7c6cdd7d45cb035b54aafd3ac9eb9cc8

Sticks and stones, though, right? And at least we’d achieved our objective: Odelia’s personal possessions had been safeguarded, and Scarface had been outfitted with a few more scars for his collection.

“My heart,” said Dooley, panting as loudly as I did. “It’s beating so fast, Max!”

“Yeah, that’s normal,” I said. My heart was practically hammering through my chest, too. “It’s the adrenaline,” I told Dooley.

“It tastes funny,” said Dooley now, as he licked his claw.

“That’s blood,” I said.

Dooley gulped a little.“Blood!”

But before we could thresh the matter out more thoroughly, the room door opened again, and this time Odelia and Chase walked in. And as we regaled them with the story of our recent heroics, Odelia didn’t look happy. Not happy at all. Nor could I blame her. If strange men with scarred faces enter your room not once but twice in a short space of time, it’s enough to give you pause.

Of course, we were in a strange town in a strange country. It was entirely possible that breaking into rooms to go through people’s personal possessions and taking pictures while they’re sleeping is some sort of local custom. All part of the Bangkok experience.

Though somehow, judging from Odelia’s reaction, and Chase’s, I didn’t think so.

Chapter 14

Odelia and Chase didn’t have time to investigate the breakin properly, as at eleven on the dot they were expected downstairs in the lobby. Surrounded by cameras, the four couples were expected to enact the second scene of the sixth season of Passion Island: the teary goodbye.

The first scene had been the interview Kimmy had set up, which had taken place in their hotel room. They’d talked a little about themselves, their history as a couple, and what they expected from their participation in the show.

Max and Dooley had both been relegated to their respective cages, something which they absolutely abhorred but which was necessary for the trip to the island, and as Odelia and Chase hammed it up for the cameras, Odelia even managing to squeeze a couple of tears from her eyes like a seasoned actress, she had the impression that the other couples didn’t even have to fake it. Tina and Nick were bawling like babies, and even the tough-looking blonde was crying her eyes out, even if her other half wasn’t. The fourth couple, whom she only saw now for the first time, was a plain-looking pair. The girl, named Joanna, was a freckle-faced pretty redhead, and her boyfriend was a chubby-looking young man who could have been a sales manager in an insurance company.

She understood now what Kimmy had told her about the selection process Clint employed: they tried to get people whom the public could identify with. So when they failed to stay together, the viewers at home would be as thrown as the cheated partner.

Chase held her close, and whispered,“Talk to you soon, babe… on our secret phone.”

She smiled. Kimmy had promised to sneak them a phone, so they could stay in touch. All they needed to do was make sure Clint didn’t catch them.

“I feel like a spy going on a secret mission,” she said.

“It’ll be fine,” said Chase. “Though I’m still not entirely sure this is such a good idea.”

“Why?”

“You’re the one running the risk. It’s not the men they target but the women.”

He was right, of course. That and Scarface lurking around their hotel room was enough to give Odelia the heebie-jeebies.

Kimmy had talked to security, but unfortunately the cameras in that section of the hotel had suffered an electrical failure. Coincidence? Somehow she didn’t think so.

“If anything happens, you can always swim to the rescue,” she quipped.

Chase grinned.“Just say the word, babe, and I’m on my way.”

The two islands—Koh Samui for the women and Koh Phangan for the men—were separated by a nineteen-mile strip of sea that could be crossed by ferry in half an hour. Swimming, unfortunately, wasn’t recommended, both for the distance—about the same distance as the English Channel between Calais and Dover—and the many sharks infesting the Gulf of Thailand, where both islands were located.

“I’ll find a boat,” Chase assured her when she reminded him of this fact. “And there’s always Kimmy. She’ll keep an eye on you, too.”

Kimmy was their ally in this, their most peculiar adventure yet, or at least the most exotic.

“Time to go!” Clint called out, checking his watch.

“Stay safe, babe,” said Chase as he planted a kiss on her lips.

“You, too, and don’t let the seductresses bite,” she added for good measure.

He grinned.“Don’t worry.I only have eyes for you…” he sang, out of tune as usual. It still managed to put a smile on her face, and then the men were led out by one of Clint’s people, and the women by Kimmy, the men filing into a black van and the women into a white one, and then they were off…

“How come we’re coming with you?” asked Dooley from his cage, sat at her feet. “I mean, Max and I are both males, so shouldn’t we be going to the male island with Chase?”

“Shut up, Dooley,” said Max. “Just when we’ve managed to convince everyone we’re females.”

Dooley didn’t get the joke at first, but when he did, he laughed heartily.

The van took them to the airport, where they were scheduled to take another flight, which would take them to the island in a little over an hour. And as they sat a little nervously, the van navigating the distance from the hotel to the airport, silence reigned supreme. Odelia decided to break the ice.“So how much fun is this, huh?” she said.

In response, only Tina managed to crack a feeble smile.

Kimmy decided to join Odelia’s efforts to lighten the mood, and said, “How are you guys doing? Are you excited?”

Nods and murmured words of assent were her response.

“You’re going to love the resort we’ve booked,” Kimmy said. “The accommodations are amazing. This year they’ve added a jacuzzi, and the pool is to die for. And of course there’s the bar…” She wiggled her eyebrows meaningfully.

“Oh, yeah,” said the tan blonde, whose name, Odelia had learned, was Jackie. “I could murder for a gin and tonic right now.”

“I could use a drink myself, to be honest,” said Tina, surprising Odelia.

“I’ll settle for a rum and coke,” said Joanna with a nervous titter.

All eyes turned to Odelia.“What’s your poison, Odelia?” asked Jackie.

“Um…” She couldn’t very well confess that she wasn’t much of a drinker. So instead she said, “Tequila. Always hits the spot.”

Cheers rang out. Subdued, still, but a sign of things to come.

“This is going to be one big party!” Jackie cried.

Chapter 15

If I thought traveling from New York to Bangkok had been tough, the small plane we were on now was ten times worse. It shook and trembled and kept going up and down and left and right for some reason, and all the while I thought this was it—the end was nigh!

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Dooley intimated from his cage, which was located right next to mine at Odelia’s feet.

“Me too, buddy,” I said, as I retched slightly. All this traveling was well and good, but it wasn’t doing a lot for my equanimity.

“This isn’t the life for me,” Dooley added with a groan. “I’m a homebody, Max, not Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. Maybe Odelia should consider getting a dog and bringinghim on her travels halfway across the world.”

He was right. Travel simply does not agree with us. Still, as far as I could ascertain, we were almost there, and not a minute too soon.

“Next time I’m not coming,” Dooley continued his lament. “She can bring Harriet and Brutus. They would have loved it.”

“Not Brutus,” I corrected him. “I think he was more than happy to be left behind. It’s Harriet who’s the eager one. She loves this Passion Island business and would like nothing more than to be part of the show.”

“Well, she can have her show,” said Dooley, in a rare case of moodiness and rebellion.

“We’re almost there,” I assured him. “And I’m sure once we arrive at destination’s end, things will greatly improve. Exclusive five-star beach resort and all of that stuff.”

“You’re forgetting one thing, Max.”

“What?”

“This is only the first part of the trip. We still have to get home again, which means another trip by plane, plane and plane.”

And then he really did retch, depositing a nice little puddle of puke right in front of his cage. And since seeing puke always makes me want to puke, too, I quickly followed suit and deposited my neat little puddle right next to his.

“Oh, dear,” said Odelia as she saw the result of our mastication on the floor. She gave us a look of commiseration. “You’re really not well, are you, fellas?”

“Not well,” Dooley said in shaky tones.

“Not well at all,” I echoed, equally shaky. My limbs were quaking, and my stomach was twitching.

“I think I’m going to die, Odelia,” said Dooley. “Please take my body back to the States and bury me in the garden underneath the rose bushes.”

“Yeah, don’t give us one of those burials at sea,” I pleaded. “I wouldn’t like to be dumped into the seething seas tucked into a plastic bag.”

“I don’t want to be tucked into a plastic bag and chucked into the sea either!” Dooley cried.

Odelia smiled.“You’re not going to die. You’re a little sick right now, but as soon as we land you’ll feel right as rain again.”

“You’re simply saying that so we won’t worry,” I said.

“Yeah, you’re simply saying that so we won’t complain when they shove us into a plastic bag and chuck us into the sea!” Dooley cried.

“I probably should have given you something against motion sickness,” said Odelia.

Behind her, suddenly a voice spoke.“Are you actually talking to your cats?” The voice was laced with a healthy dose of irony, but still Odelia sat up with a start.

“They’re not feeling well,” she explained to the woman. She was blond and tan and giving both me and Dooley a hard look. “Cats don’t take well to travel.”

“You should have gotten a dog,” said the woman as she gave us a supercilious look. “Dogs are a lot more fun than cats. Cats are stupid, spiteful creatures. My mom had a cat. It scratched me so hard on my butt once you can still see the scar.” And to prove she wasn’t lying, she showed her left buttock, where indeed a tiny scar was visible. I wondered what she must have done to provoke such an attack in that particular place. Probably she’d taken a seat on her mother’s cat by accident, at which point the creature quite naturally returned the favor by digging its claws into her behind.

Odelia clenched her jaw. She hates it when people talk smack about her cats. She refrained from lashing out, though, mostly because she was on assignment, and the first rule for an investigative reporter undercover on a case: don’t antagonize your potential sources of information.

“So how did you end up joining this madhouse?” asked the woman.

“My boyfriend and I are getting married in a couple of months, and we decided to test our relationship before taking the plunge,” Odelia explained. “How about you, Jackie?”

Jackie shrugged, and checked her overly long fingernails.“Money, of course. If we win this thing we’ll have a nice little nest egg.”

“Or a down payment to buy your own place,” Odelia suggested.

Jackie laughed.“Don’t you worry. We got that covered. Gary owns his own construction company. The first thing he did when we started going out was select a nice plot of land and show it to me. That’s when I knew he was the one. Finally a guy who’s got his priorities straight. He’s already laid the foundations, and by the time we walk down the aisle our dream house will be ready for us to move in.”

“Well, I’d say I hope you win, but since I hope to win myself…”

“I’ve seen the competition and frankly I don’t think you stand a chance, sweetheart,” said Jackie with a shrug. “That boyfriend of yours, and the others? They’re all going down.”

“And what makes you think Gary will be immune to the charms of those seductresses?”

“Because if he cheats on me, I’ll kill him,” said the woman, and gave Odelia a fine smile.

Next to me, Dooley gulped, and this time it wasn’t from the motion of the plane. Jackie clearly was a force to be reckoned with, and I wasn’t entirely sure I liked her.

Chapter 16

The lodgings at the Cha Cha Resort& Residences were excellent. As Odelia inspected the little villa she’d been awarded, it was obvious the production company had spared no expense to make the candidates feel at home. The chalet was airy and bright, with a spacious bedroom and bathroom, and a salon where she could play hostess to the other candidates or… one of the seducers—or all of the above,if it pleased her.

She had absolutely no intention of doing any such thing, but she still played the game. So when Clint himself dropped by for a visit, and asked her if everything was to her satisfaction, she giggled and asked when she’d be introduced to the six seducers.

Clint grinned and said,“Now that’s the spirit, young lady. You’ll get to meet our seducers tonight for the first time, and rest assured you will not be disappointed.”

“Thanks, Mr. Bunda,” she said demurely, as befitting the profile Kimmy had drawn up for her: the not-too-clever innocent young woman, eager to expand her horizons.

“Just call me Clint,” said the producer with a lascivious twinkle in his eye. Odelia had the impression he wouldn’t mind playing the seducer himself, if given the chance. “So let’s go over those rules again,” he said, turning serious. “No cell phones, no contact whatsoever with the other island, and participation in all the group activities as well as the dates we set up for you. Whatever you do in the privacy of your own villa, of course, is entirely up to you.” He gave her a wink. “Though we will be watching.”

She glanced around the spacious living area.“You have cameras in here, too?”

“Honey, we have cameras everywhere, but don’t let that bother you. In fact pretend they’re not even there. We always edit out the stuff that would be too embarrassing, so you just go ahead and have fun—and let us create a great show for the people back home.”

And with these words, he left her to unpack.

“What a circus,” said Max as he padded in from the bedroom. “And where are those cameras? I don’t see them.”

“That’s the whole idea,” said Odelia. “To make the contestants forget about them, and make absolute fools of themselves so ‘the people back home’ can have their voyeuristic fun.” She darted a glance in the direction of the bathroom. “I wonder if they put cameras in the bathroom, too.”

