Purrfect Cut The Mysteries of Max 14

Nic Saint

Puss in Print Publications

Contents

Purrfect Cut

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

About Nic

Also by Nic Saint

Purrfect Cut

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When Leonidas Flake, the world-renowned fashion designer and style icon, is found murdered by his live-in boyfriend Gabriel Crier, police are quickly convinced it’s an open-and-shut case. After all, Leo’s killer was caught red-handed. Grandma Muffin is not so sure, though, and decides to dig a little deeper.

Max and the other cats, meanwhile, are on strike. They feel very strongly that Odelia has been neglecting them lately and they need to teach her a lesson. Unfortunately their strike lands Max and Dooley in more danger than they anticipated, especially when they get mixed up in the saga of Pussy, Leo and Gabe’s famous and very Instagramable white Birman. Soon they are faced with their most formidable foe yet, a Siamese cat appropriately named Tank.

Will Max and Dooley escape Chateau Leonidas alive? Will Odelia be exposed as a cat whisperer? And will Dooley find love for the very first time? Find out in Purrfect Cut, everyone’s favorite cat sleuth’s exciting new adventure.

Chapter 1

A bashful sun was playing peekaboo over the horizon and distributing its first timid rays upon a restful world when I woke up. As usual I’d been dozing at the foot of my human’s bed after having spent the first part of the night exploring the ultimate range of my singing voice. As you may or may not know, I’ve long been a member of Hampton Cove’s cat choir, pride of our small town, where cats can still be cats and sing their little hearts out. Only Shanille, our stalwart and earnest conductor, had recently kicked me out of the choir, on account of the fact that several of the members had complained about my abject failure to carry a tune. The incident had greatly saddened me, as you can well imagine, since I’ve always been a staunch proponent of cats’ rights to express themselves in song. So when my membership card was withdrawn I must confess it shook me to the very core of my being.

Fortunately I’m not the kind of cat who takes life’s vicissitudes lying down, so to speak, even though ironically enough I do spend a great portion of my life lying down, and soon I was practicing hard to make a triumphant return.

Last night offered me the first opportunity since returning from England, where my human’s adventures had taken us, to showcase my progress. And to my elation Shanille and the other members—even those whose complaints had terminated my contract in the first place—deemed me fit for duty once more.

So it was with renewed fervor that I rejoined the choir’s rank and file, and I won’t conceal the fact that the whole thing gave me a distinct sense that all was well in my world, and upon ending last night’s rehearsal, I practically skipped along the road, extremely pleased with myself and my progress.

It isn’t too much to say that the mood was festive, so my friends and I decided to paint this small town of ours red, and Brutus led us along all of his favorite haunts, like a nice little rooftop restaurant that keeps the bins out where we can reach them, and our gang of four—myself, Dooley, Harriet and of course Brutus—experienced an enjoyable night on the town. It was only understandable, then, that I felt the need to sleep in. It was with a slight sense of annoyance, therefore, that I greeted the rising sun, which had decided to cut my extended slumber short by spreading its light across a peaceful world.

I stretched and yawned cavernously, as is my habit, and glanced around in search of Dooley, who usually likes to fall asleep next to me. Once upon a time we used to have a big chunk of the bed all to ourselves, but that was before Odelia decided to hook up with a burly policeman who answers to the name Chase Kingsley, and asked him to move in with her. Nowadays the bed is a little cramped for two humans and two cats, which tends to create a touch of awkwardness. The issue isn’t Odelia, who’s a fairly shortish human being, so her feet don’t invade the stretch of bed I like to call my own. What’s more, she tends to curl up into a ball when she sleeps—the fetus position I think experts like to call it—which adds to my acreage. No, the problem is Chase, who’s one of those long and stretchy humans, and likes to stick his feet where they don’t belong: in our territory. I’ve mentioned this to Odelia, and she’s promised to have a talk with the invasive cop, but until then it’s tough for a cat to find the space to sleep in peace. Especially since Chase is not one of your more peaceful sleepers. The man tends to toss and turn, and even lash out when the mood strikes, giving poor Dooley the occasional kick in the tail end.

