Purrfect Ruse, page 1
Purrfect Ruse
The Mysteries of Max 33
Nic Saint
Puss in Books
Contents
Purrfect Ruse
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Excerpt from Between a Ghost and a Spooky Place (Ghosts of London 1)
About Nic
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Purrfect Ruse
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Crooked collars & collared crooks
When a woman showed up in Odelia’s office asking her to look into a case of a missing cat, obviously I was on the case. And lo and behold, it took me less than a day to find the missing cat… and a dead body, too! Luckily, the dead body was human, not feline. Now I know what you’re going to say and you’re absolutely right: whether human or feline, murder is murder, and should be frowned upon. And I do! Which is why I was immediately hot on the trail.
Or I would have been, if not unforeseen circumstances prevented me from giving the case my full and undivided attention: the Pooles were having a new kitchen installed, and some minor disagreements immediately cropped up. Disagreements that would unfortunately lead to disastrous consequences, which I won’t reveal here if you don’t mind. Apart from what I would like to call the Kitchen Wars, there was also the case of the GPS trackers, but that would probably lead us too far afield. Suffice it to say things looked bleak for a while… before turning disastrous!
1
Look, don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a murder even less than the next cat, even though it isn’t necessarily my own species who’s affected by this tragic loss of life. But when the only cases coming Odelia’s way are spouses wanting to catch their other spouses in the act of cheating on those selfsame spouses—the first spouses, not the second ones, if you see what I mean—life becomes pretty dull and monotony soon reigns supreme.
Dooley, though, didn’t seem to mind all these people being cheated upon—or is it cheated on—from finding their way into Odelia’s office. But then again, Dooley watches a lot of daytime soaps, and eighty percent of the storylines on these soaps are exactly the cheating kind of stuff. The other twenty percent is probably illegitimate children suddenly popping up out of the blue, which frankly speaking is the same thing.
So it was with a sigh of relief that I greeted the next person entering our human’s office at the Hampton Cove Gazette. She was a large woman with red-rimmed eyes, clearly suffering from some acute or life-threatening trouble. Immediately I assumed murder, which just goes to show how warped my mind has become after having spent the formative years of my life in Odelia’s presence and that of her cop husband, her cop uncle and her neighborhood watch grandma. And it was with bated breath that I pricked up my ears as the woman took a proffered seat and launched into her tale of woe.
“My Chouchou has gone missing,” she lamented.
“Murder,” I told Dooley, my friend and housemate who was lounging right next to me in the cozy little nook of the office Odelia had reserved for us. “Just you mark my words, Dooley. Chouchou is this woman’s husband and he’s been brutally butchered.”
“Strange name for a husband,” said Dooley.
“Who is Chouchou?” asked Odelia, not missing a trick. She had looked up from her computer where she’d been busily typing up a report of her recent visit to the town library, where a recital by some local children’s orchestra had taken place.
“My sweet baby,” said the woman, sniffling and pressing a Kleenex to her eyes.
“Not a husband, a kid,” I corrected my earlier statement. “Bad business, Dooley. A child killer on the loose.”
“Strange name for a kid,” was Dooley’s opinion.
“And when did Chouchou go missing?” asked Odelia.
“Last night,” said the woman, waving a distraught hand in the general direction of the street. “She usually goes out at night but by the time I get up in the morning she’s always lying at the foot of the bed, sleeping peacefully. Only this morning she wasn’t there!”
“Does your daughter always sleep at the foot of the bed?” asked Odelia with a curious frown. It isn’t up to her to judge people, so she never does, but she couldn’t hide her surprise at this strange way to spend a night.
“Oh, but Chouchou isn’t my daughter,” said the woman. “She’s my little gii-ii-ii–rl!”
“So is Chouchou a… dog?” Odelia guessed.
The woman promptly stopped wailing, and gave Odelia a look of surprise. “Of course she’s not a dog. She’s my precious sweetheart. My sweet and lovely Maine Coon.”
“Huh,” I said, sagging a little as a sense of slight disappointment swept over me. Cats going missing is not exactly the kind of case I live for. Cats go missing all the time, you see, and usually they show up again within twenty-four hours, when their sense of adventure is sated and they return, utterly famished and happy to be home again.
“So Chouchou went missing last night,” said Odelia, summing up the state of affairs succinctly. I could see that she was less than excited at the prospect of traipsing all over town in search of a missing cat. “So does Chouchou usually stay out all night?”
“She does, but like I said, she’s always back in the morning. I have no idea where she goes, and frankly I don’t care—live and let live, I say, and that goes for my pets, too.”
“Pets as in… you have more than one cat?”
“I have a gerbil,” said the woman.
“Gerbils aren’t pets,” I muttered.
“So what are they?” asked Dooley.
“Pests,” I returned.
