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

I could have gone down to the police station to file a report, or even down to the Gazette to explain things to Odelia, but I felt it more prudent to save my strength. After all, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and I’d willingly surrendered my kibble to my housemates.

And so instead I opted to patiently await the return of my human from work, and when I told her I thought I’d solved both the crime of Bob Rector’s death, and of Lord Hilbourne’s mysterious illness, she immediately called her uncle, and the rest of the family, for a family meeting, something she said she’d been intending to do anyway, though she wouldn’t say why—probably wanting to surprise me with some great news about the wedding, I suspected. Like the fact that she’d found a different venue, which could host two or three thousand people, and a DJ who was used to playing big places like that, and a caterer who was ready to cater to thousands. And worked on credit.

And so it was that Dooley, Brutus and Harriet and myself were seated in front of the TV, and our humans were seated on the couch, wondering what all the fuss was about.

“So Bob Rector,” I said, “was the cousin of Wim Bojanowsky and Suppo Bonikowski, and I think in the end that’s what this whole case revolves around.”

Odelia dutifully translated my words for the convenience of Tex, Uncle Alec and Chase, a service Marge and Gran obviously didn’t need.

“I’ll tell you what I think happened,” I said, “and then you can decide if I’m right.”

“Sounds good,” Uncle Alec grunted. “This case is making me lose sleep—and what little hair I’ve got left on my head,” he added, patting his balding scalp.

“So the cousins must have heard that Hampton Cove had decided to award Lord Hilbourne the keys to the city, and also that the guy was loaded. And since Bob had been working on a very interesting new invention, they decided to put it to good use and test it out on Hilbourne.”

“What invention?” asked Marge.

“Well, this is just speculation on my part, but I suspect it’s some kind of device that impacts a person’s nervous system. Wear it, and the person on the other end has access to whatever your eyes can see and whatever your ears can hear. Amongst other things.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Brutus.

“No, I’m afraid I’m not. It is, in fact, the only explanation for what happened. Or at least the most plausible one.”

“Only problem was that due to his busy schedule Hilbourne was a couple of days late in arriving, and so Bob and his cousins were left languishing in town, with too much time on their hands. Which is when Bob happened to meet Emma Bezel, who was on the lookout for a decent guy her sister could date. Bob very quickly discovered that Evelina was a millionairess in her own right, and so he and his two cousins decided to try their nifty little device on her, as a test run before they tackled Lord Hilbourne, the big fish.”

“So Evelina was the appetizer and Hilbourne the main menu,” said Gran.

“Exactly. Only Bob had taken a liking to Evelina, and didn’t want to subject her to a device of which he wasn’t sure if it worked exactly as intended. I think he must have felt that maybe, just maybe, there were still a few kinks to be worked out. And in the end he didn’t want Evelina to act as a guinea pig. Only his cousins didn’t agree with this assessment and decided to go through with the plan, overruling Bob’s reservations.”

“So why this whole kidnapping spiel?” asked Chase after Odelia had translated my musings.

“I think Bob put his foot down, at which point they decided to change tack and pretend that Bob had been kidnapped. A good old-fashioned kidnapping, after all, has never failed to bring home the bacon, and it didn’t fail this time either.”

“No, seventy-five thousand is a tidy sum,” Uncle Alec agreed. “So why kill Bob?”

“I think there must have been some kind of fight that broke out between the cousins, over who got what share of the money, and one of them must have pulled his gun and accidentally shot Bob. I don’t think it was their intention to kill him. But once they had, they had to get rid of the body, and make sure they weren’t implicated in any way.”

“What a story,” said Dooley, who was enjoying this tremendously, I could tell.

“Which brings us to the Lord Hilbourne fiasco.”

“You’re saying fiasco,” said Marge. “You mean not everything went according to plan?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “When we were at the hotel last night I remembered the two cousins from the Town Hall ceremony in honor of Lord Hilbourne. They were doling out finger food to the esteemed guests. I think what they were really up to was planting the device Bob made, knowing that Hilbourne would wear it, at which point they had him.”

“What device?” asked Gran.

“I know!” said Dooley. “The key, right!”

“Not the key,” I said with a smile. “The watch. You’ll remember that Charlene handed Hilbourne a nice watch along with the key. The key was to be worn around the neck, and the watch around his wrist. I think that watch was the prototype smartwatch Bob Rector designed, its function being not just to monitor heart rate and blood pressure, like many of these gadgets, but also to hook up to the wearer’s nervous system, and offer the person on the other end, who’s monitoring the feed, a look into the person’s head.”

“The laptop!” said Gran. “Of course!”

“Exactly. Somehow they managed to swap out the watches before the ceremony. So the watch Charlene handed Hilbourne was in fact Bob’s smartwatch prototype. The idea was that Bob’s cousins would monitor what happened inside Hilbourne’s head, and that way they could hopefully glean important information like bank accounts, passwords, his passcodes and such, and