“Probably,” said Max. “So you better shower in your bathing suit from now on. Unless you want the world to see you in your birthday suit.”

“Oh, heck,” said Odelia. “I’m starting to wonder why I ever said yes to this thing.”

“Do you think there are bugs in here?” asked Dooley, also joining them. He’d subjected the villa to a thorough inspection, and came to deliver his field report.

“Oh, yes,” said Max. “Plenty of bugs, and not the tiny, benign ones either. I think we can expect a veritable plethora of fauna and flora from now on.”

Dooley shivered.“I don’t like bugs, Max. They scare me. Especially the poisonous ones.”

“Don’t worry, buddy. I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of bug spray lying around. They wouldn’t want their contestants to get eaten alive before they have the chance to be seduced by one of the bigger bugs called seducers.”

Odelia laughed.“I’m glad they let me bring you guys along,” she said. “I would have felt pretty lonely without my two babes.”

“I wonder what Harriet and Brutus are up to right now,” said Dooley as he hopped up onto the couch and made himself comfortable. “Harriet really wanted to come.”

“She’ll be fine,” Max assured him. “She’ll be able to watch the show from the comfort and safety of her own home while we brave the elements to create the show.”

“I hope those cameras aren’t equipped with sound,” Dooley said after a pause, as he darted anxious glances around the room. “Otherwise they’ll wonder why one of the contestants keeps talking to her cats.”

Odelia gave him a startled look.“You’re right,” she said. “We better watch out what we say.”

“Isn’t there somewhere we can speak freely?” asked Max. “A place where they haven’t installed cameras?”

“There is a place,” said Odelia. “Kimmy told me there’s some sort of shack where the gardeners store their gear. She assured me it hasn’t been wired.”

“So let’s meet there when we have something important to share,” Max suggested.

Odelia nodded. It was also where Kimmy had told her she could safely talk to Chase. Every morning at dawn she and Chase had arranged to touch base and go over the events of the day. She was already looking forward to it. The only problem was that the rest of the resort was being watched, so she’d have to tread carefully in order to get to the shack and back without creating suspicion.

Just then, Kimmy entered and gave her a bracing smile.“How are you holding up?” she asked.

Odelia glanced around.“I feel as if I’ve entered a maximum-security prison.”

Kimmy’s smile widened. “It’ll be fine,” she said. “Try to relax and have some fun. Most candidates who join Passion Island have a great time on the island.” Then, as she lowered her voice to a whisper, she added, “And keep your eyes peeled at all times.”

And with this admonition, the young assistant producer left the villa.

Chapter 17

The villa where we’d arrived, our new home away from home, was very nice. It wasn’t actually home, of course. And soon I started feeling a little anxious. It took Dooley to make me realize why that was.

“I miss our friends, Max,” he said as we traversed the path that led from Odelia’s villa to the main compound. “I miss Harriet and Brutus and Kingman and Shanille and I even miss Clarice.”

“I miss them too,” I told him. Then again, we’d agreed to come on this trip with Odelia, and it was important we made the best of it.

The heart of the resort consisted of a five-star restaurant where the candidates ate, a plaza with a bar, a spa, a swimming pool and second restaurant for the production crew, which ate their meals separately from the contestants. The plaza was the hub of the resort nightlife, where the seducers worked their magic to accomplish their mission.

Past the compound a path led down to the beach, and that’s where we found Odelia, seated on a flat rock, gazing out across the sea at the setting sun. It was a beautiful scene, and as Dooley and I admired the picture-postcard setting, suddenly a sound like a buffalo stomping reached our ears, and as we both jerked up in anxious anticipation, a heavyset man came crashing through the brush. He sported a wispy beard, sunglasses perched on his nose, camera hoisted on his shoulder, and was dressed in a loud flowery shirt and mauve boxers. “Hey, Odelia,” he said, panting. “Stay right where you are!”

Odelia, who was as startled as we were by this interruption, blinked a couple times.

“Just act as if I’m not here!” said the cameraman, which was a little hard to accomplish. “Beautiful,” he murmured as he trained his camera on Odelia. “Wonderful. Amazing. Now toss your hair across your shoulders, honey. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket, sweetie. Now give me one of those sultry looks… Love the blush! Great look.”

It wasn’t a blush, exactly, but more a sign of impending doom. Doom for the cameraman, though he didn’t know it yet.

“Could you lose the top, sweetheart?”

Odelia gritted her teeth then snapped, “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Um… my job?” said the guy, surprised by this retort.

“Let’s make one thing perfectly clear,” said Odelia. “I’m not losing my top, and I’m not going to try and look sexy for your damn camera. I’m not a pinup, so get lost.”

“But—“

“Get lost!”

With a sheepish look on his face, the cameraman heeded her words and got lost.

“What’s a pinup, Max?” asked Dooley. “And why did that man want Odelia to get undressed?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Dooley,” I said. “The man was confused.”

“You mean he mistook Odelia for someone else?”

“Exactly,” I said. “He probably thought Odelia was his girlfriend and wanted her to pose for him.”

“What a strange man,” said Dooley, “that he doesn’t even remember what his own girlfriend looks like.”

“Some men are like that,” I said. “They forget what their girlfriend looks like and start hitting on some other girl. It happens all the time.” Especially on Passion Island, I could have added, but didn’t. I was starting to see that this trip wasn’t just dangerous for Odelia’s well-being, but for Dooley’s innocence, too, and was going to prove a challenge for my capacity to keep explaining away the strange happenings that took place there.

I thought it better to leave Odelia to enjoy these precious few moments of peace and quiet, so Dooley and I continued our perambulation. There were more villas spread out across the resort, not just for the contestants but also, I imagined, for the seducers, which was probably convenient. That way they could sneak into a contestant’s chalet and be home before sunup. The production crew, meanwhile, stayed at a large villa on the other side of the resort, and since we weren’t there to admire the view but to solve the mystery of the vanishing candidates, we decided to head on over and stake out the place.

The villa was built in hacienda style, with a wraparound porch and brightly colored window shutters. We entered the house via the front door, which was open, and found that the place was buzzing with activity. I saw the camera guy who’d accosted Odelia lament his fate to his comrades in a room off the main lobby, and watched as Clint Bunda stalked across the floor, barking orders into his cell phone. At least he was allowed to keep his phone, which didn’t seem entirely fair, I thought.

I even saw Kimmy, seated in an adjacent room at a desk, bent over her laptop and typing away.

“So many people,” said Dooley as we sat in a quiet corner and surveyed the activity.

“It takes a lot of people to create a big show like this,” I said. “People you don’t see since they all work behind the scenes.”

“So how are we going to find out who’s making these women disappear?” he asked.

It was an excellent question. There were easily dozens of people, holed up in the different rooms that made up the ground floor, which had been turned into offices. The room where Kimmy sat working, surrounded by others also pecking away on their laptops, had a sign that indicated this was normally the luggage room. And the room where the camera crew sat reposing was the massage parlor, though of massage activities there was to date no trace.

“Let’s take a closer look,” I suggested, and we moved into the room where the camera people were all gathered. The one who’d approached Odelia was still talking, and he didn’t have a lot of complimentary things to say about our beloved human.

“She told me to get lost—can you believe it? I was just doing my job and she told me off! The nerve of the woman.”

“Pretty little blonde, though, isn’t she, our Miss Poole?” said another guy of similar dimensions, who sat fiddling with his camera. “By far the prettiest of this new crop.”

“Then you haven’t seen Jackie,” said a third. “Just what the doctor ordered. Oo-wee!”

Somehow I had the feeling I wasn’t going to learn much from listening to these men commenting on Odelia and the other women like bumblebees on a meadow of particularly nectar-filled flowers, so I told Dooley I’d heard enough and we walked out.

“They do seem to like Odelia a lot, don’t they?” Dooley said.

“Yeah, I guess they do,” I agreed, though I wasn’t particularly partial to the kind of men who salivated over my human like a restaurant visitor over a juicy piece of steak.

We moved into the next room, but there wasn’t much information to be gleaned there either. Kimmy, along with a horde of writers and fellow assistant producers, kept pecking away at their laptops in utmost concentration, so that was a bust, too.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I suggested. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and learn something.”

We moved up the stairs and arrived on the landing, several doors leading off into the crew members’ respective rooms. The door to one room was ajar, and since I heard voices from inside, I decided to investigate further. No one ever pays attention to cats, which is why our association with Odelia has been so successful. We’re the perfect spies.

Inside the room we found Clint, seated on the bed and still talking a mile a minute into his phone. So we took a seat near the door and listened to what he had to say.

“I don’t care, Susan! It’s my way or the highway, haven’t I made that perfectly clear?” He listened for a moment, and I could hear a woman’s voice holding up her end of the conversation. “Look, I don’t want to talk about it. Because I don’t want to talk about it!”

There was more repartee, and I could see that Clint was getting more and more red in the face as the conversation dragged on.

“I think he’s going to have an aneurysm, Max,” said Dooley, noticing the same thing.

“I think so, too,” I agreed, and was already eyeing the door in case we needed to race out to fetch Odelia and a doctor.

“Look, it’s got nothing to do with me. If they decide to vanish from the face of the earth that’s their business. How the hell would I know where they’ve gone off to! It’s got nothing to do with me, I’m telling you!”

I had the impression he was talking about the missing women, so I pricked up my ears. Unfortunately, the conversation quickly wound down after that, and so before Clint discovered he was no longer alone, Dooley and I tiptoed from the room again.

Out in the corridor, Dooley said,“I think he was talking about the missing women, Max.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Does that mean he doesn’t know where they are?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think we can put Clint’s name on our list of suspects.”

Though why the show’s producer would kidnap his own contestants was beyond me.

Chapter 18

That night, the first big event of the season had been announced and was to take place in the plaza, the central meeting place, and not coincidentally where the bar was located. Before Odelia had left for Thailand she’d watched a couple of episodes of the show’s previous season, conveniently taped by her grandmother, and it struck her that a lot of the ‘action’ appeared to take place in that very same plaza.

So it was with a slight sense of trepidation that she slid into the little black dress she’d selected for the occasion, slipped her feet into a pair of heels, and checked her reflection in the mirror. She’d applied minimal makeup, and her hair was a little frizzy, but she figured she’d be able to get away with it. After all, she hadn’t been cast as a seductress but as one half of a regular couple, and she looked about as regular as could be.

As she left the villa, she almost bumped into Tina, who was dressed to the nines, and looked absolutely terrified.“I’ve already downed two martinis and I still feel like I’m going to die,” the homely brunette confessed.

“It’ll be fine,” Odelia said, though she felt seriously nervous herself.

“It’s not the seducers I’m worried about so much as all those cameras. And the idea that millions of people will be watching my every move, and listening to every single thing I say. Can you believe a guy with a camera came into my bedroom just now, filming me? I kicked him out, of course.”She shook her head. “The gall of these people. Just because we signed up for their show they think they can do anything.”

“I had to get rid of a cameraman myself,” Odelia said. “Kept bugging me about removing my top.”

“We’re candidates, not strippers,” said Tina as she teetered on her high heels.

They passed a villa and a loud voice arrested their progress.“Hey, wait up!” The voice belonged to Jackie, and she looked absolutely gorgeous in a skintight red dress that showcased a sizable bust and a pair of long tan legs. She came tripping up, a look of excitement on her face. “I can’t believe the show is about to start and we’re in it!” she cried. “Isn’t that just amazeballs! Eeeek!”

“Eeeek!” Tina echoed, though it was clear her heart wasn’t really in it.

“Eeeeek!” said Odelia without much enthusiasm.

The fourth participant came walking out of her villa and smiled when she saw the three others waiting for her on the path.

“So this is it, huh?” she said. Joanna was dressed in a simple white linen dress, and looked the most normal of the foursome. Like Odelia, she hadn’t put on a lot of makeup, and it was obvious the pretty redhead wasn’t exactly the party girl. She heaved a little sigh. “Is it just me or doyou guys just want this whole thing to be over?”

“It’s just you!” said Jackie, and squealed again. And as she slipped her arm through Tina’s, and started up the path, Odelia and Joanna fell back.

“You don’t seem like the Passion Island type either,” said Joanna. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?” She laughed deferentially. “I know I’ve had my doubts myself.”

