by Nic Saint
“I’m Odelia’s plus-one,” said Chase.
“Of course you are. There was a time I was her plus-one, but you managed to usurp me. Not that I blame her. If I had to choose between a hot young stud and a feeble old lady with one foot in the grave I wouldn’t hesitate.”
“Oh, hey, you guys,” said Odelia, crouching down and greeting her cats.
“We finally made it,” said Max, looking shaken. “For a moment there I thought we’d all end up in a ditch.” He leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Your grandmother can’t drive.”
“I heard that!” said Gran who, in spite of her status as a feeble old lady with one foot in the grave, had remarkable eyesight and hearing.
“What did you hear?” asked Chase, who’d heard nothing.
“Nothing,” said Gran, then handed Chase a bulky suitcase. “Bring this up to my room, will you? Make yourself useful for a change.”
Chase stared bemusedly at the suitcase, then said, “Yes, ma’am,” and was off in the direction of the staircase.
“So where’s the dead broad?” asked Gran.
“Upstairs—don’t tell me you’re here to investigate the suicide,” said Odelia.
“Suicide? Murder, you mean.”
“Pretty sure it’s suicide.”
Gran patted her cheek. “You’re so naive. Now show me the dead woman. I’m gonna nail this perp before the body is cold or my name isn’t Vesta the Great.”
“Your name isn’t Vesta the Great.”
“That’s what I said.” She suddenly caught sight of a young police officer and collared him. “Hey, you! Show me the body!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the officer, recognizing his boss’s mother, and graciously took her arm and led her up the stairs.
“Oh, boy,” I said, as I watched Gran disappear from view.
“You guys better follow me to my room,” said Odelia. “Emerald is allegedly allergic to cats, and doesn’t want you skulking around.”
“If you didn’t want us skulking around you shouldn’t have brought us here,” said Harriet, who wasn’t used to being hidden away like a stowaway.
“I didn’t bring you—Gran did,” said Odelia.
“What? We thought this was your idea,” I said.
“No, it wasn’t. I told her not to come.”
“You told us not to come?” asked Dooley. “You don’t want us here?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You literally just did,” said Harriet dryly.
“Let’s go up to my room,” said Odelia, who looked uncomfortable.
She led the way up the stairs, the four of us following in her wake.
As we arrived upstairs, a little white fluffy dog greeted us.
“And who are you?” asked the dog, not very welcoming, I thought.
“Oh, hey, Fanny,” said Odelia, crouching down. Turning to us, she added, “You guys, meet Fanny. She’s Emerald’s. Isn’t that right, Fanny?”
Fanny ignored Odelia, her attention fixed on us—the intruders. “I should probably tell you cats are not allowed in this house. We are allergic to cats.”
“Give me a break,” said Brutus. “A dog allergic to cats? What a bunch of—”
“I didn’t say I was allergic to cats,” said Fanny, tilting her chin. “I said we are allergic to cats—in reference to my beloved human Emerald.”
“Well, I guess she’ll just have to get used to us,” said Harriet, who had no patience for uppity little doggies—or uppity humans, for that matter.
“I can’t say it any clearer than this,” said Fanny, who wasn’t budging. She assumed a fighting position, which was a little funny for a teensy weensy ball of fluff. “You shall not pass!”
Harriet rolled her eyes. “Who died and made you queen of the mansion?”
“Died?” Fanny cocked a whisker at Harriet. “Who told you someone died?”
“Gran did. And she’s here to solve the murder.”
“Murder!” Fanny cried. “Nobody told me about no murder.”
“That’s because there was no murder,” I said.
“Wait, does she think it was murder?” asked Odelia, crouching down.
Fanny stared from Harriet to Odelia. “Can you… talk to your human?”
“Yes, I can,” said Harriet triumphantly. “And she can talk to us, too.”
“That’s more or less a given,” I murmured.
“Ask her if she saw what happened,” said Odelia.
