Purrfect Crime (The Mysteries of Max Book 5)

by Nic Saint

  “So. Shall we?” he asked, directing an expectant look at me.

  “Yes, let’s,” I said, after giving Jarrett a nudge.

  “What?” he hissed when we both fell into step behind Julian.

  “This is not the time to hit on the guy!” I hissed back.

  “I’m not hitting on him! I’m just… being nice.”

  “Nice! You practically invited him to share a sauna!”

  “I did not. I was just exchanging pleasant banter.”

  “Well, save it for later. We’re here to do a job, not to pick up a date. Besides, what about Deshawn?”

  “What about him?”

  “I thought you guys were happy together?”

  He gave a noncommittal shrug. “He’s cheating on me.”

  “What?!”

  “If you haven’t heard, Deshawn’s joined The Great British Bake Off.”

  “He’s cheating on you with Paul Hollywood?!”

  “Well, I don’t think so, actually. But he is having a ball.”

  I frowned. Having a ball at a baking show didn’t exactly constitute cheating. And then it hit me. “I know what this is. You’re jealous!”

  “I am not!” he said.

  “You’re jealous because Deshawn is suddenly getting all the attention and you’re not.”

  “You’re bonkers,” he muttered, looking away, which was as much an admission as if he’d come right out and said it. “It’s just not much fun to see my better half having so much fun without me, that’s all.”

  I smiled. Deshawn Little had been Jarrett’s ‘man’ for years, until they both confessed to harboring feelings for each other deeper than merely being master and servant allowed. They’d been inseparable ever since. Until now.

  “As long as Deshawn doesn’t take his baking skills into Paul Hollywood’s personal kitchen, you’re fine,” I said.

  He grumbled something, but we’d arrived in the Ancient Egypt room, and there was no more time for idle chitchat about Deshawn’s baking adventures.

  “Here we are,” said Julian with a wave of his arm.

  The room was relatively dark, with several mummies on display, along with sarcophaguses, gilded masks, and wrapped and unwrapped remains of people who’d long been dead. It was all very impressive, and a little disconcerting at the same time.

  “Are these… real mummies?” asked Jarrett, gulping slightly.

  “Yes, they are all very real,” Julian confirmed.

  Jarrett produced a soft whimper, and I patted his back. “They’re all quite dead, Jarrett,” I said. “Just like Dippy the Dinosaur.”

  Julian stopped in front of a mummy that had been put upright. It was stiff as a board, and thoroughly wrapped up, except for its head, which was a mere skull.

  “This is the one,” Julian said. “We call him Snoopy, as he resembles a beagle.”

  I looked closer, and saw that the museum director was right. The mummy did resemble a beagle, with its pronounced set of choppers and its equally pronounced grin.

  “He looks like he’s smiling,” I said.

  Julian now displayed a smile himself. “He does, doesn’t he? In life, he was a minor pharaoh. In death, he’s the pride of our modest little collection.” His smile faded. “Or at least he was, until he started behaving badly.”

  “What does he do, exactly?”

  “Well, he seems to get a kick out of scaring the living daylights out of everyone who comes near, though his favorite thing seems to be scaring kids into a decline.”

  “Perhaps he was bullied and this is his chance to get back at his bullies?” Jarrett suggested.

  “Whatever’s going on, it’s a damn nuisance. We’ve had to close down the entire exhibit, one of our most popular ones, I might add, and visitors have been staying away. This joke is costing us heaps of money.”

  “I would think a museum could exploit this as a genuine selling point,” I said. “Mummies come alive? An actual Egyptian mummy haunting the Ancient Egypt wing?”

  “You would think that, wouldn’t you? But you would be wrong. People love ghosts in theory, not when they’re actually confronted with them.”

  “What—what does he do, exactly?” asked Jarrett. He’d moved back a few steps from Snoopy, eyeing the mummy anxiously.

  “What doesn’t he do? He makes faces at people, chases them around the room, and—worst of all—he spews some kind of pea-green slime at them. It’s disgusting. In fact he got me just this morning. I had to put on a fresh suit before you arrived.”

