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Chapter 2

  I won’t conceal I was having a tough time at it. To be honest I don’t think I’m cut out to be a teacher, and teaching a bunch of unruly cats was definitely not my idea of an evening well spent.

  “We’ll watch it again until you discover when Aurora picked up the all-important and vital clue,” I said, and tapped the rewind button on the TV’s remote. When my audience groaned loudly, I added, “And no buts. If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right.”

  “But, Max!” Brutus cried. “We’ve seen this movie three times already!”

  “And we’ll see it three times more if that’s what it takes,” I said stubbornly.

  “The Bachelor is on,” said Harriet. “I love The Bachelor. Can’t we watch that instead?”

  I gave her a stern-faced look. “No, we can’t. The Bachelor won’t teach us the things we need to know as cat sleuths. Aurora Teagarden will.”

  Unfortunately Odelia had only taped one Aurora Teagarden movie, even though I’d asked her to tape all of them if she had the chance. Instead, she’d taped a movie called I’ll Be Home for Christmas. Which featured a dog, and as everyone knows, no cat wants to be seen dead watching dogs on TV—or in real life, for that matter—so that was a definite no-no. Besides, there was no mystery, only a silly romance plot and a lot of tinsel.

  I watched the screen intently, then paused the movie just when Aurora opened her mouth to say something, her face a mask of concentration. “See? This is the moment she realizes who the killer is. See the way her forehead crinkles? How her eyebrows draw up?”

  “She looks constipated,” said Harriet, tapping her paw against Odelia’s leather couch.

  “Do I look like that when I get an idea, Max?” asked Dooley.

  “You would if you ever got an idea,” said Brutus with a grin.

  “I get ideas,” said Dooley. “I get ideas all the time. Just now I got the idea that Odelia’s been gone a long time, and that I hope she’ll be home soon.”

  “That’s great, Dooley,” I said. “But that’s not the kind of idea we’re talking about.”

  “So tell us exactly what we are talking about, Max,” said Brutus as he suppressed a yawn. Even though he, unlike Harriet, wasn’t a big fan of The Bachelor, it was obvious he wasn’t remotely interested in my lecture on modern sleuthing techniques either.

  “We’re talking about being perceptive,” I said. “About not missing even the teensiest, tiniest clue. For all we know a cigarette butt can lead us to the killer. Or, as in this case…” I pointed to the screen. “Pizza boxes tucked underneath the kitchen sink.”

  “Are the pizza boxes a very important clue, Max?” asked Dooley eagerly.

  “They are,” said Brutus before I could respond. “They’re a clue to this couple’s eating habits. It tells us that they like pizza.” He was grinning again, clearly enjoying himself.

  “The pizza boxes tell us that these people took the missing students hostage,” I said, directing a censorious look at Brutus. “It tells Aurora—and the viewer—that the missing students are, in fact, somewhere in the house. So yes, Dooley, the pizza boxes are a very important clue. They’re that all-important, telling a-ha type of clue you want to find.”

  “Pizza boxes,” Dooley repeated reverently, as if memorizing the words.

  “They’re an important clue in this particular case,” I hastened to add. “In any other case they’re probably completely irrelevant.”

  Dooley looked confused. “So… pizza boxes aren’t always a clue?”

  “No, they’re not. It all depends on the circumstances. In this case the pizza boxes—”

  “Oh, enough about the pizza boxes already!” Harriet cried, lifting her paws in a gesture of despair. “Can we watch The Bachelor now? I’ll bet Jock’s dinner with LaRue is still in full swing. We just might catch dessert if you turn off this Aurora nonsense right now.”

  “I think I need to see it one more time,” said Dooley. “I think I missed something.”

  Harriet looked as if she was ready to pounce on Dooley, but restrained herself with a supreme effort. “What don’t you get, Dooley?” she asked instead in clipped tones.

  Dooley was shaking his head confusedly. “Well, it’s those pizza boxes. I don’t see how Aurora goes from seeing the empty pizza boxes to finding those missing students.”

