The Mysteries of Max: Books 31-33 Read online

  “She didn’t mean to kick us off,” I hastened to say. “She was having a bad dream and inadvertently happened to lash out with her feet. Both feet, I should probably add.”

  “Hitting us where it hurts,” Dooley added sadly, and rubbed his tush for good measure.

  “This is too much,” said Harriet. “First she neglects to invite us to her wedding, and now she’s causing you grievous bodily harm? What’s wrong with the woman?”

  “Nothing is wrong,” I said. “She’s just nervous about the wedding, that’s all.”

  “Well, she shouldn’t be,” said Harriet. “It’s the most beautiful day of her life. She doesn’t have anything to be nervous about. She should just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  “I think she would like to be uninvited,” said Brutus. “Just like us.”

  Dooley smiled at this. “Imagine if Odelia decides to skip her own wedding. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  “If Odelia skipped her own wedding there wouldn’t be a wedding, Dooley,” said Harriet.

  “What do you mean?”

  Harriet gave an exasperated groan. “How can there be a wedding when the bride is missing? Think, Dooley,” she added, tapping my friend on the noggin. “Think hard!”

  Dooley gave himself up to thought, and judging from the frown that appeared on his brow, and the steam that gently started pouring from his ears, he was indeed thinking very hard. Finally he gave up. “No,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, Dooley,” said Harriet, and Brutus grinned, thinking the whole thing hilarious.

  Just then, the sliding glass door that offers such a nice view from the living room straight into the backyard, opened and closed and Gran walked in. Odelia’s grandmother is one of those early risers. In fact she often gets up before we do, which is saying something, as we’re usually up at the crack of dawn. Though in our defense by that time we’ve usually been up half the night. She looked her usual energetic self: blue tracksuit lined with pink, little white curls topping her head like cotton candy and a cheeky grin.

  “Heya, fellas,” she said. “Wanna hear the latest?”

  “The latest what, Gran?” asked Dooley.

  “The latest news, Dooley. Some truck just lost its cargo on the road into town. Ten tons of grade-A potatoes, if you please. Wanna go and have a look-see?”

  “What’s there to see about a bunch of potatoes lying in the road?” asked Harriet, who clearly wasn’t in the mood for the introduction of this agricultural theme.

  Gran shrugged. “Nothing much, except this.” And she spirited a large canvas bag from behind her back. It was the kind of canvas bag that can easily hold a very large quantity of grade-A potatoes. A slow smile spread across her features when she saw the light of understanding appear in three pairs of cat’s eyes: mine, Harriet’s, and Brutus’s.

  “You’re going to steal a bunch of potatoes,” I said, nodding.

  Gran’s smile disappeared. “Who’s talking about stealing? I’m just going to help that poor truck driver clean up the road. And if a couple of spuds end up in the trunk of my car, then so be it. My reward for being a good Samaritan, right?”

  And so we set out for this kind intervention. Nothing too exciting, mind you, simply four cats helping out their human, and getting away from Odelia’s new kicking habit.

  And as we made to follow Gran out the door, Dooley said, “I don’t get it. Where are we going, Max?”

  “We’re going to help Gran help a potato truck driver,” I explained.

  “Oh, okay,” he said, though he didn’t look convinced.

  He had a point, of course. Potatoes aren’t exactly a staple of a cat’s healthy diet. Then again, they are a staple of our humans’ diet, and cats might not have a reputation for being charitable, some of us do have an altruistic streak. Besides, if we helped Gran bag a couple of nice potatoes, I’m pretty sure she’d fill our bowls to the brim come dinnertime.

  How does that saying go? You scratch my back and I scratch yours?

  Though I’m not sure Gran would like it if we scratched her back. Oh, well.

