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

She felt ridiculously happy with herself and grinned like a kid. She was her brother’s sister, after all, and her daughter’s mother, though she didn’t know if sleuthing talent traveled up and sideways and not down. She didn’t care. She was going to make her own, however modest, contribution to the investigation. She flipped open the diary and frowned as she read the childish hand on the first page. The diary belonged to Rita Baker, twelve, and was filled with hearts and flowers and even pictures the girl must have cut out of the newspaper or magazines of that time. There was even a picture of James Dean, under which she’d written the words ‘World’s Biggest Dreamboat.’

Yeah, well, James had been a dreamboat, of course, thought Marge with a smile. She leafed through the diary, which was filled with the typical reflections of a twelve-year-old, about boys and her friends, and the teachers at school, the ones she hated and the ones she liked because they were generous with their grades. And then, suddenly, she discovered two pages that had been glued together. She stuck her trusty knife between the pages and carefully pried them loose. Time spent inside the musty basement had done its work and the pages soon became unstuck.

She frowned as she read the entry on the page—only a single paragraph but written in a very small but neat hand. She walked back to her desk and picked up her reading glasses. And as she read the entry twelve-year-old Rita Baker had written, an inadvertent gasp of shock escaped her, and then the diary was falling to the floor.

It didn’t take us long to return from our errand, and when I saw that pet flap, I gritted my teeth.

“You can do it, Max,” said Dooley. “You’ve been walking for miles. You lost ten pounds at least.”

“At least,” I agreed. All that walking to Morley Street and back must have sliced a couple of millimeters off my midsection. But was it enough to fit through that darn flap?

We would soon find out, for I was determined to win the fight with that recalcitrant flap.

“Maybe you should take a running leap,” a voice spoke behind me. It belonged to Brutus, and he was dead serious. “If you hit that thing with speed, you won’t get stuck,” he reasoned.

“Good tip, Brutus,” I said. “And one I’m going to put into action right now.”

“Maybe you should put some saliva on your fur,” spoke another voice. It was Harriet, and she, too, had come to watch my near-Olympian attempt.

“Saliva?” I asked.

“Yeah, grease yourself up a little. Besides, if your fur is flattened against your skin it won’t take up so much space.”

“Duly noted,” I said appreciatively. “All great ideas.”

“See, Max?” said Dooley. “We need to work together as a team. As a family. As a band of brothers and sisters.”

“Yes, Dooley,” I said. “I get the message. And I’m very happy that you’ve all decided to bear witness to my attempt to beat the flap. But if you could please turn your backs to me now? I’m getting nervous from all the attention.”

“You don’t have to be nervous, Max,” said Harriet. “We all want you to succeed. Isn’t that right, you guys?”

Brutus and Dooley nodded seriously. “We’re with you, buddy,” said Brutus. “Wherever you go, we go, and if you want us to apply some of our own saliva to grease up that pudgy midsection, I will gladly make the donation.”

This seemed a little too much, and I said so. I didn’t need the saliva of all my friends on my precious bod. “I’ve got this,” I said, as I gave a few tentative licks to my tummy.

“More, Max,” said Harriet. “You can’t sell yourself short now.”

“Yeah, a lot more,” Brutus agreed. “You need to really get in there and slather it on. Like the gladiators used to do.”

“Did the gladiators use saliva before their fights?” asked Dooley, intrigued.

“Well, not saliva, maybe. They rubbed oil on themselves, so other gladiators couldn’t catch them. Oil makes you slippery, see, and then it’s a lot harder to get caught.”

“Maybe you should use oil, Max,” Dooley said now.

“Or some other form of lubricant,” Harriet added. “I hear duck fat is good.”

“I’m not going to put duck fat on myself,” I said, starting to get a little indignant.

“Just saying, Max,” said Harriet. “If you want this, you have to do whatever it takes.”

I stared at her. She was right. If I was going to do this, I needed to go all the way. “Okay,” I said. “So where is this duck fat?”

My three friends all started chattering amongst themselves about where they could procure duck fat on such short notice, and finally Harriet had the solution. “I don’t think Odelia stocks duck fat, but there’s a tub of motor oil in the garden shed. I saw it there myself. Chase uses it to grease up the lawnmower, but I’ll bet it’ll do the trick just fine.”

“Guck,” I said, closing my eyes. But I’d told my friends I was fully on board with this endeavor, and I wasn’t going to back out now, or show them I was a pussy, which of course I was, and not just in the literal sense either.

So we moved to the garden shed and walked in. And as Harriet had indicated, there was a nice big tub of motor oil waiting for me to apply a liberal helping to my corpus.

“Do you want us to do it?” asked Brutus. “Cause we will, isn’t that right, you guys?”

“Of course,” said Harriet, though she glanced at the black motor oil with a horrified expression. Her nice white paw would no longer be as pristinely white as it was now.

“I’ll do it,” said Dooley. “I’m gray, so no one will notice a few smudges.”

“No, I should do it,” said Brutus. “I’m black, so it will blend right in.”

“I’ll do it myself, thank you very much,” I said, and after a short hesitation in which I had to overcome a certain hesitation, I stuck my paw into the black slurry and applied a nice helping to my blorange coat. It looked horrible, and it smelled even worse, but I had the support of my friends, so what could possibly go wrong?

“More,” said Harriet when I paused after the first pawful. “You need to rub this stuff on your entire torso, Max, or it won’t work.”

I grimaced as I applied more of the gunk on my gorgeous fur. Yuck. But finally I was done, and wiped my paws on a patch of grass outside the garden shed. Then, accompanied by my friends, I walked back to the house. I stood there, poised and ready like an Olympian, as I stared down that flap.

“You’re mine,” I growled, psyching myself up. “I’m going to take you down, you flap.”

And then I planted my paws firmly on the ground and took a running leap and then I was zooming—flying!—towards that pet flap like a chunky cruise missile.

And as I zipped in and zipped through, suddenly my progress was abruptly halted.

Yep. I was stuck again.

I had fought the flap and the flap had won.

Chapter 29

When the doorbell jangled and Rita Baker saw Odelia Poole’s face on her intercom, along with those of Detective Kingsley and Chief Lip, she knew this wasn’t a social call.

For a moment, her heart sank, but then she decided to buck up and not postpone the inevitable. So she pressed the buzzer and opened the door.

Moments later, Odelia, Chase and the Chief walked into her modest but nicely furnished apartment. Odelia was the first to speak. “Rita, something has come to our attention so we decided to have a little chat, if that’s all right with you.”

She was friendly, Rita had to admit, and even the two cops were eyeing her with something akin to compassion, something that wasn’t what she’d experienced before. It all brought her back to those stirring events fifty-five years ago, when her dad had gone missing, and the police had also dropped by. They hadn’t been friendly then, practically accusing him of running off with the proceeds of the loot he stole from that woman.