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

“Or maybe I’ll go to that house over there,” said Scarlett now, as she pointed to a derelict structure right next to the empty lot. The house looked ripe for demolition.

“Better don’t go in there,” Vesta advised. “Place is a crack house.”

“You think so?”

“Why do you think we’re parked out in front of it?”

“I thought you wanted a quiet spot to eat our midnight snack.”

Scarlett always brought a midnight snack, as both women got those midnight cravings most people get, but amplified by the fact that they were engaged in a high-peril endeavor, which as everyone knows makes the blood pump faster, which in turn makes you hungry. She wasn’t sure this was all scientifically kosher, but it was her explanation for the phenomenon and damn if anyone said it wasn’t so.

“My contact at the precinct tells me drugs are being dealt out of this here house,” said Vesta. “And I want to catch them in the act, snap some pictures, and get them all arrested.”

“Your contact at the station? You mean your son?”

“No, I don’t mean my son,” she scoffed. “If it were up to Alec we wouldn’t even be out here patrolling. I’m talking about Chase. At least he’s on our side. Unlike my own son, who seems to think we’re just two crazy old ladies out to create trouble.”

“Look, I don’t care if that’s a crack house,” said Scarlett. “I need to use the bathroom, and if I wait much longer I’m going to have to go right here in your car.”

“Maybe we should get you those Poise Pads. The heavy-duty ones.”

“Hey! I’m not that old!”

“Okay, so go if you have to. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Maybe you can come with me?” Scarlett suggested. “And bring the pepper spray,” she added. “And the stun gun.”

“I’ll bring the stun gun, the pepper spray and my ex-husband’s shotgun,” said Vesta as she grabbed the gym bag that sat patiently on the backseat for just such a contingency. So far they hadn’t seen a lot of action, but she had a feeling that was about to change.

So they both got out and Vesta suddenly got one of those bright ideas that sometimes came to her out of the blue. Probably as a consequence of all the vitamin B she’d started to pop. She’d read somewhere it helped boost your brain activity. “You know what?” she said. “We should probably pretend that we’re two drug addicts looking to score. That way we can catch these drug dealers in the act!”

“Isn’t that called entrapment or something?”

Neither of them was exactly on top of the finer points of the law, but that had never stopped them before. “Who cares? Don’t you want to stop these people from selling drugs to kids?”

“I don’t have any kids,” Scarlett reminded her.

“I’m not talking about your kids. I’m talking about all the kids, Scarlett.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “Honestly? I just want to pee.”

Just then, the door to the crack house suddenly flew open, and a man came hurrying out. He was holding his phone and was talking into it, even as he crossed the street and got into a car, which just happened to be the car Vesta and Scarlett were parked right behind. In a reflex action Vesta snapped a picture of both the man and the car, and as it drove off, Scarlett suddenly yelled, “Fire!”

“I know, right?” said Vesta. “We’re on fire tonight!”

“No, there’s a fire!” said Scarlett, and pointed to the crack house.

“No shit,” said Vesta as she saw that Scarlett was right: the house they’d singled out for their big drug bust was on fire—smoke wafting from the door the man had left ajar.

“We gotta do something!”

“It’s probably those crack dealers,” said Vesta. “They must have turned the heat up too much when they were cooking all of that crystal meth.” She pressed the phone to her ear and bellowed, “Yeah, Dolores. Vesta Muffin. I want to report a fire at a crack house!”

“You got a fire in your crack?” asked the raspy-voiced dispatcher with a chuckle.

“Watch your tongue, Dolores. I’m being serious here.”

“Well, that’s a first,” said the wise-cracking dispatcher.

She placed her hand over the phone and addressed her friend, who now stood pressing her legs together awkwardly in an attempt to hold her pee. “You better start putting out that fire while I try to explain to Dolores what’s going on here.”

“Put out that fire? I’m not a fire putter-outer kinda girl, Vesta.”

Vesta crooked an eyebrow. “You need to pee, right? Well, better get started.” And as Scarlett gave her an eyeroll, she grinned.

Just then, she saw the curtains move at one of the houses located directly across the street from the crack house. And as she watched, the face of a woman briefly appeared, then disappeared into the shadows again.

Looked like they weren’t the only ones keeping an eye on things.

Chapter 7

In spite of the fact that Shanille had told us we weren’t welcome anymore at cat choir, the four of us decided to defy her outrageous dictum and go anyway. After all, who was Shanille to decide we couldn’t join the biggest social gathering in town?

Harriet, specifically, was outraged, as she kept referring to the whole thing as Shanillegate , though I wasn’t exactly sure what she was talking about.

“What if she throws us out?” asked Dooley, who abhors physical violence of any kind.

“She can’t throw us out,” I said. “She would need the support of the entire cat choir and I’m sure they don’t feel the same way Shanille does.”

“But what if they do? What if all the cats in Hampton Cove hate us from now on?”

“I’m sure they don’t,” I assured my friend.

And so we decided to risk it, and set paw for the park that night. And I have to say that things weren’t as harrowing an experience as I’d surmised. Frankly, I’d been bracing myself on our trek over, mentally countering all the arguments Shanille might throw at us, and even testing the muscles in my right paw in case one of her lieutenants took a swing at me. Well, you know how it is. You build up this big thing in your head, and start arguing back and forth, putting words in the mouth of the party of the second part and then thinking up the best ways to cancel them out, and when it all comes down to it, the whole thing turns out to be one big nothingburger and you wasted all that mental energy for nothing.

“Look, maybe I exaggerated a little when I told you that you weren’t welcome anymore,” said Shanille as she walked up to me. “But you have to admit you played a pretty dirty game, Max.”

“But we didn’t play any game at all!” I cried, all those arguments in my head coming to the fore all at once. “Odelia felt that the wedding was too much for her, and so she decided she was better off canceling the whole thing. We were never consulted, Shanille, believe me.”

And even if we had been consulted, we would have heartily agreed with our human, as we personally had decided to skip the wedding, even though at a later stage Gran had arranged a safe spot for us, where we wouldn’t be trampled underfoot by the masses.

“I wanted to come to the wedding,” said Harriet. “Vesta had arranged with Father Reilly that we could sit out in front, right next to the altar. And I was really looking forward to having the place of honor, you know. To have a front-row seat to the thing.”

To be perfectly honest Harriet hadn’t been all that excited. Even seated out in front she’d been afraid someone was going to step on her precious tail and reduce it to mush, and frankly so had I.

Shanille stared at Harriet, her jaw having dropped a few inches. “Father Reilly did what?”