Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Secret

“No!” Marge shouted before Tex reached the grill.

Chase, who’d turned off the TV, took over from the doctor, and soon the party was in full swing again.

Milo drifted off in the direction of Grandma, who was now feeding him pieces of burger and even bits of coleslaw. Harriet and Brutus had snuck off into the garden next door, where they planned to make good use of those hills and valleys Gran had created, and then it was just me and Dooley.

“Milo seems fine, doesn’t he?” said Dooley. “He hasn’t told a lie all day.”

“Except for the part about pulling your tail,” I reminded my friend.

“The jury is still out on that one,” said Dooley. “No one has pulled my tail so he could be right.”

I pulled Dooley’s tail, hard, and he yelped in surprise. “See?” I said. “No gold.”

He eyed me sheepishly and rubbed his tail. “I really hoped he was right.”

“Maybe I didn’t pull hard enough,” I said, and made to pull again.

“No! I believe you,” he said quickly.

“At least spitting out nuggets of gold beats scooting your poop across the carpet.”

“I think we all learned a valuable lesson, Max.”

“Which is?”

“If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

I looked at Dooley, surprised. “Those are regular words of wisdom, buddy.”

“I read that on Odelia’s calendar.”

Of course he did.

“You know? If Milo went into politics, he could be one of the greats,” said Dooley.

And so he could. But fortunately for humans Milo is a cat, and cats aren’t eligible to go into politics and lead countries. Then again, maybe if they were, the world would be a better place. No politician licking his own butt in the middle of a speech would ever be able to be taken seriously when declaring war on another nation or making budget cuts and lowering pensions. And no stump speech would go over well if the one giving the speech suddenly yawned in the middle of a sentence, stretched and promptly fell asleep.

But wouldn’t it be fun to watch the video on YouTube?

THE END

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Excerpt from Murder Motel (The Kellys Book 1)

Chapter One

The car was moving along at a snail’s pace. The snow was coming down hard now, and the freeway had become practically impossible to navigate. Tom Kelly was still determined to soldier on, though, in spite of the warnings from his family. He’d promised Dee and the kids he’d get them to Cincinnati safe and sound and he’d be damned if he was going to fail them.

“Honey, you have to pull over,” his wife was saying, repeating the same mantra she’d stuck to for the past ten miles. “It’s not safe to be out in this weather!”

“Yeah, Dad, quit trying to act like you’re Liam Neeson in Taken 4: The Snow Apocalypse ,” said his son Scott. At twelve, Scott rarely took his eyes off his iPhone, and the fact that he hadn’t even glimpsed at the thing since this deluge began was a testament to how bad the weather had become.

“Isn’t there a motel where we can stay until the storm blows over?” Maya asked. She was petting the Kellys’ Goldendoodle Ralph, who was howling like a wolf, his nose in the air.

“I think he needs to pee,” said Dee. “And as a matter of fact so do I.”

“We’ll pee when we get there,” said Tom, his face practically plastered to the windshield now, hunched over the wheel and praying he wouldn’t hit something.

“I’m not going to pee when I get there, Tom. I’m going to pee now,” his wife insisted.

It was just a trick to get him to pull over, he knew. They’d stopped less than an hour ago, and he hadn’t seen her drink anything so it was physically impossible for her bladder to be full already. The dog was another matter entirely. If he had to go, he had to go, and if he wasn’t able to keep it in, he’d let it out on the back seat of the car, which, since it was a rental, he didn’t advocate.

“All right, all right, all right,” he grumbled.

At forty-eight Tom Kelly, or Professor Kelly to his economics students back at the University of Washington, looked younger than his years, with his floppy brown hair, square chin and engaging smile. He wasn’t smiling now, though, more like trying to keep it together, his fingers gripping the wheel until they were white at the knuckles and fervently praying the weather gods would show them some much-needed clemency. “What does the weather forecast say?” he asked for the umpteenth time. “Scott?”

“Sorry, Dad,” Scott said. “No reception. Must be the storm.”

Which would explain why his son had suddenly lost interest in his precious phone.

“There!” said Dee, pointing to some to-him-invisible spot in the distance.

“There what?” he asked, struggling to remain calm and poised.

“Don’t you see the sign? There’s a motel up ahead.”

“How far?” asked Maya, nervously shuffling in her seat.

“No idea. Must be close, though, right? Otherwise why put up a sign?”

Tom quickly glanced back to the dog, who was still howling at regular intervals. “Maybe we should stop now? Give him a chance to lift his hind leg against a tree?”

“And freeze his tush off? No way, Dad,” said Maya, who was Ralph’s biggest fan. The feeling was mutual, because Ralph now shoved his wet nose into Maya’s neck, causing her to giggle. “Stop it, you big hairy goofball,” she said, playfully pushing the dog away.

At seventeen, Maya was the spitting image of her mother: willowy, blond and absolutely stunning, with her mother’s striking green, gold-flecked eyes.

“Dad? I got some bad news,” said Scott.

“What is it?” Tom asked. He thought he’d reached his quota of bad news for the day.

“Is it the baby?” asked Dee, panic making her voice squeaky. “Is something wrong with the baby?”

“Jacob’s fine,” said Scott, patting the baby carrier. “Sleeping like a log. Thing is, I gotta pee, too, Dad, and I don’t think I can hold it in until Cincinnati, wherever Cincinnati is.”

“I told you not to drink so much soda,” said his sister. “You’re like a camel when you see a can of soda.”

“I am not,” said Scott indignantly. “I was thirsty.”

“Then drink water. You know soda’s bad for you.”

“I don’t like water. Water’s got no taste. I hate it.”

“Sugar kills your brain cells. And you don’t have that many to begin with.”

“I’ve got plenty of brain cells. I can afford to lose a couple hundred.”

“Yeah, but can you afford to lose a couple million? I don’t think so.”

“Kids, not now,” said Dee. “Your father is trying to get us out of this mess.”

And their father was indeed trying to do just that. Unfortunately the storm and the snow were winning and he and the bright red rental Toyota Highlander was losing.

Just then, a huge sign announcing the presence of the Gateway Lodge Motel loomed up by the side of the road, momentarily visible through a gap in the drifting snow.

Making an executive decision, Tom steered the vehicle onto the off-ramp and in the direction of warmth, comfort and, hopefully, decent sanitary facilities for human and dog.

Others had decided on the same tack, however, with an actual traffic jam as a consequence.

“Why don’t we just leave the car, Dad?” Scott suggested. “It’s just a rental anyway.”

Maya laughed. “That’s such a dumb thing to say.”

“Who are you calling dumb, bird-face?”

“You can’t just leave a rental car by the side of the road, pea-brain.”