Purrfect Life

  The Mysteries of Max 42

  Nic Saint

  Puss in Books

  Contents

  Purrfect Life

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  About Nic

  Also by Nic Saint

  Purrfect Life

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  Baker Street Cats

  My name is Dooley and I’m a ragamuffin. I’m also Max’s best friend, and because he’s my best friend, he asked me to write this introduction to our new mystery. I’ve never written an introduction before, so I hope you’ll forgive me if it’s not very good. Okay, let’s begin. So first there was the woman who was murdered on the beach. Chase didn’t know who killed her, and because he really wanted to find out, he went on television and asked people if they could help him.

  Then there was the blackmail. A very nice woman named Rosa Bond was being blackmailed about a dark secret in her past, and so she asked Odelia to help her. And it worked. Well, more or less. The next day the blackmailer was found dead. The good news was that Rosa got her money back. The bad news was that he was murdered, which isn’t very nice. Also, now we had to try and catch the killer, which is a lot of work. A lot of talking to a lot of people and asking them a lot of very personal questions. Good thing Chase is a cop. When people don’t want to talk he can arrest them.

  And then there was the boy who drowned in the pool. And this is where I got confused. Was he murdered or not? Some people said he was, and others said that he wasn’t. And for a while even Max didn’t know, which is weird, since he’s the smartest cat I know. Lucky for us (and for Rosa Bond) he finally figured it out. I just knew he would. Max is my hero. Even when things look pretty hopeless, and Chase has to go on television to ask people to help him, Max figures it out. I don’t know how he does it. Brutus says it’s because he has a big head. I don’t know if that’s true.

  Well, I think that’s it. I wanted to tell you who the murderer was but Max said I shouldn’t. He says it would spoil the fun. I don’t know what’s so funny about murder, but then I guess Max knows best. Did I mention he’s very clever? And now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Discovery Channel to watch. There’s a very interesting documentary on about tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets. I think I’m going to enjoy that. Moss piglets. Is it a piece of moss that looks like a piglet or a piglet that likes to eat moss? I have absolutely no idea, but I’m going to find out!

  Chapter 1

  We were all gathered in the living room of the cozy little home we share with Odelia and her husband Chase, enjoying the evening watching television as we often do. Only this evening was special, since it was the first time Chase was to appear on TV.

  For this auspicious occasion the whole clan had gathered: Odelia and Chase, of course, but also Odelia’s mom and dad, and her grandmother. Even Uncle Alec was there, with his girlfriend Charlene, and Gran’s friend Scarlett. In other words: we were entertaining a full house, and were lucky to have found ourselves a place right in front of the television, awaiting the big debut. With us I am of course referring to myself, but also to Dooley, my best friend and a Ragamuffin of the noblest kind, Harriet, a white Persian who belongs to Odelia’s mom Marge, and Brutus, that black butch cat who belongs to Chase. Though let’s not split hairs: in the Poole household, nobody actually belongs to anybody. In fact it wouldn’t be unfair to say that we all belong to each other, since we all like to do what we can to further the investigations that have put Odelia on the crime-fighting map in Hampton Cove, the small town on the East Coast we like to call home.

  Another reason for the family to celebrate was that they’d finally managed to get rid of their house guest. Following one of my less inspired interventions, a man named Rudolph Vickery had been staying with us. He was Wilbur Vickery’s brother, one of our local shopkeepers, and an aspiring musician, having chosen the heavy metal genre as a potential career path. Unfortunately he didn’t possess a great deal of talent. Still, since he had now decided that to further his musical career he had to be in LA, we had wished him good luck—and in fact I think these good wishes came from the bottom of everyone’s heart, since no one wanted to ever see the man’s face again.

  “Popcorn, anyone?” asked Uncle Alec, returning from the kitchen with two big bowls of steaming hot popcorn. “They’re hot and fresh from the oven.”

  “You’re making it sound as if we’re going to watch an entire movie with Chase in the lead,” Gran grumbled. “It’s only a short interview, Alec. Blink and you’ll miss it.”

  “It’s Chase’s big television premiere, Ma,” said Uncle Alec as he let himself fall down onto the couch next to Charlene and handed her the second bowl.

  “Did they make you wear makeup, honey?” asked Marge with a touch of concern in her voice. “I’ve heard that sometimes they put on so much makeup you end up looking completely different. It’s to make sure you don’t look shiny,” she added as an explanation.

  “No makeup,” said Chase curtly as he dipped into the bowl of popcorn and sampled one or two kernels before settling back and fiddling with the remote.

  “You see, when you’re on TV, all your little skin blemishes are enhanced,” Marge explained to the others, who weren’t really listening. Charlene was checking her smartphone, no doubt making some last-minute important decisions, like whether to plant fuchsias or roses in the municipal flower beds—Charlene is the mayor of our town, you see, and always busy-busy-busy. And Scarlett, too, was smiling and tapping on her smartphone, presumably chatting with one of her many male admirers.

