Often referred to as ‘guilt’ it was commonly associated with something called a conscience. More specifically it was the feeling that you’ve done something wrong and you regret it and wish you could turn back time and undo the damage that you’ve done.
When Max and Dooley had looked at her that morning with consternation written all over their features, she’d experienced a pang of guilt, and it had only intensified since.
She’d called Max obnoxious for wanting to heal Mia’s sundered heart, and had called Dooley dumb for his earnest wish to address her childless relationship with Brutus.
Only she hadn’t interpreted it that way, and so she’d made a mistake.
“And who is this friend we’re looking for?” asked Brutus.
“You’ll see when we find her,” she said, tapping another dumpster, hoping for a response.
She didn’t want to go so far as to apologize to Max and Dooley, even though she probably should. But then she’d have to reveal her secret identity as the Gazette’s Chloe, and she didn’t want that. So instead she had decided to do Max and Dooley a favor so big they’d forget all about Chloe’s response.
And she’d thunked her paw against another dumpster when inside a snarl sounded and she smiled.
“Clarice? Is that you?” she called out.
A furry face came peeping over the dumpster’s edge, and growled, “What’s it to you?”
“It’s me, Clarice—Harriet,” she said, elated that she’d found the other cat.
“Hi, Clarice,” said Brutus, lifting his paw in greeting. He didn’t sound excited, nor could she blame him. Brutus had always been a little bit afraid of the feral cat.
“What do you want?” asked Clarice, gracefully jumping down from the dumpster and starting to lick her paw, razor-sharp claws out.
“I have a problem,” said Harriet.
“And why should that be of any concern to me?” asked Clarice, with her usual frosty manner.
“The thing is, our house is infested with mice. Again, I should probably add. And we have no idea how to get rid of them.”
“And now you want me to go in there, guns blazing, and solve that little problem for you, is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s about what it boils down to,” Harriet confirmed, happy that Clarice was so quick on the uptake.
“No can do, toots,” said Clarice, much to Harriet’s dismay. “I’ve got plenty of food right here.” Suddenly, from underneath the dumpster, the largest rat Harriet had ever seen came scurrying, nose twitching and front teeth exposed as it sniffed at a piece of moldy bread.
Brutus squealed as he saw the rat, and hid behind Harriet.
“See what I mean?” growled Clarice. Then, quick as a flash, her paw shot out, and moments later, before Harriet’s horrified gaze, the rat was in her mouth, face down, and within seconds it disappeared, whole and hairy, down her throat, only the tail still hanging out. One more gulp, and the tail, too, disappeared down the hatch.
“I can’t believe you did that!” Brutus cried, his paws on his head as he stared at Clarice, absolutely horrified.
“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Clarice said as she burped. “So if you want a nice juicy rat, help yourselves. No one has ever accused Clarice of being stingy.”
Harriet gulped. “But you ate it alive!”
“Of course I ate it alive. What did you expect, that I would chop it into little pieces and fry it with onions and carrots?”
“That would be nice,” Brutus admitted. “Though it would probably need seasoning.”
“Look, if you’ve got mice, you need to put your paw down. Eat a couple of the big ones, and the rest will get the message and scatter. If you don’t, they’ll reproduce and soon you’ll be overrun with the vile creatures. Though it sounds like you already are.”
“But Clarice, I can’t,” said Harriet.
“You can’t what? Eat them? Then tell your human to buy mousetraps and get rid of them that way. I wouldn’t advocate poison. That stuff has a habit of getting into your food, too, and you’ll get a nasty tummy ache and, worst case, die a pretty painful death.”
“I don’t think Odelia wants to put out mousetraps, though.”
“Why the hell not?”
“She feels they’re not humane.”
Clarice barked a short laugh. “My God. What a joke.” She thought for a moment. “There is such a thing as a humane mousetrap. You catch the suckers and dump ‘em somewhere.”
“But won’t they find their way back?”
“Possibly,” said Clarice, who seemed to be something of an expert. “Which is why it’s best if you simply kill a couple, then the rest will skedaddle.”
Harriet nodded solemnly. She’d wanted to atone for her nasty Chloe letters to Max and Dooley by getting rid of the mice for them, but it was dawning on her that this was not going to happen. She’d have to figure out another way.
