The Mysteries of Max: Books 31-33 Nic Saint (kiss me liar novel english .TXT) 📖

not inconsiderable effort was required to achieve this superhuman feat. “So let me get this straight. A snail called Mr. Ed thinks Evelina Pytel’s boyfriend set up his own abduction to get his hands on seventy-five thousand of Mr. Benjamin’s crispiest and then ended up dead. Next you’re going to tell me this Mr. Ed killed the guy, out of spite.”

“No, I don’t think Mr. Ed had a hand in Bob’s demise,” said Odelia stiffly.

“Not a hand—a tentacle!” said Uncle Alec with another guffaw. He wiped tears from his eyes. “I’m sorry. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, along comes a crazy story like that.”

“Well, crazy or not, it’s the truth,” said Odelia. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“How did Bob die?” I asked from my perch on the floor.

I felt it was a little unbecoming for the lead detective in the case to have to sit on the floor, while his deputies were all high up on chairs. Then again, that’s the world we live in, unfortunately: a cat-eat-cat world, so to speak.

“Max wants to know how Bob died,” said Odelia, transmitting my question.

“Shot through the heart. Single bullet, perfect aim,” said Chase.

“How long ago was this?” asked Odelia.

“Abe is still working on his report,” said the Chief. “But he figures he must have been shot late last night, somewhere between eleven and one o’clock.”

“So how did he end up on that potato truck?” asked Odelia.

“That, my dear,” said Uncle Alec, “is the seventy-five-thousand-dollar question.”

Chapter 9

“So you know what to do, right?” said Suppo Bonikowski as he glanced out of the window of their hotel room.

“How many times are you going to ask me?” said his cousin Wim. “Of course I know what to do. You’ve only told me about a million times already.”

“It’s just that timing is everything,” Suppo said as he turned away from the window and walked over to his laptop which he’d positioned on a small side table. “We only got one shot at this, Wim. And if we blow it—”

“I know! So stop pestering me and make sure you’ve got things all set up on your end, all right?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. The technology is sound. In fact I can’t imagine why it’s taken people so long to discover the wealth of possibilities.”

“What do you mean?”

“What we’re doing is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Suppo as he held up the watch. “We can do so much more. In fact I like to think of this as a test run. If things work out as planned, I suggest we take this show on the road and start working our way through the entire supply of—”

Just then, a tap on the door interrupted his speech. Both cousins shared a look of alarm.

“Probably room service,” said Wim, as he pointed to the computer.

Suppo quickly closed the laptop and slipped the watch into his pocket, then glanced around to see if nothing was out of the ordinary.

Meanwhile Wim had moved over to the door and yelled, “Who is it?”

“It’s your neighbors!” a loud voice announced.

Once more both cousins shared a look of concern, then Suppo nodded, and Wim opened the door a crack. “What do you want?” he asked, not at all in a neighborly fashion. The milk of human kindness that usually flows from one neighbor to another was distinctly lacking in his speech.

A smallish man was standing on the threshold. His face was contorted into a kind of ingratiating leer. Next to him, a large and burly specimen stood. Whereas the first guy looked like a ferret, this second one was large and looked like an oversized gorilla. He had one of those faces only a mother could love, and then only with her eyes closed.

“Hi,” said the ferret. “My name is Jerry and this is Johnny. We’re your neighbors.” He vaguely gestured to his right. “We’re over there,” he clarified. “Now this may sound like a strange question but—”

“We wanna change rooms,” said the big one in a booming voice. “Cause we don’t like the room we’re in and so we wanna change.”

“Shut up, Johnny,” said the one who called himself Jerry. “He’s right, though,” he added. “We would like to change rooms. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with the room we’re in, mind you,” he hastened to say. “In fact it’s a great room. Tip-top. It’s just that… my friend here suffers from vertigo, see, and our room’s got a balcony. And every time he steps onto that balcony he gets dizzy.” He glanced past Wim into the room and his face cleared. “I knew it. No balcony,” he explained. “Perfect.”

“I told you, Jer. I told you this room didn’t have no balcony.”

“Shut up, Johnny. Let me do the talking.” He turned back to Wim. “So how about it?”

“Why don’t you just stay off the balcony?” Suppo suggested. He’d joined the conversation at the door.

“Um…” said Jerry, who clearly hadn’t thought of this possibility.

“It’s the thought that counts,” said Johnny. “See, I don’t even have to go on the balcony to know that the balcony is there and I could go on the balcony if I wanted to go on the balcony, which I don’t. But knowing that that balcony is out there just gives me the—”

“Shut up, Johnny. I’ll do the talking.”

“Sure, Jer.”

“Look, we don’t want to swap rooms,” said Wim, who had had enough of this pointless conversation with two guys who were obviously morons. “So buzz off, will you?”

“What my cousin means to say is,” said Suppo, plastering a polite smile onto his mug, “that you should ask reception for a different room if you’re not happy with yours.”

“But we asked, and they said they got no more rooms available,” said Johnny.

“Well, I guess there’s nothing we can do about that,” said Wim.

“But…” Johnny said.

If Wim would have had a neck, the veins in that neck probably would have stood out at this point. Instead, he raised