Purrfect Betrayal

by Nic Saint

  Tino sank down onto a Louis XIV couch, and invited them to join him.

  For a moment, they sat watching the masses moving to the pulsating beats, which filtered into the room, then he smiled and said, “Detective Kingsley. What do you think of my very own police mirror?”

  Chase looked surprised. “You know who I am?”

  “Of course. And you, Odelia Poole, reporter and sometime sleuth. I’ve followed both your careers with interest. I never thought I’d see the day you showed up in my place of business dressed like Superman and Agnetha Fältskog, though.”

  Odelia took off the wig. “I hate this thing,” she admitted. “I don’t understand how people can wear wigs and not want to take them off all the time. They’re so itchy!”

  “I agree with you there, Miss Poole,” said Tino. “Now, tell me all about this Jeb Pott business. As you will readily understand, I have a keen interest in everything that has to do with that man.”

  Chapter 33

  “It’s come to our attention that Jeb owed you a great deal of money,” said Chase, taking the lead.

  “And you think I had something to do with the death of his ex-wife, implicating him in her murder as a way of putting the squeeze on him,” said Tino.

  “The thought had occurred to us, yes,” Chase admitted.

  Tino smiled a thin smile. “You know why I wear this uniform, Detective?”

  “No, actually I don’t.”

  “It doesn’t exactly strike fear in the hearts of my enemies. I know that. But a frog has one advantage over your better-known predators: it lashes out and snaps up a bug in a fraction of a second. The bug never sees the end coming, and therefore has no defense. Creatures that look as benign and harmless as a common frog don’t use fear to keep their enemies in line. They simply gobble them up when they’re not looking.”

  “Do you gobble up your enemies when they’re not looking?” asked Odelia.

  “It’s just a figure of speech, Miss Poole.” He pointed at her. “I read your pieces. They’re well-written and entertaining. You’re a skilled writer and I admire that. Detective Kingsley’s talents lie elsewhere, and I’d be lying if I said I admired him as much as I do you.”

  “Okay, let’s cut to the chase here, Tino,” said Chase. “Did you have something to do with the murder of Camilla Kirby or not?”

  “I could play games with you all night, Detective,” said the club owner, pursing his lips and now looking completely like an actual frog. “But this is a matter that I want to see resolved as quickly as you. Jeb owes me money, that is correct. I loaned it to him out of the goodness of my heart, and because I’m a great fan of his work. Every day he spends locked up is a day he can’t earn the money to pay me back. So why would I want to put him there?”

  “You could have murdered Camilla to show Jeb you mean business.”

  “That’s not how I operate. I may talk a big game but I’m not a murderer. I don’t go around killing people’s loved ones to put pressure on them. That kind of behavior is bad for business, and ultimately attracts too much attention from the wrong crowd.” He gestured to Chase. “You, Detective Kingsley. And your uncle, Miss Poole. Attention I don’t want or need. No, I’m afraid I had nothing to do with Miss Kirby’s death, and I’m as anxious as you are to find out what happened. Did Jeb kill her? That would be too bad, because I’ll probably forfeit my money. Did someone else kill her in order to frame Jeb? Also not in my best interests. So I sincerely hope you find whoever is responsible so that Jeb Pott can go back to making blockbuster movies, entertaining the masses and paying me back what he owes me.”

  He appeared to be telling the truth, Odelia thought. Though with a gangster you just never knew, of course.

  “Maybe you can ask around,” said Chase. “Maybe one of your associates knows something or heard something.”

  “I have asked around, as you can imagine, which is how I knew before you showed up here in your Superman costume that you’re in charge of this case. But so far I haven’t been able to find out anything that can shed light on the matter. But you could, Miss Poole.”

  “I could what?” she asked.

  “Solve this case. I’ve followed your exploits eagerly, and you seem to have a knack for solving tough riddles. I’m sure that if you put your mind to it, you’ll solve this one, too.”

  “I don’t know. This is a particularly tough one.”

  “I know. It has stumped me, too.” He blinked as he surveyed the scene beyond his private room. “Just look out there.”