“Thanks, Clarice,” she said finally. “Thanks for all your advice. And you know you always have a home with us, and food if you want it, right?”
Clarice softened. “Yeah, I know. But I like it out here. I like the freedom, and I like the hunt, too. Not much fun hunting a bowl of kibble, if you know what I mean.”
She didn’t, but said she did. And then they were off, before Clarice gobbled down another humongous rat and caused Harriet to throw up her breakfast.
And as they walked out of the alley, Brutus said, “Looks like we’re on our own, baby cakes.”
“Yeah, looks like.”
“You feel bad about calling Max obnoxious and Dooley a dummy, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do,” she confessed. “I shouldn’t have written that, and I can’t even take it back without revealing that I’m Chloe.” She sighed. “Oh, Brutus, why does my temper always get the better of me?”
“Actually it’s what I like about you, sugar lump. Your passion.”
She smiled. “Only you could turn a negative into a positive like that, honey bear.”
“You could always issue a retraction,” he suggested.
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You could say that you mixed up the questions, and then you could post the real answers to Max and Dooley’s questions this time. I’ll bet they’d be over the moon.”
“Brutus, but that’s genius!”
“Oh, well,” he said modestly. “I get these brainwaves, you know.”
“Let’s go and see Odelia right now. I’ll dictate two new responses and make Max and Dooley happy again.”
“What will you tell them?”
She smiled. “Oh, I know exactly what I’ll tell them.”
Chapter 25
Odelia was hard at work in her office when Harriet came traipsing in, followed by Brutus.
“Hey, you guys,” said Odelia. “So nice to see you.”
“Odelia, I have a confession to make,” said Harriet.
“Oh?” Both cats jumped up onto her desk, and Harriet perched herself on the corner, her tail nicely draped around herself. Odelia, in spite of her long association with cats, still admired their gracefulness and poise and she did so now.
“Max and Dooley asked me a question. Well, actually they asked Chloe a question, and I feel like I let them down with my response.”
“I wondered about that,” Odelia confessed. “If I remember correctly you called Max obnoxious and Dooley dumb, right?”
“I know,” said Harriet ruefully, “and I regret it now. I misinterpreted their questions and wanted to teach them a lesson. Only I was wrong and I want to make things right again. So could you maybe put a new response on the website and add a disclaimer?”
“Something along the lines of ‘There was a mix-up and the wrong answers were posted with the wrong questions,’” said Brutus.
“Please, please, please?” asked Harriet, giving her a pleading look.
“Okay, sure,” said Odelia, and opened a new window on her computer. “So what do you want me to write this time?” And as she listened to Harriet’s response, she smiled. It sounded a lot better than the earlier one, she had to admit. When they were done, she posted the copy online and announced to a happy Harriet that her mission had been a success. “Your column is doing very well,” she added. “It’s getting even more clicks and shares than Gabi’s.”
“Are you ever going to tell us who this Gabi person is, Odelia?” asked Harriet.
“I would if I knew. But Dan is keeping her identity under wraps.”
“Too bad. I think she’s the best.”
“Uh-huh,” said Odelia, who didn’t agree. Gabi’s responses to herself and the rest of her family had all been a little one-sided, all of them revolving around the topic of Uncle Alec’s non-existent ambitions to become Hampton Cove’s next mayor. If she didn’t know any better it was almost as if her grandmother was holding Gabi’s pen, but of course that was impossible, as Dan would never give such an important job to a person as notoriously querulous and belligerent as her grandmother. Plus, Gabi worked really hard. Dozens and dozens of questions came in every day, and she dutifully answered every single one of them, with only the best ones making it to the site, the rest delivered to the person’s inbox. So whoever this Gabi was, she had a full-time job with her advice column, something which she couldn’t see Gran accomplish, on top of her work for Dad and now her sleuthing efforts, too.
Just then, the door to the outer office opened and… Gran walked in, accompanied by Scarlett. They made a beeline for Dan’s office but, when they spotted Odelia watching them, immediately halted in their tracks, then made for her office instead.
“Oops,” said Gran. “Almost walked into the wrong office there.”
“Silly us,” said Scarlett with a grin.
