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

Chapter 1

Look, don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a murder even less than the next cat, even though it isn’t necessarily my own species who’s affected by this tragic loss of life. But when the only cases coming Odelia’s way are spouses wanting to catch their other spouses in the act of cheating on those selfsame spouses—the first spouses, not the second ones, if you see what I mean—life becomes pretty dull and monotony soon reigns supreme.

Dooley, though, didn’t seem to mind all these people being cheated upon—or is it cheated on—from finding their way into Odelia’s office. But then again, Dooley watches a lot of daytime soaps, and eighty percent of the storylines on these soaps are exactly the cheating kind of stuff. The other twenty percent is probably illegitimate children suddenly popping up out of the blue, which frankly speaking is the same thing.

So it was with a sigh of relief that I greeted the next person entering our human’s office at the Hampton Cove Gazette. She was a large woman with red-rimmed eyes, clearly suffering from some acute or life-threatening trouble. Immediately I assumed murder, which just goes to show how warped my mind has become after having spent the formative years of my life in Odelia’s presence and that of her cop husband, her cop uncle and her neighborhood watch grandma. And it was with bated breath that I pricked up my ears as the woman took a proffered seat and launched into her tale of woe.

“My Chouchou has gone missing,” she lamented.

“Murder,” I told Dooley, my friend and housemate who was lounging right next to me in the cozy little nook of the office Odelia had reserved for us. “Just you mark my words, Dooley. Chouchou is this woman’s husband and he’s been brutally butchered.”

“Strange name for a husband,” said Dooley.

“Who is Chouchou?” asked Odelia, not missing a trick. She had looked up from her computer where she’d been busily typing up a report of her recent visit to the town library, where a recital by some local children’s orchestra had taken place.

“My sweet baby,” said the woman, sniffling and pressing a Kleenex to her eyes.

“Not a husband, a kid,” I corrected my earlier statement. “Bad business, Dooley. A child killer on the loose.”

“Strange name for a kid,” was Dooley’s opinion.

“And when did Chouchou go missing?” asked Odelia.

“Last night,” said the woman, waving a distraught hand in the general direction of the street. “She usually goes out at night but by the time I get up in the morning she’s always lying at the foot of the bed, sleeping peacefully. Only this morning she wasn’t there!”

“Does your daughter always sleep at the foot of the bed?” asked Odelia with a curious frown. It isn’t up to her to judge people, so she never does, but she couldn’t hide her surprise at this strange way to spend a night.

“Oh, but Chouchou isn’t my daughter,” said the woman. “She’s my little gii-ii-ii–rl!”

“So is Chouchou a… dog?” Odelia guessed.

The woman promptly stopped wailing, and gave Odelia a look of surprise. “Of course she’s not a dog. She’s my precious sweetheart. My sweet and lovely Maine Coon.”

“Huh,” I said, sagging a little as a sense of slight disappointment swept over me. Cats going missing is not exactly the kind of case I live for. Cats go missing all the time, you see, and usually they show up again within twenty-four hours, when their sense of adventure is sated and they return, utterly famished and happy to be home again.

“So Chouchou went missing last night,” said Odelia, summing up the state of affairs succinctly. I could see that she was less than excited at the prospect of traipsing all over town in search of a missing cat. “So does Chouchou usually stay out all night?”

“She does, but like I said, she’s always back in the morning. I have no idea where she goes, and frankly I don’t care—live and let live, I say, and that goes for my pets, too.”

“Pets as in… you have more than one cat?”

“I have a gerbil,” said the woman.

“Gerbils aren’t pets,” I muttered.

“So what are they?” asked Dooley.

“Pests,” I returned.

“Look, you come highly recommended, Miss Poole,” said the woman, who still hadn’t given us her name, by the way. “Everybody knows that you’re Hampton Cove’s leading cat lady, and so if there’s anyone who can find my precious baby it’s you.” She leaned forward, a pleading look in her eyes. “Can you help me find my Chouchou—please?”

“If I were you, Miss…”

“Bunyon,” said the woman. “Kathleen Bunyon. And it’s Mrs.”

“If I were you, Mrs. Bunyon, I’d wait another twenty-four hours. I’m sure that your baby will show up as soon as she gets hungry.”

“But this isn’t like her. She never stays out this long. Can’t you please help me?”

“Did you go to the police?”

“I did. And you know what they said?”

“I can imagine.”

“They said missing pets are not a priority at the moment. Can you imagine? If a missing pet isn’t a priority, what is?”

“Missing people, perhaps?” I suggested.

The woman glanced in my direction, having picked up my discreetly mewled commentary. “Oh, I see you bring your babies to work with you. Very clever.”

“Yeah, they like to be where I am,” Odelia confirmed with a warm smile.

Suddenly Mrs. Bunyon got up and joined me and Dooley in our corner. “Can’t you find my baby for me, sweet pussies? I know you’re as clever as Miss Poole is—or at least that’s what people keep telling me.”

I turned to Dooley. “Do you know this Chouchou?”

“I’m not sure,” said Dooley, thinking hard.

“What does she look like?” I asked.

And if you think it’s strange for two cats as established in our local community as we are not to know all the cats that reside in that community, I have to confess that there are so many cats now that it’s frankly impossible to know them all. Furthermore, not all cats are as socially active as Dooley and myself are, so the name frankly didn’t ring a bell.

“What does your Chouchou look like?” asked Odelia, as she opened a new file on her computer and started typing.

“Well, she’s small and very beautiful. Oh, wait. I’ve got a picture of her on my phone.” Mrs. Bunyon took her phone out of her purse and swiped it to life. “In fact I have more than one,” she admitted, and started showing us a regular barrage of pictures. She must have had thousands on there. All of them showed a very hairy Maine Coon, with a slightly stunned look in her eyes, as if she hadn’t signed up for life as a photo model.

“Nah,” I said. “Never seen her before in my life.”

“You have no idea where she goes at night?” asked Odelia.

“Not a clue,” said Mrs. Bunyon as she pressed play on a video she’d shot of her fur baby playing with a sponge. “The neighbor says he sees her walking in the direction of the park when he walks his dog, and that’s usually around eleven o’clock at night.”

“Cat choir,” I said knowingly.

“I haven’t seen her either,” said Dooley, who’d taken a long time to come to a definite position on this. “If she’s a member of cat choir she’s one of the less noticeable ones.”

Not every member of cat choir likes to stand out, of course. Some of them like to be the star of the show, like Harriet, our Persian housemate, but others simply show up and stay in the background.

“Look, I’ll see what I can do,” said Odelia with a pointed look in my direction.

I rolled my eyes. “Really?” I said. “She’s probably just wandering around having the time of her life. She’ll be back before you know it.”