The Mysteries of Max: Books 31-33 Read online

  “In hindsight they probably just wanted to be closer to Lord Hilbourne’s room,” said Wim, “so they didn’t have to go to the trouble of dealing with the two of us.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why they took my laptop,” said Suppo, apparently more annoyed at the loss of his laptop than the abduction of Lord Hilbourne.

  “Thank you,” said Sarah. “If you could come down to the station tomorrow morning, you can make a formal statement if that’s all right.”

  “Of course,” said Suppo, nodding.

  “Happy to help you catch these guys,” his cousin said, then added, “Though if they’re the same ones that killed Bob, like I overheard one of your colleagues say just now, I’m afraid Lord Hilbourne doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Chapter 31

  Johnny dangled the watch in front of his face. It was a nice watch, and he was sure it would fetch them a nice sum when sold to the right fence.

  “What do you reckon this is worth, Jer?” he asked.

  “I have no idea, and I wish you hadn’t taken it,” said Jerry, a little peevishly.

  “Yeah, but it looks so nice, and I’ve always wanted a watch like this,” said the big guy.

  Jerry eyed his partner in crime with a touch of pique. “And why did you have to take that laptop? Don’t you know that laptops can be traced? In fact now that I think about it, we better dump the thing.”

  “No!” said Johnny. “It’s a very special laptop, Jer.” And it was. In fact he’d never seen one like it. It was ultra-thin and sleek and looked like it was worth a big chunk of dough.

  “Well, you won’t be able to use it. The moment you turn that thing on the owners will know where it is and they’ll send in the cavalry.”

  They were in their rented little Fiat, on their way to the safe house they’d chosen for the occasion, even though Jerry wasn’t entirely sure how safe this house really was. Still, it was better than having to move around and risk being detected by one of the cops’ flying squads, which presumably by now would have set up roadblocks all around town and be on the lookout for them and the precious cargo they were carrying.

  “If you want you can have the watch, Jer,” said Johnny magnanimously.

  “I don’t want it! It probably belongs to Little Lord Fauntleroy over there.” He jerked his thumb to the backseat, where an unconscious ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ quietly lay slumped.

  “I didn’t know his name was Fauntleroy,” said Johnny, surprised. “I thought his name was Hilbourne.”

  “Just kidding,” said Jerry with a grimace. Since he rarely kidded, it was usually a little hard for people to figure out that that was, in fact, what he was doing. “We gotta take stock and regroup,” he announced. “And to do that we need to lay low for a while. Are you sure she’ll be as happy to see us as you think?”

  “Oh, sure, Jer. You know that woman cares about us. I could see it in her eyes the first time we met, way back when.”

  “Way back when is right,” Jerry grunted, and steered their little vehicle into the night, eager to get where they were going… fast.

  Marge had been lying awake. She’d tossed and turned but frustratingly sleep wouldn’t come. With a tired groan she shifted from her belly to her side and in the process poked her better half in the stomach with her elbow. Tex made an oophing sound and jerked upright. “You have perfectly nice legs, Mrs. Baumgartner!” he blurted out, then, dazed, glanced around, trying to get his bearings. “Oh, hey, honey,” he said.

  “What’s all this about Ida Baumgartner’s legs?” Marge asked suspiciously.

  “I was dreaming of Ida,” he said, idly groping for the wispy remnants of his recent dream—or nightmare—even as they evaporated like breath on a razor blade. “She asked me if her legs weren’t too thick and wanted me to prescribe her something to make them thinner.” He shivered. “As if it isn’t enough to have to deal with that woman on a daily basis now she’s haunting my nights as well.”

  “We have to talk, Tex,” Marge announced.

  Tex immediately looked stricken. “I told you, honey, I don’t have feelings for Evelina. I only did it as a kindness to a dying woman.”

  “She isn’t dying, Tex.”

  “Almost dying,” he muttered.

  “Let’s not get into all that again,” said Marge. “We need to talk about Odelia.”

  “Odelia?”

