Ник Сайнт - Purrfectly Hidden. Purrfect Kill. Purrfect Boy Toy

“Anything else?” asked Chief Alec, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

“The brooch. I’ve examined it more closely and those are real diamonds. So it’s worth a pretty penny. My advice would be to show it to a jeweler. Every jeweler has their personal style, so maybe they’ll be able to deduce something from the way the stones were set. There’s also a small engraving that had become invisible because of dirt.”

“And? What does it say?” asked Chase, hanging on the coroner’s every word.

“Some code, so not very helpful. I will send you my preliminary report, and detailed photographs of the brooch. Good luck, gentlemen. And if you have another case like this, please don’t hesitate to call me. It’s always fun to dig around in the past, instead of the endless number of traffic accident victims I usually deal with.”

Chief Alec checked his emails, and sure enough Abe’s email had already arrived in his inbox. He clicked on the pictures of the brooch, and both men studied them. The inscription on the back was clearly visible. It read AC/34.

“Doesn’t say much,” said Chase, disappointed.

“It might mean something to a jeweler,” Alec pointed out.

“Did you know this Boyd Baker?” asked Chase.

“I did. Well, not personally. The guy disappeared years ago. But him and his wife lived in that house, all right. In fact Marge and Tex bought the place from Phyllis Baker twenty-five years ago, and even back then the disappearance of her husband was common knowledge. Rumor had it he left town with a girlfriend, leaving his family in the lurch.”

“Is Mrs. Baker still with us?”

“No, I don’t think so. She was an old lady twenty-five years ago. But her daughter is still alive. She lived next to her mother, and sold the house to Odelia only five years ago or something. I think she moved to Grover Street, to one of those new apartments.”

“So she’s our first port of call?”

“That’s right, buddy. Oh, and Chase?”

“Mh?”

“Let’s keep Odelia out of this one, and my mother.”

“No civilian consultants?”

“No civilian consultants. People are already speculating that it’s my dad whose skeleton we found, and that my mother murdered him and buried him there. So if we let her and Odelia investigate, the gossip mill will go full tilt. They’ll say we’re trying to cover up a murder and yadda yadda yadda. Heck, they’ll probably say I’m trying to cover up the murder of my dad, but at least I’ve got the badge to make them shut up.”

Chase nodded as he studied the other pictures of the brooch, then focused on the ones Abe had taken of the skeleton as it lay spread out on his autopsy table.

“Amazing,” he said softly as he studied the pictures.

“What is?”

“So this guy has been in the ground for decades? Talk about a cold case.”

“The coldest one possible,” said Alec. “And we’re going to solve it, buddy. You and me.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea not to involve Odelia? Her cats might be able to—”

“No cat lives for decades,” the Chief interrupted him. “So I don’t see how Max and the others could help us solve Baker’s murder. No, it’s just us, Chase. Just like the old days.”

Chase laughed. “The old days? Chief, I’ve only been in town a year.”

“Funny,” said Alec with a frown. “Sometimes I have a feeling you’ve been here forever.”

“I’m bored, Jerry,” said Johnny as he leaned his head back. Spot sat in his lap and seemed bored, too, for he had placed his head on Johnny’s knee and was panting softly.

“Yeah, well, that’s what surveillance is all about,” said Jerry.

“Being bored?”

“Stalking out a place until you’re ready to move in and rob its owners blind.”

“We don’t even know if there’s anything of value to be found in there, Jer.”

“Doesn’t matter! This is our trial run, Johnny. This is where we find out how vigilant the cops in this town are, and if this all turns out the way I think it will, we can launch a run that will sustain us for the rest of our lives. Do you realize how much wealth there is in this town? This place is crawling with millionaires and billionaires and gazillionaires.”

“All with very sophisticated security systems.”

“Which you won’t have a problem to hack into.”

Johnny perked up. He liked a challenge, and cracking and hacking security systems was his forte. Call it a hobby.

“I don’t know, Jer,” he said, his smile fading. “I have a bad feeling in my gut. And so does Spot.”

“How can you possibly know what feeling Spot has in his tiny little gut? I don’t even know if dogs are capable of having feelings in their gut.”

“A dog person knows, Jer. And I can feel that he’s restless.”

“He’s probably hungry.”

A rumbling sound echoed through the car. Johnny produced a sheepish grin.

“Patience, Johnny, patience. As soon as the house is quiet we go in and do what we do best.”

“Raid the fridge?”

“Rob the poor suckers.”

Chapter 13

We’d finally arrived home and found that the sliding glass door that leads into the living room was closed and locked, which probably meant Odelia had gone out.

“If you’re hungry I can always bring you some food, Max,” Dooley offered graciously.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I should probably lose some weight, if I ever want to fit through that flap again.”

We moved over to Marge and Tex’s backyard and discovered the door to the living room was closed there, too, so we hopped up on the porch swing, and moments later were fast asleep. I don’t know what awoke me, but it may have been the pitter-patter of raindrops on the porch roof. And as I opened my eyes to take a look, I saw that yes, indeed, the nice sun that had warmed the world had been rudely obscured by a thick deck of clouds, and rain was now pouring from the heavens, soaking all and sundry.

“Good thing we’re up here, nice and dry,” I said.

“Yes, good thing,” Dooley agreed, though he was shivering. With the rain a distinct chill had set in, and Dooley felt it more keenly than I did. He has less insulation from the elements, you see. I have thicker skin, I guess, and perhaps a thicker coat of fur, too.

“You go inside, Dooley,” I said. “You don’t have to stay out here and catch a cold on my account.”

“No, I want to stay with you, Max,” he said.

“Please go in. If you catch a cold I’ll feel bad.”

“Oh, all right.”

He trotted off in the direction of the pet flap, and moments later had disappeared inside. And then it was just me and the elements. I wasn’t cold, but I still felt the chill. Not sure if it was the weather or the knowledge that beneath my paws, in the basement of the house, a dead man had spent the last couple of decades cooling his or her heels.

Weird thought, I thought, and then promptly dozed off again.

The next thing that awakened me was the movement of the swing. I looked up and saw that Dooley had joined me once more.

“Dooley, I told you to go inside.”

“I can’t be in there, Max. It’s the dead person.” He shivered, and this time it wasn’t from the cold. “I keep thinking about that skeleton, and how maybe there’s a lot of other skeletons buried down there.”

“I think there’s a big chance this is the only skeleton.”

“But how can you be sure? How can you be sure there’s not a dozen skeletons buried down there, or underneath the house? Do you remember that movie we saw about the house that had been built on top of an ancient burial ground for Native Americans?”

I distinctly remembered that movie, and was now shivering myself. Odelia loves to watch horror movies, even though they scare her to death, and she always makes us watch them with her, because if she watches them by herself she’s too scared to go to bed afterward. Over the years we must have seen dozens of horror movies, and since I don’t like horror movies, and neither does Dooley, I remember practically all of them.