by Nic Saint
And so it was that the new day saw us traipsing along the back alleys of Hampton Cove, dumpster diving and searching high and low for the wild cat that was Clarice.
“I hope we find her,” remarked Dooley after we’d scoured our third dumpster that morning. “I don’t feel up to the long hike out into the woods, Max.”
“Me neither,” I admitted.
When Clarice isn’t looking for scrumptious and tasty bits in Hampton Cove’s many dumpsters, she’s scrounging off whatever bestselling scribe is occupying Hetta Fried’s writer’s lodge, which is inconveniently located a goodish bit away from the heart of town.
What with the flea thing and last night’s #pillgate and Dooley’s sad prospects, I wasn’t feeling up to going on a country ramble in the hopes of locating this Shadow feline. I’m prepared to do a lot for my human, but one has to draw the line somewhere, right?
And we were just checking out one of the more dingy back alleys—yes, even a Hamptons haven like Hampton Cove has them—and thumping our paws against the line of dumpsters, caroling, “Clarice, oh, Clari-iece!” like some latter-day Hannibal Lecter wannabes, when suddenly a loud growl sounded and one of the dumpsters spoke back.
“Oh, will you cut it out already?” the dumpster snarled, and I recognized the unmistakable dulcet tones of our favorite wild cat. “You’ll wear out my name. Not to mention scare away the tastiest rats!”
“Rats!” cried Dooley. “I don’t like rats, Max!”
“Relax. She’s just kidding. Aren’t you, Clarice?” I said, louder.
The head of a mangy cat appeared at the top of the dumpster and she jumped down, her fur matted and dotted with bald spots, part of one ear gnawed off and more than a few whiskers missing. Clarice jumped down and started washing her face, giving us nasty glances between licks. “You two look like crap. What have you done to yourselves? Gotten stuck in a wood chipper?” She laughed at her own joke, a series of low and throaty chuckles.
“We need your help, Clarice,” Dooley announced.
“Of course you do.” She then narrowed her eyes at me. “Is that… a collar?”
I cringed. I’d hoped the topic wouldn’t crop up. But of course Clarice’s eagle eyes had immediately spotted the anomaly. “We’ve been suffering from a slight flea issue,” I said.
She laughed a hacking laugh. “Flea issue! That’s why you look so ragged!”
“It’s no laughing matter,” Dooley said. “It’s a terrible ordeal, Clarice. Painful.”
“Painful! You don’t know what pain is, city cat,” she growled, getting in Dooley’s face. “Pain is when you take a punch to the gut from a twenty-pound cat with razors for claws. Pain is when a human steps on your tail and grinds it into the ground. Pain is when your own human throws you off a cliff and leaves you to die!” She was panting from the outburst.
We both stared at her, aghast. “Is that what happened to you?” I asked.
She produced a growling sound at the back of her throat, and for a moment I thought she would lunge at me. Instead, she said, “Never get attached to your human. They will turn their backs on you. And they will leave you to rot and die, alone in the middle of nowhere.”
Cheerful. Life around Clarice is always a feast of careless laughs and cheerfulness.
“Is it true that your human left you tied to a tree trunk and that you had to gnaw off your own paw to free yourself?” asked Dooley in a reverent voice.
Involuntarily we glanced at Clarice’s paws. She seemed to possess all four of them.
“Oh, who cares,” snarled Clarice. “That’s all ancient history anyway.”
Just then, a flea jumped from Dooley in the direction of the feral cat. Clarice snatched it up in midair, then flicked it into her mouth and chomped down. “Not a lot of meat,” she grumbled. “Got any more?”
I gulped. “You’re not afraid they’ll suck your blood?”
She laughed. “A flea suck my blood! I suck their blood! That’s why they never come near me.”
I had noticed she wasn’t wearing a collar. Then again, if her human was the kind of person to throw her off a cliff to leave her to die and rot, he probably wouldn’t take her to Vena’s for flea treatment. “You don’t have fleas?” I asked.