  Odelia looked out there, and so did Chase.

  “What do you see?”

  “Um, a lot of people having a good time?”

  “No, a lot of people wanting to have a good time, and hoping they’ll find it. But in order to have a good time, you need to look beyond the obvious. Get in touch with your soul. Look for the truth within.”

  It all sounded a little new-agey for Odelia’s taste, but she nodded anyway.

  “What are you saying, Tino?” asked Chase.

  “I’m saying that if Miss Poole wants to solve this murder, she needs to move beyond the obvious. To look inside—into her own heart. That’s where she’ll find all the answers.”

  Chase rolled his eyes, but Odelia thought he had a point.

  “I think I see what you mean,” she said.

  “Right? I don’t know why I just said that.” He spread his arms. “A gift I got from my mother. She was a fortune teller, and had the gift of sight. She always said I had the same gift, but the only good it does me is when I read the people I do business with. And even then I get it wrong sometimes. Like with Jeb Pott. I thought he was a safe bet, and now it looks like he wasn’t. So prove me right, Miss Poole. Prove to me that Jeb is not a killer, and that I was right about him all along.”

  As they walked home, Odelia pondered these words. “Look for the truth within,” she murmured.

  “Oh, don’t you start believing that crap, too,” said Chase. “He was just messing with you.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Odelia. “I think he really meant what he said, about having the gift and inheriting it from his mother.”

  “Tino Krawczalis’s mother was a prostitute, and if she was a fortune teller she never advertised it.”

  “Still, she might have had the gift of sight.”

  So she needed to look inside to solve this particular murder. Only problem was, as much as she wanted to believe Tino, she had a hard time making sense of the mystery that surrounded the death of Camilla Kirby.

  “I know what we have to do,” she said, patting Chase on the arm.

  “Don’t tell me. You want me to look inside, too.”

  “I’m going to take out my whiteboard. And I’m going to do it right now.”

  “It’s after midnight! I think you need to go to bed. Get some sleep. Look at this whole thing again with fresh eyes in the morning.”

  “Oh, we will go to bed, but first we’re going to create an investigation board.”

  Chapter 34

  “So who are our suspects?” asked Odelia.

  Dooley and I and Harriet and Brutus were all seated in the front row, Odelia’s captive audience. Bim, Bam and Bom were also there, although they were a lot less captive. In fact they downright ignored her, chasing each other’s tails and gamboling about the room like a fluff-ball stampede.

  On the couch sat Gran, looking sleepy, as well as Chase, Tex, Marge and Uncle Alec.

  “Um…” said Marge. “Suspect number one is Jeb Pott, obviously? Even though I don’t think he actually did it.”

  “Why not?” asked Tex. “He’s the one with the blood on his hands.”

  “And the one who’s in the pictures this Jack Palmer took,” said Chase.

  “What pictures?” asked Alec. “We still haven’t found his damn camera.”

  “Jeb is such a sweetheart,” said Marge. “I’m sure he’s innocent. Remember that movie where he took such good care of his dear old mother? A man like that ca
n never raise his hand in anger at anyone, not even a horrible person like Camilla Kirby.”

  “So you thought she was pretty horrible, too, huh?” said Gran.

  “Oh, yes, for sure.”

  Odelia wrote at the top of her whiteboard the name Jeb Pott. In her effort to write as legible as she could, she stuck her tongue out, which I thought was pretty cute.

  “Next,” she said. “Who else could have done it?”

  “Well, this man across the street,” said Gran. “This reporter fella.”

  “Jack Palmer. But why would he kill Camilla?”

  “Because... he disliked celebrities and wanted to teach Jeb a lesson?”

  “Unlikely, but I’m still going to write it down,” she said. Chase was rolling his eyes again.

  “I saw that!” Gran said.

  “You saw what?” asked Chase, feigning innocence.

  “You were rolling your eyes at me!”

  “It’s called yoga for the eyes. It involves rolling the eyes and palming them and other things that are highly beneficial for your long-term eyesight.”

