by Nic Saint
“Again? You think she found it before?”
That was a toughie, and he was lost in thought once more. When he finally emerged, it was to address a different topic altogether. “Maybe I should take one of those pills.”
I looked up in alarm. “Pills? What pills?”
“The ones you and Brutus took. It’s obvious they did you a lot of good.”
“They made us puke our guts out.”
“And then they made you find love.”
“I didn’t find love.”
“You found Clarice—and I do think she likes you, Max. The way she was looking at you just now.”
“She called me a sissy cat!”
“I’m sure she meant it as a compliment.” He sighed wistfully. “My one true love will come to me once I take those pills. I’m sure about that now.”
Good thing Odelia threw those pills in the trash. We’d arrived home and traipsed in through the cat door Odelia had her dad and uncle and Chase install in the kitchen. Yes, it had taken three men to install one little door. Yours truly had gotten stuck in the first iteration, and the next ones, but the current version was one size fits all—even my size.
To our surprise Grandma was seated on the sofa, watching one of her daytime soaps.
“Gran? What are you doing here?” I asked upon seeing the crusty old lady.
“Watching television. What does it look like I’m doing?” she said without looking away from a couple of overly handsome doctors chatting up a couple of overly pretty female patients.
“Shouldn’t you be watching television in your own home?” I asked, having developed a powerful sense of privacy ever since the Brutuses and Chase Kingsleys of this world had started invading my home.
She waved an annoyed hand. “This is my home now. I moved in with my granddaughter.”
Dooley and I shared a look of surprise.
“You’re not going to Colorado?” asked Dooley, hope surging.
“Nah. The Goldsmiths can have their Colorado. They don’t want me—I don’t want them. Good riddance.” She cast a quick glance down at Dooley. “You look awfully pleased.”
Dooley couldn’t speak from the emotion clogging up his throat so I decided to speak for him. “Dooley was afraid you were going to take him to Colorado, away from his friends and family.”
Grandma frowned, as if she hadn’t considered this. “Look, fellas,” she said finally, “maybe this whole Goldsmith business wasn’t such a bright idea after all. I mean, going to live with one’s in-laws can be a terrible nuisance. Just look at me and Tex. What a mess! I swear to God, if that Philippe or any of his ilk had given you or me a hard time, I’d have packed my bags and returned to Hampton Cove just as soon as I had the chance, millions or no millions.” She scratched Dooley, who’d jumped up on the couch, behind the ears. “I’d never let anyone talk down to you, my pet. You know that, right? If those people had given you the cold shoulder I’d have told them to go screw themselves. Besides, I’m needed here.”
This gave me pause. Needed here? Dooley, too, found this statement odd.
“Needed for what, Gran?” he asked.
One eye on her soap opera and one eye on Dooley, she said vaguely, “Odelia, of course. It’s obvious she’s gonna need the sage advice of a wise woman like myself.”
This could only mean one thing, and Dooley came right out and said it: “Babies?”
“Uh-huh,” said Gran absently. A particularly handsome doctor was now nuzzling the neck of a particularly pretty female patient, and so she shushed us when we said more.
Dooley jumped down from the couch and joined me for an impromptu emergency meeting in the kitchen, next to my bowls of filtered water, tasty kibble and prime pâté.
“Gran has moved in,” Dooley said, summing up the salient point succinctly.
“Yes, she has,” I said, nodding seriously.
“And she just admitted she’s here for the babies—plural.”
“Yes, she did.”
“You know what this means, Max.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Soon there won’t be a place for us here.”
“No, there won’t.”
We shared a look of extreme concern, one thought at the forefront of our minds.
“The pound!” we both bleated.
Chapter 28
“Where can she be?” Odelia asked annoyedly. She and Chase had been looking all over for Tracy Sting, but thus far the woman had eluded their dragnet. The rest of the Hampton Cove Police Department, too, had kept a watchful eye—but no luck there either.
They were back at the hotel, seated in the lobby, knowing that sooner or later the woman had to show up there. Her room was empty, that much they knew, and she hadn’t been in since right after the explosion that had taken her client’s life. So where was she?
“She might have returned home,” Chase suggested.
“Columbus, Ohio? Didn’t you put out an APB on her?”
“I did, but if she rented a car she might have slipped through.”
“Her clothes are in her room. Her luggage. Everything.”
“If she’s the one that did this she might have left regardless.”
Which meant they were wasting precious time in this lobby. It felt as if Odelia had spent days at this hotel already, which actually was partly true. She dug into the bowl with potato-covered peanuts the receptionist had been so kind to put out for them. Probably another bad idea. But they were seriously addictive and she’d always been a nervous eater.
“So did your grandmother get settled in all right?”
She gave Chase an ‘are-you-kidding-me’ look. “She took my Hello Kitty sheets.”
“Uh-oh.”
“And then she told me she’s going to stay with me permanently. As in for-e-vah.”
Now it was his turn to give her the look.
She threw up her hands. “I can’t just throw her out, Chase. She’s my grandmother.”
“We could… all move in together. You, me and Granny. That could be... fun. Right?”