“Do you see a flea on me?” she asked, and I had to admit I didn’t. Fleas were probably more afraid of Clarice than she was of the little parasites. “Now are you gonna tell me what you want or are you gonna stand there yapping about your sad little lives?”
“We’re looking for Shadow,” said Dooley.
“Look behind you. But be quick,” she quipped.
Dooley did look behind him, then back at Clarice. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“Not our shadow,” I clarified. “Shadow. She’s the Most Fascinating Cat in the World, and she’s gone missing. She belonged to the Most Fascinating Man in the World but he got blown up, and if we can find her we want to ask her if she saw who killed her human.”
“Good riddance,” Clarice grunted. “I would blow up my human if I had the chance.”
“Who was your human, Clarice?” asked Dooley, interested.
In response, she merely gave him a dirty look. “I’ve seen Shadow,” she said. “Seen her rooting around my dumpsters, looking for scraps. Sad little creature. Namby-pamby cat. Scurrying away into the shadows like the kind of thing you find when you turn over a rock.”
“Where have you seen her?” I asked, my heart lifting with hope and excitement.
Clarice gestured vaguely. “Around. You’ll have to hurry, though. Cat looked absolutely mangy. Mangy and derelict. Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s dead by now.” She nodded knowingly. “It takes a special kind of cat to survive on these mean streets, boys. Trust me when I tell you these streets are unforgiving and they are relentless. No place for sissy cats like you. Or Shadow.” She gave us a stern look. “Just giving it to you straight. No fairy tales. That way you won’t be disappointed when you come upon her emaciated, rat-infested, maggot-crawling carcass in a gutter on the edge of town, nothing but a piece of road kill.”
Like I said, time spent with Clarice is always a joy to the heart and balm to the soul.
Chapter 24
The interview with the four remaining most interesting men concluded, Odelia decided to swing by the house for a bite to eat. Chase dropped her off and continued on to the station house, wanting to discuss the case with Uncle Alec. And she’d just inserted her key in the door and stepped inside when she became aware that she wasn’t alone.
Someone else was in there with her, and it wasn’t Max or Dooley.
“Who’s there?” she called out, afraid some burglar had decided to go for her meager belongings. They wouldn’t find much to satisfy their thieving tastes. Unless they were fellow cat owners and excited by the prospect of getting their kibble in bulk at the local Walmart or Costco, they’d be sorely disappointed by their sad little haul.
She took a firm hold on the baseball bat she liked to keep next to the front door—one of Chase’s contributions to interior decorating—and took a tentative step. Her house was a smallish affair, and from her position in the hallway she had a good view of the living room, the kitchen, and even the backyard through the sliding glass doors. Just then, the stairs creaked, and she gasped. Someone was in here! Score one for the Poole survival instinct.
“Show yourself!” she yelled. “I’m armed and extremely dangerous!”
She lifted the baseball bat, wondering if she was holding it right and also wondering if she’d have both the time and the gumption to take a swing at this daytime intruder.
Just then, a person came stomping down the stairs and she raised the bat over her head. “I’m—I’m not kidding!” she cried. “I’ve got a weapon and I’m not afraid to use it!”
“Where do you keep the sheets?” asked Grandma, stepping out from the stairwell and giving her a look of annoyance. She frowned when she saw Odelia’s Babe Ruth imitation. “So this is what you get up to when I’m not
looking. Having fun and playing games. And they wonder why this generation is so soft.” She shook her head and headed into the kitchen, opening the fridge. “And nothing to eat, of course. Sad. Very sad.”
“Gran,” Odelia cried, lowering her deadly weapon. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m moving in,” announced her grandmother, extracting a carton of eggs from the fridge and a tomato. “Don’t you have bacon? I need bacon if I’m gonna get through this. Bacon has always been my comfort food of choice.”
“But-but-but,” she sputtered.
Grandma plunked her bony frame down on a high kitchen stool and planted her elbows on the counter. “I got canned,” she said. “Got called out as a fraud and a cheat.”