I guess scientists who claim that people sleeping in separate beds enjoy a deeper, better sleep are on to something. All I know is that if only Chase would sleep in a separate bed, we’d all be better off—or at least I would.

Yes, I know I can always sleep on the couch, and I also know there are several other spots at my disposal. Like Marge and Tex’s bed. But Odelia’s parents’ bed is already spoken for, by Brutus and Harriet, and even they have confided in me they suffer the same fate Dooley and I do, with Tex being one of those stringbeany types, whose highly-strung feet seem to have a mind of their own. Dooley, of course, is in the best position of all: he can choose to sleep at Odelia’s, or Grandma’s. Why he chooses Odelia’s is beyond me. She’s not technically his human, and still he spends all of his nights here. Then again, it’s comforting to have my best friend and wingman nearby, and perhaps he feels the same way, which is why he endures Chase’s nervous footwork, and so do I.

I opened one eye, then the other, and saw that Odelia was awake already. Oddly enough she was staring at Chase, who was still fast asleep. So I elbowed Dooley in the tummy and he muttered something that didn’t sound entirely friendly.

“Check this out,” I whispered. “Odelia is making a study of Chase.”

Dooley reluctantly dragged his heavy eyelids open and stared in the direction indicated.

“Huh,” he said finally. “Weird.”

“Right?”

We both watched on as Odelia watched, with a strange look on her face, the sleeping cop.

“I don’t get it,” said Dooley. “What’s the big attraction?”

“I have no idea,” I confessed.

“It’s just a sleeping human.”

“It is, and he’s not even looking his best.”

Chase, who some people claim is a handsome fellow, with one of those chiseled faces, strong jaws and long, brown hair, doesn’t look his best in the morning. His trademark mane is usually tousled, and more often than not there’s a tiny thread of drool visibly at the corner of his mouth. Not exactly the kind of face that would successfully grace the cover of a romance novel. Then again, Odelia’s features aren’t much to write home about either. Her fair hair is usually a mess, and she develops weird sleep marks on her fine-boned face.

“I mean, if you’ve seen one sleeping human, you’ve seen them all,” I said.

“It’s love,” suddenly a third party entered the discussion.

Dooley and I looked up in surprise, to discover that Harriet had joined us. She must have jumped up onto the bed while we were chatting, and was now gazing upon the peaceful scene with a strange little smile on her furry face.

“Love?” I said. “Um, I don’t think so. I think she’s counting the pores on his nose. And judging from the time it’s taking her there are a lot of them.”

“Or the stubble on his cheeks,” said Dooley. “The man has a lot of stubble.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Lots of stubble and lots of pores so plenty to look at.”

“Oh, you silly, silly boys,” said Harriet good-naturedly. “Can’t you see Odelia is in love and is simply drinking in the sheer beauty of her beloved?”

I studied the scene with this new information in mind. “Nope,” I said finally. “I don’t see it.”

“That’s because you’ve never been in love,” said Harriet curtly.

“Oh, I’ve been in love,” I said. “I’ve been in love plenty of times. But even then I didn’t stare at the face of my beloved like some doofus.”

“Odelia is not a doofus,” said Harriet. “She’s a woman in love, and that’s what a woman in love looks like when faced with the object of her affection.”

I studied Odelia more closely. Her lips were curved in a tiny smile, her half-lidded eyes sparkled, and a blush mantled her cheeks. All in all she looked a little dopey. As if she needed to go poo-poo and didn’t want to wake up Chase.

“I think she needs to go wee-wee and she’s afraid to wake him,” said Dooley, proving that we were kindred spirits.

Harriet rolled her eyes in that expressive way only she can pull off.

“Ugh. You guys are so dumb,” she said.

“It’s obvious,” said Dooley. “And I can’t believe you can’t see it.”

“Apart from the fact that I think she needs to go poo-poo and not wee-wee, Dooley is right,” I said. “This is obviously a woman who is silently praying for her boyfriend to finally wake up so she can make a run for the bathroom.”

