Purrfect Sparkle

by Nic Saint

  “Laura didn’t give it to you by any chance?”

  “No, I can’t say that she did.”

  “Was she wearing her engagement ring when she came to see you that day?”

  “Honestly I wouldn’t know. I’m not the kind of guy who notices that kind of thing.” He pulled a funny face. “Ask me half an hour after this conversation what you were wearing and I’m sure I’ll draw a complete blank. She could have been wearing her ring, and it could have been that famous Pink Lady, but I didn’t pay attention and I’m pretty sure neither did Craig.”

  “But somehow Craig must have come into possession of that diamond.”

  “It sure looks that way. But I gotta tell you, Odelia, this comes as much as a surprise to me as it does to you and Caroline. How did Craig get a hold of that rock? It’s a real head-scratcher.”

  “He never told you about it?”

  “Nope. And to be honest, when we were arrested we were also searched, the both of us, and our luggage was confiscated, so we left that country with only the clothes on our backs and nothing more. Though later on our replacements did manage to get some of our stuff back, and also the plans we’d been working on.”

  “But no diamond.”

  “No diamond.”

  Odelia thought for a moment. “This is such a baffling mystery, and I really want to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Yeah, and I sincerely hope you do, and that you can tell me all about it when you manage to crack the code, so to speak.”

  Odelia was clearly disappointed, but she hid it well. “Well, thank you for your time, Ken.”

  “No sweat. There’s nothing much for me to do here, except to drink, party and be merry, and even though that sounds like something a lot of people would dream of, even paradise gets old after a while, Odelia, trust me.”

  After the man had rung off, Odelia turned to us. “This is so odd, but did you also get the impression that he wasn’t telling us everything?”

  “He definitely gave me the impression he was holding something back,” I agreed. “You, Dooley?”

  “I think he was secretly in love with Laura and they were having an affair and that’s why he was kicked out of the country,” said Dooley. “Or maybe Laura had an affair with Ken and Craig both, and she didn’t know who to choose, and then her husband found out and had her killed and her body fed to the crocodiles.”

  “I think your imagination is running away with you again, Dooley,” I said. “But that there’s something going on here that Ken didn’t want us to know, that’s obvious. I mean, how did Craig get his hands on that diamond without Ken knowing about it? That seems very unlikely.”

  “Unlikely, but not impossible,” said Odelia. “Maybe Craig was up to something and didn’t want to tell his colleague about it.”

  “Colleague and friend,” I pointed out. “They kept meeting up long after Craig had retired. That sounds like a firm friendship to me.”

  Just then, Odelia’s phone rang, and she picked up with a cheery, “Hey, Mom what’s up?” She listened for a moment, then glanced down at us. “We’ll be there in five minutes.” The moment she’d disconnected, she said, “Mom says Loretta Gray has the Pink Lady, and she just walked into the Star hotel.”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “The plot thickens, doesn’t it, Max?” said Dooley

  “It sure does, Dooley.”

  27

  We all met in front of the Star, and I have to admit that Marge had come up with a great plan of campaign.

  “So we’ll go in and pretend to be Loretta’s biggest fans,” said Odelia, reiterating the plan.

  “I don’t even have to pretend to be one of her biggest fans,” said Marge. “I actually am one of her biggest fans. Except for the part where she took that diamond, of course.”

  “And while you get her autograph and keep her talking, I’ll snoop around. I like it, Mom. Simple and effective.”

  “I didn’t know Marge had detective ambitions,” I told Harriet.

  “Why, you’d be surprised by the talent we’ve got in-house,” our Persian friend said haughtily as she tilted her chin. “In fact it was our idea, wasn’t it, Brutus, to follow this diamond thief, and it was also us that recognized the insurance people in the first place, and saw them hand the diamond to this author-slash-thief.”

  “Yeah, so if you want to give credit, it’s ours,” said Brutus. “Mine and Harriet’s.”

  “Yes, Max, did you get that? This time all the credit for solving the mystery goes to me and Brutus and me and Brutus alone.”

