by Nic Saint
“Hey there, dog,” I said, hoping it wouldn’t start barking and acting mad like most dogs do when they come across a cat.
It gave one sharp bark and Fae’s mother looked up. When she saw us, she smiled. “What are you sweethearts doing here?” She came over and crouched down next to us. “You look like you belong to someone,” she said, gently stroking my fur. “You’re too nice-looking and well-groomed to be feral cats.”
I did the purring thing again, and so did Dooley when the woman extended the same courtesy to him.
The doggie had cocked its head in our direction and stood staring with a strange look on its face. It probably wasn’t used to seeing his human engage with a pair of cats.
“You know, Max,” said Dooley now as he cast a glance at the pile of tissues on the table. “Maybe we have to convince Odelia to take on this case anyway.”
“I’m starting to think so, too,” I said as the woman suddenly burst into tears and some of those tears splashed across my head like the dewy rain.
I sneezed and she cried some more.
“She’s clearly heart-broken and so is her daughter,” said Dooley. “I don’t think humans would cry so much over a man if that man was a murderous maniacal monster.”
“You’re right,” I said. The plight of these women touched my heart. And so did the bowl of food Fae’s mom pushed in our direction and from which I was taking hearty bites.
So we’re cats. We fall in love with any human that feeds us.
The woman finally disappeared into the house, presumably to look for her daughter, and then it was just us and the dog, whom I’d identified as a Bichon Frisé dog, one of those hairy white creatures that look like a walking ball of fluff.
“What do you think, dog?” I asked around a mouth filled with kibble.
“You do know that’s my food you’re eating, right?” said the dog, head still cocked and giving us sour looks.
“And very tasty it is, too,” said Dooley. “Thank you, dog.”
“The name is Sasha, and I’d say you’re welcome if I’d had a choice in the matter. As it is, my human seems to like you, so I will not bite you in the ankles. I repeat, I will not bite you in the ankles.”
“Very kind of you,” I said.
“I probably should, though,” said Sasha, indicating we were not in the clear yet. So I took a few quick bites, just in case she changed her mind and went for my ankles anyway. Although, do cats even have ankles? “It’s in the dog rulebook, you know,” Sasha continued.
“What is?” I asked.
“When confronted with an invading feline, go for the ankles. Printed right there in black and white.”
“Right,” I said. Of all the dogs in the world, we had to come across a fanatic and a rule follower. “So what can you tell us about Jeb Pott and the woman he murdered?”
“Yes, do you believe Jeb did it or that he was framed, like Fae seems to think?” Dooley added.
“I like Jeb,” said Sasha. “He’s a decent human being. He once took me to New Zealand on a trip. Only I got kicked out by some politician on account of the fact that I’d neglected to bring along my passport.” She shrugged. “Humans. They’re just weird.”
“Tell us about it,” said Dooley.
At least we agreed on one thing.
“So no, if I’m absolutely honest, I don’t think Jeb could ever murder Camilla.”
“Wait, you knew Camilla?” I asked.
“Sure. I was hers and Jeb’s when they were married. But after the divorce there was so much lawyerly fuss that Jeb decided to give me to Helena and Fae, so here I am.”
“What about Camilla? Didn’t she want you?”
“Not sure, actually. There was some legal wrangling, and the lawyers decided that nothing was decided until everything was decided. About the divorce, I mean. And by then I’d become so accustomed to living here that I’m actually happy nothing was decided.”
It all sounded pretty complicated, and I could tell from the strange look on Dooley’s face he had a hard time following the story, too. But regardless, one thing clearly stood out: here sat yet another individual who was familiar with Jeb and believed he was innocent.
“But then how do you explain what happened?” I asked.
Sasha shrugged. “I can’t. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a lapdog, not a member of a K9 unit. But what I can tell you is that Jeb had a lot of enemies, and I wouldn’t put it past them to pull a dirty trick like this on him.”
“Or on Camilla,” I said. After all, she was the one who was dead right now.
“Or Camilla,” agreed Sasha.
I shared a meaningful look with Dooley. “I think we need to have a long talk with our human, Dooley,” I said.
“I think so, too,” he agreed.
And then we took some more kibble. What? My mother always taught me never to skip a free meal. And I’m nothing if not a momma’s cat.
Chapter 9
Odelia was in her office, typing up her piece on the Camilla Kirby murder, when her boss walked in. Dan Goory, a white-bearded pint-sized man, had been running the Hampton Cove Gazette for so long now people identified him with it. He’d started the paper back in the stone age, and had kept it running all this time, single-handedly writing most of the copy, until he’d started looking for someone to help him lighten his load, and had found, after a lot of trial and error, the right person in Odelia. Her predecessors hadn’t fared as well as she had, but their amicable collaboration had been so successful that there was even talk now of her taking over the paper if or when Dan would finally decide to retire.
She hoped that day would never come, for she knew that running a paper was a different beast from filling its pages with newsworthy stories. As it was, Dan took care of the business side as well as the editing and she was free to write articles people enjoyed to read.
