by Nic Saint
“Okay, Max,” he said, and regarded me quizzically. “You never get discouraged, do you? How do you do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a slight shrug. “I guess I’m like a pit bull that way.”
“A pit bull?”
“Yeah, they don’t give up either, do they? Once they’ve sunk their teeth into the seat of someone’s pants, they don’t let go.”
Dooley swallowed. “I don’t think I like that comparison, Max.”
He was right, of course. Comparing myself to a dog? Not done for a fine upstanding member of Hampton Cove’s feline community. Then again, maybe I do have a touch of the canine in me. That pit bull quality your good detective needs. But then I dozed off. Okay, so I’m a pit bull who likes to nap. Where else do you think I get my strength from?
18
We arrived home after a wild night out—at least Harriet and Brutus had enjoyed an exhilarating night—when we discovered much to our surprise that a light was playing in the empty house that belongs to Marge and Tex. A light indicating that a presence was at the house where no presence was supposed to be!
So immediately we snuck around to the window and hopped up onto the windowsill, which is now much closer to the ground, on account of the fact that when the house needed to be rebuilt, the Pooles decided to go for less brick and a lot more glass. I guess they’ve listened to that old song ‘Let the Sunshine In’ and decided to heed its message.
We glanced inside, and suddenly Brutus said, “Hey, isn’t that Gran’s fruitcake?”
“You mean her interior decorator,” I corrected him.
“That’s what I said. Gran’s fruitcake.”
And lo and behold, my uncouth friend was right: Jason Knauff, for it was he, was dancing around the living room, waving expressive arms, and… he was buck naked!
“Why isn’t that human wearing any clothes, Max?” asked Dooley, who had noticed the same anomaly.
“I’m not sure, Dooley,” I said.
“Do you think he’s allergic to clothes, maybe?”
“Could be,” I admitted.
“Some humans are, you know—allergic to clothes, I mean. Or to washing powder.”
“Maybe he’s testing the floor heating,” Harriet suggested. “Maybe he put it as high as it can go, and now he’s figuring out if it’s warm enough for his taste.”
Suddenly Mr. Knauff lay down on the floor, and started… making snow angels, only there was no snow, of course.
“See? I was right,” said Harriet. “He’s testing that floor heating.”
We watched the man with amazement, as he was now rolling across the floor, then jumped up again like a jack-in-the-box and started racing around the room, flapping his arms up and down like a bird and generally looking like a raving lunatic. I wondered if he’d done the same thing at Gwynnie’s new place, or Kimmie’s or Hilaria’s.
Finally we decided to leave the man be and go to bed. After all, there’s only so long you can watch a man dance around an empty house buck naked. It does get tedious.
The next morning, breakfast was a lively affair, with Gran trying to impress upon the others the importance of her upcoming concert, and Tex being in the vanguard of critics who weren’t wild about the idea, causing Gran to call him a bigot, which Tex didn’t take well, judging from the fact that he threw a bread roll in his mother-in-law’s direction, with her reciprocating by also throwing a bread roll at him, this one buttered and smeared with jam, causing it to stick to his face, then drop to his nice, crisp white shirt.
And as Dooley and I left the house through the pet flap, my friend commented, “I think it’s time the house was finished and Gran and Tex and Marge moved next door again, Max. They’re starting to get on each other’s nerves.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “Time they all got some space from each other again.”
At least in their own house they had more room to avoid each other, while at Odelia’s they had been stuck for weeks, which wasn’t conducive to a convivial atmosphere.
We wandered over to the backyard of Marge and Tex’s house and saw that Harriet and Brutus were holding an early-morning meeting with Rufus, the big sheepdog belonging to the Trappers, Marcia and Ted, the Pooles’ next-door neighbors.
“Hey, buddy,” I said as we walked up to join the conference.
“Hey, Max,” said Rufus, his head sticking through a hole in the hedge.
I noticed he looked perturbed for some reason.