“So what did you find out?” asked Odelia.
Dan’s door opened and he stuck his head out. “Oh, hi, Vesta. Scarlett.” And then promptly he retracted his head and was gone again.
“Well, it was just as Sandy said: the man was a first-class womanizer,” said Gran.
“Incredible stamina,” said Scarlett with a touch of admiration in her voice. “He bedded every single woman in that house. The maids, the cook, the housekeeper, the—”
“Yeah, yeah, you get the picture,” said Vesta. “So we talked to all of them, and nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“You always told me that a true detective gets a tingle when she hits upon a valid clue, right? Well, I didn’t feel a single tingle at any point.”
“I didn’t feel a tingle either,” Scarlett said. “Not one teensy tiny tingle. Though I did have to tinkle at one point, but Vesta assured me that doesn’t count.”
“No, tinkles don’t count,” said Gran. “Only tingles.”
“So the cook, the maids, the housekeeper…”
“They all slept with the guy at some point or another, but none of them held any particular grudge against the man. They all knew what they were getting into, and they even turned it into a game. After he’d slept with one of the maids, she told the rest of the household, and so they wondered how long it would take before he got started on them.”
“It didn’t take long,” Scarlett revealed.
“No, it didn’t take long at all. So they made a list of all of the staff and then put a green checkmark next to the name when Kirk had offered them his services. It was like a game to them, and they all admitted they liked him well enough. He was handsome and charming, but not exactly the kind of guy they’d swoon over or lose their hearts to.”
“So no jealousy or other emotion powerful enough to kill the guy over,” said Odelia.
“Nothing of the kind. He had fun with them, they had fun with him, and that’s it.”
“And what about Allison?”
“What about her?”
“Well, did they think she was lying when she told me she didn’t do it?”
“No, they don’t think she’s capable of murder.”
“They like her,” said Scarlett. “They think she’s a great boss. Very nice and even-tempered and reasonable. She even paid them extra when they had to work overtime on account of the fact that Kirk came to stay.”
“And then of course Kirk paid them in kind,” said Vesta acerbically.
Scarlett laughed at this.” Vesta, you’re so funny.”
“Thanks,” said Gran with a smile. “So what do you want us to do next?”
“I don’t know,” said Odelia, thinking. She felt like the owner of a private detective agency, instructing her operatives in the field. “What did Max and Dooley find out?”
“Nothing special. Jasmine thinks that Allison is the guilty party, but that’s probably because Allison refuses to buy Jasmine gourmet food. She feels that Jasmine doesn’t always behave, and Kirk told her he should give her plain cat food until she does.”
“So that’s the story,” said Odelia with a smile. “I figured it was something like that.”
“This is so fascinating,” said Scarlett. “The way you guys can actually talk to your cats. There’s so much information there.”
“Yeah, lots and lots,” Gran agreed.
“There must be other venues we can pursue,” said Odelia, leaning back as she thought for a moment. She stared at Harriet and Brutus, who’d made themselves comfortable on her desk.
“Don’t look at me,” said Harriet. “I haven’t got a clue what to do.”
“Me neither,” Brutus chimed in.
“Well, I give up,” said Odelia, throwing up her arms. “We talked to the entire staff, Allison and Mia, the ex-wife, the business partner. I mean, who else is there?”
“Maybe we can sleep on it,” Scarlett suggested. “The best ideas usually come to me when I’m sleeping,” she added when both Gran and Odelia gave her curious glances. “And then of course there’s that other thing we still need to do, Vesta.”
“Oh, that’s right,” said Gran.
“What other thing?” asked Odelia.
“Oh, nothing,” said Gran. “Just something Scarlett and I are cooking up.”
Odelia cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “You and Scarlett? I thought you two hated each other.”
“Hate is a strong word,” said Gran.
“Yeah, much too strong,” Scarlett agreed.
And then the two ladies were off, leaving Odelia like a general without troops and without ideas.
“You should talk to Max,” Harriet now suggested. “He usually has a lot of bright ideas.”
“She’s right,” Brutus agreed. “Max is the smart one. Ask him what he thinks.”
Odelia thunked her head against her desk. What a great detective she was, if the only way she ever solved a crime was by asking her cats.