“So Jeb Pott, huh?” said Dan now, in his low gravelly voice, courtesy of smoking a pack a day for years, even though he’d now stopped—doctor’s orders. “Who would have thunk?”
“Not me,” said Odelia, raising her hands from the keyboard and lacing her fingers behind her head. “In fact I was more than a little shocked to hear it.”
“Yeah, me too,” Dan admitted. “Even though Pott is an amateur compared to greats like Olivier and Gielgud.”
“Who?” said Odelia with a slight grin.
“Oh, you barbarian.” He paused, flicking an imaginary speck of dust from his sleeve. Today he’d opted for a heliotrope shirt with yellow suspenders, and looked very snazzy. “So what do you reckon? Did he do it?”
“Looks like,” said Odelia. “At least that’s what the police think.”
“We both know the police aren’t always right.”
“We do know that, but this time I think they are.” She ticked off the items on her fingers. “A witness saw the murder—actually witnessed the murder and called it in. Camilla’s blood was all over Jeb, and his prints all over the knife. And he’d invited her to come visit.”
“But why? What was he hoping to accomplish?”
“As far as Uncle Alec could tell from the text messages on her phone he was looking for a reconciliation. He said he still loved her and couldn’t stop thinking about her in spite of the divorce, and he wanted to try and heal the rift and put the past behind them.”
“And apparently she felt the same way or else she wouldn’t have flown all the way out here to see him.”
“Apparently.”
They were both silent for a beat, then Dan rapped the door with his knuckle and said, “Keep up the good work, Poole, and write me a killer article, will you? I have a feeling this might be our biggest issue yet.”
“Will do, sir,” she said dutifully, and bent over her laptop to pound out the rest of her article. She looked up when the outer door to the office swung open and the bell jangled.
“Where is my granddaughter?” a familiar voice rasped. “I demand to see my granddaughter!”
“In here, G
ran!” she yelled.
Her grandmother came striding into the office. She was out of breath, and had twin circles of crimson dotting her cheeks. The elderly woman was wearing her large-framed glasses, had her hair done up in tiny white curls, and as usual looked the spitting image of a sweet old lady, ready to dole out candy to kids. In actual fact she was anything but sweet. Vesta Muffin could be pretty caustic if she wanted to be, and she often wanted to be.
“What’s all this nonsense about you going out on a case and not inviting me along?” she demanded, planting her fists on Odelia’s desk and leaning over so far her head was almost touching her granddaughter’s.
“I didn’t know you worked here,” Odelia quipped, but Gran wasn’t having any of it.
“You know as well as I do that a true flogger, in order to be successful, needs to upload fresh content all the time.” She tapped the desk impatiently. “I need you to let me in on this case, Odelia. I’ve lost so many followers over this Yellow Parka MacGyver Gang fiasco it’s not pretty. I need a big hit—pronto!”
“Don’t you mean vlogging?”
“That’s what I said. Flogging. I need this, Odelia. I need this bad.”
“You sound just like my boss,” said Odelia. But Gran was eyeing her so intently she quickly relented. “All right, all right, you can tag along. But there’s no case this time, Gran. Just a murder to cover for the paper.”
“What do you mean there’s no case? A woman was murdered, right?”
“Yes, she was, but Alec already caught the killer.”
“So fast? That’s impossible!”
“It was Jeb Pott. He was caught practically red-handed. Literally, actually.”
“Oh, darn it. I liked that kid.”
Odelia refrained from mentioning that that kid was a fifty-five-year-old man. Instead, she said, “So you see? There is no case. No murder to solve. No killer to catch.”
Gran plunked down on the chair opposite hers. “At least let me interview Jeb Pott. Big star like him—my follower count will shoot through the roof.”
“What do you care how many followers you have?” Odelia asked. She didn’t understand this obsession with followers. At all.
“I need to beat Scarlett Canyon,” Gran said, looking grim now. “That jerk has started flogging, too, and she’s got more followers in one week than me in a month.”
“She’s also fighting crime now?” asked Odelia, wondering when this enmity between her grandmother and Scarlett Canyon would finally be over. All of Hampton Cove would sleep more easily when it was.
“She’s giving beauty tips,” said Gran, frowning darkly. “Which in her case means sitting in front of a camera wriggling her cleavage and pretending to know something about cosmetics. Next thing I know she’ll be doing a striptease act. Anything to get more followers.” Catching Odelia’s inquisitive look, she added, “The more followers you have the more chances of landing one of those lucrative influencer deals. L’Oréal or Lancôme will pay big bucks to push their products on the channels of people with lots and lots of followers.”
“They won’t be pushing L’Oréal on a YouTube channel about murder.”
“Of course not, silly. But then Scarlett isn’t on YouTube. She’s on Instagram. But it’s the thought that counts. I can’t let her best me, so I need more followers. Otherwise she’ll never let me live it down.”
Scarlett Canyon and Gran had been mortal enemies ever since Gran caught her doing the horizontal mambo on her kitchen table with Grandpa Jack. Things had gone from bad to worse ever since, especially since Scarlett had been Gran’s best friend before the incident.