  “Your daughter has got herself in quite a fix,” said Marge. “Well, to be entirely honest, I helped her get into that fix, and so did my mother.”

  “Of course she did,” said Tex, who’d never been a big fan of his mother-in-law. Though after successfully pleading his case his view of the woman had considerably softened.

  “A hundred more people RSVPed, most of whom were never invited in the first place, and if Odelia and my mom got the same number, and I’m sure they have, we’re looking at over a thousand guests for the wedding.”

  “A thousand!”

  “And if this keeps up—and I think it will—we’ll be looking at two or three thousand by Saturday. We can’t afford to throw a wedding for two or three thousand people. It’s going to empty our savings account and my mom’s and Odelia’s, too. We’ll all be ruined.”

  “Can’t you do something? Maybe limit the number of guests?”

  “And tell all those people they’re suddenly uninvited?”

  “You could stop accepting new people.”

  “A thousand is still too much, Tex. Way too much.”

  “I know,” he said musingly. “So what do you suggest?”

  “I suggest we hold a family meeting and thresh this thing out once and for all.”

  “Right,” said Tex as he fluffed up his pillow and prepared to go back to sleep. Though presumably this time without Ida Baumgartner’s legs haunting his dreams.

  But unfortunately for Tex sleep would have to be postponed, for just at that moment the front doorbell rang out and he groaned.

  “You’ve got to be kidding! I’ll bet it’s Ida—my dream must have been a premonition!”

  “If she complains about her legs tell her to take a hike. Hiking is a great exercise for the legs, and very slimming, too.”

  So Tex extricated himself from his comfortable position in the warm bed and reluctantly slipped his feet into his slippers and put on his robe. By the time he was stomping down the stairs he was muttering unpleasant oaths under his breath.

  That was the disadvantage of being married to a doctor, Marge thought: patients sometimes thought doctors didn’t need sleep and should be on call at all hours.

  She waited a moment, a smile on her lips, as she fully expected Tex to return and tell her that it had indeed been Ida Baumgartner and that she did have some urgent concerns about the size of her legs that couldn’t wait until the morning. Instead, suddenly her husband’s voice called out. “Honey? Can you come here a moment?”

  So now it was Marge’s turn to put on her slippers and her night robe and stomp down the stairs. Fully expecting to see the apple-cheeked apparition that was Ida, she was more than a little surprised when she saw Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale instead.

  “Hi, Marge,” said Johnny cheerfully. “We thought we’d pay you a little visit.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” said Jerry, also smiling, though it didn’t really become him. Jerry’s ferrety face wasn’t designed for smiling, and his smile came across as a sickly grimace instead.

  “We brought a guest,” said Johnny. “I think you probably know him.”

  And both men stepped aside to reveal a man’s prostrate body lying on the porch.

  “Lord Hilbourne!” Marge cried.

  “Bingo!” said Johnny. “See, Jer? I told you she’d get it right the first time.”

  Chapter 32

  After all the commotion at the hotel, none of us felt particularly in the mood for cat choir. So instead of dropping by the park, we decided to go home instead. Gran and Scarlett were too busy talking to the guests occupying the room
s to the left and right of Lord Hilbourne’s suite, and so we could forget about hitching a ride with them. Odelia and Chase had vanished, presumably on the trail of Johnny and Jerry and halfway to the Adirondacks by now, and Uncle Alec was downstairs, talking to the hotel’s receptionist.

  So it was a long hike home for us, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Us cats do like a nice long stroll in the moonlight. That’s what being a cat sleuth is all about: you just go with the flow, even if that flow involves a midnight trek through a deserted town.

  “I still can’t believe Johnny and Jerry would do such a thing,” said Dooley. “I really thought they’d changed their ways.”

  “Not likely,” said Brutus, who’d suddenly revealed himself as something of an amateur criminologist. “The recidivism rate amongst former jailbirds is high. Very high, in fact. So the likelihood of those two walking the straight and narrow after the kind of life they’ve lived is negligible.”

