The Mysteries of Max Box Sets 3 Read online

  And as she stared down at the grotesque head in horror, she had to agree that Philippe was right: the man was remarkably well-preserved. Only now he was also very dead.

  Next to her sounded a soft yelp, and the next moment Philippe had collapsed and was lying prostrate on the sidewalk, right next to the mortal remains of his famous granddad.

  The Most Fascinating Grandson in the World had fainted.

  Chapter 2

  I awoke with a start, a powerful sense that something was awry hanging over me like a pall. I opened one eye then the other, and yawned cavernously. I stretched my limbs and glanced up at the bed. As a rule, I like to sleep at the foot of Odelia’s bed, but ever since she bought herself one of those box spring contraptions I’m having a hard time navigating my approach shot. The thing is, you hit a box spring, and the box spring hits you right back. More than once I’ve landed on my tush on the floor, wondering what the hell happened.

  How humans manage to land on the bed and stay there is a mystery to me.

  I blinked against the invading light that peeped through the curtains and wondered once more what had awakened me. As far as I knew Odelia was still sound asleep, as she should be. I’m her official wake-up call, after all, and since I’d just woken up myself, it stood to reason my human was still in bed.

  So why this sense that something was wrong? And then it hit me. The music. Odelia likes to wake up to the tunes of light pop music. Rihanna or Dua Lipa or Ariana Grande. At the moment some cowboy was crooning about being kicked in the gut by the woman he loved and lost. That didn’t sound like Odelia. That sounded more like…

  An awful sense of foreboding jarred my teeth like a kick to the butt.

  Oh, no.

  Not again.

  I took the leap and landed on the bed. And what I saw there turned my blood to ice.

  Chase.

  Chase Kingsley.

  The burly cop was lying in Odelia’s bed. His long, curly brown hair draped across Odelia’s pillow. His muscular body covered by Odelia’s comforter. His handsome face buried in Odelia’s Betty Boop pajama top.

  I stared at the cop.

  Suddenly, he opened one eye and stared back at me!

  Man stared at cat.

  Cat stared at man.

  It was a moment fraught with extreme emotion, not to mention tension.

  Then he yawned and stretched and slapped the empty space next to him.

  He frowned in confusion. “You have any idea where…” He glanced at me and smiled a wry smile. “Why am I talking to a damn cat? Of course you don’t know where Odelia is. And even if you did, you wouldn’t be able to tell me, would you, little buddy?”

  He patted me roughly on the head—more a prod than a pat—and swung his feet to the floor. As usual, he was dressed in nothing but a tank top and a pair of boxers, his brawny arms all biceps and triceps and who-knows-what-else-ceps. Chase Kingsley’s body is all muscular bumps in all kinds of places and the kind of washboard stomach human females go all goo-goo-ga-ga over, drooling at the mouth, their spine and knees turning to jelly.

  You see, Chase is my human’s boyfriend, and apparently boyfriends are supposed to sleep in the beds of their girlfriends. No idea why, though according to Harriet, the cat who lives next door with Odelia’s mom and dad, it might have something to do with babies.

  No idea what, exactly, but I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to find out in the near future if this keeps up. Chase has been ‘sleeping over’ four nights in a row now, and judging from Odelia’s furtive glances in my direction, the cop just might become a fixture.

  I don’t mind admitting I don’t like it. I liked things the way they were: just me, Odelia, and my best buddy Dooley, who also lives next door. The three of us, happy as clams.

  And now this, this, this… intruder!

  Blake Shelton was still wailing away in the background—he’s Chase’s favorite warbler. The former Sexiest Man Alive is the Hunkiest Man Alive’s favorite singer. Of course he is.

  Chase threw the curtains wide and sunlight streamed into the room. Then he disappeared into the bathroom and moments later the shower turned on and steam started pouring into the bedroom.

  I heaved a ragged sigh and directed a nasty look at Chase’s phone, where Mr. Shelton was now gibbering on and on about a hillbilly bone, whatever that was. From pure frustration my skin broke out in hives and I raised my hind paw to scratch that itch.

