Ник Сайнт: Purrfect Secret

“She’s in a fight with Tex and Marge and she’s decided she doesn’t want me anymore,” he said sadly.

Grandma had worked for her son-in-law Tex for years and years at Tex’s doctor’s office. But since Tex and Odelia’s mom Marge had protested Grandma’s attempt to move away and go and live with the rich family of her ex-boyfriend Burt Goldsmith, Gran had moved out of their house and into Odelia’s, and now things were very tense all around.

“I’m sure everything will go back to normal soon enough,” I said. “Besides, Odelia is pretty much your human, too, right? She loves you just as much as she loves me.”

“In my experience humans can only love one pet, Max,” said Dooley somberly. “And since she already has you, there’s no room in her heart for anyone else.” He sighed deeply. “No, looks like I’m humanless.” Then he cast a forlorn look at me. “At least I still have you, Max. You’re my best friend, and you’ll never leave me, right?”

“Of course I’ll never leave you,” I said, rubbing my friend’s noggin with my furry knuckles. “Best friends forever, right?”

“Right,” he said, a glimmer of hope lighting up his features. “So you won’t mind if I permanently move in with you?”

I know I should have said yes wholeheartedly, so I don’t know where that slight hesitation came from. Maybe from the fact that I was on edge with this whole Milo business. Or maybe because Dooley kinda took me by surprise. Fact is, I flinched. And Dooley saw that. And his expression hardened, and without another word he stalked off.

“Dooley!” I yelled. “Come back here! Of course you can move in with me, buddy!”

But he was already gone.

I felt eyes burning into my back so I turned. Milo was staring at me. Then he smiled. “Looks like you need a new friend, Max. Why don’t you let me be that friend from now on?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, pensive now.

He strode up to me and placed a paw on my shoulder. “You look sad, Max. And no wonder. Your best friend just walked out on you. But not to worry. I’ll be your new bro.”

I gulped. A strange sensation was gnawing at me. A sense of foreboding. Then I stomped down on the sentiment. Harriet and Brutus were right. Milo was my guest. I needed to be nicer to him. Hospitable. Kind and understanding. So I relented.

“Of course,” I told him. “From now on my milk is your milk and my Cat Snax are your Cat Snax, Milo. And you’re welcome to stay under my roof for as long as you like.”

His lips slowly curled up into a smile. “I knew you’d warm to me, Max. I just knew it. You’re an old fogey, and old fogeys sometimes need time to adjust. But from now on we’re besties. Besties for life.” And he held up his paw, so I placed mine against it. And when he went low, I went low, too. But when we paw-bumped, I had a sinking feeling something was terribly wrong with this picture.

And I didn’t even know the half of it yet.

Chapter 5

True to his word, Chase showed up right on the dot. Odelia grabbed her purse, took one final glance at her grandmother puttering away in the backyard and stepped out.

Chase pressed a quick kiss to her lips, then took a firmer hold of her, dipped her down and laid a real smoocher on her.

When he returned her to perpendicularity, she was swooning a little. Great way to start the day!

“And hello to you, too,” she said, following him to his pickup, parked at the curb.

“You’ve got your grandmother to thank for that,” he said with a grin.

“She give you pointers on technique?”

“As if. No, ever since she decided to stay with you I’ve been forced to become this pining, lonesome, sad figure, watching from afar.”

“Somehow I’m having a hard time imagining you as a pining, lonesome figure.”

“Well, it’s true,” he said, getting behind the wheel as she slid in right next to him. “I’m sitting there all by my lonesome, in your uncle’s big, old house, thinking of you.”

“If it’s any consolation I’m thinking of you, too.” Especially since her grandmother was a poor substitute for having Chase’s warm body next to her in bed at night.

“Maybe we have to educate your grandmother in the ways of the world.”

“Gran is beyond education. Nothing I say or do has any effect on that woman.”

Grandma liked Chase, no doubt about it, but recently she’d developed this old-fashioned idea that the male of the species should propose to the female of the species before they actually moved in together and slept in the same bed. No idea where this idea came from, exactly. Then again, Gran did watch a lot of those daytime soap operas and maybe some former mob boss’s identical twin and reformed serial killer turned art therapist’s illegal adoptive brother who was also a Navy SEAL had at some point conceived a son with an OB/GYN and Gran felt that if only they’d gotten married they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble.

Yes, Odelia enjoyed her occasional dose of the soap opera machine herself, too.

“She’s redoing the garden now,” she said, slumping down in her seat and putting her pink-and-yellow polka-dot Chuck Taylors up on the dash. “Says she’s going to turn it into the kind of garden Louis Quatorze would have been proud of, water-spewing cherubs and all.”

Chase laughed. “She’s doing that just to spite your dad, isn’t she?”

“Oh, yes, she is.”

Grandma had always been in charge of Tex and Marge’s garden, until she decided to skedaddle and move next door. But in spite of the fact that she’d hoped Tex would be pining for her and begging her to come back, instead Odelia’s father had flourished and had never been happier. Getting his meddling mother-in-law out of the house had been a lifelong dream ever since the old lady had moved in when her husband Jack had taken his philandering ways to the seventh heaven or maybe in his case the seventh circle of hell.

Now, by turning Odelia’s garden into the cream of the horticultural crop, Gran probably hoped to inspire a raging jealousy in Tex, as the latter was oddly proud of his own backyard and this had been the one thing he and Grandma had in common: a green thumb.

“Maybe I should ask Dad to take the first step and reconcile,” said Odelia now.

“Fat chance. You’d have better luck asking your mother.”

“Mom says to let things cool off. That Gran will come to her senses soon enough.” She shook her head. “I’m not so sure. Gran seems to like this new arrangement, and so does Dad.”

“Looks like your dad and grandma have reached a stalemate.”

Chase was navigating his pickup through morning traffic and had reached the town limit. “So why did you want me to bring a clothespin, exactly?” Odelia asked.

“You’ll see. It’s not pretty.”

“Don’t tell me he got blown up. I just had breakfast.”

“He wasn’t blown up. In fact, as far as we can see, he drowned. Or I should probably say he suffocated.”

“He drowned in his pool?”

“He drowned in a pool,” said Chase mysteriously.

“A pool… of his own blood?”

“Duck poop.”

“Duck poop?”

“Duck poop.”

“Huh. And you’re telling me this wasn’t an accident?”

Chase looked grim. “Absolutely not. Dick Dickerson was murdered.”

It only took them about fifteen minutes to reach their destination. Dick Dickerson lived in one of those huge McMansions right outside of Hampton Cove, built almost on the coast, with access to a private strip of beach, a heliport, a heated pool on the patio, jacuzzi, too many rooms and bathrooms to count, and a fleet of servants at his every beck and call.

When Chase had directed his pickup down the asphalt driveway and parked in front of the house, Odelia wondered why it was that all the celebrities who came to Hampton Cove had a habit of getting murdered at one point or another. Within the past few months she’d visited the homes of singers, reality stars, actors… This small Hamptons town of theirs was quickly becoming the murder capital of the state if this worrying trend kept up.