“Everything all right?” I asked therefore.
“Oh, sure. Only Harriet just told me about cat choir setting up a joint concert with Father Reilly’s St. Theresa Choir.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Harriet’s idea, and Gran ran with it.”
“So… why didn’t you invite me, huh?”
“You’re not a cat, Rufus,” Harriet pointed out.
“I know I’m not a cat, Harriet,” said Rufus. “I’m a dog, and a proud member of dog choir, which, as you very well know, also rehearses every night at the same park as cat choir. And I don’t see why we should be excluded from this concert of yours.”
“Wow, hold on,” said Brutus, holding up a paw. “This has nothing to do with dog choir, Rufus. This is strictly a cat choir and human choir affair.”
“Which is discrimination and you know it.”
“Discrimination?” asked Brutus, slightly taken aback. Nobody likes to be accused of discrimination.
“Anti-dog discrimination, and I won’t stand for it,” said the large sheepdog.
Suddenly another member of dog choir joined us. It was Fifi, who belongs to Odelia’s next-door neighbor Kurt Mayfield. She’s a tiny Yorkie, and one of my best friends, strange as that may seem for a dog.
“Hey, you guys,” she said as she came tripping up. “What a wonderful, gorgeous morning, isn’t it? One of those glorious mornings that makes you happy to be alive.”
“Mh,” Rufus grumbled.
“What’s eating you, big guy?” she asked with a laugh.
“Cat choir is doing a show with St. Theresa Choir, and dog choir is not invited.”
“Not invited? But that’s discrimination,” said Fifi immediately.
“See?”
“You can’t exclude us. We have every right to sing at that show of yours.”
“But…” Harriet began,
“Look, it’s very simple,” said Rufus. “Either you include us, or we’re boycotting your concert.”
“And how are you going to do that?” said Brutus with a smile. “By not showing up? That’s going to make a big impression.”
“We’re going on a hunger strike,” said Rufus decidedly.
Fifi gulped a little at this. I know how much she likes to eat. “Um, yeah, that’s right. If we don’t get invited, we’re going to stop eating until we are.”
“Now wait a minute,” said Harriet, glancing over to me, as if I could magically make this hiccup go away. “If you all stop eating, it’s going to create a big fuss.”
“I know,” said Rufus with a smile. “That’s the whole point.”
“You can’t do this.”
“Oh, watch us,” said Rufus. “I can not eat for days or even weeks!” He slapped his large belly. “I’ve got plenty of reserves in the tank, if you hadn’t noticed.”
Fifi slapped her own considerably smaller belly, gulped and squeaked, “Me, too!”
“If you don’t eat for a day you’ll faint, Fifi,” Brutus pointed out. “And if you don’t eat for two days, you’ll be dead.”
Fifi gulped some more. “Anything for a good cause,” she said finally. “So you know what to do, Max,” she added. “if you don’t convince Father Reilly to add dog choir to the roster, you’ll be responsible for my premature demise.”
Oh, God. Just what I needed!
And just when I was about to launch into a long speech on why this wasn’t a good idea, a loud scream suddenly reached our ears, and when we looked up, we saw that Tex had come wandering into his backya
rd, presumably to take a gander at his lovely new house. He now stood face to face with a naked Jason Knauff, who’d just come out of the house, looking a little bleary-eyed. And did I mention he was still fully in the nood?
“What the hell!” Tex cried.
“Oh, hi, sir,” said Jason as he stretched and yawned. He didn’t even have the decency to cover his private parts with his hat. Then of course he didn’t have a hat at his disposal.
Drawn by the screams, the rest of the Pooles came hurrying over, and when they saw Jason the way God had created him, their reactions were varied and interesting to watch.
Gran was grinning, and so was Chase. Odelia was frowning, and Marge was watching the scene slack-jawed.
“I was getting a feel for the energy of the house,” Jason now said, feeling compelled to explain his presence. “It’s what I always do when I accept a new assignment.”
