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

little peeved himself, to be honest. “The wedding we were all invited to, and were all looking forward to, and then all of a sudden it was canceled and now we don’t even get to see pictures! Or silly videos!”

“Oh, there are pictures,” said Harriet.

“And silly videos,” Brutus added.

“But Odelia is not going to put them on the Gazette website.”

“Or her social media.”

“She’s not?” asked Kingman, looking surprised. “But… isn’t she obliged to publish that stuff? She is a reporter, isn’t she? Isn’t there a law about that kind of thing?”

“A reporter isn’t required by law to publish an article about their own wedding, Kingman,” I pointed out. “Or release the pictures and video she shot.”

“Well, I think there should be a law!” an irate voice sounded at our immediate rear.

We all whirled around, and found ourselves looking into the furious furry face of Shanille. Shanille is cat choir’s conductor, but she’s also Father Reilly’s cat, and Father Reilly is the person who was supposed to marry Odelia, until she decided to cancel.

“Uh-oh,” Harriet muttered next to me.

“Can you please explain to me why you decided to cancel that wedding?!” Shanille practically screamed.

“We didn’t cancel anything, Shanille,” I was quick to point out. “Odelia did all the canceling, and we were just along for the ride.”

“But you were there! You should have said something! You can’t just cancel a wedding! Father Reilly is so upset he’s started drinking again!”

“Father Reilly has become an alcoholic?” I asked.

“Coffee, not alcohol. And he knows it’s not good for him.”

“I’m sure Odelia’s wedding had nothing to do with that.”

“It had everything to do with it! Father Reilly had the most beautiful wedding planned. It was going to be the highlight of his career. Never would there have been a more beautiful wedding. It was going to be a day people talked about for generations to come. And then—nothing! Not a word! Not a single peep from the Pooles!”

“Oh, poor man,” said Dooley. “Maybe he should get married himself. That way he can enjoy the wedding of his dreams, and since he’s the one getting married it won’t get canceled.”

“Unless the bride cancels,” said Harriet.

“He first has to find a woman who wants to marry him,” said Brutus.

“Catholic priests don’t marry, you dimwits!” Shanille practically shouted.

“But why?” asked Dooley. “Don’t they like getting married?”

“Don’t try to cloud the issue,” said Shanille, pointing a threatening paw in my friend’s direction. “You should have convinced your human to let that wedding go through.”

“You overestimate the influence we have on our human, Shanille,” I said.

“Yeah, Odelia is a grown person who doesn’t listen to us,” Harriet argued.

I smiled at this, for I’d had this argument with Harriet before, and she’d taken the view that I should have stopped Odelia from flying to Vegas and antagonizing the whole town. Looked like now that Shanille argued the same thing Harriet had switched sides.

“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” said Shanille, wagging that threatening finger in Harriet’s face now. “You know how excited I was about staging the cat choir performance to end all cat choir performances, and you willfully and purposely set out to sabotage my moment of glory. Admit it!”

“I admit no such thing!”

“You know what? I don’t think I can tolerate this kind of behavior any longer, and so I don’t think I will.” She raised her head high and gave us that supercilious look she does so well, and regarded us from between narrowed eyes. “Consider yourselves expelled!”

“Expelled?” I asked. “Expelled from what?”

“Expelled from cat choir!” she said, then started to walk away, even before we had recovered from the shock, adding, “You’re not welcome anymore, same way I wasn’t welcome at your wedding!”

“But… it wasn’t our wedding!” Harriet cried.

But her pleas fell on deaf ears, for Shanille had left the gathering.

Chapter 6

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Vesta when her friend opened the car door.

“I have to pee,” said Scarlett. “Why? Do I need to ask permission?”

“Where are you going to pee? There’s no bathrooms that I can see.”

“There’s a vacant lot over there behind that fence. That all right with you?”

Ever since they’d launched the neighborhood watch, Vesta had been thinking of a simple solution to a problem that had vexed them from the start: both she and Scarlett were ladies of a certain age, and their bladders weren’t what they used to be, meaning that if they sat in a car all night, following doctor’s orders in regard to the regular intake of fluids, there came a moment they needed a bathroom break. Unfortunately, Hampton Cove wasn’t exactly littered with public restrooms, and since bars and restaurants were mostly closed by the time they started patrolling those mean streets of their small town… It was one of those vexing problems, and thus far they hadn’t been able to solve it—apart from peeing in the bushes, of course.

“Or maybe I’ll go to that house over there,” said Scarlett now, as she pointed to a derelict structure right next to the empty lot. The house looked ripe for demolition.

“Better don’t go in there,” Vesta advised. “Place is a crack house.”

“You think so?”

“Why do you think we’re parked out in front of it?”

“I thought you wanted a quiet spot to eat our midnight snack.”

Scarlett always brought a midnight snack, as both women got those midnight cravings most people get, but amplified by the fact that they were engaged in a high-peril endeavor, which as everyone knows makes the blood pump faster, which in turn makes you hungry. She wasn’t sure this was all scientifically kosher, but it was her explanation for the phenomenon and damn if anyone said it wasn’t so.

“My contact at the precinct tells me drugs are being dealt out of this here house,” said Vesta. “And I want to catch them in the act, snap some pictures, and get them all arrested.”

“Your contact at the station? You mean your son?”

“No, I don’t mean my son,” she scoffed. “If it were up