by Nic Saint
“She was no monster either.”
“No, but if you work together for fifteen years, there are bound to be clashes. And maybe they had such a clash yesterday. Of all the people we’ve spoken to, Cher is the person most likely to know the combination of Neda’s safe. So what if she and Neda came to blows over something? And Neda accidentally ended up dead? It would be a cinch to open that safe and make it look like a burglary gone wrong, wouldn’t it?”
“Mh,” said Chase, but I could tell from the expression on his face when he looked at Cher Shorn’s back that Odelia’s argument had been a most convincing one.
22
While Chase returned to the station, to drill a little deeper into Cher’s background, as he announced with a touch of relish, we went to the offices of the Hampton Cove Gazette instead, where a mountain of work awaited our human, since she’d already spent all day yesterday and part of today trying to figure out who had killed Neda Hoeppner, and now it was time to devote some of her time to her actual job.
When we arrived there, and Dooley and I took up position in the corner of her office, where she’s created a cozy little nook for us to relax and nap, she was surprised to find a small note stuck between the keys of her keyboard. It was her editor’s way of drawing her attention to something important.
She picked up the note and read it, a frown cutting a deep groove between her brows.
“If she isn’t careful that’s going to create a wrinkle, Max,” said Dooley. “And once it’s there, it’s going to stay there forever, and she’ll have to start using Botox, and that has to be painful, with all those needles being stuck in your face.”
“I don’t think Odelia will ever resort to Botox,” I told my friend. “Even if she has wrinkles.”
“Oh, but she must. She won’t have a choice.”
“Of course she has a choice.”
“But she’ll want to keep on looking beautiful. Men don’t like women with wrinkles, everybody knows that. And if she gets all wrinkled and looking like an old lady, Chase will want a divorce, and then she’ll end up all alone, like Gran.”
“It’s true that for some men their affection is only skin-deep, Dooley. But lucky for us Chase isn’t one of those men. The affection he feels for Odelia is the real deal, I’m sure.”
“Are you sure?” asked my friend. “Because in General Hospital men are always cheating on their wives and their mistresses are always a lot younger than they are.”
“General Hospital isn’t a reflection of real life, Dooley,” I told him. “It’s fiction.”
“Still,” he said, musing.
In a sense he was right, of course. There is a certain group of men out there who will only date women of a certain age, and even though their own age keeps edging north, the age of their dates seems to go south. It’s a sad phenomenon, but I firmly believed that Chase wasn’t part of that small and frankly pitiful segment of the population.
“You guys,” said Odelia suddenly as she waved the little note. “What do you make of this? ‘Look no further than RP for the murder of NH.’”
“RP?” I said. “That has to be Raban Pacoccha, right? And NH is Neda Hoeppner.”
Odelia glanced in the direction of the door. That thought wrinkle was deepening, and Dooley whispered, “She’s doing it again, Max.”
“It’s a natural human response when something baffling occurs,” I said. “They frown.”
“But why? What’s the point?”
“What’s the point of any human expression? To signal an emotion to other humans.”
“But we don’t do that,” said Dooley. “We never smile, or frown, or at least not so that it messes up our fair complexion.”
“We don’t have a fair complexion, Dooley.”
“Yes, we do—only you can’t see it because of all the hair. But it’s there, Max. And in fact I think your complexion is probably even fairer than mine.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re a ginger. Everybody knows that gingers have fair skin. With freckles. Here, I’ll show you.”
And before I could stop him, he was grabbing me and trying to part my fur like the Red Sea, to show me the color of the skin beneath.
“Stop that,” I said.
“I’m just trying to prove my point!” he said.
“You’re simply pawing my face!” I cried as I tried to slap his paws away.
“But it’s there, Max. Underneath that blorange fur, you’re a pink freckled beauty!”
“I don’t care,” I said, and was now engaged in a slapping match with my best friend. Which is why we hadn’t noticed how Odelia had left the office and now returned.
“Dan says he didn’t write this note. It came in an envelope addressed to me.”
“Sent by post?” I asked immediately.
“No, slipped into the mailbox outside.”
“An anonymous letter,” I said musingly. “From someone eager to help you catch Neda’s killer.”
Dooley was now repeating the same procedure he’d applied unsuccessful to my face to my belly. “See!” he cried. “Odelia, Max is pink with tiny freckles! Like a piglet!”
“I don’t care!” I repeated.
Odelia smiled as she watched Dooley’s attempts to show me my true colors. “When you’re finished playing around,” she said finally, “could you maybe visit your friend Buster and ask him if he happened to see who delivered this message? I need to know.”
I immediately got up to do as she asked, but Dooley had stepped on my tail and was now trying to find out its color. “Pink!” he finally cried. “Pink with tiny brown freckles!”
“Lemme see,” said Odelia, now also joining the fray. And since I know when I’m beat, for the next few dreadful moments, I reluctantly subjected myself to the twin scrutiny of one human and one feline, as they tried to determine what I’d look like if I’d suddenly lost all of my fur overnight.
“You’re right, Dooley,” said Odelia finally. “Max is pink with teeny tiny freckles.” She patted my head. “Very cute, Max.”