  Chapter 2

  Odelia wasn’t having a good time. She knew she should be ecstatic, over the moon, delirious with happiness at the prospect of finally tying the knot and engaging in matrimony with the man currently snoring away to his heart’s content right next to her. But as she lay there, wide awake, even though it was still dark outside, she couldn’t help experiencing a powerful twinge of concern. The worst part was that she had no idea why. When she thought things through logically there was nothing to be concerned about: the wedding had been arranged and would soon be taking place at St. John’s Church, officiated by Father Reilly. The invitations had all been sent out, the reception nailed down, as well as the wedding dinner and party, the caterer and the DJ booked and paid for, and the jamboree promised to be a big hit with those guests lucky enough to have snagged an invitation to what promised to be the social event of the season.

  So maybe that was what was troubling her: she hadn’t planned for her wedding to become an event. Somehow, though, it had quickly ballooned into this big thing and now she had a hard time reconciling the shindig as planned with the one she’d had in mind.

  Chase, too, was a little overwhelmed with the response. He hadn’t planned to invite his entire precinct but that was what had happened, and the poor guy even had all of his former NYPD colleagues busing in on the day, eager to put their feet under the table. They viewed the wedding of their ex-colleague as an opportunity to organize a reunion of sorts, and even though Odelia was happy for the opportunity to have a meet and greet with all of his brothers and sisters in blue—all one hundred and fifty-four of them—she wasn’t sure this was what Chase had in mind when he told her, only two weeks ago, that he was looking forward to their nice little wedding, just them and a couple of guests.

  She closed her eyes, eager to catch a few more winks before dawn, but unfortunately sleep refused to come. So it was with a slight sigh that she finally decided it was no use and got up. Careful not to wake her snoring future better half, she tiptoed into the bathroom for a quick bathroom break, then tiptoed down the stairs to get some work done on an article for the newspaper. Much to her surprise, of her cats there was no sign. But figuring they were probably out and about, she took a seat at the kitchen counter, opened her laptop, and was soon typing away. It wasn’t exactly a Pulitzer-winning article she’d been handed by her editor, having been given the dubious honor of chronicling the upcoming ceremony awarding the keys to the city to Lord Hilbourne, but it effectively took her mind off the wedding, which was exactly what she needed right now.

  Vesta parked her car across the street from where the terrible accident had occurred. As it turned out she wasn’t the only one who’d heeded the call and had decided to lend a helping hand. The truck driver was talking to a familiar figure, and as Vesta walked up, this familiar figure rolled his eyes and said: “I should have known you’d show up.”

  “Is that the way to greet your beloved little mother?”

  For it was indeed Alec Lip, her son, and coincidentally also Hampton Cove’s chief of police, who stood, notebook in hand, chatting to the driver. A driver who’d taken off his ball cap and stood scratching his scalp as he watched the entire contents of his truck now spread out across the road. In both directions traffic was blocked, and long lines of cars had formed. Luckily it was still early, and not that many people were out and about.

  “So you say you saw a deer and you swerved and…” Alec reiterated.

  “Yeah, the deer, it just jumped right in front of me, stared at me for a moment, then took off again. So I stomped on the brakes and in a reflex action turned the wheel and…” He gestured to the tons of spuds on the tarmac. “And then this happened.”

  “At least you’re fine,” said Alec, patting the dazed driver on the back.

  “Yeah, and so is the deer.”

  “You didn’t hit it?”

  “No, it made
a clean break. Walked off cool as dammit, the white-tailed rascal.”

  “As soon as the road is cleared of your cargo, we can lift your truck and assess the damage,” said Alec.

  “Think it’ll still run?” asked the driver with a hopeful look at his capsized vehicle. It lay on its side like a wounded animal, smoke wafting from under the hood.

  “Let’s wait and see,” said the Chief. “And if not, you are insured, right?”

  “Oh, sure,” said the guy. “But I’m supposed to take these taters to Philadelphia by noon.” He checked his watch. “I guess I could still make it. If my truck is fine.”

  “And if it’s not, I’m sure the good people of Philadelphia will find some other way to satisfy their tater appetite,” Alec concluded, ending the interview on a cheerful note.

