by Nic Saint
Returning to the office, Odelia felt a sense of disappointment. When you’re all geared up to tackle a problem, and the problem simply yields all by itself, the end result can be disconcerting. Not unlike putting your foot down expecting that one final step and discovering you’ve already reached the ground floor. It’s jarring, to say the least.
But since she’d been asked to do a job, she decided not to overthink things. Joshua Curtis had asked her for results, and clearly she’d been able to get the results desired. So she picked up her phone and put in the call.
Joshua picked up on the first ring. “Yes, Miss Poole? What have you discovered?”
“Well, it would appear that your friend was dumped by her boyfriend,” said Odelia.
“Dumped? What do you mean?”
“He called her while she was at the hair salon,” she explained. “And dumped her over the phone. Apparently they were supposed to meet up but instead he said it was over.”
“Huh,” said Joshua, clearly as taken aback by this denouement as Odelia herself was. “He dumped her over the phone? The bastard,” he said with some heat.
“Yeah, she looked devastated,” said Odelia, transferring the information Max and Dooley had gleaned from their surveillance. “I don’t think she was expecting it.”
“Poor Melanie,” said Joshua. “So do you know who the guy is yet?”
“No, I don’t. Do you still want me to keep going? I mean, the affair, if there ever was one, seems to be over. So there really is no point in bringing it up with her, I guess.”
“No, I guess not,” Joshua agreed. “Just… just to satisfy my curiosity, though, Miss Poole, could you maybe find out who the guy is? Just in case she resumes the affair. And take plenty of pictures, if you can. I want some good shots of the evil bastard.”
It sounded like a fair enough request, Odelia thought, so she said, “Sure thing, Joshua. I’ll try to find out. Though now that the affair is over, that might prove a lot harder.”
“See what you can do,” he said, and disconnected.
Odelia swiveled in her chair for a moment, thinking up ways and means of figuring out who this mystery man could possibly be.
Chapter 5
‘This was probably the shortest case in the history of cases,” said Dooley.
“Yeah, it sure was,” I agreed.
“And we solved it, Max!”
“We didn’t solve anything, Dooley,” I said. “The case more or less solved itself.”
“I don’t get it,” said Harriet. “This is an attractive woman, and this guy simply dumps her? And over the phone, no less? If I were her I’d press charges.”
“You can’t press charges against a man you’re having an affair with, Harriet,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, if she presses charges her husband will find out,” Brutus said. “And I don’t think that’s what she wants.”
“But he can’t just treat her like that!” said Harriet, all the female in her annoyed.
“Poor Melanie,” said Dooley. “She looked very sad, didn’t she?”
“She sure did,” I said.
After having been dismissed by Odelia, we operatives found nothing better to do than to wander around a little aimlessly in downtown Hampton Cove. That’s what operatives do, you know: they live for the chase, but when the chase is over, all that adrenaline that’s been coursing through their system needs to settle down, and it makes you feel a little bit on edge. Just like soldiers who’ve been fighting several tours of duty and then arrive home to a sedentary life. Though probably I’m stretching the comparison a little.
We’d arrived at the General Store, where I saw that our friend Kingman was holding court on the sidewalk as usual.
“Hey, you guys!” he shouted by way of greeting. “Wilbur is still pretty upset with you. So if I were you I wouldn’t let him see you.”
“Indeed? Why is he upset with us?” asked Harriet.
“Because he wasn’t invited to the wedding, of course!” said Kingman. “In fact there’s a whole lot of very angry people in Hampton Cove right now!”
“But we can’t help it if Odelia decided to cancel the wedding,” I said. “It was her decision, not ours. So why do we have to suffer?”
“Wilbur wouldn’t chase us away,” said Brutus. “He knows it’s not our fault.”
But we still made sure to glance in Wilbur’s direction, and make sure that if he did come after us, our exit strategy was in place.
“So how did it go?” asked Kingman eagerly.
“We solved the case in less than ten minutes!” said Dooley proudly.
“What case? I was talking about the wedding.”
“Oh, the wedding” said Dooley, as if Kingman was referring to some old news.
“Yeah, the wedding!” said Kingman, sounding a little peeved himself, to be honest. “The wedding we were all invited to, and were all looking forward to, and then all of a sudden it was canceled and now we don’t even get to see pictures! Or silly videos!”
“Oh, there are pictures,” said Harriet.
“And silly videos,” Brutus added.
“But Odelia is not going to put them on the Gazette website.”
“Or her social media.”
“She’s not?” asked Kingman, looking surprised. “But… isn’t she obliged to publish that stuff? She is a reporter, isn’t she? Isn’t there a law about that kind of thing?”
“A reporter isn’t required by law to publish an article about their own wedding, Kingman,” I pointed out. “Or release the pictures and video she shot.”
“Well, I think there should be a law!” an irate voice sounded at our immediate rear.
We all whirled around, and found ourselves looking into the furious furry face of Shanille. Shanille is cat choir’s conductor, but she’s also Father Reilly’s cat, and Father Reilly is the person who was supposed to marry Odelia, until she decided to cancel.