  I assured the museum director that all was fine, and that we had the situation well in hand. He excused himself, and then hurried away, being careful to close the door behind him when he left. And then it was just me and Jarrett. And Snoopy.

  Chapter Two

  “So how do we do this?” asked Jarrett, licking his lips nervously.

  “Why don’t we just call him and see what happens?” I suggested.

  “Right,” said Jarrett, hopping from one foot to the other. “You know, Harry? I would feel a lot more comfortable if Buckley was here.”

  “We can do this,” I assured him. Though if I was honest, I’d have preferred our third associate to be here with us, too. Sir Geoffrey Buckley had been my employer until his untimely demise, and was now our ghostly consultant, the person with his feet firmly in the world of the wraiths. Lately he’d made himself more and more scarce, however, and I was starting to think he was tired of spending time in both worlds.

  I took up position in front of the mummy, which was leering at me. It was one of those juicy mummies, with quite a bit of flesh on its bones. “Um, Snoopy?” I asked, then figured this might not be the best way to address the irate ghost of a pharaoh. I glanced at the name card that identified him as Rhamenas, the sixteenth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, who’d reigned from 1292 to 1292 BC.

  “Very short reign,” Jarrett whispered.

  “Only a couple of months,” I whispered back.

  “Probably murdered. Which would explain the foul attitude.”

  “Mr. Rhamenas, sir?” I asked. “Are you there?”

  No response. The dead pharaoh’s eyes remained as dead as before.

  “Maybe he barfed up so much this morning he needs a break?” Jarrett suggested.

  “Or maybe he knows we’re here to get rid of him.”

  “About that, Harry,” Jarrett said. “Don’t you think it’s time we start suiting up for these assignments? I mean, look at the Ghostbusters. They’ve got all this cool gear. Proton blasters and whatnot, and what have we got? Nothing! I mean, it’s just ridiculous.”

  “Ghostbusters don’t exist, Jarrett,” I reminded him. “It’s just a movie. Proton blasters or whatever don’t exist in the real world. They’re props.”

  “It could exist. Just say the word and I’m sure I could find us some stuff.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing, which is simply pointing out to these lost souls that they need to move on.”

  “One of these days that’s not going to work anymore. We’re going to come up against a spirit who doesn’t want to move on. A spirit so evil diplomacy isn’t going to do diddly—”

  Just then, the mummy moved! Or at least his lips moved. Slowly, those leathery, blackened lips opened, and before I could duck, a stream of green gunk shot out from the mummy, and hit me straight in the face!

  “Duck!” said Jarrett. Royally late, of course.

  I ducked, and Jarrett, instead of following his own advice, just stood there, and was now in the line of fire, taking a big hit of slime. “Yuck!” he yelled, when he’d finally sank down to his knees. “It’s in my mouth! Harry, it’s in my mouth!”

  “It’s in my eyes,” I said. “Just keep calm, Jarrett. It’s just ectoplasm. We know the drill.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to like it!”

  I got up, this time making sure I kept a safe distance from the mummy, and planted my hand on my hip. “Mr
. Rhamenas, what is your problem? Huh?”

  “You assume he speaks English,” said Jarrett, spitting out green goo.

  “I’m bored,” suddenly a voice sounded. “Bored to tears. Wouldn’t you be bored to tears if you just had to stand there, stiff as a board, for years and years and years?”

  I looked up, and saw that the mummy’s lips had moved. “You speak English?”

  “Of course I do. I’ve been in this country for so long I speak the natives’ lingo perfectly.”

  “So you’re bored, huh?” asked Jarrett. “Then why don’t you just, you know, move on or something?”

  “I can’t,” said the mummy sadly. “Trust me, I’ve tried, but I just seem to be stuck here for some reason.” He shrugged. “So I have a little fun at the expense of those damn tourists who stare at me all day long.”

  “Why do you pick on the kids so much?” I asked.

