by Nic Saint
“Hey, little buddy,” the soft object spoke, and looking up Brutus realized he’d been caught by a friendly giant.
Looking up even further, he saw he’d dropped off a cliff. A sort of man-made promontory that overlooked another duck pond. And by the side of that pond, a man had been sleeping off his hangover—at least judging from the powerful smell of booze on him.
Dang it! This was the third time he’d almost died today!
Chapter 24
Dooley and I snuck further into the room, adamant to talk to that dog, whether he liked it or not. And obviously he didn’t like it one bit.
“Hey, dog,” I said, in a bid to get him to come from behind the nightstand. “Nice doggie, doggie.”
“We just want to talk to you,” said Dooley.
In the bed just by our side, Wolf Langdon stirred. No matter how softly we talked, our meowing probably disturbed his slumber. We needed to do this fast, before he woke up and kicked us out of his room!
“Doggie!” I loud-whispered. “We need to ask you a few questions.”
“Yeah, it’s not as if we’re going to bite you or something,” Dooley chimed in.
We both laughed at that. Just the idea. Cats biting a dog! Ha ha.
But the Chihuahua didn’t laugh along. He probably wasn’t in on the joke.
“Look, we’re cat detectives,” I said, “And we’re trying to figure out who killed Dany Cooper.”
“Do you know who Dany Cooper was?” asked Dooley.
“I know who Dany was,” the dog said, in a scared little voice. He didn’t sound or behave like any dog I’d ever met.
“Well, she was murdered this afternoon,” I said, “so we’re trying to figure out who did it.”
“You’re not going to hurt me?” asked the doggie.
“Of course not. Why would we want to hurt you?” I said, more abruptly than I intended.
“Oh, please don’t scratch me,” said the doggie. “A cat once scratched me and I didn’t like it.”
“We’re not the scratching kind,” I assured him.
“I’m sure glad Harriet didn’t come along,” Dooley whispered. “She would have scratched him for sure.”
“Dooley, shush,” I said. Addressing the Chihuahua, I repeated, “We don’t scratch dogs, dog. Usually it’s the other way around.”
“Yeah, dogs like to bite us, for some reason,” Dooley added. “No idea why. We’re not that tasty, as far as I know.”
“I’m not going to bite you,” said the doggie. “I never bite anyone—except my bone, of course. I like to chew my bone.”
“Well, that’s all right,” I said. “You won’t bite us and we won’t scratch you. Deal?”
“Um, okay,” he said, then reluctantly came crawling out from behind the nightstand.
He looked funny, with his big ears and his short body. His tail was down and he still looked pretty scared.
It was a novel experience. No dog had ever been afraid of me before.
“So what do you know about Dany Cooper?” I asked.
“She was nice. And my master liked her a lot. And I do mean a lot.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, they were putting their lips together a lot, and they spent an awful lot of time naked in bed together.”
Dooley and I were silent for a beat, then Dooley said, “Yeah, I guess they did like each other a lot.”
“Do you think your master could have something to do with Dany’s death?”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe he killed her?”
The dog cocked his head and stared at me. “I don’t get it.”
He didn’t strike me as the sharpest dog in the shed, so I repeated the question. “Did Wolf kill Dany?”
“But why would he kill her? He kept telling her he loved her. He’d also bought her a big ring and he said he was going to marry her as soon as his wife signed off on the divorce.”
“Divorce? Wolf was getting a divorce?”
“Sure. At least that’s what he told Dany. I don’t think he told Emily, though.”
“Emily?”
“Wolf’s wife. She’s very sweet. She was here, and then she wasn’t. I don’t think she liked it that Wolf spent so much time with Dany, even though he said he didn’t.” He shook his little head. “Humans are weird.”
“Tell me about it,” I said with a sigh.
“Anyway, Wolf loved Dany, so he would never hurt her. Besides, I was sitting next to him the whole time, so if he had killed her, don’t you think I would have noticed?”
