I laughed.“Maybe you’re ready, but I’m not, Max.”
“What was that?” asked Chase.
“I think Max and Dooley have baby fever.”
He smiled.“I have baby fever.”
“Me too,” Uncle Alec chimed in.
The snow was coming down hard now, and all around us the world had turned white. Twinkling lights indicated Christmas was almost upon us, and I suddenly felt happy. I hugged Max and Dooley, who’d jumped up onto my lap.
“If you have a baby, are you still going to keep us?” asked Dooley.
I rubbed him behind his ear.“Of course I’m going to keep you. You’re my babies, too.”
“Odelia is talking to her cats again,” said Chase, shaking his head.
“You’re just going to have to get used to it, Chase,” said Uncle Alec.
“Oh, but I am,” he said. “In fact soon enough I may start talking to cats myself!”
“I hope not,” I said softly. “Cause then you’ll discover all my secrets.”
“Don’t worry, Odelia,” Max said. “Dooley and me will guard your secrets with our lives. Isn’t that right, Dooley?”
“Damn skippy,” said Dooley. “We will take your secrets to the grave!”
“Please don’t mention the word grave,” Max said with a shiver. “It gives me the creeps.”
“We will take your secrets to cat heaven!”
“Cat heaven?” asked Chase with a frown. “Did someone just mention cat heaven?”
Max, Dooley and I shared a look of alarm. Uh-oh… Had Chase just overheard a cat convo? Now that would be a first.
Chapter 12
The next day was the day before Christmas, and I decided to go into the office to give Dan the bad news in person. I’d waited until the last minute, hoping the Mayor would change his mind and answer one of the many messages I left on his phone, but no such luck. Dan wasn’t happy. He said it was a disgrace that the only newspaper in town did not have the scoop on the new Santa. More than that, though, I thinkhe was offended that he’d been replaced, probably for the first time in his life.
When I left the office, I ran into Chase.“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, and his face was flushed. “I’ve got a lead on my grandpa. Guess where he is?”
“The hospital?”
“Right here in Hampton Cove! Someone saw him get on the Jitney two days ago, headed for The Hamptons. I talked to the dispatcher and they have him on the nine o’clock bus to Hampton Cove. The bus picked him up at 59th, between Lexington and Third. So I got in touch with the driver and he says he remembers him. Says he got off at the Hampton Cove stop and was met by some guy.”
“What guy?”
Chase shook his head.“No description. All he remembers is he was wearing a Knicks cap.”
“That narrows it down. So what do we do now?”
“No idea.” He looked unhappy. “Why would my grandfather come to Hampton Cove and not get in touch with me? It doesn’t make sense. The only thing I can think of is that he wanted to surprise me. Spend Christmas with me. But then he met Knicks Cap Guy and vanished into thin air.”
“First the well-dressed man and now this guy. Your grandfather keeps running into suspicious men.”
“And ends up disappearing.”
“But someone must have seen him.”
“I talked to some people but no one remembers. Which isn’t surprising. The stop is on Main Street. It’s a pretty busy place.”
“None of the shopkeepers remember anything? Wilbur Vickery?”
“Nope.”
“Looks like we both struck out. I still have no idea who the new Santa is and you lost your grandfather.” In the grand scheme of things, it was more important to find Chase’s granddad, though. Santa would be revealed tonight. His grandfather just might have run into the wrong people and be inbig trouble.
“I can’t believe this,” he said, shaking his head. “He came here to see me and now he’s gone.”
“We’ll find him,” I promised. “Somehow we’ll find your grandfather, Chase.”
He gave me a hopeful look.“You think so?”
“I know so,” I said with more conviction than I was feeling.
“If anyone can find him, it’s you. I’ve never met a better detective than you, Odelia.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said with a grim smile. I wasn’t sure it was warranted, though. In fact I had only one more card to play. The feline card.
[Ęŕđňčíęŕ: img_2]
I was working on my article about Santa, what little I had gathered, when there was a soft scratching sound at the glass sliding door. I looked up, and when the scratchy sound was joined by a soft mewling, I smiled. My feline squad had returned from their mission. I just hoped they’d been able to accomplish more than me and Chase had.
I opened the door and Max and Dooley hurried in. Their coats were flecked with snow and they looked as if they’d just spent hours in the icy cold, which they had. They hurried to the radiator and plunked down right in front of it. Then, noticing I’d lit a fire in the fireplace, they gratefully moved over to the sheepskin rug in front of it and stretched out, their backs to the fire. It wasn’t a real fire with actual logs, just an electrical one, but it supplied a lot of heat, and the red radial glow was almost as good as the real thing.
“So? What did you guys find out?” I asked. Dooley was checking the socks dangling from the mantle, ascertaining if they were still in place. When he discovered they were, he contentedly placed his head on his paws and dozed off.
“Max?” I asked. “Anything?”
Max yawned, then closed his mouth with a click.“Well, we talked to Kingman, and he remembers an old guy walking around with another guy wearing a Knicks cap. He remembers because the old guy reminded him of Santa so much. The old guy had one of those rolling suitcases, which was a bad idea, as he kept getting it stuck in snowdrifts. But then the guy in the Knicks cap got tired of waiting and snatched the suitcase from his hands and carried it for him.”
“And this happened around the time the Jitney arrived?”
“He’s not sure. He’s learned to ignore the Jitney. Doesn’t even notice it these days.”
Which was to be expected. When your owner runs the store directly across from the bus stop, after a while you stop seeing the buses coming and going.“You’re sure this guy looked like Santa?”
“That’s what Kingman said. He had a nice white beard and one of those red Santa hats.”
It could be Chase’s grandfather. Of course, a lot of people wore those red Santa hats around the holidays, and a lot of eighty-year-old men had white beards. “Did he also see where they went?”
“They went into the Hampton Cove Star.”
I smiled and patted the big red cat on the back.“You did great, Max. You did really great.”
“Thanks. And now I need a nap. Traipsing in the snow all day is not my idea of a good time!”
I got up and picked my phone from the table.“I put some snacks in the kitchen for you guys.”
He looked up with an expression of relish on his furry face.“Cat Snax?”
“Yep. But you’ll have to share with Dooley.”
“Oh, I will. I’ll take seventy percent and leave thirty percent for Dooley. Or eighty-twenty.”
“Why don’t you make it fifty-fifty?”
“Have you seen me? I’m at least twice as big as Dooley, so I need twice as much food.”
“Fifty-fifty, Max. It’s only fair.”
“Oh, all right,” he said grudgingly, then promptly dozed off, just like Dooley.
I watched them with a smile on my face. Amazing. My cats had just found Chase’s gramps.
Chapter 13
I met Chase in front of the Hampton Cove Star, a small boutique hotel in the heart of Hampton Cove. It featured an actual indoor pool, wellness center, fitness club, and whatever other amenities its upscale clientele demanded. There were only about thirty rooms, but they were all top of the line. Pretty pricey, too, as was to be expected. Still, they were usually fully booked during the holidays, and now was probably no exception.