  “Oh, God, don’t get me started on the kids,” he said. “They are the absolute worst. They like to stick needles in me when they think the guard isn’t watching, or even light matches to my wrappings, or cut them with a knife hoping to find amulets hidden inside. It’s maddening, I tell you.”

  Jarrett nodded. He wasn’t too keen on kids himself, and could see where Rhamenas was coming from. “So maybe you’ve been separated from a loved one?” he suggested. “A girl you were keen on marrying—or a guy?”

  “Nope. Too busy with affairs of the state to think about dating. Hell, I’m only twenty-one, buddy.”

  “Oh, you’re a handsome young devil, aren’t you?”

  “Yep. I was a big hit with the ladies,” Rhamenas confirmed with a horrible grin.

  “Why did you die so young?” I asked. “It says here you only reigned a year?”

  “A year?” he scoffed. “I wish! I reigned for all of five months and two weeks!”

  “What happened?”

  “No idea. I was going to invade the Levant again—that’s what we did in the olden days when we got bored—when I suddenly got sick and died.”

  “Poison?” Jarrett suggested.

  “Could be,” the Pharaoh admitted.

  “Look, whatever it was,” I said, “you have got to stop harassing the visitors.”

  “Oh? And why would I do that? Like I said, it’s the only entertainment I have.”

  “Hey! Why don’t you listen to the lady and buzz off!” suddenly another voice piped up. It seemed to come from across the room. Another mummy was moving in its open sarcophagus, and he did not seem happy.

  “You buzz off, Uncle Albinium!” Rhamenas cried.

  “If I have to listen to your whining one more day I’m gonna expire!”

  “For your information, you’re dead already.”

  “Oh, and I don’t know that? Who do you think made me this way?”

  “You’re blaming me?”

  “We’re all blaming you, young Rhamenas,” another voice spoke. It belonged to the mummy of a female.

  “Mom, I was talking to Uncle Albinium.”

  “Don’t speak to your mother like that, Rhamenas,” growled a male voice. “Show some respect.”

  “Oh, shut up, Dad. I wasn’t talking to you, either.”

  Jarrett and I shared a look of concern. Looked like all the mummies in this place were suddenly coming alive. This did not look good!

  “Why are you all still here?” I asked. “You’ve been gone for thousands of years.”

  “And whose fault is that?” asked Uncle Albinium. “That good-for-nothing Rhamenas killed me!”

  “And me,” said the Pharaoh’s mother.

  “Add me to the roster,” grumbled his father.

  “Wait, you killed your entire family?” I asked.

  “Of course I did! How do you think I managed to become Pharaoh at such a young age? If I’d have waited, I’d never been Pharaoh. Don’t think I didn’t know you were all scheming behind my back. You were going to have another baby, weren’t you?”

  “None of your beeswax,” said the Pharaoh’s mother sharply.

  “We weren’t scheming,” said Uncle Albinium. “We were simply concerned about your mental health, that’s all.”

  “Oh, you were worried about my mental health? Maybe you should worry about yours, you old fruitcake.”

  “I’m not the nutcase in this family. You are!”

  “No, you are! You’re all nuts!”

  “Sticks and stones, Rhamenas! Sticks and stones!”

  “I think we better get out of here,” I whispered.

  “I think you’re right,” Jarrett whispered back.

  So we snuck out of the Ancient Egypt room, leaving Rhamenas and his family to fight amongst themselves. When we encountered Julian, I told him he needed to separate the family members. Only then would he ever have a hope of removing these annoying disturbances from his museum.

  “I didn’t even know they were related,” he said, surprised.

  “Rhamenas killed his own parents and his uncle, because he felt they were trying to keep him from becoming pharaoh,” I explained. “And by putting them all in the same room, you simply reignited these centuries-old resentments.”

  “They never were in the same room before,” said the director. “We just thought it would be interesting to have them all in one collection. They were spread out across the globe before.”

  “Trust me,” said Jarrett. “Spread them out again. It’ll fix all your problems.”

  And as we walked away, we could still hear Rhamenas fighting with his family. “This doesn’t bode well for the Wraith Wranglers, Harry,” said Jarrett, a worried frown on his handsome face.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve never failed a client before.”