  “Will you cut that out,” Gran grumbled, taking her friend’s phone away.

  “Hey, I wasn’t finished,” Scarlett protested.

  “You’re finished now,” said Gran. “It’s Chase’s big debut. And it doesn’t happen every day that a member of this family is live on television.”

  “He won’t be live, Ma,” said Tex. He turned to his son-in-law. “When did you tape this, Chase?”

  “This afternoon,” said Chase. “Just after we found Josslyn Aldridge’s body.”

  “So soon? But why?” asked Marge, who’s always interested in the minutiae of Chase’s police investigations. Being a librarian, she has an important role to play in the local community, providing fresh gossip to all who visit the library, which is a large contingent on normal days, and even more when a tragic event like a murder has taken place.

  “It’s probably a mugging gone wrong,” said Uncle Alec. “And from experience we know that it’s very difficult to solve cases like this, especially when there are no witnesses.”

  The woman Uncle Alec was referring to had been found on the beach by one of those people who like to go for a jog first thing in the morning. I’d never want to be seen dead going for a jog, especially that early, but then again I’m a cat. We don’t go in for sports.

  Josslyn Aldridge had been found next to a concrete staircase leading down from the boardwalk to the beach. The coroner ascertained that her head had been smashed against that concrete staircase. And since her purse was missing, and later found nearby, minus the woman’s wallet, it stood to reason that the police was now looking for the mugger.

  “Was she local?” asked Charlene, her business apparently concluded.

  “A tourist,” said Chase, who was heading up the investigation. “I talked to her friend, and they came down here for a one-week vacation, arriving in town two days ago.”

  “Oh, that’s so sad,” said Marge. “Where was she from?”

  “Middletown, Ohio.”

  “And you have no idea who did this to her?” asked Tex with a frown. He seemed anxious to see his tax dollars not go to waste on fruitless police investigations.

  “No, her friend told us that she happened to bump into an old work colleague that morning, and had arranged to have a drink, to talk about old times, but when she woke up this morning, and her friend’s bed had not been slept in, she sounded the alarm.”

  “Do you think this colleague might have something to do with it?” asked Odelia.

  “I doubt it,” said Chase. “Like the Chief said, it’s probably a mugging gone wrong. She must have met up with this colleague, then taken a stroll along the boardwalk when she ran afoul of a mugger who forced her down those steps where he proceeded to grab her purse. She must have put up a fight, and that’s when he gave her a shove, her head hit the concrete steps, and when the mugger saw that she was dead, he panicked and ran off.”

  “Sad business,” said Marge, shaking her head.

  “And bad for tourism,” Charlene added with a grim look on her fac
e. “I hope you catch the bastard quickly, Alec.”

  “Oh, we will,” Uncle Alec assured her.

  “Ooh! It’s about to start, you guys!” said Scarlett, pointing with one of her long-nailed fingers to the screen, where a picture of the unfortunate tourist had appeared, while the newscaster reiterated the events as Chase had already outlined them. Josslyn Aldridge was in her early sixties, with gray curly hair, and a sort of startled look on her face.

  “Where did they get that horrible picture?” Marge muttered.

  “We got it from her friend,” said Chase. “It was the only one she could give us on such short notice.”

  And then the moment had come: Chase was on TV, being interviewed by a peppy young blonde, who seemed fresh out of school, holding a microphone under his nose.

  “You were right, Chase, honey,” said Marge. “They didn’t use makeup.”

  “Look how shiny his face is,” said Gran. “It looks like an ice skating rink.”

  “Gran is right, Max,” said Dooley. “He does look very shiny.”

  “It was a warm day today, Dooley,” I said. “And when humans sweat, they shine.”

  “I’m not sure makeup would have helped,” said Scarlett. “It might have made things worse.”

  “Will you shut up,” Uncle Alec growled. “You’re missing Chase’s big moment.”

  “So we’d like to ask that the colleague Josslyn had arranged to meet comes forward as soon as possible and gets in touch with us,” Chase was saying on TV, looking straight into the camera now. “So we can reconstruct the last hours of her life, and hopefully catch the person responsible for this terrible crime.”

  “Don’t you have a name for this colleague?” asked Marge.

  Chase shook his head. “Josslyn never said, and Sadie didn’t think it was important to ask.”

  “Sadie?”

  “Josslyn’s friend.”

  “Oh, right,” said Marge.

  “I think he looks good on screen,” said Scarlett. “Don’t you think he looks good on screen, Vesta?”

  “His head looks big,” said Gran.

  “That’s because he’s on camera. They say the camera adds ten pounds.”