  “You are such a smart-ass. But you’re a handsome smart-ass and I like you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said with a grin.

  “So we have Jeb and Jack Palmer,” said Odelia, visibly proud of her work. “Next?” Instead of waiting for her audience to come up with more names, she decided to speed up the process and do it herself. After all, everyone was tired, and wanted to go to bed.

  “Prunella Lemon, because Jeb ruined her career. Fitz Priestley, because Jeb ruined his career. Tino Krawczalis, because Jeb owed him money and he wanted to coerce Jeb to pay him. Conrad Jenkins—”

  “Who’s Conrad Jenkins?” asked Marge, who’d missed big chunks of the investigation on account of the fact that she’d been busy prepping monthly book club night at the library.

  “He’s Mom’s drug dealer,” Uncle Alec said.

  “Vitamins!” Gran cried. “They were vitamins!”

  “Oh, right,” said Marge, nodding. “The vitamin dealer.”

  “How are you feeling now, Vesta?” asked Tex.

  “I’ll feel better if you tell me I don’t have to give blood in the morning,” she snapped.

  “Looks to me like she’s fine,” said Alec, and Tex nodded emphatically.

  “So who else is there?” asked Odelia, studying her board.

  “There’s Helena Grace,” I said.

  “Helena Grace?” Odelia didn’t seem convinced. “Why would she want to kill Camilla?”

  “Because she stole her husband?”

  Odelia nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Okay. And she would implicate Jeb, why?”

  “Because Jeb left her and she wanted to get even.”

  “He’s got a point, Odelia,” said Gran.

  Chase, who had only heard meowing, frowned. “Who’s got a point?”

  “Odelia,” Gran was quick to say.

  “What point? I’m not following.”

  “That’s because you’re not taking your vitamins,” said Gran, patting the cop’s arm.

  “I said that Helena is also a suspect,” said Odelia, jotting down the woman’s name.

  “I must have missed that part,” said Chase, and rubbed his eyes.

  “And you can add Fae, too,” I said. “After all, she might have held a grudge against her father’s new wife, too.”

  “Fae Pott,” said Odelia, and wrote down the name.

  “Why Fae?” asked Chase.

  “Because she was harboring a grudge against Camilla,” said Odelia, repeating my words.

  “Right,” said Chase. “Unlikely, though. The girl is clearly crazy about her dad. And she hired you to investigate the murder. Would she do that if she was guilty?”

  “Unlikely,” Odelia agreed, and put Fae’s name between brackets, and then Helena’s name as well. “Helena is clearly very sad that Jeb is in jail,” she explained. “And that kind of sadness can’t be faked, no matter how great an actress she is.”

  “She does look very sad,” Dooley agreed. “In fact she was crying even more the second time we saw her than the first.”

  “Can we speed this up?” asked Harriet. “I need my beauty sleep.”

  “I’m not following,” said Brutus. “Are you following, Max?”

  “So far, so good,” I said, though I had to admit the case was pretty complicated.

  “Okay,” said Odelia. “Now for the other suspects. Conrad?”

  “Has an alibi,” said Uncle Alec, who sat slumped in his chair, clearly ready to nod off. “He was being ‘entertained’ by one of his customers at her place, and she swears up and down that he didn’t leave the house at any point during the night.”

  “Tino Krawczalis?” asked Odelia, going over the list from bottom to top.

  “Also has an alibi,” said Uncle Alec. “He was in New York that night, opening a new club. Plenty of people saw him.”

  “Was he dressed in his Kermit costume?” asked Odelia with a giggle.

  “He was,” Alec confirmed. “He seems to like that particular outfit.”

  “Okay, moving on. Fitz Priestley.”

  “His wife says he was with her all night.”

  “Prunella Lemon. Husband provided her with an alibi.”

  “Not sure how strong those spousal alibis are, though,” said Alec. “Wives and husbands tend to say anything to protect their partners, so I wouldn’t take them off your list for now.”

  Odelia tapped the name at the top of the list. “That leaves us with Jeb Pott.”

