A Purrfect Gnomeful (The Mysteries of Max Book 24) Read online

  It had to be cancer. It simply had to be.

  Max was sick and dying, and being the wonderful friend that he was he didn’t want Dooley to worry.

  Oh, no, Dooley thought as tears formed in his eyes at the thought of losing his best friend. Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.

  He decided to launch another joke. It was important now to make his friend laugh. To make him laugh and laugh and laugh until he was feeling much, much better, and that nasty cancer was simply driven out of his body and replaced with good, healthy cells.

  “Did you hear the one about the one-armed sailor who took a job as a window cleaner?” he asked now, arranging his features into an expression of jollity, designed to inspire happiness and laughter in his friend.

  “No, I haven’t,” said Max, a little grumpily.

  “Well, he didn’t get the job.” He waited for Max’s pleasant laugh to ring out, and when it didn’t come, he decided to set the example and produced the kind of laugh a hyena would approve of.

  Max frowned and said, “I don’t get it.”

  Oh, dear. Clearly Dooley had to up his game. Come up with better material.

  “Um…” he said, thinking hard. “A priest, a rabbi and an assface walk into a bar. And the assface says to the priest, ‘Have we met before?’ And the priest says, ‘No, I don’t think so. I’d remember a face like yours.’”

  He waited for Max to laugh uproariously, but nothing came. Not even a chuckle or a chortle. So once again he decided to show his friend how it was done and guffawed loudly and with solid conviction.

  “I didn’t want to tell you this, Dooley,” finally said Max, after giving him a curious look—exactly the kind of look a doctor would give a patient before having him admitted to Bellevue, Dooley imagined. “But your jokes need work. A lot of work.”

  “What kind of work, Max?” he asked. Your up-and-coming comedian likes to take these little criticisms on board.

  “Well, for one thing your jokes aren’t funny.”

  “Mh,” Dooley said, nodding. “I see your point,” he said, filing Max’s comment away for later use.

  “What’s going on over there?” asked Max now, and gestured to the offices of the Hampton Cove Gazette. It was where Odelia worked, and a very nice office it was, too. With a very nice boss named Dan Goory. He looked like Santa Claus, only without the pleasant rotundity. Or the red-cheeked cheerful face. Or the bag of presents and the use of a stable of reindeer. On second thought Dan didn’t look much like Santa Claus at all.

  Dooley looked over to where Max was pointing. Odelia was there, and so was her uncle and her boyfriend Chase. And when Dooley saw the ambulance, his heart skipped a beat. Or two.

  “Oh, no! An ambulance! Maybe Dan died!”

  “Dan didn’t die,” said Max. “He’s standing right there, talking to Uncle Alec.”

  “Oh, so he is,” said Dooley, much relieved. He quickly checked off the names of potential victims in his head and came to the reassuring conclusion that all the people he loved and cared for were alive and accounted for. Which begged the question: “So who died?”

  “Let’s go and find out,” Max said, and they headed on over to dig deeper into the mystery of the ambulance standing in front of Odelia’s workplace.

  “What happened?” asked Max as they sidled up to Odelia.

  Odelia looked left and right—she didn’t like to be seen talking to her cats for some reason—and said, “According to Dan the victim’s name is Heather Gallop. She contacted him yesterday and made an appointment. And then afterward she sent him a one-word text that read, ‘Gnomeo,’ so Dan thinks it’s got something to do with Maria Power.”

  “Who’s Maria Power?” asked Dooley immediately. He’d discovered that when he didn’t ask questions immediately he often forgot to ask them later, so better do it now.

  “She’s a famous movie actress from the seventies and eighties who lives in Hampton Cove. Dan is a big fan. He’s also the president of the official Maria Power Fan Club.”

  “So this Heather Gallop is dead?” asked Max, getting to the heart of the matter as usual.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Odelia.

  “How did she die?” asked Dooley. He darted a worried glance at his friend. “Was it cancer?”

  “She was hit over the head with a garden gnome,” said Odelia.

  “Murder,” said Max, nodding.

  “Murder!” Dooley cried. “In your office!”