“Uh-oh,” Harriet muttered next to me.
“Can you please explain to me why you decided to cancel that wedding?!” Shanille practically screamed.
“We didn’t cancel anything, Shanille,” I was quick to point out. “Odelia did all the canceling, and we were just along for the ride.”
“But you were there! You should have said something! You can’t just cancel a wedding! Father Reilly is so upset he’s started drinking again!”
“Father Reilly has become an alcoholic?” I asked.
“Coffee, not alcohol. And he knows it’s not good for him.”
“I’m sure Odelia’s wedding had nothing to do with that.”
“It had everything to do with it! Father Reilly had the most beautiful wedding planned. It was going to be the highlight of his career. Never would there have been a more beautiful wedding. It was going to be a day people talked about for generations to come. And then—nothing! Not a word! Not a single peep from the Pooles!”
“Oh, poor man,” said Dooley. “Maybe he should get married himself. That way he can enjoy the wedding of his dreams, and since he’s the one getting married it won’t get canceled.”
“Unless the bride cancels,” said Harriet.
“He first has to find a woman who wants to marry him,” said Brutus.
“Catholic priests don’t marry, you dimwits!” Shanille practically shouted.
“But why?” asked Dooley. “Don’t they like getting married?”
“Don’t try to cloud the issue,” said Shanille, pointing a threatening paw in my friend’s direction. “You should have convinced your human to let that wedding go through.”
“You overestimate the influence we have on our human, Shanille,” I said.
“Yeah, Odelia is a grown person who doesn’t listen to us,” Harriet argued.
I smiled at this, for I’d had this argument with Harriet before, and she’d taken the view that I should have stopped Odelia from flying to Vegas and antagonizing the whole town. Looked like now that Shanille argued the same thing Harriet had switched s
ides.
“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” said Shanille, wagging that threatening finger in Harriet’s face now. “You know how excited I was about staging the cat choir performance to end all cat choir performances, and you willfully and purposely set out to sabotage my moment of glory. Admit it!”
“I admit no such thing!”
“You know what? I don’t think I can tolerate this kind of behavior any longer, and so I don’t think I will.” She raised her head high and gave us that supercilious look she does so well, and regarded us from between narrowed eyes. “Consider yourselves expelled!”
“Expelled?” I asked. “Expelled from what?”
“Expelled from cat choir!” she said, then started to walk away, even before we had recovered from the shock, adding, “You’re not welcome anymore, same way I wasn’t welcome at your wedding!”
“But… it wasn’t our wedding!” Harriet cried.
But her pleas fell on deaf ears, for Shanille had left the gathering.
Chapter 6
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Vesta when her friend opened the car door.
“I have to pee,” said Scarlett. “Why? Do I need to ask permission?”
“Where are you going to pee? There’s no bathrooms that I can see.”
“There’s a vacant lot over there behind that fence. That all right with you?”
Ever since they’d launched the neighborhood watch, Vesta had been thinking of a simple solution to a problem that had vexed them from the start: both she and Scarlett were ladies of a certain age, and their bladders weren’t what they used to be, meaning that if they sat in a car all night, following doctor’s orders in regard to the regular intake of fluids, there came a moment they needed a bathroom break. Unfortunately, Hampton Cove wasn’t exactly littered with public restrooms, and since bars and restaurants were mostly closed by the time they started patrolling those mean streets of their small town… It was one of those vexing problems, and thus far they hadn’t been able to solve it—apart from peeing in the bushes, of course.
“Or maybe I’ll go to that house over there,” said Scarlett now, as she pointed to a derelict structure right next to the empty lot. The house looked ripe for demolition.
“Better don’t go in there,” Vesta advised. “Place is a crack house.”
“You think so?”
“Why do you think we’re parked out in front of it?”
“I thought you wanted a quiet spot to eat our midnight snack.”
Scarlett always brought a midnight snack, as both women got those midnight cravings most people get, but amplified by the fact that they were engaged in a high-peril endeavor, which as everyone knows makes the blood pump faster, which in turn makes you hungry. She wasn’t sure this was all scientifically kosher, but it was her explanation for the phenomenon and damn if anyone said it wasn’t so.
“My contact at the precinct tells me drugs are being dealt out of this here house,” said Vesta. “And I want to catch them in the act, snap some pictures, and get them all arrested.”
“Your contact at the station? You mean your son?”
“No, I don’t mean my son,” she scoffed. “If it were up to Alec we wouldn’t even be out here patrolling. I’m talking about Chase. At least he’s on our side. Unlike my own son, who seems to think we’re just two crazy old ladies out to create trouble.”
“Look, I don’t care if that’s a crack house,” said Scarlett. “I need to use the bathroom, and if I wait much longer I’m going to have to go right here in your car.”
“Maybe we should get you those Poise Pads. The heavy-duty ones.”
“Hey! I’m not that old!”
“Okay, so go if you have to. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Maybe you can come with me?” Scarlett suggested. “And bring the pepper spray,” she added. “And the stun gun.”
