“We met at the house this afternoon,” Odelia reminded him, a touch of pique in her voice. How could this idiot not recognize her? They met twice! “And again this evening? I was the one who discovered it was one of your bodyguards who put that knife on your pillow?”
“So you did!” he said, his face clearing. “Hey, you’re clever and hot!”
She pressed her lips together. “Please be on your way, Charlie.” She would have said ‘Please get lost,’ but she was still working the man’s case, and didn’t want to be rude.
“Ouch.” He touched his bare chest. “You just broke the Dieber’s heart, babe.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she muttered, slammed the limo door shut and stalked off.
He rolled down his window. “Some other time, huh, babe? Can I have your number?”
Without turning back, she held up a hand. She would have raised her middle finger but the same principle still applied: never disrespect the subject of an ongoing investigation.
She couldn’t help wondering, though, if the world wouldn’t be a better place if Charlie Dieber had taken that bullet that morning instead of Ray Cooper. She reprimanded herself. Charlie might be a douchebag, but even douchebags didn’t deserve to die. Right?
Chapter 18
After a long trek, we finally made it back to Hampton Cove. We passed through the small marina, the streets pretty much deserted, as one would expect in the middle of the night, and that’s just the way we liked it. And we were about to head on home and sample some of that delicious kibble our humans like to put out when Brutus froze midstep, and stared straight ahead, like a pointer dog—which is odd, since Brutus doesn’t even like dogs.
“What’s wrong, Brutus?” asked Dooley, ever considerate.
“This is the end,” he breathed in a stertorous voice. “I’m throwing my hat in the ring.”
“But you don’t have a hat,” Dooley pointed out in an admirable display of logic.
“Look, fellas,” Brutus heaved. “Look over there.”
We looked over there, and that’s when we saw what had suddenly made him pant like a pointer. It was Diego and Harriet, seated on the roof of The Hungry Pipe, the popular restaurant that’s one of the marina’s draws. I could just make out their silhouettes as they were sitting, heads together, backlit by that same moon that had fascinated Clarice so much.
“It’s our spot,” Brutus said, still sounding as if he’d swallowed a mosquito. “The spot I declared my everlasting love and devotion. The very spot I vowed to love and protect, to honor and cherish, to be all that I could be…” He heaved a soft sob, and for perhaps the first time since I’d made his acquaintance, I could see actual tears glisten in the tough cat’s eye.
“That’s not very nice,” said Dooley, in a massive understatement.
“He’s doing it on purpose,” Brutus said. “He knows how much this place means to me and he’s just rubbing my nose in it.”
It seemed a little far-fetched to think that Diego would know when Brutus would pass by The Hungry Pipe and see him and Harriet on the roof. The cat might be evil, but he was not clairvoyant. What had probably happened was that Harriet must have pointed the spot out as one she favored, and Diego decided to humor her and see what the big deal was.
The big deal is that Colin Carret, the Pipe’s proud owner and a perennial optimist, always overestimates the appeal of his place, and prepares more food than his clientele can ever tuck away. And since his kitchen happens to be on the top floor of the building, a lot of that food makes its way into his garbage bins, which are located on the roof before being transferred to the alley below via the kitchen elevator in the morning. Every cat in Hampton Cove knows that the Pipe is the place to be to get your paws on some high-quality grub.
I decided not to introduce this sordid materialistic theme into the conversation. Brutus was hit hard enough as it was. And as we watched, Diego and Harriet’s profiles retreated, and moments later we could see them descend the fire escape, reach street level, and stalk off in the direction of home and hearth, where presumably Diego would eat my food, drink my water, poop in my litter box and take my place at Odelia’s feet.
“I can’t go home,” Brutus announced brokenly, and staggered towards that same fire escape, and was soon mounting the steps, in the throes of a debilitating emotional crisis.
“We can’t leave him like this,” I told Dooley.
“Yeah, he doesn’t look very happy,” Dooley announced.
“You wouldn’t be happy if you were forced to watch the cat you loved canoodle with some other cat.”
“I’ve been watching Harriet canoodle with other cats all my life,” Dooley reminded me. “I think I’m a canoodling expert by now—at least where it concerns Harriet.”
He was right. Dooley had always nursed a quiet passion for Harriet—a passion which unfortunately had never been reciprocated by the haughty white Persian. “One day, Dooley,” I told him. “One day you’ll find the cat for you.”
“I already found the cat for me. She just hasn’t found me yet,” he said simply.
I never knew my best friend was a closet philosopher, and the upshot was that as I trotted after Dooley, who was trotting after Brutus, I had to wipe a tear from my eye, too. It was that moon. It was having a strange effect on all cats—even hardened ones like me.
“When are you going to fall in love, Max?” asked Dooley as we mounted the stairs.
“I’ve had my brushes with romance,” I told him.
“I know you’ve had your flings, Max, but when are you going to find true love?”
I shrugged. “I dunno, buddy. When true love finds me, I guess?”
“You are by far the most unromantic cat I’ve ever met.”
“I simply don’t like being tied down. I’m a free agent, Dooley.”
“You just haven’t found the right one yet, Max.”
I didn’t enjoy this conversation, so I decided to cut it short by ghosting my friend for the rest of the climb up the creaking, rusty contraption. The ladder was Colin’s fire escape and rarely used by humans except for couples to sit and pucker their lips for a smoke or a kiss or both. For cats, though, it was the main gateway into Colin’s culinary paradise, for it led straight to the spot on the roof where he liked to dump the Hungry Pipe’s tasty leftovers.
The scent that drifted down was intoxicating, and as usual about half a dozen cats could be found snacking on the premium morsels. When they saw us, they turned their heads. All of them were in cat choir and had refused to choose our side in our enduring conflict with Diego. In return, we ignored them. I must admit cats aren’t above being petty.
Brutus had dragged his weary bones to the spot where Diego and Harriet had been enjoying each other’s company, and Dooley and I watched him with a measure of concern.
“You don’t think he’s going to jump, do you?” asked Dooley.
“Cats don’t commit suicide,” I told him. “Only humans do.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“Because cats are too smart to hurl themselves off rooftops. Besides, we tend to land on our feet. And then there’s that whole nine lives thing to consider. We’d have to plunge to our deaths nine times before the jig is up, and who wants to go to all that trouble?”
“Maybe we should tell Brutus before he takes the plunge,” said Dooley.
“He’ll be fine. And the moment we drive Diego out of town he’ll be even better.”
“You think we’ll be able to drive Diego out of town?”
“We did it once, we can do it again,” I said with a conviction I wasn’t really feeling.
“Clarice did it once,” he reminded me. “And she’s refusing to do it twice.”
“So we’ll do it ourselves.”
“But how?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
We sat in silence, keeping a keen eye on Brutus, who clearly wanted to be alone at this point, and might have sat there for all eternity, if not a disembodied voice behind us had piped up.