  “Dan’s office, actually,” said Odelia.

  “Did Dan have something to do with it?” asked Max.

  “If so he’s not admitting it,” said Odelia, and rose from her crouch to rejoin the conversation between her uncle, Chase, and Dan. The latter didn’t look happy, which was understandable. If someone murders one of your visitors with a garden gnome, it probably comes as something of a shock. Plus it might scare away future visitors.

  “Let’s go inside and have a look,” Max suggested, and padded into the Gazette building and then straight into Dan’s office.

  There wasn’t all that much to see, as the body had already been removed, probably by those nice people that drove that big shiny ambulance with the flashing lights. People dressed in white were combing the office for traces of things murderers sometimes like to leave behind, whether they want to or not, and the county coroner, a thickset man named Abe Cornwall, was muttering something to himself as he studied the room.

  Max paused in front of a glass display case in a corner of Dan’s office and Dooley joined him.

  “What are you looking for, Max?”

  “Gnomes,” said Max.

  “Gnomes?” asked Dooley, wondering if the tumor that Max was suffering from was one of those brain tumors. He’d seen a documentary on the Discovery Channel about brain tumors, and they sometimes did very strange things to people’s brains. It kinda displaced them, squished them so hard they stopped working like they should.

  “Looks like Tex isn’t the only one who collects the horrible things,” Max remarked.

  Dooley followed his gaze, and saw to his relief that the display case was filled with gnomes. So the gnomes were real, and not merely a figment of Max’s diseased brain.

  In the same display case a collection of pictures had been placed, all of them depicting the same woman.

  “Maria Power,” said Max, masterfully reading Dooley’s mind before he’d even uttered a single word. It just goes to show how Max and Dooley were attuned. How their minds worked as one mind. Though of course minus the brain tumor in Dooley’s case.

  “I wonder what the connection between these gnomes and this Maria Power is,” said Dooley.

  “It says right there in that framed article,” Max pointed out.

  And indeed he was right again. The title of the yellowed newspaper article—possibly from Dan’s very own newspaper—was ‘Gnomeo and Maria: a most lovely pairing.’

  “Gnomeo and Maria,” said Dooley, then got the joke and laughed heartily. “It’s just like Romeo and Juliet, isn’t it, Max?”

  “Yes, it is,” said Max, displaying a slight smile of amusement. “It seems like today gnomes keep popping up wherever we go.”

  With the swiftness of motion that was his hallmark, in spite of his size, Max turned on his heel and made for the door, Dooley right on his tail.

  “Do you think Odelia is going to ask us to assist her in cracking the case?” he asked.

  “Pretty sure she will,” said Max. He turned and smiled. “Doesn’t she always?”

  To see that smile on his friend’s face warmed Dooley’s heart to such an extent he had to wipe away a tear. Max might be dying of cancer, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

  Maybe a good murder case was exactly what he needed to lift his spirits.

  Even if it was his last one…

  6

  As Dooley and I walked out of Dan’s office, I couldn’t help but pick up a very distinct but pleasant scent. It clearly belonged to a human and it wasn’t Dan or Odelia’s. I
figured it might belong to one of Dan’s frequent visitors, or one of those strange people dressed all in white going over the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb.

  But then, just as we were leaving, I noticed a second glass display case. This, too, was dedicated to Maria Power, and contained a plastic mannequin dressed in a very nice green silk dress with sequined bodice. At the foot of the mannequin a picture had been placed showing the real Maria Power wearing that self-same dress.

  I studied the picture for a moment, and saw she was a very handsome woman indeed.

  She had those high cheekbones some men go all gaga over, shiny auburn tresses, a wide mouth and remarkable green eyes. She was smiling in the picture, and judging from the background had every reason to: I could see palm trees, a nice beach, and those clear azure waters you find in your better-quality beach resorts.

  And as I took another sniff I finally decided the distinct scent had to come from the dress. And it was with a little sigh that I left the office. Humans sometimes smell very nice indeed.

  “So who do you think did it, Max?” asked Dooley as we were once again walking along the sidewalk.

