Purrfect Setup Read online

  Purrfect Setup

  The Mysteries of Max 30

  Nic Saint

  Puss in Print Publications

  Contents

  Purrfect Setup

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from The Whiskered Spy

  About Nic

  Also by Nic Saint

  Purrfect Setup

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  Pawsitive identification

  When we were called to the home of a banker who’d taken his own life, little did I suspect this would lead to an actual case. But then the banker’s daughter asked Odelia to investigate, convinced her father had been murdered. And so we set out to prove the impossible. The police were satisfied with a verdict of suicide, and we had nothing to go on except the girl’s plea. Meanwhile Dooley had his own theories about the case, and then there was his quest to become a cub scout. His good deeds soon began to give me great cause for concern, especially when they started to put lives at risk.

  1

  Odelia Poole had just entered the gym changing room after a satisfying marathon session on the stationary bike when a young woman, a teenager really, called out her name.

  “Odelia? Odelia Poole?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re the reporter, right? The one who also works as a private detective?”

  Odelia smiled. “Reporter will do. I’m not much of a detective, except by accident.”

  “There’s something I need to ask, Miss Poole,” said the teenager, and glanced behind her, as if to ascertain whether they weren’t being overheard. She was probably around eighteen, maybe even younger, with fair hair and a light complexion. Her eyes were large and blue as she gave Odelia a searching look.

  “What’s your name?” asked Odelia, who could sense that the girl was in some kind of trouble.

  “Rose,” said the girl. “Rose Wimmer.”

  “How can I help you, Rose?”

  “I’ve been getting these messages, Miss Poole,” said Rose, taking out her phone.

  “Odelia, please. What messages?”

  Rose held up her phone and swiped it to life. “I have no idea who’s sending them but they’re very annoying. My boyfriend saw them and he says I should go to the police. But I really don’t want to get them involved.” She shook her head. “This is so embarrassing.”

  Odelia, whose curiosity was now well and truly piqued, said, “Can you show me the messages?”

  “Here’s one,” said Rose, and held out her phone for Odelia to see. “This is the one I got just now. They were sent to my Messenger. I was doing the Pilates class and I heard my phone buzz and I knew it was him. Don’t ask me how but I just knew.”

  Odelia stared at the message. It took her but a short moment to realize what it was she was looking at. “Is this…” she began.

  Rose nodded and bit her bottom lip nervously. “I’ve been getting at least one a day. It’s horrible.”

  The picture showed a man’s undercarriage in all its dubious glory. “Um…” said Odelia, unsure of how to respond. “So who are they from?”

  “That’s the thing. I have absolutely no idea. At first I thought Cole was sending them–that’s my boyfriend—Cole Donalds. But he swears up and down it’s not him.” Rose shook her head. “It must be some jerk I know from school. Has to be.”

  “Can’t you block this person?”

  “I did! Blocked and reported. He just creates a new account and starts sending again.”

  “There’s no name? No other messages?”

  “No, nothing. It’s disgusting, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty gross,” Odelia agreed, who’d never been on the receiving end of these kinds of obscene messages herself, thank God.

  Rose raised her eyes to Odelia’s. Her expression had taken on a pleading aspect. “Can you please find out who’s sending these, Miss Poole—Odelia? Please? I have to know.”

  “I think I have to agree with your boyfriend, Rose. I think it’s best if you take these to the police. If you file a complaint they can trace these back to the person who sent them.”

  “No police,” said Rose with a note of finality in her voice. “I’ve never been involved with the police and I don’t want to start now.” She clasped her hands together. “Oh, please help me, Odelia. I’ve heard so many good things about you. How you’re an ace detective and how you can solve a mystery even when the police are completely stuck?”

  That pleading look was affecting Odelia deeply. And even though she had no idea how to help Rose, she found her resolve weakening under the onslaught of the teenager’s insistence. “Oh, all right,” she said finally. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” said Rose, and promptly slung her arms around Odelia’s sweaty neck and gave her a bone-crushing hug. When she released her, the young girl’s eyes were sparkling. “Cole thinks I’m cheating on him, you see. He thinks I have another boyfriend and it’s him that’s been sending me these messages. If I can just prove to him that it’s just some weird creep…”

  Just then, Jared Zmuda stuck his head in. The gym owner was dressed in his usual attire: Iron Man tank top and fluorescent shorts. “Just to let you girls know we’ve been having some issues with the plumbing,” he said. “So if you want to take a hot shower, better do it now, before the plumber gets here.” He gave them both a toothy grin and then retreated again.

  “We better take that shower,” said Odelia as she opened her locker and took out her gym bag.

  “So how do you want to do this?” asked the girl. “Do you need my phone or do I forward you these messages?”

  “I think you better give me your phone so I can take a closer look,” said Odelia.

