As far as I could see I was now partnered up to the hilt with not one but two undesirables. Though I had to admit Stevie was growing on me. Throughout our nightly vigil I had even grown to like the hairy blabbermouth. I just wondered how he would respond to this sudden extension of our duo to a trio. On the other hand, seeing as this espionage business could get dangerous, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea to have a known strongcat on our team. If Dana had her Peterbalds, we had Brutus. And though I was still feeling positively dubious about this latest development, it was with a lighter heart that I descended from the Moppett bench and made my way home.
22
Dana Drops By
Arriving home, I did the eating and drinking bit, but somehow that didn’t satisfy me. And as I munched down another piece of kibble, I remembered how Zack always likes to sleep late. Perhaps if I could just test my ‘planting thoughts’ abilities on him for a bit, I could find out some more about the mystery that was puzzling me. I would never say a bad word aboutthe guy—he is, after all, the hand that feeds—but it is a well-established fact in Brookridge that Zack is not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. And I had this theory that his weaker intellect would yield more readily to my newfound powers of psychic persuasion.
I trotted upstairs and found my lord and master tangled up in his bed sheets, as usual. I hopped up on the bed and made myself comfortable at the foot, where Zack has placed a sheet for me. I first scanned his dreams. Not surprisingly, they dealt mainly with food and women, Zack’s two main interests in life. At this moment the Don Juan was entertaining a remarkably pretty girl during dinner in some fancy restaurant. Unlike real life, Zack had the girl in convulsions by directing at her an endless stream of witty banter, while dozens of waiters hurried to and fro, carrying laden trays with the most delicious foodstuffs imaginable. Talk about wishful dreaming.
Unfortunately, the dream held Zack so strongly in its grip that when I tried to introduce the Bluebell theme into the conversation, it was met with a stoic refusal. I tried again, by whispering the curious name in Zack’s mental ear, but the waiters kept on strewing roast chicken from their proverbial hats and Zack moved his odd brand of eloquence into higher gear by asking the girl if she liked cats and, being informed that she did, starting waxing eloquent on… me.
I was touched, of course, and since it’s always nice to listen to a seemingly endless stream of compliments, I momentarily lost all interest in the mission and drifted off into a refreshing sleep, myself. I don’t know whatI dreamt about, but I have a hunch it had something to do with being the birthday cat at some fancy dinner party thrown in my honor.
It was probably late when I woke up, what with having been through the most eventful night in my young life. And what woke me wasn’t the chirping of the birds or Zack heaving his large frame out of bed, but the sensation that someone was staring at me. When I opened my eyes I discovered I wasn’t far from the truth: Dana was sitting not three feet away from me, studying me intently.
“Huh?” I said, my keen feline brain springing into action.
She merely shook her head in what I would describe as a censorious fashion.
“What’s going on?” I said, as I smacked my lips and suppressed a yawn.
“How you can sleep, at a time like this, is beyond me,” were her opening words.
I shook my head to clear out the cobwebs. I know you humans like to think cats are never fully asleep, that our razor sharp senses are constantly on the alert, that with the flick of a claw we are wide awake, ready to face any danger, and respond to any contingency with an alacrity that seems almost preternatural.
While this is perhaps the case with most cats, I like to put in my twenty hours of shut-eye and prefer not to be disturbed while doing so. FSA principals bothering me at home while I’m catching my Z’s are not well received, and I gave Dana both the glare and the puckered face as I tried to adjust my faculties.
Perhaps it’s living with a notorious lazybones like Zack that has eroded my natural impulses, but I like to think sleep is a necessary instrument for restoring the tissues and keeping oneself functioning at top level.
“What do you want?” I said, not enjoying this habit of Dana’s to give me the third degree every time we met.
“Something has happened,” she said, still staring at me with that look of mild reproach.
“So?” I said. “Something always does.”
“There’s been a second murder.”
23
Startling Revelations
I started.“What? Where? When?”
“Last night, while you were sleeping,” she said tersely.
I drew myself up to my full height.“I wasn’t sleeping last night,” I said with as much hauteur as I could manage on the spur of the moment. “I was… investigating.”
She scoffed.“Of course you were.”
“I was!” I exclaimed, now truly offended. Not only had this cat the gall to enter my personal space uninvited, she came loaded with all kinds of unfounded accusations. “In fact, Stevie and I discovered several extremely valuable clues!”
She seemed unimpressed.“And did any of those ‘extremely valuable clues’ point to the Brookridge Park serial killer?”
I gulped.“Serial killer?”
She nodded.“The same thing happened again. Under the same tree.”
“But how do you know it was the same guy?”
“Because someone saw what happened and described the killer as a fellow with a large and distinct pimple on the nose. Furthermore, he and the victim—a girl named Jamie Burrow—were practicing what sounds like the same scene from the Murder in the Park play, when he suddenly took out a big, shiny knife from the recesses of his costume and laid into her.”
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, yes,” she said, a twinge of pain now marring her furry face.
“Jamie Burrow… she was Lucy Knicx’s understudy for the Zoe Huckleberry part.”
She looked up, surprised.“How do you know?”
“Stevie and I paid a visit to Father Sam’s study last night—he’s directing the play, you know—and Stevie said Jamie Burrow would be replacing Lucy in the play. She’d been coming by a couple of times.”
Dana looked up at this, visibly surprised, then nodded.“Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”
“Oh, all right,” I said, as casually as I could, though inwardly I felt as proud as a peacock. Seems like those Peterbalds didn’t give full satisfaction after all. Of course, that’s what you get when hiring the pure muscle: all brawn and no brains. Then, since thinking about brawn and brains reminded me too much of my recent encounter with Brutus, I banished all thoughts of muscle heads altogether and focused on Dana. She was saying something about grass blades.
“Uh-huh,” I said, trying to sound as intelligent as I knew how. Grass blades have never been one of my favorite subjects, though I do enjoy them after a heavy meal.
“From the way the grass was flattened, it’s clear she was carried all the way from the tree to the pond and then dumped in.”
She was moving at a good pace and I had to make an effort to keep up. One of the disadvantages of being big is that it takes more energy to move from point A to point B. Something to do with an apple and a guy called Newton.“Dumped in?” I repeated, panting a little.
“Just like Lucy Knicx,” she said. “Too bad the witness didn’t have the nerve to stay the killer’s hand.”
“Your crew wasn’t in place, then?” I said, as innocently as possible.
She gave me a bemused frown.“Crew? What crew?”
“Those heavies I saw before,” I said. When she looked at me as if I was speaking dog, I elaborated. “Three ugly-looking and very unfriendly Peterbalds?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said finally. “I canvased the scene all by myself, though Frank dropped by later on to see if there was anything he could do.”