Odelia experienced a pang of guilt for lying to these women. Still, she had to stick to her story. She couldn’t very well come out and tell Joanna she was there in an official capacity. “I don’t really care about the whole show element either,” she confessed, “but the prize money could really change my life. In my line of work 50.000 dollars is a lot of money. I’d have to work my whole life toraise that kind of cash.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a reporter for a small-town newspaper on Long Island. Lots of local events. You know the kind. Wedding anniversaries, library readings, a farmer’s chickens organizing the great escape. Not exactly Pulitzer-Prize-winning material. I love it, though.”

“I thought you were a vet or something,” said Joanna. “Because of the cats.”

“Oh, no. Though it’s true that I love my two fur-babies.”

“They are pretty cute,” said Joanna with a smile.

“How about you? What do you do?”

“I’m an accountant, and so is my Arthur. In fact that’s how we met. My parents are accountants, too. They run their own company, and Arthur was their first hire, so we ended up spending a lot of time together crunching numbers, and chatting around the water cooler. And one thing led to another and here we are.” She smiled. “Friends signed us up for Passion Island. They figured we could use a little excitement in our lives.”

“Oh, they did, did they?”

“Why is it that people always think accountants are boring?” asked Joanna, a tiny frown slicing her brow.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Odelia said with a smile. She liked Joanna. She was nice. “So do you think Arthur will be able to resist the charms of those seductresses?”

“Oh, sure. Arthur adores me. He told me we’d easily win this thing.”

They’d arrived at the plaza, and were greeted by a camera crew, bright lights competing with the natural light still being dispensed by a sun slowly sinking behind the horizon.

“Welcome, ladies!” Clint said, a toothy grin on his face. “Let me introduce you to your host: Francine Richter!”

Gasps of excited anticipation escaped four throats, even Odelia’s. Francine Richter, the famous show host, looked absolutely gorgeous. She was pushing fifty, but didn’t look a day over thirty-five. Not a hair of her platinum coiffure was out of place, her slender frame clad in a bright yellow dress was stunning, and her famous features were arranged in an appropriately welcoming smile.

“Hello, ladies,” she said in that deep voice instantly recognizable to viewers around the country. “So how are you feeling today? Are you excited to be part of Passion Island?”

“You bet!” Jackie cried, and the other three women all concurred, though in slightly less exuberant tones, due to being awestruck by the presence of network royalty.

And as Clint melted into the background, Francine expertly took control of the interview. For a couple of minutes she chatted easily and brightly with the four contestants, eliciting a few sound bites about their background and motivation to be on the show, and then it was time for the moment they’d all been waiting for: the introduction of the seducers.

Odelia swallowed. She wasn’t there for the show, really, but she still couldn’t help but be swept up in the excitement of the moment. She’d never been on TV before, and certainly never on a popular reality show.

Then, as music blasted from the speakers, lights flashed, and the smoke machine worked overtime, six men came strutting onto the dance floor and performed an exhilarating dance routine. They looked like the lineup of a Chippendales show, or that movie with Channing Tatum: steely-eyed looks, chiseled faces, granite jaw lines, gleaming rock-hard pecs, and bulging muscles, these men took their fitness routines seriously!

“Oh, my,” Joanna said next to Odelia, as a gasp escaped Tina, and Jackie screamed her head off with excitement.

Chapter 19

“Max?”

“Mh?”

“Why are those men so shiny?”

“Oil,” I said curtly. I would have said more, but just like everyone present I was transfixed by the strange spectacle of six grown men gyrating not twenty feet from where I was sitting, dressed like Tarzan and throwing glances that can only be described as lascivious at the four young ladies for whom this spectacle was clearly intended.

“Oil?”

“Oil.”

“But why, Max? Why are they dressed in oil and not much else?”

“I think their costume—or lack thereof—is designed to impress, Dooley.” And judging from the rapturous expressions on the faces of their audience it was clear their very particular dress code had hit its mark. Even Odelia looked as if she’d bitten down on a delicious piece of yummy chocolate and the taste had exploded across her palate.

“Why is Odelia’s mouth hanging open, Max?” Dooley continued his barrage of tough questions.

His powers of observation were excellent, though. In fact he was probably understating things, as our human’s jaw was practically on the floor now.

“She’s probably hot,” I said. It was pretty hot out, even though the sun was setting.

“I don’t think Chase is going to like this,” said Dooley. “I don’t think he’s going to like it that she’s looking at those men like that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “She’s probably surprised, that’s all.” After all, it isn’t every day that all of a sudden, and quite out of the blue, six grown men of the Adonis type are suddenly performing a routine that’s usually reserved for the kind of clubs I’m sure Odelia doesn’t lend her patronage. “Besides,” I added. “It’s not as if Chase can see her. He’s on a completely different island, with no way of knowing what his fianc?e is up to.”

Then my eyes shifted to the row of cameras filming every single moment of the sordid little scene and I gulped a little. Oops.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

One island over, Chase Kingsley was not having a good time. If he’d hoped going undercover in the belly of the Passion Island beast would give him a wealth of clues as to the dark underpinnings of the reality show, and lead him to unmask the evil conspiracy at its heart, that hope had yet to be borne out.

So far all he’d done was chat with three rather obnoxious young men, whose only intention apparently was to have fun with as many women as possible before tying the knot with their ones and only, and watch those same men down copious amounts of alcohol to ‘get in the mood.’

He hoped Odelia was having better luck, because as far as he was concerned this operation so far was a bust.

He was seated at the bar, waiting for the moment of the big reveal—the introduction of the six seductresses, whose unenviable task it was to break up four happy couples.

It all sounded pretty immoral as far as Chase was concerned, and his low opinion of the show’s producer, Clint Bunda, was hitting new lows as he listened to the boasts and brags of his three co-contestants.

To Chase, relationships were a sacred bond between a man and a woman, and these Passion Island shenanigans were seriously getting on his nerves. To the extent he’d had to suppress a powerful urge to put these men in their place for being so cavalier.

“It’s happening!” suddenly declared Nick, a stringy young man whose hair hadn’t survived an attack of attrition. His betrothed was a girl named Tina, and according to his drunken braggadocio they’d made a secret arrangement that he could bed any seductress he wanted, as a way of sowing his wild oats one last time before entering a state of wedded bliss.

Chase had his doubts about this so-called arrangement, but hadn’t given vent to his skepticism. He didn’t want to blow his cover by going overboard on the heavy-handedness. He was, after all, one of the boys, though right now he felt more like an adult surrounded by a couple of rambunctious teenagers.

On the dance floor, the spotlights were showing off their stroboscopic prowess as four ladies sashayed onto the scene, all dressed in tiny thongs and even tinier string bikinis. All four were extremely tan, thin and showcasing the kind of physique only attainable with the assistance of a skilled plastic surgeon, personal trainer and stylist. To Chase’s dismay, they reminded him of life-sized Barbie dolls. Not exactly his dream dates, though judging from the uproarious grunts and howls from his co-islanders, they couldn’t have disagreed more.

And as they produced the kind of animal sounds befitting this jungle environment, the lanky cop expelled a tired groan.

“Hey, why are there only four?” asked Arthur suddenly.

Chase narrowed his eyes. The accountant was right. Six seductresses had been advertised, but only four were stalking across the platform.

“Oh, there they are,” said Nick.

And, much to Chase’s surprise, suddenly two more seductresses materialized—and they looked very familiar indeed.

“What the…” one of the men muttered.

Four jaws drooped, Chase’s included, as two mature ladies appeared. One was dressed in a pink tracksuit, and the other in a tiger-print catsuit.

They were Grandma Muffin and Scarlett Canyon.

Chapter 20

“I think we’re on the wrong island, sweetums.”

“Shush, Brutus,” said Harriet.

“No, but I mean it. We’re on the men’s island. We were supposed to be on the women’s island.”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“But it does, sugar plum. The women’s island is where it’s at. That’s where the investigation is taking place.”

“I’m going to be on camera whether they like it or not,” said Harriet, clearly not paying attention to a word her mate had said.

She had that resolute look in her eyes that Brutus knew all too well. It often spelled trouble, and already he was trying to anticipate Harriet’s next move so he could talk her out of it, but this time she was too quick, even for one as closely familiar with her wiles as he was.

Before he could stop her, she was already stalking off in the direction of the plaza.

“Harriet!” he called out, but the music pounding from the speakers was so loud even her fine feline sense of hearing couldn’t have picked up his cry of despair.

He watched helplessly as Harriet joined the lineup of six women and started a series of gyrations that could easily compete with those of the dancing Barbies.

Brutus shook his head in frustration. He knew how keen Harriet was to be part of Passion Island, but this was too much. If she kept this up she’d be booted off the island!

The men seated at the bar were all whooping and hollering, except Chase, who looked a little green around the gills.

It’s one thing to have to watch four would-be strippers, but another to see your future grandmother-in-law strutting her stuff like a seasoned Jezebel, along with her newly-found best friend, a seventy-year-old woman having squeezed her pneumatic frame into a much-too-tight leopard-skin excuse for a garment.

The four other women kept darting curious glances at Scarlett, probably wondering if that’s what they’d look like in another forty or fifty years, but Scarlett didn’t appear bothered. Quite the opposite. While the other women strutted their stuff in situ, she decided to venture out into the world and now approached the candidates, quickly curling herself around a large and portlyone, much to the latter’s obvious delight.

Scarlett Canyon might have celebrated her seventh decade on this planet, but with all the work she’d had done she easily looked decades younger. And of course the men had been drinking steadily all evening, and the booze must have affected their eyesight.

Brutus eyed the spectacle of four Barbie wannabes, one Persian cat and one septuagenarian dressed like Estelle Getty with a jaundiced eye.

Things could only get better from this point onward. Couldn’t they?

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

“What do you think you’re doing?” Chase hissed.

“Oh, come off your high horse, Mr. Cop,” said Gran, waving away his objections. “Now what does a girl have to do to get a drink around here? Preferably one of them umbrella ones.”

They were seated at the bar, the show having ended when one of the producers had pulled the plug on the sound system and ordered the cameras to stop rolling. He’d looked on the verge of having a heart attack and had screamed something that sounded a lot like ‘Get rid of that darn cat!’

“You’re not seriously considering sticking around, are you?” Chase asked, incredulous.

“Of course I’m sticking around! I didn’t come all this way to get kicked off this island so soon.” She tilted her chin. “I have every right to be here, same as you.”

Chase couldn’t believe his ears. “But you’re a cheat!”

Gran had heard through the grapevine that two of the seductresses had had to drop out at the last minute and had sent in her and Scarlett’s applications to be their replacements. Only they hadn’t mentioned their ages, and they’d used pictures from a stock photo website. And since time was of the essence, they’d been quickly sent the go-ahead. Only when they’d suddenly appeared in the lineup had the production team realizedthat the two ladies they’d figured were part of the kitchen staff were in fact their much-sought-after new replacement seductresses.

“Look, I told that idiot that if he dares kick us off the island I’m going to sue him for ageism. It’s time that senior citizens get their due. It’s not fair that only the young get to have fun. He quickly backed down after that.” She smacked her lips as she bellowed, “Waiter! One of ‘em umbrella drinks for me! Yeah, the fruity ones!”

“You’re going to ruin this whole operation,” Chase said, as he rubbed his face.

“Nothing of the kind. I’m going tosave your operation. You didn’t think this through, Chase. You and Odelia infiltrated the show as fake candidates—“

“Not so loud!” Chase hissed.

“But who’s infiltrating the seductresses, huh?” She thumped her chest. “Me!”

“Oh, God…” Chase muttered.

“You didn’t think, sonny boy! Where do you think the danger is coming from? Exactly those wily seductresses. They’re the ones setting up this whole kidnapping scheme. Listen, I’ve got it all figured out. The seductresses seduce the men, right?”

“Mh.”

“And of course they want to keep them once the show is over, cause these are some pretty fine specimens. Not the kind of guys who normally go for the stripper type, right?”

“Are you going somewhere with this?”

“Just listen! So once the show is over, and the cameras are gone, and the free booze, and the sun and the beach and the rest, these men of course land back in reality with a thud. Back to work on Monday. Back to their regular lives, with their regular fianc?es.”

“If they’ll still have them,” Chase muttered.

“Of course they will. This is just one long stag party. But these women don’t want it to be over. They want to hook these men once and for all. So how to work it? By getting rid of the competition. They whack the future wives, step into their roles and bingo! A great life awaits. With a pretty boring husband, granted, but that’s why adultery was invented.”

“You’re forgetting one thing.”

“I doubt it.”

“The women are on the other island.”