“I’m telling you it’s love! How can you confuse love with having to go wee-wee or poo-poo!” Odelia uttered a little sigh, and the three of us looked up. “See?” said Harriet triumphantly. “Only a person in love can produce such a delightful little sigh.”

“It’s the sigh of a woman who needs to go pee-pee and knows she can’t go,” said Dooley, sticking to his guns.

Suddenly a deep, rumbling voice echoed through the room. “When are those darned cats going to shut up?” The voice was Chase’s and obviously, in spite of our best efforts, we hadn’t been as quiet and respectful as we’d hoped.

“Finally,” I said. “He’s awake. Now Odelia can stop counting his pores and his stubble and go to the bathroom.”

“A bowl of kibble says they’re going to snuggle,” said Harriet. “Because snuggling is what humans in love always do.”

“You’re on,” I said. “A bowl of kibble says she’s going to take this opportunity to make a run for the bathroom.”

But we were both disappointed, and the bet would have to remain a toss-up. For at that exact moment the front doorbell jangled, and both Odelia and Chase uttered a groan of annoyance and made to get up and start their day.

Unfortunately Chase did this with a little less tact and care than Odelia, and the upshot was that his sudden movements bumped Harriet from the bed and onto the carpeted floor, then also sent Dooley flying. The only one still in position was me, and I carefully watched Odelia as she swung her feet to the floor. “A bowl of kibble says Chase will go downstairs to open the door and Odelia is going to race to the bathroom,” I said, still wanting to win my bet.

Three pairs of cat’s eyes watched carefully as two humans stuck their feet into their respective slippers—a pair of Hello Kitty slippers for Odelia and boring old brown ones for Chase—and got up. They both moved out of the room, but before reaching the door Chase took a sharp left turn and muttered, “Can you get that, babe? I need to take a wee.” And before she had the chance to respond, he’d closed the bathroom door behind him and that was that.

Talk about a shock twist! Which just goes to show that human behavior is very hard to predict indeed.

“All bets are off,” said Dooley, sounding disappointed.

“And we still don’t know why Odelia was staring at Chase’s face for the best part of an hour,” I added, equally disappointed.

“Love!” Harriet cried as she padded to the door. “I keep telling you. Love!”

“Yeah, right,” I said. Only a female feline could come up with a dumb theory like that. Dooley and I exchanged a knowing glance. We were in agreement: Harriet was crazy. And we didn’t even need to bet kibble over that. It was a fact, borne out by long association with the white-haired Persian.

And since we were all up now we decided to follow in Odelia’s footsteps and see who this early morning visitor could be. Even before we’d set paw on the first step of the stairs, I recognized the voice of Odelia’s uncle Alec, Hampton Cove’s police chief and generally a harbinger of bad news.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “This can’t be good.”

We hurried down the stairs, all questions regarding human behavior wiped from our minds. And as we arrived in the living room, the first words I heard were, “He was dead when we got there. Dead as a dodo.”

I heaved a deep sigh. I may not know why humans like to stare at one another in the early morning, but here’s one thing I do know: humans simply can’t seem to stop murdering each other. The good thing, of course, is that this unseemly habit provides a steady flow of income for the fine upstanding men and women employed by the Hampton Cove Police Department. And Odelia.

I probably should have mentioned this before, but Odelia is by way of being a local sleuthhound. Officially she’s a reporter for the Hampton Cove Gazette, but her natural curiosity and keen intelligence have turned her into something of a local amateur detective. And that’s where the four of us come in. As cats we have access to all those places that are usually off-limits even to your intrepid reporter-slash-sleuth. Places only cats can sneak into unseen and unheard, and pick up those precious tidbits of information that are not designed for snooping eyes and ears. Plus, we get to talk to all the other cats that freely roam our town, along with its resident animal population, wild or domesticated, large or small. And it provides us what a pretty accurate picture of what goes on in our town at all times, which we then dutifully convey to Odelia, and which has helped her solve numerous crimes so far.

