Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Advice. Purrfect Passion. A Purrfect Gnomeful

“Let’s take a closer look,” I suggested, and we moved into the room where the camera people were all gathered. The one who’d approached Odelia was still talking, and he didn’t have a lot of complimentary things to say about our beloved human.

“She told me to get lost—can you believe it? I was just doing my job and she told me off! The nerve of the woman.”

“Pretty little blonde, though, isn’t she, our Miss Poole?” said another guy of similar dimensions, who sat fiddling with his camera. “By far the prettiest of this new crop.”

“Then you haven’t seen Jackie,” said a third. “Just what the doctor ordered. Oo-wee!”

Somehow I had the feeling I wasn’t going to learn much from listening to these men commenting on Odelia and the other women like bumblebees on a meadow of particularly nectar-filled flowers, so I told Dooley I’d heard enough and we walked out.

“They do seem to like Odelia a lot, don’t they?” Dooley said.

“Yeah, I guess they do,” I agreed, though I wasn’t particularly partial to the kind of men who salivated over my human like a restaurant visitor over a juicy piece of steak.

We moved into the next room, but there wasn’t much information to be gleaned there either. Kimmy, along with a horde of writers and fellow assistant producers, kept pecking away at their laptops in utmost concentration, so that was a bust, too.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I suggested. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and learn something.”

We moved up the stairs and arrived on the landing, several doors leading off into the crew members’ respective rooms. The door to one room was ajar, and since I heard voices from inside, I decided to investigate further. No one ever pays attention to cats, which is why our association with Odelia has been so successful. We’re the perfect spies.

Inside the room we found Clint, seated on the bed and still talking a mile a minute into his phone. So we took a seat near the door and listened to what he had to say.

“I don’t care, Susan! It’s my way or the highway, haven’t I made that perfectly clear?” He listened for a moment, and I could hear a woman’s voice holding up her end of the conversation. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it. Because I don’t want to talk about it!”

There was more repartee, and I could see that Clint was getting more and more red in the face as the conversation dragged on.

“I think he’s going to have an aneurysm, Max,” said Dooley, noticing the same thing.

“I think so, too,” I agreed, and was already eyeing the door in case we needed to race out to fetch Odelia and a doctor.

“Look, it’s got nothing to do with me. If they decide to vanish from the face of the earth that’s their business. How the hell would I know where they’ve gone off to! It’s got nothing to do with me, I’m telling you!”

I had the impression he was talking about the missing women, so I pricked up my ears. Unfortunately, the conversation quickly wound down after that, and so before Clint discovered he was no longer alone, Dooley and I tip-toed from the room again.

Out in the corridor, Dooley said, “I think he was talking about the missing women, Max.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Does that mean he doesn’t know where they are?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think we can put Clint’s name on our list of suspects.”

Though why the show’s producer would kidnap his own contestants was beyond me.

Chapter 18

That night, the first big event of the season had been announced and was to take place in the plaza, the central meeting place, and not coincidentally where the bar was located. Before Odelia had left for Thailand she’d watched a couple of episodes of the show’s previous season, conveniently taped by her grandmother, and it struck her that a lot of the ‘action’ appeared to take place in that very same plaza.

So it was with a slight sense of trepidation that she slid into the little black dress she’d selected for the occasion, slipped her feet into a pair of heels, and checked her reflection in the mirror. She’d applied minimal makeup, and her hair was a little frizzy, but she figured she’d be able to get away with it. After all, she hadn’t been cast as a seductress but as one half of a regular couple, and she looked about as regular as could be.

As she left the villa, she almost bumped into Tina, who was dressed to the nines, and looked absolutely terrified. “I’ve already downed two martinis and I still feel like I’m going to die,” the homely brunette confessed.

“It’ll be fine,” Odelia said, though she felt seriously nervous herself.

“It’s not the seducers I’m worried about so much as all those cameras. And the idea that millions of people will be watching my every move, and listening to every single thing I say. Can you believe a guy with a camera came into my bedroom just now, filming me? I kicked him out, of course.” She shook her head. “The gall of these people. Just because we signed up for their show they think they can do anything.”

“I had to get rid of a cameraman myself,” Odelia said. “Kept bugging me about removing my top.”

“We’re candidates, not strippers,” said Tina as she teetered on her high heels.

They passed a villa and a loud voice arrested their progress. “Hey, wait up!” The voice belonged to Jackie, and she looked absolutely gorgeous in a skintight red dress that showcased a sizable bust and a pair of long tan legs. She came tripping up, a look of excitement on her face. “I can’t believe the show is about to start and we’re in it!” she cried. “Isn’t that just amazeballs! Eeeek!”

“Eeeek!” Tina echoed, though it was clear her heart wasn’t really in it.

“Eeeeek!” said Odelia without much enthusiasm.

The fourth participant came walking out of her villa and smiled when she saw the three others waiting for her on the path.

“So this is it, huh?” she said. Joanna was dressed in a simple white linen dress, and looked the most normal of the foursome. Like Odelia, she hadn’t put on a lot of makeup, and it was obvious the pretty redhead wasn’t exactly the party girl. She heaved a little sigh. “Is it just me or do you guys just want this whole thing to be over?”

“It’s just you!” said Jackie, and squealed again. And as she slipped her arm through Tina’s, and started up the path, Odelia and Joanna fell back.

“You don’t seem like the Passion Island type either,” said Joanna. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?” She laughed deferentially. “I know I’ve had my doubts myself.”

Odelia experienced a pang of guilt for lying to these women. Still, she had to stick to her story. She couldn’t very well come out and tell Joanna she was there in an official capacity. “I don’t really care about the whole show element either,” she confessed, “but the prize money could really change my life. In my line of work 50.000 dollars is a lot of money. I’d have to work my whole life to raise that kind of cash.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a reporter for a small-town newspaper on Long Island. Lots of local events. You know the kind. Wedding anniversaries, library readings, a farmer’s chickens organizing the great escape. Not exactly Pulitzer-Prize-winning material. I love it, though.”

“I thought you were a vet or something,” said Joanna. “Because of the cats.”

“Oh, no. Though it’s true that I love my two fur-babies.”

“They are pretty cute,” said Joanna with a smile.

“How about you? What do you do?”

“I’m an accountant, and so is my Arthur. In fact that’s how we met. My parents are accountants, too. They run their own company, and Arthur was their first hire, so we ended up spending a lot of time together crunching numbers, and chatting around the water cooler. And one thing led to another and here we are.” She smiled. “Friends signed us up for Passion Island. They figured we could use a little excitement in our lives.”