“So are you going to let me interview Jeb Pott or not?” Gran insisted.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be able to interview Jeb. Uncle Alec gives me a lot of leeway but he draws the line at actually jeopardizing a conviction. But I’ll see what I can do,” she added when Gran pulled one of her unhappy faces.
Gran got up and patted her cheek. “Good girl. And if you stumble across another dead body, this time let me know, all right? I need all the flogging I can get.”
And after uttering these immortal words, she strode back out of the office.
Chapter 10
Peace had finally returned to the office and only the sounds of fingers tapping keyboards could be heard as Odelia and Dan worked silently in adjacent offices, hard at work to put out a killer edition of the Gazette. When Odelia’s phone rang, she started and almost knocked over her cup of coffee.
“Yes, Uncle, what is it?” she asked when she saw it was him.
“I thought you’d want to know that Jeb denies the charges. Or rather, he’s denying being aware that he killed his ex-wife.”
“You mean he doesn’t remember?”
“He says he passed out and doesn’t remember a thing. He’s pretty sure he would never kill his wife, though. As if that means a thing in his current situation.”
“Is that even possible? To murder a person and not remember?”
“Judging from the copious amounts of narcotics and alcohol he had in his system that’s certainly a possibility, although the coroner reckons that it would have been pretty hard for him to murder anyone in his condition. Passed out sounds about right. In fact it’s a minor miracle he didn’t kill himself, instead of Camilla.”
“So what are you saying? That he didn’t kill her?”
“Well, Abe reckons that a man who’s been abusing intoxicants on such a scale could probably still function where others would have succumbed, so there’s that to consider.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, frowning as she took in this new information. “Okay. So this doesn’t change anything, right?”
“No, it doesn’t.” He noisily cleared his throat. “There’s something else.”
“What?”
“Camilla received a bunch of texts inviting her to Hampton Cove, right?”
“The texts that said he still loved her, wanted to reconcile, yadda yadda yadda.”
“Chase did a routine check of Jeb’s phone and didn’t find a trace of those texts.”
“Weird.”
“Not so weird. He could have used a second phone.”
“And did he?”
“Now this is where it does get weird. Those texts were sent from a burner phone.”
“Why would Jeb use a burner phone?”
“It gets weirder: there’s no trace of that phone. We searched his lodge top to bottom. Nothing.”
“Jeb could have sent those texts and then dumped the phone.”
“But why would he do that? And why not send his wife a text from his own phone?”
“Maybe.... he wanted to keep it a secret?”
“That doesn’t make sense. He had no way of knowing how she’d react. She could have shown his messages to her lawyers. She could have contacted a reporter, heck she could have told the whole world. So why a burner phone? And why hide it?”
“You said it yourself. To deny that he sent them in case she reacted badly?”
“Maybe.” He hesitated.
“Spill it. You know you want to tell me.”
“That guy who called 911?”
“What about him?”
“We tried to trace him through his cell phone.”
“And?”
“Dead end. Another burner phone. Now why would a neighbor walking his dog use a burner phone?”
That was a very good question, and one to which she didn’t have an answer.
“Anyway, just thought you’d like to know. In case, uh, you decided to investigate further, I mean.”
“Do you want me to investigate this further?”
“I’m not saying you should.”
“So what are you saying, exactly?”
He sighed, and she could just imagine him sitting behind his desk, looking at his wilted office plants, and patting his wilted hair. “What I’m saying is that if you do investigate, I’m not going to stop you.”
“Gotcha. What does Chase think?
”
“Oh, he’s happy as a clam that for once he doesn’t have to chase witnesses and suspects and dig up clues.”
“He thinks Jeb did it.”
“Honey, everybody thinks Jeb did it. But just in case he didn’t…”
“You want me to check so you can tie up those annoying loose ends.”
“I hate loose ends, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” she said with a smile. “Look, Gran is dying to interview Jeb. Do you think you can get us in the room with him?”
“Vesta and Jeb? No way!”
“I promise I’ll make her behave.”
“That’s an empty promise and you know it. Besides, if the judge finds out I allowed my mother to interview my one and only suspect, there will be hell to pay.”
“Or I could let her run this entire investigation all by herself. She’s getting very good at it, and you know she’s going to be the vlogging sensation of the year.”
“And now you’re blackmailing me.”
“No, I’m not!”
“All right! Five minutes, and if she so much as puts one foot out of line, I’ll yank her out of there so quick her dentures will rattle.”
“Deal,” she said, and disconnected just as the doorbell jangled again, and she watched Max and Dooley tiptoe into the office.
“Odelia!” Max said as he came tripping up to her desk, then hopped on top of it. “You have to accept Fae’s offer. You just have to!”
“Oh... kay,” she said. “What brought this on all of a sudden?”
“Fae and her mother were crying and crying and crying,” said Dooley. “You can’t believe how sad they are that Jeb is in jail now.”
“And they have a little doggie, too,” Max said. “The Bichon Frisé that used to belong to Jeb and Camilla? Her name is Sasha and she says Jeb would never hurt anyone. No way. So you see, Fae is right. Someone is trying to frame her daddy for murder, and you have to find out who the real killer is so Jeb can come home and be with his family again.”