  Suddenly, and without warning, another itch broke out, this time behind my left ear, and I raised my hind paw a little higher to address that itch, too. It was no use, though, as seemingly all across my voluminous body my skin erupted in an annoying cascade of itches and for the next five minutes, while Mr. Hunk’s voice burst into song in the bathroom next door, I busied myself fighting a regular forest fire of itchiness all over my feline bod.

  “Max!” suddenly a voice called out from the door.

  I glanced over. It was Dooley, my best friend and wingman. Whereas I am of big-boned stock, with blorange fur, Dooley is a gray ragamuffin and considerably slighter. At the moment he was looking troubled. Now the thing you need to know about Dooley is that he always looks troubled. He is what you would call a worrier. But right now he was looking even more worried and troubled than usual.

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t like it either.”

  “It’s terrible!” he cried. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Weeks. Months. I don’t know. One day everything is fine, and then suddenly. Boom. Your life is turned upside down. It’s not fair is what it is. Not fair to spring this on us.”

  “You’ve had it for months?” he asked, joining me on the bed. For some strange reason the box spring only kicks back when I try to land on it. Dooley, on the other hand, landed gracefully on all fours and gave me a look of concern. “You should have told me.”

  “I did tell you. I’ve been telling you all the time. I’ve done nothing but tell you.”

  “Where is it?” he asked, glancing down at the itch I was currently trying to remedy.

  I gestured with my tail to the bathroom. “In there.”

  He glanced over, a puzzled look on his furry face. “Huh?”

  “He’s in there! God’s gift to women is taking a shower, acting as if he owns the place, can you believe it? I swear to Sheba, Dooley, that man is moving in.”

  Dooley blinked. “You were talking about Chase?”

  “Weren’t you?”

  In response, he raised his hind paw and started scratching furiously behind his right ear. “No. I. Was. Not,” he said between grunts and scratches. The itch finally abated and he added, panting slightly, “I was talking about these terrible itches. These horrible, annoying itches. They started up last night and I can’t seem to get rid of them.”

  “Itches? You have itches?”

  “I have—and so do you. And so, for that matter, do Brutus and Harriet.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “It’s bad, Max,” he said, his whiskers puckering up into an expression of extreme concern. “Do you think we caught some kind of disease? Do you think…” He swallowed visibly and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you think… we’re going to… die?”

  I groaned. “We’re not going to die, Dooley. It’s just an itch. It will pass.”

  He flapped his paws a bit. “But we all have them, Max!” His eyes widened to the size of saucers. “It’s a virus! A virus that will wipe out the entire feline population!”

  We’d watched a movie called Contagion the other night with Odelia and Chase. It was about Gwyneth Paltrow who shakes hands with a chef in Hong Kong and dies and pretty soon everyone else also dies except for her husband Matt Damon who doesn’t die. It was horrible. I kept my paws in front of my eyes the entire time. Can you imagine even Kate Winslet died? After surviving that whole Titanic thing she goes and dies from some silly little virus. And now every time someone coughs Dooley thinks they are going to die, too.

  “But Br
utus and Harriet have it, too, and I’ll bet soon every cat in Hampton Cove will have it, and then it will spread to New York and the country and the world!” He gave a hiccup and grabbed my paw, which hurt, as he neglected to retract his claws. “We’re all gonna die!”

  Just in that moment Chase walked in from the bathroom and we both looked up. He had a towel strapped around his private parts and was toweling his long hair. He reminded me of that movie Tarzan we’d seen with that vampire from True Blood. I know, we watch a lot of television in this house. And you thought cats didn’t watch TV. Huh. Think again.

  “Oh, hey, Dooley,” said Chase, spotting my friend sitting next to me. Then he grinned and shook his head. “I’m doing it again. Talking to a bunch of cats. I must be going loco.”