  “We didn’t fail Julian. He just has to split up the quarreling family and he’ll be fine,” I argued.

  “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “I have a very bad feeling about this.” He checked his watch. “Oh, shoot. I’m going to be late.”

  “Late for what?”

  “Deshawn is on the Graham Norton Show. They’re taping it right now. Wanna come?”

  And so, even though I didn’t know it at the time, began the next great adventure of the Wraith Wranglers.

  Jarrett’s words would soon prove true.

  Chapter Three

  Sitting in the audience at the Graham Norton Show was quite the experience. We got some of the best seats in the house, right in the front row, where we had a good view of all the action. Deshawn was seated next to talk show host Graham Norton, whose eyes were sparkling with mirth as he interviewed the former butler. Next to Deshawn sat Marisol Glee, the famous singer with the golden pipes. The notoriously volatile diva did not look happy that all the attention was now going to some baking Jeeves.

  “So you were an actual butler, were you? Amazing,” said Graham.

  “Yes, and now my former employer is my boyfriend,” said Deshawn, a soft-spoken, stocky man.

  “I can’t believe this,” said Norton, rubbing his graying beard as he gazed into the camera. “This is like Pretty Woman, people, only much, much better! Hollywood, you have got to turn this man’s story into a movie!”

  “Starring Matt Damon,” said Deshawn with a slight smile.

  “Oh, why not? And who’s going to play your boyfriend?”

  Deshawn glanced into the audience at Jarrett, and said, “Ryan Gosling, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Graham. “Matt Damon and Ryan Gosling. I would see that movie! Wouldn’t you see that movie?!”

  The audience burst into loud applause.

  “Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?” said Graham, also applauding.

  And Deshawn? He just sat there, that same small smile on his face.

  “I had a butler who baked once,” said Marisol now, with customary affectation. “You wouldn’t believe the things he did for me. It boggled the mind.” She smiled at the camera and adjusted her ultra-tight miniskirt.

  “You don’t say,” sa
id Graham, making an effort not to roll his eyes. “Now, Deshawn. Tell me more about The Great British Bake Off. I’m dying to know what you think about Paul Hollywood. Simply scrumptious, isn’t he?”

  “He has a very impressive presence,” Deshawn agreed. “Though not as impressive as my boyfriend Jarrett Zephyr-Thornton, of course.”

  “Oh, you are an infatuated little birdie, aren’t you?!” Graham exclaimed.

  “I had a bird once,” said Marisol with a stiffish smile.

  “I’ll bet you did,” said Graham. “What is your favorite pastry, Deshawn?”

  “Well, I love a good Bundt cake,” Deshawn admitted.

  “You can never have too much Bundt cake,” Graham agreed.

  “I ate a Bundt cake once,” Marisol began.

  “Of course you did,” Graham said acerbically. “Do you see yourself winning the competition, Deshawn?”

  “I’m certainly going to give it my all, Graham.”

  Jarrett let out a soft sigh. “Deshawn is handling himself so well, isn’t he? And look how photogenic he is. The cameras simply adore him.”

  “I thought you didn’t like all this newfound attention he’s getting?”

  “I don’t—but I have to admit he’s crushing it, darling. Simply crushing it.”

  And he was. At least until the next guests appeared. Which is when Jarrett lost it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Graham Norton. “The moment you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. Please welcome onto the stage, the one and only… Piquant Pack!”

  “Omigod!” cried Jarrett, his hands flying to his face. “Omigod!”

  One by one, the members of the legendary nineties girl band walked onstage, announced with thunderous voice by Graham. “Piquant Red, Piquant Blue, Piquant Blond, Piquant Pink and Piquant Black, ladies and gentlemen. Reunited for the first time in twenty years, exclusively on the Graham Norton Show!”

  “Omigod, omigod, omigod,” Jarrett was whispering, in total shock.

  “Don’t tell me. You were a fan?” I asked.

  “Who wasn’t?!”

  “Well, since I was only three when they split, I guess I wasn’t.”