“I wasn’t there,” said Fanny. “But I know someone who was. Stevie.”
“Who’s Stevie?” asked Harriet.
“The dead woman’s Brussels Griffon. She was in the room with her.”
“We have to talk to Stevie,” said Harriet, looking up at Odelia. “She was there when the dead woman died.”
Odelia smiled and patted Harriet’s head. “Well, done, honey. We’ll do that later. First I’ll show you your room. Oh, and before I forget, did Gran bring your stuff?”
“I’ll bet she forgot,” I said.
“No worries,” said Odelia. “I’ll borrow one of Fanny’s bowls.”
“Hey—no borrowing my bowls!” yelled Fanny. “I need all of them!”
But we’d already reached Odelia’s room and she now ushered us in.
The moment she’d closed the door, I turned to her. “All right. Let’s get this out of the way once and for all. Why did you have a vital part of our anatomy removed for no good reason at all?”
Chapter 22
“Look, I’m sorry I never told you,” said Odelia, which was a good way to start, I thought, “but it was for your own good,” which I thought was a bad way to finish.
“For our own good?!” cried Harriet. “You took away our proactive capacity. How can that be for our own good?”
“Reproductive,” I corrected her.
“Whatever!”
“Look, before we get into this, I want you to know this hasn’t affected you in any way—on the contrary, it’s been proven that male cats that are neutered suffer less risk of disease and certain cancers, and the same goes for females. It also limits aggression in males and the mating instinct in females.”
Looked like it hadn’t worked for Harriet, I thought, who had a very powerful mating instinct. And as far as aggression in males went, Brutus could be just a touch too aggressive in my view. But who was I to contradict Odelia’s words? She seemed to know all about the topic—more than us cats!
“So you see?” Odelia concluded her instructional little talk. “It’s all good!”
“The thing is, Odelia,” said Brutus, “that Harriet and I want to start a family. You know, settle down, raise a couple of rug rats. So we’d like very much for you to make an appointment with Vena and get these tubes untied.”
“Yeah, we’ve decided to take our relationship to the next level,” said Harriet, “and bless the love we share with offspring of our own.”
“Um... the thing is, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” said Odelia.
“How do you mean? Tied tubes can be untied,” said Harriet. “It’s a minor procedure, or so Milo told us. Just like untying shoelaces.”
“You do know that Milo is a serial liar and a fantasist, right?”
“Of course I know,” said Harriet. “But he wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. We’re talking about the sanctity of feline life here. He wouldn’t mess with that.”
“Of course he would,” I said. “It’s Milo. Nothing is sacred or off-limits.”
“But how about the tubes and stuff?” asked Harriet.
“I still don’t get the whole tube thing,” said Dooley in an aside to me.
“We’ll discuss it later,” I said.
“And the birds and the bees and the storks, too?”
“Promise,” I whispered, mentally adding the tube thing to the list.
“The thing is…” said Odelia, but then the door swung open and Uncle Alec walked in, followed by Chase and Gran, in that order.
&nb
sp; Ugh. Looked like Odelia had been saved by the bell.
“Nasty business,” Uncle Alec said as he took a seat on a nice overstuffed chair. It creaked dangerously in protest. “Bad way to go for that poor girl.”
“Yeah, if I were to take my own life, I wouldn’t take cyanide, that’s for sure,” said Gran.
“So did you talk to everybody?” asked Odelia.
“We did. From what I can gather Kimberlee wasn’t well-liked, especially amongst the women. The men, though, gave me a completely different story. They were all nuts about her, except Verna Rectrix’s husband, who hated her.”
“I think I know why,” said Odelia. “Kimberlee had an affair with Verna.”
“Yeah, I can see how a husband wouldn’t like that,” said Uncle Alec. “But he also told me Kimberlee did drugs, and tried to involve Verna.”
Odelia blinked. “That’s a new one. Kimberlee was a drug addict?”