  Vesta, even though she’d hoped to collect a few potatoes for her personal consumption, now felt sorry for the driver, and decided against her initial plan of campaign. And so as she joined the rescue workers who were busily removing the potatoes from the road and placing them on large tarpaulins a helpful hand had placed on the road’s shoulder, she suddenly saw that a member of the public had decided to take a nap. Presumably the prospect of spending the next hour picking up potatoes had become too overwhelming, and he’d chosen the exact spot Vesta had selected to showcase her skilled spud-saving activities to have a lie-down.

  The man was dressed in a nice powder-blue suit, and was on his back. And as the sun shimmered across the horizon, pulling up its pants and spitting into its hands to start another day on the job, Vesta suddenly noticed, as a stray ray flickered across the man’s visage, that he looked very pale indeed. Also, when she stepped a little closer, she saw that his eyes were wide open and that there was a smudge of blood on his chest.

  And that’s when she realized this wasn’t a rough sleeper or tired rescue worker.

  This man… was dead!

  Chapter 3

  “There’s something sticking out of the potatoes, Max,” said Dooley suddenly.

  I hadn’t really paid attention to the potatoes, to be honest. Potatoes, as I’ve already indicated, aren’t designed to inspire excitement in a feline, and on top of that, these particular potatoes, having spent a considerable amount of time lying on the tarmac and thus having had the dubious benefit of being thoroughly marinated in a sauce of exhaust fumes, oil, road paint, tire remnants and asphalt that exists wherever thousands of cars travel across a stretch of road on a daily basis, didn’t look all that appetizing to me.

  But Dooley was right. There was, indeed, something sticking out amongst the sea of potatoes that didn’t look very potato-like to me. And judging from the way Vesta was staring at the object in question, and loudly calling her son to come and take a look, it was clear something was amiss.

  “Do you think it’s the driver of the potato truck?” asked Dooley.

  “The driver is standing over there,” said Harriet, gesturing with her tail to an unhappy-looking man who stood tapping away on his smartphone, presumably giving either his boss or his significant other an update on his (lack of) progress.

  “Probably the person responsible for the accident,” Brutus suggested. “Guy standing in the middle of the road for some reason, or a pedestrian trying to cross the road and not realizing he should have waited until the light turned green. Ouch!” he added.

  This last part of his contribution followed the smack on the head Harriet gave him.

  “There are no traffic lights out here, Brutus,” she said. “Besides, the reason the truck driver had the accident is because a deer crossed the road, not a person.”

  Clearly while the rest of us were wondering why this potato rescue mission had sounded like a good idea when Gran had suggested it, Harriet had been busy collecting the facts pertaining to the case and getting up to date on what had actually happened.

  “I think that man is dead,” Dooley suddenly announced.

  “Are you sure?” said Brutus. “He could just be taking a nap.”

  “Gran just told Uncle Alec the man is dead,” Dooley explained.

  It seemed to cinch things, and the four of us, as one cat, moved forward in the direction of what could now only be described as a crime scene. And as we approached the person lying flat on his back on the road, surrounded by a sea of potatoes, it soon became clear that Dooley was right: this man, whoever he was, was most definitely dead.

  “Poor guy,” Gran was saying. “He must have been hiding between the potatoes, and when the truck flipped over he must have hit his noggin on the tarmac. Freak accident.”

  “Do you think it’s one of them asylum seekers?” asked one of the other potato collectors, who’d joined the small throng that had gathered around the dead man.

  “Pretty sure he is,” said a man. “Like the old lady says, must have been hiding in the back of that truck, hitching a ride to who knows where.”

  “Please stay back,” said Uncle Alec, gesturing to the chattering crowd. He was gripping his phone in one hand and gesturing to the potato pickers with the other, presumably calling in backup for what had escalated from a mere traffic accident to a mysterious death.

  “He looks like a nice person,” said Dooley.

  “And what makes you say that?” asked Harriet with a touch of skepticism.

  “He has a nice face,” Dooley explained.