  Like a pair of synchronized swimmers, both Dooley and I raised our hind paws and started scratching ourselves behind the left ears, then the right ears, then under the chin.

  Chase stopped rubbing his scalp with the towel and gave us a look of concern.

  “Well, what do we have here?” he muttered.

  He sat down on the bed, and for some reason began inspecting me, checking my fur here and there, carefully parting my blorange hair to look at that nice pink skin underneath. Then he subjected Dooley to the same procedure. Finally, he sat back, and glanced at a smattering of red spots on his ankle and nodded knowingly. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Suddenly something jumped from my neck onto the bed. Something small and black.

  Quick as lightning, Chase caught it between his fingernails, and studied it for a moment, before mashing it to bits, his face taking on a serious expression. He then gave me and Dooley a long look of concern, not unlike a father about to give his daughter The Talk.

  Oh, yes. I’ve seen movies where fathers give their daughters The Talk. But Chase wasn’t my father, and I’m not his daughter, so why would he give me The Talk?

  I braced myself for the worst, and judging from Dooley’s claws digging into my skin, so did he.

  “I hate to be the one to tell you this.” Chase spoke earnestly and with surprising tenderness lacing his rumbling baritone. “But you guys got fleas.”

  Dooley and I shared a look of confusion. “Fleas?” I asked. “What are fleas?”

  Dooley was quaking where he sat. “It’s the virus! It’s what killed Rose from Titanic!”

  “Now, this is nothing to be concerned about,” Chase continued gently, almost as if he could actually understand what Dooley was saying. “I’ll tell Odelia and she’ll take care of this straightaway.” He patted my head again—another one of those awkward prods—and smiled. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And fleas have never killed anyone. I think.”

  Dooley, who was on the verge of a full-scale panic attack, wailed, “We won’t die?”

  “Didn’t you listen to the man?” I asked. “Fleas are going to make us stronger.”

  Another itch suddenly plagued me, and I reached with my hind paw to remedy it. But Chase beat me to the punch. He dove right in, and soon was extracting another one of those jumpy little bugs from my skin, mashing it to pieces between his fingernails.

  Both Dooley and I stared at the guy like a pair of hobbits staring at Gandalf the Wizard. “He saved you, Max,” said Dooley reverently. “He killed the killer bug.”

  “It’s not a killer bug, Dooley,” I said.

  “He killed the killer bug with his bare hands.”

  “I’m telling you it’s not a killer bug.”

  “He saved you. Chase saved you from the killer bug. He’s a hero.”

  “It’s not a killer bug and Chase is not a hero!”

  But I had to admit that maybe—just maybe—I’d misjudged Odelia’s boyfriend.

  The man was a genuine hero. The fiercest fleaslayer the world had ever known.

  Chapter 3

  Back at the hotel Odelia was prepared for the worst when she followed her uncle up to the second floor of the Hampton Cove Star. Downstairs, the secondary crime scene had been sealed off from prying eyes by a screen, and techies from the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s office were busily scratching their heads as they stared down at Burt’s head.

  Upstairs, the hotel manager, an obsequious little man with a clean-shaven face and shifty eyes, led the way to the room where the tragedy had taken place. Odelia’s uncle Alec Lip, Hampton Cove’s chief of police, hiked up his gun belt, while Odelia and a few more boys and girls in blue followed in the big man’s wake.

  As the town’s prime crime reporter—or quite frankly the town’s only reporter, prime, crime or otherwise—Odelia had a front-row seat to most investigations her uncle was involved in, as long as she was discreet and didn’t print stuff in her paper that could hamper the investigation. A fine sleuth in her own right, she’d solved more than one crime in her time, a fact for which her uncle was more than appreciative.

  “Where is Chase?” she asked now.

  Her uncle cocked an eyebrow in her direction. “I should probably ask you that.”

  She blushed slightly. Chase had been living with Uncle Alec, but had been staying over at her place more and more frequently these past few weeks. She didn’t know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, but she had to admit she’d grown very fond of the cop.