“Look, you come highly recommended, Miss Poole,” said the woman, who still hadn’t given us her name, by the way. “Everybody knows that you’re Hampton Cove’s leading cat lady, and so if there’s anyone who can find my precious baby it’s you.” She leaned forward, a pleading look in her eyes. “Can you help me find my Chouchou—please?”
“If I were you, Miss…”
“Bunyon,” said the woman. “Kathleen Bunyon. And it’s Mrs.”
“If I were you, Mrs. Bunyon, I’d wait another twenty-four hours. I’m sure that your baby will show up as soon as she gets hungry.”
“But this isn’t like her. She never stays out this long. Can’t you please help me?”
“Did you go to the police?”
“I did. And you know what they said?”
“I can imagine.”
“They said missing pets are not a priority at the moment. Can you imagine? If a missing pet isn’t a priority, what is?”
“Missing people, perhaps?” I suggested.
The woman glanced in my direction, having picked up my discreetly mewled commentary. “Oh, I see you bring your babies to work with you. Very clever.”
“Yeah, they like to be where I am,” Odelia confirmed with a warm smile.
Suddenly Mrs. Bunyon got up and joined me and Dooley in our corner. “Can’t you find my baby for me, sweet pussies? I know you’re as clever as Miss Poole is—or at least that’s what people keep telling me.”
I turned to Dooley. “Do you know this Chouchou?”
“I’m not sure,” said Dooley, thinking hard.
“What does she look like?” I asked.
And if you think it’s strange for two cats as established in our local community as we are not to know all the cats that reside in that community, I have to confess that there are so many cats now that it’s frankly impossible to know them all. Furthermore, not all cats are as socially active as Dooley and myself are, so the name frankly didn’t ring a bell.
“What does your Chouchou look like?” asked Odelia, as she opened a new file on her computer and started typing.
“Well, she’s small and very beautiful. Oh, wait. I’ve got a picture of her on my phone.” Mrs. Bunyon took her phone out of her purse and swiped it to life. “In fact I have more than one,” she admitted, and started showing us a regular barrage of pictures. She must have had thousands on there. All of them showed a very hairy Maine Coon, with a slightly stunned look in her eyes, as if she hadn’t signed up for life as a photo model.
“Nah,” I said. “Never seen her before in my life.”
“You have no idea where she goes at night?” asked Odelia.
“Not a clue,” said Mrs. Bunyon as she pressed play on a video she’d shot of her fur baby playing with a sponge. “The neighbor says he sees her walking in the direction of the park when he walks his dog, and that’s usually around eleven o’clock at night.”
“Cat choir,” I said knowingly.
“I haven’t seen her either,” said Dooley, who’d taken a long time to come to a definite position on this. “If she’s a member of cat choir she’s one of the less noticeab
Not every member of cat choir likes to stand out, of course. Some of them like to be the star of the show, like Harriet, our Persian housemate, but others simply show up and stay in the background.
“Look, I’ll see what I can do,” said Odelia with a pointed look in my direction.
I rolled my eyes. “Really?” I said. “She’s probably just wandering around having the time of her life. She’ll be back before you know it.”
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Bunyon, I’ll find your Chouchou for you” said Odelia, widening her eyes at me.
“Oh, all right,” I said with a groan. “I’ll go look for her. But if she’s home safe and sound while we’re traipsing all over town looking for her…”
“The moment she arrives home you’ll tell me though, right?” said Odelia.
“Oh, yes, of course.” Mrs. Bunyon had clasped her hands together in a gesture of silent prayer. “You’ll find her for me, won’t you, Miss Poole? You’ll do whatever you can to bring my baby home to me?”
“Yes, absolutely,” said Odelia, making a promise I knew she was going to hand over to me as soon as Mrs. Bunyon had left—it’s called delegating and humans are experts at it.
“Thank you,” said Kathleen Bunyon. “Thank you so much!” She’d clasped Odelia’s hand and squeezed it, then vigorously shook it, almost removing it from its parent socket. “I knew I could count on you.”
The moment the woman had left, Odelia gave me and Dooley a smile. “Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you, boys,” she said, then pointed to the door. “So chop, chop. Don’t dawdle. Go and find Chouchou.”
“We’re not dogs, Odelia,” I said with an exaggerated sigh as I got up from my perch.
“I know you’re not dogs, but you saw how devastated Mrs. Bunyon is over the disappearance of her cat. And just imagine if you guys went missing, how devastated I would be.”
“We’d never do that to you, Odelia,” said Dooley earnestly. “If we went missing we’d first tell you where we went missing to.”
“Come on, Dooley,” I said. “Let’s go and find ourselves a Chouchou.”
2
Traipsing along the sidewalk, I must confess at that moment I had no idea the mess we’d soon find ourselves in. As I said, cats go missing all the time, and in due course they always come back. So I had no reason to assume that this time things would be different.