  He was right. It’s hard to determine what makes a face fall into this particular category, but this man’s face most definitely did. It was one of those round faces, which in life I would imagine had been pink and jolly. Even in death there was a touch of cherubic pleasantness about it.

  “If he’s an asylum seeker,” said Brutus, “then why is he wearing a blue suit?”

  “Why can’t an asylum seeker wear a blue suit?” Harriet challenged her boyfriend. “As far as I know there isn’t a dress code for asylum seekers, now is there?”

  “No, I guess there isn’t,” Brutus allowed. “Still. It’s a very ugly suit.”

  “What do you find ugly about it?” I asked.

  “The color. A suit should be dark gray or black. Gray and black are forgiving colors. You can wear them for a long time without noticing all of those smudges. Not blue.”

  “Oh, you’re such a snob,” said Harriet, shaking her head. “If this man wants to wear a blue suit, he can wear a blue suit. It’s a free country.”

  “But look at those smudges. That wouldn’t have happened if he’d worn black.”

  “I don’t think he cares about the smudges, Brutus,” Harriet said. “He’s dead.”

  “Maybe he comes from a country where people are persecuted for wearing blue suits,” was Dooley’s suggestion. “So he came to America, where people can wear whatever they want.”

  Brutus had a point, though. If this man was hiding in the back of a truck filled with potatoes, which, as a rule, aren’t exactly the cleanest vegetable to hide amongst, his choice of outfit was ill-advised. Now if he’d picked a truck carrying a load of bell peppers, a suit would have been fine, and the blue would go well with the red, yellow and green.

  Moments later, the sound of a police siren cut through the early morning air, followed by that of an ambulance, and soon both arrived on the scene.

  “Looks like it will take a little longer before the road is cleared,” I said.

  “Poor Gran,” said Dooley. “She was hoping to steal a couple of potatoes and instead she ended up being a witness to murder.”

  “Murder!” I said, surprised. “What makes you think this was murder?”

  “Well, the man probably didn’t kill himself, did he?” said Dooley. “So if he didn’t kill himself, he must have been murdered.”

  Harriet scoffed a little at this. “And who do you think killed him? A potato?”

  “I think Gran called it,” said Brutus. “The guy must have hit his head on the asphalt when he tumbled from the truck. So it’s not murder, Dooley. It’s an accident.”

  We looked on as the paramedics mu
scled a path to the dead man, the throng of rubberneckers splitting like the Red Sea. But since there was nothing the medical boys and girls could do, they quickly gave way to the police officers, who proceeded to cordon off the area. And by the time the coroner arrived, and started doing his thing, Gran took us back to her car, and soon we were once again homeward bound—without potatoes.

  Chapter 4

  Suppo Bonikowski was busy soldering a small piece of hardware in place. Under his magnifying glass the watch he’d selected for this delicate operation lay gleaming. The tip of Suppo’s tongue was sticking out of his mouth in sheer concentration, and he was so focused on the delicate operation he was conducting that he hadn’t even noticed the door to the hotel room had opened and closed.

  “Almost finished?” suddenly a voice rang out behind him.

  He almost dropped the soldering iron, which was producing strange-smelling fumes. Lucky for Suppo the most vital part of the procedure had already been concluded and so he quickly put down the instrument and raised his head to direct an irate look at the new arrival.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Wim? Don’t talk to me when I’m working.”

  “All right, all right,” said Wim, who was a thickset individual who hadn’t been blessed with a neck to speak of. He was also the proud owner of a white-blond buzz cut which had earned him the nickname Whitey Wim early in life. “So is it done?” he asked, gesturing with his head to the watch.

  “It is done,” said Suppo proudly. Contrary to his cousin Wim he was reedy and tall, though a little thin on top, which he compensated for with a black beard that covered the lower strata of his face.

  “So when are we going to deliver this little beaut?” asked Wim, admiring the object under discussion.

  “Soon,” said Suppo. “You do realize that if we pull this off we’re home free?”