“Gee, thanks, Madam Mayor. Now how do you want your hair done this week?”
“Oh, just the usual. And if you could do something about those gray roots?”
“Sure thing. Consider it done.”
“We’re starting to get famous, you guys,” said Buster, after the conversation between Charlene and the hair doctor had turned technical. “And soon we’ll be even more famous if we can pull off that concert.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Do you think it’ll happen?”
“I’m sure it will,” I said. “If Harriet wants something, it usually does.”
“Then we better start taking our rehearsals a little more seriously. We don’t want to look like fools when the big moment comes and we’re standing in front of that audience.”
There was a lot I could have said to that, but I decided not to. Sometimes the best thing is simply to let cats enjoy these moments until their dreams collide with reality.
Then again, maybe we would be a smash hit. Who knows? After all, only a small percentage of the park’s neighbors ever throw shoes in our direction. So maybe that silent majority are actually rabid cat choir fans? Or maybe they’ve run out of shoes.
24
Our next port of call was, of course, St. John’s Church, where Odelia set a course the moment we put her in the possession of Buster’s story of the surreptitious priest.
“I still can’t believe Father Reilly wouldn’t simply tell me,” said Odelia as she pushed her way through the tall oak door and entered the heart of the impressive structure.
“Maybe he thought you wouldn’t believe him?” I ventured.
“Why wouldn’t I believe him, Max? No, obviously he knows something but is afraid to tell me. Which can only mean one thing.” She cocked a meaningful glance in my direction.
I immediately caught her drift.“Confession,” I said with knowing nod.
“Confession?” asked Dooley as we trot through the church in search of the priest.
“If a person confesses something to a priest, the latter isn’t allowed to tell another living soul,” I explained. “The confession has to stay between himself and the confessor. So maybe someone told Father Reilly something during confession, and now he’s finding himself in the impossibility to talk about it without breaking the seal of confession.”
“That’s annoying,” said Dooley. “What if someone confesses that they hid a treasure under their kitchen floor and after they die Father Reilly would like to tell the person’s relatives and he’s not allowed to?”
“I think that’s a very unlikely scenario, Dooley,” I said.
“It could happen.”
“Theoretically, I’m sure it could.”
“Of course Father Reilly could dig up that treasure himself and then sell it and anonymously slip an envelope of cash into the relative’s mailbox, like he did with Odelia.”
I smiled.“You have a powerful imagination, Dooley.”
We’d arrived at the back of the church, and Odelia searched around for the priest, but found the woman who removes the burnt-out candles instead, who directed us to Father Reilly’s office. She knocked on the wooden door, and a disembodied voice bid us entry.
When Father Reilly saw who’d come to pay him a visit, he put down the sheaf of papers he’d been examining—probably next Sunday’s sermon—took off his glasses to let them dangle from his neck, and had the decency to blush.
“Odelia!” he said, but his expression belied the joviality of his tone. This was a man who wasn’t happy to see us.
“You put this note in my mailbox this morning,” she said, and produced said note and placed it in front of the man of God.
“I’m sure I didn’t,” he sputtered as he pushed the note away, as if it was hot to the touch.
“Yes, you did,” said Odelia. “Someone saw you, and they said you did your best to look inconspicuous. In fact you tried so hard to look inconspicuous that you became conspicuous.”
Father Reilly closed his eyes.“Oh, dear.”
“You’d make a terrible, terrible spy, Father.”
He smiled.“I would, wouldn’t I?”
“So what’s this all about?” asked Odelia as she took a seat in front of the man’s sizable mahogany desk. “Why are you convinced Raban Pacoccha killed Neda Hoeppner?”
Father Reilly folded his hands on his desk blotter, which showed a nice depiction of the Virgin Mary with child, beatifically gazing up at the blotter user. Father Reilly cast a quick glance at the blotter, as if to draw strength from the touching scene, then steeled himself and said,“Nothing I tell you can leave this room, Odelia. Is that understood?”
“Of course,” she said immediately.
“I think she’s lying, Max,” said Dooley, eyeing our human closely.
“What do you mean?”
“See how she’s bouncing her leg? Whenever Odelia is nervous she bounces her leg. She’s also fidgeting. Also a sign she’s nervous. So I think she’s probably lying right now.”
My friend was right. Odelia was fidgeting. And bouncing her leg.“So she’ll probably tell Chase whatever Father Reilly is about to tell her,” I said. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
“But she’s lying to a priest, Max. She’ll be struck down by the wrath of God!”
“I very much doubt whether God is interested in Odelia’s little fib,” I told him.
The door behind us had opened, and Shanille came trotting in.“Oh, hey, Max—Dooley.” She stifled a yawn, indicating she’d just had a nice refreshing nap somewhere in the bowels of the church—or possibly in Father Reilly’s private residence, which was located right next door. “Are you here to talk about the concert?” Clearly the concert was at the forefront of her mind and not on the back burner, as was the case with yours truly.
“Um… sure,” I said, not to upset her.
“Max!” said Dooley. “You’re lying, too!”
“I’m not lying,” I told him. “I’m sure that Odelia will slip the concert in there somewhere.” I’d suddenly remembered my promise to Rufus and Fifi, and felt a pang of guilt that I’d completely forgotten to mention their request to join the big concert!
“Ever since Vesta talked Francis into organizing that concert, he hasn’t mentioned it,” Shanille explained. “And you know how it is with humans: you really have to pin them down and make sure they keep their promises. It’s only one more week until that concert, Max. So we need to start making practical arrangements. Work out the program, print and distribute flyers, sell tickets, start rehearsals—all of that important stuff.”
“Sure, sure,” I murmured, not meeting her eye, which no doubt was shiny with excitement.
Shanille glanced up at our humans, and took up position on the floor, expectantly following the flow of the conversation until it naturally landed on her precious concert.
“So Raban is one of my parishioners,” Father Reilly was explaining, looking a little pained, as if he was letting us in on some deep, dark secret. Or maybe he suffered from constipation, which of course is always a possibility. “And he was in here this morning. He said his conscience was burdened, and he needed to confess. So naturally I accepted to take his confession, and he proceeded to tell me he’d done a most terrible thing.”
“He killed Neda,” said Odelia. Her leg had stopped kicking up and down, and she was sitting completely still now, her full attention focused on the aged priest. She must have realized history was being written: she’d just solved the case of Neda’s murder!
“He said he’d wanted to kill off Neda for a long time. In fact he’d been planning it for months. He said he was sick and tired with his job, his life, everything. Said he was done.”
“Killed her off. He used those exact words, did he?”
Father Reilly’s gray head bobbed up and down. “Indeed he did. It came as a big shock to me, of course. So I told him to go to the police immediately, but he said he couldn’t.”
“And why is that?”
“He said the police were not his friends. They were not in his corner, had never been in his corner, and he had no use for them. Also, they’d stop him if they knew.”