  “Well I think he looks great,” said Odelia, patting her hubby on the arm. “In fact I think he looks amazing and he’s doing a great job.”

  “Thanks, babe,” Chase grunted.

  “Why is he pulling at his nose, Max?” asked Dooley.

  “Probably because he’s nervous,” said Brutus. “People who aren’t used to being interviewed on camera always get nervous, and start doing stuff like pulling their noses or pulling their ears, or sweating and looking shiny.”

  We watched as Chase first pulled his nose, then pulled his ear, then pulled his nose again. All while looking very shiny indeed.

  “He looks very shifty,” said Harriet. “If I didn’t know any better I would have thought he was the mugger.”

  “Yeah, well, the man is a cop, smoochie poo,” said Brutus. “Not a professional actor.”

  “That’s true,” Harriet admitted.

  “He just needs a little more training. I’ll bet that if he does another dozen of these interviews he’ll be a real pro.”

  “Let’s hope not,” I said, “because a dozen interviews also means a dozen crimes for which they need to ask the public for its assistance.”

  And then the show was over. Almost before it had begun. Gran was right. Blink and you missed it.

  “That’s it?” asked Scarlett. “Isn’t there any more?”

  “Nope, that’s it,” said Chase, heaving a sigh of relief. In spite of his stoic appearance clearly the burly cop had been nervous about his first television appearance.

  “Are you sure?” said Marge. “Maybe there will be more after the commercial break?”

  “They said they’ll repeat the appeal in their late-night newsflash, and again tomorrow morning.”

  “Well, let’s hope we get some good tips from that,” said Uncle Alec.

  “And let’s hope this colleague has been watching,” said Odelia, “and will come forward.”

  “It’s going to be a terrible shock for the man,” said Marge, “when he finds out that his colleague was murdered so soon after they met.”

  “Didn’t Josslyn say anything about this colleague?” asked Tex.

  “Only that she hadn’t seen him in years, and was looking forward to catching up.”

  Gran now took control of the remote, and switched channels until she found one where they were playing Titanic, one of her favorite movies. The howls of protest rising up from her fellow family members quickly made her change her mind about settling in.

  “Oh, all right,” she grumbled, relinquishing the remote to lady of the manor Odelia. “It’s not as if I don’t know how it ends.”

  Odelia returned to the local TV station, maybe in hopes of catching some more snippets from her hubby’s big interview, and for the rest of the evening, the conversation shot back and forth about a whole range of topics, hopscotching from one subject to another, as is usually the case when the members of Odelia’s family get together of an evening.

  “One thing’s for sure,” said Harriet as she placed her head on her front paws.

  “What’s that?” asked Brutus.

  “Chase will catch this person. He’s very good at catching the bad guys.”

  “It’s not so much about catching the guy,” Gran now interjected, inserting herself into our conversation and abandoning the human conversation for a moment. “It’s about prevention, isn’t it? I mean, if only the neighborhood watch had been out in full force last night, this crime could easily have been prevented.”

  The others had picked up on Gran’s line of thought, and Scarlett said, “You’re absolutely right, Vesta. It’s simply not enough that you and me patrol our streets every night. There should be more people joining us. If only the watch consisted of a dozen or two dozen citizens, this kind of crime would be completely eradicated, and this poor woman’s life would have been saved.”

  “You know, I usually don’t agree with you,” said Tex, “but for once I actually do.”

  “Oh, don’t you start,” Uncle Alec grumbled. “Keeping the streets safe and preventing crime is a job for the police, not for regular people or, God forbid, a couple of pensioners.”

  “So why don’t you patrol those streets?” asked Gran. “Why weren’t your officers patrolling that boardwalk last night? And saving Josslyn Aldridge’s life?”

  “We simply don’t have the manpower to put a cop on every single street corner every single minute of every single day,” said Uncle Alec.

  Gran now turned her ire on Charlene, who, as mayor of our fair town, controls the police budget. “You have to invest more in our police force, Charlene,” said the old lady. “You have to recruit and train more cops. It is what we pay taxes for, after all.”

  “That’s fine by me,” said Charlene. “If you’re prepared to pay more tax, then we’ll put more cops on the streets. But as long as that’s not the case, I’m afraid my hands are tied.”

  “I have an idea,” said Harriet, who’d been listening to the conversation closely. The attention of Gran, Marge and Odelia turned to her—not coincidentally they were also the only three people who speak our language.

  “What’s your idea, Harriet?” asked Odelia with an indulgent smile.

  “So putting cops on the streets is expensive, right?”

  “Oh, it is,” said Odelia. “They all need to receive a decent salary.”

  “And asking people to give up their leisure time to patrol the streets is a hard ask.”

  “Of course,” said Marge. “People work all day, they have families to take care of, and what little time they have left they like to spend relaxing with their loved ones.”