  “Admit it, babe,” said Chase. “He’s still our number one suspect. He had means, motive, and opportunity, and from where I’m sitting he’s guilty as hell.”

  “Tough for his ex-wife and kid,” said Tex, rubbing his eyes.

  Everyone looked tired, and it was time to go home.

  “I think maybe I should tell Helena and Fae I have to disappoint them but that I haven’t found conclusive evidence of anyone other than Jeb being behind the murder of his ex-wife,” said Odelia. “And as soon as Jack’s camera turns up, I’m afraid that’s it for Jeb.”

  “So what about this Jack Palmer?” asked Gran. “Could he have done it?”

  “I don’t see why he’d kill a woman he’s never even met,” said Odelia.

  “His death is definitely an accident, right?” asked Marge.

  Odelia looked at her uncle, who nodded. “No sign of foul play. The guy stepped on a rotten step and broke his neck. Case closed.”

  And so was the meeting apparently, for everyone got up and started moving to their respective dwellings.

  As far as I was concerned, it was obvious I didn’t have anything useful to contribute to this particular case, so Dooley and I followed Odelia and Chase up to bed, and Harriet and Brutus followed Gran and the others to the house next door.

  And as I settled in for the night, or at least until Odelia was fast asleep, I said, “This is just about the weirdest case we’ve ever been involved in, don’t you agree, Dooley?”

  “Yeah, we caught the killer even before the investigation got started.”

  “Not every case has to be the same, though,” I said, and placed my head on my paws.

  And then I dozed off. It had been a long day, and since the case was apparently closed now, the culprit in jail, I decided not to spend another moment of my precious time on this investigation. What? I could have finished an entire bag of Cat Snax in that time.

  Chapter 35

  The next day, Marge decided to take her cat menagerie to work. Just as a special treat for us. Chase didn’t mind taking the kittens to the police station again, but Marge felt that everyone deserved to have a chance to play with them, and there were so many kids who’d asked about the kittens when Marge had announced her daughter had recently adopted three of them, that she felt she really needed to show them off now.

  So in the car we all went and onward to the library—no less than seven cats in the backseat, four of them adults and th
ree babies.

  Bim, Bam and Bom, of course, were playing around in the car footwell to their heart’s content, the rest of us stodgy old cats perched neatly on our seats, not moving an inch.

  “You know, Max?” said Brutus as he surveyed the tiny bundles of joy cavorting about, “when I see those kittens I suddenly feel old.”

  “Same thing here,” I admitted. “For one thing, if I drop down from a great height I don’t recuperate as well as those little tykes do.”

  “I don’t see what the big appeal is,” said Harriet, who still hadn’t warmed to the youngsters.

  “They’re just so much fun to be around,” said Dooley. “In fact they don’t make me feel old—they make me feel young!”

  “Oh, that’s just crap,” said Harriet. “You’re only as old as you feel, and I, for one, refuse to believe in that age-old ageist nonsense. I feel young, therefore I am young.”

  “Yes, but they really are young,” Brutus said, “whereas we are old—um, old-er,” he quickly amended when she shot him a terse look.

  Bom had discovered Harriet’s fluffy tail again and now sat chewing on it. When she found out, she swiped at the young whippersnapper, but he didn’t seem to mind. He probably thought it was a game, so he slapped her right back. After a while the other two kittens wanted in on the action, and they all started playing with Harriet, who kept trying to fend them off. The harder she tried, the more they crawled all over her.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sakes,” she grumbled, and finally managed to swing one kitten in my lap, the second one in Dooley’s and the third in Brutus’s.

  I grinned at the little one, and when she dug her tiny teeth into my tail, I didn’t even mind. I’d grown to like the little angels—or devils, depending on how you felt about them.

  We arrived at the library and Marge bundled up the kittens then let us walk into the side entrance under our own steam. We’d been there plenty of times before. The kids had so much fun playing with us that I always loved our time at the library. Even the old folks enjoyed our company. They always said being around us cats brought them so much joy that they returned home happy as clams. And so did we, actually.