Ник Сайнт - Purrfect Murder

“A chat?” he asked, falling into step beside me. “With who?”

“With whom,” I corrected him. We might be cats, but that was no excuse for a lapse in grammar. “Who do you think?”

“Is this a trick question?” he whined. “Don’t do this to me, Max. Not when I’m tired. Just tell me already. Whommmm are we going to chat with?”

“Clarice, of course.”

He gulped. “Clarice? Are you nuts? She’ll just tell us she saw nuthin.”

“Well, maybe she will, or maybe she won’t. But it’s definitely worth a try.”

Of all the cats I knew in Hampton Cove, Clarice was the one who’d traveled the most and traveled the farthest. She had to, to find food and shelter, as she didn’t have a human to take care of her. Once upon a time, the rumor went, she’d had a human, but he’d abandoned her. Some tourist who came to Hampton Cove for the holidays, and then tied her to a tree out in the woods and took off. The same rumor held that she’d gnawed off her own paw to escape, like James Franco, though from what I’d seen her limbs were still present and accounted for, so that story might just have been a fabrication.

“Clarice,” I called out as we approached the dumpster she was currently holed up in. “Clarice, we’d like to talk to you.” The small collection of dumpsters was where the stores the mall was comprised of dumped their garbage, and was always a place where all manner of critters gathered.

When Clarice’s head popped up out of the dumpster, looking shifty-eyed and ready to flee, Dooley chimed in, “Hey, Clarice. So we meet again, huh? What are the odds?” He looked a little afraid, and with good reason. Clarice had been known to lash out when she was approached without invitation.

“We were just wondering—” I began.

“I know nuthin,” she muttered, repeating her usual mantra.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, a little gruffly. I wasn’t in the mood for games. I was tired and hungry and my paws hurt. “Look, all we need to know is whether you know a cat who knows a cat who might have seen a cat who…”

“I know nuthin,” Clarice repeated.

“See? I told you this was a waste of time,” said Dooley. He’d planted himself on his rear end and was sniffing the air, probably looking for meat.

“Look, we just want to know—”

“I know nuthin!” she repeated, and jumped out of the dumpster, giving us both the dirtiest of looks and starting to walk away.

“Now hold it right there!” I cried. “All we want is information. Is that too much to ask? If you tell us what we need to know we’ll even share our kibble with you next time you’re in the neighborhood. Isn’t that right, Dooley?”

Dooley stared at me. He obviously didn’t agree. If anyone was going to share his kibble, it was going to be me. Well, that was fine by me. From experience I knew that fresh kibble was only a trip to the store away.

I panted a little, because Clarice was giving me her best stare. Locked in a stare-down with the most feral cat in Hampton Cove. If she lashed out now and scratched my nose, that would set the seal on this day. To my surprise, she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Oh, all right, Max, you annoying little weasel. What do you wanna know?”

Relieved, I told her about the murder of Paulo Frey. It turned out that the Writer’s Lodge was like a second home to her. Which, now that I thought about it, wasn’t surprising. Writers are an easy mark for a cat’s affections, as a lot of them genuinely like us. Most of them got cats at home, and when they come out to the woods to write they miss their little furballs. So when they see Clarice lurking in the woods, they try to lure her by offering her the best treats. I now saw what her MO was, and with it came a newfound respect.

“Well, I don’t know anything about that Chase Kingsley affair,” she finally said, “and I don’t care one hoot either. What humans do is none of my business. What I can tell you is I saw someone drag the body of that writer out of the lodge a year ago, so I’m guessing that might have been your killer.”

Dooley and I exchanged excited glances. “You saw the killer?” I asked.

“Sure, sure,” she said, studying her nails, which were razor-sharp. “They dragged the body of that Frey guy out of the lodge and dumped it where they like to do their business. Made a nice big splash, too. Then they came out again and dumped a bunch of other stuff in there.”

“A laptop and a couple of suitcases,” I said.

“Sure, sure,” she said, rolling her eyes, already bored with the conversation.

“So?” I asked when she was silent for a beat. “Who was it?!”

“Yeah, Clarice,” Dooley huffed out. “Who’s the killer?”

“What’s it worth to you?” she asked, removing a fishbone from between her teeth and giving it a tentative nibble.

“Whatever you want,” I said excitedly.

“I’ll take a twenty-pound bag of fish kibble. The expensive stuff. And a couple bags of that party mix you guys seem to like so much. Mixed grill.”

“Deal!” I cried.

Clarice gave a chuckle, spit out the fishbone and suddenly, fast as lightning, flicked a paw beneath the dumpster and came away with a mouse, dragging it out by its tail. And then, before our horrified gaze, she gobbled down the mouse, hair and hide!

I gulped and so did Dooley. We weren’t necessarily mouse hunters, what with having such a cushy life and all, and watching this… massacre taking place in front of our noses reminded us we were as far removed from our feral ancestors as felinely possible.

“So, those are my terms,” Clarice said, spitting out the mouse tail and using it to pick her teeth. “I want the best stuff. Take it or leave it.”

“Sure! Fine! All right!” I cried. “I can get you all that and more.”

I was pretty sure that Odelia wouldn’t mind trading a couple of expensive bags of cat food for the identity of the Paulo Frey killer. It was a bargain!

Clarice held up her paw, then sliced it with the nail of her other paw. A small drop of blood dribbled down. I thought I was going to faint at the sight of the blood, and it was obvious Dooley was feeling the same way.

“Put it there, fellas,” she said in that gravelly voice of hers. “Let’s seal the deal with blood.”

“Is that really necessary?” asked Dooley in a choked voice.

“No blood, no deal,” growled Clarice.

“What is this, the Middle Ages?” squeaked Dooley. “I thought we were past all this nonsense.”

“All right, all right,” I said, fearing Clarice would change her mind. So I held up my left paw and made a small incision. A drop of blood appeared, and I suddenly felt queasy. That’s the curse of being a house cat: you lose those killer instincts.

“Now you, Dooley,” I said.

“Yeah. Now you, Dooley,” said Clarice in a mocking voice. “Put it there, pal.” She was simply taunting us, I realized. Playing with us, as if we were mice.

“I—I can’t,” he cried. “I can’t stand the sight of blood. And I—I hate the pain!” he added with a pathetic whiny voice.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Clarice grunted. “What are you, a cat or a mouse? Come here, you pansy-ass puss.” And with a vicious slicing movement, she scratched Dooley’s nose.

“Owowowowow!” he cried. “What did you do that for?!”

“Because you’re a whiny little pussy,” she said, and put her hand up to his nose, giving it a hearty pat. “Now you, Max. Slap one on this sissy’s nose.”

I put my paw against hers and Dooley’s nose, so that our blood mingled. It was a very unhygienic business, I thought, and as I did it, I winced. Dooley mewled with apparent pain, and obviously didn’t like his nose squeezed between my paw and Clarice’s. He bore it bravely, though, probably because he didn’t have any choice. If he ran for the hills now, Clarice would hunt him down and eat him alive, just like she’d swallowed down that mouse.