The Mysteries of Max: Books 31-33 by Nic Saint (chrome ebook reader txt) 📗

cops and crime scene people, and Dooley and I were forced to take a backseat. When Odelia finally turned to join us, she announced, “Yeah, he’s definitely been murdered. Shot through the head with what looks like a .38 caliber firearm if you please.”

“Shot!” I cried. I don’t know why I was surprised. If a person takes the time to bury a body in the woods, it’s highly unlikely that the victim died of natural causes.

Odelia nodded as she took in the strenuous activity surrounding the burial site of the dead man.

“And who is he?” asked Dooley.

“We don’t know, Dooley,” said Odelia. “He had no ID on him. No wallet, no phone, not a slip of paper. They’ll take his fingerprints, of course, and see if he’s in the system.”

“What system is that?”

“The police database.”

“Is everybody in the police database?”

“Only if you’ve ever had a brush with the law,” Odelia explained.

“And if he hasn’t?”

Odelia shrugged. “Then it looks like we’re dealing with a John Doe.”

“Oh, so you do know his name.”

“A John Doe is just a name for a person whose identity is unknown,” I explained for my friend’s information.

“So his name isn’t really Mr. Doe?”

“No,” said Odelia. “His name isn’t really John Doe. One thing we do know. This is a man who’s lived rough for a long time. He definitely shows signs of having lived life on the street for at least a number of years.”

“So he is a bum?” asked Dooley.

Odelia smiled a tight smile. “Yes, Dooley. Looks like our John Doe is a bum.”

Chapter 8

While the police handled the investigation into the mysterious death of a homeless person, it was back to our regular lives for us cats. Important things had been happening at the home of Marge and Tex, Odelia’s parents, and it was time we pulled our attention from recent events as they’d unfolded, and returned it to what was really important, namely the picking of the right kitchen design for Tex and Marge’s new kitchen.

The old kitchen had been there since Odelia’s folks had bought that house many years ago, and Gran had felt for a long time that it was time to retire it and put in a new one, and that she had to have the last word when it came to picking the new design. Marge, of course, felt differently, and so did Tex, and that was where matters now stood.

Our humans had at least agreed on one thing: where to buy the kitchen, and so we found ourselves in the showroom of Kramer Kitchen Kreation, the company owned by Fred Kramer, also known as the Kitchen King, faced with an impossible choice.

“So many kitchens, Max!” Dooley said with words of hushed awe.

He was right. I don’t think I’d ever seen so many kitchens in the same room, and a big room it was, too. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to reconstruct dozens of different kitchens in one big showroom, and plenty of people were milling about, potential customers all in the same position as our own humans: faced with the near impossible task of picking just one of these gorgeous kitchens.

“Look, it’s very simple,” said Gran. “Just give me carte blanche and I’ll pick the right kitchen for us. In fact I’ve picked the right kitchen already, so you really don’t have to bother anymore.” She smiled, and added the magic words: “Trust me!”

Magic in the sense that they worked on Tex like a red rag on a bull.

“And how much is this going to cost me?” asked the good doctor as he eyed his mother-in-law with an expression that betrayed his lack of trust in her judgment.

“Oh, not that much,” said Gran. “In fact it’s a real bargain, if you ask me.”

“This is my kitchen as well as yours, Ma,” said Marge, glancing around and looking for a salesperson. “So excuse me if I’m going to have the final say in this.”

“And since I’m the one who’ll have to pay,” said Tex, “excuse me for having final say.”

A salesperson had come charging to, and he must have realized he had a couple of real buyers before him, and not just window shoppers, for he displayed the wide smile your real salesman likes to display when he’s about to make a killing. “Excellent choice,” he said, as he nodded at the kitchen we just happened to be standing in. It was all dark wood and gleaming new appliances, and wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Nancy Meyers movie, preferably starring either Diane Keaton or Meryl Streep.

“We’re not buying this,” said Tex immediately. He’d taken a gander at the price tag which was displayed on a stand near the entrance, and there was a finality to his voice that told of his reluctance to pay through the nose for what he considered an exercise in futility. Tex had long argued that they didn’t need a new kitchen, that the old one was perfectly fine, that it had at least another fifteen years left in the tank, and he wasn’t budging from this point of view, juxtaposed with that of his wife and mother-in-law.

“So what did you folks have in mind?” asked the salesman, smile still firmly in place.

“Why is he smiling like that, Max?” asked Dooley, who’d been studying the man like one studies an animal at the zoo.

“Because your true salesperson believes that a smile allays some of that sales resistance,” I explained. “A smile says: I have absolute faith in your ability and your willingness to pull your wallet and hand me your credit card so I can swipe it.”

“Tex doesn’t look like he’s ready to pull his wallet.”

“No, he certainly does not.”

In fact Tex looked like he was ready to pull a gun on the salesperson and make him go away, like a bad dream—or a highway robber.

“We want a new fridge,” Tex explained. It was one point on which he was willing to concede.

“We want a new kitchen,” Marge