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

“Gotcha!” she yelled.

“Eek!” Chase screamed.

“Gotcha!” Scarlett cried as she hopped into the bed from the other side.

“Eeeek!” Chase yelped, and turned on the light.

Vesta, blinking against the sudden blaze, searched around for Donna.

“Where are you hiding, you trollop!” she said. “Come out now!”

“Yeah, come out now!” Scarlett echoed, clearly having a ball.

“What are you doing?!” Chase said, looking startled as he wrapped the sheet closer to his chest, staring at the two old ladies having hopped into bed with him out of the blue.

“Where is she?” asked Vesta, wagging a menacing finger in the cop’s face.

“Yeah, where is the floozie?” asked Scarlett.

“What floozie? What are you talking about?!”

“Donna. I know you’re hiding her somewhere,” said Vesta.

“Donna? There is no Donna. I sent her home after her third martini and after pumping her for information on the missing women. She was best friends with one of them so I figured she might know what happened to her friend.”

Vesta stared at the guy, a little dumbfounded. “You mean you weren’t planning on sleeping with the woman?”

“What?! Of course not! I’m in love with Odelia. Why would I want to sleep with Donna?”

“Oops,” said Scarlett, making herself comfortable on her side of the bed.

“Yeah, oops,” said Vesta, also settling back against the backboard.

Then, as they sat side by side, two seductresses and one contestant, suddenly a loud gong sounded. It was the third gong of the night, this time announcing that one of the men had been unfaithful.

“I think that was your gong, Chase,” said Vesta, a little sheepishly.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Scarlett.

Chase heaved a deep sigh. “Guess I’m not going home with that big prize after all.”

“At least you found out something about the missing women, right?” said Gran.

“No. Donna didn’t know anything about that.”

“Too bad,” muttered Vesta.

“We’re famous now,” said Scarlett. “Most famous trio in the history of Passion Island.”

Chase groaned and buried his head in his hands.

Chapter 32

I was starting to get the sense that Passion Island wasn’t the kind of place a young and innocent mind like Dooley’s should necessarily be subjected to. People were jumping into bed left, right and center, and if they weren’t huffing and puffing under the cover of a single sheet they were hotting up the dance floor, or steaming gently in the sauna or coming to a slow boil in the jacuzzi. It’s one thing to be my friend’s keeper, but another to have to labor under circumstances that are a lot less than ideal.

So I had half a mind to tell Odelia to call the whole thing off and return to the safety and comfort of Hampton Cove, if it weren’t for the fact that Odelia is one of those people that hates to leave a job before it’s well and truly done.

She hadn’t yet gotten to the bottom of this baffling mystery of the disappearing women, and so prematurely leaving the island simply wasn’t in the cards.

Once again half the production crew had come running the moment they saw Fred take an iron to the noggin and go down for the count.

“What happened?!” Kimmy asked as she surveyed the scene.

“He tried to seduce me,” said Odelia simply.

Kimmy’s jaw dropped, then she spoke the immortal words, “Are you planning on taking out the entire field of seducers or do you want to leave a couple for the competition?”

“It was an accident,” Odelia explained, looking appropriately mortified.

“An accident is when you slip on a bar of soap,” said Kimmy. “This?” She gestured to the fallen seducer, who was being tended to by the team’s nurse. “This is overkill.”

Odelia winced at the mention of the word kill. “I’m sorry. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I guess I got a little upset, so I just reached for the first thing I could find.”

“Good thing it wasn’t a knife or he’d be dead.” Kimmy then broke into a wide grin. “I have to say I admire your touch, honey. If every guy who doesn’t take no for an answer took an iron to the head the world would be a better place. And a lot safer for women.”

“Did you hear that gong earlier?” asked Odelia. “Was that the men’s gong?”

Kimmy nodded. “I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I’m afraid the gong sounded for your boyfriend.”

“Oh, no!”

Kimmy’s smile didn’t diminish. Quite the contrary.

“Why are you smiling! Chase just cheated on me!”

“Technically, yes, but I think you’ll find that actually he didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he was caught in bed with your grandmother and your grandmother’s friend, and from what I understand it was all one big misunderstanding. They were trying to catch him in the act with Donna, and ended up getting caught in the act themselves—the act of giving him a tongue-lashing, that is.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not. I saw it with my own eyes. The techies were laughing so hard they were practically rolling on the floor.” She rubbed Odelia’s back. “I gotta tell you, this is shaping up to be the most interesting season yet, and it’s all thanks to you and Chase.”

“Kimmy, can I ask you something?”

The production assistant turned serious. “Did you discover a lead?”

“Well, Jack claims that Joanna could be up to something.” And in a few words she explained what Jack had discovered.

“I’ll look into it,” Kimmy promised. “Keep up the good work—though try not to knock out all of our seducers. We still need them.”

Odelia sank down onto the living room couch, as we watched the nurse rub something under Fred’s nose. He woke up with a start.

“Wha-wha-wha…” he said, then caught sight of Odelia and his eyes widened considerably. “Get away from me!” he cried, scrabbling to his feet.

“Easy, buddy,” said the nurse. “Let me check those pupils.”

“She tried to kill me!”

“That’s what you get from crawling into a woman’s bed without being invited,” said the nurse, who was the stern and implacable kind. “Look into the little light. That’s it.”

And as she examined the guy, he kept darting nervous glances to Odelia, which told me he was A-okay. Apparently it took more than a blow to the head to give him pause. He did need stitches, though, which was a pretty gruesome sight to behold, I must say.

“So your gong was a false alarm, and Chase’s gong was a false alarm,” I told my human when all the hubbub had finally died down and it was just the three of us again. “Which means you still have a shot at winning this thing.”

“I’m not interested in winning this thing, Max,” said Odelia. “All I want is to figure out who’s kidnapping these women. And I’m still nowhere on that.” She yawned. “But tomorrow is another day, and maybe Kimmy will have some luck with Joanna so I’m not going to start despairing just yet. No, sir, I am not.”

And with these words, she stumbled into the bedroom, tumbled into the bed, and was soon snoring away like a lumberjack—a fine-boned, fair-haired lumberjack, that is.

And since Passion Island was oddly devoid of cats of any persuasion, and I didn’t feel like hanging out with the local creatures of the night, Dooley and I hopped onto the bed and turned in for the night as well.

Like Odelia said, tomorrow was another day, and maybe it would bring us closer to the truth.

And if it didn’t, there were still four seducers left for Odelia to take a whack at.

Chapter 33

It took our human some little while to get out of bed and ready for action. As I’ve indicated before, Odelia is never at her best in the early morning, and usually needs a strong dose of caffeine to get her system into gear. Now, after last night’s events, and less hours of sleep than is her custom, she looked like a shadow of her usual chipper self.