Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Cut

“And you think that’s what happened here?”

“Pretty sure it did. I’m not sure how it all works, but it was clear to me they were holding an entire conversation, and now we have everything on tape.”

“So? What does it prove? That Odelia Poole is a little nutty?”

“That’s for our viewers to decide. And I’m sure we’ll get great coverage.”

Zak got up and stretched his sore limbs. “I’m starting to understand what being a war correspondent feels like. Tough to have to lie in bushes.”

“This is not war reporting, you idiot,” Lauren snapped as she plucked a beetle from her shoulder. “For one thing, there are no snipers trying to kill us.”

“Except for my colleague,” he muttered darkly.

“So what did you think of Gabriel Crier? Do you think he did it?”

“How should I know? I’m not a cop,” the cameraman grumbled as he swiped at the knees of his jeans where two nice patches of green had appeared.

“I think he did it,” she said. “And a great story it is, too: Gay Lover Murders King Of Couture. It’s the Gianni Versace thing all over again. Right here in the heart of the Hamptons. Oh, this is going to be a smash. My big break. And then the Odelia Poole pet whisperer thing on top of that, it’s going to be the one-two punch that’s going to blow all my competition out of the water!”

Christopher Cross, the pet detective, was at that moment applying a slender finger to the buzzer of Chateau Leonidas and patiently waiting for the gates to swing open, which after a brief delay they did. He got back into the van and directed his vehicle along the long drive, his trusty feline sidekick next to him in the passenger seat.

“I wonder what she wants from us this time,” grumbled Tank.<>

“Probably to hand us our paycheck,” said Chris. “We cracked the case, didn’t we? So time to pay up.”

“We didn’t crack the case, Chris,” said the Siamese cat tersely. “The case cracked itself. Or should I say, Gabe cracked under the pressure and killed his lover.”

“The operative word being cracked. The killer was caught so we need to get paid. It’s as simple as that.”

“Yeah, though I’m not so sure.”

“Not so sure about what?”

“That they got the right guy!”

“He was caught red-handed. Why wouldn’t he be the right guy?”

“Cause those two idiots Max and Dooley are still hanging around the chateau, making nice with Flake’s flock of barnyard animals. And let me ask you this: would they bother if the case was cracked? Let me answer that for you: no, they wouldn’t!”

“Max and Dooley are idiots. They wouldn’t know how to find a clue if it stared them right in the face.”

“They may be idiots, but they still manage to solve a lot of cases, bud, or haven’t you been reading dear Odelia Poole’s articles?”

Chris had. In fact those articles were what had put him on this career path in the first place. He’d always had the knack of being able to communicate with his pets, even from a young age. And it had taken him a while to understand how unique this gift was. The truth had probably only dawned on him when his folks had sent him to his first shrink. Dr. Jinx had found nothing particularly wrong with him, apart from a childish belief he could talk to animals, which he described as the Dr. Dolittle Complex, a rare disease for which there was, alas, no cure. The advice Dr. Jinx had given Chris’s parents was to simply ignore the affliction, and it would go away all by itself as he got older.

It hadn’t gone away, but Chris had become hip to the fact that he was always going to be considered a weirdo if he kept insisting he could talk to animals, so from one day to the next he’d simply stopped mentioning the strange gift he had and that had elicited twin sighs of relief from his parents, not to mention the rest of his family. The revelation had come to him when Bethany Kernick, who was in his class, had told him he was a weirdo. Since he was deeply, madly in love with young Bethany at the time, he’d decided then and there that talking to animals was probably not the babe magnet he’d thought it was, and had decided to stop mentioning it to anyone. He’d even gone so far as to admit to Bethany that the only reason he’d told her he could talk to her pet hamster was to make an impression on her because he liked her so much. It had worked, and he and Bethany had gone steady for the rest of the semester, until she met Ernesto Hair and had declared him her boyfriend. It had been a valuable lesson for young Chris, though: don’t let the world know that you’re different, for it can only result in being bullied, or in girls like Bethany Kernick spurning your well-intentioned advances.

It had taken him well into his adult life to embrace his gift. Only when the rumor had reached his ear that Odelia Poole, of Hampton Cove Gazette fame, got a little help from her cats when researching her articles, did he finally realize his was a marketable trait, and so he’d gotten his PI license, hung out his shingle, and hadn’t looked back since.

“So you think there’s more to this story than meets the eye?” asked Chris.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure there is,” said Tank in that gruff voice of his.

For a detective’s pet sidekick Tank was a little on the belligerent side, but Chris didn’t mind. As long as they got the job done, that’s what counted.

“So let’s poke around some more,” he said. “Have you talked to Pussy?”

“Nah. Haven’t been able to track her down.”

“Talk to her. If anyone knows what’s going on it’s her. Spread some of that charm of yours. Put your winning personality on display.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Tank grumbled.

“Just… be nice, okay?”

“I’m always nice!”

“You weren’t very nice to Max.”

“Max is a fat dumbbell,” said Tank, narrowing his eyes at the recollection.

“He’s also the main competition. And if we’re going to wipe out the competition, we’ll have to be smart about it.”

And then once Odelia Poole and Max were out of the picture, the world was their oyster. There was no limit to the heights they could rise as the only man-and-cat detective combo in the business, and soon the money would start rolling in like nobody’s business. In fact he couldn’t understand how Odelia Poole hadn’t tapped the mother lode yet. Probably too dumb to understand that a private sleuth who could talk to animals was the cat’s meow. Soon they’d be making Uncle Scrooge money, and the Bethany Kernicks of this world would weep bitter tears for turning him down for an Ernesto Hair.

Vengeance was his—and would be even sweeter than he’d imagined.

But first they needed to get rid of Odelia Poole and her dumb chums.

Chapter 16

The meeting was about to commence, and Dooley and I were ready to attend and take copious notes so our friend behind the curtain would know what had been discussed in regards to her future fate.

People had been arriving in droves, chauffeured in by fancy cars, as we had been able to witness from our vantage point behind the second-floor window, and judging from the buzz downstairs things were hotting up quickly.

Pussy had already shown us the setup so we could follow the meeting as if seated on the first row. It was a room only Pussy appeared to have access to. Off Flake’s bedroom, she simply put her paw against a hidden security pad, a section of the wall slid open, and we found ourselves in a secret room!

“Wow—real James Bond type of stuff,” said Dooley.

Inside, a wall-to-wall row of screens showed us every part of the house. Apparently Flake had installed it a long time ago, as a parallel system to the official security setup. It was a fairly small space, and probably had to be, or else people would notice this architectural funny business. The state-of-the-art surveillance equipment could take a peek inside every corner of the chateau. Flake had cameras in every room, even the bathrooms, and according to Pussy the designer had spent hours in there, spying on guests and associates.