“What does that mean?”
Chase grinned. “It means Mrs. Smithers is a nosy parker, but an imperfect one. Even nosy parkers have to go the bathroom from time to time, right? They can’t all be seated in front of the window all the time.”
Odelia nodded. In the distance, the sound of an ambulance could be heard. Max and Dooley had returned from their brief perusal of the house. “No pets,” Max announced.
“No mice either,” said Dooley, bringing a smile to Odelia’s face in spite of the circumstances.
“Which means no witnesses,” she murmured.
“Nothing from your cats?” asked Chase, who was used to Odelia’s special relationship with her cats by now.
“Nope, nothing.”
“There is a very strong scent of Maria Power hanging all over the house, though,” said Max. “But that can easily be explained.” He gestured to the stairs. “The woman had a regular shrine to the actress in one of the upstairs rooms.”
Odelia nodded and headed up the stairs. She took a left turn, as Max indicated, and was surprised to find a room completely filled with Maria Power paraphernalia: movie posters, pictures, cups and saucers with her likeness… and a hat once worn by the actress.
“Another Maria Power fan,” she said.
“Yep,” said Max, who’d followed her in. “That name keeps cropping up.”
“I think we better pay a visit to Maria Power herself. Somehow this entire case seems to revolve around her.”
“And gnomes,” said Max. “Don’t forget about the gnomes.”
Chapter 22
All the way to the house of Maria Power, silence hung like a wet blanket over the car. In the backseat, as usual, Dooley and myself. Behind the wheeclass="underline" Chase, with Odelia riding shotgun. In a second car, following right behind us, was Uncle Alec, who didn’t want to miss this chance to meet the one and only Maria Power for the world.
Odelia and Chase, too, were, judging by the silence, deeply impressed by this unique opportunity to talk to the reclusive actress, who was pretty much an icon in the acting world.
To be absolutely honest it wasn’t meeting the iconic legend of the silver screen I was looking forward to as much as her cats, which I sincerely hoped she owned. But even more than Miss Power’s cats it was their kibble I hoped to lay my paws on. Apart from the nuggets of food Kingman had awarded us, I hadn’t eaten all morning, since the mice had stolen our food, and my belly was making its displeasure known loud and clear.
“I’m hungry,” said Dooley, showing he felt exactly the same way about our upcoming visit.
“Yeah, we really need to fix those mice,” I said. “If this goes on much longer I’ll starve.”
“You can always drop by my place,” said Dooley magnanimously. “Gran makes sure there’s always something to eat, day or night, and we don’t have any mice to deal with.”
“Oh, just you wait and see,” I said. “Pretty soon they’ll expand their hunting ground to Marge and Tex’s place, and then spread out from there. And before you know it they’ll start in on Fifi’s dog chow, and Rufus’s too. Which is all the more reason we have to stick together and deal with them once and for all.”
For a moment, no one spoke, as I contemplated ways and means of ‘fixing’ Hector and Helga’s expanding offspring. After a moment, I felt that Dooley was watching me intently. I turned to him and asked, “What?”
“You don’t look so good,” Max,” he said. “In fact you look even worse than you did yesterday.”
“Why, thanks, Dooley. That’s very nice to hear,” I said, not hiding the hint of sarcasm in my voice. Though I doubt whether Dooley picked up on it.
“I’ll tell you another joke,” he announced, and before I could stop him, he said, “A duck, a shuck and a chuck walk into a bar…”
I held up my paw to stop him in his tracks. “Shucks don’t walk into bars. They have no feet.”
“Just listen,” he said. “You’ll laugh very much, and that’s exactly what you need. So a duck, a shuck and a chuck walk into a bar. ‘Say, listen,’ says the chuck. ‘I sold a truck for a buck to a cluck. What does that make me?’ Both the duck and the shuck shrug. Then the bartender says, ‘You sold a truck to a cluck for a buck? You know what that makes you?’ ‘What?’ ‘A shmuck.’” My friend laughed loudly, presumably to show me how it was done.
I, on the other hand, didn’t laugh at all. Frankly I didn’t get the joke, which is what I told Dooley.
“That’s because you’re not in the right frame of mind,” he said. “Oh, Max. I worry about you. I worry a lot. And worrying is not good. We should be laughing, and having fun. It’s the only way to make sure that we don’t get—”
And I was sure he would have said a great deal more, but the car had arrived at its destination, and Chase leaned out of the window to address the unknown person in charge of opening the gate. It was one of those very tall and eerie gates, with the pointy spikes on top, to keep unwanted visitors out at all cost. It reminded me of that Hitchcock movie Rebecca, and the words ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again,’ popped into my head and I shivered slightly.
Chase’s bona fides satisfactorily established, the gate crept open with a creaking sound, and soon Chase’s squad car was moving along a long and winding drive, crunching gravel as it did.
We pulled up to a large mansion that looked just as creepy as the front gate, with turrets on either side of the structure, and tall windows deeply set in gray stone that had blackened with age.
“Creepy,” Dooley said, and that was exactly the word to describe Miss Power’s home.
We got out of the car, and as we did suddenly a figure appeared in the tall entry doors. She was slim and gray-haired and looked sixty-ish. Presumably the housekeeper, I thought, but as we set paw in her direction, it was Uncle Alec, who’d parked right behind us, who corrected my mistake when he exclaimed, a distinct tremor of emotion in his voice, “Miss Power. An honor, ma’am. An absolute honor.”
The former actress nodded once, a tight smile on her lips, and stepped back to welcome us inside.
It only took me two seconds to ascertain that she was one of those rare people who didn’t own a cat, and three seconds to determine that what she did own was a dog, which filled me with joy and apprehension in equal measure. Joy because I don’t mind having a stab at a nice bowl of dog kibble from time to time, and apprehension because I had the distinct impression it was one of those big and scary dogs. The kind that can eat a cat whole and will do so without batting an eye.
“Please step through,” said the actress, who was dressed in simple garb: a long dark skirt and a gray blouse with a nice big brooch. She was also wearing a scarf around her neck, flat black shoes and looked just about as unglamorous as humanly possible.
“She doesn’t look like a famous actress,” Dooley whispered.
“I thought she was the housekeeper,” I confessed.
“I thought she was a lady butler.”
We both grinned a little, and as we followed the humans into what I figured was a drawing or sitting room, suddenly Maria Power directed a critical look at both Dooley and me and said, “Cats! How did they get in!”
“Oh, they’re mine,” Odelia was quick to say. “I hope you don’t mind. They more or less go everywhere I go.” When Miss Power gave her a penetrating look that said she minded a great deal, she quickly added, “If you don’t want them in the house I can leave them outside.”
“I would indeed prefer if they didn’t come in,” said Miss Power. “I’m quite allergic to cats.” And to show us what she meant, she sneezed.
Moments later we were relegated to the great outdoors, the door closed in our faces, and my affection for Maria Power, not great to begin with, dropped to an even lower level.
“I don’t think I like her very much,” Dooley said.