She was still shaking her head, her blond hair dangling around her shoulders. She looked lovely, I thought. Sunlight slanted in through the grimy windshield and lit up her features, and made her hair shine golden. No wonder this Chase couldn’t keep from bumping into her wherever she went.
“Look, Max. I don’t know what you think you saw, but Chase and I are never going to become an item. He doesn’t even like me. In fact he hates me. And I…” She faltered, and then said stubbornly, “I don’t like him either.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just keep telling yourself that. Anyway, here’s the deaclass="underline" promise to have Brutus fixed and I’ll tell you what kind of guy Chase Kingsley really is.”
“All right,” she said. “If Chase and I should ever get together—and that’s a very big if, mind you—I’ll talk to him about having his cat neutered.”
“Great,” I said, the prospect of Brutus having his nuts chopped off suddenly putting me in a great mood. Hey, I never said we’re always the cuddly, sweet-tempered creatures you humans seem to think we are!
“Now tell me,” she insisted. “Is Chase Kingsley innocent of these harassment charges like he claims, or is he simply lying through his teeth?”
She gazed at me expectantly, and I gave her a reassuring grin, though I doubt whether she could spot it.“He’s innocent,” I told her. “The guy’s as honest and valiant as they come. You’ve got yourself a regular white knight here, honey. Chase Kingsley would never harm a woman or touch her in anger, nor force himself upon her. I’m pretty sure the commissioner and the mayor’s wife have been very naughty, and did a real number on the guy.”
“No wonder he looks so angry all the time,” she murmured, and I thought I could see a small smile tugging at her lips. My assessment of Chase had obviously pleased her, which just went to show I was right about them.
“So what doyou think, Dooley?” she asked, keen to get a second opinion. Her dad was a doctor, after all. Getting a second opinion was what they did.
“Max’s right,” muttered Dooley, not even bothering to open his eyes. “The guy is golden.”
“That settles it,” said Odelia, now looking grim. “I’m going to expose the commissioner and the mayor’s wife and clear Chase’s name.”
I looked up in alarm.“Um, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, honey.”
“Why not? He’s been wrongfully accused. You said so yourself. It’s my job to right this wrong. It’s what I do.”
Uh-oh. I shook my head.“If you’re going after those two they’ll simply deny the whole thing and get you fired. You’ll never work in this town again.”
“Ever, ever, ever again,” muttered Dooley, who was living proof that while cats might appear to be sleeping, they’re actually fully alert.
“They can’t do that!” Odelia cried. “He doesn’t have that authority. Dan would never fire me just because the NYPD commissioner says so.”
“No, but they could make your life very difficult,” I said. “These two are up there with the happy few, honey. They’ve got powerful friends who might put the squeeze on Dan and his advertisers until he’s forced to choose between you or the survival of his paper. No, if you’re going after those two you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way: by launching a smear campaign.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a reporter. You write the story and credit an anonymous source.” I pointed at myself and Dooley. “We’re your anonymous sources, honey.”
“But how can I go after him? I don’t have a single shred of proof.”
“Leave that to us,” I said. “First we’ll find ourselves a witness of the commissioner’s indiscretions, and then we’ll get you your proof. Like I said, someone somewhere saw those two, and, like with cats, nowadays smartphones are pretty much ubiquitous, so someone’s bound to have snapped a picture, even if they don’t know its importance. And once those pictures surface, they’ll corroborate the story you’re about to write.”
She smiled down at me.“You guys are really special, do you know that?”
“I do know that,” I acknowledged. “Of course we’re special.”
“Just like Babe,” Dooley muttered.
“Just like Babe,” I said. Dooley had been right all along. We were special, and we didn’t even have to speak sheep to prove it. Or dance like penguins.
Chapter 16
Odelia pulled the car up in front of the police station, and let the cats out. Dooley seemed reluctant to be shifted, so Max gave him a poke and he finally relented, muttering something about never being allowed to get any sleep.
“We have a job to do, Dooley,” said Max solemnly. “Sleep can wait.”
She watched the two cats stalk off, launching their all-important mission, and smiled to herself. If it hadn’t been for her special talent of being able to talk to cats, her life would have looked quite different. She walked into the police station and waltzed straight past Dolores, who announced that this time the chief was in, and would be more than happy to see her.
Happy or not, he was going to see her anyway. She needed to know what the medical examiner had discovered.
“Hey, Odelia,” said her uncle when she breezed into his office. “I was just going to call you.” And he held up his phone as proof of these words.
She plunked down in a chair and gave him a tense look. All this business with Chase had only served to take her mind off the murder case, which was probably a whole lot more important than whether the detective was innocent of the crime he’d been accused of or not.
“Shoot,” she finally said. “How did Paulo Frey die?”
“Well,” said her uncle, leaning back in his chair, “looks like bludgeoning.”
“Bludgeoning?”
“The guy had his head smashed in. And since we found a poker next to the body, that just might be our murder weapon. Especially since it was a little bent out of shape, exactly the shape of a person’s head, actually.”
She whistled through her teeth.“That must have been some hit.”
“Yeah, whoever killed him hit him so hard they fractured his skull, which, according to the ME, is what caused his death. And a good thing, too.”
“That’s a little harsh. You didn’t even know the guy.”
Her uncle emitted a chuckle.“I mean that if he’d been stabbed or had his throat slit we might never have found out, as the body was too decomposed.”
“Anything else? Chase told me you pinpointed time of death?”
“Yeah, the techies discovered that Frey used to sync his smartphone to his laptop, which was an automated process, apparently. The last time he did was September sixteen, which is also the last time the laptop was accessed.”
“Because it ended up in the cesspit along with the body.”
“Exactly.”
“Did you get anything off his phone?”
“Nope. We’re checking his laptop, but so far it hasn’t yielded any clues.”
“No webcam picture of the killer bending over the victim while he was busy working on his next masterpiece?”
He laughed.“Now wouldn’t that be something? But no. No picture of the killer.”
“Too bad.”
“Yeah.” He gave her a quick look. “Chase tells me you keep popping up wherever he goes?”
“I could say the same thing about him.”
“It’s driving him nuts,” said her uncle with a grin. “I guess NYPD cops aren’t used to reporters interviewing suspects and going over the crime scene.”
“I guess not,” she said with a smile.
“You talked to Aissa Spring and Gabby Cleret, so there’s not much you don’t already know, I guess,” he said, checking a file on his desk.
“Apart from the fact that Paulo Frey was not a nice person? I guess not.”
“Yeah, he was a piece of work, all right,” her uncle admitted. “I talked to Hetta Fried, by the way.”