“I haven’t kept up with litter box duties,” said Gran. “But in my defense, I’ve had a lot on my mind these past couple of days.”
“Who’s this cat now?” asked Scarlett.
“Kingman. Wilbur’s cat.”
“Oh, right. I thought I’d seen him before. So many cats in Hampton Cove. How do you keep track of them all?”
“Easy. They’re all friends, and chat all the time. You keep track of your friends, don’t you?”
“I guess,” said Scarlett dubiously. This whole talking to cats thing had always struck her as strange. Probably the way it would strike a lot of people as strange, if only they knew about it.
Vesta decided to pop out for a quick chat with the neighbors. If they were leaving tomorrow, she wanted to say goodbye. Some of these people had become friends in the short space of time they’d been there. Like Bob and Ester, and also Liz and Olivia and Bill. In fact she could imagine herself sticking around here longer. Then again, she had actually missed Marge and Tex, and would be happy to see them again. There simply was no place like home.
[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]
“So what brings you all the way out here, Kingman?” asked Brutus.
“I’m bored,” the big cat announced. “With you guys being cooped up in here, cat choir hasn’t been the same, and I miss our daily chats in front of the store.”
“We’ll be out of here tomorrow,” said Harriet. “The case is closed—or at least as far as we’re concerned—so we’re going home!”
“Great news,” said Kingman. “So what is it you’ve been doing here, exactly? Cause I’ve got to tell you that the craziest stories have been doing the rounds. Some cats are saying that you’ve moved in here permanently, because of old age, and that we’ll never see you again. Others thinkthat Vesta has finally lost her last marble, and you need to keep an eye on her. Make sure she doesn’t escape.”
“Neither of those stories is true,” I said. “Gran isn’t crazy—well, not that crazy, at least—and we haven’t moved here permanently.”
“We’ve been working on a case,” said Dooley.
“Yeah, a pretty tough case,” Brutus chimed in. “We had to spy on a guy who was cheating on his wife with two different women. And I gotta tell you, Kingman—it was brutal, buddy. I’m talking pure torture!”
“We actually had to watch…” Harriet’s voice choked. “Had to watch through the window…” She shook her head. “I can’t. The wound is still too fresh.”
“It was hell,” Brutus confided in the big cat. “Absolute hell.”
“And we had to spy on a man who was posing a threat to a woman’s daughter,” said Dooley. “But then the man was murdered, and that was the end of our mission, since he didn’t pose a threat anymore, since he was dead.”
“But then we got a new mission,” I said. “We had to figure out who killed the guy. And we did. More or less.” I decided not to explain the rest of the story, since it got a little complicated, and I could tell that Kingman was bored already. He wanted to shoot the breeze and spread some gossip, not get into the weeds of a murder investigation.
“And Wilbur got scammed,” he said as he darted a quick look at our food bowls, then turned away again. Kingman gets the best food in town, and it shows in his size. “Scammed by a tax collector!”
“A tax collector?” said Brutus. “I didn’t know they scammed people.”
“Well, this wasn’t a real tax collector. She was pretending to be one. And of course Wilbur fell for it, hook, line and sinker! She was very pretty, which may have had something to do with it.”
“With Wilbur, it usually has,” I said with a smile. Wilbur is a sucker for a pretty face. Being a bachelor, he’s always on the lookout for the love of his life. But since he falls in love about a dozen times a day, it’s hard for him to find ‘the one’ among them.
“So what happened, exactly?” asked Brutus.
“Well, she came into the store yesterday, claiming to work for our local IRS office, and said there were some irregularities with his account and could he give her access to his banking information so she could set the matter straight before he was fined with some huge penalties. And of course Wilbur said ‘Absolutely’ and gave her everything: his bank account number, codes, anything and everything.”
“And so she plundered his account,” said Brutus, who had heard this story before, as had we all.
“Well, lucky for Wilbur a very alert individual at the bank must have noticed that large sums of money were suddenly being transferred out of Wilbur’s business account, and put a block on it, called Wilbur to check if everything was on the up and up, and when Wilbur said it wasn’t him, they made sure this so-called tax collector was locked out. They also locked down Wilbur’s account for the time being, in case these scammers tried to withdraw the money from an ATM, or make any payments. They also reset his code and told him never, ever to give his codes and account details to anyone ever again.”
“So Wilbur was saved from his own mistake,” said Harriet in conclusion. She shook her head. “This could only happen to your human, Kingman.”