“Thanks, I guess,” I grumbled. I hate to be manhandled, or even woman-handled.
“You really have to stop frowning, Odelia,” Dooley now said.
“Oh?” asked Odelia, frowning.
“See? You’re doing it again. It’s not good for you.”
“And why is that?”
“He thinks Chase will leave you when your face gets all wrinkled from the excessive use of your facial muscles,” I explained.
Odelia, much to her credit, burst into loud and amused laughter. She has one of those tinkling laughs, which are so nice and musical to listen to. And in spite of himself, Dooley had to laugh, too.
“You silly willy,” said Odelia, as she gave my friend a tickle under his chin. “Now off you go. I want to know who slipped me this note, and I want to know now!”
23
Dooley and I quickly crossed the street and went in search of Buster. The hair salon where his human Fido Siniawski plies his trade of divesting the population of Hampton Cove of its excess hair, is where Buster plies his own trade: which is to spy on our human counterparts and spread those rumors through our small town’s sizable cat population.
It’s one of the reasons we like Buster so much: he always has fresh gossip to share.
“Hey, you guys,” he said when we waltzed into the salon. Charlene Butterwick was on the chair, subjecting herself to Fido’s stellar technique.
When she saw us, she smiled through the mirror, and I gave her a little wave of acknowledgment.
“Buster, Odelia received a mysterious note this morning,” I told our friend, deciding to forgo the small talk for once. “And she really wants to know who delivered that note.”
Fido’s shop is on the corner of the street where Odelia’s office is also located, and Buster can see the Gazette office from the hairdresser’s window. I just hoped the Maine Coon hadn’t slackened his notorious vigilance, and had seen all, as he usually do
es.
“Oh, that was Father Reilly,” said Buster, hitting a home run straight out of the gate.
“Father Reilly?” I said, a touch of doubt in my voice.
“Sure. I saw him walk up to the office and quickly slip something into the mailbox, then walk away as if nothing happened. He looked up and down the street before he did, though. So that drew my attention, of course. Suspicious, if you know what I mean.”
“Of course,” I said. It would certainly have drawn my attention. “So he looked up and down the street, then slipped a note into the Gazette mailbox?”
“Well, first he was dawdling on the corner, since there were several passersby, most notably Ida Baumgartner. But once Ida had moved out of sight, Father Reilly quasi-casually crossed the street, took a good look up and down and then pretended to just happen to pass the Gazette offices, dumped that note into the mailbox with a very dexterous hand, and came back.” Our friend nodded importantly. “If you hadn’t shown up to ask me about it, I would have collared you at cat choir tonight to tell you.”
I could tell that our friend was dying with curiosity to know what had been in that little note.
“It was a very short message,” I said, not wanting to keep Buster in suspense. “It said…”
“Look no further than RP for the murder of NH,” Dooley said, beating me to the punch.
“Okay,” said Buster, thinking this through. I could tell there was a touch of disappointment on his face. Clearly the dramatic content of the message failed to grip.
“Look at Raban Pacoccha for the murder of Neda Hoeppner,” I translated Father Reilly’s missive to Odelia.
“Oh, of course,” said Buster, his interest piqued once more. “So Father Reilly thinks this…”
“Raban Pacoccha,” I supplied helpfully.
“Killed Neda Hoeppner? Interesting. Very interesting.”
“What are those cats discussing, I wonder?” said Charlene.
“I have absolutely no idea,” said Fido as he bent through his knees to study his latest victim in the mirror, framing her head with his hands. “Those are Odelia’s cats, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are. Max and Dooley.”
“They’re in here all the time. Always chatting away a mile a minute with my Buster.”
“You know, before I met the Pooles I didn’t even know cats could be so chatty.”
“Oh, they sure are chatty. Buster sneaks off every night to go to the park, where he meets all the other cats and they spend half the night doing whatever it is they do.” He shook his head. “It’s a mystery, Madam Mayor, but at least it keeps them out of trouble.”
“Yeah, at least there’s that,” she said, and gave me a wink. She knew exactly what we got up to, of course.
“You know, one time I followed Buster to the park. Frankly I hadn’t even known that he spent all his nights down there. But I’d outfitted him with one of them GPS trackers, you see, and so I decided to keep an eye on him, just out of curiosity. You should have seen them. Dozens and dozens of cats, all sitting around that playground. Some of them on top of the jungle gym, or crawling all over the slide. And the noise they made. The meowing! And you’ll probably think I’m crazy, but it almost looked as if…” He hesitated.
“Yes?” Charlene encouraged him.
“Well, you know Father Reilly’s cat?”
“Shanille.”
“Shanille, yes. Well, Shanille was sitting out in front, and the cats were all over that jungle gym and that slide, and that, um, that seesaw?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, it almost looked as if they were… singing.”
“Singing?”
“Yeah, I know. Crazy, right?”
“No, I don’t think it’s crazy, Fido. Cats are clever creatures. So maybe they do like to get together and sing. Who knows?”
“And Shanille? She was waving her paws like a choir director.” He laughed an embarrassed little laugh. “Don’t tell anyone I said that. They’ll think I’ve finally lost it.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “It’ll be our little secret.”
