Chase barked an incredulous laugh. “I don’t believe this. You’re telling me that my cat is bullying your cat?”
She pursed her lips. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. You can’t simply barge into town and start throwing your weight around, Detective Kingsley.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“So you better have a talk with your cat and tell him to behave, all right?”
Chase threw up his hands. “Sure! Of course! Why not? I’ll ‘talk’ to my cat. Is there anything else you’d like me to do, Miss Poole? Tell my begonias not to take up so much space in my garden? Cause God knows they shouldn’t simply barge in here and start bullying other plants in other gardens!”
“You’re making fun of me now,” she said, eyeing him darkly.
“No, you’re making fun of me!” he snapped, then turned away from her, muttering something under his breath that sounded an awful lot like ‘Who the heck do you think I am? Doctor frickin’ Dolittle?’
“Well, that’s settled then,” said the chief, placing his hands on his desk. He was looking uncomfortable. “Chase will have a word with his cat, and—”
“—as soon as you hear from the ME’s office—”
“—I’ll be sure to give you a call,” he finished with a wide smile.
“Of course you will,” Chase added with another eye roll.
She turned. “You’ll soon find that down here in Hampton Cove we do things differently than in the big city, Detective Kingsley,” she snapped.
“You don’t say,” he muttered.
“So I suggest you get used to it,” she added, and without deigning him another glance, swept from the office and slammed the door behind her.
Chapter 5
I decided to return to the house and regroup. This whole business with Brutus had thrown me for a loop. If you can’t even go where you want in your own town, it’s a sad state of affairs. So when I arrived in my own backyard again, I felt both relieved—this was most definitely my domain and no domineering cat could tell me otherwise—and annoyed, for I suddenly felt cooped up for the first time in my life. When you’re a free roaming spirit and suddenly you’re forcibly confined to your own backyard, it’s not much fun.
I suddenly felt what prisoners must feel like once they find themselves locked up in Guantanamo Bay. I even had the orange jumpsuit to go with my current position. Well, not the jumpsuit, maybe. But definitely the right color.
The moment I set foot in my yard, Harriet and Dooley came trotting up. I swear they have a sixth sense about these things. Or maybe they simply gab a lot. Word spreads fast in our small Hampton Cove cat community.
“What happened?” asked Harriet. She appeared genuinely worried, which felt like balm to my wounded pride.
“Yeah, what’s going on?” Dooley asked. “I heard you got kicked out of the police station by that brute Brutus?”
“And is it true that a man was murdered?” asked Harriet, eyes wide.
“How do you guys even know about that?”
“Well, Stacy Brown’s cat witnessed the standoff between you and Brutus, and Father Reilly’s tabby Shanille was out snooping around the Writer’s Lodge yesterday,” said Harriet, studying her paw intently. “The place was crawling with cops, and next thing she knew an ambulance rode up and took away what looked like a corpse. She had to move upwind at some point, as the place was stinking to high heaven.” She wrinkled her nose. “Shanille said they found the body in the lodge’s poo-poo pit.”
“It’s true,” I confirmed. “They found the body of that writer that went missing last year. Paulo Frey, remember? He used to stay at the lodge at least once a year, to write his bestsellers, and last year vanished without a trace.”
“So they found him, huh?” asked Dooley, licking his butt. All this talk about poo-poo had apparently inspired him to have a taste of his own poo-poo pit. What can I say? Us cats are a very suggestible bunch.
“So what happened? Did he commit suicide? Jump into the pit?” asked Harriet, her green eyes glittering with excitement. “Why would he do that?”
“Humans love poo-poo,” said Dooley wisely. “He must have wanted to take a bath in the stuff and accidentally drowned. It’s the latest craze.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“The latest craze!” he repeated. “Out in Hollywood they take baths in their own poo-poo now. It’s supposed to rejuvenate the skin. And that’s not the only thing. They even drink their own pee-pee,” he added knowingly. “First thing in the morning. It’s like a tonic or something. Juice of life stuff.”
“That’s crazy talk,” I said. “Nobody takes a bath in their own poo-poo, except maybe for pigs, but that’s just because they don’t know any better.”
“Duh. Pigs are dumb,” said Harriet. “Everybody knows that.”
Yes, I know. We’re not averse to pig shaming. Sue us.
“No, I’m telling you, Max. It’s a real thing,” said Dooley. “Celebs smear their own poop on their faces all the time. It’s been on that website POOP.”
“GOOP,” Harriet corrected. “Not POOP, Dooley. GOOP.”
Gwyneth Paltrow’s website was a hit with Hampton Covians as she was a local girl done good. I’d never met her, as she spent most of her time in Amagansett, but I was a fan, and so were all the other cats. Her site often featured articles on what cats are thinking. Rubbish, of course, but very droll.
“I’m pretty sure Gwyneth would never propagate something silly like smearing poop on your face,” I said, though maybe she would. The things that celebrities did to stay young was frankly amazing.
“It’s a thing,” Dooley insisted, giving his butthole another lick.
“Anyway,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track. “Paulo Frey didn’t take a bath in his own poop. He was killed and then his body was dumped in there so nobody would find out. At least that’s what the police think. Since they also found his laptop in there, and all his belongings.” I cocked an eye at Dooley. “If he wanted to take a poop bath, would he have jumped in with his laptop?”
Dooley shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to take notes while he was doing it? Writers are crazy, buddy. Maybe he was researching the perfect murder, decided to try out this poo thing for himself and got in way over his head.”
Harriet laughed. “That’s actually funny, Dooley. Way over his head.”
Dooley gave her a blank stare. He obviously didn’t get his own pun.
Dooley was right, though. Writers were a little crazy. Year after year they came to the Writer’s Lodge to hatch up their harebrained plots, roaming the woods muttering to themselves, or soaking in the Jacuzzi Hetta had installed for their benefit, staring up at the sky and begging the gods of creativity to help them out when they got stuck again. So yeah, they were a crazy bunch, but not so crazy to jump into the toilet with all of their belongings, almost as if they were jumping into a Hot Tub Time Machine, hoping to be transported to another time and place. No, this case had the stench of foul play all over it.
“He was killed,” I said adamantly. “The Chief is sure of it. Now all he needs is cause and time of death, which the medical examiner will hopefully figure out from what’s left of the body, and he can start his investigation.”
“Who’s running the investigation?” asked Harriet. “Is it true that Chief Alec is handing it to the dreamboat?”
“How do you even know about that?” I asked. I was starting to wonder if all my snooping around the police office was even necessary. If Harriet could find out as much as I had simply by talking to other cats, what was the point?
“Well, it’s only common sense,” she said. “Chase used to be NYPD, after all, so what better person to run a murder investigation than him, right?”
“Yeah, what about that?” asked Dooley, nodding. “A genuine NYPD cop. How cool is that, huh?”