“According to him she liked to snort a line of coke from time to time, and wasn’t averse to a bit of smack. And since she and Verna were having an affair, it was the husband’s fear she was introducing Verna to the same lifestyle.”
“And was she?”
“Verna claims she refused to partake in that aspect of her girlfriend’s life. But she admitted she was smitten with her, and had been thinking about getting a divorce and getting together with Kimberlee for real.”
“And did Kimberlee feel the same way?”
“According to the boyfriend she did not. He claims she just liked playing the field. Being young and happy in Hollywood meant she liked to indulge in all the vices she hadn’t had access to in her home state of Colorado. He also felt she would have settled down eventually and left this self-destructive path behind once she was a little further along in her career.”
“So who do you think did it?” asked Gran as she studied a portrait of Emerald that decorated the wall. It depicted the Queen of Hollywood in a long, bedazzled white gown, holding aloft one of her many Oscars.
“Did what?”
“Killed her.”
“No one killed her, Ma,” said Alec. “She killed herself, remember?”
“I’m not stupid, Alec. Obviously a woman on the cusp of a great career is not going to kill herself. And definitely not with cyanide, which made her beautiful face look really ugly and ruined her shot at an open casket, unless the mortician is a magician who can work a miracle, which I honestly doubt.”
“Look, the room was locked from the inside, and there’s no sign anyone tampered with that can of Coke. No, this is suicide, plain and simple.”
“But why? Why would she do it?”
“Who cares? She did it—end of story.” He got up. “Now please don’t get carried away and start thinking this is some kind of murder mystery, okay? I’m filing my report and I’m calling it suicide.”
“So where did she get the cyanide?” asked Gran, who wasn’t one to let something like this go just because her son said so.
“Chase is checking into that. Chase?”
“Kimberlee was in a lot of different productions the last couple of years,” said Chase. “Also overseas. It’s not inconceivable she got her hands on a small stash of cyanide while filming in Europe, or even Russia, where she played Anastasia in a miniseries last year.”
“The same goes for all of these ladies,” said Gran. “Emerald, Abbey, Alina and Verna. They all filmed overseas, and they all could have come into the possession of cyanide.”
“But why would they kill her?” asked Alec.
“Why not? They’re all rivals. I mean, didn’t you watch Big Little Secrets? Those women may have looked like friends, but anyone with the slightest knowledge of human nature could tell they were really rivals deep down.”
“There was a lot of hatred directed at Kimberlee,” Odelia admitted. “Alina hated her for having an affair with her husband. Emerald, same story. Verna had been dumped and wasn’t taking it well. And Abbey used to be best friends with her until they had a falling-out and Abbey was ghosted. There was no love lost between these women. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
“So basically you’re saying one of them entered the room, made Kimberlee drink a cyanide-laced can of Coke, then walked out again, making sure the room was locked from the inside?”
Odelia stared at her gran, who nodded. “I’m not sure,” she admitted.
“Reasonable doubt,” Chase said. “You have to admit something smells fishy, Chief. And I’m not talking about the smell of cyanide.”
The Chief raked his fingers through his few remaining hairs. “Okay, so I would have preferred if she took a bunch of sleeping pills or maybe even used one of her silk scarves, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do it.”
“She looked fine to me,” said Odelia. “Before she stormed off and went up to her room? She didn’t strike me as a woman about to commit suicide.”
The Chief eyed her for a moment, then finally nodded. “Okay, so convince me. Make me see the light.”
Odelia smiled. “You have to give us time, Uncle Alec.”
“You have twenty-four hours, and then I’m calling it. All right?” Before he left, he wagged his finger in his mother’s face. “And you, better behave, okay? I don’t want any complaints.”
“When have I ever not behaved?” said Gran indignantly.
“Oh, heaven help me,” said the Chief, and left the room.
“This is so great!” Gran cried. “The gang is back together!”
