Purrfect Cover (The Mysteries of Max Book 25)

by Nic Saint

  “Me, too,” Uncle Alec grunted.

  “But what we also share is a love of dogs.”

  “Dogs,” said Gran disgustedly. “Are you serious?”

  Charlene nodded. “Probably because I could never have kids I’ve always loved dogs with a particular fervor, and I’ve adopted quite a few strays over the years.”

  “I always wanted a dog,” said Uncle Alec mournfully. “Never got around to it.”

  “So Alec and I decided to open a dog kennel. When people thought we were playing hooky we’ve been out inspecting buildings and looking for people who could run the kennel. This is going to be an official dog kennel, run by the town of Hampton Cove, and it’s going to be a shelter that’s going to offer a better life for our strays and dogs whose owners for whatever reason are not in the position to keep them anymore.”

  “A dog kennel,” said Gran, looking stunned.

  “But what about the pound?” asked Tex. “We already have a perfectly good pound.”

  “There have been a number of complaints over the years,” said Charlene. “The animals haven’t been treated as well as they should have. So we’re closing down the pound and opening a kennel instead. Mostly it’s dogs that are kept at the pound anyway.”

  “But what about stray cats?” asked Odelia. “What’s going to happen to them?”

  “We’ve thought about that,” said Uncle Alec, “and we’re going to open a second building, adjacent to the dog kennel, where all other animals are kept in the same excellent conditions. It’s going to be called the Hampton Cove Animal Kennel, and it’s going to set a new benchmark for the way strays should be treated.” He expanded his chest with justifiable pride. “I’m going to volunteer there, and so will Charlene, and I hope you will do the same.”

  “A dog kennel,” Gran muttered, plunking down on one of Uncle Alec’s leather couches.

  “An animal shelter, if you will,” said Charlene, “but with an emphasis on dogs.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Gran said, shaking her head and looking as if she was about to pass out.

  “So no babies?” asked Mom, sounding disappointed.

  “Fur babies,” Charlene specified.

  Mom nodded, and Odelia gave her a rub across the back. “Fur babies,” she repeated. “That’s great, isn’t it, Mom?”

  “Wonderful,” said Mom, but without much conviction.

  “We’re finalizing our plans this week,” said Charlene. “The lease is signed and we’ve hired a manager so things are progressing nicely.”

  “We were going to announce our plans to the world next week,” said Alec. “But you took us by surprise.” He directed a censorious look at his mother, who was still looking distraught. For a woman whose entire life has revolved around cats, to have a son who opens a dog kennel was clearly a big shock for the old lady.

  “I’ll be a volunteer,” said Odelia. “I love dogs—and cats, of course.”

  “Oh, I was hoping you’d say that, Odelia,” said Charlene. “You’ll love the place—it’s so big and airy. And we’re going to turn it into the most gorgeous shelter in the state.”

  “I’ll volunteer, too,” said Mom. “I like cats, of course, but I don’t mind dogs.”

  “That’s… the spirit,” said Charlene.

  “And if you want my help, you’ve got it,” said Dad.

  “I’ll lend a hand,” said Chase. “I love dogs. Used to have two great dogs as a kid. Loved those guys to death.”

  All eyes now turned to Gran, but when the old lady became aware of the attention, she shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m not volunteering at no stinkin dog kennel. It’s cats for me—cats all the way. And cats and dogs,” she announced, her voice rising as she herself rose up from the couch, “don’t mix! And you!” she added, raking a fiery glance across Odelia and Mom’s faces, “Are both traitors!”

  And with these words, she strode out and slammed the door behind her.

  41

  I’d been pleasantly asleep when I became aware of the sound of footsteps approaching. Immediately I was wide awake.

  “Dooley!” I hissed. “Someone’s coming!”

  “It must be the thieves!” he said.

  It stood to reason, though, that if we hadn’t been able to find the painting, the thieves wouldn’t either. Then again, never underestimate a highly motivated burglar. They will search until they find what they are looking for.