  “I think it’s got something to do with the adrenaline rush criminals feel when they commit a crime,” said Harriet, joining her boyfriend in the ranks of feline criminologists. “You simply don’t get that same kind of experience in civilian life, sitting behind a desk and entering numbers into a computer.”

  “No, but they could pick a job that provides more of a challenge,” I said.

  “Like what? Nothing compares to the rush you feel holding a person at gunpoint,” said Brutus, as if all he did all day was hold people at gunpoint.

  “They could always try for police academy,” Dooley suggested.

  “Police academy! Those two? You must be crazy!”

  “No, but I mean… they would make great cops,” said Dooley. “The fox that becomes the rabbit. Or is it the rabbit that becomes the fox? It’s a thing. I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel once about a reformed crook who now spends his time putting his former colleagues behind bars.”

  “You mean like that Leonardo DiCaprio movie?” I said.

  “Catch me if you can!” Harriet suddenly blurted out.

  Dooley stared at her with interest. “If you want to play that game you have to make a run for it first, Harriet.”

  “No, it’s a movie, silly. Catch Me If You Can. About a guy who used to do all kinds of bad stuff and now he helps the FBI catch the people who used to be in his line of work. It’s based on a real story of a person who really did all of that stuff.”

  “I didn’t know Leonardo DiCaprio used to be crook,” said Dooley, interested in this peculiar piece of news.

  “Leonardo DiCaprio was just playing the criminal. As an actor?”

  “Oh, right,” said Dooley, understanding dawning.

  “And the cop who was chasing him was played by Tom Hanks,” said Brutus. “We saw that movie together, didn’t we, sugar lips?”

  “Yeah, Marge was saying when we watched it how funny it would be if Johnny and Jerry would become cops one day, and work for her brother.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” said Brutus. “Like I said, recidivism is a tough proposition. Very hard for these people to leave behind that life of crime.”

  We’d finally arrived home, and as we walked past a Fiat that stood parked in front of Marge and Tex’s house, I happened to pick up a familiar scent. “Hey, you guys,” I said. “Come over here a minute. Do you smell that?”

  My friends all joined me, and took a good sniff around the little car. “It smells like… Johnny and Jerry,” said Brutus.

  “Yes, it does,” said Harriet. “What are the odds they’d be hiding out here someplace?”

  And as I sniffed a little more, and followed the trail, not unlike a police dog would, I found myself moving up the path to the front door of Odelia’s parents’ house, with the scent growing stronger by the second.

  I turned to my friends. “You know what? I think they’re here.”

  “Impossible,” said Brutus. “Those crooks would never come here.”

  “Why not?” I said. “They like and respect Marge. They used to work for her at the library, remember? And they got along terrifically.”

  “But don’t they know that she’s the sister of the Chief of Police? The man who’s searching high and low for their whereabouts?”

  “You’ve got to admit,” said Harriet, “that thinking has never been their strong suit. In fact their lack of brains is what keeps leading them into trouble over and over again.”

  We all sat there, staring at the closed door, then decided to move around the back and take a look for ourselves, to ascertain whether this wild and crazy theory could possibly have a basis in fact.

  So we rounded the house, then snuck in through the pet flap, and soon found ourselves in the kitchen.

  “Nothing,” said Brutus. “What did I tell you? They would never dare to show their faces here.”

  But then we heard noises upstairs, and the shuffling of feet.

  “I think we better go and have a look,” I said. “Marge and Tex are supposed to be asleep, not dancing the Viennese waltz.”

  So we moved up the stairs, single file, and as we crept into the bedroom were surprised to find the lights ablaze, but of Tex and Marge there was no sign.

  “Johnny and Jerry took them hostage, too!” said Harriet.

  “I think this is a bad idea,” suddenly we heard Tex exclaim.

  We proceeded in the direction of the sound, and, arriving in the guest bedroom, found ourselves witnessing an unusual sight: Marge and Tex were there, which was to be expected as this was their home, but also Johnny and Jerry, standing next to the guest bed. On that bed, looking pale and motionless, lay Lord Hilbourne—currently the most famous man in Hampton Cove—and also the most sought-after.

