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

“At least you’re fine,” said Alec, patting the dazed driver on the back.

“Yeah, and so is the deer.”

“You didn’t hit it?”

“No, it made a clean break. Walked off cool as dammit, the white-tailed rascal.”

“As soon as the road is cleared of your cargo, we can lift your truck and assess the damage,” said Alec.

“Think it’ll still run?” asked the driver with a hopeful look at his capsized vehicle. It lay on its side like a wounded animal, smoke wafting from under the hood.

“Let’s wait and see,” said the Chief. “And if not, you are insured, right?”

“Oh, sure,” said the guy. “But I’m supposed to take these taters to Philadelphia by noon.” He checked his watch. “I guess I could still make it. If my truck is fine.”

“And if it’s not, I’m sure the good people of Philadelphia will find some other way to satisfy their tater appetite,” Alec concluded, ending the interview on a cheerful note.

Vesta, even though she’d hoped to collect a few potatoes for her personal consumption, now felt sorry for the driver, and decided against her initial plan of campaign. And so as she joined the rescue workers who were busily removing the potatoes from the road and placing them on large tarpaulins a helpful hand had placed on the road’s shoulder, she suddenly saw that a member of the public had decided to take a nap. Presumably the prospect of spending the next hour picking up potatoes had become too overwhelming, and he’d chosen the exact spot Vesta had selected to showcase her skilled spud-saving activities to have a lie-down.

The man was dressed in a nice powder-blue suit, and was on his back. And as the sun shimmered across the horizon, pulling up its pants and spitting into its hands to start another day on the job, Vesta suddenly noticed, as a stray ray flickered across the man’s visage, that he looked very pale indeed. Also, when she stepped a little closer, she saw that his eyes were wide open and that there was a smudge of blood on his chest.

And that’s when she realized this wasn’t a rough sleeper or tired rescue worker.

This man… was dead!

Chapter 3

“There’s something sticking out of the potatoes, Max,” said Dooley suddenly.

I hadn’t really paid attention to the potatoes, to be honest. Potatoes, as I’ve already indicated, aren’t designed to inspire excitement in a feline, and on top of that, these particular potatoes, having spent a considerable amount of time lying on the tarmac and thus having had the dubious benefit of being thoroughly marinated in a sauce of exhaust fumes, oil, road paint, tire remnants and asphalt that exists wherever thousands of cars travel across a stretch of road on a daily basis, didn’t look all that appetizing to me.

But Dooley was right. There was, indeed, something sticking out amongst the sea of potatoes that didn’t look very potato-like to me. And judging from the way Vesta was staring at the object in question, and loudly calling her son to come and take a look, it was clear something was amiss.

“Do you think it’s the driver of the potato truck?” asked Dooley.

“The driver is standing over there,” said Harriet, gesturing with her tail to an unhappy-looking man who stood tapping away on his smartphone, presumably giving either his boss or his significant other an update on his (lack of) progress.

“Probably the person responsible for the accident,” Brutus suggested. “Guy standing in the middle of the road for some reason, or a pedestrian trying to cross the road and not realizing he should have waited until the light turned green. Ouch!” he added.

This last part of his contribution followed the smack on the head Harriet gave him.

“There are no traffic lights out here, Brutus,” she said. “Besides, the reason the truck driver had the accident is because a deer crossed the road, not a person.”

Clearly while the rest of us were wondering why this potato rescue mission had sounded like a good idea when Gran had suggested it, Harriet had been busy collecting the facts pertaining to the case and getting up to date on what had actually happened.

“I think that man is dead,” Dooley suddenly announced.

“Are you sure?” said Brutus. “He could just be taking a nap.”

“Gran just told Uncle Alec the man is dead,” Dooley explained.

It seemed to cinch things, and the four of us, as one cat, moved forward in the direction of what could now only be described as a crime scene. And as we approached the person lying flat on his back on the road, surrounded by a sea of potatoes, it soon became clear that Dooley was right: this man, whoever he was, was most definitely dead.

“Poor guy,” Gran was saying. “He must have been hiding between the potatoes, and when the truck flipped over he must have hit his noggin on the tarmac. Freak accident.”

“Do you think it’s one of them asylum seekers?” asked one of the other potato collectors, who’d joined the small throng that had gathered around the dead man.

“Pretty sure he is,” said a man. “Like the old lady says, must have been hiding in the back of that truck, hitching a ride to who knows where.”

“Please stay back,” said Uncle Alec, gesturing to the chattering crowd. He was gripping his phone in one hand and gesturing to the potato pickers with the other, presumably calling in backup for what had escalated from a mere traffic accident to a mysterious death.

“He looks like a nice person,” said Dooley.

“And what makes you say that?” asked Harriet with a touch of skepticism.

“He has a nice face,” Dooley explained.

He was right. It’s hard to determine what makes a face fall into this particular category, but this man’s face most definitely did. It was one of those round faces, which in life I would imagine had been pink and jolly. Even in death there was a touch of cherubic pleasantness about it.

“If he’s an asylum seeker,” said Brutus, “then why is he wearing a blue suit?”

“Why can’t an asylum seeker wear a blue suit?” Harriet challenged her boyfriend. “As far as I know there isn’t a dress code for asylum seekers, now is there?”

“No, I guess there isn’t,” Brutus allowed. “Still. It’s a very ugly suit.”

“What do you find ugly about it?” I asked.

“The color. A suit should be dark gray or black. Gray and black are forgiving colors. You can wear them for a long time without noticing all of those smudges. Not blue.”

“Oh, you’re such a snob,” said Harriet, shaking her head. “If this man wants to wear a blue suit, he can wear a blue suit. It’s a free country.”

“But look at those smudges. That wouldn’t have happened if he’d worn black.”

“I don’t think he cares about the smudges, Brutus,” Harriet said. “He’s dead.”

“Maybe he comes from a country where people are persecuted for wearing blue suits,” was Dooley’s suggestion. “So he came to America, where people can wear whatever they want.”

Brutus had a point, though. If this man was hiding in the back of a truck filled with potatoes, which, as a rule, aren’t exactly the cleanest vegetable to hide amongst, his choice of outfit was ill-advised. Now if he’d picked a truck carrying a load of bell peppers, a suit would have been fine, and the blue would go well with the red, yellow and green.

Moments later, the sound of a police siren cut through the early morning air, followed by that of an ambulance, and soon both arrived on the scene.

“Looks like it will take a little longer before the road is cleared,” I said.

“Poor Gran,” said Dooley. “She was hoping to steal a couple of potatoes and instead she ended up being a witness to murder.”

“Murder!” I said, surprised. “What makes you think this was murder?”