  “I called him,” she said. “He said he’d be here.”

  Uncle Alec shrugged. “If he says he’ll be here, he’ll be here.”

  She glanced back at the line of cops following in her wake. They all looked away, but judging from their barely concealed smiles and pricked-up ears, they were eagerly listening in on the conversation. The whole station knew about her and Chase, and followed the budding romance with the kind of fervor usually reserved for the big Hollywood love stories.

  The manager came to a full stop in front of an unremarkable door and inserted an unremarkable badge into the unremarkable slot. The mechanism gave a beep, then the door unceremoniously dropped out of its hinges and collapsed to the side, offering the stunned viewers a glance at the devastated room behind it. The place looked like a war zone.

  “Oh, Lord,” said the little manager, clasping his hands to his face. “Oh, dear. Oh, my.”

  “Not much left,” said Uncle Alec gruffly, and ventured inside.

  Odelia’s uncle was a big man with a big belly and a big, round ruddy face. At last count he possessed three chins, two man boobs and two russet sideburns. The moment he stepped across the threshold, there was a loud creaking sound and something gave way.

  One moment Uncle Alec was there—the next he was gone.

  “Uncle!” Odelia cried, and took a step forward, only to be held back by the manager.

  “Careful, Miss Poole, please,” the man said in a breathless whisper.

  They both glanced down into the chief-of-police-shaped hole at their feet. One floor down, Uncle Alec was staring up at them, looking slightly dazed and covered with chalk and debris. He was lying on a bed, which had broken his fall, an elderly lady lying next to him, clutching a sheet to her chest, and staring at him with a mixture of curiosity and surprise.

  “I’m fine!” Alec called out to them, lifting an arm to indicate he was still alive. “The bed broke my fall.”

  Suddenly, the woman next to him said, “And my husband.”

  “Mh?” Alec asked.

  The woman pointed to an object underneath Alec. “My husband broke your fall.”

  A muffled sound came from beneath the large man. “Kindly get off me, sir!”

  Uncle Alec rolled from the bed, and a rumpled elderly gentleman appeared, his glasses askew. He took a few deep breaths, and proceeded to give the police chief his best scowl. “This is an outrage, sir. An outrage.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the policeman. “And thank you.”

  The man was shaking his fist at the hotel manager now, visible through the hole in the ceiling. “I’m calling my travel agent, sir. This is not the kind of service I expected from this establishment! First that loud ba
ng that woke us up and now this. Color me dissatisfied.”

  “You tell ‘em, Earl,” said his wife, still clutching the sheet to protect her modesty.

  “I’m truly sorry, Mr. Assenheimer,” the manager called out. “We’ll comp you your room and your meals. And you can add a week to your stay. No expense.”

  “That’s the least you can do,” said the old man, slightly mollified.

  Odelia stepped across the hole in the floor and carefully ventured into the room. The devastation was incredible. Walls, floor and ceiling blackened. The bed smashed against the wall. The windows blown out. In fact it was a miracle the damage had been contained to this one room. As far as she could determine—and she was no expert—the explosion must have taken place near the window, the brunt of the force directed outward.

  “Maybe we should wait for the fire department, Miss Poole,” said the manager.

  She nodded, glancing around. Then her eyes landed on the remains of the man she’d come here to interview. His blackened and charred corpse—now conspicuously headless—had been flung onto the balcony and was now lying there, almost as if in leisurely repose. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was sunbathing. And had overdone it.

  She narrowed her eyes. Was the man buck naked? It would appear so.

  “Better step back, Odelia,” her uncle’s voice sounded from the door. He was scratching his chalky scalp. “This is something for the experts. Not much we can do here.”

  He was right, of course. There was absolutely nothing they could do here.

  She directed a final look at Burt Goldsmith and shook her head. Such a tragic loss. The man might not have been in the prime of his life, but he still had so much to offer.

  She stepped back into the corridor and the manager heaved an audible sigh of relief. He obviously did not want more people to crash through the floor and onto other guests.