“What’s going on, Kingman?” asked Dooley as we joined the store owner’s piebald.
“Madness,” said Hampton Cove’s feline Nestor. “Pure madness.” Then he directed an irritated look at me. “Is it true that you called me a pompous old windbag, Max?”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said, rolling my eyes. “No, I did not!”
“Milo’s been here, hasn’t he?” said Dooley.
“He’s the one who told me,” said Kingman. “I practically couldn’t believe my ears.”
“So don’t,” I advised my friend. “Milo is a mythomaniac, Kingman.”
“That’s almost the same as a nymphomaniac,” Dooley added knowingly.
“He makes stuff up so he can create trouble between cats.”
“And humans, too,” said Dooley. “Remember what he told Odelia about you?”
I did. The cat was a menace. I spread my paws.“All this is Milo,” I told Kingman. “All this fighting and bickering is his doing. He’s been hard at work tearing up the social fabric of our once peaceful and loving cat community.”
“Well, maybe not all that loving,” said Kingman dubiously. “I distinctly remember Shanille once calling me a braggart simply because I told her Wilbur gives me foie gras from time to time—only as a treat,” he quickly added when I cocked a surprised whisker at him, “and only ethical foiegras, where the birds aren’t forced to gorge, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. We might be cats but that doesn’t mean we’re animals.
One of the cat fights on the street had escalated into a minor war, with two cats coming to blows. Usually when cats fight one cat will hold up its paw and make to hit the other one, then doesn’t. The other cat then returns the favor. Almost like a beautiful ballet.
There was nothing beautiful about the skirmish that had now broken out, though. These cats were whizzing around in a circle, a maelstrom of yowling and screeching and fur flying when nails hit their marks.
“Oh, enough already!” bellowed Kingman, and descended from his throne. He pranced up to the two cats, slapped one with his left paw and one with his right, then said, “Stop it, you two! You should be ashamed of yourselves, Shanille and Harriet!”
Only now that the whirring movement had stopped did I finally get a good look at the cats involved in the fight and to my astonishment Kingman was right: they were our very own Harriet and the conductor of cat choir, now both panting and missing a few patches of fur. Shanille even had a nasty scratch on her nose which was bleeding profusely.
“Explain yourselves,” Kingman said, now fully assuming the role of a King Solomon.
“She’s trying to seduce my boyfriend!” Harriet panted.
“And she’s been saying that I’m a slut!” Shanille retorted.
“I did not!” Harriet cried. “You take that back!”
“I will do no such thing,” said Shanille. “I will not be insulted by a common Persian!”
“No anti-Persian racism here, Shanille,” said Kingman sternly. “And what do you have to say about the accusation? Are you trying to lay your paws on Brutus?”
“Of course not! I don’t even like Brutus! He’s been saying some very nasty things about me!”
“Like what?” asked Kingman, who couldn’t resist a nice morsel of juicy gossip any more than the rest of us could.
“Brutus says I don’t observe Lent, but I do! I always observe Lent.”
“You abstain from eating meat during Lent?” asked Harriet, horrified.
Shanille raised her head proudly.“I do. So you better tell your boyfriend he’s a liar.”
“Brutus didn’t say those things,” said Harriet. “You’re lying.”
“Milo told me and Milo knows. Milo lives with Brutus,” said Shanille. “So there.”
I groaned, and locked eyes with Harriet. She knew, too.“Oh, dear,” she said.
“Who told you about Shanille having an affair with Brutus?” I asked.
“Oscar.” She nodded. “And he probably heard it from Milo.”
“Milo,” I said, extending and retracting my claws. “Always Milo.”
“Did I hear my name?” suddenly a voice rang out.
We all looked up and there he was. The treacherous cat himself.
Harriet rounded on him.“You told Shanille Brutus says she doesn’t observe Lent,” she snarled, and something of the fight she’d just engaged in must have still come through in her voice, for Milo moved back a few paces.
“I’m sure Brutus is making that up, Harriet. I would never say such things.”
“You didn’t?” asked Shanille, surprised.
“Of course not, Shanille,” said Milo. “I know what a God-fearing cat you are. You’re an example to us all.”
If he wasn’t tearing cats down, he was building them up. Nice strategy.
“You told Oscar that Brutus was having an affair with Shanille,” said Harriet now.
“Oscar said that? But that’s terrible! I always knew there was something fishy about that cat. But then he does work for a fishmonger,” he added with a sly smile.
The cat was slick, I had to give him that.
“Look, you have to stop spreading these lies,” I told him. “Cats are getting hurt.”
“Spreading lies? I don’t spread lies, Max,” he said with an expression of such innocence he could have fooled even me. “Am I a born socializer? Yes, I am. I love my fellow cats and I love shooting the breeze and even the occasional crude joke. But lying? Spreading rumors and gossip? I wouldnever do that.” He was holding up his paw. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were a Cat Scout?” asked Dooley, impressed in spite of himself.
“I was only the most decorated Cat Scout in the history of cat scouting,” said Milo proudly. “They gave me so many medals that I finally told them to stop. It was becoming embarrassing. Also my human ran out of space on the mantel.”
“There’s no such thing as cat scouting,” I said, then turned to Kingman. “Is there?”
But Kingman was holding up his paws and walking away.“I’m not getting involved, cats. You’re old and wise enough to know a lie when you hear one.”
And with these words, he hopped back onto the checkout counter and dozed off.
Chapter 40
Odelia walked into the police station just as Yasir Bellinowski walked out. The crime kingpin had the gall to give her a lascivious grin, which she bluntly ignored.
“Hey, Odelia!” Dolores yelled from her perch behind the glass.
“Hey, Dolores,” she said, walking up to the desk. “Is Chase in?”
“Oh, he’s in, all right. Listen, honey. What’s this stuff I keep hearing about your granny moving in and Chase moving out? Correct me if I’m wrong but shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“Chase never moved in,” said Odelia, wondering if these were the rumors traveling around town.
“Still,” the wizened front desk officer grunted. “I’d rather have a man sleeping in my bed than my grandmother, if you see what I’m saying.”
Oh, she saw what Dolores was saying, all right, and she heartily agreed.“I can’t very well kick her out, can I?”
“Didn’t she use to live with your mom?”
“She did. They had a falling-out.”
She really wasn’t ready to discuss family business with outsiders, though, so she was determined to leave it at that. Dolores was determined not to. “What happened? She and your dad don’t get along? I heard she quit that receptionist job at the doctor’s office.”
“I think it will all work itself out,” she heard herself say—quite lamely, too.
“Sure, honey,” said Dolores dubiously, grimacing like one denied the kind of information she feels entitled to. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t keep that man waiting. He’s one hot hunk, and there’s plenty of women working out of this here police station that wouldn’t mind getting hot and heavy with him—if you see what I’m saying.”
Once again, she saw exactly what Dolores was saying.“I think I get the picture.”
“So you better stop slacking, baby girl,” said Dolores. “And get fracking.”