by Nic Saint
Dooley looked up at this. “A rat? Where!”
“Not an actual rat, Dooley. I smell foul play.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said.
“Definitely foul play,” Rufus agreed.
“Rats always smell foul,” Dooley offered. “So I find it very weird that you guys can all smell that rat and I can’t.”
Before long we’d reached the road, and Odelia and Chase proceeded to hop into Chase’s pickup, followed by five cats and two dogs. But then Ted and Marcie brought up the rear, and they needed transport, too. Lucky for them Father Reilly had arrived in his own car, and after some negotiations the final tally was as follows: me, Dooley, Harriet and Brutus rode with Chase and Odelia, while Ted and Marcie, Fifi, Rufus and Shanille, and of course Marigold, squeezed into Father Reilly’s modest little Peugeot. And so the entire group who’d joined the expedition returned home, and still we weren’t any the wiser as to what had happened to Angel Church. But at least now we knew why she hadn’t answered her phone: it had been lying at the bottom of that pond all this time.
14
While Chase drove his pickup with a steady hand, Odelia engaged us in conversation so she could pick our brains.
“So what do you think, Max?” she asked.
“Max, Max, Max,” Harriet grumbled. “Always Max. What are we, Odelia? Chumps?”
“Okay, so what do you think, Harriet? What are your conclusions?”
“I actually think that Angel ran away from home because she was upset when she discovered that Father Reilly is her dad,” said Harriet.
Odelia blinked at this. “Wait, what?”
“Oh, you didn’t know? Yes, Father Reilly and Marigold have been a couple for the past twenty years or so, and Angel is their daughter.”
“I don’t think Angel knows, though,” said Brutus.
“No, she doesn’t,” I said. “Shanille specifically told us that they never told her, even though Marigold has often asked Father Reilly to sit down with her and tell her, but he feels that she wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret.”
“So… Angel is Father Reilly’s daughter?” asked Odelia.
Chase looked up at this. “Angel is Reilly’s daughter?”
“Yeah, that’s what the cats just told me.”
“Do you think this is connected with her disappearance?”
“I don’t know. The cats seem to think she ran away after she found out who her father is.”
“It’s a possibility,” Chase allowed. “Kids have run away from home for less.”
“I think she was abducted by aliens,” said Dooley. “And now they’re doing all kinds of experiments on her, and when they’re done, they’ll give her back to her mom and dad, but not before they wipe her memory, so so she’ll never know what happened, and she won’t be able to tell us, which is a good thing,” he added with a knowing nod, “since this means she won’t be traumatized.”
“Did you get all that from the Discovery Channel?” asked Brutus with a slight grin.
“Oh, absolutely. They have all kinds of interesting stuff on the Discovery Channel, and I discover new things every day.”
“So now what?” Odelia asked.
“Now we send a team of skilled investigators out there,” said Chase, “Who are going to comb through every square inch of those woods, and hopefully they’ll come up with something—anything—that will lead us to Angel.”
Angel Church woke up suffering from a splitting headache.
“Ouchie,” she muttered as she brought a distraught hand to her aching head. That’s what you get from partying all night with the girls, she thought. Every time she woke up with a hangover like this she swore it would never happen again, but after a couple of days the memory of that hangover dissipated, and she was ready to do it all over again.
When she opened her eyes she was surprised to find she wasn’t lying in her own bed, but in an unfamiliar room. The curtains were drawn, and she immediately knew this wasn’t her cozy room in the apartment in Bickersfield she shared with her mom. So where was she? Had one of her friends collected her at the side of the road where she’d collapsed and taken her to their place? But she’d been in all of her friends’ houses and none of them had looked like this. At least not that she remembered.
She looked around and found nothing special about the room she was in. A single bed, a table, a chair, and a stack of old newspapers and magazines piled high in a corner. It all looked a little shabby. There was dust on the hardwood floor, and the curtains were a drab olive green. Yuck. Whoever the interior decorator had been clearly had no taste.
