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

“I didn’t push you. You fell.”

“A likely story.”

“No, really. And since I didn’t want to wake you—”

“You decided to leave me lying on the floor. Nice!”

“Let’s get you into that shower, and while you’re soaking under that hot stream I’ll book you a nice massage. How does that sound? And maybe we’ll throw in a sauna.”

“No workouts today?” he asked.

“No workouts today. I promise.”

“Mh. All right, then,” he grumbled, and shuffled towards the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, he was slowly starting to feel human again, his sore muscles gently massaged by the pleasantly powerful stream of hot water. And by the time he exited the walk-in shower, Chase announced they were both booked for a sauna at ten, and massages at eleven. “And no conference,” Chase said sternly.

“We’re playing hooky again?” Alec asked.

“Yep. Doctor’s orders. I’ll quickly pop into the shower and then we’ll head down for breakfast, okay? At least,” he said, halting in the bathroom doorway, “if you feel up for it.”

The thought of that delicious breakfast buffet did much to lift the police chief’s mood. “I’m feeling up for it,” he announced bravely.

“I thought as much,” said his deputy with a cheeky grin, and disappeared into the shower before the spongy hotel slipper Alec aimed at his head could find its target.

Chapter 24

We’d finally arrived at the beauty parlor, and the driver dropped us off at the back, so as not to attract any attention. We quickly hurried inside, presumably to thwart any attempts by lurking paparazzi or other lookie-loos to catch sight of us, and soon found ourselves inside the beauty parlor proper. It was a nice parlor, as parlors go, though I have to admit I don’t have a lot of experience with beauty parlors, never having actually set paw inside one before.

There was a row of seats where presumably people had their hair done, judging from the sinks and the mirrors and the hair salon trays, a station where pedicures and manicures were executed, and of course there were tanning beds, a sauna, and even a hot tub where people could relax. All in all, a paradise for the ladies, but not for us cats.

At least not until we were led by a very kind-faced young woman to another part of the building, and suddenly found ourselves in pet paradise indeed: there was a play area where several pets were having fun with a multitude of toys in all shapes and sizes, scratching posts that reached all the way to the ceiling, a pet grooming station where currently a long-haired mutt was being relieved of his excess mane, and even a pedicurist devoted to those little pet nails, currently working on a Chihuahua.

“Pamper paradise,” said Harriet, a little breathlessly.

“It’s nice here,” said Prunella. “I come here almost every week. It’s basically a glorified waiting room for pets while their humans are gussied up next door, but I like it.”

“I like it, too,” said Harriet. “In fact I think I could live here.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I said.

“What? Oh, you mean food? I’m sure they have a kitchen around here somewhere.”

“We’re not here to be primped and prinked. We’re here to find our original selves in that cryogenic freezer.”

“Oh, right,” she said, clearly having completely forgotten about our special mission.

As luck would have it, the cloning lab and the pet salon and the beauty parlor were all part of the same operation. A one-stop shop, so to speak, where rich people could have their precious furballs pampered, but also cloned if they happened to drop dead overnight.

“Somewhere in this building is a cloning facility,” I said, addressing the troops, “and we need to find it and figure out whether we were, indeed, cloned or not.”

“Cloned?” asked Prunella, curious. “Are you cloned?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” I said. “Maybe you could help us?”

“Yeah, you’ve been here many times before,” said Brutus. “Maybe you could show us the way to these cloning people?”

“I could help you,” Prunella said, much to my elation, “on one condition.”

“Of course. Anything,” I said.

“That you finally tell me your names! I can’t believe we’ve spent all this time together and you still haven’t given me your names.” She tapped my chest. “Rude!” She tapped Brutus’s chest. “Very, very rude, sir!”

“Well, I’m Max, this is Dooley, this is Harriet, and that black butch fellow over there is Brutus.”

“Nice to meet you, Max, Dooley, Harriet and Brutus,” she said pleasantly. “Now let’s get going, shall we? Time and tide wait for no cat.” And off she went, in the direction of the door.

Lucky for us, it was conveniently outfitted with a pet flap, and so we all slipped through in Prunella’s wake.

“Keep up, keep up,” she said as we tripped down a hallway and up a flight of stairs.

“I’ll bet she’s taking us to another playroom for pets,” said Harriet. “She probably doesn’t even know what cloning is.”

“Maybe she will and maybe she won’t,” I said. I had faith in her, though, and had a feeling she was finally coming through for us.

And as we burst into a room located on the second floor, I saw that Prunella hadn’t been kidding: she had been there before, and this place did look like a cloning lab, even though I’d never seen a cloning lab before. There were white-washed walls, though, and clean countertops with a multitude of instruments and test tubes, there were complicated and expensive-looking machines, and, finally, there was a wall of freezers near the back, and as we came to a full stop in front of them, we all took a deep breath.

There, inside those freezers, presumably rested our original selves. And now that we had finally arrived, I suddenly wasn’t so sure I really wanted to know if I was in there!

There were several people working at their workstations. They were dressed like doctors, or lab technicians, in white coats, and all looked appropriately serious. They didn’t pay any attention to us, though, probably used to working with animals all day long, dead or alive. One man was peering through a microscope and handling some strange device that looked like a pipette, dropping something onto a glass plate.

I returned my attention to the bank of freezers.

“So how are we going to find out if we’re in there?” I asked.

“We’re just going to have to open them all,” said Harriet.

“And how are we going to do that? These are not desk drawers, Harriet. You can’t insert a nail and pull. These freezers take a strong hand to open. A human hand.”

“So? We’ll simply ask one of these humans to open them for us.”

I laughed. “Since when do humans listen to anything we say? Unless their names are Odelia, Vesta or Marge?”

“You said it, Max,” said Brutus, gesturing to the door.

And as I looked over, I saw that Odelia was walking up to us!

“Oh, there you are,” she said.

Shoot! She’d caught us red-pawed!

“The lab people told me you were up here. What are you doing sneaking off like that? Max?”

“Um… well, you know what cats are like,” I said, going for blatant flippancy. “Always sneaking off and sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”

“We want to look inside these freezers,” said Harriet, blowing my strategy straight out of the water. “We want to know if our original selves are located inside of them.”

“Your original selves? I don’t understand,” said Odelia, frowning.

“She’s just kidding,” I said, laughing a laugh that sounded fake even to my own ears.

“They think they’ve been cloned,” suddenly Prunella spoke up. “And now they want to find out of their bodies are in these freezers just to be sure whether they’re clones or not.”