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

“We could always put them back,” Scarlett suggested.

“And get caught? I don’t think so,” said her friend.

“Look, just come clean,” said Odelia. “Uncle Alec won’t be happy, but he won’t be too upset either. After all, you can always say…”

“Yes?”

“Well, you could say…”

“Uh-huh?”

Odelia threw up her hands. “I have no idea what you could say, but I do know you can’t keep these.”

“Like I said, I wasn’t planning on keeping them. They’re yours.”

“Oh, God.”

“The guy’s your client! You should keep them!”

“I’m not keeping those jerrycans, Gran. That’s evidence in a crime. And not just any evidence, either. This is crucial evidence!”

“Well, duh. Why do you think I took it, dummy?”

“Gran is in big trouble now, isn’t she?” said Dooley.

“No more than usual,” I told him.

“So just tell us honestly,” said Scarlett. “Do you really believe this Joshua Curtis guy is innocent?”

Odelia shrugged. “Right now I’m not sure what to believe. I’m just trying to get a clearer picture of what’s going on here. And hopefully in the process find the truth.”

“You know who could have done it?” said Gran, wagging her finger at no one in particular. “Those neighbors.”

“What neighbors?” asked Odelia.

“The neighbors! We saw them peeking through the window, didn’t we, Scarlett? And then pretending like they hadn’t seen us.”

“I talked to Dolores today,” said Odelia thoughtfully, “and she mentioned that the neighbors have been launching a regular avalanche of complaints the last couple of months.”

“See!” said Gran. “I knew I was onto something!”

“Even a broken clock gets it right twice a day,” Brutus muttered.

“I heard that!” Gran shouted.

Chapter 21

“That tip about the neighbors was a good one, I have to give her that,” said Odelia as she steered her aged pickup through Hampton Cove, on her way to Parker Street.

“Like Brutus said, though,” Max intimated, “even a broken clock gets it right twice a day.”

“Yeah, but Dolores said much the same thing: the Dibbles really wanted those people gone. Is it too much to imagine that they might have gone to extreme lengths to get what they wanted?”

“I guess we’ll soon find out,” said Max, and she threw him a grateful smile through the rearview mirror.

Dooley and Max were in the backseat, as usual, while Brutus and Harriet had opted to head on home. They weren’t in a sleuthing mood, apparently, and Harriet had said something about a showdown at cat choir she needed to get mentally prepared for, whatever that meant.

Odelia parked her car across the road from the derelict structure, now deserted and festooned with crime scene tape, and glanced up at the house where the Dibbles lived, husband and wife. She saw the curtain move, then drop back into place. “At least they’re home,” she told her cats, who were following in her wake.

“Now let’s get them to talk,” said Max.

“So if I’m Numpty, and you’re Dumpty,” said Dooley as they walked up to the house, “then who is Humpty?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Dooley,” said Max, sounding a little weary.

“Could it be,” said Dooley, “and this is just a theory, mind you. But could it be that Humpty is the name of the stork?”

“No, Dooley,” said Max, “Humpty is not the name of the stork.”

“How do you know? Have you ever met the stork?”

Odelia smiled as Max had to admit that Dooley had him stumped.

She pressed her finger against the mother-of-pearl bell button and listened to the loud buzz of the bell as it sounded inside. Moments later the door was opened a crack and two suspicious eyes studied her carefully. “Yes?”

“Hi, my name is Odelia Poole and I’m investigating last night’s murder. The murder that happened just across the street? You didn’t happen to see anything?”

“I already talked to the cops,” said the woman, for now that the door was opened a little wider Odelia could see that it was indeed a woman. She would have pegged her in her late sixties, with a florid face and a hard expression in her eyes. Not a woman to be trifled with.

“I know, but I’m just working a different angle.”

“Do you have a badge? The policewoman who was here last night had a badge.”

“No, I do not have a badge,” she said, “but if you want to check my credentials you can always get in touch with this person.” She handed Mrs. Dibble Chase’s card. “He’s the detective investigating the case and I’m sure he’ll vouch for me.”

“Mh,” the woman said, clearly not impressed. “So what do you wanna know?”

“Well, did you see anything suspicious last night? People entering the building or exiting?”

“I saw one guy exiting the building. Nice-looking fella. Looked like a lawyer. Not the kind of person you’d expect in a place like that.”

“And what kind of place is that?”

“A crack house,” the woman spat. “Filled with junkies and slackers. I’ve been complaining to the cops for months, but do you think they even showed me the courtesy to come and talk to me? No way. But now that three people are dead suddenly they all show up and start asking a million questions. If you people had listened to me sooner, this would never have happened!”

“I know,” said Odelia. “So apart from the clean-cut type, did you see anyone else?”

“No one,” said the woman, shaking her head. “Of course it’s not as if I spent all night looking at that wretched place. I’ve got better things to do, me, and so does my husband.”

“Can I talk to your husband, perhaps? Maybe he saw something?”

“He didn’t see nothing.”

“But—”

“Nothing!”

“Just one more question, Mrs. Dibble. Did you happen to call the police last night? Or your husband?” she hastened to add when the woman started shaking her head.

“I did not,” said Vanda Dibble.

“Well, someone called the police.”

“Two old ladies were out here, staking out the place. They called the cops.”

“I know, but one more call was placed. Or actually two. The clean-cut individual, as you so aptly described him, called 911 and so did the two old ladies, but there was a third 911 call, and I was wondering…”

“Well, it wasn’t us. Now if there’s nothing else…” She started to close the door. Then suddenly there was a loud scream that came from somewhere inside the house.

“Vanda!” a man’s voice called out. “I got ‘em! Busted them fair and square!”

The woman quickly turned back to join her husband, and Odelia decided it behooved her to enter the house and see what was going on in there.

And as she followed Mrs. Dibble into the living room, then through to the kitchen and out into the backyard, she was met with a fascinating scene: there stood an old man, with a face as florid as his wife’s and eyes as hard her hers, brandishing a gun at two old ladies. And those two ladies were… Gran and Scarlett!

“What are you doing here?” Odelia blurted out.

“You know these two?” asked Mrs. Dibble, whirling around.

“I caught them with these,” said Mr. Dibble, and pointed to four empty jerrycans, lying at Gran’s feet. “They tried to sneak into the tool shed, if you please!”

“You told me to get rid of them!” Gran cried. “So I figured what better place to dump them than here with these two killers!”

“I told you to take them to the police!” said Odelia.

“How do you know each other?” Mrs. Dibble tried again.

“I was gonna call the cops as soon as we planted them in the shed,” Gran explained.