She got up from the bed, then plunked down again, as a wave of nausea immediately washed over her. “Darn hangover,” she said. After her head had settled a little, she gave sitting up another shot. She finally managed to get up without falling over, and went to the window to look out. Someone had boarded the window shut, but she could still look through a crack. It looked pretty green out there. So where the heck was she?
She proceeded to the door, but when she tried to open it, found that it was locked. She frowned to herself, and suddenly bits and pieces of last night’s revels drifted back into her memory. Partying hard with the girls, then she’d set off along the road home, and then what? Try as she might, she simply couldn’t recall. But clearly she must have arrived here at some point. But how? And why? Suddenly a key turned in the lock, and the door swung open. Much to her surprise, a very large man stood before her, clad in black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. His face was obscured by a mask, and he carried a tray, which he proceeded to plunk down on the table, then grunted, “Eat up before it gets cold, princess.”
And before she had a chance to respond, he was already returning to the door.
“Hey, wait,” she said as he made to close the door. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
He chuckled lightly. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that. Just sit tight, and eat your food.” He slammed the door shut again, and turned the key in the lock.
She sank back down on the bed, and realized how this looked.
Had she been… abducted?
15
When Tex arrived at the senior center, he fully expected to find a bunch of tables set up where old folks were playing cards, but instead he found the main room devoid of local inhabitants. With a frown, he walked on through, in search of the two men he wanted to have speech with. And he finally found them in a backroom of the center, where they were teaching a class of tango to a dozen or so eager learners—all of them women!
Dick Bernstein and Rock Horowitz could have been brothers: both were handsome men in their seventies. But what set them apart from the other members of their age group were their perfectly preserved full heads of hair. Granted, those hairs had turned a vivid white, as Tex’s own hair had done, but at least they still had all of it.
Tex took a seat at the edge of the dance floor, and watched how first Rock, then Dick glided across that floor, a lucky dame in their arms, and tangoed as if they were born Argentinians. Amazing was one of the words that came to mind as he watched the spectacle. The other word was one he wouldn’t have said out loud, and probably stemmed from a deep-seated jealousy that suddenly manifested itself. Why was it that some men seemed to have it all? As far as he knew, neither Dick nor Rock had lived a healthy lifestyle. Instead they’d drunk, gambled, taken illegal substances, and had flitted from girlfriend to girlfriend like butterflies from flower to flower, sampling all the nectar they could find.
Finally Dick noticed the doctor’s addition to the audience, and graciously thanked his dance partner for the dance, then came over to take a seat next to Tex. The man wasn’t sweating, Tex saw to his consternation—he wasn’t even panting from the exertion!
“Hey, Doc,” said Dick as he reached for his back pocket and took out the pack of cigarettes he kept there, then placed it on the next chair for later consumption. He settled himself in for the long haul, immediately assuming that manspreading
posture your regular subway traveler abhors so much. “So you’re interested to learn to tango, huh?”
“No, thanks,” said Tex. “I am actually here to ask you something, Dick.”
“Sure—shoot.”
“This may sound a little weird, but…”
The other man cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Well… I was just wondering how, in spite of your age, you manage to—”
“Viagra,” said Dick immediately. “Though I should probably take it easy on the little blue pills. Not good for the old blood pressure. But then I don’t have to tell you, Doc.”
“I wasn’t referring to Viagra, Dick,” said Tex, with perhaps less warmth than a doctor is supposed to award a loyal patient. “I was actually referring to your hair.”
“My hair?”
“The thing is that I think I’m going bald, and so I was wondering if perhaps you’d like to share the secret of that amazing crop of hair of yours.”
Dick burst into loud laughter at this, causing the unreasonable resentment Tex experienced toward the other man to spike.
“Oh, for crying out loud, just tell me how you do it, Dick. You and Rock, both.”
