“I know, right?” said Norm. Then he decided to play his trump card. Since he already knew the killer, he didn’t see this as leading the witness. And besides, they weren’t in a court of law and he wasn’t a prosecutor. Merely an independent investigator brought in by Max and Dooley to assist them so whatever rules they adhered to didn’t apply to him. “Look, I know who did it. There’s this couple in the room across the corridor, see, and they’ve developed a bug spray.”
“A bug spray?”
“Yeah, to kill all of us bugs.”
Bill made a face. “That’s not good.”
“No, it sure isn’t. They were meeting with the victim. Something about getting him on board as a client. Only there must have been some bad blood between them, because it’s my firm belief they are the ones who killed him. I mean, if they’re capable of murdering innocent bugs like us, why wouldn’t they go the whole hog and murder their fellow man also, right?”
“Absolutely,” said Bill. “I like your thinking, Norm.”
“So?” he said.
Bill gave him a questioning look. “So what?”
“So did you see them? Shoot the guy, I mean?”
Bill grimaced. “I wish I could say I did, buddy. But like I said, I was so preoccupied with Melinda and her sister that I didn’t pay much attention to the guy. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.” And so he said his goodbyes to his one and only witness—who hadn’t seen anything—and wished him well in his marital strife, and flew off. At least now he knew what the victim had for breakfast. Not that it mattered, but then maybe it did. Max was an ace detective, and so maybe he could deduce from the way the guy buttered his toast, his entire life story and also the way he met his maker.
As he was zooming back to the other room to report back to Max, he was almost swatted by an irate-looking police officer who stood guarding the door. It was a narrow escape, and he was reminded once again what horrible creatures humans are. To try and murder an innocent fly who hasn’t done them any harm whatsoever, just because they can. Gah!
CHAPTER 6
Norm had only just flown off, thoroughly excited about the mission we had given him, when there was some kind of altercation on the street below. People were screaming, and when we hurried over to the window to take a look, we saw that the throng of shoppers was heading in the direction of a side street, in anticipation of something that must have taken place there.
“Could be a sale,” Harriet suggested. She and Brutus had returned, to announce that they had discovered nothing. “People are always reacting like this when there’s a big sale going.”
“Or it could be a show,” Brutus said. “A busker putting on a great performance.”
“Or a celebrity?” Dooley said. “Maybe George Clooney is in town and people are all trying to take a selfie with the man?”
But then Chase’s phone rang and it wasn’t long before the mystery was solved. “There’s been a shooting,” he informed Odelia in a low voice, so as not to alarm Carlos and Mindy, who were still seated on the couch, with Mindy still looking very pale and undone.
“A shooting?” asked Odelia. “Here in Hampton Cove?”
The cop nodded. “On Grover Street. Looks like a drive-by shooting. The victim was unharmed—miraculous escape, Dolores said. They’re taking him to the hospital just to make sure. She asked us to meet him there.”
“But what about the prince?”
“The prince will have to wait,” said Chase. “This is more urgent.”
I didn’t necessarily agree. If Carlos had heard a gurgle or a groan coming from inside the prince’s room, that meant that the killer could have been in there with his victim at the time, and that gurgle or groan could have been the prince being shot and trying to cry out for help. So where had the killer gone, if Carlos and Mindy had been standing at the door? One thing was for sure: he or she couldn’t have gone far and might still be on the premises, even if he had escaped via the balcony. But since Chase was in charge of the investigation, he called the shots.
“Do we have to go too, Odelia?” asked Dooley.
But she shook her head in a sign that we were to stay put, which I thought was sound thinking on her part. If the crowd moving in the direction of Grover Street was anything to go on, this second crime scene would be pretty crowded by now, and a couple of cats might get trampled underfoot if that was the case.
“We’ll keep looking for witnesses,” I assured our human, and she gave me a grateful pat on the head.
An officer was charged to keep an eye on Carlos and Mindy, and in the meantime, the investigation would continue, with officers knocking on doors of the adjacent rooms and asking guests if they had heard or seen anything suspicious.
“We should really look at CCTV footage,” said Odelia as she made to follow her husband.
“Way ahead of you, babe,” he said. “I’ve already asked the guy in charge of hotel security to get me that footage ASAP. Right now we have a drive-by shooting to look into.”
It certainly was a nice change of pace for the duo, I thought.
“What is a drive-by shooting, Max?” asked Dooley.
“Well, it’s a shooting that happens while people are driving by,” I said.
He stared at me. “People are driving by a shooting?”
“No, the shooters are driving by their intended victim.”
He still didn’t get it. “So… shooters are in the car and they’re shooting at another car also driving by? Two cars passing by one another, like that jousting business in medieval times?”
“Not exactly,” I said. And so I proceeded to explain to him as well as I could what a drive-by shooting consisted of, exactly. In the meantime, we made to leave the room and look for more possible clues into the murder that had just taken place across the corridor.
“I don’t like this,” said Brutus.
“What don’t you like?” I asked.
“Why, this drive-by shooting, of course. If people are going to start shooting innocent pedestrians, Hampton Cove will turn into some kind of mafia town, with killers on every corner of the street waving machine guns and spraying bullets.”