  “Oh, no, absolutely,” I said. “You did a great job, you guys.”

  “We discovered something, too,” said Dooley.

  “Whatever you discovered can’t be as big and enormous as what we discovered,” said Brutus.

  “So what was it?” asked Harriet, carefully studying her nails.

  “We talked to Ken Cesseki, who was Craig Bantam’s colleague in 1986, and he told us that he and Craig were arrested for talking to the Sheikh’s wife and kicked out of the country,” I said, summing up the conversation in as few words as possible, since both Marge and Odelia were raring to go in and do their thing.

  Harriet frowned. “So how did his colleague get his hands on that diamond?”

  I shrugged. “Ken claims he has no idea.”

  “A likely story,” Harriet scoffed. “Let me tell you something, Max. If you’re going to interrogate a person, you need to use the proper technique, otherwise they’ll just lie to you and think they’re getting away with it—and it looks to me,” she added as she gave me a supercilious look, “that he actually did get away with it.”

  “You should have waited for me and Harriet to be there,” said Brutus. “We would have seen right through the guy!”

  “It’s very hard to put pressure on a person when you’re a cat,” I reminded my friends.

  “And the conversation was all done through Skype,” said Dooley.

  “Yeah, it’s even harder to put pressure on a person through Skype.”

  “Ken lives in Thailand,” Dooley explained, “and likes to drink umbrella cocktails under a palm tree on the beach. But he says he’s bored of paradise and he wants to come home and spend time in Hampton Cove, which he called a cozy little town.”

  “He didn’t actually say he wants to come home,” I said.

  “No, but I’m sure that’s what he meant.”

  “Oh, so now you’re putting words in other people’s mouths, are you?” said Harriet. “Way to go, Dooley.”

  Dooley smiled widely. “Gee, thanks, Harriet. Coming from you that’s a big compliment.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” said Harriet with a touch of acerbity.

  “I don’t think Dooley gets sarcasm, do you, Dooley?” asked Brutus.

  Dooley gave him a look of uncertainty. “What’s sarcasm, Brutus?”

  But then it was time to get the show on the road, and so we followed Marge and Odelia into the hotel.

  Once inside, Marge walked up to the front desk—she was in the lead now—and asked what room Loretta Gray was staying in. The pimply receptionist told her no Loretta Gray was staying at the hotel, so then it was Odelia’s turn. She joined her mom at the front desk, and whipped out her snazzy new police badge and immediately the kid’s eyes went wide, blushing a pretty crimson under his pimples, then hastened to say, “Oh, you mean Loretta Gray! She’s in room two-fourteen, detective… officer… sergeant?”

  “Police consultant,” said Odelia in that officious voice your true cop likes to assume. It takes years of training at the police academy to master that particular tone of authority, but Odelia, even though she hadn’t spent a day at police academy, had the tone down pat, which just goes to show she’s an absolute natural at this cop thing.

  And so moments later we were riding the elevator up to the second floor, and then were dawdling in front of room 214, Marge looking decidedly nervous now, even though it had been her plan in the first place.


  “You do it,” she suddenly said, taking a step back from the brink. “I’m too nervous.”

  “No, Mom, you’re the big fan—you have to do it.”

  “You can be the fan, and I’ll be the one rifling through her things.”

  “But I haven’t even read the book!”

  “Oh, dear,” said Marge, chewing her bottom lip for a moment. Then she seemed to gather her courage, and raised her hand to knock, only to lower it again. “I’m going to screw this up. I just know it!”

  “You’ll be fine. Forget that we’re here to get that diamond and just think of yourself as the fan that you are, meeting her big hero in the flesh for the first time.”

  “But it’s not the first time. We met yesterday on the street in front of the library.”

  “Even better. That means that first awkward moment is over with, and you can pick up where you left off.”

  “We left off with her racing away in her car after I asked her some questions she didn’t like.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Odelia groaned, and decided to take matters into her own hands and did the knocking for her mom.

