Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Alibi

She gave Dooley a hesitant look, as if fully expecting him to be upset, but Dooley was merely looking slightly dazed. Like me, he’d never met a talkative pig before either.

“We, um, we’re actually working with our human,” I said, after I’d remembered there was a question hidden amid the word diarrhea. “She’s a police consultant and a reporter and she’s trying to figure out who killed Chris Ack—He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

Kevin Bacon and Miss Piggy shared a quick look of concern. “Oh, dear. This is going to bring Angelique to tears,” said Miss Piggy. “She still has feelings for her ex-husband.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t,” grunted Kevin Bacon.

“And I’m sure she does. She’s been crying herself to sleep for weeks, Kevin Bacon, or haven’t you heard?”

Her porcine helpmeet muttered something incomprehensible, then waddled off to the edge of the bed and jumped off onto the fluffy carpet below.

“He’s very sensitive about our human’s predicament,” Miss Piggy whispered. “Ever since He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named walked out on Angelique, Kevin Bacon has been suffering from heart palpitations. Sympathy symptoms, the vet says.” She shook her head. “It’s been a terrible, trying time. Hopefully the man’s death will bring a measure of closure.” She then plastered a cheerful expression onto her face. “So. Cats, huh? Tell me about those nine lives. What’s your secret? Can you teach me? I mean, who doesn’t want nine lives, right? Seriously, though. Tell me. I need to know.”

“Um…” I said.

“Max, Dooley!” Odelia yelled from the other room.

“Sorry, Miss Piggy,” I said, hopping down from the bed. “Time to go!”

“Hey!” she said. “You haven’t told me your secret!”

“It’s very simple,” said Dooley. “A balanced diet, plenty of sleep, and try to stay out of trouble.”

“That’s your big secret? There’s something you’re not telling me, cat! Come back here!”

But we were already on our way out. We hadn’t learned a thing in there, apart from the fact that pigs could be real chatty and that Angelique Ackerman had loved her husband.

I sure hoped that the next interview would land us a few more revelations. Then again, the true detective takes the bad with the good and knows that not every clue will lead to the killer. There will always be a few red herrings buried in there. Or pink piglets.

Chapter 23

It was a nice concatenation of circumstances that Rockwell Burke was staying at the same hotel as Chris Ackerman’s widow. It meant that Odelia and her entourage—consisting of her aged grandmother and two cats—didn’t have to travel all the way out to Hampton Cove’s billionaire lane, where all the rich people lived. Instead, they went one floor up to arrive at the boutique hotel’s penthouse suite and knocked on the door.

Rockwell Burke himself opened the door, barefoot and dressed in tattered jeans and an equally tattered T-shirt that proclaimed he loved The Walking Dead . Not surprising as he was, after all, a famed horror novelist.

For a moment, Odelia was speechless. She was in the presence of greatness, not to mention one of her childhood heroes, as she’d practically grown up with the man’s books. Lucky for her Gran had never suffered from being tongue-tied or diffident.

“Rockwell Burke?” she announced. “We’re here to interrogate you about the murder of Chris Ackerman, the man you once called a hack writer and a fraud and who was found dead with a fountain pen up his jugular at a reading you were scheduled to officiate.”

Rockwell rocked back on his heels, visibly shaken. “Who are you people? The cops?”

“Close enough,” said Gran, and pushed her way into the room, past the horrormeister. Odelia, mortified, stood grinning up at the famous author, still speechless.

“So who are these Walking Dead , Max?” asked Dooley when Odelia and Rockwell had finally moved inside and the writer had closed the hotel door, after watching me and Dooley stalk past him. The writer had the stunned look on his face of one who’s come into contact with Gran. She would definitely make a great ‘bad cop’ if she ever chose to sign up.

“They’re zombies,” I said, checking around and observing that this room, even though it was called a penthouse suite, wasn’t all that different from Angelique Ackerman’s. The only difference was that it was bigger, and had a wraparound balcony that offered a nice view of Hampton Cove’s main street down below.

“Zombies? You mean dead people who aren’t really dead and like to snack on human brains?”

“Yup.”

“But why would any human love zombies? Aren’t they extremely dangerous?”

“I guess horror writers prefer undead humans over live ones. Undead humans don’t leave bad reviews, after all.”

“But they kill live humans!”

“Creating more undead humans, which is just a win-win for all. Do you see any pets in here?”

“I hope not,” said Dooley with a shiver. “If they’re all like that Miss Piggy I hope we don’t run into any more pets on this particular tour of duty.”

“Pity.” Miss Piggy and Kevin Bacon were a washout, as far as sleuthing went. I was hoping to score some points with the next batch but it looked like Burke was not a pet lover.

So instead of wandering around in search of our next target, we settled down near the window, where the rays of the sun played on our fur and where it was nice and warm, and listened to Odelia and Gran conduct their second interview of the day.

“Isn’t it true, Mr. Burke,” said Gran in sharp tones, directing her phone at the horror writer, “that you hated Mr. Ackerman? And isn’t it also true that you resented the fact that he made a lot more money at this writing thing than you did? And isn’t it also true that—”

“Wait a minute,” said Rockwell, holding up his hands in a gesture of defense. “I mean, it’s true that I once said Ackerman wasn’t much of a writer.”

“You called him a hack.”

“I meant it as a compliment! Ackerman was a writer in the pulp fiction tradition. He could produce a clean draft in next to no time, and his readers loved it. Where it took me a year to write a halfway decent book he wrote a dozen, and they sold like hot cakes.”

“So you hated his guts,” said Gran, narrowing her eyes.

“I admired him!”

“You were jealous!”

“No! Well, yeah, maybe a little. I mean, who wouldn’t be? He sold more books than the next ten writers on the bestseller list. He raised the bar for all of us. Did I envy him? Sure! Did I want to kill him over his killer output? Of course not! I wanted to be him, not kill him.”

“Hmph,” Gran said, indicating she didn’t believe a word the novelist said.

“Look, I went in there last night fully intending to set the record straight. I know I’ve said some things about Chris in the past that he was sore about, even though at the time I meant it in jest—like I said, more in tribute than criticism. My words got twisted and we ended up with this feud or whatever. So when my publisher suggested I moderate the reading I jumped at the chance. But when I got there I suddenly had a change of heart.” He shook his head. “I—I worried that people would see this as a publicity stunt. My last couple of novels weren’t well received, and my sales have been down. The only thing I’ve got going for me is that I’ve never sold out. My fans know I don’t compromise. That I’ll never go on TV to hawk a product or a book I don’t believe in. And going into that reading suddenly felt like a bad idea. This business is about perception and I don’t want to be accused of selling out.”