m not fat!”
“You’re going to have to eat more, Dooley,” Odelia said.
He abruptly stopped his whimpering. “Eat more?”
“You’re too skinny.”
“Too skinny? Is that even possible?”