“So? They don’t get abducted straightaway, do they? These women must have accomplices waiting until the candidates return to the States, and nab them first chance they get. Now where’s that drink? Hey, waiter! I can see what you’re doing, you sneaky little twerp! You’re serving the bimbosfirst! Wanna get sued for ageism? Cause I’ll do it! Thanks,” she added, and took a satisfied sip from her umbrella drink. “Aaah,” she said, closing her eyes. “Now that hits the spot.”

Chapter 21

That night, a first campfire was being held on both islands. As Kimmy had explained, the campfire was when the candidates were all gathered around a fire and shown footage of what their other halves were up to on the other island. It was usually a moment fraught with a certain measure of dread, as Clint liked to throw in a couple of grenades in the form of infidelities engaged in by the candidates and watch the fallout.

Odelia, as she took a seat, glanced at her fellow candidates. Jackie looked extremely jolly, as her blood was now presumably one hundred percent pure alcohol after having knocked back more G&T’s than probably was good for her. Tina was chewing her bottom lip, looking anxious, and Joanna was yawning, indicating it was way past her bedtime.

After the show had wound down, the six Chippendale wannabes had mingled with the contestants at the bar, and immediately one of them had hit on Odelia. She’d made it clear from the outset that she wasn’t interested, though, earning her a wounded look from the male model. The moment he’d vacated his seat another one had taken his place, and this one hadn’t taken no for an answer, and had spent the rest of the evening trying to break down her defenses, which of course was what he was being paid to do.

He wasn’t an unpleasant guy, though, so she’d endured his company, but had steered the conversation resolutely away from the more romantic topics.

Jackie, meanwhile, hadn’t been as reticent as Odelia, and had stuck so close to two of the seducers she could have described their physique with her eyes closed. Tina and Joanna had also spent the evening being wooed, though Odelia doubted with much luck.

Francine Richter joined them at the campfire, which was actually a black metal terrace heater. She was clutching an iPad, a look of significance in her eyes.

For Passion Island aficionados this was the highlight of the show.

“So this is it, ladies,” said the show host. “Are you ready for the moment of truth?”

“Please tell me nothing happened,” said Tina, having transferred her chewing activities from her lip to her fingernails.

“You’ll soon find out,” said Francine ominously, and swiped the iPad with a long-nailed finger.

The screen flickered to life and footage of a similar nature to what had happened on Koh Samui appeared: over on Koh Phangan the four candidates were seated at the bar, Chase amongst them, and then the seductresses arrived and the party started.

Odelia’s shocked gasp echoed the gasps of the other three contestants when Gran and Scarlett suddenly appeared in the lineup!

“What’s this?” asked Jackie. “Is this a joke?”

“Um, in the spirit of diversification we’ve decided to allow women of all ages to compete for the candidates’ attention,” Francine said, clearly lying through her teeth.

Odelia had no idea how Gran had pulled this off, but obviously she had!

“Nick likes older women,” Tina said miserably. “In fact he loves them.”

Odelia doubted whether even Nick would fall for the charms of Gran or Scarlett, but she rubbed Tina’s back consolingly. The latter gave her a watery smile in return, then fixed her eyes on the screen again for signs of her future husband’s infidelity.

“What’s that cat doing there?” asked Joanna.

And she was right: a cat was prancing around in front of the line of seductresses. And it was a cat Odelia knew all too well. It was Harriet!

“Passion Island is really going down,” said Jackie a little angrily. “First those two old biddies and now a cat. If I’d known…”

Her words stuck in her throat as her boyfriend Gary came into view. The builder was busily examining the tonsils of one of the seductresses with his tongue, and only came up for air when the camera was so close to his face he could probably feel the static electricity.

“Bastard!” Jackie cried. “The cheating bastard!”

Her fianc? had the gall to grin at the camera like a boy caught with his fingers in the cookie jar, then simply picked up where he left off and went right back to his deep space exploration.

“I’ll get him for this,” Jackie growled, balling her fists. “I’ll teach him a lesson he’ll never forget!”

“Strictly speaking he hasn’t cheated on you, Jackie,” Francine said. “We don’t count kissing as cheating, remember. Only when we catch a candidate in bed with a seducer do we strike the gong.”

BOOOOING!

Suddenly the sound of a gong reverberated through the resort. Someone had been caught cheating, and judging from the pitch, it was one of the male contestants.

“Oh, he’s done it now,” said Jackie, getting up. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs, “I’ll get you for this, Gary Goulash!”

She stomped off in the direction of the plaza, presumably to drown her sorrow.

“It could be anyone,” said Joanna. “It could be my Arthur.”

“We’ll find out tomorrow,” Francine assured them. “At the next campfire.”

Which meant that all day tomorrow Joanna, Tina and Odelia would be held in suspense, not knowing whether their significant other had been unfaithful or not.

Though Odelia was pretty sure it couldn’t have been Chase. He wasn’t that kind of guy.

Or was he?

Spend long enough on Passion Island and anything could happen…

Chapter 22

The sound of the gong had also had a powerful effect on the other side of the stretch of water. The male contestants were all gathered around a similar campfire, only no Francine Richter was in evidence but George Foulard.

Like Miss Richter, Mr. Foulard was a veteran broadcaster, with a long pedigree as a show host. His gray hair gave him that respectful look, but it didn’t fool Chase. The man was as cunning and clever as they came, and as George looked up when the gong was struck, his eyes glistened mischievously.

“Oops,” he said. “Now who could that possibly be?”

It wasn’t hard to guess, as only one man had failed to show up for their campfire tryst, that man being Gary Goulash. As Gary had been playing tonsil hockey with one of the seductresses all evening, he probably felt it incumbent upon him to carry on his efforts in the privacy of his own bedroom, where Clint’s cameras had caught him in flagrante delicto, hence the sound of the gong.

It made for a welcome change, as the campfire hadn’t supplied its promised excitement: even though the women had engaged with the seducers, and had stood them a couple for drinks, no improprieties had ensued, and even Jackie, who’d seemed like the type of girl to whom fidelity was an elastic concept, had merely danced with but not kissed her prince for the night.

Chase had watched with a certain measure of disquiet how Odelia had chatted with not one but two seducers, and when one of the latter had placed his hand on her arm had felt his blood go to a boil. The sudden powerful urge to wipe the man’s smirk from his face by means of planting his fist in his mouth was so overpowering he was already calculating how long it would take him to swim to the other island, the talk of dangerous currents and undercurrents and even potential sharks having been wiped from his mind.

“Looks like we’re the lucky ones,” said Joanna’s fianc?, clapping Chase on the back. “Just look at my sweet baby girl. Doesn’t even flinch when that tattooed fool flexes his ridiculously pumped-up bicep in her face.”

Nick, too, looked relieved.“Tina would never go for a guy like that,” he said, indicating the screen. “She’s more into the intellectual type, like me.”

If Nick was an intellectual, Chase was RuPaul, but he merely smiled encouragingly and unflexed his fists. He wasn’t fully sanguine, though. He knew Clint would do whatever it took to make the women fall for their seducers. After all, that’s why Passion Island had become the network’s top-rated show.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

“So… Gran is on the other island?” asked Dooley.

“Yes. And so is Scarlett Canyon,” I said. “And Harriet and Brutus.”

“But… why? And how?”

“I have absolutely no idea, Dooley. But I’m sure we’ll soon find out.”

Odelia had slept but fitfully, tossing and turning all night. Dooley and I, ensconced at the foot of the bed, as is our habit, had watched it with a worried eye. Apart from the fact that I don’t like it when Odelia moves around, afraid she’ll kick me in the snoot and send me flying off the bed, I hate to see my human troubled, and troubled she clearly was.

So far she hadn’t been able to chat with anyone from the production team, and it was exactly those people she needed to get close to if she was going to uncover what had happened to those other women.

Unfortunately Clint had instigated a rule that his staff refrain from getting too close to the candidates the moment the show started. In previous incarnations some of the cameramen hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to schmooze with some of the seductresses, and some of them had even hooked up. So this year the staff kept to their own villa, while the contestants stayed in their own little bubble with the seducers.

Morning had finally broken, and we watched as Odelia opened first one eye then the other.

“Wakey-wakey, sleepyhead,” I said.

She groaned and buried her face in her pillow.“I dreamt I was home,” she muttered.

“Usually people dream of being on a tropical island, all expenses paid,” I pointed out to her.

“Yeah, but those people haven’t been asked to try and unmask some abductor of women,” she replied, then turned and rubbed her eyes.

“I think you should really try to enjoy yourself more, Odelia,” said Dooley. “Maybe forget about the investigation for a couple of days and have some fun?”

“Yeah, you could go for a swim,” I suggested. “The beach looks particularly beautiful. And I heard that today you’re all going jet-skiing, so that should be a blast, right?”

Being dragged at a high rate of speed behind a boat, only two thin slices of styrofoam between you and the raging shark-infested waters of a deep sea didn’t sound like something I’d enjoy, but then humans are strange creatures. Some of them even like to climb mountains, which is something I thought only a certain species of goats enjoy.

“Jet skiing,” Odelia muttered as she dragged herself from the bed. “Great. Just what I need. More attempts by Mike to try and get into bed with me.”

“Why does Mike want to get into your bed?” asked Dooley. “Doesn’t he like his own bed?”

Odelia smiled.“I guess not,” she said, then slouched out of the room and into the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later she’d put on running shoes, and was dressed in a T-shirt and running shorts and looked a lot less like something Dooley or myself had dragged in.

“Let’s go, you guys,” she said, performing a strange movement known as jumping jacks.

And then we were off, for our first run.

It was seven o’clock in the morning and already it was heating up quickly. And Odelia had only run five minutes before a stitch in my side halted my progress.

Cats are built for sprints, you see, not marathons.

“You go on ahead,” I said as I pressed a paw to my side. “I’ll get there in my own time!”

Dooley, too, was out of breath already.

And as we watched Odelia disappear around a bend in the dirt path, we both settled down in the shade of a nearby palm tree, languorously lying in the tall cool grass.

And just as I was catching my breath again, who’d pass us by but a long, thin man with a nasty scar slicing his brow and a slight limp!

Chapter 23

“Let’s go, Max!” Dooley cried, and was up and running before the fact that Scarface had once again entered the picture had thoroughly registered in my mind.

It’s easy to say ‘Let’s go’ when you’re as lissome as Dooley, but a lot harder to accomplish when you’re blessed with big bones like me. By the time I’d managed to break the hold gravity held over me and was going well, a certain amount of time had elapsed.

So for the reader of these chronicles it might be a good idea to reiterate the state of affairs: there was Odelia, running like a young foal, eager to have speech with her fianc?, then Scarface, no doubt filled with nefarious thoughts of snatching young maidens in the bloom of their lives and doing God knows what with them, then Dooley, running full out, conscious of a strong desire to protect said maiden, and finally, at a distance, your correspondent, huffing and puffing in the morning heat, and perspiring like a long-distance runner about to pass mile twenty and moving into the home stretch.

My paws were killing me, and so was my belly which, for some inexplicable reason, kept flopping around as I pottered on. And it was as I was starting to see red spots moving into my field of vision that I caught up with Dooley, who’d caught up with Scarface, who’d caught up with Odelia, who was now glancing around furtively and entered a sad-looking little shack built next to a tall fence lining the resort’s domain.

Scarface had ducked behind a bush of uncertain antecedents, and Dooley had ducked behind another bush, so as to spy on the spy. I joined my friend in his bush.

“What’s going on?” I asked as I plunked down heavily. I had the feeling I was melting, as sweat dripped from my paws, the only area, I might add, cats can sweat through, and I was glad for the reprieve. Even though I dislike Vena Aleman, our designated vet, I had a feeling she would have looked at me askance right now, for exerting myself to this extent.

“Scarface is talking into his phone,” said Dooley. “And Odelia just went into that shack over there.”

“We should be in that shack,” I said, gulping like a fish on dry land, “finding out what’s going on with Chase and the others.”

“But if we go into the shack we can’t keep an eye on Scarface,” Dooley pointed out, and I had to admit he was right.

“I think it’s the heat,” I said, waving a paw in front of my face. “It’s starting to affect my mental faculties.”

Scarface was indeed talking into his phone, then held it up in the manner perfected by all amateur smartphone users in the direction of the shack. He was clearly filming Odelia again, which seemed to be some kind of obsession with this horrible man.

“He must be the guy who keeps abducting women,” I said after I’d filled my lungs with some much-needed oxygen.

