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

“What a story,” said Dooley, who was enjoying this tremendously, I could tell.

“Which brings us to the Lord Hilbourne fiasco.”

“You’re saying fiasco,” said Marge. “You mean not everything went according to plan?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “When we were at the hotel last night I remembered the two cousins from the Town Hall ceremony in honor of Lord Hilbourne. They were doling out finger food to the esteemed guests. I think what they were really up to was planting the device Bob made, knowing that Hilbourne would wear it, at which point they had him.”

“What device?” asked Gran.

“I know!” said Dooley. “The key, right!”

“Not the key,” I said with a smile. “The watch. You’ll remember that Charlene handed Hilbourne a nice watch along with the key. The key was to be worn around the neck, and the watch around his wrist. I think that watch was the prototype smartwatch Bob Rector designed, its function being not just to monitor heart rate and blood pressure, like many of these gadgets, but also to hook up to the wearer’s nervous system, and offer the person on the other end, who’s monitoring the feed, a look into the person’s head.”

“The laptop!” said Gran. “Of course!”

“Exactly. Somehow they managed to swap out the watches before the ceremony. So the watch Charlene handed Hilbourne was in fact Bob’s smartwatch prototype. The idea was that Bob’s cousins would monitor what happened inside Hilbourne’s head, and that way they could hopefully glean important information like bank accounts, passwords, his passcodes and such, and somehow empty the accounts and transfer the money to their own bank accounts—presumably located in some non-extradition tax paradise.”

“And so when Johnny and Jerry asked to change rooms…” said Odelia.

“They refused, as they didn’t know how far the range of that smartwatch extended—presumably not very far—and they needed to stay as close as possible to pull this off.”

“So what went wrong?” asked Tex.

“I think the watch, being the first of its kind, didn’t work as planned. I think it gave Hilbourne some kind of shock to the brain—an aneurysm.”

“A brain bleed,” said Tex, nodding.

“But if his brain was bleeding, why was there blood on the carpet?” asked Marge.

“His brain was leaking!” Dooley cried.

“It’s possible,” Tex conceded. “It depends where in the brain the hematoma occurred. The fact that he bled through the nose probably saved his life, as pooling of blood inside the cranium puts pressure on the brain and could have killed him before he got to the hospital.”

“So instead of looking into his brain and stealing his passwords,” said Gran, “they almost killed him.”

“They must have panicked,” said Marge.

“And Johnny and Jerry chose that exact moment to force their way into the room,” said Gran, “and thought the cousins were roughing up Hilbourne and decided to intervene.”

“The cousins must have realized something was terribly wrong when they heard Lord Hilbourne cry out in pain,” I said, “or maybe they saw what was happening on their laptop, so they hurried into Hilbourne’s suite, wanting to help Hilbourne, and help themselves by swapping the watches again—making the evidence disappear. But Johnny and Jerry dropping by ruined their plan.” I shrugged. “And the rest I think you know.”

“When Mr. Ed first approached you,” said Harriet, “he said he heard Bob say ‘If I can just convince her I’m home free.’ It made Mr. Ed suspicious. What was that all about?”

“I think at first Bob was planning to outfit Evelina with the smartwatch, as planned. But he had to convince her to wear the watch all the time, so they could gather enough data. Later on he changed his mind and told his cousins he couldn’t go through with it.”

“I have a question, too,” said Tex. “When Emma Bezel asked me to date her sister, she didn’t tell me that Bob was dead. She told me he’d broken Evelina’s heart by not showing up for a date. Was she lying to me or didn’t she know that Bob was dead at that point?”

“Of course she was lying,” said Gran with a shake of the head. “Much easier to convince you that way. Imagine if she told you that her sister’s boyfriend had been found dead in the back of a potato truck. Would you have been as eager to have lunch with her?”

“Um…” said Tex, giving this a think.

“On second thought, better don’t answer that,” said Gran.

Odelia got up and pressed a kiss to my furry brow. “You did well, Max. I’m proud of you.”

“We’ll have to confirm Max’s theory,” said Uncle Alec, “but it all sounds very plausible to me. So plausible in fact that I think I might recruit him as my newest detective, Odelia.”

Odelia smiled and said, “No way. He’s my assistant.”

“Fair enough,” said the Chief with a grin. He got up to leave, but Odelia said, “Not so fast, Uncle Alec. I also have an announcement to make.”

“ We have an announcement to make,” said Chase.

“Chase and I have given this a lot of thought,” said Odelia.

“And we’ve decided…” Chase continued.

“… that the wedding is off,” Odelia finished.

“What?!” Gran cried.

“But honey!” said Marge.

“I knew it,” Tex said, shaking his head. “I just knew it.”

“Well, that saves me the cost of having to rent a tux,” Uncle Alec muttered.

“What we mean to say is,” said Chase, “that the wedding as we originally envisioned it is off.”

“It’s become too unwieldy and too big for us,” Odelia explained.

“Instead I’ve got six plane tickets here,” said Chase. “One for each of you and also for Charlene and Scarlett.”

“Tickets? Tickets to where?” asked Gran.

“Vegas. If you agree, we would like to fly you out there next Saturday.”

“And you,” said Odelia, gesturing to myself and my three friends and housemates.

“We’re going for a Vegas wedding,” said Odelia finally, a big smile on her face.

“Just you guys,” said Chase, “and no one else.”

“How about it?” asked Odelia, and both she and Chase looked a little trepidatious all of a sudden, unsure of how their family would react.

“I love it,” said Uncle Alec.

“Absolutely!” said Marge, and streaked forward to hug her daughter.

“Does that mean we have to write to all those people to disinvite them?” asked Gran.

“I think a message in the Gazette will suffice,” said Odelia.

“Then count me in,” said Gran.

“And me!” said Tex.

“Chase’s granddad is also coming,” Odelia said, “and his mom and aunt. And that’s it. We’re going for the ultra-limited approach.”

“Sometimes that’s the best one,” Marge agreed.

And frankly I couldn’t have agreed more.

“Vegas,” said Dooley, wide-eyed. “Do they have cats there, Max?”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s just a town like any other, Dooley.”

“Well, maybe not like any other,” said Brutus with a grin.

“But they’ve got kibble, right?”

“Of course they have kibble,” I said.

And hopefully it was the non-pre-chewed kind.

Chapter 38

The wedding had gone off without a hitch. The same couldn’t be said for the post-wedding dinner, which Tex had taken upon himself to preside over. Unfortunately he’d opted for one of those sushi places where the customer is supposed to do everything themselves. But even as Tex grabbed the knife and tongs handed to him by an overoptimistic server, and started slicing and dicing morsels of food then aiming them at his clients’ plates, those clients—or victims—were still basking in that post-wedding bliss too much to bother about what landed on—or in the vicinity of—their plates.