  Rose handed her the phone with obvious reluctance. As was the way with many people, especially teenagers, obviously the girl’s world revolved around that small device.

  “I’ll give it back to you as soon as I can,” Odelia promised.

  “But how will you reach me?”

  “Do you have a second phone? Or a regular home phone?”

  The girl nodded, and gave Odelia her home address, phone number and the number of her boyfriend. “Best to call Cole, though. I don’t want my dad to know about this, or Daphne.”

  “Who’s Daphne?”

  Rose grimaced. “My stepmom. We don’t exactly get along. Not that I get along with my dad either. He’s a banker and obsessed with his job. But not too obsessed that he’s not always on my case.” She sighed an exaggerated sigh. “He doesn’t like Cole, you see. Thinks he’s not right for me.”

  Jared stuck his head in the door again. “Final warning,” he said. “ETA on the plumber is ten minutes. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” And he gave the doorjamb a pat before retracting his head again.

  Odelia placed Rose’s phone in her gym bag. The girl had opened her locker but hesitated t
hen turned to face Odelia. “How… how much is your fee, Odelia? It’s just that… my dad may be loaded, but he’s really stingy. I do work weekends at Denny’s, and—”

  “No fee,” Odelia cut into the girl’s explanations about her impecuniousness.

  “Oh, but you have to let me pay you.”

  “Look, I wouldn’t want to receive these kinds of horrible pictures myself, nor do I think anyone should send them to someone as young as you. So frankly I want to catch the bastard as badly as you do.” She smiled. “In short: I’ll be happy do this for free.”

  Rose’s smile lit up her face and warmed Odelia’s heart. “Thank you,” she said, and clasped the reporter’s hands. “I knew you were the right person to ask. I just knew it.”

  2

  “Max?”

  “Mh?”

  “What is a dick pic?”

  I’d just been taking a liberal swig of water from my water bowl when Dooley hit me with this frankly shocking question. As a consequence I almost choked on my intake of my usual H2O and slowly turned to my friend, who was looking at me with that innocent look in his eyes which is so typical for him.

  But before I could formulate a response, he went on, “I mean, I know it’s a picture of a man named Dick, but we don’t know any men named Dick, do we? So why is Odelia showing his picture to Chase right now, and why are they whispering?”

  I glanced over to where our humans were conducting a whispered conversation at the kitchen counter, both intently looking down at something positioned on the counter.

  Harriet, who’d overheard the conversation, gave me a cheeky wink. “Yes, Max, please tell us what picture of Dick Odelia and Chase are studying. Inquiring minds want to know.”

  Harriet had until now been licking her precious white fur, but Dooley’s question clearly held enough intrigue to make her halt this favored pastime. Her green eyes were sparkling with mischievous mirth, and I gave her a hopeless look.

  “I think you’re absolutely right, Dooley,” I said. “A dick pic is obviously a picture of a man named Dick, and if I’d hazard a guess this Dick person is probably someone related to either Odelia’s job or Chase’s.”

  Dooley nodded sagely. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “I heard Chase use a curse word, Max, when Odelia showed him this Dick person’s picture, so Dick must be a man who did a very bad thing.”

  “A very bad thing indeed,” said Harriet with a slight grin, and without further ado resumed her interrupted grooming session.

  Her boyfriend Brutus, the fourth member of Odelia’s feline household, now came tripping up through the pet flap. Brutus is a butch black cat, and now looked slightly bored when he joined us. “Gran is watching Jeopardy again,” he announced. “And she’s yelling out all the questions. Much to Tex’s annoyance.”

  Now that Dooley’s curiosity was satisfied, at least temporarily, it was time to satisfy mine. And as I directed a curious glance at my humans, still in whispered conference, I decided to hop up onto one of the kitchen stools and find out what they were up to.

  The moment I did, the whispered conversation abruptly halted, and two pairs of human eyes quickly swiveled to the intruder in their midst: me.

  “What do you want, Max?” asked Odelia, a little curtly I thought.

  “Dooley says that you received a dick pic, and he wants to know all about it,” I said.

  “Oh, dear,” said Odelia with an expressive eye roll. “I should have known not to bring Rose’s phone home.”

  “Who’s Rose?” I asked.

  “Rose is a girl I met at the gym,” she said. “And she’s been receiving these very offensive pictures… of a man’s undercarriage. She neither asked for these pictures to be sent to her, nor does she enjoy the experience of receiving them.”

  “Who does?” Chase muttered. The lanky cop was staring intently at something on a smartphone that didn’t belong either to him or to Odelia. I could tell from the pictures of flowers pasted on the pink phone cover and the glitter with which it had been encrusted.

  “And now Rose wants me to find out who’s been sending her these pictures,” Odelia went on. “She thinks it’s probably some kid at her school.”

  “If I get my hands on the little jerk,” Chase grumbled as he flexed and unflexed a fist.