“Do you think he wants to kidnap Odelia?” asked Dooley, sounding shocked.

“I think so. He broke into her room and filmed her sleeping, then tried to access her laptop and tablet computer, and now he’s filming her again. The guy is obsessed with her, that much is obvious.”

“We have to warn her, Max. The moment she comes out of that shack he’ll grab her.”

“I don’t think so. He could have grabbed her before, and he didn’t. He’s waiting for something. Watching and waiting.”

Dooley shivered.“It’s very creepy.”

“It is,” I agreed. “Come on. Let’s circle around and enter that shack from the back.”

I’d recovered enough to perform this feat, and soon we found ourselves at the other side of the shack, and to our elation managed to sneak inside through a crack in the dilapidated structure’s side.

“It’s one theory,” Odelia was saying, “though it sounds very unlikely to me, if I’m honest.”

“Yeah, it sounds pretty unlikely to me, too,” we heard Chase respond when Odelia put the phone in speaker mode.

“Gran thinks the seductresses are behind the kidnappings,” Odelia explained for our sake. “So they can marry their husbands,” she added when we stared at her, a lack of comprehension apparently written all over our features. “So how are you holding up?” Odelia asked now.

“I’m fine,” said Chase. “But can I ask you a question? Who’s the guy you were chatting with last night?”

Odelia smiled.“Oh, that’s just Mike. He’s harmless.”

“Mike, huh,” said Chase, and his voice betrayed his displeasure.

Odelia giggled.“You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Of course I’m jealous! I have to sit here while Magic Mike tries his best moves on my girl.”

“I can handle Mike, don’t worry. And I have no intention of causing the gong to go off,” said Odelia, sounding amused. “How about you? You were having a great time with some of those seductresses.”

“If you mean your grandmother, who I spent half the night talking to at the bar, I think it’s safe to say you have nothing to worry about.”

“No, I don’t mean my grandmother. I mean that blond bimbo who couldn’t stop staring at your butt.”

“Oh, Dina. She’s all right. I told her I’m not interested and she accepts that. She’s a Passion Island veteran. This is her third time as a seductress. So I hoped to squeeze her for information.”

“Just make sure she doesn’t squeeze you back.”

I’d been trying to catch Odelia’s attention, but she was so wrapped up in her conversation about Mike and Dina that she was steadfastly ignoring me.

“There’s a guy out there spying on you!” I finally blurted out.

She frowned and looked down at me and Dooley.“What? Who?”

“Scarface,” said Dooley. “He followed you from the villa and he’s out there filming.”

Odelia gulped a little, then glanced out through the small windows.“Are you sure? I don’t—oh, crap, I see him. Chase, Scarface is back, and he’s followed me down here!”

“Try to sneak out the back,” was the cop’s advice, “then alert security and tell them some creep has been following you around.”

She disconnected and I pointed at the broken plank that had facilitated our access. She took a good grip and pulled hard. It easily broke off, and she repeated the procedure with its neighbor. Now she’d created a hole wide enough to slip through, which she did, followed by Dooley and me.

And as she crawled through the undergrowth, thoroughly ruining her nice T-shirt, I stealthily returned to see if Odelia’s departure had been observed.

Scarface was still in position, though, and talking into his phone again.

I quickly made my way back to my human, and together the three of us circled around and started our way back to the compound.

The sun had crept a little higher across the horizon and the world was quickly heating up.

“Now I understand why I haven’t seen a single cat on this island,” I told Dooley. “It’s too hot for the likes of us, what with our thick coat of fur.”

“Maybe I should shave you guys?” Odelia suggested.

“Ha ha,” I said. “Over my dead body.”

We quickly arrived back at the site, and Odelia made a beeline for the villa that housed the staff. The first person we met was Kimmy, and Odelia quickly told the production assistant of our unfortunate encounter with Scarface.

Kimmy’s face took on a grave expression. “I’ll tell security. Hopefully they can still catch the guy.”

And as Dooley and I watched on, the villa came to life: beefy security men came hurrying out, then hopped into a jeep, and soon were off, after having received instructions from Odelia, detailing Scarface’s last known location.

“I hope they catch him,” said Dooley.

“Yeah, I hope so, too.”

“Though if they do catch him, our job here is done, right? And we get to go home again?”

“I think so,” I said.

He looked happy at the prospect, and I have to confess I felt happy, too. A cat is never happier than when close to home and hearth. It’s strange but true. After all, we’re not dogs. Dogs enjoy prancing around the world like hapless globetrotters. Us cats do not. We’re homebodies, and proud to be so.

I’d only been there a day and already I missed cat choir, and my friends, and my couch, and my daily routine.

Besides, I was way too hot—and not prepared to allow Odelia to shave me. Uh-uh. No way! I prefer to suffer in silence than to end up looking like a fool. Have you ever seen a hairless cat? They’re weird!

Besides, I love my blorange coat of fur. It’s part of my personality. It’s who I am.

So I decided to sweat, and not fret, and when ten minutes later the jeep returned, and I saw that they’d managed to capture the scar-faced man, I was over the moon.

Our adventure was over.

We were going home!

Chapter 24

“But he’s my gaffer!” Clint cried as he walked out of the villa to survey the scene. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, spying on my contestants!” he added with a good deal of ire.

Scarface had been deposited in front of the big boss, and Odelia, having crossed her arms and eyeing the man with no small measure of pique, had been joined by pretty much the entire contingent marooned on the island, fellow candidates and seducers included.

Scarface wilted a little under the attention, and seemed genuinely unnerved, like a man dragged before the police court after having been caught driving under the influence.

“I’m… a reporter,” he finally said, in a surprisingly reedy voice. “The name is Jack Davenport and I’m doing a piece on Passion Island for the National Star.”

“The National Star!” Clint, cried, throwing his hands in the air. “So you mean to tell me you’re not a gaffer?”

“An amateur gaffer at best,” said the man, looking distinctly ill at ease.

“But why did you break into my room and film me in my sleep?” asked Odelia.

“Plenty of these so-called couples aren’t couples at all,” said the guy with a shrug. “So my editor told me to try and catch you in the act, meaning sleeping apart. You guys are a real couple, though,” he said, offering Odelia a faint smile.

“So you spied on all of my candidates?!” thundered Clint.

“Yeah, and I gotta say all of them are for real, man.”

“Of course they’re for real!”

“My editor thought otherwise, so he sent me in to expose this show as a fabrication. But so far that hasn’t been my experience. Everything looks above board. Not a message my editor wanted to hear, mind you. I can tell you he was pretty disappointed.”

“Well, you can tell your editor he can go and boil his head!” Clint said, and stormed into the house. Then, apparently having changed his mind, he came storming out again. “On second thought, why don’t you stick around?”

“Stick around?” asked Jack Davenport.

“Stick around?!” asked Odelia, aghast.

“Yeah, if you promise to give the show a good write-up, you can stick around. If not, you can go to hell.”

“I’d rather stick around, sir,” said Jack.

“Great. I look forward to reading your article,” said Clint with a nod.

“You can’t do this!” Odelia cried. “He broke into my room!”

Clint shrugged.“Nobody’s perfect.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Poole,” said Jack later, as he and Odelia were seated at the breakfast table. “I know your work and I’m a great admirer. So when my editor told me to film all the contestants in their sleep, I balked at the idea. But he told me that if I didn’t do it, he’d send someone who would. And I need the job. My wife is pregnant with our first, and I can’t afford to be out of work right now. You know how hard it is to be a reporter these days. Not a lot of jobs to go around.”

“I still think it’s a pretty crap thing to do,” said Odelia as she bit down on a chocolate croissant with cream filling. The food at the resort was amazing. If she wasn’t careful she’d go home ten pounds heavier than when she set out for Thailand.

“I hope you can forgive me,” said Jack.

“I actually thought you were a kidnapper.”

“A kidnapper!”

“Yeah, the way you came after me this morning.”

“I was just trying to get a couple of good shots for my article. And when I saw you take off running the opportunity was too good to miss.” He thoughtfully took a sip from his coffee. “What were you doing in that shack if I may ask? It almost looked as if you were on the phone with someone, which of course is impossible, since candidates aren’t allowed to have phones.”

Odelia studied the guy. Now that he’d told them his name, she knew who he was. She’d read his articles. He was a pretty sharp observer, and a great writer. What he was doing writing for a tabloid she didn’t know. Then again, as he said, it wasn’t easy finding work as a reporter these days. She wondered how much to tell him, then decided to trust her gut.

“I’m not here as a candidate, Jack. I’m here as a reporter. Some of the contestants from previous editions have gone missing, and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Jack whistled through his teeth.“Now that’s the kind of story I wouldn’t mind breaking. Missing, you say? How come I haven’t heard about this?”

“Because their families haven’t filed missing person reports. They’re still in touch with them, through email and letters and postcards. But it’s too much of a coincidence that five women, all of them former contestants, would take off like that.”

“Yeah, I’d say the odds of that happening are pretty slim.”

“My fianc? is a cop, and he’s on the other island checking things out over there, while I’m here, trying to see if I can find out what’s going on.”

“And you thought I was involved,” said Jack, nodding.

“Can you blame me?”

He shook his head and smiled, then fingered his scar absentmindedly.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” asked Odelia.

“I fell from my bike when I was five,” said Jack, anticipating. “The doctor who patched me up did a pretty lousy job and the wound got infected. I could get it fixed, but I’ve found that it actually helps in my line of work. The bad guys figure I’m one of them, and the good guys feel sorry and get gabby.” He grinned. “So I just leave it. I call it my lucky scar, and my wife doesn’t seem to mind.”

“You know?” said Odelia, throwing down her napkin. “We could team up. Whatever we discover, we share the credit. What do you say?”

“Oh, I’d love nothing more,” said Jack. “Spying on reality show participants isn’t as exciting as it sounds.”

They both laughed, and shook hands on it.

Chapter 25

“So we’re not going home?” asked Dooley sadly.

“We’re not going home,” I said, just as sadly.

We were both lying on the beach, watching the Passion Island contestants being dragged around the Gulf of Thailand on jet skis. And when I say we were on the beach, I mean, of course, on the edge of the beach, safely and comfortably nestled on the terrace of one of those beach restaurants that appear to infest beaches the world over, and offer refreshments, ice cream, and the opportunity for a sanitary break if so desired, though of course most beachgoers use the wide-open oceans or seas as their convenient latrine.

“Jack Davenport,” said Dooley, and in his eyes was a look that said what exactly he thought of this reporter.

It was the same thing I thought, namely that it simply wasn’t fair, pretending to be a nasty kidnapper and then coming out and revealing oneself as a mere reporter.

“So we’re still no closer to discovering who’s behind these kidnappings?”

“Not an inch closer,” I agreed.

“Too bad,” he said with a sigh.

For a moment we were both silent. On the water, Odelia was going under, having fallen off her skis for the third time. Surprisingly, Joanna was actually the only one who’d managed to stay upright so far. Must be all those books she balanced as an accountant. Clearly worked wonders for her sense of equilibrium.

“Maybe Harriet and Brutus will have better luck,” said Dooley.

“I doubt it,” I said. “I don’t buy Gran’s theory about the seductresses being behind this whole thing. No, the real culprit will be on this island, and so far I haven’t a clue who it could be.”

“It could be Clint Bunda himself.”

“But why? Why would Clint abduct his own contestants?”

“Maybe he collects them?”

“Collects them?”

“Well, some people collect stamps or baseball cards or comic books. Maybe Clint is the kind of man who collects reality show contestants?”

It was a thought, of course. Though it’s a lot harder to collect women than it is to collect stamps or baseball cards or comic books. Not to mention illegal. Then again, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round, so maybe Dooley was onto something.

“Let’s take a closer look at his room,” I suggested therefore. Frankly there’s only so long you can watch people falling into the water and having to be rescued by the Chippendales.

So Dooley and I made our way to the staff villa, and entered unnoticed. The villa was pretty much emptied out, most of the technical crew at the waterfront, making sure the candidates’ escapades were captured in technicolor and perfect surround sound.

Once upstairs, we found that Clint had closed his door. We quickly found a workaround, though: we snuck into a neighboring room, and proceeded onto the balcony. Just like the first floor it was of the wraparound variety, and we easily moved from room to room, this time having more luck, as people tend to leave their windows open in these hot climes.

And it was as we arrived on the fourth balcony that we hit pay dirt. Actually we hit upon the producer himself, taking a nap on his balcony, his hat draped over his eyes.