I know they say cats are selfish and solitary creatures, and if a human wants to choose a partner from the animal kingdom they should pick a dog. Well, that’s where they would be wrong. Dogs, because of their natural tendency to shoot their mouths off and trip over their own clumsy feet, are the worst sidekick imaginable. If you really want to get the job done, you should pick a cat. Discreet, silent as the night, and naturally nosy, we are the perfect amateur sleuth’s assistant, and that isn’t merely my humble opinion. It’s a fact.

“So who’s dead?” asked Odelia, stifling a yawn.

Uncle Alec, a ruddy-faced man with russet sideburns and only a few token hairs left on top of his head, cocked an eyebrow. “Have you ever heard of Leonidas Flake?”

Odelia frowned. “The fashion designer?”

Uncle Alec nodded. “That’s the one.”

“He died?”

“He died,” the portly police chief confirmed. “And what’s more, we know exactly who did it.”

“Who?”

“Gabriel Crier. His partner of thirty years. We found him with the bloody knife in his hands, bent over the corpse of his dead lover.”

“If you know who did it, then why are you here?” Odelia asked.

He shrugged. “I just figured you’d like to have the scoop.”

Odelia’s face twisted into a wide smile. “I love you, Uncle Alec.”

“I know you do. Now where the hell is Chase? I’ve been trying to call him all morning.”

Chapter 2

Chase joined his boss and Odelia in the kitchen. Odelia had made the three of them a pot of her trademark strong coffee and they were now sipping from the tasty black brew, accompanied by toasted waffles for Uncle Alec, yogurt for Odelia, and a bowl of cereal for Chase.

“You should watch that stuff,” said Odelia, pointing to the warm waffle her uncle was devouring.

Alec blinked. “Watch the waffle?” he stared at the thing as if expecting some bug to come crawling out.

“It contains a lot of bad stuff. Palm oil, for one thing. And you know what palm oil does for your cholesterol, Uncle Alec.”

He stared at her. “Um, no, I don’t.”

“It’s bad for you, all right? Just… try not to eat too much of it.”

He gave her a sheepish nod, then shoved the rest of his waffle home. He’d sprayed a liberal helping of whipped cream from the can on top of it, and now licked the remnants from his fingers. There were a lot of people in Alec’s life who tried to make him eat the right thing, and who had taken it upon themselves to alter his diet for the better. Only problem was, Uncle Alec was a bachelor, and what he did in the sanctity of his own home was nobody’s business but his own, an opinion he stuck to diligently. Chase had lived with the big guy for a while, and seen firsthand the kind of diet the Chief kept. Many were the nights the two of them had sat on the big couch in Alec’s living room, watching a game on the big TV and shoving down burgers, slices of pepperoni pizza and chips. Washed down with beer, it added to the impressive belly the police chief had managed to construct around his midsection.

Good thing, at least, that he usually ate his dinners at his sister Marge’s place, who made sure her brother got some wholesome nourishment in him.

“So if this fashion designer was killed with a knife,” said Odelia, “and his boyfriend was found standing over him with that same knife clutched in his hand, blood all over him, has he confessed to the crime already?”

“Funny you should ask that,” said Uncle Alec. “No, he hasn’t.”

Odelia cut a glance to her boyfriend, who’d risen from the table and was now engaged in his favorite morning ritual of preparing a protein shake to take into the office. “So… he’s claiming to be innocent or what?” asked Chase.

“Not exactly,” said Alec, digging a knife into the pot of Nutella and applying an ample spread to his next waffle and ignoring Odelia’s look of concern. “He has no recollection of the crime.”

“What do you mean?” asked Odelia.

“He has no idea how he got there, how the knife got into his hand, and how his dead boyfriend got dead in the first place. Complete blackout.”

“Who is this Gabriel Crier anyway?” asked Chase.

Alec took his little notebook from his front shirt pocket and flipped it open. He cleared his throat noisily. “Gabriel Jake Crier. Fifty-four. Worked as a hairstylist to the stars for a while, before meeting Leonidas Flake at an art show in Paris and becoming his personal hairdresser and then something more.”

