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

“Storks don’t work at night, Dooley,” I said. “They’re like most people: they work nine to five and then they take a load off. Let’s go.”

Much relieved, Dooley traipsed after me as we entered the house.

We quickly made our way upstairs, where all the activity seemed to be focused, and found ourselves in a small room adjacent to Joshua’s bedroom.

“Oh, my God,” said Dooley. “Will you look at that.”

I was looking at that, and it became clear to me that Joshua Curtis had some serious issues: everywhere we looked the smiling face of Melanie Myers greeted us. From pictures hanging on the walls, to painted portraits, to sculpted busts and even a life-sized statue literally placed on a pedestal, LED lights illuminating it from below. There was even one of those small bubbling water features, with Melanie clearly recognizable in the cherub pouring water from her pitcher and looking entirely too happy as she did.

“I think Joshua really likes Melanie,” Dooley said. “Like, really really likes her.”

“Yeah, a little too much, I would say.”

Just then, Chase came walking in, followed by Uncle Alec. They looked around and shook their collective heads, then Chase said, “This is just evidence overload, Chief.”

“Talk about an open-and-shut case,” his superior officer agreed. “Holy hell, what are those two doing here?”

Since he was staring straight at us, I immediately assumed he was referring to Dooley and myself, so I gave him my best smile and said, “Top of the morning to you, Chief.”

But of course he couldn’t understand a word I said. Also, it was mid-afternoon at that point, so my greeting was probably out of place. At any rate, he was glowering at us now, clearly not all that happy with our presence at the scene.

“I can’t go anywhere without these two spying on me!” he cried, shaking an irate fist. “Pretty soon they’ll be in my bedroom, watching me sleep! I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and there will be two pairs of cats eyes looking at me from the foot of the bed!”

“We would never do that,” I assured the big guy.

“No, we like to sleep at the foot of our own human’s bed,” Dooley added.

“And watch her sleep.”

“It’s too much!” Uncle Alec cried.

“They’re just cats, Chief,” Chase said.

“I know they’re just cats, but they’re freaking me out.”

“They’re just doing what Odelia told them to,” Chase added as he gestured to the door with a slight shake of the head.

I got his drift immediately, and both Dooley and myself sidled away to the door, keeping our eyes peeled just in case Uncle Alec went full-berserk and launched himself at us. He had that look, you know. That look people get who are about to go cuckoo.

“Look, they’re going already,” said Chase.

“Probably to go and tell Odelia all about what we discovered here.”

“Oh, I’m sure she knows all about it from Vesta and Scarlett.”

“More spies! I’m surrounded by spies!” Uncle Alec screamed, sounding like a Roman emperor now, surrounded by wannabe Senate assassins.

“You shouldn’t see them as spies so much as helpful contributors,” Chase tried. “We all want the same thing, Chief.”

“And what’s that? To drive me nuts?”

“To solve this case.”

“Well, your wife sure has a strange way to go about it, and so does my mom and her friend.” He dragged a hand through his modest mane. “I swear to God, Chase, if this keeps up I’m going to slam an injunction on them.”

“On who?”

“All of them! My mom, Scarlett, Odelia, and especially those darn cats!”

When we arrived back at the car, to report back to Odelia, we didn’t come bearing gifts, but more like stink bombs.

“Looks like Joshua is guilty after all, huh?” she said finally, when we’d painted a colorful word picture of Joshua Curtis’s inner sanctum—his shrine to Melanie Myers.

“Yeah, looks like,” I agreed.

“Have you seen the stork?” asked Dooley, glancing up nervously.

“I told you already, Dooley,” I said. “Storks don’t work at night. They sleep.”

“Oh, right,” said Dooley, relaxing.

“Well, I guess that does it,” said Odelia. “Game over. Joshua Curtis was in love with Melanie to such an extent that he decided to kill the man she was having an affair with. Though I still don’t get why he hired me.”

“So he could stay out of the picture?” I suggested. “He wanted you to snap a couple of pictures of the man she was seeing, and ask you to go and talk to Melanie. That way Melanie would break off the affair, and Joshua wouldn’t have to get involved.”

“But then why did he decide to kill the guy? And just after I told him the affair was over. That Franklin had ended things.” She shook her head. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Chapter 24

After the long day we’d had, filled with emotion and not a small degree of strife, I was glad that it was time for cat choir again, my favorite entertainment of an evening.

Odelia had dropped us off near the park, and when we arrived at the playground that serves as the backdrop for our nightly rehearsal sessions with the other cats of Hampton Cove, we saw that the showdown had already begun: Shanille was positioned on one side of the playground, near the jungle gym, where a handful of cats were listening to her speech about the importance of respect for one’s elders, while Harriet was located on top of the slide, a bunch of cats listening to her speech about the importance of respecting one’s peers, especially when they are right and you are wrong.

“They’re not going to fight again, are they?” asked Dooley, as we took position somewhere in the middle between the two separate camps.

“I think they might just fight with words today?” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sanguine, I must admit. Harriet and Shanille both have a volatile streak, and just might go paw to paw again. Which would turn cat choir into fight club, which wasn’t the idea.

Brutus came over to