Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Sidekick. Purrfect Deseit. Purrfect Ruse [calibre 5.14.0]

“What?”

“It’s just too much. The whole thing’s gotten way out of hand.”

“You mean—even more than before?”

“As of a couple of hours ago, we’re officially at nine hundred.”

He blinked. “Nine hu—you mean the wedding, not the reception, right?”

“The wedding and the reception and the wedding dinner… and the party.”

His jaw dropped. “Odelia!”

“I know, I know,” she said. “Mom talked to the caterer, and they’re very upset. They’re not equipped to handle such a large crowd, and already have been making alternative suggestions, like cutting down on the menu so they can seat and feed more people, or even splitting people into groups, sitting them down for dinner at different times. Also, there’s a problem with the reception. They didn’t order nearly enough champagne for such a large crowd, so…” She sighed and buried her head in her hands. Once again she started hyperventilating a little at the thought of such an enormous undertaking.

“Let’s call the whole thing off,” said Chase curtly.

“No, wait, what?” said Odelia. “Chase, we can’t—”

“It’s obvious this is going to turn into a complete disaster. Nine hundred people, and who knows who else will show up. We’re looking at a thousand or more. If this keeps up we’ll have to talk to your uncle about organizing crowd control. Bring in barriers. Except your uncle is also one of the people on the guest list, and so are all of my colleagues.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “I guess we all got a little carried away.”

“It’s all right, babe,” said the cop as he placed a hand on Odelia’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I know you wanted the wedding to be perfect, and you wanted to share it with as many people as possible. But clearly we’re at a critical juncture here.”

“It’s too much,” she agreed. “Mom talked to Father Reilly, and he’s also overwhelmed with all the interest. He says never in his career has he been accosted by so many people asking when the wedding is going to be, and expressing an interest in showing up on the day. He’s going to put up big screens outside so people can follow along.”

“Big screens, huh?” said Chase with a smile. “Like a Justin Bieber concert. Which would make you Hailey Baldwin.”

Odelia grinned. “Or maybe I’m Amal Clooney and you’re George.”

“I don’t think George and Amal had this many people at their wedding.”

“No, they were smart about it,” said Odelia ruefully.

“Look, I don’t want to disappoint anyone either,” said Chase, “so I suggest we call off the wedding and…”

“And what?” she asked, giving him a look of trepidation.

He shrugged. “We’ll find a solution.” He glanced over. “We have to.”

They’d arrived at the hotel, and Chase parked the car across the street. Two police cars had already arrived, and Odelia saw that her uncle’s squad car had jumped the curb.

“All right,” said Chase. “Are you ready to do this?”

She nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

Chapter 29

The room where Lord Hilbourne had been staying was very nice indeed. It was the hotel’s Presidential Suite, and wasn’t merely extremely spacious, but also very cozily appointed. In fact I wouldn’t have minded staying there myself. When we entered, in the wake of Gran and Scarlett, who’d managed to overrule the objections of the receptionist, and also of the cop standing sentry outside the suite, it was obvious some kind of skirmish or scuffle had taken place there: furniture had been overturned and a glass had been dropped to the floor, a liquid soaked into the thick carpet, which felt like a pity, as it was nice and white and now had a dark spot, which I reckoned would be hard to remove.

Then again, stain removal probably wasn’t high on the hotel’s list of priorities right now. Finding the missing Lord Hilbourne was.

“So what happened here?” asked Gran as she bustled into the suite.

A cop whom I recognized as Sarah Flunk, one of Chase’s colleagues, looked up in surprise. “Are you supposed to be in here?” she asked.

A rhetorical question, as Gran is always supposed to be wherever she happens to be.

“The guy at the front desk mentioned blood?” Gran asked, blatantly ignoring the officer’s outburst.

Sarah Flunk, a copper-haired, fine-boned officer, hesitantly said, “Yeah, we found traces of blood over there on the carpet.”

“A lot of blood?” asked Scarlett, clearly fascinated by this glimpse into a different world: the world of crime and detective work, of which until now and in spite of the fact that she’d been part of the watch for a while now, she didn’t have much inkling.

“Smells like blood,” said Harriet as she took a tentative sniff from the spots of crimson on the floor.

“Looks like blood,” Brutus added.

“So very likely it is blood,” Gran murmured as she studied the spots.

There was indeed quite a lot of the stuff, though probably not enough to warrant the receptionist’s suspicion that Lord Hilbourne was bleeding to death as we spoke.

“Any sign of the culprits?” asked Gran.

Officer Flunk still seemed reluctant to humor her boss’s mother, but since Gran was, indeed, her boss’s mother, she couldn’t very well stonewall her either, so she said, “It looks like the kidnappers came in from the next room.”

Just then Uncle Alec came bursting in, followed by more officers, and as he took in the scene, he frowned and said, “What are you doing here?”

He was addressing Gran, of course, who took the comment in stride and said, “Scarlett happened to notice that Johnny Carew is staying here. Isn’t that right, Scarlett?”

“Yeah, I saw him glancing out of one of the windows on the third floor earlier today.”

Uncle Alec’s frown deepened. “Johnny Carew? Here?”

“Yup,” said Scarlett, inordinately pleased that she was able to supply such an important clue.

Things were getting a little crowded, for close on the heels of Uncle Alec, Odelia and Chase came walking in.

“Only the people who are supposed to be here, can stay,” said the Chief, who was getting seriously annoyed. “That means Chase and Odelia. You, you and you—out!”

The first you referred to Gran, and she didn’t look happy about being excluded like this. The second you, Scarlett, looked equally unhappy, and the third you, which was a collective you indicating the entire contingency of cats, showed their unhappiness with this state of affairs by breaking into loud and plaintive mewling.

“Is this a crime scene or auditions for The Voice!” Uncle Alec bellowed as he pressed his hands to his ears. “Okay, the cats can stay, but only if they don’t contaminate the scene. Odelia—I’m holding you personally responsible!”

And so it was decided: we all got to stay and sniff around for clues, while Odelia and Chase handled the investigation. Gran’s neighborhood watch, meanwhile, was relegated to the sidelines—i.e. the corridor, where they could lament to their heart’s content.

And as Brutus and Harriet took up the inspection of the suite, Dooley and I moved through the connecting door into the next room, where we found, much to our surprise, that two people had decided that the best way to spend an evening was to go and hide in the bedroom closet. Our well-developed sense of smell had immediately taken us there, and as we sat and meowed, Odelia and Chase quickly came over and opened the closet, revealing two men, trussed up and with rags shoved into their mouths. They were giving us piteous looks.

I recognized them. They’d been part of the waitstaff at Charlene’s big ‘keys to the city’ shindig, where they’d provided the guests with canapés and other amuse-gueules.