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

“Well, not to die, exactly,” said Harriet. “You had plenty of food out there in the woods, Chouchou, so let’s not get overdramatic, shall we?”

“Okay, so…” Karl began, as his wife regarded him with unmitigated consternation. “So look, Kathy. The thing is…” He sighed deeply, then finally blurted out, “I’m allergic to cats, all right!”

“Allergic!”

“Yeah, I just didn’t want to tell you because… Well, you know how it is. You meet someone and you try to make a good impression on that person, and so when she asks you if you love and adore cats as much as she does, you obviously say yes, because you don’t want to make her think you’re some kind of cat-hating freak. And then one thing leads to another and…” He suddenly sneezed and said, “I’ve been allergic to cats all my life. It’s not that I hate the creatures, though I’m not terribly fond of them as you can imagine, but they make me sick—and I mean that in the kindest way possible,” he hastened to add.

“You are allergic to cats…” said Kathleen, sounding skeptical.

“I am! Always have been.” He sneezed again.

“So is that why you’re always sick?”

“Partly, yeah,” he said. “I have other allergies, too, but mainly it’s cats.” He shrugged. “I probably should have told you from the beginning, when we first started dating, but I fell for you like a ton of bricks, and I had a feeling this whole cat thing was kind of a deal-breaker, so…” He gave her a sheepish look.

“So you decided to lie to me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.”

“But how did you go from being allergic to cats to prowling around at night collecting them off the streets and dumping them in the woods?” asked Odelia.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Max said at her feet.

“Well,” he said, giving Chouchou an uncertain glance, “the thing is, I just thought at some point that the best solution would be to simply get rid of Chouchou once and for all. And I’d read an article that cats are never happier than when in their natural habitat, so I just figured…”

“You just figured you’d take my sweet precious baby and dump her in the woods,” said Kathleen, her anger still building.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, hanging his head. “And to make sure you wouldn’t suspect me I just thought I’d collect a few of those creatures and put them all in the same place.”

“So we would think a catnapper was on the prowl,” said Odelia, understanding dawning.

Karl Bunyon shrugged. “It sounded like a good idea at the time.”

“Karl, it’s the worst idea possible!” Kathleen screamed, and gave him a good whack on the arm.

“I’m sorry, all right!” he wailed. “I just didn’t know what else to do! My allergies were getting worse and worse, and I had to do something!”

“What you should have done is to come clean and then we could have taken the necessary steps,” said Kathleen.

“You mean give Chouchou away to your folks?” he said hopefully.

“No! To take you to a doctor and get you the proper medication to treat those allergies of yours!”

“Oh, God,” he said, burying his head in his hands. “I’m a horrible person, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are, Karl,” said Kathleen with grim-faced annoyance. “God! And you tell me he’s gone and kidnapped your cats, too?”

“All four of them,” Odelia confirmed.

“Karl!” Kathleen cried and gave her husband another well-deserved whack.

“I’m sorry, all right! How was I supposed to know those cats belonged to someone?”

“Hello—they’re all wearing collars!”

“Collars with trackers,” Chase specified. “Which is how we knew they’d been taken, and where they’d been taken.”

“Trackers,” Karl murmured as he studied Odelia’s foursome. “I should have known.”

“So now what?” asked Kathleen, as she regarded Chase with a touch of trepidation. “Are you going to arrest my husband?”

“Are you pressing charges?” Chase shot back.

Kathleen stood regarding her husband for a moment, then said, “Karl, go upstairs for a moment will you?”

“But why?” asked her catnapping other half.

“Because there’s something I want to discuss with Miss Poole and Officer Kingsley.”

“Oh, all right,” said Karl, and repaired upstairs.

“Look, I know this looks bad,” said Kathleen once her husband was out of view and out of earshot, “but there’s something I need to explain to you about Karl.”

“We already know about his allergies,” said Odelia. “And we already know he did a very stupid thing here, Kathleen.”

“I know, and I’ll deal with him in my own way. But here’s the thing about Karl: he’s been through the wringer and I think it’s taken its toll on him—no, I know it’s taken its toll on him. See, when I met him he was really down in the dumps. He’d just gone through a terrible divorce, and he was feeling at a very low ebb in his life. So even though it sounds odd that he would lie about his allergies, when you know what he was like back then it’s actually almost understandable why he did what he did.”

“How come?” asked Chase. “Why was he in such a bad way?”

“It’s a long story, and I’ll save you the details. But let’s just say that Karl used to be something of a big shot at Kramer Kitchen Kreation, Fred Kramer’s outfit?”

Odelia shared a look with her husband. “Isn’t that where Mom and Gran went to pick out a new kitchen?”

“I think so,” Chase said.

“Well, Karl was their chief accountant—Fred Kramer’s go-to financial guy. Karl’s then-wife Grace was Fred’s secretary, and for a while things were going great. Until Fred started an affair with Karl’s wife, and Fred accused Karl of embezzlement and had him kicked out of the company. So suddenly Karl not only lost his marriage, but also his high-flying job and his social esteem. He went from being the cat’s meow to being a nothing.”

“Did Fred press charges?”

“Oh, no. And according to Karl there never was any embezzlement and I believe him. I think the embezzlement charge was just an excuse to get rid of Karl, and to convince Grace that her husband was a crook so she’d leave him for Fred, which she did.”

“But that’s terrible,” said Odelia.

“And you haven’t even heard the worst part. Karl and Grace had two kids, and ever since the divorce Grace has been trying to take the kids away from him. She got custody of the kids, based on those embezzlement charges, which were all dropped, by the way, a clear sign they were bogus, and now she’s trying to take Karl’s visitation rights away.” She gave Odelia a knowing look. “So you see, if it gets out that Karl has been grabbing cats and dumping them in the woods, Grace is sure to use it as more ammunition in the divorce battle against her ex-husband, and he’ll almost certainly lose his kids for good.”

“So I take it you’re not going to press charges,” said Odelia, getting the gist.

“Look, I think what he did is terrible, and he should never have touched my cat or your cats, or any of those cats, but Karl has been under a lot of pressure lately.”

“The custody battle.”

Kathleen nodded. “It’s really taken a toll on him, and he’s not thinking straight at the moment.”

“Okay, all right, I get that,” said Odelia. “But the thing is, close to the place where your husband dumped the cats—yours and mine—a man was found. A dead man.”

“Oh, I saw something about that,” said Kathleen, nodding. “A vagrant, wasn’t he?”

“We’re not sure yet,” said Chase. “But we were actually looking for the catnapper because we figured he might be involved with this murder business.”