“Gee, thanks, Madam Mayor. Now how do you want your hair done this week?”
“Oh, just the usual. And if you could do something about those gray roots?”
“Sure thing. Consider it done.”
“We’re starting to get famous, you guys,” said Buster, after the conversation between Charlene and the hair doctor had turned technical. “And soon we’ll be even more famous if we can pull off that concert.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Do you think it’ll happen?”
“I’m sure it will,” I said. “If Harriet wants something, it usually does.”
“Then we better start taking our rehearsals a little more seriously. We don’t want to look like fools when the big moment comes and we’re standing in front of that audience.”
There was a lot I could have said to that, but I decided not to. Sometimes the best thing is simply to let cats enjoy these moments until their dreams collide with reality.
Then again, maybe we would be a smash hit. Who knows? After all, only a small percentage of the park’s neighbors ever throw shoes in our direction. So maybe that silent majority are actually rabid cat choir fans? Or maybe they’ve run out of shoes.
24
Our next port of call was, of course, St. John’s Church, where Odelia set a course the moment we put her in the possession of Buster’s story of the surreptitious priest.
“I still can’t believe Father Reilly wouldn’t simply tell me,” said Odelia as she pushed her way through the tall oak door and entered the heart of the impressive structure.
“Maybe he thought you wouldn’t believe him?” I ventured.
“Why wouldn’t I believe him, Max? No, obviously he knows something but is afraid to tell me. Which can only mean one thing.” She cocked a meaningful glance in my direction.
I immediately caught her drift. “Confession,” I said with knowing nod.
“Confession?” asked Dooley as we trot through the church in search of the priest.
“If a person confesses something to a priest, the latter isn’t allowed to tell another living soul,” I explained. “The confession has to stay between himself and the confessor. So maybe someone told Father Reilly something during confession, and now he’s finding himself in the impossibility to talk about it without breaking the seal of confession.”
“That’s annoying,” said Dooley. “What if someone confesses that they hid a treasure under their kitchen floor and after they die Father Reilly would like to tell the person’s relatives and he’s not allowed to?”
“I think that’s a very unlikely scenario, Dooley,” I said.
“It could happen.”
“Theoretically, I’m sure it could.”
“Of course Father Reilly could dig up that treasure himself and then sell it and anonymously slip an envelope of cash into the relative’s mailbox, like he did with Odelia.”
I smiled. “You have a powerful imagination, Dooley.”
We’d arrived at the back of the church, and Odelia searched around for the priest, but found the woman who removes the burnt-out candles instead, who directed us to Father Reilly’s office. She knocked on the wooden door, and a disembodied voice bid us entry.
When Father Reilly saw who’d come to pay him a visit, he put down the sheaf of papers he’d been examining—probably next Sunday’s sermon—took off his glasses to let them dangle from his neck, and had the decency to blush.
“Odelia!” he said, but his expression belied the joviality of his tone. This was a man who wasn’t happy to see us.
“You put this note in my mailbox this morning,” she said, and produced said note and placed it in front of the man of God.
“I’m sure I didn’t,” he sputtered as he pushed the note away, as if it was hot to the touch.
“Yes, you did,” said Odelia. “Someone saw you, and they said you did your best to look inconspicuous. In fact y
ou tried so hard to look inconspicuous that you became conspicuous.”
Father Reilly closed his eyes. “Oh, dear.”
“You’d make a terrible, terrible spy, Father.”
He smiled. “I would, wouldn’t I?”
“So what’s this all about?” asked Odelia as she took a seat in front of the man’s sizable mahogany desk. “Why are you convinced Raban Pacoccha killed Neda Hoeppner?”
Father Reilly folded his hands on his desk blotter, which showed a nice depiction of the Virgin Mary with child, beatifically gazing up at the blotter user. Father Reilly cast a quick glance at the blotter, as if to draw strength from the touching scene, then steeled himself and said, “Nothing I tell you can leave this room, Odelia. Is that understood?”
“Of course,” she said immediately.
“I think she’s lying, Max,” said Dooley, eyeing our human closely.
“What do you mean?”
“See how she’s bouncing her leg? Whenever Odelia is nervous she bounces her leg. She’s also fidgeting. Also a sign she’s nervous. So I think she’s probably lying right now.”
My friend was right. Odelia was fidgeting. And bouncing her leg. “So she’ll probably tell Chase whatever Father Reilly is about to tell her,” I said. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
“But she’s lying to a priest, Max. She’ll be struck down by the wrath of God!”
“I very much doubt whether God is interested in Odelia’s little fib,” I told him.
The door behind us had opened, and Shanille came trotting in. “Oh, hey, Max—Dooley.” She stifled a yawn, indicating she’d just had a nice refreshing nap somewhere in the bowels of the church—or possibly in Father Reilly’s private residence, which was located right next door. “Are you here to talk about the concert?” Clearly the concert was at the forefront of her mind and not on the back burner, as was the case with yours truly.
“Um… sure,” I said, not to upset her.
“Max!” said Dooley. “You’re lying, too!”