The gang had never been apart, I thought. Except for a brief interlude last night. And while Odelia, Chase and Gran sat down to compare notes, suddenly a voice piped up. It was Harriet.
“So are you seriously telling me Brutus and I can’t start a family?!!!!”
Chapter 23
“You do realize that a single female feline and her litter can produce offspring totaling 370.000 in a seven-year period, right?” said Gran.
“Holy cow,” I said. “Half a million kittens? That’s a nice, big family.”
“We don’t want half a million kittens, though, right, snuggle pooh?” said Brutus, as he cast a nervous glance at his one true love.
“No! Of course not!” said Harriet. “We’ll start with just the one, then maybe have another one in a year or so—a little brother or sister.”
“Look, toots, this is crazy talk,” said Gran. “Cats don’t get to choose the number of kittens they’re going to have. Expect between two and five in your first litter. And seeing as cats are in heat several times a year, multiply that number by three. Plus, do you really think Brutus is the only one who’ll come sniffing at your butt once you’re in heat? Forget it! Every cat on the block will be all over you. You won’t be able to fend those suckers off!”
“See, that’s why we did this,” said Odelia, sitting down next to Harriet. “We wanted to save you the inconvenience of being in heat all the time, and being pregnant all the time. It’s not the happy home you expect it to be, Harriet. Cats are not people.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “Half a million kittens.”
Brutus was now looking distinctly ill at ease. The thought of fathering half a million babies seemed to have him discombobulated.
“I don’t get it,” said Dooley. “What’s all this talk about being in heat?”
“It’s when a female cat is ready to, um, be with a male cat,” said Gran.
“But Harriet is ready to be with Brutus all the time. Does that mean she’s in heat all the time?”
We all chuckled softly at this. Dooley wasn’t wrong.
“Wow, wow, wow!” Chase suddenly cried. “What the hell is going on here?!”
Oops. Looked like Odelia and Gran had totally forgotten Chase was in the room.
“Oh, we were just fooling around, me and Gran,” said Odelia, trying to project an air of happy unflappability and doing a pretty good job at it.
“You were talking to your cats! And they were responding! I could see their little mouths moving, and how you we
re actually... talking! And they were talking back!”
“Don’t be silly, Chase,” said Odelia. “Nobody talks to cats. That’s crazy.”
“I know! It is crazy—but it just happened! I saw it!”
“Oh, Chase…”
“And it’s not the first time. This has happened before!”
“I think the jig is up,” said Gran. “I think it’s time to level with him.”
“Level with me about what?” asked Chase.
Odelia looked doubtful. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I do.”
Odelia studied her grandmother for a moment, then nodded pensively.
“Sit down, hun,” Gran told Chase. “This might come as something of a shock to you.”
Chase sat down, looking a little apprehensive. “What’s going on?”
“The thing is, Odelia and her mom and me? We can all talk to cats.”
Chase waited, then when nothing more came, said suspiciously, “This is a joke, right? This is some kind of trick you’re pulling on me.”
“No joke,” said Odelia. “And Gran is right. It’s time you finally learned the truth. You’ve been suspecting it for a long time, and we always managed to convince you you were seeing things. Well, you were right the whole time. We really can talk to cats, and they can really understand us and talk back.”
“Well, duh,” I said. “If he hasn’t gotten the message by now he hasn’t been paying attention.”
“He got it a while back, though,” said Dooley. “Remember how he talked to us when we were all sitting on the porch swing?”
“Yeah, and he still managed to convince himself he was seeing things.”
“What are they saying?!” asked Chase.
“They’re saying they thought you figured it out a while back—particularly that one time when you were out on the porch and you interrogated them.”
“They understood what I was saying? But this is incredible!”
“Yeah, it is kinda incredible,” said Odelia with a smile. “The thing is—no one can know, Chase. Which is why I didn’t want to tell you until... Well, until I was…”
“Until she knew you were the real deal,” said Gran, finishing Odelia’s sentence.