Rita’s mother Phyllis had moved into a nursing home twenty-five years ago, but Rita had stayed in the house next door until five years before, when she decided the house was too big for her, and had bought an apartment. Odelia had jumped at the chance to move in next to her parents, and Marge and Tex helped her out with the down payment.
“Funny, though, right?” said Marcie now.
“What is?”
“Well, first the Bakers lived here, with their daughter living next door, and now you and Tex live here, with Odelia where Rita used to live. Almost as if history repeats itself.”
“Yeah, I guess in a way that’s true,” Marge agreed, though she didn’t really want to think of herself as an old lady being forced to move into a nursing home just yet.
“Whatever happened to Phyllis Baker?” asked Marcie now, leaning on the hedge.
“She passed away. About ten years ago, I guess.”
“What about her husband?”
“We never met. As I remember it, Rita once told me he walked out on them. But this must have happened when Rita herself was quite young, her brother still in his teens.”
They shared a look of significance. “We may just have figured out that skeleton’s identity, Marge,” said Marcie.
“Yes, we may have done just that,” said Marge.
Marcie gave her a sympathetic nod. “If you need anything, just give a holler.”
“Thanks, Marcie. That means a lot.”
And as she moved back to her laundry and hung up one of Tex’s checked shirts, her mind kept going back to the mystery of Mr. Baker, and whether he might be the skeleton in her basement. Somehow she doubted it. Phyllis Baker hadn’t been a murderer, and Rita and Tom definitely weren’t. Still, it was all very intriguing.
Chapter 10
Dooley and I had arrived in Morley Street, the place where, according to Kingman at least, and I had no reason to doubt him, as Kingman is usually one of the best-informed cats in town, the oldest animal in Hampton Cove lived.
“So what is a macaw, Max?” asked Dooley.
“I think it’s a kind of parrot,” I said. “One with very colorful plumage, too. It’s also an endangered species, as humans tend to catch them in the wild and sell them as pets.”
“Is that what happened to us? Did someone catch us in the wild and sell us?”
Dooley has a tendency to ask tough questions from time to time, and I guess now was such a time. “I don’t think so, Dooley. I don’t think we ever lived in the wild. Or at least I can’t remember that I did.”
“Me neither,” he admitted.
“I seem to remember Odelia telling us she got us straight from our mothers,” I said. “And that doesn’t sound very wild to me.”
“Straight from our mothers,” Dooley echoed, and already I could see the wheels turning in his head. “So… who was my mother, Max? And my father?”
“No idea, Dooley. You’d have to ask Odelia. Or Gran.”
“I will,” he said.
We’d been wandering up and down the street, wondering where to find this old bird, when suddenly I was struck with an idea. Yes, it happens.
“We’re going about this all wrong, Dooley.”
“We are?”
“Yes, where do birds live?”
“In the trees?”
“Apart from the trees.”
“Um… in cages?”
“Unfortunately, yes, but also in backyards. So why don’t we go from backyard to backyard and try to find this bird that way?” I suggested.
And now that we had a plan of campaign, we decided to put it into action immediately. So we moved between two houses, where a narrow strip of lawn divided both structures, and arrived in the backyard of what looked like a very ordinary house, not unlike our own. Looking here and there, we kept an eye out for our colorful feathered friend, hoping we’d find her soon and she would be able to enlighten us.
“Have you noticed how all these houses look exactly the same, Max?” asked Dooley as we traversed one backyard and then moved into the next.
He was right. It was almost as if we were home, even though we weren’t. There were backyards that had swings and plastic toys for kids, and others that had lawn chairs out where people could snooze, while still others had small pools installed, or even fish ponds where colorful fish swam. It all looked very suburban and very cozy to me.
“I think it’s because humans all like the same thing,” I said.
“What is that?”
“Whatever the neighbors have. If the neighbor has a pool, they want the bigger pool. If their neighbor has a new car, they also want one, only bigger and flashier and more expensive. The human mind is a parrot, Dooley. A mimicking machine.”
“Like Camilla.”
“Like Camilla.”
“So if Odelia has a cat, her neighbor also wants a cat, only bigger and better?”
“Um… well, maybe this parrot thing doesn’t apply to cats,” I allowed. Odelia’s neighbor Kurt Mayfield hates cats, for some reason, and each time we hold one of our impromptu rehearsals in the backyard likes to show his lack of appreciation by throwing shoes in our direction, and not because he likes us so much and ran out of bouquets.
We’d arrived in a backyard where the owner had added a nice verandah to the house, with a lot of nice-looking flowers blooming inside the structure. It all looked very colorful, and reminded me of the rainforest, or what little I’d seen of it on TV.
“There!” Dooley suddenly cried, and pointed with his paw in the direction of the verandah.
I glanced over, and discovered he was right. What initially I’d taken for another flower turned out to be a very large bird of colorful plumage instead. It had red plumes, but also green ones and blue ones and yellow ones. As if a kid had been given a box of crayons and told to draw the most vivid and most colorful bird imaginable.
We moved closer to the house, and I saw that a window in the verandah was ajar, so we hopped up onto the garden table and I put my face against the crack. “Hey, there,” I said by way of introduction. “Is your name by any chance Camilla?”
The parrot slowly turned in my direction, a visible frown on her face. “Who’s asking?”
“I’m Max,” I said. “And I would like to have a word with you, Mrs. Parrot.”
“I’m not a parrot,” said the parrot. “I’m a macaw.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Macaw.”
“Who’s that scrawny mongrel next to you, big cat?” asked the macaw.
“That’s Dooley. He’s my friend and also a detective, just like me.”
“A detective, eh? Now that’s a first. Most cats I know are hunters. Killers.”
“We’re not that kind of cats,” I assured her. “In fact I can’t even remember the last time I did any hunting. Or killing, for that matter.”
“No, I guess you prefer your meals straight from the can or aluminum pouch.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So the thing is, we would like to pick your brain, Mrs. Macaw.”
“You want to do what with my brain?” asked the parrot—or macaw.
“Pick it,” I said. “You know, like, pick your brain.”
“I knew it. Stay away from me, cat. And don’t come anywhere near my brain. I like my brain just the way it is, and don’t want it picked to pieces, if it’s all the same to you.”
“No, it’s just an expression,” I said. “All we want to do is ask you a couple of questions, that’s all. There will be no picking of brains going on. No brain business whatsoever.”
“She thinks we’re Hannibal Lecter, Max,” said Dooley, seated beside me and following the conversation with rapt attention. “She thinks we like to eat brains.”
“We do not want to eat your brain,” I said, just to make my meaning perfectly clear. “No brain will be eaten in the course of this interview. We just want to, um, consult it.”
“Download it,” Dooley added.
“She doesn’t know what downloading is, Dooley. She’s obviously very, very old, and probably has never even seen a computer.”