So there went that particular theory. “I guess so.”
“This is just so sad. Dany always gave me lots of cuddles and kisses. I liked her.”
I suppressed a shiver. Who would want to kiss and cuddle a dog? Now that I was this close to him, I discovered Harriet was right. Dogs did smell. Some type of musky odor. Yuck.
“So exactly where were you when Dany was killed?” I heard Dooley ask. I was already moving back to the door, writing the interview off as a huge waste of time.
“I was right there. I actually saw her getting killed.”
“Wait, what?” I said, turning back.
“Yeah, it wasn’t pleasant,” said the dog. “This human stood chatting with her, then suddenly they made a move and her face went all weird, and then she dropped down.”
“Doggie,” I said intently.
“You don’t have to keep calling me doggie,” said the doggie. “I have a name, you know, and it’s Ringo.”
“Ringo. Listen to me. This is very important. Who was that person?”
“I don’t know. I think it was a man, judging from his posture, though I can’t be sure. He had his back turned to me so I couldn’t see his face. All I know is that he was wearing—”
“A yellow parka. Yeah, we know.”
“If you knew already, why do you ask?” he said indignantly.
So maybe dogs are not so dumb after all.
“You never saw his face?” I asked, just to make sure.
“No, I didn’t. But I can tell you who did. Mr. Owl.”
“Mr. Owl,” I said dubiously.
“Yeah. He always sits in that tree. I’ve seen him every time. He’s very friendly, too. Always greets me with a nod and a kind word. He was in that tree today, so he must have seen the whole thing. You talk to Mr. Owl and he’ll tell you who killed Dany.”
I held out my paw and Ringo winced, probably expecting me to scratch him. Instead, I patted him on the shoulder. “Ringo. You have given us a vital clue.”
“I have?” he said.
“You sure have. You may even have solved Dany’s murder.”
A smile slowly crept up Ringo’s narrow face, and his big ears distended even wider, giving him an owlish look. “I like that,” he said. “It’s not nice when people kill other people, especially when they’re sweet and kind, like Dany Cooper.”
“You’re absolutely right. And we’re going to make sure the killer won’t get away with it.”
“Our human’s boyfriend is a cop,” Dooley explained. “So we tell our human who the killer is, and Chase makes sure he goes to prison.”
“Wait, you can talk to your human? And they understand what you’re saying?”
“She does. She’s one of those rare humans who understand cat language.”
Ringo cast a hopeful look at his inert human. “Boy, oh, boy. How I wish Wolf could understand me. The stories I would tell him!”
We said our goodbyes, and just as we left the room, Odelia and Chase entered. From behind us, Ringo asked, “And who are these people? Should I bark? Alert my master?”
“No, Ringo,” I said. “These are the humans I was talking about. They’re looking for your master’s phone.”
“On the nightstand. See ya, guys.”
“See ya, buddy.” To Odelia, as she entered, I said, “the phone is on the nightstand.” She gave me a wink in return.
“I have to say, Max,” said Dooley as we d
escended the stairs. “I may just have had a change of heart about dogs. They may not be as horrible and nasty as I always thought.”
“We met nice dogs before, remember?”
“Yeah, but I always figured they were the exception that proved the rule. Now I’m not so sure.”
“I’m not so sure either.”
“When Odelia gets a dog, I sure hope it’s a nice one like Ringo.”
And I sure hoped she wouldn’t get a dog. Nice or not, frankly speaking I was having enough trouble navigating the complicated relationships in Odelia’s menagerie as it was.
Chapter 25
Odelia snuck over to the nightstand, and grabbed Wolf’s phone. So the stories of the director sleeping with his phone under his pillow were greatly exaggerated.
“Hello, little one,” she whispered as she turned over the phone in her hand.
Next to her, Wolf stirred in his sleep, muttered something, then turned to his other side and went right back to snoring softly.
