Ник Сайнт: Purrfect Crime

“Will you just focus?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Oh, all right,” he grumbled, patting his hair to make sure it was still in place. Jarrett is fair-haired, slender and one of the richest men in the country. Or at least his father is. Jarrett simply sponges off the old man. As for me, I’m not rich nor come from money. I pushed at my blond bob, smoothed my pink T-shirt around my lithe form, adjusted my jeans, and walked up to the man we were here to meet.

“Hello, Mr. Goodfellow,” I said. “Henrietta McCabre, but everyone calls me Harry. And this is my associate Jarrett Zephyr-Thornton.”

“The Third,” Jarrett added petulantly.

“So what can we do for you?”

Julian Goodfellow was younger than I’d imagined and rocking a sexy bookish look, with a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on a well-shaped nose, his handsome face creased into an engaging smile. When he gripped my hand and shook it, there was power in those fingers.

“So nice to finally meet you, Harry. Your reputation precedes you. And you, Jarrett.”

“H-hi,” said Jarrett, slightly taken aback. “You’ve got a-a firm grip, Mr. Goodfellow. Do-do you work out?”

I rolled my eyes. When Jarrett starts stuttering, it’s usually because he’s spotted prey. It’s part of his Hugh Grant impersonation, which he figures will add to his charm.

“I do work out, yes,” said the museum director after a pause. “It’s important to stay in shape.”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Jarrett. “I work out myself, of course. Not a day goes by that I don’t spend in the gym. And the sauna, of course. Nothing like a nice sauna after a hard, hard workout.” He gave the other man an appraising look, but the director ignored him.

“So. Shall we?” he asked, directing an expectant look at me.

“Yes, let’s,” I said, after giving Jarrett a nudge.

“What?” he hissed when we both fell into step behind Julian.

“This is not the time to hit on the guy!” I hissed back.

“I’m not hitting on him! I’m just… being nice.”

“Nice! You practically invited him to share a sauna!”

“I did not. I was just exchanging pleasant banter.”

“Well, save it for later. We’re here to do a job, not to pick up a date. Besides, what about Deshawn?”

“What about him?”

“I thought you guys were happy together?”

He gave a noncommittal shrug. “He’s cheating on me.”

“What?!”

“If you haven’t heard, Deshawn’s joined The Great British Bake Off .”

“He’s cheating on you with Paul Hollywood?!”

“Well, I don’t think so, actually. But he is having a ball.”

I frowned. Having a ball at a baking show didn’t exactly constitute cheating. And then it hit me. “I know what this is. You’re jealous!”

“I am not!” he said.

“You’re jealous because Deshawn is suddenly getting all the attention and you’re not.”

“You’re bonkers,” he muttered, looking away, which was as much an admission as if he’d come right out and said it. “It’s just not much fun to see my better half having so much fun without me, that’s all.”

I smiled. Deshawn Little had been Jarrett’s ‘man’ for years, until they both confessed to harboring feelings for each other deeper than merely being master and servant allowed. They’d been inseparable ever since. Until now.

“As long as Deshawn doesn’t take his baking skills into Paul Hollywood’s personal kitchen, you’re fine,” I said.

He grumbled something, but we’d arrived in the Ancient Egypt room, and there was no more time for idle chitchat about Deshawn’s baking adventures.

“Here we are,” said Julian with a wave of his arm.

The room was relatively dark, with several mummies on display, along with sarcophaguses, gilded masks, and wrapped and unwrapped remains of people who’d long been dead. It was all very impressive, and a little disconcerting at the same time.

“Are these… real mummies?” asked Jarrett, gulping slightly.

“Yes, they are all very real,” Julian confirmed.

Jarrett produced a soft whimper, and I patted his back. “They’re all quite dead, Jarrett,” I said. “Just like Dippy the Dinosaur.”

Julian stopped in front of a mummy that had been put upright. It was stiff as a board, and thoroughly wrapped up, except for its head, which was a mere skull.

“This is the one,” Julian said. “We call him Snoopy, as he resembles a beagle.”

I looked closer, and saw that the museum director was right. The mummy did resemble a beagle, with its pronounced set of choppers and its equally pronounced grin.

“He looks like he’s smiling,” I said.

Julian now displayed a smile himself. “He does, doesn’t he? In life, he was a minor pharaoh. In death, he’s the pride of our modest little collection.” His smile faded. “Or at least he was, until he started behaving badly.”

“What does he do, exactly?”

“Well, he seems to get a kick out of scaring the living daylights out of everyone who comes near, though his favorite thing seems to be scaring kids into a decline.”

“Perhaps he was bullied and this is his chance to get back at his bullies?” Jarrett suggested.

“Whatever’s going on, it’s a damn nuisance. We’ve had to close down the entire exhibit, one of our most popular ones, I might add, and visitors have been staying away. This joke is costing us heaps of money.”

“I would think a museum could exploit this as a genuine selling point,” I said. “Mummies come alive? An actual Egyptian mummy haunting the Ancient Egypt wing?”

“You would think that, wouldn’t you? But you would be wrong. People love ghosts in theory, not when they’re actually confronted with them.”

“What—what does he do, exactly?” asked Jarrett. He’d moved back a few steps from Snoopy, eyeing the mummy anxiously.

“What doesn’t he do? He makes faces at people, chases them around the room, and—worst of all—he spews some kind of pea-green slime at them. It’s disgusting. In fact he got me just this morning. I had to put on a fresh suit before you arrived.”

I assured the museum director that all was fine, and that we had the situation well in hand. He excused himself, and then hurried away, being careful to close the door behind him when he left. And then it was just me and Jarrett. And Snoopy.

Chapter Two

“So how do we do this?” asked Jarrett, licking his lips nervously.

“Why don’t we just call him and see what happens?” I suggested.

“Right,” said Jarrett, hopping from one foot to the other. “You know, Harry? I would feel a lot more comfortable if Buckley was here.”

“We can do this,” I assured him. Though if I was honest, I’d have preferred our third associate to be here with us, too. Sir Geoffrey Buckley had been my employer until his untimely demise, and was now our ghostly consultant, the person with his feet firmly in the world of the wraiths. Lately he’d made himself more and more scarce, however, and I was starting to think he was tired of spending time in both worlds.

I took up position in front of the mummy, which was leering at me. It was one of those juicy mummies, with quite a bit of flesh on its bones. “Um, Snoopy?” I asked, then figured this might not be the best way to address the irate ghost of a pharaoh. I glanced at the name card that identified him as Rhamenas, the sixteenth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, who’d reigned from 1292 to 1292 BC.

“Very short reign,” Jarrett whispered.

“Only a couple of months,” I whispered back.

“Probably murdered. Which would explain the foul attitude.”

“Mr. Rhamenas, sir?” I asked. “Are you there?”