“Walk around the backyard nekkid?” asked Gran.
“Well, yes,” he said with an indulgent little smile. “Clothes form a barrier, you see, an obstacle between myself and these subtle energies. So I get rid of this barrier so I can become one with the empty space—bask in its aura so I know what the house needs.”
“And what does the house need?” asked Marge, who’d managed to reel in her jaw but was still staring at the designer.
“Well, I’m seeing… brightness,” he confessed, holding up his hands like a cinematographer. “Yellows and greens and blues and reds—bright, bright, bright!”
“You know what I see?” said Tex.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said the designer with a mild smile.
“Pants,” said Tex curtly. “Get dressed, buddy. Now!”
“But surely the naked body holds no secrets for you, Doctor Poole,” Jason tried.
“Pants! Right now!”
Tex is a mild-mannered man, and it’s very rare that he loses his temper, but clearly meeting a naked man in his own backyard, a place where a homeowner can safely assume to be safe from naked men popping out of the undergrowth, had taxed him.
The artiste blew out a sigh of disappointment, but finally entered the house, presumably to put on some clothes.
Just then, Uncle Alec suddenly came crashing through the opening in the hedge. “Oh, there you all are,” he said. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to. Chase, Odelia, can you both drop by the station now? Dolores just called. Neda’s sister is coming in.”
“Neda’s sister?” asked Odelia. “I didn’t even know Neda had a sister.”
“Well, looks like she did. She’s coming in from New York, and she’s very anxious to find out what happened to her sister.”
“You’re not going to invite her to the station, are you?” said Marge.
“Why not?” asked her brother, indignant. “What’s wrong with my police station?”
“And put her in one of those horrible interrogation rooms? No way. You better buy her a cup of coffee,” she told her daughter.
“Did you know that Neda had a sister?” Odelia asked.
“No, I didn’t,” her mother confessed.
Chase had slapped an arm around his superior officer’s shoulder and said with a grin, “You missed something, buddy. There was a naked man out here just now.”
“An exhibitionist?”
“Vesta’s decorator. Something about clothes forming a barrier between energies.”
“Do you want me to arrest him?”
“No!” Gran cried. “There will be no arresting of my decorator. He’s a genius.”
“A naked genius!” said Chase, that grin still firmly in place.
“So? All geniuses are eccentric, everybody knows that.”
“Now, Max,” Rufus suddenly urged me on. “You tell Vesta that dog choir is to be included on the concert’s bill or else.”
“All right, all right,” I told our friendly neighborhood sheepdog. “But not now.”
“But…”
“Do you trust me, Rufus?”
He hesitated, then finally nodded sheepishly. Or sheepdoggedly. “Yes, I do.”
“Then let me handle this in my own way.”
“All right, Max.”
“You take your time, Max,” Fifi joined in. Then she gave me a wink. I think she was happy that she wouldn’t have to go on a hunger strike.
19
Henrietta Riding, or Titta as she liked to be called, was a young woman probably twenty years Neda’s junior. She wore her hair short and had a small ring through her nose and a piercing through her upper lip. All in all she didn’t look anything like her big sister, and I was curious to hear her life’s story, and so were Odelia and Chase as they took a seat across from Titta in Cup o’ Mika, the popular coffee shop on Norfolk Street.
Marge had been right, of course. You don’t meet grieving relatives in that old police station, even though Uncle Alec, in a final attempt to out-argue his sister, had offered his own office for the interview.
“I was a troubled teen,” Titta began as she took off her leather jacket and placed it next to her on the bench. They’d taken a seat near the window, where they could watch the world go by, and still enjoy one of the excellent coffees Mika is rightly famous for.
I’m not a coffee aficionado myself, of course, so I take Odelia’s word for it. She’d chosen the venue, since she is a big coffee fan, and so is her hubby.
“A troubled teen?” Odelia prompted.
