Chapter 32
“We need to get in there,” said Gran.
We were parked outside a nice-looking apartment building where, according to Gran’s research, which consisted of a phone call to Dolores at the police station, Marva lived.
“Are you sure about this, Vesta?” asked Scarlett. “I mean, if we get caught breaking into a cop’s home…”
“We won’t get caught,” said Gran. “And if we are, we simply tell them that we heard a noise. That always works.”
“A noise? During the daytime?”
“Burglars don’t just burgle at night, honey. They burgle all the time, especially if they know that the person isn’t home because they’re at work.”
“I guess that makes sense,” said Scarlett, but she still didn’t seem fully convinced.
“What do you hope to find in there, Gran?” asked Brutus.
“Oh, anything that tells us what kind of person this Marva really is,” said Gran.
“It’s clear that a girl as young and sexy as Marva being teamed up with an older man as handsome and attractive as Chase is asking for trouble.
So we need something damaging. Something detrimental to her reputation.
Something that will give us leverage over her. ”
“And then?” asked Harriet. “What do we do with that leverage?”
“We hold it over her, of course. Tell her to back off, or we post everything on the internet.”
“Good thinking, Gran,” said Clarice approvingly. “I like the way your mind works. Devious. Dark. Not afraid to play dirty.”
“I’m not trying to play dirty, Clarice,” said Gran. “All I’m doing is protecting my granddaughter’s marriage. There’s nothing sinister about that. And now,” she added as she clapped her hands and rubbed them freely, “how are we getting up there?”
“She probably has a burglar alarm,” said Scarlett. “Considering she is a cop, she is well aware of the threat of burglars, so she will have installed a burglar alarm.”
“Alarms are expensive, honey,” said Gran, “and Marva is only fresh out of the police academy. In fact, she only joined the force a couple of weeks ago. So she doesn’t have the funds. No, I’m pretty sure it’s a cinch.”
“Do you want us to take a look first, Gran?” asked Dooley. “We can do that, and nobody will wonder what we are doing up there, since people never pay any attention to cats. Isn’t that right, Max?”
“That is exactly right, buddy,” I said. “Cats are the ninjas of the animal kingdom.”
And since Gran seemed to go along with our way of thinking, we circled the building, looking for a way in, and found that there was a fire escape that ran along the building and led us nicely to the third floor, where Marva supposedly lived.
The only problem was that the fire escape’s stairs and landings were made of steel grating, with gaps wide enough for a cat’s paws to slip through. In other words, crossing it promised to be a pretty painful experience!
But since we, too, wanted to save Odelia and Chase’s marriage, there was no other way to do this.
I had only climbed one flight of stairs when I was already regretting saying yes to this scheme.
“I hate these fire escapes!” I cried as one of my paws pushed right through the grating and I was stuck again.
“You have to walk on the edges, Maxie baby,” said Brutus. “That way, you won’t get stuck. See? Like this.” He demonstrated his technique, and I had to admit that he was doing a much better job than I was. But then of course he’s lighter on his paws than me.
“It hurts the side of my paws,” said Harriet. “Though not as much as it must hurt Max, since he is so much heavier than we all are.”
Dooley was the one with the fewest problems, but then he is as light as a feather.
“I’m not heavy,” I countered. “I’m big-boned. If it weren’t for my big bones, I would fly up these stairs.”
“Yeah, right,” said Brutus. He was taking a restful break on the second-floor platform while I was still making my way up and not making much progress. Oh, woe is me!
In the end, we all managed to make it all the way up and found to our elation that Marva had left one of her windows open a crack. It was a cinch for Dooley to sneak through, and once he had, to push the window open a little further, so we could all enter.
As I landed deftly on the carpeted floor, I saw that Marva hadn’t really dressed up her apartment yet. Boxes were stacked high, and the place looked as if she had just moved in.
“Looks like she still has a lot of work to do,” said Brutus.
“Okay, let’s spread out and find Gran something she can work with,” I suggested. “Some leverage to hold over this girl.”
“What leverage is that, Max?” asked Dooley.
“Oh, you know, anything she has been up to that she doesn’t want people to know.”
“For one thing, she has strange taste in art,” said Harriet as she stared at a painting which had been placed against the wall, preparatory to hanging it up.
It depicted a cherubic figure flying through the air, and we had no problem recognizing it as Cupid.
“It’s tacky,” I told Harriet, “but not exactly a crime.”
“If people find out about this, they will make fun of her,” Harriet argued, “so it falls well within the definition of leverage, Max.”
Somehow, I doubted whether Marva would mind if people knew about her love of Cupid, but then Harriet seemed determined to amass as many embarrassing facts about Marva as possible.
As I entered the bedroom, my paws happy about the carpeting underpaw, I noticed that this room was easily as bare as the rest of the apartment.
There was a single bed in the center of the room, but the walls hadn’t been papered or painted, and the old wallpaper was peeling in places.
It also looked as if this had been a children’s bedroom, as the old wallpaper showed little angels flying about and strumming their harps.
