“It’s probably a mummy,” said Dooley now, after having eaten his fill and assuming the position to start grooming himself.
“A mummy?” I asked, still busy gobbling up those precious nuggets. In my defense I’m probably twice Dooley’s size, and so I need to take in more nourishment than my gray Ragamuffin friend.
“Yeah, you know, like the Egyptian mummies? I think they probably have one at the local museum, and some vandals could have decided to steal it and put it here as a joke.”
“I very much doubt whether they have actual Egyptian mummies in our very modest local museum, Dooley. Most likely they simply keep some old stones and local fossils down there, but no mummies.”
“But where else could it have come from, Max? It must be a mummy. They simply removed the bandages and put it in that field.” But then his eyes widened to their fullest extent. “Or maybe it’s a zombie! It woke up one night and decided to take a walk in the neighborhood, only it got tired and decided to take a nap, and that’s when Fifi found it!”
“Aren’t zombies usually more… juicy?”
“Usually, but why can’t a zombie be a skeleton?”
“First off, zombies don’t exist, Dooley,” I said. “They’re simply an urban legend. And secondly, if that was a zombie, don’t you think it would have woken up by now? Even zombies don’t like it when a group of people stand around jabbering away, after all.”
“No, I see your point,” he said, his excitement slightly dampened by my use of logic. “So what is it, Max? And where did it come from?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Dooley,” I said. And frankly I wasn’t all that interested either. Judging from the state of those bones, that human had died quite a long time ago—possibly dozens or even hundreds of years. And frankly the whole thing didn’t interest me. Who cares if some old skeleton turns up in a field? Not me, I can assure you. When you’ve lived to be my age, you learn how to conserve your energy, you see, and it was with that idea in mind that I decided to take a nice long nap, while the humans ran around in circles, falling over themselves to take a look at a pile of boring old bones.
And I’d just closed my eyes when suddenly the sound of the pet flap alerted me that we were no longer alone. And when I opened a lazy eye to see what was up, I saw to my surprise that none other than Shanille had decided to grace us with her presence.
Shanille is cat choir’s director, and only very rarely makes house calls.
“Shanille?” I said. “What brings you out here?”
“Oh, Max,” she said, and if cats were in the habit of writhing their paws, she looked as if she would have much liked to engage in that kind of behavior right now. In other words, she looked extremely distraught.
“What’s going on?” Dooley asked.
“One of my humans has gone missing,” Shanille announced, a tremulous note in her voice.
“One of your humans?” I asked. “I thought you only had the one human: Father Reilly.”
“No, well, officially Father Reilly is my human, but the person who takes care of me on a daily basis, and of Father Reilly, too, is Marigold. She’s the housekeeper at the rectory.”
“And something happened to her?” I asked, understanding dawning.
“Not to her, but to her daughter Angel. She went out last night with some friends, and never came home.”
“So… has her mother tried calling these friends? What do they say?”
Shanille looked as if she was on the verge of tears.“She’s called all of them, frantic with worry, as you can imagine, and none of them have any idea where Angel might be. They left her in downtown Hampton Cove around three o’clock last night, and she said she was going to walk home, since she doesn’t live far away, but this morning Marigoldfound her bed unslept in, and when she tried calling, her calls went straight to voicemail. Oh, Max, you have to do something—she’s such a sweet kid. The best there is. And her mom is the best human a cat can ever hope to find—well, except Odelia maybe,” she allowed.
“Has Marigold contacted the police?”
“No, she hasn’t.” She heaved a sigh. “Marigold doesn’t believe in the police.”
“Doesn’t believe in the police? What are you talking about?”
“She and Uncle Alec have long been locked in a feud, and Marigold has sworn an oath never to ask for his help.”
“So her daughter is missing, and she won’t go to the police?”
Shanille nodded.“So you see, Max? I really need your help. We have to find Angel.”
Dooley suddenly looked up in alarm.“Oh, no, Shanille!”
“What is it?” asked Shanille, blinking rapidly.
“I think we found Angel—we found her this morning!”
“What!”
“Yes, in the field behind the house.”
“Dooley,” I said warningly.
“Well, actually Fifi found her. She thought it was just another pile of bones, you see, and wanted to bury them, the way she always does with bones. You know what dogs are like. When they see a bone, they—”
“Dooley, what are you talking about?!”
“Well, the bones—it must be Angel.”
Shanille’s face crumpled like a used tissue. “God, no!”
“It can’t be Angel,” I said, finally getting a word in edgewise.
“But it has to be, Max,” said Dooley. “It’s too much of a coincidence: first this girl goes missing and this morning we find that skeleton.”
“Skeleton!” Shanille cried.
“It’s not her, I’m telling you!” I said. “It takes years for a human body to turn into a skeleton, and if Angel was alive last night, it stands to reason it can’t possibly be her.” When Dooley looked skeptical, I prompted, “Remember the documentary you saw?”
“Oh, right,” said my friend finally. He then turned to Shanille. “Max is right. It can’t be your Angel. Unless of course her killer managed to turn her into a skeleton overnight.”
“Oh, Dooley,” I said with a sigh.
5
And so off we went, in search of Shanille’s human’s daughter. Now the problem with cats functioning as private detectives is that we can’t make ourselves understood by humans. So if for instance we want to ask a potential witness what they saw, they’re simply going to smile and give us a pat on the head if they’re cat people, orgive us a kick in the rear if they’re not. Neither response is helpful, or brings us closer to resolving the mystery we’re trying to tackle.
So you’re asking me why I didn’t ask Odelia to take the matter in hand? Because she was busy with the skeleton, that’s why, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but humans are very much single-taskers. Oh, I know there’s this notion that women are multi-taskers and men are single-taskers, but that’s just a myth. As a rule all humans can only do one thing well at a time, before moving onto something else. If they try to tackle several things at once, that’s when things get messy. They go a little screwy in the head, you see. So I decided not to bother Odelia, and to see if we couldn’t figure this one out ourselves.
And as luck would have it, we almost bumped into Harriet and Brutus as we emerged from the pet flap.
“Where are you off to?” asked Brutus suspiciously. Lately someone’s been sneaking kibble from his bowl, and I know he suspects either me or Dooley. I know this because he told me yesterday: “You’ve been sneaking food from me, Max—or was it you, Dooley?”
I assured him that it wasn’t us, but I don’t think he believed me. I can tell you in confidence now that it was actually Rufus, Ted Trapper’s sheepdog. He likes to sample some of our superior cat kibble from time to time. Add some variety to his diet.