He didn’t sound convinced. “You and me and my grandmother. In the same house.”
“Why not? How bad can it be?”
“Bad. Very bad.” She sighed. “We’ll just have to learn to live without, I guess.”
“Live without…” He gestured between them. “…this?”
“Uh-huh. She told me something about putting in her earplugs but I wouldn’t feel comfortable with my granny in the next room. Like you said, it’s something of a turn-off.”
“When you put it like that.”
“I don’t know how Mom and Dad have managed all these years.”
“Maybe they never do it?”
She grimaced. “Let’s not go there.” Imagining her parents like that was an even bigger turn-off than imagining her grandmother in the next room, listening to every noise she and Chase made. Then she brightened. “We could rent a room. Here. At this fine establishment.”
He placed an arm around her shoulder. “Or we could do it in my car. Or yours. I’m not picky.”
She giggled, snuggling into his arm. “I’d like that. Let’s steam up some windows.”
Just then, Chase’s phone chimed. When he placed it to his ear and listened, he arched an eyebrow, as if what he was hearing was a highly unusual piece of news. After he disconnected the call, he was silent for a few beats.
“Was that the station?” she asked.
He nodded automatically.
“Well, what did they say? Did they find Tracy Sting?”
“Oh, they found her,” he said in a toneless voice.
“Well? What are you waiting for? Go interrogate the lady.”
“It wasn’t just her they found.”
“What do you mean? She had an accomplice?”
“You could say that.” He seemed to shake something off. “A citizen called in a complaint about a display of public indecency. A couple were going at it inside a stationary vehicle. Going at it wit
h some eagerness I might add. Steamed-up windows and everything.”
“Don’t tell me. Our Miss Nitro and her mystery accomplice?”
He turned to her. “Miss Nitro and your uncle, actually. Cops were dispatched and found them in flagrante delicto inside Alec’s police cruiser—both in a state of undress.”
They walked into the police station, and judging from the looks Dolores, the crusty receptionist, was giving them, by now everyone and their uncle were aware of what had happened. “I can’t believe my uncle the police chief would do such a thing,” Odelia said.
“I can’t believe he’d use the cruiser. Isn’t that misappropriation of police property?”
“Who cares about the car? He was canoodling with a felon!”
“Maybe she’s one of those femme fatales,” he offered. “Those are hard to resist.”
They arrived at interview room number one, where the entire Hampton Cove police force stood staring through the little window at the woman locked inside. She was a striking beauty, no doubt about it. Flaming red hair, perfect features, a chest Odelia would have given her eyeteeth for. At least she was dressed, which hadn’t been the case when they arrested her, as the arresting officer loudly explained to his fascinated audience.
“Where’s my uncle?” asked Odelia.
They all pointed to interview room number two. Odelia took a glance through the window and saw her uncle fuming silently inside, pacing the small space. She grimaced. Awkward. Chase had followed her and placed a hand on her back. “I’ll interview the woman first. See what she says. And then I’ll deal with your uncle.”
She watched as Chase entered the interview room along with a colleague, and folded her arms across her chest. She noticed how every cop standing there with her did the same, all settling in for what promised to be a most entertaining show.
“Miss Sting,” said Chase as he took a seat, his colleague, a female officer named Sarah Flunk, rifling through some notes as she shot not-so-friendly glances at the suspect. “Are you aware that there are laws in this state against public lewdness?”
Miss Sting made an annoyed gesture. “We were in a private vehicle parked in a back alley, hidden from view or so we thought. Can I help it if some nosy parker peeping tom pervert do-gooder decided to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong? And isn’t the chief of police exempt or something?”
Chase coughed into his fist. “Where did you and the Chief meet?”
She leveled an icy look at him. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“I’m asking you.”
“I met him in a bar. He accused me of being a cold-blooded murderer so I invited him to dinner. That’s when he came after me and invited me into his car. Things kinda took off from there.” She made a gesture of annoyance. “Look, we’re consenting adults, officer—”
“Detective.”
“Whatever. None of your business what your boss and I were doing in his car.”
“Fine,” he said. “Frankly I don’t care what you and Chief Alec were doing. What does concern me is that you’re the prime suspect in a murder investigation and that your engaging with the person in charge of that investigation amounts to a form of bribery.”
She uttered an exclamation. “Bribery? Really? Are you nuts?”
“Insulting a police officer isn’t going to—”
“No, really. I already told Alec I didn’t have anything to do with this whole Burt Goldsmith thing.” She sliced the air with her hand, spitting out the words. “No-thing!”
Chase smiled. “Obviously you were most persuasive.”
“You’re a pig,” said the woman, shaking her head.
“And you’re in hot water here, lady. We have four witnesses who claim your company hired you to ‘take care of’ Burt when he wouldn’t go quietly into the night. So you decided to release him from his contract with a bang. What did you tell him? You’re fired?”
“Oh, please,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I guess this is where I tell you I want to speak to my lawyer.”
“And this is where I tell you that it won’t do you any good.”
“Are you going to charge me? If so, go right ahead. If not, I think I’ll be leaving now.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Miss Sting.”
