The Mysteries of Max BoxSet

by Nic Saint

  “Is this a trick question?” he whined. “Don’t do this to me, Max. Not when I’m tired. Just tell me already. Whommmm are we going to chat with?”

  “Clarice, of course.”

  He gulped. “Clarice? Are you nuts? She’ll just tell us she saw nuthin.”

  “Well, maybe she will, or maybe she won’t. But it’s definitely worth a try.”

  Of all the cats I knew in Hampton Cove, Clarice was the one who’d traveled the most and traveled the farthest. She had to, to find food and shelter, as she didn’t have a human to take care of her. Once upon a time, the rumor went, she’d had a human, but he’d abandoned her. Some tourist who came to Hampton Cove for the holidays, and then tied her to a tree out in the woods and took off. The same rumor held that she’d gnawed off her own paw to escape, like James Franco, though from what I’d seen her limbs were still present and accounted for, so that story might just have been a fabrication.

  “Clarice,” I called out as we approached the dumpster she was currently holed up in. “Clarice, we’d like to talk to you.” The small collection of dumpsters was where the stores the mall was comprised of dumped their garbage, and was always a place where all manner of critters gathered.

  When Clarice’s head popped up out of the dumpster, looking shifty-eyed and ready to flee, Dooley chimed in, “Hey, Clarice. So we meet again, huh? What are the odds?” He looked a little afraid, and with good reason. Clarice had been known to lash out when she was approached without invitation.

  “We were just wondering—” I began.

  “I know nuthin,” she muttered, repeating her usual mantra.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, a little gruffly. I wasn’t in the mood for games. I was tired and hungry and my paws hurt. “Look, all we need to know is whether you know a cat who knows a cat who might have seen a cat who…”

  “I know nuthin,” Clarice repeated.

  “See? I told you this was a waste of time,” said Dooley. He’d planted himself on his rear end and was sniffing the air, probably looking for meat.

  “Look, we just want to know—”

  “I know nuthin!” she repeated, and jumped out of the dumpster, giving us both the dirtiest of looks and starting to walk away.

  “Now hold it right there!” I cried. “All we want is information. Is that too much to ask? If you tell us what we need to know we’ll even share our kibble with you next time you’re in the neighborhood. Isn’t that right, Dooley?”

  Dooley stared at me. He obviously didn’t agree. If anyone was going to share his kibble, it was going to be me. Well, that was fine by me. From experience I knew that fresh kibble was only a trip to the store away.

  I panted a little, because Clarice was giving me her best stare. Locked in a stare-down with the most feral cat in Hampton Cove. If she lashed out now and scratched my nose, that would set the seal on this day. To my surprise, she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Oh, all right, Max, you annoying little weasel. What do you wanna know?”

  Relieved, I told her about the murder of Paulo Frey. It turned out that the Writer’s Lodge was like a second home to her. Which, now that I thought about it, wasn’t surprising. Writers are an easy mark for a cat’s affections, as a lot of them genuinely like us. Most of them got cats at home, and when they come out to the woods to write they miss their little furballs. So when they see Clarice lurking in the woods, they try to lure her by offering her the best treats. I now saw what her MO was, and with it came a newfound respect.

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that Chase Kingsley affair,” she finally said, “and I don’t care one hoot either. What humans do is none of my business. What I can tell you is I saw someone drag the body of that writer out of the lodge a year ago, so I’m guessing that might have been your killer.”

  Dooley and I exchanged excited glances. “You saw the killer?” I asked.

  “Sure, sure,” she said, studying her nails, which were razor-sharp. “They dragged the body of that Frey guy out of the lodge and dumped it where they like to do their business. Made a nice big splash, too. Then they came out again and dumped a bunch of other stuff in there.”

  “A laptop and a couple of suitcases,” I said.

  “Sure, sure,” she said, rolling her eyes, already bored with the conversation.

  “So?” I asked when she was silent for a beat. “Who was it?!”

  “Yeah, Clarice,” Dooley huffed out. “Who’s the killer?”

  “What’s it worth to you?” she asked, removing a fishbone from between her teeth and giving it a tentative nibble.

