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

He emptied the box in his shoulder bag and moved to the closet where often a small safe was located. No such luck here. He crossed to the second bedroom, which was some kind of office with an elliptical machine, and searched the drawers. Nothing much, but he took the laptop and the tablet computer. Then he proceeded to room number three and rifled through the closets. He quickly gave up, his expert eyes telling him there was nothing of value stored in there.

He’d arrived back downstairs where Johnny had already done the preliminaries and had searched through all the cupboards and closets and cabinets.

“Any safes?” he asked.

“Nah, nuthing, Jerry.”

“Maybe in the basement,” he said, and opened the door to the basement. A lot of people kept their safes in the basement, once again because they hoped no one would bother to look there. And as he and Johnny descended the stairs, he saw to his surprise that it was infested with even more cats than upstairs. A black one that looked kinda lost, and a white one that had its head stuck in the wall. “Look at that dumb critter,” he said, pointing to the white cat. But Johnny was staring at a part of the wall where someone had recently applied a hammer.

The cats were meowing up a storm, even the one with its head stuck in the wall. They were yowling and howling, making that horrible noise only cats can make, and that will drive you nuts if you listen to it for too long.

“Can’t you get them to shut up?” he asked his partner in crime. “If they keep this up someone will come and look.”

“Here, kitty, kitty,” said Johnny, bending over and trying to attract the attention of the black cat. “Nice kitty, kitty. Sweet little kitty.”

But whatever language he was speaking, it clearly made little impression on the cats, for they seemed to increase the volume of their laments.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Jerry grunted. “I can’t believe a bunch of stupid cats are going to ruin a perfectly nice burglary.”

He’d searched around the basement but had found no evidence of a safe, until he thought he saw something that looked promising: a small cupboard shoved up against the wall. So he opened it and immediately wished he hadn’t. Inside the cupboard dozens of mice stared back at him, their beady black eyes eyeing him with distinct malice!

“Yikes!” he shouted. He hated mice even more than he hated cats or dogs.

He jumped back but the mice had apparently not appreciated this intrusion on their privacy and jumped out of the cupboard and attacked!

“Help!” he cried as he tottered back and then stumbled and fell. Immediately he was overrun with mice. They were everywhere: on his head, on his arms, crawling into his shirt and on his bare skin. “Johnny! Help!” he screamed.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Johnny, and took a small cannon from his pocket. And before Jerry could tell him not to, he’d fired his firearm and a minor explosion rocked the basement, tearing a fist-sized hole in the wall. For a moment nothing happened, and then the mice all made a run for it, and raced to the far wall and disappeared.

“Thank God,” said Johnny, as he helped up his partner. “Are you all right, Jer?”

“Why did you have to go and fire that gun? And without a frickin’ silencer!”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it? I scared them off.”

“Let’s just get out of here,” said Jerry, and made for the staircase.

And he’d just put his foot on the first step when suddenly a burly figure appeared on the top step and shouted, “Freeze!”

The figure was also holding a gun in his hand, and looked like he meant business.

Chapter 22

“A gunfight! In our basement!” Dooley was saying. “First the dead skeleton next door and now a gunfight!”

“Yeah, I feel like I’m in a gangster movie,” said Brutus as he licked his paws.

We were all on the couch in the living room while all around us activity buzzed. Cops had shown up en masse, and had taken the two gangsters off Chase’s hands, and now they were picking the bullet one of the crooks had fired out of the wall and investigating the loot they’d gathered. Everything lay piled up in a heap on the living room floor, where the gangsters had left it, and amongst the treasure was Odelia’s box of jewelry, the television, an envelope with cash Odelia liked to hide in the kitchen drawer for emergencies, and plenty of other stuff. They’d even laid their hands on Chase’s laptop, which probably has all kinds of very sensitive information on it about the world of crime and whatnot. And of course the tablet computer we like to use when we need to google something. All in all a nice haul, if they’d gotten away with it.

Unfortunately for them and fortunately for Odelia and Chase we’d quickly slipped out of the house the moment those two thugs had started rummaging through Odelia’s private things, and had warned Odelia, and it didn’t take long for Chase to come running, armed to the teeth.

“Imagine if they’d gotten away with it,” said Harriet now as she stared at the pile of personal possessions.

“Yeah, imagine,” said Brutus.

Both Brutus and Harriet appeared a little under the weather, I thought. Then again, an entire afternoon and part of the evening doing hanky panky will wear a cat out.

“So did you enjoy your hanky panky?” asked Dooley now.

Brutus and Harriet both looked up as if stung.

“What did you just say?” asked Harriet.

Dooley eyed her a little uncertainly, then gave me a questioning look. I shook my head. Cats usually don’t like to be reminded they don’t perform these feats of hanky panky in a vacuum. That there are other cats around who can hear everything that goes on in these unguarded moments.

“Um, that’s what Max said you were doing down there,” said Dooley, squarely dragging me into the thing. “So I just thought I’d ask…”

Brutus plastered a fake smile onto his face. “Yeah, um, the hanky panky. Well, it was a lot of fun, wasn’t it, Harriet?”

“Actually we were not engaged in hanky panky,” said Harriet.

“We weren’t?” asked Brutus. Harriet was giving him warning signals for some reason, so he quickly amended his statement to, “No, we weren’t.”

“We were looking for clues,” said Harriet. “Clues in connection to the case Odelia is working on. We figured if there’s one body buried inside the wall of the basement, it stands to reason there must be others, especially as these two houses were inhabited by the same family once upon a time. Two basements, so why not two bodies, you know?”

I’d explained the whole story to Harriet, but it did strike me as peculiar that she would have known to look for dead bodies before she was apprised of the state of affairs. Almost as if she was psychic. Odd.

“And? Did you find any?” asked Dooley, and Harriet gave him a dirty look that was entirely undeserving for such an obvious question.

“No, Dooley, we did not find more dead bodies. And it is my firm belief that the basement, at least this one, is entirely body-free.”

“Oh, that’s great,” said Dooley. “Odelia will be happy to hear that.”

“So what about the mouse?” I asked, and this time Harriet’s eyes flashed their anger at me. Why, I did not know.

“No, we didn’t find the mouse. It probably got scared and ran off.”

“Okay,” I said. “So why were those gangsters yammering on and on about mice when Chase led them out of the house?”

“Oh, just tell them,” said Brutus as he hunkered down on the couch, looking miserable.

“No, I will not tell them,” said Harriet. “Remember what we agreed, Brutus.”

“It’s no use, Harriet,” said Brutus. “They’re too smart. They’ll figure it out.” He directed a quick glance at Dooley, then amended his statement. “Max is too smart. He’ll figure it out.”