Meanwhile, the Chihuahua sat studying her every move. He’d clearly been briefed by Max, or else he would have barked his little head off.
She tiptoed back to where Chase was checking the pockets of Wolf’s jacket and together they clicked the phone to life. The screen lock was one of those password patterns.
She glanced at the doggie, which sat staring at her unblinkingly. Too bad she didn’t speak a dog’s language. And too bad Max and Dooley had already left, for they could talk to any animal in existence, apparently, and then relate what they told them to her. Her finger hovered over the phone, but Chase shook his head.
“Three attempts and the phone will be locked. Better not risk it.”
They hadn’t really thought this through, had they?
Just then, the little doggie softly barked once.
She turned to him and saw he was still eyeing her intently. He then did the most amazing thing. He slashed the air like Zorro used to do with his sword, creating the letter Z.
Both Chase and Odelia stared at the dog, who seemed to roll his eyes, then repeated the gesture. Slash. Yep. Just like Zorro.
She glanced down at the phone in her hand. Could it be?
Chase shook his head and mouthed, ‘No! Don’t do it!’
She decided to throw caution to the wind and traced the letter Z across the small panel, connecting the dots. Instantly the phone unlocked and she made a little fist pump.
‘Omigod,’ Chase mouthed. He couldn’t believe it either.
Odelia turned to the Chihuahua and nodded her thanks. And she could have sworn the dog actually smiled!
She immediately called up the email app and scrolled through Wolf’s emails. When she saw he had a hundred unread ones, she typed Dany into the search window. Nothing. She thought for a moment, then brought up the WhatsApp app. And immediately hit the motherlode. She scrolled through Dany and Wolf’s chats. It was all pretty saucy stuff.
“Mamma mia,” Chase muttered as they read a few excerpts together. “EL James should turn this into a book.”
It confirmed that Wolf and Dany had been in a relationship, but nothing more. Odelia idly read through a few of the more recent exchanges while Chase dug through Wolf’s closet, in search of something to tie the director to the murder.
Dany had been worried about Wolf’s wife Emily, apparently, repeatedly asking Wolf how far along he was in his divorce procedure. Wolf kept assuring her he was going to file for divorce any day now, and she kept asking him to talk to his wife soon.
Finally, in the last message she’d sent him, she’d said, ‘I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep quiet. Each time I meet Emily I’m afraid I’m going to just blab it out!’
Odelia frowned. Wolf might have construed this as a threat. He might never have had any intention of divorcing his wife, who apparently was the source of his wealth and an important part of his business. So maybe he’d killed Dany before she could ‘blab it out?’
Suddenly, she noticed Chase was wildly gesturing at her from the closet he was digging through. She hurried over, Wolf’s phone still in her hand. When Chase stepped aside, she saw it: a yellow parka, tucked away in the far corner of his packed closet.
Chase gave her a meaningful look and took it out by the clothes hanger, careful not to touch the jacket itself. And the moment he did, she saw the tiny red dots that were spattered all across the front of the parka.
Blood.
Dany’s blood.
Dooley and I were walking back to the car when Harriet came walking up to us. Head hanging down, she didn’t look like her usual feisty self.
“Hey, Max. Hey, Dooley,”’ she said, and even sounded downcast.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Where is Brutus?”
“Oh, around, I guess,” she said, sounding as cheerful as a zombie who hasn’t had their daily portion of brains.
Just then, there was a yelp followed by a scream, and then we were running towards the source of the sound. I’d recognized the yelp as coming from Brutus, the scream as human in origin.
When we rounded the house, we discovered the scream had come from a small duck pond. What was it with duck ponds today? The pond itself was dwarfed by a rock wall that rose up like some jagged-edged monstrosity. The front was outfitted with climbing holds but the top hovered over that pond like a giant black beak.
When we arrived on the scene, a potbellied man was sitting on a bench, right beneath the promontory, looking dazed, with Brutus positioned squarely on his stomach.