  We sat absolutely still as the footsteps halted outside the garden shed, then the door crept open with a creaking sound.

  “What do we do, Max?” asked Dooley.

  He was right to ask. Cats aren’t dogs: we can’t bark and make the bad guys go away.

  “Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t eat the meat!”

  “Oh, no!” he said. “They’re going to try and poison us, aren’t they?”

  “As long as you don’t touch the meat, you’ll be fine.”

  The door opened wider, and a person stepped in. For a moment, I feared the worst: meat laced with poison dropped in front of me, and the burglar trying to force-feed it. I was already clamping my mouth shut, so I wouldn’t get some of that poison that had knocked out Fifi inside me, but then a blood-curdling scream rocked me to the core.

  “It’s gone!” a voice cried, the intensity of its scream piercing the silence of the night.

  And then I recognized the midnight marauder: it was Tex!

  “Big Gnome #21—he’s gone!” he repeated, then flicked on the light.

  I blinked, and when my eyes had adjusted to the hard light from the single bulb, I was hit by the accusing look in Tex’s eyes. “Max! I asked you to guard my painting!”

  “Yeah, so where is it?” I asked. “I never saw the darn thing.” It’s too much to start accusing an innocent guard cat, I mean to say, especially after he’s voluntarily given up cat choir to heed his master’s command.

  More footsteps sounded, no doubt drawn by Tex’s loud wailing and gnashing of teeth.

  “What’s going on?” asked Marge, who was the first to arrive on the scene.

  “My painting. I asked Max to guard it for me and he’s allowed thieves to steal it!” said Tex, on the verge of tears.

  “Max? What happened to the painting?” asked Marge, getting down to brass tacks.

  “I never saw any painting,” I said. “I figured Tex must have hidden it somewhere.”

  “No, it was hanging right there,” said Marge, pointing to the wall above my head.

  “Well, it wasn’t hanging there when we got here,” I explained.

  “The thieves must have stolen it before Max and Dooley got here,” said Marge thoughtfully.

  “What? It was gone already?”

  “Oh, darn,” I said. “We’ve been guarding an empty shed, Dooley.”

  “Well, at least nobody stole the hoes and the pruning shears,” Dooley pointed out.

  More people came flocking to, drawn by the nocturnal commotion. They were, in order of arrival, Odelia, Chase, Ted and Marcie Trapper, and even Kurt Mayfield, who’d brought along his dog Fifi.

  “What’s happening?” asked Ted, interested. “Is this a block party?”

  “My painting was stolen,” said Tex, then directed an accusing look at Ted.

  But before he could speak, Ted held up his arms. “I didn’t do it. Whatever it was, I didn’t have nothing to do with it, I swear!”

  And since Tex had already falsely accused his neighbor once, he seemed reluctant to do it again.

  “Who knew you were keeping a painting in your garden shed?” asked Chase, ever the cop.

  “Nobody,” said Tex. “Just me and Marge.”

  “That’s not completely true, honey,” said Marge. “You told those insurers, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but they’d never steal my painting,” said Tex. “They’re the ones who’ll have to pay me now.”

  “Who are your insurers?” asked Marcie Trapper, rubbing her husband on the back. Ted had been accused one too many times of th
eft, she seemed to say with that gesture.

  “Um, Johnson and Johnson,” said Tex. “On Bleecker Street.”

  Chase and Odelia shared a look of surprise. “Isn’t that the same company you’re investigating for fraud, babe?” asked Odelia.

  “Yeah, it is,” said Chase.

  “Fraud?” cried Tex. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

  “I’m also insured by Johnson and Johnson,” said Kurt. “Their premiums are pretty steep if you ask me.”

  “Is it possible that they stole your painting?” asked Chase now, voicing the most pertinent question.

  “Why would they steal a painting they’ve insured?” said Tex. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “The complaint against Johnson and Johnson seems to be that they never pay out,” said Chase. “Basically they always find some excuse or technicality not to pay the claimant. So chances are that if they stole your painting, they’ll sell it on, and since they’re not going to pay you for your loss, they get to pocket the proceeds from the sale.”