He’d already learned Malcolm’s secret, but frankly he didn’t feel like practicing that man’s remedy if given a choice. Not that he was squeamish, but still. There were limits to what a man was willing to do—even a man as desperate as he was.
Dick was still grinning, took a cigarette from the pack, stuck it between his lips, then removed it again and returned it to the pack. “Look, Doc, I like you. In fact I like you a lot, so I’m going to tell you my secret, but before I do, I want you to know that this is not for the faint of heart, all right? So you do with it what you will, but I won’t be held responsible for the consequences.”
“Oh, absolutely, Dick,” said Tex, now really curious for what was about to follow. “So what’s the big secret?”
And so Dick leaned into him, and whispered his big secret into his ear. Tex’s eyes went wide, and when Dick leaned back, the man gave him such a shit-eating grin that frankly Tex couldn’t help but wonder if the man wasn’t perhaps having a laugh at his expense. Dick must have sensed his skepticism, for he now nodded and said, “Honest to God, Doc. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask Rock. He’ll tell you the exact same thing.”
“So Rock…”
“Applies the same technique.”
Tex thought for a moment, then nodded. “Thanks, Dick. I owe you.”
“Sure. Oh, and you’ll tell me if it works out for you, okay?”
“I will,” said Tex as he got up. He was feeling slightly dazed as he walked out, and when he glanced back, saw that Dick had snatched another willing lady from the flock, and was moving across that dance floor again with an energy Tex knew he’d never be able to conjure up if he lived to be a hundred. Which is why he decided to try Dick’s remedy. Only he had to make sure no one found out, or he’d be the laughingstock of the whole town!
16
When I walked out of the pet flap, after having eaten my fill, and ready to take a nap on the lawn, I found Dooley sniffing that same lawn with a determination I found particularly amusing. “What are you doing?” I asked, even though it was obvious he was sniffing grass!
“I’m conducting an experiment, Max,” said my friend as he lifted his nose from the lawn long enough to answer my question.
“What experiment?”
“Okay, so Fifi and Rufus managed to track Angel all the way to that pond, all right?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, placing myself down on the lawn, and emitting a contented little sigh as I rolled over on my back, my paws dangling in the air. Sheer heaven!
“So why can’t we do the same thing?”
“Because we’re cats, Dooley, not dogs,” I said.
“I know, but our sense of smell is pretty developed, too, right?”
“Of course it is, but not as developed as a dog’s. And also, dogs seem to have cornered the market on that kind of stuff, so why not let them? It’s my belief, Dooley, that we’re all put here on this earth with a specific purpose, and a dog’s purpose seems to be to sniff out stuff and follow their nose wherever it may lead.”
“And our purpose?” asked Dooley, closely following my reasoning.
“Our purpose is to use our brains and our cunning, and the agility of our feline bodies,” I said as my eyes started to drift closed. The sun was really giving of its best, and within a few minutes I’d be compelled to retreat to the shade. But for now I enjoyed that tickle on my belly—those warm rays massaging my abdomen—and decided to stay put and relax.
“I’ll bet you’ve figured out what happened to Angel already, haven’t you, Max?”
“No, Dooley, I haven’t,” I murmured sleepily.
“No, but I bet you have, with that big brain of yours. So where is she, Max? Did she really run away from home, or was she beamed up by aliens?”
“I have no idea, Dooley. Absolutely no clue.” And then I really did drift off into a peaceful slumber.
I have no idea how long I’d been lying there, but it must have been longer than I’d anticipated, for the sun had already shifted further west at this point, and it took me a little while to realize that the sound of shouting voices had woken me up. And as I pricked up my ears and turned them in the direction of the sound, I discovered that the voices were coming from Blake Carrington’s field. And so I reluctantly picked myself up from the lawn, and started off in that direction, to find out what was going on. Dooley, who’d been sleeping in the shade of the rosebush, woke up when I trudged past, and sleepily said, “Have the aliens returned Angel yet?”