  “Whatever you want,” I said excitedly.

  “I’ll take a twenty-pound bag of fish kibble. The expensive stuff. And a couple bags of that party mix you guys seem to like so much. Mixed grill.”

  “Deal!” I cried.

  Clarice gave a chuckle, spit out the fishbone and suddenly, fast as lightning, flicked a paw beneath the dumpster and came away with a mouse, dragging it out by its tail. And then, before our horrified gaze, she gobbled down the mouse, hair and hide!

  I gulped and so did Dooley. We weren’t necessarily mouse hunters, what with having such a cushy life and all, and watching this… massacre taking place in front of our noses reminded us we were as far removed from our feral ancestors as felinely possible.

  “So, those are my terms,” Clarice said, spitting out the mouse tail and using it to pick her teeth. “I want the best stuff. Take it or leave it.”

  “Sure! Fine! All right!” I cried. “I can get you all that and more.”

  I was pretty sure that Odelia wouldn’t mind trading a couple of expensive bags of cat food for the identity of the Paulo Frey killer. It was a bargain!

  Clarice held up her paw, then sliced it with the nail of her other paw. A small drop of blood dribbled down. I thought I was going to faint at the sight of the blood, and it was obvious Dooley was feeling the same way.

  “Put it there, fellas,” she said in that gravelly voice of hers. “Let’s seal the deal with blood.”

  “Is that really necessary?” asked Dooley in a choked voice.

  “No blood, no deal,” growled Clarice.

  “What is this, the Middle Ages?” squeaked Dooley. “I thought we were past all this nonsense.”

  “All right, all right,” I said, fearing Clarice would change her mind. So I held up my left paw and made a small incision. A drop of blood appeared, and I suddenly felt queasy. That’s the curse of being a house cat: you lose those killer instincts.

  “Now you, Dooley,” I said.

  “Yeah. Now you, Dooley,” said Clarice in a mocking voice. “Put it there, pal.” She was simply taunting us, I realized. Playing with us, as if we were mice.

  “I—I can’t,” he cried. “I can’t stand the sight of blood. And I—I hate the pain!” he added with a pathetic whiny voice.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Clarice grunted. “What are you, a cat or a mouse? Come here, you pansy-ass puss.” And with a vicious slicing movement, she scratched Dooley’s nose.

  “Owowowowow!” he cried. “What did you do that for?!”

  “Because you’re a whiny little pussy,” she said, and put her hand up to his nose, giving it a hearty pat. “Now you, Max. Slap one on this sissy’s nose.”

  I put my paw against hers and Dooley’s nose, so that our blood mingled. It was a very unhygienic business, I thought, and as I did it, I winced. Dooley mewled with apparent pain, and obviously didn’t like his nose squeezed between my paw and Clarice’s. He bore it bravely, though, probably because he didn’t have any choice. If he ran for the hills now, Clarice would hunt him down and eat him alive, just like she’d swallowed down that mouse.

  Clarice finally grunted her approval. “It’s not your regular blood oath,” she said as she gave Dooley a nasty glare, “but I guess it’ll do.”

  And, as promised, she proceeded to put us on the scene she’d witnessed over a year ago, when Paulo Frey had lost his life. Both Dooley and I gasped when we finally l
earned the identity of the killer, and stared at each other in abject horror. All this time I’d figured that some outsider had done the terrible deed, and not one of our own, but now it turned out that evil had been much closer than we’d figured. We’d harbored a viper at our bosoms, and Hampton Cove would never be the same again after this startling revelation.

  “So I’ll come and collect one of these days,” Clarice reminded me, and then seemed to take pity on us. “Cheer up, boys,” she snarled. “It’s a tough world. Kill or be killed. No need to get all mushy on me. You’re cats, for crying out loud, not pansies. Learn to love the pain! Love it!”

  After dispensing these pearls of wisdom, she trotted off, leaving bloody paw prints behind. Long after she’d left, Dooley and I still sat there, staring into space, Dooley with blood dripping down his nose, which he occasionally licked, trying to heal the wound, and me holding up my paw and also licking it in a steady rhythm. I wasn’t going to go walkabout now, not with that cut. It just might infect and cause gangrene and then my entire leg would have to come off, and how would I look then? I know, I know. Dooley and I are not exactly feral. Sue us. We’re house cats, used to the good life. Used to being pampered and spoiled. At least we’d just solved the Paulo Frey murder.

