The Mysteries of Max: Books 31-33 by Nic Saint (interesting novels in english txt) 📕

fix,” said Marge. “Well, to be entirely honest, I helped her get into that fix, and so did my mother.”

“Of course she did,” said Tex, who’d never been a big fan of his mother-in-law. Though after successfully pleading his case his view of the woman had considerably softened.

“A hundred more people RSVPed, most of whom were never invited in the first place, and if Odelia and my mom got the same number, and I’m sure they have, we’re looking at over a thousand guests for the wedding.”

“A thousand!”

“And if this keeps up—and I think it will—we’ll be looking at two or three thousand by Saturday. We can’t afford to throw a wedding for two or three thousand people. It’s going to empty our savings account and my mom’s and Odelia’s, too. We’ll all be ruined.”

“Can’t you do something? Maybe limit the number of guests?”

“And tell all those people they’re suddenly uninvited?”

“You could stop accepting new people.”

“A thousand is still too much, Tex. Way too much.”

“I know,” he said musingly. “So what do you suggest?”

“I suggest we hold a family meeting and thresh this thing out once and for all.”

“Right,” said Tex as he fluffed up his pillow and prepared to go back to sleep. Though presumably this time without Ida Baumgartner’s legs haunting his dreams.

But unfortunately for Tex sleep would have to be postponed, for just at that moment the front doorbell rang out and he groaned.

“You’ve got to be kidding! I’ll bet it’s Ida—my dream must have been a premonition!”

“If she complains about her legs tell her to take a hike. Hiking is a great exercise for the legs, and very slimming, too.”

So Tex extricated himself from his comfortable position in the warm bed and reluctantly slipped his feet into his slippers and put on his robe. By the time he was stomping down the stairs he was muttering unpleasant oaths under his breath.

That was the disadvantage of being married to a doctor, Marge thought: patients sometimes thought doctors didn’t need sleep and should be on call at all hours.

She waited a moment, a smile on her lips, as she fully expected Tex to return and tell her that it had indeed been Ida Baumgartner and that she did have some urgent concerns about the size of her legs that couldn’t wait until the morning. Instead, suddenly her husband’s voice called out. “Honey? Can you come here a moment?”

So now it was Marge’s turn to put on her slippers and her night robe and stomp down the stairs. Fully expecting to see the apple-cheeked apparition that was Ida, she was more than a little surprised when she saw Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale instead.

“Hi, Marge,” said Johnny cheerfully. “We thought we’d pay you a little visit.”

“Yeah, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?” said Jerry, also smiling, though it didn’t really become him. Jerry’s ferrety face wasn’t designed for smiling, and his smile came across as a sickly grimace instead.

“We brought a guest,” said Johnny. “I think you probably know him.”

And both men stepped aside to reveal a man’s prostrate body lying on the porch.

“Lord Hilbourne!” Marge cried.

“Bingo!” said Johnny. “See, Jer? I told you she’d get it right the first time.”

Chapter 32

After all the commotion at the hotel, none of us felt particularly in the mood for cat choir. So instead of dropping by the park, we decided to go home instead. Gran and Scarlett were too busy talking to the guests occupying the rooms to the left and right of Lord Hilbourne’s suite, and so we could forget about hitching a ride with them. Odelia and Chase had vanished, presumably on the trail of Johnny and Jerry and halfway to the Adirondacks by now, and Uncle Alec was downstairs, talking to the hotel’s receptionist.

So it was a long hike home for us, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Us cats do like a nice long stroll in the moonlight. That’s what being a cat sleuth is all about: you just go with the flow, even if that flow involves a midnight trek through a deserted town.

“I still can’t believe Johnny and Jerry would do such a thing,” said Dooley. “I really thought they’d changed their ways.”

“Not likely,” said Brutus, who’d suddenly revealed himself as something of an amateur criminologist. “The recidivism rate amongst former jailbirds is high. Very high, in fact. So the likelihood of those two walking the straight and narrow after the kind of life they’ve lived is negligible.”

“I think it’s got something to do with the adrenaline rush criminals feel when they commit a crime,” said Harriet, joining her boyfriend in the ranks of feline criminologists. “You simply don’t get that same kind of experience in civilian life, sitting behind a desk and entering numbers into a computer.”

“No, but they could pick a job that provides more of a challenge,” I said.

“Like what? Nothing compares to the rush you feel holding a person at gunpoint,” said Brutus, as if all he did all day was hold people at gunpoint.

“They could always try for police academy,” Dooley suggested.

“Police academy! Those two? You must be crazy!”

“No, but I mean… they would make great cops,” said Dooley. “The fox that becomes the rabbit. Or is it the rabbit that becomes the fox? It’s a thing. I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel once about a reformed crook who now spends his time putting his former colleagues behind bars.”

“You mean like that Leonardo DiCaprio movie?” I said.

“Catch me if you can!” Harriet suddenly blurted out.

Dooley stared at her with interest. “If you want to play that game you have to make a run for it first, Harriet.”

“No, it’s a movie, silly. Catch Me If You Can. About a guy who used to do all kinds of bad stuff and now he helps the FBI catch the people who used to be in his line of work. It’s based on a real story of a person who really did all of that stuff.”

“I didn’t know Leonardo DiCaprio used