  “What did you do?!”

  “I knocked on the door!”

  “I’m out of here,” said Marge, and made to leave.

  But then the door suddenly swung open and Loretta Gray appeared. “Marge?”

  Marge quickly covered her nervousness with an engaging smile and said, “Loretta! Fancy meeting you here!”

  “Oh, boy,” Brutus muttered next to me.

  Dooley, who’d been studying a spot on the carpet, asked me if I thought it was Nutella or jam or blood.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Loretta, as her eyes flitted from Marge to Odelia down to the four cats staring up at her—well, three cats, since Dooley was still studying that spot and now gave it a tentative lick.

  “I think it’s jam,” he said.

  “Don’t lick weird stuff on the carpet, Dooley,” I told him.

  “It’s not weird, it’s jam.”

  “So I forgot to ask you for your autograph yesterday,” said Marge, finally rallying round. She held up the voluminous tome called The Sheikh’s Passion and practically thrusted it at the writer.

  “I’m Marge’s daughter,” said Odelia, smiling in her most disarming way possible. “Mom told me all about your wonderful book, so I started to read it last night and it’s just fantastic. I don’t think I’ve ever read a story that has gripped me so much as The Sheikh’s Passion.”

  “I think she’s overdoing it,” said Harriet. “First rule for a good detective: always play it cool.”

  “Yeah, she better tone it down,” said Brutus. “Nobody likes to be buttered up to such an extent.”

  But the authoress’s frosty demeanor thawed under this onslaught of praise, and she was even affecting a smile when she said, “Why, thank you. Do you want to come in for a moment?”

  “We’d love to,” said Marge, and stepped in, followed by Odelia and the cat contingent, with yours truly bringing up the rear.

  “I’m sorry,” said Odelia the moment the door was closed, “but could I perhaps use your bathroom?”

  “It’s through there,” said the writer, and gestured to a door near the window.

  “So I was hoping to find out what inspired you to write such an amazing story,” said Marge, continuing in her gushing tones, which seemed to have such a positive effect on the writer.

  “Well, like I told you yesterday, I’m blessed with a lot of imagination.”

  “But it’s so true to life.”

  “It’s all fiction, Marge,” said Loretta, taking the book from her big fan’s hands. “Sheer fiction, I assure you.”

  “But the Pink Lady is real.”

  “Well, yes, certain aspects of the book are loosely based in reality. Like the Pink Lady. But the rest is fiction.” She’d dug out a pen and was now writing a dedication on the first page.

  And as Marge talked to the author, and got her to open up about the book’s inspiration, Odelia was still in that bathroom, presumably searching it from top to bottom for a certain pink diamond.

  “She won’t have hidden it in the bathroom,” said Harriet decidedly. “She only got back twenty minutes ago, so she wouldn’t have had time to look for a proper hiding place.”

  “It’s probably in her luggage,” said Brutus, indicating the suitcase that had been shoved underneath the bed.

  “Or maybe in her clothes?” Dooley suggested, pointing to the closet where several dresses hung suspended from clothes hangers.

  “Or maybe she has a jewel case and it’s in there,” suggested Harriet.

  “This is hopeless,” was my opinion. “This room really needs to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb, and we neither have the time or the opportunity to do that.”

  “Yeah, I think Marge should call the cops and get this over with,” said Brutus.

  “Chase would have found that diamond by now,” Dooley opined. “Because he is a very good cop, and when he wants to find something he always finds it. That’s the kind of cop he is.”

  And while my friends were arguing amongst themselves as to what the best course of action would be, my attention was drawn to the nightstand, where Loretta had put her phone, and right next to her phone lay… an envelope. I frowned as I took it in. There was a bulge in that envelope, a bulge that matched the size of a diamond. So while Marge was entertaining Loretta, and Harriet, Dooley and Brutus were talking strategy, and Odelia was presumably lifting the toilet seat to look underneath, I tripped over to the nightstand in as auspicious a way as I knew how, and with a single nail lifted the flap of that envelope. And lo and behold: a pink shimmer greeted me the moment the flap was lifted. I swallowed away a lump of excitement. So now what?