“Yeah,” said Titta, who’d drawn up one leg under her bum and looked a little sad. “Always getting in some kind of trouble. Drugs, vandalism, getting involved with a bad crowd. So my dad finally had enough and kicked me out—sent me to a boarding school in upstate New York. More a reform school for girls. I thought I’d hate it, and I did, but it was also what saved me. If I’d continued down the same road, I probably wouldn’t be alive today. But while I was there, Dad decided it wasn’t enough that he’d kicked me out of the house, he also decided to disown me. Especially after I managed to get in trouble again, in my first year. I’d met a boy, and gotten pregnant and we ran away together. We made it to the Canadian border when police found us and brought us back. At least they brought me back, Frank was sent to prison—I was still only fifteen at the time, you see, and he was nineteen. Anyway, Dad felt enough was enough, and didn’t want anything more to do with me. He still paid for the school, but he effectively cut me out of his life.”
“You never saw your dad again?”
“No, I didn’t. I spent the next three years in that school, and when I finally graduated Dad had one of his lawyers contact me. He offered me a choice. Either go to college, which he’d pay for, or accept a lump sum and never darken his doorstep again, as he so eloquently put it. I chose the money, and ended up drifting around for a while, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I finally hooked up with Frank again, and we set off for India. Only Frank had a different idea of what to do once we got there. He wanted to live off my money and score drugs and party. I wanted to stay clean and make something of myself. So we split up, and I traveled to Nepal but got stranded in Banbasa.”
“Banbasa?” asked Chase, who’d been jotting down notes.
“North of India,” Titta explained. “I ended up staying in one of the orphanages up there, and since I’ve sometimes felt like an orphan myself I fit right in. So I never left, and have been helping out there, doing what I can. And for the first time in my life I felt at home. It’s been the making of me. I found purpose and something to dedicate my life to.”
“So what brought you back?” asked Odelia.
She shrugged. “I wanted to visit my sister. I’d heard Dad had died, and tried to get in touch with Neda, but she wouldn’t acknowledge me. So I just figured I’d drop by and talk to her in person.” Her face crumpled. “Only turns out I was too late.”
“When did you arrive from India?”
“Three days ago. I’m staying with a friend in Brooklyn. I tried to get in touch with Neda again, and when that didn’t work
I was planning to drive down here and just show up on her doorstep. But then my friend saw the news about a woman being robbed and killed, so…” She tapped the table with her finger. “Now I’m really all alone in the world.”
“Why didn’t Neda respond to your message, you think? Did you fall out?”
“Dad must have poisoned her mind against me, that’s the only thing I can think of. She was twenty years older than me, and by the time I was born, she was in college in Boston and then got a job in Philadelphia for a couple of years, so we never saw much of each other. She came home for the holidays, but less and less. For most of my childhood it was just me and my dad, and we never got on. He was a strict disciplinarian, and I rebelled against that. The fact that he blamed me for the death of my mom also didn’t help.”
“Your mom died when you were little?”
“She died in childbirth,” Titta explained, “so I never knew her. She was in her early forties when she got pregnant, and even though my dad told her not to carry the pregnancy to term, she refused to get rid of me. She died three days after giving birth from an infection. Which Dad blamed me for.” She shrugged. “A hell of a sob story, huh?”
“And now your sister died,” said Odelia, whose eyes had turned a little misty.
“Can you give me the name of your friend?” said Chase, who didn’t appear affected by Titta’s story. “Name and number, please. Just routine,” he added in a low rumble.
“Sure. You can call her. She’ll confirm my story,” said Titta.
“So what are you going to do now?” asked Odelia, whose hands had stolen across the tabletop and had enveloped Titta’s hand in hers.
“I’m seeing the executor of the estate after this,” she said. “It’s the same lawyer who visited me at the boarding school. He’s worked for our family for years. I guess he’ll tell me what formalities need to be taken care of and how long that will take. I’ll probably sell the house and all of Neda’s belongings, and then I’m off again as soon as possible.”