  “God give me strength,” Harriet muttered, very expressively rolling her eyes.

  “Why don’t you let us do the thinking from now on, Dooley?” Brutus suggested.

  “You think so?” said Dooley.

  “Yes, unlike you I do think. In fact I think so much I don’t mind doing a little thinking for you, too, so that you can…” He gave Dooley a dubious look. “Do whatever it is you do.”

  “I could… help you search for those pizza boxes,” said Dooley hopefully.

  “You do that,” said Brutus, patting the other cat on the shoulder. “You do that.”

  I now realize I may have committed the ultimate faux-pas. I’ve neglected to introduce you to my merry band of felines. Let me rectify that right now, by introducing myself first. My name is Max, and I’m Odelia Poole’s feisty feline sidekick. I’m strapping, I’m blorange, and I’m proud to be of assistance to my human, who’s probably one of the finest humans a cat could ever hope to be associated with. She also stems from a long line of females who can converse with felines, which makes her an honorary feline in my book.

  The three cats lounging on the couch are (reading from left to right) Dooley, who’s a gray Ragamuffin and my sidekick (yes, he’s a sidekick’s sidekick), Brutus, a black musclehead who likes to think he’s the bee’s knees (or more appropriately the cat’s whiskers) and finally we have Harriet, who’s by way of being Brutus’s mate. She’s also a pretty, prissy Persian but don’t tell her I said that because she can be quite catty. And she has some very sharp claws.

  “I think I saw a pizza box yesterday, Max,” Dooley said now, showing the kind of zeal and initiative a feline sleuth worth their salt should strive for. “If you want I can show you.”

  “That’s all right, Dooley,” I said. “We can go into that when we start the practical part of this introductory training.”

  “Practical part?” asked Harriet. “There’s a practical part?”

  “Of course there is,” I said. “First we learn the basics, then we apply them to a real-world situation.”

  “I still don’t get why you get to teach this course, Max,” said Brutus. “What makes you think you’re qualified?”

  “I’ll have you know I’ve solved quite a number of high-profile cases,” I told him.

  “You couldn’t have pulled those off without me and you know it. In fact before I arrived in town you hadn’t solved a single case. Not a one. Admit it, Max.”

  I was puffing out my chest to give him a proper rebuke when all of a sudden there was a commotion at the door. It flew open and Odelia burst in.

  “I need you guys to come with me,” she said, panting as if she’d just run a marathon. “There’s been a murder.” She fixed us with a meaningful look. “My mom is implicated.”

  Chapter 3

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” said Odelia.

  “So who did it?” asked Dooley.

  “I have no idea.”

  “So who’s the victim?” asked Harriet.

  “I have no idea!”

  After this rare outburst, we all sat silent for a moment. Not for very long, though. We are cats, after all, not church mice. You can’t keep a good cat down. Or quiet.

  “So what do you want us to do?” I asked.

  Odelia, who was visibly overwrought at the thought of her mother being involved in some dreadful murder business, heaved a deep sigh and rolled her shoulders in a bid to relax them. She’d been sitting hunched over the steering wheel, which I could have told her was the kind of posture that could lead to some serious neck trouble. “I want you to talk to any animal you can find within a mil
e radius of the library. If anyone out there saw something I want to know about it. If someone out there heard something I want to know about it. And if someone out there so much as smelled something, I want—”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You want to know about it.”

  She didn’t smile. “This is my mother we’re talking about, Max.”

  “I understand,” I said. “And we’ll do everything in our power to—”

  “So did Marge kill someone?” asked Dooley.

  It wasn’t the right question to ask, so when Odelia’s head snapped around, for a moment I thought she was going to bite Dooley’s head straight off. Instead, she merely snapped, “Of course she didn’t kill someone. My mother is the sweetest, kindest woman I know. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone the bestselling thriller writer on the planet.”

  “I saw her swat a fly once,” said Dooley conversationally. “It was a big fly. One of those blue ones. Made a big mess, too.”

  When I gave him a prod in the ribs he blinked and turned to me, looking slightly offended. “Shut up,” I loud-whispered.

