“Just about as exciting as watching paint dry,” Vesta grunted.
Chapter 14
Even though it was the middle of the night, Odelia felt it incumbent upon her and Chase, as responsible pet parents, to confront the person who was guilty of the abduction and subsequent dumping of her precious cats in the middle of the woods.
And so it was that she and Chase stood on the porch of Mrs. Bunyon and husband, eager to have a word with the woman, and find out what had behooved her to catnap Odelia’s cats—and her own cat, too, for that matter!
It took a little while before the doorbell was answered and the sound of approaching footsteps could be heard. By then Odelia had already rung the bell three times and Chase had proceeded to pound on the door a couple of times for good measure.
The door opened and a bedraggled-looking Karl Bunyon appeared, his wife right behind him, both looking wary and ready to engage in a heated discussion with the marauders who’d gotten it into their heads to disturb them at this time of night.
“Miss Poole!” Kathleen Bunyon exclaimed. “What’s wrong?” She darted a quick glance behind her. “Is it… did Chouchou get taken again?”
“Yes, she did,” said Odelia, “and so did my cats.” She wasn’t in the mood for beating around the bush. “And I have credible information that the person who took them is—”
“Odelia!” suddenly Max exclaimed. “It’s not her—it’s him!”
“Yeah, it’s definitely him,” Dooley chimed in. “I thought it was Mrs. Bunyon but now that I smell them both it’s definitely Mr. Bunyon!”
Odelia’s eyes shifted from Mrs. Bunyon to Karl Bunyon, and her ire, like liquid fire already sloshing about her ears, increased even more. “As I said, I have credible intel—very credible intel, in fact—that the person who took my cats, and in fact took all of the cats that have been taken tonight, and probably all the other nights, too, is you!”
And to make sure there could be no mistake she emphasized these words by pointing at Mr. Bunyon, who stood staring at her index finger with a look of consternation on his round features. Karl Bunyon was a man who not only suffered from a receding of the hairline, but also from a weakening of the jawline and a very marked expanding of the waistline. He now stood quivering like a blancmange.
“Me!” he cried. “What are you talking about?” He turned to his wife. “Who are these people, Kathleen? And what are they doing here in the middle of the night!”
“This is Miss Poole, remember? She was here yesterday. I asked her to find Chouchou when she went missing, and she found her.” She gave Chase an uncertain look. “And you are…”
“Chase Kingsley,” said Chase. “Hampton Cove PD.”
“Police!” Mr. Bunyon squeaked, and already was starting to show a certain moistness about the temples. He was dressed in his pajamas, and looked very ill at ease indeed.
“That’s right,” said Chase, giving the man a steely look—the look he gave his most hardened criminals and which only rarely failed to make them tremble at the knees.
“Are you here to… arrest me?” asked Karl Bunyon nervously.
“We just want to know what’s going on,” Odelia explained. “Why you would kidnap these cats, Mr. Bunyon?”
Kathleen turned to her husband questioningly. “Is this true, Karl?”
“Of course it isn’t true! Darling, I would never—ever…” He swallowed uneasily.
“I know of nine cats that have been taken and released in the middle of the woods,” Odelia said. “Four of which are mine, by the way.” She gestured to the foursome at her feet, who all stood staring up at Mr. Bunyon with fury in their eyes.
“It’s him,” said Harriet now. “Dooley called it. It’s definitely him. I can smell it now.”
“Yeah, no doubt about it,” Brutus confirmed. “He took us and bagged us and then dumped us—he’s the Hampton Cove catnapper, all right!”
“Karl, did you really take Miss Poole’s cats and dump them in the woods? Tell me the truth.”
Karl blinked a couple of times, now subjected to the combined scrutiny of four cats, one police detective, one reporter-slash-sleuth and his own wife and cat lover. “I-I can explain,” he finally said, a little lamely, Odelia thought.
Kathleen’s eyes went wide. “You did this?! You kidnapped my precious Chouchou?”
“Maybe we should take this inside,” Chase now suggested. “No sense in talking this thing through out here on the porch.”
And so the discussion proceeded inside, where they gathered in the living room. Chouchou sat eyeing her master with wide-eyed consternation. “I thought I smelled something familiar when he took me,” she now explained. “But I would never have believed it possible—my very own human! Kidnapped me and left me to die!”
“Well, not to die, exactly,” said Harriet. “You had plenty of food out there in the woods, Chouchou, so let’s not get overdramatic, shall we?”
“Okay, so…” Karl began, as his wife regarded him with unmitigated consternation. “So look, Kathy. The thing is…” He sighed deeply, then finally blurted out, “I’m allergic to cats, all right!”
“Allergic!”
“Yeah, I just didn’t want to tell you because… Well, you know how it is. You meet someone and you try to make a good impression on that person, and so when she asks you if you love and adore cats as much as she does, you obviously say yes, because you don’t want to make her think you’re some kind of cat-hating freak. And then one thing leads to another and…” He suddenly sneezed and said, “I’ve been allergic to cats all my life. It’s not that I hate the creatures, though I’m not terribly fond of them as you can imagine, but they make me sick—and I mean that in the kindest way possible,” he hastened to add.
“You are allergic to cats…” said Kathleen, sounding skeptical.
“I am! Always have been.” He sneezed again.
“So is that why you’re always sick?”
“Partly, yeah,” he said. “I have other allergies, too, but mainly it’s cats.” He shrugged. “I probably should have told you from the beginning, when we first started dating, but I fell for you like a ton of bricks, and I had a feeling this whole cat thing was kind of a deal-breaker, so…” He gave her a sheepish look.
“So you decided to lie to me.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.”
“But how did you go from being allergic to cats to prowling around at night collecting them off the streets and dumping them in the woods?” asked Odelia.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Max said at her feet.
“Well,” he said, giving Chouchou an uncertain glance, “the thing is, I just thought at some point that the best solution would be to simply get rid of Chouchou once and for all. And I’d read an article that cats are never happier than when in their natural habitat, so I just figured…”
“You just figured you’d take my sweet precious baby and dump her in the woods,” said Kathleen, her anger still building.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, hanging his head. “And to make sure you wouldn’t suspect me I just thought I’d collect a few of those creatures and put them all in the same place.”
“So we would think a catnapper was on the prowl,” said Odelia, understanding dawning.
Karl Bunyon shrugged. “It sounded like a good idea at the time.”
“Karl, it’s the worst idea possible!” Kathleen screamed, and gave him a good whack on the arm.
“I’m sorry, all right!” he wailed. “I just didn’t know what else to do! My allergies were getting worse and worse, and I had to do something!”
“What you should have done is to come clean and then we could have taken the necessary steps,” said Kathleen.
“You mean give Chouchou away to your folks?” he said hopefully.
“No! To take you to a doctor and get you the proper medication to treat those allergies of yours!”