  “I have no idea, Dooley,” I said. “Which is why I suggest we tap all of our usual sources and do it quickly, too.”

  “Why quickly?”

  “Because I have a feeling Odelia’s boss is in big trouble.” I’d picked up a few snatches of the conversation between Uncle Alec, Chase and Dan, and it seemed to me that the police officers had already decided who the killer was and were now only waiting for the results of the forensic investigation to strike.

  We’d arrived at Wilbur Vickery’s General Store, and I saw that our friend Kingman was already in pole position to spy on the fine female felines that prance up and down Main Street on any given day.

  “Hey, Kingman,” I said by way of greeting, but he was momentarily distracted by a strikingly handsome Persian sashaying past the store and giving Kingman the eye.

  “A woman has been murdered,” Dooley said, clearly taking my advice about moving quickly to heart. “And Max thinks that Uncle Alec thinks that Dan did it.”

  “Mh?” said Kingman, finally becoming aware of our presence. “Oh, hiya, fellas. What was that about a murder?”

  “A woman has been found murdered in Dan’s office,” I explained. “And we were wondering if you heard something.”

  He frowned, dragging his mind out of the gutter. “Um…”

  “It happened just now,” I said. “So chances are slim you would have heard anything, but just in case you have…” I raised a questioning eyebrow, signaling to my friend how important this case was.

  Indeed if Dan was charged with murder it would effectively mean the end of the Gazette, and Odelia’s job. It was perhaps a little selfish of me to think along these terms but there you have it. No job for Odelia also meant no more money coming in, and no money meant no food for me, unless Odelia’s parents jumped in to give her some much-needed financial support—and Chase, of course. Though I doubted whether a policeman’s salary would allow for the kind of lifestyle to which we’d become accustomed.

  “What’s going on?” asked Buster, who was passing by.

  “A woman was murdered in Dan Goory’s office,” Kingman explained. “And Max is wondering if I’d heard something, which I’m afraid to say I haven’t.”

  Buster frowned. He’s a Main Coon belonging to Fido Siniawski, the barber, and as such a valuable source of information for Dooley and me—and by extension Odelia.

  “When was this?” asked Buster.

  “Just now,” I said. “Maybe half an hour ago or so?”

  “I did see a UPS guy head into the Gazette,” said Buster. “And just before that I saw Dan hurry out, looking rattled. He had a big frown on his face and was talking to himself.”

  “So Dan walked out as the UPS guy walked in?” I asked, making sure I got the sequence of events just right. “So did they meet?”

  “Nah. Dan walked out and then the UPS guy walked in. I have to admit I didn’t see him walk out again. Missy came in with Garvin and I got distracted. I did see your Odelia walk in, though, and then later the shit hit the fan: ambulance, police—the works.”

  “So who was the woman that died?” asked Kingman.

  “A Heather Gallop,” I said. “One of Dan’s visitors. She called him yesterday and told him she wanted to meet. She also sent him a text with the word ‘Gnomeo.’”

  “Probably some kind of code,” said Buster with a grin.

  “Code for what?” I asked.

  Kingman and Buster shared a look. Clearly their minds were now both in the gutter.

  “Naughty Dan,” said Kingman, proving that my assessment was right on the money. “First hanky-panky and then murder. And all this during office hours, huh? What a guy.”

  “I’m sure it’s not like that,” I said, but I had a feeling my words fell on deaf ears. Soon the story would do the rounds that Dan had accidentally murdered his lady friend in some kind of sordid sex game gone terribly wrong. And it had involved a gnome.

  “I wonder what he did with the gnome,” said Buster, sniggering delightedly.

  “Or maybe it was her that handled the gnome,” said Kingman, snickering uncontrollably.

  “Sticking it where it didn’t belong,” said Buster.

  “Until he’d had enough and knocked her over the head with it.”

  “I don’t think this is a laughing matter,” I said sternly.

  “Yes, it is!” said Kingman, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “I’ve heard of a lot of things, but a garden gnome? Never!”

  “Humans,” said Buster, shaking his head. “They never cease to amaze.”