So we snuck into his room and started our silent inspection. Unfortunately I didn’t find anything to raise a red flag that this man was our man: no strange communications or discarded messages indicating Clint had a secret and highly illicit hobby.

I even hopped onto his desk to inspect his laptop, but ended up scrolling through an endless list of emails, finding nothing particularly incriminating except a penchant for off-color jokes.

And just when I’d opened his Facebook, a knock sounded at the door, and Dooley and I quickly scooted under the bed.

“Mr. Bunda!” a voice called out. “Mr. Bunda, sir!”

“Grmbl,” was the response from the balcony. Moments later the big guy came stumbling in, still sleepy, and opened the door. “Oh, it’s you,” we heard him say, and I snuck a look from underneath the bed. It was a skinny, pale-looking guy with pockmarked face I thought I’d seen before. Oneof the technicians.

“There’s a problem with one of the feeds,” said the guy.

“Feeds?” grumbled Clint with the air of a man who’s just been roused from a relaxing slumber. I knew just how he felt, having been in the same position many a time myself.

“The feed from Jackie Copley’s bedroom,” said the techie. “It cuts in and out.”

“Well, then fix it,” said Clint irritably. “They’re all out on the water right now, so you better fix it before they get back.”

“It’s just that…”

“Just what?”

“What if Miss Copley walks in just as I’m fixing the cameras?”

“Ask Frank to go with you. Tell him to wait outside and watch out for Jackie. Tell him to whistle if she walks up.”

“Whistle, sir?”

“You do know how to whistle, don’t you, Rick? You just put your lips together and blow.” And to show what he meant, he proceeded to give us a demonstration. A copious amount of spittle proceeded from his lips, hitting his technician, but no sound came.

“I don’t think he knows how to whistle, Max,” said Dooley.

“No, I don’t think so either,” I said, thoroughly amused by the scene.

“Maybe I’ll tell Frank to make the sound of a bird, sir,” said Rick, who wasn’t convinced by this botched demonstration.

“Do whatever you like,” grumbled Clint.

“Do you know an indigenous bird, sir?”

“What kind of bird now?”

“Indigenous to these parts, sir? We don’t want to draw suspicion by making the sound of a bird that doesn’t inhabit these islands, sir.”

“Oh, go to blazes!” Clint barked, and slammed the door in the techie’s face, thus ending the conversation with the kind of finality the producer of a hit show likes to see.

It also ended Dooley and my excursion into the life of Clint Bunda, as I didn’t think the man was the kind of collector Dooley had taken him for. The only things the man seemed to collect were insults and naps, as he went straight back to his balcony, and moments later the telltale sound of loud snores told us the coast was clear, so we skedaddled, not exactly with our tails between our legs, but very nearly so.

When were we finally going to catch a break?

Chapter 26

When we arrived downstairs, we passed a room whose door was ajar. Inside, Rick was explaining to a guy I assumed was Frank of how they were going to go about restoring the camera feed from Jackie’s bedroom.

“So you hide in the bushes and the moment Jackie arrives you make this sound,” he said, then tapped a key on a computer and the sound of birdsong filled the air.

It was a strange, whoop-whoop-whooping kind of sound, like a cuckoo but different.

“It’s the mating call of the hoopoe,” Rick explained. “That way Jackie won’t suspect a thing. Now give it a try.”

Frank, a heavyset guy with no hair on top of his head and the fringes tied back in a ponytail, pursed his lips and tried to mimic the sound of the hoopoe. It wasn’t even close. In fact it sounded more like a kettle going on the boil.

“No, Frank. You’re not even trying,” said Rick.

“Why can’t I just whistle?” asked Frank plaintively.

“You can whistle?” asked Rick, sounding surprised.

“Sure. Who can’t?” And he produced a healthy whistle, this time without covering his colleague in a waterfall of spittle.

“Okay, I can live with that,” said Rick.

“Or I could do the Imperial March,” said Frank as he and Rick walked out. And without waiting for a response he started singing some bombastic-sounding snatch of music.

“No, no, no!” said Rick. “That’s not how it goes. John Williams specifically added those grace notes. Here, let me show you.”

And while the two geeks walked off, to make sure Jackie’s nocturnal escapades were picked up for the audience’s edification, if not titillation, Dooley and I snuck into the room and found ourselves gazing at a wall of screens, feeds visible from all over the resort. They were all neatly labeled, too: Odelia’s bedroom, Odelia’s bathroom, Odelia’s living room…

“Oh, my God,” I said. “This is a voyeur’s paradise. If Norman Bates saw this, he’d break into song and dance.”

“They’re filming everything,” said Dooley, awed by this flagrant intrusion of privacy. “They even film her when she’s in the bathroom.”

“I think there’s probably laws against that,” I said as I checked the other screens. All four candidates were there, but also the four male contestants, and all of the seducers and seductresses. And on top of that many public areas, too, like the plazas, the bars, the toilets behind both plazas, the beaches…

“This must be the main control room,” I said. “Where all the feeds come in.”

“There must be hours and hours of footage,” said Dooley.

“Must be a nightmare to edit.”

A scene attracted my attention. It was Odelia sitting on the beach with seducer Mike. And they appeared to be very cozy indeed.

Dooley must have seen it, too, for he said,“I don’t like that, Max. Odelia and this Mike guy? Soon she’ll dump Chase and Mike will move in with us. And what if he doesn’t even like cats?” A note of panic had entered his voice as he talked. “Maybe he’ll demand she get rid of us, and then where does that leave us? Out on the street. Or at the pound!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said soothingly. “Odelia is simply chatting with Mike, probably trying to find out what he knows about the missing women.”

“Look, Max!” Dooley cried, and pointed to another screen. It depicted Chase, also seated on the beach, over on the other island, chatting with a blonde of impressive measurements. “It’s happening, Max! Passion Island is breaking up our couple!”

“Not a chance,” I said, though I had to admit both Odelia and Chase looked very cozy chatting with people that weren’t their significant other. “I’m sure they’re just talking. And there’s nothing against talking, is there?”

On yet another screen, I saw Gran and Scarlett seated at the bar, chatting. I wondered what they were talking about. Possibly Gran’s theory about the seductresses being behind this whole kidnapping scheme.

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“We’ve got to do something, Scarlett. I’m telling you, this whole thing is going to hell in a handbasket if we don’t interfere now!”

“Relax, Vesta,” said Scarlett as she sipped from her drink. “Mh. This stuff is pretty good. What’s in this, darling?” she asked the bartender, a handsome young man she’d taken a shine to.

“Banana rum, pineapple juice, Blue Cura?ao and cream of coconut, ma’am,” said the kid.

Scarlett giggled and said,“Ma’am. Do I look like a ma’am to you?” She placed a hand on the man’s arm and squeezed his bicep appreciatively. “Call me Scarlett.”

“Um, all right…” said the kid, his eyes taking in Scarlett’s impressive bust.

“Scarlett!” said Vesta. “Stop trying to seduce that kid and listen to me. If we don’t get Chase out of the claws of that Donna person we’re going to lose him, you hear me?”

“Not a chance. That boy loves your granddaughter. He’s not going to risk it all just for the chance to dive into bed with that floozie.”

“That floozie’s got her sights set on him, and she’s working him for all she’s got. Men are weak, Scarlett. You know it and I know it. Remember Jack?”

“Oh, do I remember Jack!” said Scarlett with a grin. Then, as she saw Vesta’s thunderous expression, she dropped the smile. “Look, Chase is not like other men. He’s one of the good guys. He’s not going to cheat on your granddaughter. No way.”

“He doesn’t want to cheat, but he won’t be able to help himself. But I have a plan.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes.“Here we go again.”

“Listen to me!”

“I’m listening, I’m listening!”

“We have got to make sure he doesn’t sleep with the woman, so here’s what we’re going to do.” And as she explained her plan in great detail, earning herself another eyeroll in the process, she couldn’t help but hope that on the other island someone was offering the same courtesy to Odelia, cause if she succumbed to the charms of this Mike guy Chase had mentioned, all was well and truly lost.

Chapter 27

In spite of the fact that she’d sucked in more seawater than strictly necessary, and had spent more time in the water than on her skis, Odelia discovered to her surprise that she’d had a good time. She wasn’t naturally inclined to try out new things, especially when they could potentially end in terminal consequences to life and limb, but the water skiing was a lot more fun than she’d anticipated.

Looking and feeling like a water chicken, she returned to her villa to wash the brine from her hair and skin, and get dressed for dinner. Francine had announced she had a surprise for them, and she had a feeling she knew exactly what this surprise entailed.

Date night.

And since the seducers were the ones taking the initiative she saw a late-night date with seducer Mike in her immediate future.

She reckoned she could have hit it worse. Mike was a nice guy. They’d chatted a little on the beach, after she’d finally decided she’d had enough of the water skiing experiment. He worked as a male model for a New York agency and had joined Passion Island to raise his profile with the company and land more lucrative gigs. He wasn’t necessarily a lady killer, though, and had admitted he actually had a girl back home, and she’d never forgive him if he hooked up with a contestant.

So she was pretty much safe with him, knowing he wouldn’t hit on her. Or at least not too hard.

As she walked up the path to her villa, she was waylaid by Jack Davenport, who’d clearly been lying in wait.

“Can I talk to you?” he asked, looking left and right as if expecting company.

“Sure. What’s on your mind?”

“Not here,” he said, and took her by the elbow, leading her behind the villa. “I disabled the feed before I came out here,” he explained.

Odelia had slung a towel around herself, but was eager to get inside and take that shower, so she said,“Better make it quick. I need to get ready for dinner.”

“Listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “It’s about Joanna.”

“Joanna? What about her?”

“You know how I spied on all of the candidates, right? Back in Bangkok? Making sure they were couples or not? So when I was checking up on Joanna and her boyfriend she slipped out of bed in the middle of the night to make a mysterious phone call in the bathroom. It was really annoying, cause I wanted to leave their hotel room and I couldn’t. I was hiding behind the curtains the whole time, and getting a crick in the neck.”

“What mysterious phone call?”

“I don’t know, but it was obvious she didn’t want her boyfriend to overhear her. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but with what you told me about women going missing…” He arched a meaningful eyebrow.

“You think she’s involved somehow?”

“It’s worth looking into, don’t you think?”

Odelia nodded slowly.“Thanks. I’ll try to bring it up with her.” She wondered how, though. She couldn’t very well confess that she’d made a pact with the intrusive tabloid reporter.

“Oh, and one other thing,” said Jack as Odelia started for the front of the villa. “Better watch your back. I looked into the profiles of the five women who disappeared and they all have one thing in common.”

“What?”

“They’re the spitting image of… you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

As Odelia luxuriated under the spray of the rainfall shower head, she mused on Jack’s words. He was right. Of all four candidates she was the only one who resembled the type the five missing women represented. Which meant that whoever this kidnapper was, he might come after her next. And in spite of the heat of the shower, she suddenly shivered, and wished Chase wasn’t on a different island, separated by a large swath of sea.

Now that she came to think of it, all of her allies were far away: Chase and Gran were one island over, Uncle Alec was in Hampton Cove, and her parents were in Europe.

Then, as she toweled then tied the towel on top of her head, she smiled when Max and Dooley came ambling into the bedroom.

At least she had two cats in her corner.

“So what did you guys get up to today?” she asked.

“Oh, this and that,” said Max airily.

“We saw you on the beach with Mike,” said Dooley, not so airily. “Are you and Mike getting married, Odelia? Is he moving into our house soon and is Chase moving out?”

Two pairs of cat eyes stared at her accusingly, and she laughed.“Oh, you guys. Of course not. Mike is just a friend. Well, not even a friend. More of an acquaintance.” She made a conscious effort not to move her lips too much, in case the cameras picked up on it. “Shall I let you in on a little secret?”

Both cats nodded eagerly.

“Mike is engaged to be married. He only took this job to improve his chances to land better jobs back home so he can get married to his high school sweetheart. So there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

They both heaved sighs of relief, especially Dooley, who was something of a worrywart sometimes.“I really thought he was moving in!” Dooley cried, now also smiling. “And I figured that if he doesn’t like cats he’d kick us both out and we’d have to spend the rest of our days at the pound!”

“No pound for you, my sweet,” said Odelia, and finished dressing. She told the cats about her meeting with Jack, and they offered to spy on Joanna to see what she was up to. She decided not to mention she fit the profile of the abducted women to a tee. No need to get them all worked up about it.

