“Sure. But she won’t believe us either,” I said.
“But why? You’re her friends!”
“Trust me, Brutus. When it comes to matters of the heart, a female feline only believes what she wants to believe. And if she wants to believe Diego is God’s gift to cats, nothing we say will convince her otherwise.”
“We need proof!” Brutus said, searching around. “We need Odelia with her phone. She needs to film this! She needs to get this on video and show Harriet!”
“Even so. Harriet is not going to believe it unless she sees it with her own eyes,” I said. “Trust me on this, Brutus. That’s just the way it is.”
“Oh, God!” he cried. “This is just one big nightmare, isn’t it?”
“Do you think it hurts?” Dooley asked, now lying on his back.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“But they’re panting. And look at her. She looks like she’s in pain!”
“That’s not an expression of pain, Dooley,” I said. “That’s… rapture.”
“Rapture? What’s rapture?”
“Nothing you’ll ever experience,” I promised him.
“But why?!”
“Just think about the juiciest chicken wing God ever created.”
He frowned, thinking hard.“Uh-huh.”
“Now multiply that sensation by about a million.”
“Oh, my,” he said, eyes widening.
“Exactly.”
“Look, I’m going to get Odelia. She needs to see this,” Brutus said, sounding very agitated. “She’ll back me up. If she says Diego was doing the horizontal mambo with some other chick, Harriet has got to believe her.”
“What’s the horizontal mambo?” Dooley asked.
“Oh, Dooley,” I said with a sigh.
Brutus went off on his fool’s errand, and I stared after him for a moment. And that’s when I saw it. A Tesla, driving along Main Street. A very black Tesla.
“Dooley!” I said.
“Huh?”
“It’s the Tesla!”
He glanced the way I was looking.“Nice wheels.”
“It’s the car that was parked behind the restaurant that night! It’s got to be!”
And before he could respond, I broke into a run, in hot pursuit of the Tesla. I needed to get a glimpse at the license plate. I needed to figure out who that car belonged to. And as I came racing out of the alley, I saw that the car stopped right in front of a boutique store, halfway down the street. Panting, I came running up, and I watched as a tall Asian man stepped from the car and disappeared into the store. He was elegantly dressed in a kind of cape draped across his shoulders, shiny slicked-back black hair and snazzy sunglasses. I glanced at the license plate. It said Z1VR1D1N. I stared. Huh? Then I got it. ZIV RIDING!
Chapter 26
Konrad Daines had been charged with the murder of his celebrity chef rival and arrested. A lawyer was on his way over, though it was obvious there wasn’t a lot he’d be able to do for his client. Konrad had confessed. Case closed.
And Odelia was just about to go to the Gazette to write up the shocking story of the two rival TV stars, when Brutus came barging into the police station, meowing up a storm.
“You have to come with me, Odelia,” he pleaded.
She quickly glanced around, but Dolores had gone on a bathroom break, and Chase was still in the Chief’s office, discussing the denouement of the case. She crouched down. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
“Nobody’s hurt! It’s Diego!” Brutus said between two pants. He looked as if he’d been running, his heart beating a mile a minute.
“Diego? What about Diego?”
“He’s with another cat! You have to come along as my witness.”
“He’s with a cat? You mean, in the biblical sense?”
He stared at her blankly.“I don’t know what that means.”
“I mean, are they… smooching?”
He gave a disgusted snort.“Not just smooching. They’re having sex!”
She laughed, tickling Brutus behind his ears.“Oh, my. And we can’t have that, right?”
“No, we can’t! I mean, of course wecan, but Harriet… I mean…”
“I think I understand. You want me to tell Harriet that Diego is with some other cat, being unfaithful to her, so you and Harriet can get back together.”
“That’s it! You’re so smart!”
She sighed, getting up.“I can’t do that, Brutus. I can’t be a snitch on my own cats. If you feel Diego isn’t doing right by Harriet, you have to tell her, but I’m not going to sneak around and spy on him so I can tell on him to Harriet.”
“But why?! He shouldn’t be doing that!”
“That’s not for me to judge, Brutus. And, honestly, I think you should just let it go. I’m sure Harriet will find out soon enough what kind of cat Diego is. And she doesn’t need you to tell her.”
“But I… love her!”
“Then you’ll just have to trust her to do the right thing.”
“But how is she going to know about Diego if I don’t tell her?”
“She’ll know,” she said with a smile. “But if you go and snitch on Diego, she’ll lose all respect for Diego, and she’ll lose all respect for you, too.”
Brutus groaned in agony.“Why is everything always so complicated?!”
“I’m glad it’s not just us humans that make things complicated,” she said.
Just then, Max came slamming into the police station.“Odelia! You have to see this!”
She held up her hand.“Brutus already told me all about Diego, Max. And I told him I wouldn’t turn snitch on my own cats.”
“Who cares about Diego?!” Max cried. “It’s the Tesla! I saw the Tesla!”
Her curiosity piqued, she bent down again.“The black Tesla?”
He nodded furiously.“It belongs to Ziv Riding. He’s got one of those vanity plates, that’s how I found out. He went into one of the boutiques on Main Street.”
Now this was definitely interesting.“I think I better go and get Chase,” she said, and gave Max a pat on the head. “Well done, buddy. Great sleuthing.”
“Thanks,” he said, then caught Brutus’s scowl. “What?”
“Nothing,” said Brutus. “Just that I thought you’d back me up on the Diego thing.”
Max rolled his eyes.“Oh, God. Enough with the Diego thing already.”
She left the two cats and went in search of Chase. They needed to check up on this Tesla sighting. She hadn’t told Chase cats had seen the black Tesla parked behindFry Me for an Oyster, and neither would she tell Riding. It was enough that an anonymous witness had seen the car. She needn’t involve Max.
She stuck her head into her uncle’s office. “The black Tesla has been sighted. And guess what? It belongs to Ziv Riding.”
“Sweatshop Ziv Riding?” Chase asked.
“Yep. One and the same.”
“Well, go on, then,” said the Chief. “Go ask him what he was doing here the night of the murder.”
They didn’t need her uncle’s encouragement. She and Chase were hotfooting it out of the police station and hurrying along the street before Chief Alec had managed to get up from his seat.
“So who saw the car?” Chase asked.
“I did, actually,” she said after a moment’s pause.
“I thought you said the Tesla had been sighted?”
“Yeah, by me. It was sighted by me.”
He gave her a curious look.“Why didn’t you just say that?”
She flapped her hands a bit.“I was so excited I couldn’t think straight!”
“Right,” he said, and she had the impression he didn’t believe one word she said. But she couldn’t worry about that now. They needed to figure out what the fashion designer had been doing that night at the restaurant.
“Are you sure it’s the same car that was parked in the alley that night?”
“Not a hundred percent sure, no,” she admitted.
“I mean, there must be hundreds of Teslas, thousands, even. And a lot of them are black.”
“I guess so,” she said.
“So what makes you think it was Riding’s car?”
She paused for a moment.“Actually…”