Ник Сайнт - Purrfectly Deadly

She left the library feeling a little annoyed. First her grandmother tried to push her into Chase’s arms and now her mother. It was a concerted matchmaking effort that didn’t sit well with her. If she was ever going to choose a mate for life, as her grandmother put it, she’d do it herself, without anyone’s help. Besides, clearing Chase’s name wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

Back when he was still an NYPD detective, the wife of a suspect had accused him of molesting her, and those charges had lost him his job and, very briefly, his freedom. And they weren’t going away. Instead, they’d followed him to Hampton Cove, where his job now hung in the balance.

Chase claimed he’d caught the NYPD commissioner and the wife of the mayor of New York in a torrid affair, and they’d set up this molestation claim to discredit him and shut him up. Since arriving in Hampton Cove, he’d apprehended the killer in another murder case, that of a well-known bestselling novelist, and that had gotten him a reprieve from the mayor of Hampton Cove, but it didn’t sit well with several concerned citizens that a cop on the Hampton Cove Police Department was an NYPD reject, so they’d been pressuring the council and Mayor Turner to have him dismissed.

Odelia had promised to look into the case, but so far had nothing to show for her efforts. If Chase’s old boss was having an affair, he was very discreet about it, and so far she only had Chase’s word on the matter.

As she was crossing the street to pick up the necessary ingredients for the chocolate cake her mother wanted her to bake, she saw a guy selling something from the trunk of his car, and she was reminded of Orville’s words.

She decided to have a closer look and, arriving there, saw that the guy’s customer was none other than her own grandmother! The feisty old lady was negotiating with the salesman, who stood gesticulating wildly. He had slicked-back raven hair and was wearing an actual three-piece suit.

“Gran?” she asked when she’d joined the odd couple. “What is this?”

“Oh, there you are, honey. I was hoping to run into you. So what do you think, huh?” she asked, holding up a small plastic baggie in one hand and a glass vial in the other. “Powder or liquid? I was thinking liquid, as you know I have trouble swallowing.”

Odelia’s eyes swiveled to the trunk of the guy’s car, and when she saw the baggies of white powder, clear glass vials, more baggies with pills in different colors, she had a pretty good idea what was going on here. She directed a hard look at the guy. “Are you selling Liquid G to my grandmother?”

“Hey, she wanted something to help her sleep,” the guy said, holding up his hands. He then tapped a small vial. “This will help her sleep just fine.”

“This will help her sleep forever,” Odelia said, planting her hands on her hips. “You’re that drug dealer, aren’t you? The one who’s trying to muscle Orville Haggis out of the market?”

The guy took a good look at Odelia. “And you’re that reporter, aren’t you?”

“Odelia’s the best reporter in town,” said Gran proudly. “She’s the one that catches all the bad guys before the cops ever do.” She then grinned at the guy. “She even caught herself a drug dealer just before, didn’t you, honey?”

Well, news certainly traveled fast. But then what else was new?

The next thing she knew, the guy slammed the trunk of his car closed, and then he was bolting away from them, barreling down the sidewalk.

“Oh, crap, not again,” she groaned, and took off after the guy.

“You go get him, honey!” her grandmother yelled. “I’d help you catch him but my hip’s acting up again! In fact now might be a good time to try this here happy stuff, just like the guy said.” And she flicked the vial curiously.

Horrified, Odelia shouted over her shoulder, “Don’t drink that, Gran!”

But even as she glanced back, she saw that the old lady was already knocking back the vial with visible relish. And as she was sprinting after her second drug dealer of the day, she managed to snatch her cell phone from her pocket and press it to her ear. “Chase? I’m on Main Street, chasing another drug dealer. And my gran just took a hit of GHB!”

Chapter 12

A foot pursuit was even harder than a car chase, she discovered. The guy might be a little portly, but he was in great shape. In fact he was in much better shape than she was. She probably should have bought that elliptical trainer. She’d only run a couple hundred feet before a shooting pain attacked her spleen, or whatever organ was acting up. But thinking about how this asshole had sold GHB to her grandmother gave her the fuel to keep going.

“Hold it right there!” she yelled as the guy jumped over a Poodle on a leash and then veered right between two shops. “I just wanna talk to you!”

That wasn’t necessarily true, of course. Well, she did want to talk to him, but she also wanted to slam his head against the pavement until he promised never to sell drugs to senior citizens again, or anyone else for that matter. Not that he would listen. Guys like that never listened. You had to lock them up.

She also hung a hard right and found herself hurtling down a narrow alley that opened up into a wider lane. She halted, hands on knees, panting heavily, and checked left and right. In every direction she was looking into the backyards of the houses on the next street, all neatly divided by hedges or fences. And the drug dealer, who clearly wasn’t a customer of his own junk, was now vaulting over the fences like a regular steeplechaser!

She wiped the sweat from her brow and with a groan continued her pursuit. She wanted to say she was too old for this shit, but that wasn’t true. She was simply not trained for this shit. And as she climbed the first fence, she hoped Gran hadn’t taken an overdose of that horrible drug. If she had, she’d never forgive dealer guy. Instead of gracefully hopping over the fence like a member of SEAL Team Six, she dropped down into the yard, her jeans ripping when they caught on a rusty nail. And as she tumbled down, she crashed right into a barbecue set, which, luckily for her, wasn’t switched on.

A couple, sitting on the deck, stared at her. “Is this for a contest?” asked the woman.

“I think it’s for one of them reality shows,” said her husband.

“It’s neither,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I’m chasing a drug dealer.”

“Oh. Right,” said the woman, as if that made perfect sense.

“You go get him, honey,” said the man.

“I will, if I survive,” she said between two gasps.

She climbed the next fence, and thought that at this rate she would never get her man. But then, to her great surprise, she saw that she’d gotten her man already. He was lying sprawled on the lawn of the next family’s garden, cursing loudly and nursing an injured shin as he rolled on his back. Apparently, when landing, he’d knocked his shin on the toy plastic castle that took up a big part of the garden. The two kids who’d been playing with the castle were staring at the man who’d suddenly interrupted their garden party, and then set off into the house, wailing loudly for their mommy.

Odelia pounced on the guy and pressed him face down into the grass. She would have loved to cuff him, but since she wasn’t a cop she couldn’t. She now wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask Uncle Alec to deputize her, seeing as she was doing more work than the regular cops anyway.

But then her eye fell on a brightly green skipping rope, and she figured it would do. So she quickly and expertly tied the guy’s hands.

“You have the right to remain silent,” she began.

“What the hell are you doing?” he cursed, spitting out a few blades of grass. “You’re not a cop! You can’t make an arrest!”