  “But that’s illegal!” cried Tex.

  Chase dragged a hand through his scraggly hair. “Well, turns out it’s not that black and white. Which is why I’ve been investigating the company for the past month and still have to find the smoking gun.”

  “Well you found your smoking gnome now,” said Marge. “Do you think that’ll do?”

  Chase nodded. “I’ll try and get a search warrant tomorrow,” he said. “If we’re lucky I’ll find Tex’s painting and that’ll be the end of Johnson and Johnson.”

  Just then, Gran came walking up. “What’s with all the noise?” she complained. “Can’t a woman get a decent night’s sleep around here without being kept awake by you party people?” And when she saw Fifi, she sniffed annoyedly. “This neighborhood is going to the dogs. To the dogs, I tell you!”

  And with these words, she was off again, leaving Kurt to stare after her, and Fifi, too.

  “What does she got against dogs?” asked Kurt.

  “It’s a long story,” said Marge. “Come on, husband,” she added, patting Tex on the arm. “Time to go to bed.”

  “But my gnome, Marge,” said Tex plaintively. “They took my gnome.”

  “There will be other gnomes, honey,” said his wife soothingly.

  “But it cost twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  She winced. “Please don’t remind me.”

  After they’d gone, Chase said, “Twenty-five thousand dollars for a painting?”

  “Yeah, Dad thought it was a good investment,” Odelia explained. “It’s painted by a famous artist named Jerome Metzgall.”

  “Metzgall is a flake,” Kurt grunted. “Worst investment of Tex’s life.”

  “Was your Jackson Pollock insured with Johnson and Johnson, Kurt?” asked Odelia.

  “It was. And until now they haven’t paid me a dime. It’s still early days, of course.”

  “And I’ll bet Ida Baumgartner’s Picasso was insured with Johnson and Johnson, too, and so were Mort Hodge’s cartoons.”

  “What a setup,” said Ted. “First you insure the stuff, then you steal it and sell it, and refuse to pay out.”

  “We’re not insured with them, are we?” asked Marcie.

  “No, we’re not,” said Ted. “Then again,” he added with a shrug, “we don’t have anything valuable to insure anyway, so there’s that.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” said Marcie.

  Soon the small gathering of neighbors dispersed, and Dooley and I decided to head into town. Cat choir sometimes runs late, and we’d had enough nap time for a while. And as we walked along the deserted streets of our town, Dooley said, “Is twenty-five thousand dollars for a painting of a gnome a lot of money, Max?”

  “That depends, Dooley.”

  “On what?”

  “Well, I happen to think twenty-five dollars is a lot of money to spend on a painting of a gnome, but possibly there are people out there that are willing to spend two million dollars on the same painting, and in that case twenty-five thousand is a bargain.”

  “I think I’ve heard about that,” he said. “Supply and demand, right?”

  “Exactly. As long as you can find a fool who’s an even bigger fool than you and willing to spend more on the same thing you spent all of your money on, you’re golden. And if not, you better look in the mirror, for the biggest fool is you.”

  42

  It came as something of a shock to us when Odelia announced that she’d asked Blanche to clean out the attic. It was going to take her two weeks and all that time she was presumably going to lock the pet flap.

  So it was with a heart bowed down with the weight of woe that Dooley and I were lying under the big cherry tree in Marge and Tex’s backyard, along with Harriet and Brutus.

  All of us were the victims of a pair of evil cat-hating cleaners, and there didn’t seem to be anything we could do about it.

  We heard the telltale sounds of a cleaner working hard: vacuum cleaner being switched on and off, and then on again. Water slushing in buckets, the smell of lavender-scented bleach being poured into those same buckets.

  “She does work hard, I’ll give her that,” said Harriet as we lay there, awaiting the end of our sentence.

  “The house is much cleaner since Blanche started coming around,” I admitted.

  “No more dust bunnies,” said Dooley.

