Ник Сайнт: Purrfect Peril

“I think you’re selling yourself short, Brutus. These are new and exciting times. These days lady cats love a tomcat who shows his feelings—who’s not afraid to open his heart. To lay it all out there for everyone to see. It’s the millennial cat they want. The soft cat. The cat who dares to cry in front of his lady cat. Shed a few tears and admit that we’re all feline.”

A strange sound attracted our attention. When we turned in the direction of the sound we discovered that Dooley was softly weeping, tears trickling down his furry face.

“Oh, stop crying, Dooley,” Harriet said gruffly. “Are you a man or a mouse? Have you seen Brutus cry? No, you haven’t. Because my Brutus is a real cat. A cat’s cat. A cat who wouldn’t be seen DEAD crying like a sniveling whiny little cry-baby.” She directed a loving look at Brutus. “Tough as nails he is,” she added proudly. “And that’s what I love about him.”

Brutus slowly turned back to me and raised a single whisker.

I nodded. “You’re in a heap of trouble, my friend,” I said.

“I told you, Doc. If you don’t fix my plumbing I’m a dead cat.”

Chapter 6

Grandma Muffin came walking up to the small gathering in front of the hotel, shaking her fist and crying, “Where is he? Where is my lover? Don’t tell me he’s dead!”

Odelia and Chase shared a look of confusion. “Her lover?” asked Chase.

“She’s finally lost her final marble,” said Uncle Alec. He stepped forward. “Ma. What the hell do you think you’re doing, making a spectacle of yourself like that?”

The old lady stood her ground. “I’ve come here to meet my lover. Where are you hiding him?”

Alec gave her a weary look. “And who would this lover of yours be?”

“Why Burt Goldsmith, of course. Most Fascinating Man in the World.”

“Ma, Burt Goldsmith is not your lover.”

She waved that fist again. “Watch your tone, son. Burt Goldsmith was my lover long before you were born.”

A look of confusion stole over Alec’s face. “Long before I was born?”

“Sure! Each time he came to town we went at it like rabbits! Burt was my lover in the swinging sixties! The time of anything goes. Not like nowadays, when people clench their butt cheeks each time someone mentions the word sex.” She glanced around at the gathering crowd. “Sex!” she cried. “See how they cringe? Sex! That’s right—I like sex!”

“Ma!” Alec growled, and took a firm grip on her arm and led her away and into the hotel vestibule. Odelia and Chase followed, and so did Philippe Goldsmith, who seemed to have developed an odd and rapturous fascination with the old lady all of a sudden.

Inside the hotel, Alec pushed his mother down on one of the plush sofas and towered over her. Not that it intimidated the old lady one bit. Vesta Muffin was a tough old broad, and in spite of the fact that she was rail-thin and the spitting image of Estelle Getty, with her close-cropped white hair and large glasses, she was afraid of no one—not even her son the big police chief. She pointed a bony finger in his face. “I demand to see my lover!”

“Your lover is dead,” Uncle Alec said before he could stop himself.

She gasped—a quick intake of breath. “Dead?”

“Yeah, he was killed this morning.”

Her face turned into a scowl. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

“What?!”

“You didn’t want your mother to carry on with the Most Fascinating Man in the World so you killed him before we had the chance to hold our hot and steamy reunion!”

Uncle Alec directed his eyes heavenward and planted his fists on his hips. “God, give me strength,” he muttered. “Give me the strength not to strangle my own mother.”

Odelia decided to step in and prevent a second murder from taking place. She took a seat next to her grandmother and held her hand. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Grandma,” she said. “But I can assure you Uncle Alec had nothing to do with Mr. Goldsmith’s death.”

“Then who did?”

“We don’t know yet. All we know is that there was an explosion in his room and as a consequence of the blast he died.”

“Can I at least see the body?”

Odelia shared a quick look with her uncle, who shook his head, No!

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. The explosion—it did a lot of damage.”

Grandma nodded firmly, then bit her lower lip. “Just my rotten luck. To find my lover again after all these years only to have him snatched away from me—just like the first time.”

“Is it really true you and my grandfather had an affair?” asked Philippe Goldsmith. He’d been listening intently and now joined the conversation.

Grandma directed a scathing look at him. “Who are you?”

“This is Philippe Goldsmith,” said Odelia. “Burt’s grandson.”

Grandma studied the bespectacled young man with interest. “You don’t look like Burt.”

“I take after my mother,” said the kid. “She was a dainty, delicate woman.”

“I’ll bet she was.”

“So is it true about you and Grandpa?”

“Sure it’s true—don’t you believe the naysayers,” she added, giving her son a nasty look. “Burt and I really whooped it up back in the swinging sixties. We were hot to trot and that’s exactly what we did for all those summers he spent down here in Hampton Cove.”

Philippe nodded. “Grandpa did mention that he had fond memories of this town. Which is why he was so happy to be back. Did he grow up here?”

“Nah. He was a city boy. But every summer his folks would come down to Hampton Cove and rent the old Mason place near Devil’s Point. The house is long gone now, bulldozed in the eighties and developed into a big fancy hotel. Oh, the fun times me and Burt used to have. Then one summer his folks didn’t come down, and I never saw him again. We didn’t have no internet back then, and he never gave me his address or else I would have written. He did have my address, though, and for three years I hoped he’d write.” She pressed her lips together. “He never did, so I finally mended my broken heart and moved on with my life. That’s when I met Jack. He was a sailor.” She shrugged. “The rest is history.”

Uncle Alec grumbled something. He was part of that history, Jack being his dad.

“So how did you finally reconnect?” asked Philippe.

“He left a message on my Facebook page,” said Grandma.

They all looked at her. “You have a Facebook page?” asked Odelia.

“Sure I do. No thanks to you people. I had to set it up all by myself.”

“What do you need a Facebook page for?” asked Uncle Alec.

“Where else am I going to meet some nice boys?”

Alec raised his eyes to the ceiling again. “Why do you need to meet nice boys?”

“You may not want to hear this but a girl’s got needs,” she snapped. “And since all the nice boys are taken or on the Facebook I made myself a page. With some help from Dick Bernstein and Rock Horowitz from the senior center. They were only too happy to oblige.”

Alec pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered something. It sounded like a prayer.

“Grandpa told me he met a woman online,” said Philippe.

Grandma tapped her chest. “I’m that woman, kiddo.”

“So he reached out to you?” asked Odelia.

“He sure did. Said he remembered me fondly and wanted to apologize about never writing to me back in the day. Turns out his folks discovered he’d been seeing some local hussy—that’s me,” she added proudly, “and wanted to break up the affair before things got serious. He did write me, he said, but his parents intercepted his letters and burned them.”

“Just like The Notebook ,” said Chase quietly.