“You should have seen the setup these people have,” Max said as he stretched out on the bed. “An entire bank of screens, wall to wall, showing footage from dozens and dozens of cameras planted all over the two resorts.”

“Yeah, they can see everything you do,” Dooley chimed in. “It’s a little creepy.”

“It’s very creepy,” Odelia said.

“Jackie’s camera broke,” Max continued. “And two technicians named Rick and Frank had to go and fix it before tonight. It seemed like a big deal to Clint.”

“I think they’re expecting fireworks tonight,” Odelia said as she checked herself in the mirror. She’d opted for a simple floral dress that made her look less like a femme fatale and more like the girl next door. She figured she was done playing the perfect candidate and was going to be more herself from now on.

“We’re having fireworks tonight?” asked Dooley, surprised. “I don’t like fireworks. It makes me want to pee.”

“I don’t mean actual fireworks,” she said, wondering what to do with her hair. “I mean…” She directed a glance down at Dooley, who was eyeing her intently. “Um…”

“What Odelia means to say is that Jackie and the boy she likes are probably going to spend some time together,” said Max, treading carefully. “Because they like each other so much.”

“But doesn’t Jackie like her own boyfriend anymore?”

“Well, her own boyfriend has been very naughty over on the other island and he’s been, um… kissing another girl. So now Jackie is upset and she’s decided to, um…”

“Kiss another boy,” said Dooley, nodding. “To get even.”

Odelia gave Dooley a look of surprise.“Correct,” she said.

“I watch a lot of soaps with Gran,” Dooley explained. “Women on General Hospital do that kind of thing a lot. But sooner or later they forgive their boyfriends and then they get married. So I’m sure that’s what’ll happen with Jackie and Gary. When the show is over they’ll kiss and make up and live happily ever after.”

Somehow Odelia doubted whether Dooley’s rosy world view would come true for Jackie, but she nodded. “I’ll bet you’re right, Dooley.”

“Of course I’m right. Though there’s also a small chance Jackie will end up getting pregnant and discover that Gary isn’t the father but Gary’s long-lost twin brother is, and she’ll end up drinking a lot of alcohol and crashing her car and needing plastic surgery and falling in love with the trauma surgeon over at the hospital who’ll turn out to be her father.” He shrugged. “Happens all the time.”

Odelia frowned and reminded herself to tell Gran not to watch her soaps in front of Dooley again. It clearly was having an adverse effect on the poor cat.

Chapter 28

That evening, dinner wasn’t the usual laidback affair. Instead, different nooks had been arranged, where different seducers sat down with the four contestants for their first date night. Which seducer got to date which contestant had been left to the show’s producers to decide, and in Odelia’s case Mike was the lucky boy. Or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it.

Dooley and I had taken up position nearby, making sure nothing untoward was happening. You could call us our human’s keepers. Odelia may have told us she wasn’t interested in dating this male model, but that didn’t stop us both from worrying.

For once I heartily agreed with Dooley that he had reason for concern. I liked Chase, and didn’t enjoy the prospect of Odelia performing a switcheroo and replacing him with this Mike character.

“He doesn’t look like a cat hater,” said Dooley as we closely observed the man.

“Appearances can be deceiving, Dooley,” I reminded him. “He could be on his good behavior now, but the moment he moves in with Odelia he could turn out to be some kind of Cruella De Ville, only in his case out to skin cats not Dalmatian puppies.”

“You’re right,” said my friend. “We have to watch him like a hawk. Did you know that hawks can spot a prey from a hundred feet? Amazing creatures, hawks. They eat mice.”

Dooley watches a lot of Discovery Channel, which is preferable to watching Gran’s batch of daily soap operas. It sometimes leads to strange interludes in our conversations, though.

“Speaking of mice,” I said, “did you ever find out why Hector prefers our basement over Marge’s?” I couldn’t help but think back to those halcyon days when we were still blissfully unaware of Passion Island and missing women, the days before Kimmy had entered our lives and dragged us out to Koh Samui Island with its palm trees and scorching heat.

“Odelia says it’s because they know we won’t harm them,” said Dooley.

“Brutus and Harriet wouldn’t harm them either,” I said, frowning. I didn’t like these disparaging notions about my mouse-hunting prowess being bandied about so loosely.

“No, but Harriet at least tried to catch them once, remember?”

“That wasn’t Hector and Helga. That was a different family of mice.”

“Odelia thinks mice talk. And word must have spread about Harriet being the kind of cat who doesn’t waste time hunting any rodent intruder.”

“Mh,” I said dubiously.

“It’s a good thing, Max,” said Dooley. “If the mice of Hampton Cove all think you’re a softie, it says a lot about you. You should take it as a compliment.”

“I’m not sure that a reputation of being soft on mice is necessarily a good thing, Dooley. What if all the mice of Hampton Cove decide to come and live with us? Where would that leave us? Out on the street, probably.”

He threw me a worried glance, in between his stares at Mike.“In that case I hope the house won’t be overrun with mice by the time we get back.”

“Uncle Alec said he’d drop by once a week to water the plants,” I reminded him.

We both shared a look of concern now. Uncle Alec isn’t exactly the most conscientious homeowner. His own place is usually a mess of epic proportions, so his promise to watch Odelia and Marge’s houses was probably not such a good thing.

“Look, we made a pact,” I reiterated a point I’d had to explain to a lot of cats since its inception. “And Hector is not the kind of mouse who’d renege on a promise once given.”

Though truth be told his kids didn’t always seem to adhere to the pact, judging from the food that kept disappearing from Odelia’s fridge and pantry at regular intervals.

“Max!” suddenly Dooley cried. “He’s going in! He’s going to try and kiss her!”

Dooley was right. Right before our very eyes Mike was leaning across the table, which was set for a romantic dinner for two, complete with candles and the resort’s very best china, a string quartet’s gentle tones oozing from the speakers.

“As we practiced, Dooley,” I said crisply. “On your mark—ready, set, GO!”

And as one cat we jumped on top of the offending lover boy.

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Odelia had to admit that Mike made for good company. Frankly she was feeling a little drowsy. She still hadn’t fully recovered from the jet lag, and spending the afternoon on the water practicing a sport at which she was an absolute novice had made her particularly sleepy. But Mike was easy to talk to, and funny to boot. And when she told him she was going to turn in early he didn’t mind one bit.

“It might earn me a pretty harsh rebuke from Francine but I don’t care,” he said as he held his glass of wine and clinked it against hers.

“Rebuke? Why?”

“The whole idea of this dinner is that it ends in a win for Team Seducers,” he said with a grin. “And it would earn me a pretty hefty bonus.”

“This show is really immoral on so many levels,” said Odelia, a little disgusted. “They’re actually paying you money if you manage to get into bed with me?”

“There’s a bonus system,” he explained. “First base nets us a cool hundred, second base two hundred, and so on and so forth. It’s pretty elaborate.”

“How much for nookie?” she asked.

“A thousand. Two for a repeat performance and another two for every night after that. So you see, it adds up.”

“That’s pretty sick,” she said, shaking her head. “Like legalized prostitution.”

“Yeah, if I’d known about it I probably wouldn’t have signed up. Problem is, they don’t tell you from the beginning. They only let you in on the bonus system once you’re already here and fully committed. It’s tough to walk out if you’ve gone to all the trouble of putting your life on hold for the duration of the show.”

“Well, I’m very sorry, Mike,” said Odelia. “But you’re not going to win anything by going after me. Not one cent, I’m afraid.”

“And like I said, that’s perfectly fine with me. I’m not here to cash in. Besides, I don’t want to lose the respect of my girl. She’ll be watching this and so will her family, and mine. Do you want a refill?” He leaned over to grab the bottle, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, two furry fiends came flying, and attached themselves to Mike. One furry fiend jumped on top of his head, while the other hit his chest like a cannonball.

Uttering a loud scream, Mike toppled over and fell to the floor.

“Max! Dooley!” Odelia cried, springing to her feet. “Get off him!”

“But he’s trying to kiss you!” Max yelled, seated on the unfortunate seducer’s chest.

“He wasn’t. Now get off!”

They did as they were told, and Odelia helped Mike to his feet. He looked more startled than hurt, though his nose was bleeding where apparently Dooley had bitten him.

“What was that?!” he yelped.

“My cats. They must have thought you were trying to, um… Well, they’re very protective.”

“They’re crazy!” he squealed, checking his chest for puncture marks. “Crazy cats!”

And with these words, he walked off, a little unsteadily.

“I’m sorry!” she yelled after him, but he was mumbling to himself under his breath.

“We thought he was moving in for a kiss,” Max explained.

She sat down and arched an eyebrow in her cat’s direction. “I guess I should praise myself lucky that you never took a dislike to Chase. You might have killed him.”

“We would never attack Chase,” said Dooley earnestly. “We like Chase. Chase is great.”

In spite of the ruinous ending to her evening, she smiled.“Your intentions were good, but next time please don’t attack my dates.”

“There will be others?” asked Max, startled.

“After this? Probably not.”

Members of the production team came running now. They must have seen everything on their monitors. In the distance she could see Mike receiving first aid, and Kimmy was by her side, fussing over her and asking if she was all right.

“Did you get all of that on tape?” asked Odelia.

Kimmy grinned.“Oh, yeah. I have a feeling your cats are going to be pretty famous after this.”

“You hear that, guys?” asked Odelia. “You’re going to be famous. They’ll turn you into memes.”

Dooley’s eyes went wide. “But I don’t want to be turned into memes! I want to live!”

Chapter 29

Over on Koh Phangan, the men’s island, things weren’t progressing quite as Harriet had anticipated. She’d hoped to get a lot of screen time, and had positioned herself in the picture as much as felinely possible.

While the men were frolicking in the pool with the seductresses, she’d stuck close to the cameramen, but they’d roundly ignored her attempts to strut her stuff. One had even had the gall to kick in her direction and utter the one cry cats hate more than anything: ‘Shoo!’

Wounded to the core of her immortal soul, she’d retreated to her lodgings, which were also Chase’s lodgings, and Brutus’s, the latter telling her not to take these things personally, as cameramen will be cameramen and apparently this one was as anti-cat as they came.

During the campfire, she’d positioned herself on Chase’s lap, and had remained there throughout, until Chase had become all agog at the sight of Odelia sitting on the beach in her bikini chatting with a hunk in trunks and Harriet had been flung from his lap when he’d started gesticulating wildly.

And during Chase’s dinner date with Donna, she’d managed to walk into the picture a couple of times, until one of the producers had bodily grabbed her and deposited her elsewhere.

“The gall of these people!” she cried. “To manhandle me. Me!”

“Yeah, that wasn’t nice,” Brutus agreed.

They were back in Chase’s room, where they’d returned after this most recent and infuriating incident.

“I’m going to tell Chase to write a strongly worded email to the producer that this kind of thing can’t go on. This island is full of cat haters and something must be done.”

“At least they can’t cut you from the frame, sweet puss. Or else they’ll have to cut Chase, too, and they’re not going to do that.”

“They can edit me out. These people can do anything. Edit me in or out as they see fit. Just like Stalin.”

“Stalin?”

“He used to edit people out of his pictures all the time. At least that’s what Dooley told me.” She frowned darkly. “If this keeps up I’m going to be deleted from history completely. As if I was never even here!”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that,” said Brutus soothingly.

“I wouldn’t be too sure. These people are capable of anything, even feline deletion!”

Just then, Gran and Scarlett both came bursting into the room.

“Harriet, Brutus!” whispered Gran, as if afraid she might be overheard. “How did Chase’s date go?”

“Yeah, how did it go?” Scarlett echoed.

“They kicked me out,” said Harriet. “Can you believe it? There I was, strutting my stuff for all I’m worth, and some minion came and grabbed me and told me in no uncertain terms to get lost.”

“Huh,” said Gran, not really showing the kind of compassion a cat scorned likes to see in her human. “So was there any kissing going on? Things heating up between Donna and Chase?”

“No kissing,” said Brutus categorically. “I checked.”

“Good,” said Gran, satisfied. She turned to her friend. “No kissing,” she explained.

“Doesn’t mean anything,” was Scarlett’s prompt response. “They could be kissing up a storm right now, and heading this way for some after-dinner nookie.”

“Over my dead body,” Gran growled. “Harriet, Brutus. New mission. The moment Donna sets foot in this villa you have my permission to do whatever it takes to get her out again.”

Harriet perked up at this. In every cat lurks a touch of the wild. They may have allowed themselves to be domesticated but, unlike the canine species, have managed to retain the hunter’s instinct their ancestors possessed. Under normal circumstances a cat tamps down on its primeval instincts, but to give it permission to unleash these urges is like giving a pyromaniac a set of matches and telling him to go and build a nice bonfire.