  After what seemed like the longest time, we set a course for the homestead, and Dooley was the first one to break the silence.

  “Who would have thought?”

  “Yeah, who would have thunk?”

  We didn’t speak again. We were both bone-tired, and the moment we arrived home, we both dropped our weary bodies down, me on my favorite spot on the couch, and Dooley right next to me. He’d asked to crash at my place, as he didn’t want to risk coming across Harriet and Brutus, and I’d magnanimously agreed. Dooley and I are like brothers, and my space is his space. Besides, we’d just made a blood oath, so now we were blood brothers.

  And then we both fell into a deep, healing sleep, dreaming of cruel killers and feral cats and big bags of the best kibble Odelia’s money could buy.

  Chapter 19

  Odelia parked the pickup across the street from the library. It was located on its own patch of land, and fronted by a small garden that sported several flower beds and looked as colorful, cozy and inviting as the library itself, the place where her mother Marge had worked all her life. A neo-Elizabethan style building, it looked like something transported from England and plunked down here. Once inside, it got even better, as high ceilings and open spaces invited you in. Hampton Covians young and old gathered here to find their favorite book or to listen to one of the writers occasionally asked to read from their work.

  Recently the library had been expanded with a children’s wing, which was now the pride and talk of the town. Odelia didn’t have to look long for her mother, who was at the desk, checking out a couple of books for a young mother and her two kids. While she waited until her mom was free, Odelia strode to the newspaper and magazine nook and took a seat. A copy of her very own Hampton Cove Gazette was on display, right next to the big boys like the New York Times, the Washington Post and USA Today. Of course the local press was also represented: Dan’s Papers and the East Hampton Star had pride of place.

  She picked up a copy of Time Magazine and saw that it featured an article on Paulo Frey, on the occasion of his disappearance one year ago. She leafed through the article, and saw that the reporter, like most people, simply assumed the writer had gone off to write a novel somewhere on an exotic island, and would soon return clutching a voluminous tome that would prove his masterpiece. Little did they know he’d been resting at the bottom of a pit all this time.

  She placed the magazine back on the stand and wandered over to the new children’s section, past rows and rows of neatly indexed books. The children’s room sported a large boat, where kids could sit and read, and other creative nooks as well, all in a bid to inspire the new generation to take up the habit of picking up a book from time to time. In this day and age of electronic devices, it was sometimes hard to get kids to read, when they could watch a cartoon on their tablet computer instead, and the new wing had been designed to provide kids with a sense of curiosity about the world of books, and to instill them with a love for the medium that would hopefully last a lifetime.

  “Great space, huh?” her mother asked when she joined her. Marge Poole was a fine-boned woman with long blond hair, just like her daughter, and soft, brown eyes that spoke of her humanity. She was soft-spoken and sweet-tempered, and had been a mainstay at the library for the past thirty years.

  She now stepped into the boat and picked up a picture book of Jonah and the Whale and started flipping its pages. Odelia joined her and picked up a Garfield comic book. Garfield always reminded her of Max.

  “So how are things at the paper?” Marge asked.

  “Great,” said Odelia. The boat was even more spacious than she’d imagined, even for two grown-ups, so she gathered for kids it was enormous. “I’m working on an article about the Paulo Frey murder case.”

  “I heard about that,” said her mother, looking up. “What a horrible thing to happen in Hampton Cove. Who would have thought something like this was even possible? It’s more something you’d expect in New York, not here.”

  “Yeah, it’s not something that happens every day,” she agreed, then decided to broach a topic that might lead her into trouble. “Dad told me you invited that new cop for dinner? Chase Kingsley?”

  Her mother’s face lit up with a smile. “Such a nice young man. I figured since he’s new in town, it would be nice to offer him a home-cooked meal and show him that Hampton Cove is a genuinely hospitable town.”

  “So you met him, huh?”