“I’ll bring the stun gun, the pepper spray and my ex-husband’s shotgun,” said Vesta as she grabbed the gym bag that sat patiently on the backseat for just such a contingency. So far they hadn’t seen a lot of action, but she had a feeling that was about to change.
So they both got out and Vesta suddenly got one of those bright ideas that sometimes came to her out of the blue. Probably as a consequence of all the vitamin B she’d started to pop. She’d read somewhere it helped boost your brain activity. “You know what?” she said. “We should probably pretend that we’re two drug addicts looking to score. That way we can catch these drug dealers in the act!”
“Isn’t that called entrapment or something?”
Neither of them was exactly on top of the finer points of the law, but that had never stopped them before. “Who cares? Don’t you want to stop these people from selling drugs to kids?”
“I don’t have any kids,” Scarlett reminded her.
“I’m not talking about your kids. I’m talking about all the kids, Scarlett.”
Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Honestly? I just want to pee.”
Just then, the door to the crack house suddenly flew open, and a man came hurrying out. He was holding his phone and was talking into it, even as he crossed the street and got into a car, which just happened to be the car Vesta and Scarlett were parked right behind. In a reflex action Vesta snapped a picture of both the man and the car, and as it drove off, Scarlett suddenly yelled, “Fire!”
“I know, right?” said Vesta. “We’re on fire tonight!”
“No, there’s a fire!” said Scarlett, and pointed to the crack house.
“No shit,” said Vesta as she saw that Scarlett was right: the house they’d singled out for their big drug bust was on fire—smoke wafting from the door the man had left ajar.
“We gotta do something!”
“It’s probably those crack dealers,” said Vesta. “They must have turned the heat up too much when they were cooking all of that crystal meth.” She pressed the phone to her ear and bellowed, “Yeah, Dolores. Vesta Muffin. I want to report a fire at a crack house!”
“You got a fire in your crack?” asked the raspy-voiced dispatcher with a chuckle.
“Watch your tongue, Dolores. I’m being serious here.”
“Well, that’s a first,” said the wise-cracking dispatcher.
She placed her hand over the phone and addressed her friend, who now stood pressing her legs together awkwardly in an attempt to hold her pee. “You better start putting out that fire while I try to explain to Dolores what’s going on here.”
“Put out that fire? I’m not a fire putter-outer kinda girl, Vesta.”
Vesta crooked an eyebrow. “You need to pee, right? Well, better get started.” And as Scarlett gave her an eyeroll, she grinned.
Just then, she saw the curtains move at one of the houses located directly across the street from the crack house. And as she watched, the face of a woman briefly appeared, then disappeared into the shadows again.
Looked like they weren’t the only ones keeping an eye on things.
Chapter 7
In spite of the fact that Shanille had told us we weren’t welcome anymore at cat choir, the four of us decided to defy her outrageous dictum and go anyway. After all, who was Shanille to decide we couldn’t join the biggest social gathering in town?
Harriet, specifically, was outraged, as she kept referring to the whole thing as Shanillegate, though I wasn’t exactly sure what she was talking about.
“What if she throws us out?” asked Dooley, who abhors physical violence of any kind.
“She can’t throw us out,” I said. “She would need the support of the entire cat choir and I’m sure they don’t feel the same way Shanille does.”
“But what if they do? What if all the cats in Hampton Cove hate us from now on?”
“I’m sure they don’t,” I assured my friend.
And so we decided to risk it, and set paw for the park that night. And I have to say that things weren’t as harrowing an experience as I’d surmised. Frankly, I’d been brac
ing myself on our trek over, mentally countering all the arguments Shanille might throw at us, and even testing the muscles in my right paw in case one of her lieutenants took a swing at me. Well, you know how it is. You build up this big thing in your head, and start arguing back and forth, putting words in the mouth of the party of the second part and then thinking up the best ways to cancel them out, and when it all comes down to it, the whole thing turns out to be one big nothingburger and you wasted all that mental energy for nothing.
“Look, maybe I exaggerated a little when I told you that you weren’t welcome anymore,” said Shanille as she walked up to me. “But you have to admit you played a pretty dirty game, Max.”
“But we didn’t play any game at all!” I cried, all those arguments in my head coming to the fore all at once. “Odelia felt that the wedding was too much for her, and so she decided she was better off canceling the whole thing. We were never consulted, Shanille, believe me.”
And even if we had been consulted, we would have heartily agreed with our human, as we personally had decided to skip the wedding, even though at a later stage Gran had arranged a safe spot for us, where we wouldn’t be trampled underfoot by the masses.
“I wanted to come to the wedding,” said Harriet. “Vesta had arranged with Father Reilly that we could sit out in front, right next to the altar. And I was really looking forward to having the place of honor, you know. To have a front-row seat to the thing.”
To be perfectly honest Harriet hadn’t been all that excited. Even seated out in front she’d been afraid someone was going to step on her precious tail and reduce it to mush, and frankly so had I.
Shanille stared at Harriet, her jaw having dropped a few inches. “Father Reilly did what?”
“He said we could sit out in front,” Harriet repeated, unaware of Shanille’s consternation, or maybe extremely aware and eager to rub it in. “Next to the altar?”