  “Endless source of entertainment,” Kingman agreed.

  And as Buster and Kingman discussed the logistics of hanky-panky with the assistance of a garden gnome, I decided it was time for Dooley and me to take our leave.

  “So we probably have to find the UPS guy, don’t we?” asked Dooley.

  “Yes, we do,” I said. “He might be able to tell us if the victim was still alive when Dan left the building. And if she was dead already…”

  I didn’t finish the sentence, as the prospect of Dan being locked up for murder was too horrible to contemplate.

  7

  Harriet was sniffing around the backyard. She and Brutus had officially been recruited to join Gran’s neighborhood watch and she was a cat who took her responsibilities seriously.

  “Anything?” asked Brutus.

  “Nothing so far,” she said sadly.

  Even though she possessed a keen sense of smell, and had hoped to pick up the trail of the culprit or culprits who’d dared invade the sanctity of Tex and Marge’s backyard and abscond with Tex’s treasured gnomes, so far she hadn’t picked up the scent yet.

  “Maybe we should call in the dogs,” she suggested with a sigh. It was hard for her to admit, but it was true that dogs’ sense of smell was even better than cats’. And since Ted and Marcie next door had recently gotten a dog, it would be a cinch to enlist Rufus, who was a large and fluffy sheepdog.

  “A dog?” Brutus cried. “Never!”

  “But sweetie pie, dogs do have a superior sense of smell.”

  “No, they don’t,” said Brutus. “Our sense of smell is just as good as Rufus’s, no doubt about it.”

  “If you say so,” said Harriet with a sigh. That was the trouble with men: oftentimes ego trumped common sense, and when it did, it hindered rather than aided in their investigations.

  “Did I hear my name?” suddenly asked a voice from across the fence.

  Harriet smiled and trotted over. There was a small hole through which she could see Rufus’s friendly face. Even though she’d never been a big fan of dogs—most cats aren’t, and for good reason, too—she’d come to like and appreciate Rufus, who was one of those big kind-hearted dogs. The proverbial gentle giant.

  “Hey, Rufus,” she said. “Maybe you can help us out here.” She ignored Brutus�
��s hissed, ‘Don’t!’ and proceeded to explain the situation to the big dog.

  Rufus’s eyes narrowed as he took this in. “So you’re saying someone stole Tex’s garden gnomes last night? But that’s terrible! Who would do such a thing?!”

  “He’s not happy about it. Tex loves those gnomes and he’s pretty upset.”

  “I can only imagine,” said Rufus, nodding. “So how many gnomes were stolen?”

  “All of them,” said Harriet. “And he must have had a dozen.”

  She had no idea how it was even possible to love a garden gnome, of all things, but she’d long ago stopped being surprised about the strange and curious behavior of humans. How anyone could collect terra cotta lawn ornament figurines was frankly beyond her, but obviously plenty of people did, or else they wouldn’t have been stolen.

  “Hey, Brutus,” said Rufus good-naturedly.

  “Grmbl,” Brutus said in return, which elicited an eye roll from Harriet.

  “You’ll have to forgive Brutus,” said Harriet. “He got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. So to speak.”

  “Ha ha,” said Rufus at this quaint conceit. Then he frowned. “You guys have your own beds now?”

  “It’s just a manner of speech,” Harriet said. “We usually sleep at the foot of our human’s bed.”

  “Oh, nice,” said Rufus. “I sleep at the foot of the bed, too, though sometimes my humans kick me off. They say I’m too big to sleep there, but I don’t think so.”

  Harriet could only imagine how much acreage the big dog would occupy, and mentally commended Ted and Marcie for their tolerance. “So you didn’t see anything last night?” she asked, returning to the topic under discussion.

  “No, I’m sorry to say I didn’t,” said Rufus ruefully.

  “Thought so,” Brutus grumbled.

  “Maybe if you could sniff around you might be able to pick up the thieves’ scent?” Harriet suggested.

  “Harriet!” Brutus cried, then added between clenched teeth, “We can’t allow dogs in OUR backyard!”