“No, I don’t think so, Dooley. But they have brought us something else to investigate.”
And so Dooley, who’s just about as inquisitive a cat as I am, got up and together we snuck through the hedge, and then through the high grass that covers the field, except the part where that car wreck lies, and of course—and how could I forget—that skeleton!
Two men stood near the wreck, and one of them was actually shaking his fist at the other man. The fist-shaker was tall, with one of those craggy faces and impeccably groomed gray hair and looked to be about sixty years of age. The other man was younger, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties.
“You did this!” the older man was snarling. “If you hadn’t been there that day, this would never have happen!”
“How many times do I have to tell you—I wasn’t there!”
“My private detectives don’t lie, Jessie. Not only were you there, you were in the car that raced my son and caused him to have that terrible accident. You killed my boy!”
But Jessie, whoever he was, made a circular motion with his index finger next to his temple and then made to leave. “When you asked me to come out here I actually thought you had something interesting to tell me. I should have known it was the same garbage!”
“Where are you going?”
“Home. If you think I’m going to stand here and listen to this nonsense you’re crazy.”
“You stay here—I’m not done with you, Jessie. Come back here!”
Jessie turned. “You know what you should do—what you should have done a long time ago? Get rid of that wreck, sell the land and move on. Because this?” He gestured to the car wreck. “This is crazy. As crazy as you are!”
“I’m going to sue you, Jessie! How dare you dig up my boy and dump him here!”
But Jessie had already moved out of earshot, and now it was just us and Blake Carrington, for I had a strong suspicion that the man now leaning against the car was the late Steven Carrington’s dad. The recent screaming match had clearly taken a lot of energy, for Mr. Carrington didn’t look well. He was clutching at his chest, and his face had gone a pasty sort of pale.
“I think he just might drop dead right there,” I said.
“We better get a doctor,” Dooley said.
And so we hurried back to the house, in se
arch of Odelia, or Marge or anyone who could get Mr. Carrington some much-needed medical attention. Fortunately for him, we soon managed to collar Marge, and she came hurrying with us to where we’d last left the older man. He was sitting on the ground now, sort of slumped to his side, his back leaning against the wreck of his boy’s car, and looking like death warmed over.
“Mr. Carrington?” asked Marge, leaning over him. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Pain… chest…” the man croaked quietly.
Marge grabbed for the man’s pulse, but clearly it wasn’t what it should be, for she shook her head, then took out her phone to call an ambulance. Ten minutes later the ambulance arrived, and two paramedics were soon taking care of the unfortunate man, loading him up onto a stretcher, and then carting him off to the hospital.
“Good thing you called us, ma’am,” said one of the paramedics before hopping into the ambulance. “He’s not in great shape.”
And then they were off, sirens screaming, as is their wont.
“It’s actually you Mr. Carrington needs to thank,” said Marge, referring to Dooley and myself. “If you hadn’t called me out here…” She glanced around. “What was he doing here anyway?”
“He was arguing with a man named Jessie,” I said. “Accusing him of organizing the street race that killed his son. And also accusing him of digging up his son’s body.”
“There was a lot of shouting, Marge,” Dooley said. “Mr. Carrington doesn’t like Jessie.”
“Yeah, and then Jessie walked away, and Mr. Carrington slumped against the car.”
“His heart, I think,” said Marge. “I’m not a nurse, but his pulse was very weak.” She shook her head. “Poor man. I don’t think he ever got over the death of his son.”
“What about his wife? Is she still alive?” I asked.
“No, Alexis died when Steven was an infant,” said Marge. “Blake raised Steven and his sister Fallon and older brother Adam all by himself, and from all accounts father and son were very close—so close they were more like friends than father and son. But then Blake married his secretary Krystle, and that caused the boy to rebel. The car crash obviously came as a big shock to Blake, and I think he never fully recovered. He started to drink heavily, and then when Krystle left him things really went downhill for the poor man.”