  I darted a quick look over to Loretta, still talking about her vivid imagination and how it had sustained her through all of the months she’d spent writing her precious tome, and then gave the envelope a casual flick. It dropped to the floor, and since I didn’t know what else to do, I took the stone that had rolled from its recess into my mouth, then quickly walked back to my friends.

  “I wave wit,” I said.

  They all stared at me. “What’s wrong with you, Max?” said Harriet. “You sound funny.”

  “I wave we phtone!” I said, trying to talk around the object I now held in my mouth.

  “I think he’s running a fever,” said Brutus.

  “Let me feel your brow, Max,” said Harriet.

  I jerked my head away, but in doing so accidentally gulped, and the stone, not used to being treated thusly, decided to gambol it down the hatch. I gulped some more when I realized I was now holding a million-dollar diamond in my tummy!

  “Oh, boy,” said Brutus. “I think he’s going to croak. Look at his face. He’s having a seizure or something. Call a doctor!” he yelled. “Max is sick!”

  Marge looked up at this, and immediately Odelia came rushing out of the bathroom. I did feel a little weak, but that was more from the knowledge that I’d just swallowed a diamond, and was now wondering how it would affect my innards.

  “Max, are you all right?” asked Marge as she bent down next to me.

  “I feel a little faint,” I admitted.

  “Is your cat all right?” asked the authoress, who seemed momentarily taken aback that Marge’s attention, which had been so lavish and unstinted, had suddenly switched to me.

  “I think he’s not feeling well,” said Odelia. “We better take him to a doctor. Max, say something,” she urged.

  “I just swallowed…” I began.

  But then Harriet cried, “He swallowed a bug and now he’s dying!”

  “Dying!” Dooley cried. “Oh, please, Odelia—quick! Max is dying!”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Marge, addressing Loretta, who’d been watching the scene with limited interest. “But I think we better take Max to a doctor straight away.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” said Loretta. She didn’t seem sorry tha
t we were leaving, and nor would she, since she’d just stolen a precious stone and hadn’t had time to hide it yet.

  So we left the room, Odelia carrying me in her arms while I still felt a little woozy. But once we were out in the corridor, I finally managed to say, “I swallowed the Pink Lady.”

  Odelia frowned as she took this in.

  “What did he just say?” asked Marge.

  We were waiting for the elevator to arrive.

  “I think he said he swallowed the Pink Lady,” said Odelia.

  “He’s hallucinating,” said Harriet. “It’s a common side effect of poisoning by bug.”

  “I’m not poisoned,” I said, a little weakly. “I saw the Pink Lady lying on the nightstand, took it in my mouth, then accidentally swallowed it and now it’s in my tummy.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Odelia as she shared a look of concern with her mom.

  “We better get Vena to take a look at you, Max,” said the latter.

  “Or Dr. Poolittle,” Dooley suggested. “He is a miracle worker—the pigeon said so.”

  “Who’s Dr. Poolittle?” asked Marge, puzzled.

  “Why, Tex, of course,” said Dooley before anyone could stop him. “He’s suffering from a midwife crisis and now he wants to be a vet,” he explained when Marge merely stared at him. “But don’t tell anyone, Marge, cause it’s a secret.”

  “We’re going to Vena,” said Odelia decidedly.

  “Thank you,” I said. I hate going to the vet, but if I have to go, I’d much rather go to one who’s done her homework, and not an amateur vet who’s suffering from a midwife crisis.

  “Did you know about this?” Marge asked as we rode the elevator down.

  “Um…” said Odelia, trying not to meet her mom’s eyes.

  “He wants to become a vet? But why?”

  “He doesn’t like that people show him their moles at Costco’s,” said Dooley. “And he saved a pigeon’s life.”

  “Moles and pigeons? What is he talking about, honey?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it in the car,” said Odelia.