“Is he here?”
“No, he’s in New York. Chickie has been coming and going to his studio for the past couple of months. I know because I’m the one who’s been driving her.”
Odelia smiled. “Tell me honestly, Tyson—you have heard the new songs, haven’t you? And you’ve been secretly recording them and sending them to Laron Weskit.”
“No! I would never do that, Miss Poole. You have to believe me. All I did was keep an eye on the record executives Chickie was in negotiation with. Laron was still hoping to reach an understanding with her. Make a new deal. He wanted to know if he still had a chance. These big players have deep pockets, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep up.”
“Is Laron in town?”
“Yes, he and his wife are staying at the Hampton Cove Star. Charlie Dieber, who’s under contract with Laron, is being offered some kind of award. Keys to the city.”
“So Charlie and Laron are both staying at the Star,” said Odelia pensively.
“I guess so.”
Odelia nodded, and I could tell what she was thinking: time to pay a visit to Laron and Charlie, and find out what they’d been up to.
“One last question,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Poole.”
“Can you definitely rule out the possibility that an intruder managed to get past security and murder your employer?”
He stared at her for a moment, then heaved a deep sigh. “No. I know I should probably lie and tell you such a contingency is out of the question, but that’s not the case. Theoretically there’s always a chance someone managed to sneak in unseen and out again, killing Miss Hay in the process. But the chance of that happening is very slim.”
“But there is a chance?”
“There’s always a chance, yes, whatever any security expert might tell you.”
Odelia returned indoors while the bodyguard stayed rooted in place, eagerly drawing from his cigarette. The man had just admitted something he probably shouldn’t have.
“If this is true, anyone could have come in and murdered Chickie,” said Dooley.
“Yes, any old prowler could have killed her,” I agreed.
And then a strange sound reached my ears. It seemed to come from the other side of the house. And as Dooley and I went in search of its source, we were met by Harriet and Brutus, who’d noticed the same thing. It came from across the fence, so Dooley quickly scaled it, followed by Brutus and Harriet. The only one who wasn’t scaling it was me.
Look, I’ve lost weight recently. A lot of weight. To the extent that I now fit through the pet flap again. But that still doesn’t make me the skinniest cat on the planet—the kind of cat that scales fences with effortless ease.
“What’s going on?” I yelled to my three friends.
“Come up here and see for yourself!” Harriet yelled back.
I stared at the fence. It was conveniently covered in ivy and looked scalable. So I took a deep breath, and put my first paw on the ivy, then slowly but gradually moved up until I’d reached my friends. And I was so over the moon with my heroic effort that I almost didn’t notice the strange young man who stood singing a famous Chickie song below us. He was also lobbing long-stemmed red roses over the fence for some strange reason.
And just when I thought he’d go away, he walked up to the gate and started banging it with his fists, then started actually crawling up the sturdy thing!
It swung open, though, and soon three burly men descended upon him and grabbed him. And then Chase joined them and before the man could utter another bar of the Chickie Hay song, he’d been cuffed and escorted in. The gate closed, and soon all was quiet again. And when I glanced around, I understood why all was so quiet: I was alone up there on that fence. And down below, Harriet, Brutus and Dooley sat staring up at me.
“What are you doing still doing up there, Max?” asked Harriet. “Get down here!”
Easier said than done. I had absolutely no idea how to get down from my perch.
Chapter 12
The experience wasn’t new to me. Usually my bugaboos are tops of trees, or roofs of houses, but the fence was a novelty. Still, it boiled down to the same thing: I was stuck.
I could have jumped, of course, considering the nine lives things and all, but that fence was easily six feet high, and I’ve never harbored a death wish in my life.
“Max! Get down!” Dooley encouraged me.
“I can’t!” I shouted back. “I’m stuck!”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Max,” said Brutus. “Just get down here.”
“Funny, isn’t it!” I replied.
“What is?”
“Usually the two of us are stuck together!”
He chuckled. “You’re right. That is funny.”
Or maybe not.
“I guess we better ask Chase to get you down,” said Harriet with a sigh of annoyance.
“Oh, no, please don’t,” I said.
“Why? What do you have against Chase?”
“Nothing. I’m just embarrassed that he keeps having to save me.”
“You can’t stay up there, Max,” Harriet pointed out with infallible logic.
“What’s going on?” asked Mark the Peacock as he came prancing up.
“Max is stuck on top of your fence,” Brutus explained. “He can’t get down.”
“What are you doing there, cat?!” the peacock shouted.
“Taking in the view, Mark,” I shouted back.
“Who’s this Mark you’re talking about?”
“I thought your name was Mark?”
“My name is Hannibal,” he said. “But my friends all call me Hanny.”
“Well, Hanny, if you have an idea how to get a cat down from a fence…” said Harriet.
“Let me give it some thought,” said Hanny. And he wandered off to exercise his little gray cells.
Next was the little doggie. “What’s Max doing up there?” he asked.
“Hi, Boyce Catt!” I said. “I need a ladder. Can you help me out?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Boyce Catt, and went off in search of a ladder.
“This is silly,” said Harriet. “Chase will happily get you down from there. Chase!” she shouted, and disappeared before I could stop her.
“Now that there’s no chance of you blabbing about it, I don’t mind revealing who killed Chickie Hay,” said Brutus. He paused for effect, then said, “It was Jamie Borowiak.”
“According to our information she and Chickie made peace this morning,” said Dooley. “And Chickie’s bodyguard says Chickie was alive after Jamie left.”
“Shoot,” said Brutus. “And here I thought we’d cracked the case.”
“The case remains uncracked,” Dooley said. “But Odelia has a lead. She thinks a man named Laron Weskit might have done it. So there’s that.”
“Did you give her that lead?”
“I guess we did.”
“Again, shoot,” said Brutus. “Harriet won’t like this.”
“Why is she so competitive about this?” I asked from my position on top of the fence.
“Oh, I don’t know. She feels she should be the number one sleuth, mainly because she’s a girl, and Odelia is a girl, and Gran is a girl, and then it’s all girls together, see?”
“No, I don’t see,” said Dooley, and frankly I didn’t see it either.
“So they can be a team. Harriet, Odelia and Gran. Like Charlie’s Angels? Three girls fighting crime. Harriet saw the movie and now she wants to be the third angel.”
“Why?” asked Dooley, clearly puzzled.
“I’m not sure. She says it’s feminism.”
“So who’s Charlie?” asked Dooley.
“Some old, rich guy,” said Brutus.
“So feminism is an old, rich guy who tells three women what to do?”
“I guess. You better ask Harriet, though. She knows all about it.” He stretched. “Anyway, I guess our work here is done, so it’s back to the homestead for us.”
“Odelia and Chase are still busy figuring things out, though.”
“They don’t need us to do that, Dooley.”
“I think they do.”
“Listen to me, Dooley,” said Brutus, placing a brotherly paw on Dooley’s shoulder. “There’s a point when we cats stop being useful to our humans. A point where they say ‘Thank you very much, cats, but we’ll take it from here.’ And this is just such a point.”