  “Alec brought him by the library yesterday to introduce him.”

  “He, um…” She hesitated. “Did he tell you about his previous career?”

  “Well, Alec told me that Chase used to work for the NYPD.”

  “Did he also tell you how he got fired?”

  Her mom’s eyes widened. “Fired? No, he didn’t tell me about that.”

  In a few brief words she explained why it was that Hampton Cove had suddenly gained a policeman while the NYPD had lost one. She also added that Max and Dooley were convinced that the man was innocent of the charges, and that they’d set out to prove it.

  “Of course he’s innocent,” said her mother now. “A man like that could never be guilty of such a heinous crime. Harassment, no less. I think I would recognize a molester when I saw one, and Chase definitely isn’t one. In fact I’m surprised you thought for a moment he could be guilty of such a crime.”

  She shrugged. “Like I told Dad, we got off on the wrong foot. He took a dislike to me, simply because I’m a reporter, and then things escalated.”

  “We’ll settle all of that tonight. You and Chase can take a stroll after dinner and work things out. Kiss and make up,” she said blithely.

  She blinked, and felt her cheeks redden. “Um, I don’t know about that,” she said. “He seems to hate my guts, especially after…”

  Her mother frowned. “After what?”

  “Nothing,” she muttered, idly toying with a particularly colorful troll that was placed on the edge of the boat. Which reminded her… “Did you know that Frey had a reputation for trolling people? Especially women and gays?”

  “No, I didn’t,” said her mother, surprised. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty much. He trolled Gabby Cleret and Aissa Spring and a lot of others. Turns out he wasn’t such a nice person, and whoever killed him was probably one of his victims.”

  “I simply can’t imagine. He was in here often, you know.”

  This surprised her. “He was?”

  “Well, as a writer of his stature we took every opportunity to invite him for readings. He was extremely accommodating and always proved a big hit.”

  She gave her mother a grin. “So you can’t recognize a molester of women after all, huh?”

  Marge pursed her lips in disapproval. �
�Are you sure those aren’t just rumors and gossip? Paulo Frey never struck me as an unpleasant man. Quite the contrary. I thought he was extremely charming, and eager to please.”

  “Yes, I’m sure, Mom,” she said, remembering Aissa’s story, and Gabby’s harrowing tale. “He was actually a very nasty person.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’re right,” said her mother, fiddling with a troll. They were placed throughout the library because of a special screening of the movie Trolls. Justin Timberlake was supposed to attend and sing a song. “I just hope they catch his killer soon. I’d hate for anyone else to get hurt.”

  “I don’t think anyone else is going to get hurt. This was personal.”

  “Well, I’m sure Alec and Chase will capture the killer soon enough.”

  “Not if I catch him first.”

  This elicited a frown from her mother. “Honey, you’re not a police officer. You’re a reporter. Why don’t you leave this nasty business to Alec?”

  “Because I have an instinct for solving crime, Mom, even Alec said so.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean you have to go and willingly put yourself in harm’s way, honey. Messing around with murder is extremely dangerous.”

  “I’m sure that this killer only ever intended to make one victim,” she said, brushing off her mother’s concerns. Mom was always worried about her safety. She’d been even more worried when she’d been away in New York, in college, and only came home on the weekends. Now that she was home again, living next door, she still worried. Even though she was proud that her little girl was a reporter, she’d much rather have seen her pursue a career fraught with less danger. Like a doctor, following in her father’s footsteps.

  In her mother’s hopes and dreams for her future, she’d always seen her work alongside her father, so she could take over the practice when he retired one day. Even her father had faintly harbored that wish. But she’d never had any interest in the medical profession. Journalism had been her first love, and she’d always known that when she grew up she’d be a reporter, just like Dan. Even though she’d had loftier ambitions at the time. She’d always wanted to be a reporter for one of the big papers. Or even one of the big networks. But she’d soon discovered that at heart she was a small-town girl, and had to accept she’d never make a career in New York. She’d never fly overseas to cover a war, or interview the leaders of the world gathered in Davos. And she was fine with that. She was happy right here in Hampton Cove, covering the opening of a new library wing, or the mermaid festival.