“The angel motif is strong with this one, Max,” said Dooley.
“Yeah, but presumably she didn’t pick the paper. The previous tenants did.”
“Under the bed there are plenty of dust bunnies,” said Dooley as he examined the location in question. “Do you think that can be used as leverage against Marva?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “If it does, it can be used as leverage against pretty much every single person on the planet.”
“Because dust bunnies are pretty?”
“Because dust bunnies are everywhere.”
They certainly were present everywhere I looked. Proof that Marva didn’t have time to clean. Or maybe she simply hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
“I have found something!” Brutus yelled from the next room.
“I hope it’s not dust bunnies,” I said as I walked into the room he was inspecting.
Much to my surprise, it was an exercise room, much like the one Chase had—or even better, as this one had a lot more equipment. And there were definitely no dust bunnies here. On the contrary. The room was squeaky clean, and everything looked brand-new, too.
“What is it?” asked Brutus with a grin. “Surprised?”
“Yeah, actually I am,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see a professional home gym in an apartment that otherwise seems a little neglected and run-down.”
“Look here,” he said as he gestured to something on the desk he was sitting on. “I think you will like this.”
I jumped up onto the desk and saw that a stack of training books had been placed there, all material that outlined how to get ripped. And right in the center of the desk, a large picture had been taped. It was none other than Chase, but it looked as if it had been taken many years ago.
“It’s Chase,” I said. “But at the same time, it’s not.”
“This is what Chase looked like fifteen years ago,” said Brutus. “When he was still based in New York and went to the gym every night.”
“He certainly looks fit,” I said.
And that was an understatement. In the picture, Chase was seen posing in only a pair of shorts, and his muscular frame was clearly on display.
“I think this was taken at some bodybuilding competition,” said Brutus. “This was before my time, but I remember Chase mentioning that he used to harbor the ambition to become a bodybuilding champion at some point. And looks like he tried his best.”
“And Marva likes it so much that she has taped this picture to her desk,” I said.
“She certainly is a fan,” said Harriet, who had also jumped onto the desk so as to see what the fuss was all about.
“Is this leverage?” asked Dooley, who had remained on the floor and was looking up at us. “Is this what Gran means?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I mean, it will be embarrassing, but in a sense, it might increase Marva’s chances with Chase if she tells him that she has always been a big fan of his.”
“I wonder if this is evidence that she wants to have him all to herself,” said Brutus.
“Well, she certainly is a fan, and she has all the equipment to show us that she is into the same kind of workout mentality as Chase himself is.”
Even though over the years he had started to lessen the time he spent in the gym. Especially since Grace was born, he didn’t have as much time to spend in there as he used to. And the same was true for Odelia.
“Let’s keep looking,” I suggested. “Let’s check her closets.”
“I hope we don’t find a skeleton in there,” said Dooley with a shiver. “I don’t think I would like that.”
As we searched around, we didn’t find any skeletons.
What we did find was that Marva liked Chase so much that she had his picture everywhere.
We found it taped to the wall in the bathroom, in the toilet, in the kitchen, and on the ceiling of the bedroom, something we hadn’t noticed the first time we were in there.
Dooley and I, as we lay on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, were both fascinated by the spectacle up there.
“What is it called, Max?” my friend asked.
“It’s a dream board, buddy. It’s what people call a collage with all the stuff they would like to see coming true in their lives.”
“Looks like Marva wants to get married to Chase.”
“True,” I agreed.
In the collage, which Marva had glued to the ceiling, and at which I imagined she stared each night as she lay in bed, a picture of a couple had been placed, their heads replaced by the heads of Chase and Marva.
They were looking into each other’s eyes and were holding hands, her wedding dress and wedding ring making it clear they had just gotten married.
There was also a big house on there, a Ferrari, and the body of a female athlete, who looked absolutely ripped and in the best shape of her life.
Apart from that, I also noticed that the logo of a band had been placed in a corner.
And if I wasn’t mistaken, that band was Turbo Heartthrob.
When I looked even closer still, I saw that the different members of the band were also in the collage, and that they had Marva herself in their midst, looking happy and part of the gang.
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves another Turbo Heartthrob fan,” I told Dooley.
“Maybe we should listen to their music, Max. Maybe we will become fans, too.”
“Somehow, I doubt it, buddy.”
Music as played by humans has never appealed to me all that much. Not sure what it is about it, but I much prefer the sounds of nature myself.
We met Harriet and Brutus in the hallway, and as we shared our conclusions, we agreed that there wasn’t a lot in that apartment that gave us leverage over Marva, except the fact that she was clearly madly in love with Chase.
“And she is a fan of Turbo Heartthrob,” said Dooley. “Just like Marge, and Mercedes’s son Harley.”
Which told me that Marva should probably be added to the list of suspects.
We hadn’t found the guitar that was stolen from Harley, though, which would have been concrete evidence that Marva was a killer.
But I had a feeling Chase might be interested to know that the partner he was investigating the murder with was as much a fan of Turbo Heartthrob as the victim.