“This is a bad idea, Francis,” said Wilbur. “Take it from me.”
“No, but it is very original, isn’t it?” said Father Reilly, growing more excited by the second. “Imagine a chorus of darling little angels, led by my precious Shanille.”
“With a nice solo performance from me,” Harriet added.
“Will Kingman be included?” asked Wilbur, touching the hirsute appendage that set his face on fire. It looked itchy, though that could simply be the chili pepper association.
“Oh, sure. Kingman will be in the first row,” said Gran, really selling Harriet’s idea for all she was worth. “And since this has never been done before, tickets will fly out the door like hotcakes.”
“Tickets? What tickets?” asked Father Reilly, confused.
“You’re not going to put on a show like this without asking people to pay for the privilege, are you, Francis?”
“But we never ask for money,” said the priest. “We just invite people to give whatever they can afford or think is fair.”
“I think a hundred bucks is fair.”
The howls of indignation rising up from both men told us they didn’t agree.
“Okay, so how about eighty, and we split the profit right down the middle—same way we divide Hampton Cove?” Gran suggested. “It’s only fair since this is my idea.”
I glanced at Harriet, and I could tell she wanted to say something, but kept her tongue. After all, it didn’t matter whose idea it was, as long as the plan was brought to fruition, right?
“Eighty bucks a pop… how many seats in the house, Francis? Two hundred? Split four ways, that makes… well, plenty of dough anyway.”
“Vesta, really,” said Father Reilly, shaking his head in dismay. “We can’t use the house of the Lord to make a profit.”
“Oh, like hell we can’t. You need gas in that tank of yours, don’t you?” she said, poking a finger in Wilbur’s chest. “And so do I. We spend all night keeping this town safe. Well, I say Hampton Cove owes us, and this is where they pay us some protection money.”
“Protection money! What is this, the Mafia!” said Wilbur, though his eyes were gleaming. Your small-town business owner knows the value of money, and can spot a good deal when he sees it. He now turned to his friend. “Francis, as much as it pains me to admit this, I think Vesta has a point.”
“So how about two shows?” said Vesta, well pleased that she had found an ally. “Or three or four? Heck, if this thing pans out we can take this show on the road! And then if Hollywood comes knocking, turn it into a movie!”
“Oh, dear,” I said as I turned away from these negotiations. Somehow I had the feeling that this new endeavor Gran had discovered wasn’t going to end well. But then what else was new.
Harriet, for her part, looked on with shiny eyes.“We’re going to be the new Hamilton, wookie,” she said to Brutus, who was slightly more reticent. “Broadway, Hollywood, here we come!”
17
That night cat choir was an exhilarated affair. Harriet had told the others about our upcoming appointment with greatness, and excited murmurings had quickly spread throughout Hampton Cove’s cat population, most of whom are members of cat choir.
“Did you hear that, Shanille?” asked Kingman. “We’re going to be singing at an actual concert—an actual live concert in front of an audience that doesn’t consist of a bunch of shoe-throwing rubes!”
“I heard,” said Shanille. She looked a little discombobulated, which was only to be expected, of course, since she now was going to be faced with the enormous responsibility of having to prepare the first-ever cat concert in the world! “Oh, my,” she said, as her chest rapidly rose and fell.“oh, my, my.”
“This is great news. We’re going to be famous, Shanille. If this goes well and this show goes on the road we’re talking Broadway, international tours, and then… Hollywood!”
“Oh, my,” Shanille repeated, and I could tell from her glittering eyes that she was picturing it alclass="underline" the applause, the rave reviews, the accolades, maybe even an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony! And I could see her mentally rehearse an acceptance speech, teary-eyed and in a quaking voice thanking her collaborators, her agent, her manager and of course her human for the tons of kibble over the years.
And while cat choir whipped itself up into a frenzy over this amazing opportunity, Dooley and I took a seat underneath the jungle gym and decided to take a load off. It had been a busy day, with not much opportunity for our usual nap. From the moment Neda’s body had been discovered by her faithful secretary, it had been one interview after another, and even though we may be experienced sleuths by now, we’re also cats, and cats need their nap time—preferably the whole eighteen hours of it!
“What do you think about this concert, Dooley?” I now asked as I placed my head on my front paws and let my eyes droop closed.
“I think it’s going to be great,” said my friend. “Though I’m not sure if Hampton Cove is ready for a cat choir concert.”
He eyed the shoe that had recently been thrown in our direction. It was a Nike shoe, though it had seen better days. No one ever throws new Nikes at us, only the old ones they don’t need anymore.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Well, we may think we’re good, but humans judge things by different standards, don’t they?”
“They most certainly do.”
“And frankly I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”
Harriet, who was over the moon with joy, now decided this was a good moment to sing one of her signature arias. It mainly consisted of a long caterwaul, which began quite modestly enough, in the lower register, then rose in ever-modulated intensity to the mid-range of her powerful voice, to end on a high note, one of those screeches that have the capacity to break glass, which luckily wasn’t available there in the park.
Promptly a large shoe came flying in her direction and hit her squarely in the snoot. It was one of Kanye West’s shoes, I saw. One of those weirdly-shaped Yeezys.
“Expensive shoe,” I commented as Harriet shook her head and scrabbled into an upright position again. “Two hundred bucks at least.”
“See what I mean, Max?” said my friend as Harriet resumed her practice, undaunted like a real diva should. Mariah Carey probably has been the target of many a Yeezy early in her career, and so has C?line, or even Whitney. And did it stop them? No, it didn’t.
“Yeah, I see what you mean, Dooley. Hampton Cove isn’t ready for cat choir taking the big stage, I’m afraid. But who’s going to listen to us?”
“Nobody.”
“So we’ll just relax and see what happens.” Which you might say is my motto in life.
“I was still thinking about Bonnie and Clyde, Max,” Dooley said now.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’m starting to think that maybe Yoko is innocent after all.”
“And why do you think that?”
“Because Odelia found another witness who confirmed that Yoko was at the restaurant all morning. One of the customers.”
“Pity,” I said. “She sounded like a good suspect.”
“It’s hard, isn’t it, Max?”
“What is?”
“Well, here we are, trying to find out what happened to poor Neda, and these suspects, they just keep slipping through our paws like so much sand on the beach.”
I grinned.“I didn’t know you were a poet, Dooley.”
“No, but it’s true, isn’t it? It’s frustrating, Max, that’s what it is.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” I said as my eyes now drifted closed again. “You just have to keep going, and going, and going, and sooner or later you’ll get where you need to be.”
“If you say so,” said my friend, sounding a little dejected.
I opened my eyes again and regarded him sternly.“Don’t you go losing heart now, you hear? There’s still plenty of suspects, and we’re not giving up until we’ve nailed that one suspect that we can actually connect to this crime in a satisfactory manner.”