“I thought so,” Frank said with a grunt of satisfaction. “Selfish to a degree; that’s the Tom I know.”
“I’m not selfish,” I protested, but I knew he had me licked. It’s not just that Zack provides me with all the necessaries like food and shelter, I’m also quite partial to the way he tickles me under my chin and strokes my whiskers. And the way he fluffs up my pillow each time before I take a nap is also one of those things that endears him to me in ways that I find hard to describe to anyone but my closest friends. I do believe he loves me, if you catch my drift, and I have to admit to being quite fond of the big oaf as well.
“Look, that’s neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that Zack is not the one going around being stabbed in parks at night. He’s too smart to ever get himself entangled with a cold-blooded murderer like that. And for one thing, the woman was cheating on her husband, so…”
Frank cocked an eye.“And that makes it all right for her to be whacked by some psycho in the local park?”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” I said quickly. Oh, boy, I really was sinking deeper and deeper into the quagmire. Perhaps I should just shut my big mouth and move on before I really got myself into trouble with the furry arm of the law. “What I meant was that…” To tell you the truth, I didn’t really know what I meant.
“Right,” said Frank. “Not only selfish to a degree, but also sexist. I see.”
“Look, I understand the desire to make a character study of my person, but don’t you have something better to do? Like to search for men with pimples on the tips of their noses? I’m sure Dana told you about that telling detail?”
Frank nodded, his ears flopping to and fro as he did.“She did, indeed. But I was hoping to extract some more details from you. Like what kind of clothes was he wearing? What color was his hair, his eyes, his face? Was he tall? Small? Fat? Skinny? What did he smell like?”
On and on the interrogation went. I supplied the good Poodle with all the details I could remember and finally, after what seemed like an interminable delay, I was finally released from Frank’s scrutinizing gaze, and allowed to go on my merry way.
It still puzzled me a great deal why this self-appointed upholder of the law would go to all the trouble of conducting a police investigation in what clearly was a human affair, when my progress towards the kibble trough was halted once again. By then I’d reached the edge of the park and was trotting down the sidewalk, having once more managed to relegate the sordid details of the recent affair to the back of my mind.
A sudden hiss arrested my attention, and when I turned to verify its source, I found myself staring into the eyes of Brutus, my nemesis, staring back at me from the shrubbery.
4
Meet the Bully
Brutus, as you may or may not know, is the Persian belonging to Royce Moppett, Zack’s next-door neighbor, and between us a warm enmity had sprung up from the first time we met. I don’t know what it is about Brutus, but apart from the fact that he’s a mean-spirited, bullying nosy parker, I guess I simply don’t like him. And the feeling was obviously mutual.
“Hey, fattie!” he now hissed from the shrubbery.
Not deigning to respond to this insulting salutation, I continued on my way.
“Hey! Meatball!”
Turning a deaf ear, I held my tail up high, and pranced away. Unfortunately, before I had proceeded ten feet, the menace had joined me and fallen into step at my side.
“Why don’t you listen when I talk to you?” he said plaintively, as if I had done him an injustice.
“Oh, you were talking to me, then?” I said, feigning surprise. “Well, seeing that my name is Tom—Tommy for my closest cronies—and not ‘fattie’ or ‘meatball’, I just assumed you were talking to yourself again. You do have a habit of soliloquizing, you know.”
“Wise guy,” Brutus said in a low voice. “I wanted to talk to you, Tommy.” Somehow he always managed to pronounce my name as if it was a dirty word.
“No one is stopping you, Brutus.”
“What’s all this I hear about you reporting a murder in the park?”
I rolled my eyes at this incorrect representation of the facts.“For one thing, I never reported any murder. Who’s been feeding you lies? One of your loathsome friends?”
Brutus has the most abhorrent circle of cronies. A bunch of repellent yes-cats that answers to his every beck and call as if he were the leader of a gang of sorts. Which, now that I come to think of it, he probably is.
“I got it from Ricky,” he growled, “who got it from Rufus, who got it from Candy, who was there when Dana told the whole story to Frank, that wannabe copper. Some dame got whacked and you and Dana were there when it happened, and saw the whole thing.”
I admitted to having been an eyewitness to the events he’d just described, but made strong objection to the use of the term ‘whacked’. Frank’s words had really rung a bell with me and I’d now come to consider the woman being murdered with the proper compassion she undoubtedly deserved.
Too true, I now saw, that being unfaithful is no reason to find oneself on the receiving end of a very large and very sharp knife. If everyone who has ever cheated on his wife or husband would meet with the same fate, the world would probably be a lot less populated than it is now.
“Now, tell me something. Was it a big knife?” said Brutus, his eyes gleaming with a strange light.
“I—”
“Was there a lot of blood? Did it spout from the vic like a geyser?”
“I really—”
“Is it true that the killer licked the knife clean? And that he howled like a werewolf when the light of the full moon lit up his savagely contorted face; half human, half beast?”
“Oh, please,” I said, disgusted. Somewhere between Candy, Rufus and Ricky, the story had obviously taken a turn for the fantastic. Cats will be cats, and embellishments will find their way into any tale they tell. “Nothing of the kind. What do you think this is, Werewolf High? All Dana and I saw was some guy stab some woman and do a disappearing act with the mortal remains. No licking or howling was involved.”
Brutus seemed disappointed.“You always were a spoilsport,” he grunted, indicating he held me personally responsible for ruining a perfectly good story by telling the truth.
“Look, I don’t see what the big deal is,” I said. “They’re humans. They’re prone to violence. They’re not as levelheaded and intelligent a species as we are and they will go around causing all manner of murder and mayhem. It has happened before and it will happen again.”
“Not in Brookridge Park, it hasn’t,” said Brutus. “Frank said this is the first time something like this has ever happened around here.”
“Oh, puh-lease,” I said. “And what about that girl who fell from a tree last fall? Broke her neck and died on the spot.”
“Accidental death,” said Brutus with a touch of wistfulness. “Not a killer in sight, not even a small one.”
“Or the boy who fell through the ice on the Brookridge Park pond? Didn’t he die?”
“No, some idiot dove in and saved him. And, again, no one pushed him. He fell in all by his idiot self. No, this really is the first time a real, juicy murder has happened in this little nook of the world, and you and Dana were the only ones to see it.” He eyed me with the green eye of jealousy. “Of all the cats… And to think I would have been there if not for Ricky getting his tail entangled in those nasty bridge-side brambles.”
Brutus had touched on a point of much contention between us.“That elm tree is mine, Brutus, and you know it.”
“Trees don’t belong to anyone, fathead.”
“Well, that one does and everyone knows it. Don’t you ever stop and smell the bark?”
“I do, and then I take a leak right on top of it.”