Odelia stared at her grandmother. “I don’t get it.”
“Neither do I. Things were going great. Philippe was really taking to me, I could tell. Calling me Granny Goldsmith and stuff, and showing me pictures from when he was a baby. He didn’t even mention Scarlett Canyon anymore—having seen right through the woman I’ll bet.” She puckered up her face. “And then she showed up and ruined the whole thing.”
“She?” asked Odelia, also taking a seat at the kitchen counter.
“Sure. She. Amelia Goldsmith she calls herself. Burt’s wife. Turns out Burt may have played the part of the player, cutting a neat swath through a pack of blond bimbos over the years, but all this time the guy was married, can you believe it? Married! And to the same woman, no less. Claims she’s the mother of Burt’s boy Hunter and Philippe is her grandson.”
“But what about the DNA test?”
“Results came back. Neither me nor Scarlett made the cut. Nope,” she said, heaving an unhappy sigh. “Looks like that ship has sailed. Burt and I may have done the horizontal mambo back in the day, but ne’er a son was born from our union. And the same goes for the Canyon menace, though I could have told you this without some stupid darned DNA test.”
“So… that means you’re staying put?”
“Sure.” Gran slapped the counter and got up. “So where are those sheets? And you know I like them light and fluffy. None of that flannel stuff. I’ve got sensitive skin.”
She gave her grandparent a look of confusion. “What do you need sheets for? Don’t you have plenty of sheets at your own place?”
Gran’s face darkened. “I don’t have a place. Marge and Tex are dead to me. No way am I going back to those two backstabbers. After the way they treated me? Not one ounce of support for my bid to become Granny Goldsmith and rake in the millions.” She shook her head decidedly. “Nah-uh. I’m moving in with you.” She spread her arms. “Granny’s home!”
Chapter 25
We met up with Brutus and Harriet on the corner of Main Street and Franklin Avenue. Brutus and Harriet had formed a second team to look for Shadow. It was obvious from their expressions that they hadn’t found what they were looking for either, though.
“Did you find her?” asked Brutus.
“No, did you?” asked Dooley, who had a hard time reading faces.
“We did find Clarice,” I told the others. “She said she saw Shadow and that if we don’t hurry it might be too late.”
Brutus frowned. “You mean she might have left town?”
“She might have left the planet.”
“As in… flown off into space?”
“As in being dead and buried.”
“Look, all this talk about Shadow is all well and good,” said Harriet, “but shouldn’t we focus on the more important issue here?”
We all stared at her. “What more important issue?” I asked.
She tapped her collar. “These, of course! When are we going to be allowed to get rid of these horrible collars? Cats are staring at us, in case you hadn’t noticed. Mocking us.”
I looked around. Every single cat I saw was also wearing a collar, and they weren’t staring, either, too busy wallowing in self-pity, just like Harriet was. Cats are notoriously self-absorbed, and Harriet is a prime example. It’s one of our less attractive qualities, I’m afraid.
“I guess once the fleas are gone the collar can come off,” I said.
“Duh. In case you hadn’t noticed, the fleas are gone,” said Harriet. “So you better talk to Odelia and get her to remove these terrible things ASAP, Max. And better do it now.”
“I saw a flea,” Dooley piped up. “It jumped from me to Clarice but then she ate it.”
Harriet ignored this outburst from one she considered a mere cypher in our small cat universe. “Talk to Odelia, Max. I’m serious.”
“Why don’t you talk to her?” I asked.
“Because she only listens to you. Everyone knows that.”
“That’s not true.” They all looked at me. “Is it?”
“It is kinda true, Max,” Dooley said. “You seem to be her favorite.”
“Odelia doesn’t have favorites. She loves us all equally.”
“Yeah, right,” Brutus grunted. “You know that ain’t true, Max.”