  “So… have you found out?” I asked, darting a glance in the direction of the phone in question. But Chase was carefully shielding it from view, and probably that was a good thing, too. Frankly I’d never witnessed a human male’s undercarriage up close and personal and I honestly liked to keep it that way. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

  “It’s not so easy,” said Odelia, as she took what was left of the pepperoni pizza she and Chase had enjoyed and deposited it into her mouth.

  “Well, it is easy,” said Chase, “but it’s not something you or I can accomplish. But if I take this phone into the station tomorrow, and hand it over to one of our techies—”

  “No way,” said Odelia. “I promised Rose I wouldn’t involve the police, and I intend to keep my promise.”

  “She doesn’t have to know I took it,” Chase argued. “Heck, your uncle doesn’t even have to know.”

  “You would keep this from my uncle?” asked Odelia with an amused look at her boyfriend.

  “If all Rose wants is to know who’s sending her these pictures, and she doesn’t want to file a complaint or to press charges, I see no reason for Alec to get involved,” said Chase, referring to Alec Lip, Hampton Cove’s chief of police and also Odelia’s uncle.

  “Mh,” said Odelia, considering this. “And you’re sure you’ll be able to find out?”

  “Absolutely,” said Chase. “These guys are incredible. You hand them this phone and they’ll pinpoint the source of this creep’s nasty messages in a heartbeat.”

  Odelia thought for a moment, then finally sighed. “It’s not as if I’ll ever be able to find out this guy’s identity. And the longer I stare at these pictures…” She shivered visibly. “I just wish I’d never laid eyes on them.”

  Chase, in the heat of his argument, had placed the phone down on the counter, and I got my first good look at the object under discussion, namely Dick’s picture. I blinked as I stared at the thing. It was… a little disconcerting to be honest. And just then Dooley joined us on the only stool left, and immediately got an eyeful of Rose’s phone.

  He frowned as he took in the picture in its full splendor. “Is that a sausage?” he asked.

  Odelia, who suddenly noticed both her cats were intently staring down at the offensive image, quickly snatched the phone and turned it upside down. “Please tell me you didn’t see that,” she said with a groan.

  “I saw a sausage,” Dooley announced.

  Odelia smiled with relief. “And that’s exactly what it was, Dooley. A sausage.”

  “So Dick sent your friend a picture of a sausage?” asked my friend.

  Odelia swallowed. “Yep. That’s exactly what he did. Which is why we call him… Dick the Sausage.”

  “So is this a game or something? For the newspaper?”

  “Absolutely,” said Odelia, whose face was glowing crimson now as she tried her hardest to contain a peal of laughter bubbling to the surface. “Find the sausage. A new game Dan invented.”

  “Oh,” said Dooley, and promptly lost all interest. After all, we all know humans are a strange breed, sending pictures of sausages to unsuspecting people. And as Chase pocketed the girl Rose’s phone, I decided to put the entire matter out of my mind.

  It was much harder than I thought. The picture of this particular sausage was one of those things that once seen, it’s impossible to unsee, and I now truly wished I’d never hopped up onto that stool and stuck my nose in.

  3

  I’d been dozing peacefully, not even a hint of sausages in my dreams I can proudly say, when suddenly Odelia’s phone started belting out its usual tone indicating someone wanted to have speech with her.

  This is one of the disadvantag
es of being a reporter: anyone can call you up in the middle of the night with some important piece of information to impart. The same goes for Chase, of course. Since criminals rarely have the decency to commit their crimes during waking hours and instead like to do so under the cloak of darkness, it frequently happens that he’s called out of bed at some ungodly hour to investigate some crime.

  “Is that Odelia’s phone?” asked Dooley who, like me, had been peacefully sleeping at the foot of our humans’ bed.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Maybe she won the competition,” he said. And when I stared at him, he added, “The sausage competition? Maybe she won first prize.”

  “Oh, right,” I said.

  Odelia had already picked her phone from the nightstand where it had been blaring away and pressed it to her ear. With a muffled, sleepy voice she said, “Odelia Poole speaking.”

  Chase was stirring, and Dooley and I were staring, and when suddenly Odelia sat bolt upright in bed, the cop flicked on the light and I could see that my human’s eyes were wide and her face wore an expression of profound shock. “I’ll be there right away,” she spoke into the phone, her voice suddenly a lot more crisp and snappy. “Have you called the police?” She glanced over to Chase, who was frowning and mouthing, ‘What’s going on?’ “Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell them to hurry. Yes, just sit tight, Rose, and whatever you do—don’t touch anything, you understand? Bye.” She disconnected and turned to Chase, dragging a careworn hand through her tousled mane of fair hair. “That was Rose Wimmer. Her dad died. She just found him sitting at his desk—dead. Looks like suicide.”