“How old was Leonidas?” asked Odelia, gratefully accepting the protein shake Chase had just mixed up.

“Um, seventy-eight, and still going strong by all accounts,” said Alec, kindly refusing a similar offer.

“It’s good for you,” Odelia pointed out. “Drink it. You’ll like it. It’s a vitamin bomb and you’ll feel much better.”

“It tastes like horse piss.”

Instead of being insulted, Chase laughed loudly. “And how would you know what horse piss tastes like?”

“I don’t have to taste it to know what it tastes like,” said Alec, with the kind of strange logic the unhealthy use to remain unhealthy. He took a pack of cigarettes from his other front shirt pocket and shook one out.

Odelia watched on in horror. “Don’t tell me you started smoking again!”

“No, I haven’t,” he said. “But I can’t seem to shake the habit of taking one out of the pack from time to time.” And as he said it, he put the cigarette to his lips. He smiled a beatific smile. “Feels so good,” he muttered, then grudgingly put it away again and returned the pack to his shirt pocket. “Where were we?”

“So Gabriel Crier worked for Leonidas Flake as his personal hairstylist and something more?” Chase prompted as he licked the green sludge from his lips.

“Right. He was also rumored to be the designer’s right-hand man.”

“As a fashion designer?” asked Odelia.

“Was he any good?”

“Who knows,” said the chief with a sigh. “I know about as much about fashion as the next chief of police.” He tucked away his little notebook.

“Maybe he felt things weren’t moving along fast enough?” Odelia said. “And so he figured if he killed his boyfriend he’d become the new top guy?”

“Yeah, but that’s just it. I talked to the guy’s attorney early this morning. As far as he knows the most recent will and testament doesn’t exactly hand the keys to the kingdom to the boyfriend. On the contrary. Everything goes to—”

“The kids?” Chase offered.

“Siblings?” Odelia guessed.

“—his cat,” said Uncle Alec with a quick look towards the living room couch, where four cats sat listening to the kitchen counter conversation—Brutus had joined his friends, who had all made themselves comfortable.

“What?” asked Chase with a laugh. “A cat is inheriting the Leonidas Flake empire?”

“Looks like,” said Alec. “Unless Mr. Flake made a last-minute change his attorney isn’t aware of—and this seems very unlikely—the cat gets everything. The millions, the brand, the stores, the global fashion empire.”

Odelia frowned. “I don’t get it. How can a cat inherit a company?”

“Yeah, a cat can’t run a business, can it?” said Chase, directing his question at Odelia, just to be on the safe side. She was, after all, the feline expert.

“I guess a cat could run a company,” she said slowly, “if that cat knew a thing or two about business. But they would still have to relay all of the decisions through a human, who would then have to organize the actual day-to-day running of the business along those instructions. It would require a person who could intuit the cat’s decision-making process, of course.”

“A person like you, you mean,” said Chase, who’d recently been made aware of the fact that his fiancée was one of those rare people who could actually communicate with cats.

She nodded.

Chase turned to Alec. “And did Flake have such a person on the payroll?”

“That was Gabriel’s task,” he said. “He was in charge of Pussy’s routine. Pussy being the name of Flake’s cat. Mr. Crier took Pussy to her weekly visits to the pet salon, kept a close eye on her diet, organized her parties—”

“Sorry, her parties?” asked Chase.

“Yes, apparently this Pussy has a very busy social life, and as a rule Mr. Crier planned a lot of activities for her—she had a full schedule.”

“Who told you all this stuff?” asked Odelia.

Alec dragged a meaty paw through the devastated area that was his scalp. “You’d be surprised how chatty staff members of the recently departed can be.”

“You should have called,” said Chase. “I would have helped set up the interviews.”

“I did call you,” said Uncle Alec. “And Odelia.”

Both Odelia and Chase grabbed for their phones. “Shoot,” Chase muttered. “Must have forgotten to plug the darn thing in last night.”