And as we walked on, idly looking left and right for Shadow, I thought about this. Was I Odelia’s favorite? I didn’t think so. I was her cat, of course. Harriet was Marge’s. Dooley was Grandma’s, and Brutus was Chase’s mom’s. But that didn’t mean anything. No, I was pretty sure they were mistaken. Odelia loved us all to bits. And we’d just crossed into yet another back alley, when we came upon a strange sight: a man and a woman in a police cruiser were also loving each other to bits. Literally. And they had the steamed-up windows to prove it.
And as we stood watching, mouths agape, I suddenly noticed the guy inside the police cruiser looked awfully familiar. He was portly, with a big head and red sideburns.
Brutus had noticed, too. “Isn’t that… Uncle Alec?” he asked.
“No way,” said Dooley. “Uncle Alec would never do… what is he doing, exactly?”
A hand suddenly slapped against the window, as the woman appeared to straddle Uncle Alec. And then the car began moving in a curious rhythm, tires squeaking audibly.
I gulped a little, and felt compelled to place my paw over Dooley’s eyes, just like one would when suddenly an adult scene pops up in an otherwise family-friendly movie on TV.
“What is she doing to him, Max?” asked Dooley, panicky. “She’s choking him!”
“No, she’s not.”
“But she’s on top of him!”
“Brutus, tell him,” I said. “Explain to him what’s going on. Brutus?”
I glanced around and saw that Brutus and Harriet had moved away and were now ensconced behind a dumpster, engaged in a similar activity as Uncle Alec and the mystery woman inside the car. Probably inspired by the moment. It was hard to make out the woman’s features, because of the steamed-up windows, but I could tell she had red hair and was a lot prettier than Uncle Alec. She also seemed to be enjoying herself tremendously, as she was yelling, “Oh, yes, sheriff! Oh, yes, sheriff! Oh, yessss! Sheriff!” It was a little repetitive but Alec didn’t seem to mind.
From their perch behind the dumpster, meanwhile, Harriet was yelling, “Oh, yes, Brutus! Oh, yes, Brutus! Oh, yesssss! Brutus!” Obvious plagiarism, of course, but who cared?
“What’s happening, Max?” cried Dooley, perfectly disoriented.
I led him away from the scene, my paw still over his eyes. “Nothing special,” I told him. “Let’s go. I think I saw Shadow.”
“Is that Harriet? What is she yelling about? Is she in pain?”
I glanced back at Harriet, whose face was contorted in rapture. “I don’t think so.”
“Because she sounds like she’s in pain.”
“I’m sure she’s fine, Dooley. Brutus will take care of her.”
And Brutus was taking care of her. And finding the time to give me two paws up. Guess Vena’s vitamin pills had worked their magic after all. I held up one paw in greeting, my other paw protecting Dooley’s innocence, and then we were out on the street, where life was lived at a less strenuous pace and public displays of ind
ecency were not as prevalent.
Like I said, sometimes being a cat is tough. Not as tough as Clarice seems to believe, but not something for pussies, either.
We hadn’t found Shadow, but Brutus had found his catliness, Uncle Alec had found a woman who didn’t seem to mind that he was overweight and out of shape, and I had found that sometimes helping friends was all about chomping down pills that aren’t necessarily good for you, and helping other friends by pretending a couple in heat is just another feature of small-town life. Nothing to see here, folks. Just move along. Which is exactly what we did.
Chapter 26
Odelia listened to the ringing tone once, twice, three times—and wondered why her uncle wasn’t picking up his phone. This was the third time she tried to call him and each time she got his voicemail. Normally he picked up on the first ring so where was he?
She tried Chase instead, who did pick up on the first ring.
“Hey, babe,” he said, his new favorite word for her. She could get used to it.
“Have you seen my uncle? He’s not picking up his phone.”
“Nope. Isn’t at the station, either. No idea where he is, actually. Why?”
“I have a situation here. With his mother.”
“Uh-oh. What has she gone and done now?”
“She’s moved in with me.”
Silence. Then: “I think I misheard. Did you say she moved in?”
“Yup. The Goldsmith gambit backfired and since Mom and Dad didn’t support her claim to fame and fortune she decided to move out of their house and into mine.”