“Where are we going, Max?” asked Dooley.
“Well, let’s first talk to Kingman,” I suggested. In our town Kingman is also the king of gossip. I’m not sure if that’s why he’s called Kingman, but he is the cat we all turn to when we need to find out what’s going on in our local little feline community.
Kingman is a very large and frankly slightly obese cat, who likes to hold forth outside his owner’s grocery store, where he enjoys both an endless supply of cat food, courtesy of Wilbur Vickery, his human, and an equally endless supply of pretty lady cats prancing by. Kingman isn’t just the king of gossip, you see, but also something of a ladies’ cat.
“Max! Dooley!” he said by way of greeting. “Just the fellas I wanted to see!”
“Hello, Kingman,” I said as I returned his hearty greeting. “What did you need us for?”
“I’ve got a favor to ask you. See, Wilbur wants back in.”
“Back in what?”
“Back in the neighborhood watch, of course. He’s been reading about how Vesta has been so successful dealing with this recent crime wave, catching bad guys all over the place, and he wants a piece of the action.” He lowered his voice as he darted a quick look at his human, busily ringing up wares for his never-ending line of customers. “Wilbur is bored to his eyeballs. And he fondly remembers his time, however brief, as a member of the watch. He feels he’s not doing enough for this town so he wants back in. What do you say?”
“What do you want me to say?” I said, not sure what it was that Kingman expected from me.
“Talk to Vesta! Tell her to let Wilbur back on the team!”
“You know Vesta, Kingman. She’ll never go for it.”
“Come on, Max, don’t be like that. You hold sway with the woman. If you ask her to let Wilbur back on the team, I’m sure she’ll give it some serious consideration.”
Frankly, I wasn’t sure that letting Wilbur back on the watch team was such a good idea. The last time he’d been a member he’d made a real nuisance of himself.
“Oh, and you better ask her to let Francis Reilly back in, too.”
“Father Reilly wants back in, too?”
“Sure! You know that he and Wilbur are like this.” He intertwined twin nails to show us how close the shop owner and the parish priest were. It was an unlikely friendship, I must admit, since Wilbur isn’t exactly a paragon of virtue. More like a paragon of vice, the way he likes to ogle any person of the opposite sex, whether eligible or ineligible.
“Look, I’ll talk to Gran, all right?” I said. “But first you’ve got to help us, Kingman.”
“Ask me anything! Frankly, between you and me, if Vesta doesn’t take Wilbur back that man is going to drive me nuts. All he does all night is sit on his couch and whine!”
“Look, a cat has gone missing,” I said, wanting to get off the topic of Wilbur and onto the topic I was really interested in.
“Her name is Chouchou,” Dooley supplied helpfully. “And she’s a Maine Coon.”
“She’s a member of cat choir but after last night’s rehearsal she didn’t come home.”
“Probably out on a toot,” said Kingman knowingly. “You know how it is. A couple of us like to hit the town after cat choir, and this Chouchou of yours must be just like that.”
“She doesn’t sound like a party-loving cat to me, Kingman,” I said.
“More like a peace-and-quiet-loving cat,” Dooley added.
“What does she look like?” asked Kingman with a slight frown.
“White with red stripes across her face.”
“She’s very pretty,” said Dooley. “In an understated sort of way.”
“Very pretty, eh?” said Kingman, rubbing his whiskers thoughtfully. “Mh.”
Kingman knows pretty. In fact I’m willing to bet that Kingman probably knows every cat who scores more than a five or a six on his personal prettiness scale.
“I think I know the cat you’re talking about,” the large cat finally said. “Chouchou. Yeah, definitely rings a bell. Mousy kind of feline, right?”
“Chouchou is not a mouse, Kingman,” said Dooley with a laugh. “She’s a cat!”
“Yeah, even a cat can be mousy, Dooley.”
“They can?” asked Dooley, much surprised.
“Sure. Just like a mouse can be catty, a cat can be mousy.”
“Huh,” said Dooley with a frown as he processed this startling new information.
“So have you seen her or haven’t you seen her?” I asked, wanting to get to the bottom of this missing cat business and move on. I’d been enjoying a leisurely time in Odelia’s office and wanted to return to my cozy little nook as soon as possible if you please.
But Kingman shook his head. “Can’t say that I have,” he said. “You see, Chouchou is not one of those cats that really stand out, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean she’s more like a cat who stands in?” asked Dooley.
“Not exactly,” Kingman replied with a grin. “And besides, you know how it is—cats go missing all the time. But they always come back.”
I didn’t enjoy my own line being quoted back to me, and I grimaced at this.
“And it’s not as if Chouchou is the only cat that’s gone missing lately. In fact I know of at least half a dozen who’ve suddenly disappeared. But do I look worried?”