All around Odelia, cops were glued to the one-way window, following the back-and-forth with relish. Just then, Odelia’s phone chimed and she walked out of the small space and into the corridor. “Yes, Gran?” she said, stepping into her uncle’s office for a moment.
“You better get over here,” said her grandmother.
“Why? What happened?”
“It’s Dooley. He’s not well.”
Ice suddenly curdled her veins. “I’ll be there in ten.”
“Come to Vena’s. That’s where we took him.”
Chapter 29
The whole family was gathered at Vena’s, hovering around Dooley’s sickbed. The scene resembled one plucked straight from one of Grandma’s soap operas. Well, minus the beefcake doctor. Instead we had to make do with Vena, not a picture of beauty and grace, unfortunately. Then again, she’d saved Dooley’s life, which made her a hero in my book.
“Why the hell did he take those pills?” asked Tex, shaking his white-haired head.
“I just wanted to see what they tasted like,” said Dooley in a thin and reedy voice.
“You know what they tasted like,” I said. “I told you they tasted horrible. And would more than likely make you puke your guts out.”
I’d jumped on top of the cat bed and was keeping my buddy company. I was the one who’d alerted Grandma that something was wrong when I found Dooley passed out on the kitchen floor, unresponsive and pretty much dead to the world. Apparently he’d hopped on the kitchen counter and had gobbled up all the remaining vitamin pills.
“I never should have left those pills out,” said Odelia.
“You couldn’t have known,” said Marge soothingly.
“Who would have thought that vitamins could be bad for you?” said Grandma.
“Some cats have an adverse reaction,” Vena said. “If you ingest as many as Dooley did, it causes havoc to the digestive system, which in turn puts pressure on the heart.”
“Good thing Max was there to save him,” said Grandma. “If not for him, he might have died.”
“Thanks for saving my life, Max,” said Dooley, smiling weakly.
“Any time, buddy,” I said. “Just don’t swallow so many pills again, will you? You almost gave me heart failure.”
Vena left to attend to some of her other patients, and Odelia addressed Dooley directly. Since Chase wasn’t here, and it was just family, she could talk freely. “Never do that to me again, all right, little guy? I thought I lost you. You scared the hell out of me.”
“I just thought… if you and Chase have those babies—”
“What babies?”
“The babies you and Chase are having. The reason Gran has moved in with us.”
The humans all stared at one another. This was obviously news to them.
Dooley gave them a sad look. “There won’t be a place for us at your home once those babies arrive, and you’ll be forced to take us to the pound. And we all know what life at the pound is like. Not a place for sissy cats like me and Max. A cat needs to be tough to survive life at the pound. Clarice would thrive, but Max and I? Not so much.” He coughed. “We have to toughen up, Max. And we don’t have a lot of time. Those babies will be arriving any day now, so I figured if I took some vitamin pills now and again by the time they drop us off at the pound I’ll be all butch like Brutus or Clarice.” He frowned. “I guess I took too many at once. Should have started with one, then ten, then take it from there. Plus, I thought they’d boost my love life, like I told you. If we’re going to be on our own from now on I want a girlfriend.”
“Oh, Dooley,” said Odelia, stroking the small cat’s fur. “I would never take you to the pound. And where did you get this idea about the babies?”
“Chase and I are simply boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“But boyfriends and girlfriends have babies. Everybody knows that.”
“Damn Discovery Channel,” Grandma grunted.
“I promise you there are no babies on the horizon just yet,” said Odelia gently. “And even if there were, nothing will change for you and Max. Your home will always be with me.”
Dooley gave her a look of such hopefulness it almost brought tears to my eyes. “Do you promise?”
“Yes, I promise,” said Odelia. “Babies or no babies, you’ll always be my baby, too.”
“Aww,” said Marge softly, and even Tex’s eyes suddenly grew moist.
“You’re an idiot, you know that?” I told Dooley.
He sighed contentedly. “Yeah, but I’m Odelia’s idiot.”
Just then, Vena walked back in. “And how is our patient?” She checked Dooley and nodded with satisfaction. “His vital signs are fine. He’ll be up and about in no time. I would like to keep him here overnight, though. Just to make sure he makes a complete recovery.”
“I’ll stay, too,” I said quickly. No way was I going to let my friend stay in a creepy place like this. Clinics, whether for humans or for animals, always give me the heebie-jeebies.
“That’s fine, Vena,” said Odelia. “I know he’s in good hands with you.” She patted my head. “And if you don’t mind, we’ll leave Max here, too. He and Dooley are inseparable.”
“Yeah, they’re not your typical cats,” Vena commented. “Most cats are solitary creatures. Not given to fraternizing with their fellow cats. Max and Dooley are different.”
Odelia smiled. “They sure are.”
This was the point when Vena told the Pooles that visiting hours were over and that it was time to let the patient get some healing shut-eye. She didn’t put it in those exact terms, though, but still managed to shoo everyone out, which was a nice change of scene for us. Usually humans shoo cats out, and to see a human shoo other humans out was a lot of fun.
And then it was just me and Dooley.