Chapter 52: Gazelle

When Jake meets the famous singer.

There was the sound of soft pattering as water dripped onto the raccoon's umbrella from the large leaves overhead. The moist humidity of the air around Jake was almost stifling this far down in the Rainforest District. The almost deafening sound of rushing water as it tumbled over boulders, which had been strategically placed in the nearby stream before it poured down a waterfall and into the wide brownish slower waters of the river beyond.

"The moisture alone will play hell on any cameras which would be placed down here, we will have to have some type of fan to move the air enough to prevent condensation," Jake yelled over the roaring water to his companion as thin brown-furred, tailless rat in a turquoise silk shirt and black slacks frowned back at him. "Any ideas?"

"Yeah, I vote yoz dump this client," the rat ironically nicknamed Tails scoffed. "I ain't got no confidence in this job."

"It looks like once they finish it's going to be a nice mansion, but there is no road access," the raccoon replied as he looked up at the huge house tucked up in the branches of a nearby tree. Green moss hung off off the surrounding trees but had not had time to grip onto the new building's undulating roofline and although the house's facade appeared to be made from bamboo, both Jake and Tails knew that there were solid mason cement bricks behind the faux exterior. The building jutted out over the lazy river below, where a boathouse sheltered two large powerboats. "We can't turn her down, you know that! Besides we're only making a bid for the contract, she isn't a client yet."

"Just cuz she is a famous broad, don't mean yoz haz ta make a bid."

"I can't pass up having Gazelle as a client, but why she plans to live down here is a mystery to me?"

"Don't yoz keep up on yer gossip rags do ya coon? She gots a nice penthouse suite downtown too, I bet she spends most her time there where she can be nice and dry."

"Sorry Tails, I'm not a fan of hers."

"Yer Bunny friend is and so is Chief Bogo," Tails continued as he gave the larger raccoon a shrug. "Guess I'd rather keep Bogo happy, I've been on the wrong side of his horns before."

"Who hasn't!" Jake laughed. "Come on, her manager gave me the key, so let's go inside to look around."

Once they entered the mansion, Tails made a beeline towards the basement to look at the wiring for a potential security system and Jake began to wander around the mostly empty rooms.

He had just gone upstairs and had entered a large bedroom, poking around with practiced burglar's eyes as he tried to case the joint for any valuables. "Ah there it is!" he proclaimed when he located the wall safe behind a rather gaudy painting. It wasn't the latest and greatest state of the art safe, just a simple off the shelf version. Setting his ear to the safe, he played with the dial for a few minutes until he heard the tumblers click. Opening it up, he gave a small chuckle when he found it was empty and then after completing his task, he closed it again.

He looked inside a rather huge walk-in closet and frowned at the rumpled clothes which had been lazily tossed upon the dark brown mahogany wooden floors. "Must be the maids," Jake sighed with a shrug. He turned and crossed the hallway to where the master bath was located and opened the door. A scream announced his presence and he stared in disbelief at the very naked gazelle relaxing in a bath full of bubbles.

Jake was dumbfounded as he stood there and stared, finally he somewhat gathered his wits and asked, "What the hell are you doing here and alone?"

The famous singer was staring wide-eyed at him before she grabbed at her cell phone, but her hoofs were soapy and the phone fell with a plunk into the bathwater. "GET OUT!" she screamed before she launched into a very verbal tirade in her native tongue.

"WAIT...WAIT!"

The portly cheetah in the dark blue police uniformed scoffed as he sat his mug down and looked down the bar at the raccoon in the blue suit. There was a uniformed red fox sitting between them. "Wait, are you telling me you walked into the bathroom and Gazelle, the world's greatest singer...an angel with horns...was stark naked?"

"Yes Benny, she was in a bubble bath, I doubt that she wore her clothes in the bath!" the fox named Nick chucked. "Finish your story coon."

"Right," Jake sighed before he took another sip of his drink. "Where was I?"

"Gazelle was naked!" Clawhauser about screamed. "You were being a pervert and staring at HER!"

"Oh yeah," the raccoon chuckled. "Anyways after she screamed for me to leave, I about tripped over my feet trying to get out of the room. Things hadn't calmed down much by the time she finally came out the bathroom wrapped in a towel, she scowled at me and angrily asked why there was a raccoon in her bedroom. 'Are you here to rob me or do worse?' I think is what she asked me. There was a wooden stool in her hoofs, which she tried to shake at me as she clutched at the towel to keep from loosing it. I finally choked out the fact that there was nothing in the house to take and that I was much smaller then she was and happily married at that. I think I said something like, let's not embarrass either one of us any more than we already have."

"Then what?" Clawhauser desperately asked.

"She didn't calm down much and began to call me a perverted stalker," Jake answered.

The raccoon stopped telling the story to nibble on a coup of the remaining kibble bits. "Don't leave us hanging Ringtail, poor Benny is starting to hyperventilate," Nick said with a smirk of his muzzle.

"Well by then I had enough!" Jake continued. "I looked her straight in the eyes and told her to calm down, I was not a stalker or even a fan. That I had been contacted by her manager to give him a quote on providing a security system for the house."

"What did she say then?" Ben asked as he leaned closer, almost crowding out the fox who was between him and the raccoon.

"She stared at me and then said that she knew me from somewhere," Jake answered. "I told her that we had first met when the mayor gave me that medal for helping stop the feline distemper outbreak and then she said she also remembered me from when I led the search for those two scouts lost on Howler Mountain. You know Nick that I've got a picture of her and me, which was taken at one of her charity fundraisers, but I figured that she met so many folks at those events that she would never remember me from that. I left her to dress and waited for her downstairs, by then the maid had finally returned."

"You stayed in her house?" Nick asked before he pushed the oversize cheetah back and away from him.

"Sure and after she dressed, she came down and we sat on the floor and talked. She seemed rather lonely," Jake replied. "It turns out that she snuck away from her security guards and came there for some alone time, quiet time from the immense social and career pressures of being a superstar. I told her that was a very dangerous thing to do and that of everything in this place, she was the most valuable."

"Aw, that was sweet!" Clawhauser gushed.

"I don't think he meant it that way," Nick sarcastically scoffed.

"She took it that way too," Jake laughed as he gave a shrug. "But you are right Nick, I meant value as in kitnapping. But since she had calmed down, I left it at that. We sat and chatted about her life and other things while eating lunch on the floor of her mostly empty mansion."

"So you got the contract?" Nick asked as he leaned back on his bar stool.

"Nope, we got underbid by Acme," Jake sighed.