  “She’s washed my favorite pillow with Ariel,” said Brutus. “I love the smell of Ariel. It’s like sleeping on a cloud, in Ariel heaven.”

  “And she has finally chucked out those old dried plants on the kitchen windowsill,” I said. “They’ve been collecting mold for years, and little flies have been buzzing around those plants and preventing me from sleep.”

  So maybe having a pair of professional cleaners in the house wasn’t such a bad thing after all. If only they wouldn’t hate cats so much.

  The doorbell rang and the vacuum cleaner was turned off. We heard Bella answering the door, then yell something about having no need for the word of Jesus, and slamming the door shut.

  We all looked up at that, and curiosity compelled us to get up from our pleasant perch underneath the cherry tree and hurry to the front of the house, where we just caught a glimpse of Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale, Bibles clutched in their hands, looking like Mormon missionaries, neat in their costumes, hair cut to precision, and walking up to the next house, no doubt ready to spread the word of Jesus to anyone who’d listen.

  “Looks like they’ve finally been sprung from jail,” I said.

  “Which probably means the Johnsons are in jail instead,” said Brutus, whom I’d told the story of last night’s events.

  “Who are these Johnsons and why are they in prison?” asked Harriet.

  So I told her the story of what happened in Tex’s garden shed, and how Iris and Mira Johnson were apparently a pair of common crooks and burglars.

  “Let’s hope Tex gets his painting back,” said Dooley. “It cost twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  Harriet stared at my friend. “Twenty-five thousand dollars for a painting of a gnome? Has he lost his mind?”

  “Marge seems to think so, but she still loves him,” said Dooley. “Which makes me think that love must be blind.”

  So much wisdom coming from one not well-known for dispensing wisdom had us all look at Dooley in surprise.

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes, Dooley,” I said. “You’re absolutely right. Love is blind, and a good thing it is, too, otherwise humanity would probably have died out a long time ago.”

  “Not just humanity,” said Harriet with a cheeky glance at her boyfriend.

  Just then, the front door opened, and Bella appeared. She was holding a mat and proceeded to hit it several times with a knocker, causing a cloud of dust to emerge from the household object. The dust wafted in our direction, carried by a gentle breeze, and soon we were all coughing and running for cover. Bella, who’d no
ticed this, smiled a sly little smile, and disappeared inside again.

  And as I walked out into the street, to escape the dust particles tickling my throat and nostrils, I found myself looking up at a black van parked in the street. The license plate started with A5.

  I frowned at the van, before the penny dropped. “Dooley!” I said. “It’s the van!”

  “Oh, it is,” he said.

  “Which means the thieves must be around.”

  “What thieves?” asked Harriet. “What van?”

  “The night Kurt’s house was burgled Dooley and I saw two masked burglars drive off in this van. I only managed to remember the first two digits of the license plate and gave them to Chase. He must have been too busy with his insurance fraud case to look it up. And now here it is. Parked right in front.”

  We all shared a look, then slowly turned to look at the house in front of which the van was parked. It was Marge and Tex’s place.

  And the only person who was inside… was Bella.

  Could it be?

  No, of course not.

  What a ridiculous thought!

  We still had to wait two more hours before our suspicions were confirmed. That’s how long it took for Blanche and Bella to finish their shift. When they walked out, slamming the doors of Odelia’s and Marge’s houses behind them, in amazing synchronicity, I might add, and met on the sidewalk, we held our breath for a moment.

  “I think it’s them,” said Brutus.

  “And I think it’s not,” said Harriet.

  We were all seated in the front garden of Marge and Tex’s house, watching intently.

  For a moment, both women exchanged pleasantries, then moved, as one woman, in the direction of the black van. Blanche pressed her key fob, there was the telltale beep beep sound of a car alarm being switched off… and they both got into the van!

  “It’s them!” I cried. “They’re the burglars!”

  “I knew it,” said Brutus. “I knew all along they were up to no good.”

  “No, you didn’t,” said Harriet.

  “They’re cat haters!” said Brutus. “What else can you expect!”