  “What did I say?”

  Raising my voice, I said, “If anyone saw, heard, smelled or tasted something, we’ll find them and let you know, Odelia.”

  Odelia grunted something I understood to be approval, and continued staring straight ahead through the windshield, while her foot ground the accelerator into the floorboard and the car flew across the road at a rate of speed which was frankly disconcerting, not to mention frowned upon by traffic police everywhere.

  “So who is the bestselling thriller on the planet?” asked Harriet.

  When Odelia didn’t respond, Brutus decided to do the honors. “Agatha Christie, of course,” he said. “In fact she’s the best-selling author of all time. Sold billions of books.”

  “Agatha Christie died years ago,” I said.

  “So?”

  “So she can’t have been murdered tonight if she’s been dead for years.”

  This stumped him for a moment. He quickly rallied, though. “Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe she only pretended to die but she’s been alive all this time only to be murdered at Marge’s library tonight.”

  “Agatha Christie was almost ninety years old when she died,” I said.

  “So?”

  “This was years ago! She would have been a hundred-whatever!”

  “So? Humans get very old. Hundreds of years, probably. Maybe even thousands.”

  For a long time I’d been laboring under the same misapprehension. I’d always figured Odelia was probably a couple of hundred years old. But she’d recently cured me of this mistaken belief in the longevity of the human species. Odelia, as it turned out, wasn’t even thirty years old yet. And most humans never made it past the age of a hundred. Weird, huh?

  “Trust me, Brutus. Whoever was killed tonight, it wasn’t Agatha Christie.”

  “Chris Ackerman,” said Odelia suddenly.

  “Who?” asked Dooley.

  “Chris Ackerman. The thriller writer?”

  Neither me nor Brutus, Harriet or Dooley showed any signs of recognition. Then again, cats are not your great readers. We love television—mostly cat food commercials—but we lack the patience and the attention span to read page after page like humans do.

  “So who was this Chris Ackerman?” I asked.

  “Like I said. A thriller writer.”

  “Any good?” asked Harriet.

  “I liked him,” said Odelia. “He was the master of the cliffhanger.”

  “Why would a writer make cliffhangers?” asked Dooley. “Isn’t that what IKEA does?”

  “Not clothes hangers, Dooley,” I said. “Cliffhangers.”

  “What’s a cliffhanger?”

  “It’s like the rose ceremony,” said Harriet. “From The Bachelor? Our handsome bachelor is about to hand out his final rose of the night and suddenly they cut to commercial and you can’t wait to see what happens next.” She nodded seriously. “That’s a cliffhanger.”

  Dooley stared at her, obviously not seeing the connection between cliffhangers, roses and The Bachelor. But when he opened his mouth to ask a follow-up question, Odelia said, “We’re almost there, you guys. So you know what to do, right?”

  “We know,” I said. “We’re going to talk to any animal we can find.”

  “Any animal?” asked Harriet in an undertone. “Not just cats?”

  “Any animal,” I confirmed.

  “I’m not talking to dogs,” Harriet said determinedly. “No, I mean it. I draw the line at dogs. Dogs are filthy, especially street dogs. Just looking at them makes my skin crawl.”

  “But what if that particular dog has some very important information to share?” I asked. “Odelia wants us to be her eyes and ears out there.” Not to mention her nose and taste buds, apparently. “So put your petty anti-dog sentiments aside for a moment and think about the greater good here, Harriet.”

  “Yes, think about the greater good, Harriet,” Dooley echoed.

  “I mean, what if this particular mutt got a good look at the killer’s face? Are you going to let him get away just because you don’t like dogs?”

  “Are you, Harriet?” asked Dooley. “Are you doing to let him get away?”

  Harriet bridled at this. “You know what? If you like dogs so much why don’t you talk to them? I’ll stick to cats.”

  Dooley thought about this for a moment. “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll take the dogs—you take the cats.” Then he directed a curious look at Brutus. “What species of animal are you going to talk to, Brutus?”