“Same here,” said Odelia, taking Chase’s phone and proceeding to plug in both phones so they could recharge before they left the house.

“Anyway, it’s a slam-dunk case,” said Alec, eagerly checking out the uneaten waffle on his niece’s plate and gratefully accepting it when she handed it to him. “Crier was caught red-handed, so I’m guessing we’ll be done with this before lunch. Still, always good to cross our T’s and dot our I’s.”

“Weird that the only person who stands to gain from the designer’s death is the man’s cat,” said Chase. “What do you make of that, Chief?”

He lowered his bristly brows into a frown. “Not sure, buddy. But you have to allow for the fact that these are celebrities, and as we all know celebrities are eccentric. Leonidas only changed his will last week. The one before that had the boyfriend as the main beneficiary, so there’s always a chance he didn’t know Flake cut him out of his will.”

“I think the cat did it,” Chase quipped.

“Funny guy,” the Chief grumbled.

Odelia glanced over to her cats, who were listening attentively. “Did you hear that, you guys? Looks like we have a feline suspect for this one.”

“Impossible,” said Max. “A cat would never kill a human.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Brutus. “If that human treated him or her badly, anything is possible.”

“But he was stabbed with a knife,” Max pointed out. “Cats don’t stab people with knives, Brutus.”

“Cats don’t need knives,” said Harriet. “We use our inbuilt tools.” And she unsheathed a razor-sharp claw to turn her words into a show-and-tell.

“Was he stabbed with the knife Crier was holding?” asked Odelia now.

“Um… not sure,” said Alec. “Abe is delayed.” He checked his watch. “He should be there shortly, though, so I better start heading back over there.”

Odelia jumped down from the kitchen stool. “You mean to say the body is still there? The coroner hasn’t even examined the victim?”

“Nope,” said Alec with faux cheer. “Which is why I figured I might as well pick up you two, so you can give me a hand wrapping this thing up.”

“We better get going,” said Odelia. “I can’t believe we’ve been sitting here chatting while that poor man is lying there.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” said Alec, buttering a piece of toast.

“And I haven’t taken a shower yet,” said Odelia, patting her hair.

“You look fine,” said Chase.

“Oh, God,” she muttered. She hated leaving the house without taking a shower or putting on a fresh set of threads. “Give me five minutes.”

“You can take ten,” said Uncle Alec, unconcerned.

She hurried up the stairs, and took the quickest shower in the history of mankind, put on a pair of jeans, pulled a T-shirt and sweater over her head, and decided to forgo drying her hair for once, then hurried down again.

Alec and Chase were still chatting away, not a care in the world.

“Cats don’t frame humans,” Uncle Alec was saying. “That’s a fact. I mean, no offense to you guys,” he added, gesturing to Max and the others, “but I don’t think you have it in you to try and frame someone for a crime you committed. Am I right or am I right?”

“Cats may be a lot of things but we’re not that cunning,” Brutus agreed.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” said Harriet. “Cats can be very, very cunning.”

“What is he saying, honey?” asked Alec.

“He’s saying cats are not that cunning,” said Odelia, shoving her notebook into her purse and checking the kitchen to see if all the appliances were turned off.

“And then there’s the logistics of the thing,” said Chase. “How would a cat kill a person, then plant the knife into the hand of another person, without that person’s knowledge? It can’t be done. No, I think you’re right, Alec. The case is open-and-shut. All we need to do is get a confession and we’re done.”

“That’s the plan,” said Alec. He got down from the kitchen stool and hoisted up his pants. “Well, let’s get going, kids. Chateau Leonidas awaits us.”

“Chateau Leonidas?” asked Chase. “Why am I not surprised that the man lived in an actual castle?”

“Because if you’re one of the most successful designers in the world, of course you live in a castle,” said Alec. “Besides, he’s French, so there’s that.”

“Do all French people live in castles?” asked Dooley.

“No, I don’t think they do, Dooley,” said Odelia with a smile. “Only the very wealthy.”

“Oh,” said Dooley, looking slightly disappointed. ...