  Chapter 33

  “See?” said Brutus, a note of triumph in his voice. “I told you that these bozos would never be able to get rehabilitated. Once a crook, always a crook.”

  “You really shouldn’t have come here,” said Tex, addressing Jerry, whom he seemed to have singled out as the intelligent one.

  “I know, I know,” said Jerry. “But Johnny figured you were our best option. Better tell them the story, Johnny. And leave no detail out, no matter how insignificant.”

  “Well, it all started with me being afraid of heights, see,” said the big lug.

  “I didn’t know you were afraid of heights, Johnny,” said Marge, a note of affection in her voice that Brutus probably didn’t like to see there.

  “Yeah, it’s very annoying, especially in my line of work.”

  “You mean because you frequently have to break into places?” asked Tex.

  “No, because I’m so tall I always find myself looking down on people.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s not important,” said Jerry. “Get to the part where we met those two idiots next door.”

  “So the only room available at the hotel was on the third floor,” said Johnny. “And that wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t come with a balcony. I hate balconies, Mrs. Poole—Marge. I hate them cause they make me feel dizzy when I stand on them.”

  “So don’t stand on them,” Tex suggested.

  “Exactly what I keep telling him,” Jerry grumbled.

  “But I like to look at the birds. I love birds. They relax me. And I like the colors.”

  “Will you just get to the good part already?!” Jerry cried.

  “So we tried to change rooms, only the two guys next door said no.”

  “Yeah, real sweethearts, those two.”

  “But what can you do, right?” said Johnny. “So we figured if they say no, that’s it. I better don’t go near the window—and that balcony.”

  “So suddenly last night,” said Jerry, taking over the narrative thrust of the conversation, “I hear this strange noise coming from next door, and so I put my ear to the door, as one does.”

  “One of those connecting doors,” Johnny explained. “Very thin. Isn’t that right, Jer?”

  “Yeah, real thin. You can hear pretty much everything th
at goes on in the next room. So there’s a lot of shouting and stumbling around, so I figure those two idiots have gotten into a fight.”

  “Probably one of them felt sorry he didn’t give us their room, and the other didn’t agree,” said Johnny.

  “So we decide to bust into the room, wanting to break up the fight.”

  “And maybe muscle those guys out and into our room so we can take theirs.”

  “But instead of those guys duking it out they’ve got Little Lord Fauntleroy over here and his face and shirt are full of blood and he looks half dead. They were trying to kill him!”

  “So I just followed my instincts,” said Johnny, “and knocked both those guys’ blocks off and dumped them into the closet for safekeeping.”

  “You mean…” said Marge.

  “Yeah, we saved this weird little dude’s life,” said Johnny proudly.

  Marge and Tex were momentarily speechless, then turned to their celebrity guest, who looked pretty dead to me, actually.

  “He stopped moving twenty minutes ago,” Jerry announced. “So we figured you could maybe take a look at him or something? You are still a doctor, aren’t you, Mr. Marge?”

  Tex, if he took umbrage at being addressed as Mr. Marge, didn’t show it. Instead, he moved over to the bed and started examining the deathly pale British blue blood.

  “Why didn’t you take him to a hospital?” Marge wanted to know. A very apt question, I thought.

  “Because we figured if we did that they’d end up blaming us for what happened to the dude,” said Jerry.

  “Yeah, people tend to think: once a criminal, always a criminal,” Johnny said. “It’s sad but that’s the way it is.”

  Brutus had the decency to look a little uncomfortable at this.

  “Something really weird is going on with this guy,” said Tex after his first cursory examination. “What were these people doing to him? Did you see?”

  “Well, when we burst into that room they were holding him up, and he was jerking around pretty violently,” said Johnny. “Almost like he was having a seizure or something. I figured they’d just finished beating him up something real bad.” He smiled at Marge. “When I used to beat up people they reacted exactly the same way. Jerking and shaking. Though sometimes they’d just lie real still—trying to make me think they were dead.”