  “I’ll take the ladies,” said Brutus with a big grin before he could stop himself. But when Harriet directed a withering look in his direction, he quickly added, “Or you could talk to the ladies, Harriet. I can talk to the gentlemen.”

  “We’re here,” said Odelia, and stomped on the brake with such fervor that the four of us were suddenly catapulted from our positions on the backseat and plastered against the back of the front seats. All of us except Dooley, who’d been sitting in the middle. He flew through the air, describing a perfect arc, and would have been reduced to a mere smear on the windshield if Odelia hadn’t had the presence of mind—and the superior reflexes—to grab him by the neck and save him from further harm.

  “Phew,” said Dooley once he’d recovered from his adventure. “Thanks, Odelia.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” said Odelia, giving Dooley a quick hug before placing him on the passenger seat. She turned to face us. “I know I’m a little on edge right now, but that’s because my mom is in trouble. So please do the best you can, and I apologize for being such a sourpuss.” She gave us a quick smile, then opened the door and allowed us to hop from the car and onto the pavement.

  I saw she’d parked a ways away from the library. She probably didn’t want to advertise the fact that she’d called in her private feline army to deal with this latest murder emergency. Even though Odelia can talk to cats, and so can her mother and grandmother, no one else can, and they would think it strange if they saw a grown woman speak feline.

  We watched Odelia lock up her pickup and stalk away in the direction of the library. I felt for my human. She looked more stressed and downhearted than I’d ever seen her.

  “I hope they don’t lock up my human,” said Harriet, who must have read my mind.

  “They won’t,” I assured her. “Your human’s brother is the chief of police, and he would never lock up his own sister. Humans don’t lock up their own kin.”

  Actually, they probably did, but this wasn’t the time to discuss worst-case scenarios. This was the time to rally round and tackle this dreadful murder business which had suddenly struck very close to home indeed.

  “Let’s do this,” I said, and we were off to the races.

  Chapter 4

  When Odelia tried to enter the library she discovered a police officer had been stationed at the front door—possibly the first time that had ever happened. He was
one of those stalwart types: buff, with a slight pudginess in the belly area, and sporting a nicely trimmed mustache, which doubled as a donut crumb collector.

  “Um, I need to get in there?” she said tentatively.

  She’d recognized the cop as one of her uncle’s guys and she was pretty sure the cop had recognized her as well. He shook his head, though, and stared over her head as if silently hoping she would take a hint and simply melt away into the background.

  “Oh, come on, Jackson,” she said. “Don’t give me that dead cod look.”

  This stirred him out of his self-chosen apathy. “I don’t look like a dead cod,” he said indignantly.

  “Yes, you do. Now are you going to let me in? My mom is in there and she needs me.”

  “Your mom is a suspect, Poole, and unless you’re her lawyer you’re not setting foot anywhere near her.”

  “I was wrong,” she said. “You’re not a dead cod. You’re dead, period. Or at least dead from the neck up.” She tapped his noggin. “Yup. Just what I suspected. Solid ivory.”

  He had the good grace to look offended. “I’m just doing my duty. Please go away.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, but if you don’t step aside you’re the one who’s going away.”

  That seemed to register. Officer Jackson obviously knew that Odelia was his boss’s niece, and not just any old niece but the man’s favorite niece, who’d helped him out with quite a few investigations in the recent past. What was more, she was now dating one of Hampton Cove’s foremost police detectives.

  He still continued undecided, though. That’s the trouble with making decisions: either way you go, there are going to be consequences so it’s probably better not to do anything.

  Odelia decided to try a different tack. “Come on, Jackson. Have a heart. That’s my mother in there. What if it were your mom?”

  “My mom would never get involved with murder,” he said a little huffily.

  “Hey, that’s something we’ve got in common: my mom wouldn’t get involved with murder either!”

  He rolled his eyes. “Chief Lip told me not to let anyone in so I’m not letting anyone in.” Clearly feeling this was the last thing he was prepared to say on the matter, he clasped his hands behind his back and directed his gaze in the middle distance, studiously ignoring this pesky troublemaker.