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

Unfortunately for her the two men blithely ignored her long lament, and then Alec left and Chase stared at her like a cat who’s about to eat a canary—the one that had just started singing, presumably.

“What?” said Vesta. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You’ve done it now, Vesta.”

“What have I done now?”

“The Chief just told me it’s in the bag.”

“What’s in the bag?”

“The deal! Scarlett just signed a document granting her full immunity in exchange for her confession, and she’s put all the blame squarely on you.” And to emphasize his words, he poked a finger in Vesta’s direction.

“She did what?!”

“She talked! Said this was all your idea!”

“No, she didn’t!”

“Oh, yes, she did.”

“Look, it may have been my idea,” she said, “but Scarlett was in on it from the start. She was there when we broke into the Curtis place, and she searched the upstairs while I searched the downstairs. In fact it was her that found that nude painting of the Melanie Myers woman. Okay, so I found the jerrycans, and so it was my idea to get rid of them, making sure a silly little piece of evidence like that didn’t land Odelia’s client in the soup. And sure, it was also my idea to plant them at the Dibbles, but Scarlett was with me every step of the way, so she can’t go crying wolf now. If she didn’t agree, she should have said so!”

“Why did you plant those jerrycans at the Dibbles?”

“Cause they’re guilty, Chase! Isn’t it obvious? They’d been complaining about that crack house for months, and finally they decided enough was enough. If the cops weren’t going to do anything about it, they would take matters into their own hands, and so they torched the place. So what if a couple of drug dealers ended up dead? Good riddance!”

“When we process those jerrycans, are we going to find your fingerprints? Or Scarlett’s?”

“What do you think I am? A rookie? I wore gloves the entire time, dumbo.”

He ignored this slur as he jotted down a note. “Did you take anything else from the Curtis place apart from those jerrycans?”

“No, nothing. I wanted to take that painting, but it didn’t seem like a good idea.”

“And why is that?”

“Too heavy! Do you think I want a hernia? Those jerrycans were easy. They were empty.”

“Empty, huh?” said Chase as he jotted down another note.

“Sure. Which is why I figured you guys would probably use them as some kind of evidence against Odelia’s client.”

“You keep referring to Joshua Curtis as Odelia’s client. But he isn’t her client, is he? Just a guy who asked her to do him a favor.”

“If you’re gonna get all nitpicky about it, sure,” she allowed. Then she smiled. “So now do I get the deal or what?”

Chase got up and said, stony-faced, “What deal?”

“Hey, you said there was a deal on the table!” she cried as he left the room. “I want my deal!”

It took her another couple of minutes of sitting in silence to realize that A) there was no deal. B) there never was a deal. And C) she’d just been played!

Chapter 23

We were sitting in Odelia’s car, on what is commonly termed a stakeout, watching the house that belongs to Joshua Curtis. There was a lot of police activity going on: cops were walking in and out of the house, carrying boxes and crates and all kinds of stuff.

“What is going on?” Odelia said.

Our human was a little frustrated, I could tell. She’d walked up to the cops and asked them what was happening, and what they were dragging out of the house, but they were all under strict instructions from her uncle not to divulge anything about the case to her.

“Maybe you guys can go in there and take a look?” she finally suggested.

It had been an eventful evening already, what with Gran and Scarlett being arrested in flagrante delicto, for trying to plant stolen evidence in the Dibbles’ tool shed, and probably for trespassing, as I don’t think they’d asked permission before they snuck in.

“Let’s go, Dooley,” I said as Odelia opened the door.

So we tripped across the street to find out what was going on. Already we knew that four jerrycans had been found in Joshua’s garage, but now it looked like more stuff was going to be used to tie Odelia’s client to this triple homicide.

Dooley, who’d been glancing upwards, now asked, “Do you think storks work at night, Max? Or do you think they sleep?”

“I thought you’d finally dropped the whole stork thing?”

“Well, I know that Odelia says she wants to wait to have babies, but it’s not up to her, is it? When that stork decides to drop a baby in her lap, he’s going to drop that baby in her lap, whether she likes it or not.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Dooley.”

“No, but it does, Max! It happens all the time on General Hospital. Even to people who aren’t even married. One of the doctors had an affair with a nurse and one morning she came into his office and announced that she was pregnant. And he was married to another person! So either that stork made a big mistake, or storks simply don’t care whether a person is ready or not. They just deliver those babies anyway.”

“Sure, Dooley,” I said as we watched the cops work like beavers—or glorified movers. When all this was over, and Joshua was let out of jail again, he’d have a hard time recognizing his place, with all the stuff that had been removed from it.

“I have a theory,” said Dooley now, visibly pleased with himself.

“What is your theory?” I asked, curious in spite of myself.

“Well, I think that the International Association of Storks is tasked with the important task that there should always be a certain number of babies in the world, so they simply go around distributing them. Now if a person is ready to have a baby, so much the better. But even if they’re not, those babies have to be placed somewhere, right? So they are going to be placed, whether the people getting them are ready or not.”

“Right,” I said dubiously as I watched Sarah Flunk, one of Odelia’s uncle’s officers, carry a very large portrait out of the house, along with another cop. The portrait portrayed Melanie Myers in the nude, and was a vivid depiction of her likeness.

“Hey, that’s that painting of Melanie Myers without any clothes on,” said Dooley, momentarily distracted from his stork theory. “You still haven’t explained to me why she’s not wearing any clothes, Max.”

“She probably forgot to get dressed,” I said. “It happens. Let’s go inside and have a closer look.”

“But who’s going to watch for the stork?”

“Storks don’t work at night, Dooley,” I said. “They’re like most people: they work nine to five and then they take a load off. Let’s go.”

Much relieved, Dooley traipsed after me as we entered the house.

We quickly made our way upstairs, where all the activity seemed to be focused, and found ourselves in a small room adjacent to Joshua’s bedroom.

“Oh, my God,” said Dooley. “Will you look at that.”

I was looking at that, and it became clear to me that Joshua Curtis had some serious issues: everywhere we looked the smiling face of Melanie Myers greeted us. From pictures hanging on the walls, to painted portraits, to sculpted busts and even a life-sized statue literally placed on a pedestal, LED lights illuminating it from below. There was even one of those small bubbling water features, with Melanie clearly recognizable in the cherub pouring water from her pitcher and looking entirely too happy as she did.

“I think Joshua really likes Melanie,” Dooley said. “Like, really really likes her.”

“Yeah, a little too much, I would say.”