“Brutus!” I cried. “What happened?”
“He-he saved me,” said Brutus, staring at the man with some incredulity, as the man, equally flustered, was staring right back at him. “He just saved my life.”
“Good thing you landed on my tummy, little buddy,” said the man now. “Otherwise you’d have been nothing but a grease spot on this bench.”
“See?” said Dooley. “My analogy was right on the money.”
“Oh, shut up, Dooley,” said Harriet. “Brutus?” she said croakily. “Are you all right?”
“I am now,” he said. He looked shaken, not stirred, but otherwise in excellent fettle. The man, on the other hand, now pushed the black cat from his belly and rubbed it. He looked a little winded. Being hit by a falling Brutus would do that to a person, of course.
We all looked up, at the promontory thirty feet over our heads. It wouldn’t have killed Brutus, and then again it might have.
“How the hell did you get up there?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I was wandering, thinking, and suddenly… I was falling.”
“The back of the wall must be a gentle slope down. Probably there’s some kind of path leading from the top, so climbers can walk down once they’ve reached there,” I said.
“This makes it the third time I almost died today,” said Brutus with an uncharacteristic tremor in his voice. “Maybe I should just lock myself up in the house from now on, and stay put.”
“Hey, that reminds me of those movies,” said Dooley.
“What movies?” I said.
“Those Final Destination movies. A group of teenagers cheats death, and then death comes after them, killing them in increasingly freaky and horrible ways, one by one, until they’re all dead, except for the token survivor, who gets it in the next movie.”
“Dooley,” I said, shaking my head. “Not now.”
“But it’s exactly the same thing!” He turned to Brutus. “Did you cheat death by any chance in the past couple of weeks?”
“I cheated death three times today,” he said. He could have been white around the nostrils. It’s hard to tell with a cat, what with all the fur.
“Mh,” said Dooley, pensive. “In the movies death eventually gets them for sure. So maybe this is not your typical Final Destination case. Or maybe it is. In which case you’ll die in a most excruciating but very cinematic and elaborate way in the next couple of hours.”
“Oh, shut up, Dooley!” Harriet cried suddenly.
“Why don’t you just shut up for once!” And after this sudden outburst she ran off at a brisk pace, leaving us all a little puzzled.
“I guess she doesn’t like movies,” said Dooley.
Just then, all hell broke loose: the lights in the manor all lit up, and loud sirens of police cars on approach ripped through the nocturnal silence.
“Uh-oh,” said Brutus. “I hope they’re not here for me.”
Chapter 26
Odelia watched on as Wolf Langdon was led from the house and into a waiting squad car. He’d already professed his innocence several times, but it was hard to argue with the yellow parka covered in Dany’s blood. When they’d finally woken him up and confronted him with the evidence, he’d been flabbergasted and had exclaimed, “That’s not mine. That’s not mine, I’m telling you! Someone put it there!” Even now, as he was being pushed into the car, he was screaming, “I’m being framed! You have to believe me! This is a setup!”
“Fat chance,” said Chase. “Framed. Yeah, right.” He bumped Odelia’s fist. “Well done, babe. Your hunch paid off in spades.” And then he walked off, to accompany Wolf to the station house for questioning.
Uncle Alec came waddling up to her. “I see my advice to stay out of this investigation was followed to the letter, huh?”
“I’m sorry, uncle. You know as well as I do it’s hard to stay away from a case like this—especially when it involves someone I knew personally.”
He nodded. “I guess I shouldn’t have warned you off. I should have known you’d ignore me. But what the hell were you and Chase doing in the man’s bedroom?”
“Following a lead,” she said. She explained about the message she’d seen on Wolf’s phone, and how she’d decided to follow up on it.
“And a good thing you did.” He scratched his scalp. “Now how am I going to explain your presence at the manor? You didn’t happen to have a search warrant, did you?”