“Let’s talk to the peacock, Dooley,” I said, turning away from the duo.
“He won’t tell you a thing!” Harriet called out after me.
I turned back. “And why is that?”
“We made him sign a Nondisclosure Agreement,” said Brutus. “An NDA as I call it.”
“Everybody calls it an NDA, Brutus,” I said. “And how can you make a peacock sign an NDA? You don’t even have pen and paper.”
“It’s a figure of speech,” said Harriet. “We told him not to tell you what he told us.”
“But why?” asked Dooley, still looking puzzled by all this subterfuge.
“Why do you think? May the best cat win, Dooley.”
“And get all the tasty kibble and gourmet food,” Brutus added, licking his lips.
And then they were off, presumably in search of Odelia to deliver her the good news about the MOAC and the VIC, though perhaps not about the NDA.
After a moment, Dooley said, “Maybe you were right, Max. Maybe Brutus and Harriet haven’t lost their competitive streak after all.”
So we redoubled our efforts to find Peacock Number Two (or PNT). And I’d almost given up hope when we finally found it. PNT was strutting its stuff near a nice pond where I could see several fishes of exotic gillage flitting agilely through the water.
Any other cat would have stared at those fishes, eager to dip a paw in to try and catch one, but not me, and not Dooley. We’re made of sterner stuff, and so we forewent the fishes and focused on the peacock instead.
“Hi, Mr. or Mrs. Peacock,” I said as an introductory remark. “A word, please?”
The peacock rolled its beady little eyes. “Not again,” it said. “I just told those other cats everything I know and I’m not going to say it a second time.”
I was disappointed that this was not PNT but PNO. Still, I decided not to show it.
It’s like that age-old advice when facing a predator: never show fear, because the predator will smell your fear and attack. When faced with a possible witness in a murder investigation the same principle applies: never show disappointment. Act as if you’re one of those know-it-all detectives. Let nothing the potential witness says faze you.
“So where were you on the night of the fifteenth?” asked Dooley, who apparently had been watching too many cop shows recently, on top of his Discovery Channel binges.
“What my friend means to say is, where were you when Miss Hay was murdered?” I asked, hoping to break Harriet and Brutus’s imposed NDA.
“Like I told your friends, I was right here, minding my own business, not getting involved in human affairs. Never get involved in human affairs,” PNO admonished us.
“I’m sorry, but are you a he or a she?” asked Dooley, incapable of curbing his curiosity.
“First let me see some ID,” said the peacock. “Who are you cats?”
“I’m Max, and this is Dooley,” I said. “And I’m afraid we left our ID cards at home.”
“I’m a he, and so is he,” Dooley added, just to make matters crystal clear.
“In lieu of an ID we do have microchips implanted in our necks,” I said. “So if you have a device capable of reading chips, you will be able to glean all there is to know about us, including but not limited to the name and address of our human and other valuable personal information.”
“Okay, fine,” said the big bird a little grumpily, “So what do you want to know? Oh, right, my gender. Well, if you must know, I find your question insulting. Why do I have to choose a gender? Why can’t I simply be gender-fluid? Maybe today I feel like a girl, and tomorrow I feel like a boy. Why does society try to pin me down on one or the other?”
This momentarily rendered Dooley and me speechless, but my friend quickly recovered. That’s what all that Discovery Channel watching does. It makes one resilient, and ready to take the vicissitudes of life and the animal kingdom in particular in stride.
“So what’s your name, sir or lady?” he asked now.
The peacock shrugged. “Arnold,” they said. “Or maybe Rose. Or Jasper. Or Francine. I consider myself name-fluid, which means that based on how I feel at any given moment I choose the name I like to use. And there’s nothing you or society can do about it.”
“Isn’t that… a little confusing?” I asked, but the thundercloud that suddenly contorted the bird’s face into an expression of displeasure told me I’d made another faux-pas.
“Maybe it’s confusing to you, but that’s probably because you’re a fluidphobic bigot. And if you don’t know what that means, I’ll tell you. You, sir, are a hater of fluids.”
“I think Max likes fluids,” said Dooley. “Mainly water, though. Milk, not so much.”
The bird raised itself to its full height, which was considerable, and already its ruffled feathers were starting to rise up. “Are you making fun of me? Is that what this is?”
I decided to try and defuse the situation. “So… it’s Francine then, is it?” I asked.
“I feel like a Franklin right now, so call me Franklin,” they said with a toss of the head.
“Great. So, Franklin, can you tell us anything pertaining to the murder of Chickie Hay who was, I presume, your human?”
“Never presume anything,” said Franklin. “Just because she took me under her wing, and fed me and took care of me doesn’t make her ‘my’ human.”
“It doesn’t?” asked Dooley.
“Of course not! That’s such a paternalistic thing to say. She was my fellow living creature, and I loved and respected her, but that doesn’t mean she was superior to me, or assumed a position of control over me. She was ‘a’ human but not ‘my’ human.”
“Fine,” I said, starting to find this conversation a little trying. “So what can you tell us about ‘a’ human named Chickie Hay and her recent demise?”
“She was nice,” said the bird, momentarily looking off with a dreamy expression in their eyes. “She respected me as an individual, and never tried to impose the rigid strictures and structures of society on me. And only yesterday she had a big, great, giant row with her former best friend Jamie.”
“Jamie Borowiak? The singer?” I asked.
“That’s the one.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“Boys, of course,” said the peacock with a very expressive roll of the eyes. “What else? Jamie claimed that Chickie had tried to steal her boyfriend and Chickie claimed she’d known Charlie for so long the argument could be made that it was in fact Jamie who stole her boyfriend from her instead. It all ended with a big brawl and then Jamie stalked off and said she never wanted to clap eyes on Chickie ever again, and Chickie said that Jamie was dead to her and she hated her and hoped she choked and died.” Franklin cocked an eyebrow at me. “But then Jamie returned this morning for a do-over of yesterday’s fight, and this time she killed Chickie.”
I was a little taken aback by this. “What, you actually witnessed the murder?”
“Not witness it, exactly. But I saw Jamie, and I heard her exchange heated words with Chickie in Chickie’s dance studio. So my conclusion is that Jamie is Chickie’s killer.”
“Thank you, Franklin,” I said, excited by this information. “That’s very—”
“Um, the name is Immaculata,” said the peacock. “The name just came to me.”
“Well, thanks, Immaculata. The information is really—”
“Or better yet, call me Sookie.”
“Thanks, Sookie.”
“Or… how about Doogie?”
That was the moment we decided to part ways, before the name-challenged Arnold-Rose-Jasper-Francine-Franklin-Immaculata-Sookie-Doogie drove us completely bananas.
Chapter 7
While Uncle Alec guarded the body and waited for the coroner to show up, Odelia and Chase had decided to tackle the interviews together. The first person they talked to was the housekeeper, as she’d been the one to find the singer. The room they’d been allocated was right next to the rehearsal space, and was a conference room, where Chickie probably conducted meetings with her team. On the wall several gold and platinum disks had been placed, along with plenty of posters of her successful tours.