“Anything at all?” asked Harriet, sheathing and unsheathing her sharp claws.

“Whatever it takes,” Gran repeated. “That campfire was a disaster, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Chase decided to get some of his own back after watching Odelia schmooze with that musclehead.”

“I thought he was very handsome,” said Scarlett. “In fact I wouldn’t mind making his acquaintance one of these days.”

Scarlett had lamented on more than one occasion that the four candidates weren’t much to write home about, and she’d much rather have a go at the seducers over on the other island instead. But since beggars can’t be choosers she’d decided to help Gran.

“You and I are going to hide under the bed,” said Gran now.

“Wait, what?!” cried Scarlett.

“That way we can make sure Chase doesn’t do anything stupid. Like cheat on Odelia.”

“I’m not crawling under that bed,” said Scarlett.

“Fine. You can hide in the closet then.”

“How about I hide in the bathroom? When they catch me I can always tell them I got confused. These villas all look the same anyway.”

“It’s either the closet or the bed. You choose.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll take the closet. But I’m not staying in there all night. I need my beauty sleep.”

“It won’t take long, believe me,” said Gran with a resolute look on her face.

“So if Chase and Donna walk in, we pounce?” asked Harriet eagerly. “Go for the jugular?”

“Take it easy, princess,” said Gran. “We want to scare the woman, not create a bloodbath. No, when they walk in, you create a big fuss. And when that doesn’t work, Scarlett and I will come out of hiding and try to talk some sense into the guy.”

“It will be hard,” said Scarlett. “By the time Chase walks in with Donna he’ll be so hot and bothered he could get belligerent when he doesn’t get what he wants.”

“That’s where Brutus comes in.” Gran crouched down, causing her knees and hips to creak dangerously. “Brutus, you hit Chase with anxious puss face. You know, like Puss in Boots from those Shrek movies.”

Brutus frowned.

“No, not like that.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen that movie,” he said, looking a little confused.

“Brutus doesn’t really do anxious,” said Harriet. “He does scary very well, though.”

“Fine, you do scary and Harriet, you do anxious puss.”

“I don’t do anxious either,” said Harriet haughtily. “It isn’t in my repertoire, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, fine! So you both do scary.” Gran then slid underneath the bed. “The things I do for my granddaughter,” she muttered.

Scarlett disappeared into the bathroom and Vesta yelled after her.“Where are you going?”

“Touch up my makeup. I want to look good for the cameras.”

“Get back here.”

“Yes, boss,” said Scarlett, tripping back into the room.

“Now into the closet with you, and be quick about it!” Vesta barked.

Scarlett giggled.“This is so exciting!”

And thus the scene was set.

Now all it took was for Chase to walk in with Donna and the show was a go.

Chapter 30

I was feeling slightly embarrassed about the predicament we’d landed our human in. Mike apparently had been spooked to such an extent he wanted to go home, and even Clint had come down to declare the plaza and its surroundings off-limits for cats from now on. And since Dooley and I were the only cats on the island that clearly meant us.

Odelia herself wasn’t mad. I think she was even proud of the protective instincts that had guided our misguided attempt to make her remain faithful to her chosen one.

She was also very tired, though, so she’d turned in for the night the moment Mike had been patched up sufficiently and the date had officially been written off as a total loss.

So it was with mixed emotions that I walked into Odelia’s villa, Odelia pretty much dead on her feet and Dooley still speculating whether Mike had worn a toupee or not.

“I felt his hair shift when I landed on top of his head,” he repeated. “I’m sure he’s wearing a hairpiece, Max.”

“It could be a weave,” I countered. “A hairpiece would have come off when he was on that speedboat dragging Odelia behind him on her water skis.”

“Not when he’s glued it in place.”

“You don’t glue a hairpiece in place, Dooley,” I said. “You loosely attach it to your scalp and hope the wind won’t pick it up and deposit it on your date’s plate.”

All this talk of weaves and hairpieces didn’t appear to capture Odelia’s attention, for she headed straight for the bathroom, fully intent on getting ready for bed.

“I still think it was a toupee,” said Dooley.

“Must have been a weave,” I argued.

The thought then occurred to me that there was only one way to settle the argument once and for all: we could simply go over to Mike’s villa and see for ourselves. It’s a rare man who sleeps with a toupee, as it tends to shift when he turns in his sleep. A weave, on the other hand, stays firmly stuck in place.

And as we walked back out of the villa, I briefly wondered if we weren’t forsaking our sacred duty as Odelia’s watch-cats. Then I figured that with all the cameras watching her every move, it would be a very dumb kidnapper indeed to try and snatch her now.

Five minutes later Dooley and I were gazing in through the window to see if Mike the seducer was a toupee man or a weave man.

As luck would have it, he came walking out of the bathroom just when we arrived. And much to my surprise, he was rocking a Jason Statham, cleanly shaven dome and all.

“See!” said Dooley triumphantly. “It was a toupee!”

“Touch?,” I murmured, gracious in defeat.

And just as we were about to hop down from the windowsill, much to my surprise a second person came walking out of the bathroom. It was Jackie, and she was only wearing a towel, and as she dropped it, she was wearing even less.

I gulped, and so did Dooley.

“Oh, my,” I said. “Looks like our friend Mike has gotten over his cat-induced trauma pretty quick.”

And as Jackie joined Mike in bed, I gulped some more, and then, for some reason, my right hind leg suddenly developed a cramp and shot out, neatly hitting Dooley in the buttocks and sending him flying off the windowsill. These kinds of R-rated scenes were not fit for the likes of him.

“What happened?” he asked, having neatly landed on his feet.

“I don’t know,” I said, joining him on the deck. “I got a sudden cramp in my leg.”

The sound of the gong echoed through the air, but judging from the giggling sounds inside the room, Mike nor Jackie seemed to mind.

“We better get back to Odelia,” I said, before Dooley could hop onto that windowsill to watch the sequel.

Dooley immediately picked up on my hint.“You think she’s all right?”

“Let’s go and find out,” I said, and soon we were trotting back to our own villa.

We hadn’t even set foot inside when a loud scream rocked me to the core, and we covered the last couple of yards in a flash.

Inside the bedroom, Odelia sat up, looking dazed. Next to her, I recognized one of the other seducers. I think his name was Fred.

Fred was grinning, even as Odelia was looking at him as if she’d just discovered dog poo on her shoe.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” she cried.

The anatomically gifted young man grinned even wider, then shrugged.“I just figured, with Mike out of the way… Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

“Wrong,” said Odelia decidedly, and slapped the guy across the face so hard the sound echoed through the room and made even me wince at the impact.

“Hey! What did you have to go and do that for!” Fred yelled.

“Out!” said Odelia. “Get out!”

“Hold your horses,” said the guy, but did as he was told. “If you didn’t want to hook up why did you sign up for the show?” he grumbled.

“Out!” she repeated, her voice ringing in my ears.

“I’m going, I’m going,” he said, and headed for the door. Before walking out, though, he turned and said, “This could have been a night you’d never forget, babe. Your loss.”

Odelia picked up the first object that was available and threw it across the room. Unfortunately for Fred it was the iron she’d used to iron her dress earlier in the evening. It hit the guy in the face with a clunking sound and he went down hard.

“Oops,” said Dooley, when the avid seducer didn’t come up.

“Looks like this will be a nighthe’ll never forget,” I said.

Just then, a loud gong sounded, reverberating through the room. It was the second gong of the night, and I had a sneaking suspicion it was triggered by the presence of Fred in Odelia’s bed. Even though nothing had happened—apart from him getting knocked out cold—according to the rules it was still a breach.

Looked like Odelia wasn’t going home with an extra 50.000 in her bank account.

Chapter 31

Vesta wasn’t exactly feeling on top of the world. In fact she was feeling at the bottom of the world, or at least the bed. Dust bunnies tickled her nostrils, and she wondered briefly if the dark shape she saw near the wall could be a dead cockroach or, worse, a live one.

The closet creaked open, and Scarlet loudly hissed,“He’s taking his sweet time, that grandson of yours!”

“He’s not my grandson yet!” she hissed back.

And she was starting to wonder if Chase was really worth the aggravation. He was a great guy, sure, but there were lots of great guys in the world. And if Chase and Odelia couldn’t be trusted with an island full of seducers and seductresses maybe their bond wasn’t to be and she was simply wasting her time trying to protect him from making a mistake.

Suddenly she heard the sound of voices approaching.“Get back in your closet, you!” she loud-whispered, and Scarlett did as she was told and closed the door again, but not before emitting an excited giggle. Clearly she was loving every minute of this.

The door to the villa opened, and she heard the telltale sound of shuffling feet. They’d arrived. Now all she needed to do was wait until they were both in bed and then she was going to pop out from underneath and give Chase a good talking-to.

“Ooh, Chase, you’re so sweet!” a woman cooed, and Vesta pressed her lips together.

“It’s Donna!” Scarlett said, opening the closet a crack. “I knew it!”

“Get back in there!” Vesta returned.

“Can I offer you something?” Chase was saying. “Wine, beer… something stronger?”

The son of a gun! Shamelessly liquoring up his conquest!

She had half a mind to crawl from under the bed and leave them to it. He didn’t deserve Odelia, that much was obvious.

The sound of voices continued, and as Vesta tried to pick up words, she was also keenly aware of the passage of time, as it seemed to take Chase an awfully long time to make his move. Unless he planned to conclude his business on the living room couch. She didn’t think so. Chase had always struck her as an old-fashioned kind of guy, and old-fashioned kind of guys still preferred bedding their conquests in their actual beds.

She must have dozed off, then, for when she woke up, the room was awfully quiet, and she wondered if she’d missed her window of opportunity.

She directed a glance at the closet, but of course she couldn’t see if Scarlett was still in there or not.

“Harriet!” she whispered, but Harriet was a no-show. “Brutus!” she tried, but once again there was no response.

Dang it. What was going on? Had she slept through the whole thing?

She decided to find out the only way she knew how: by checking the bed for signs of Donnas.

So she crawled from under the bed with some effort, probably covered in dust bunnies from head to toe, and raised her head to check the bed. There clearly was someone asleep in there, and possibly two.

Her face set, she took executive action and jumped into bed, intent on catching the lovers in the act.

“Gotcha!” she yelled.

“Eek!” Chase screamed.

“Gotcha!” Scarlett cried as she hopped into the bed from the other side.

“Eeeek!” Chase yelped, and turned on the light.

Vesta, blinking against the sudden blaze, searched around for Donna.

“Where are you hiding, you trollop!” she said. “Come out now!”

“Yeah, come out now!” Scarlett echoed, clearly having a ball.

“What are you doing?!” Chase said, looking startled as he wrapped the sheet closer to his chest, staring at the two old ladies having hopped into bed with him out of the blue.

“Where is she?” asked Vesta, wagging a menacing finger in the cop’s face.

“Yeah, where is the floozie?” asked Scarlett.

“What floozie? What are you talking about?!”

“Donna. I know you’re hiding her somewhere,” said Vesta.

“Donna? There is no Donna. I sent her home after her third martini and after pumping her for information on the missing women. She was best friends with one of them so I figured she might know what happened to her friend.”

Vesta stared at the guy, a little dumbfounded.“You mean you weren’t planning on sleeping with the woman?”

“What?! Of course not! I’m in love with Odelia. Why would I want to sleep with Donna?”

“Oops,” said Scarlett, making herself comfortable on her side of the bed.

“Yeah, oops,” said Vesta, also settling back against the backboard.

Then, as they sat side by side, two seductresses and one contestant, suddenly a loud gong sounded. It was the third gong of the night, this time announcing that one of the men had been unfaithful.

“I think that was your gong, Chase,” said Vesta, a little sheepishly.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said Scarlett.

Chase heaved a deep sigh.“Guess I’m not going home with that big prize after all.”

“At least you found out something about the missing women, right?” said Gran.

“No. Donna didn’t know anything about that.”

“Too bad,” muttered Vesta.

“We’re famous now,” said Scarlett. “Most famous trio in the history of Passion Island.”

Chase groaned and buried his head in his hands.

Chapter 32

I was starting to get the sense that Passion Island wasn’t the kind of place a young and innocent mind like Dooley’s should necessarily be subjected to. People were jumping into bed left, right and center, and if they weren’t huffing and puffing under the cover of a single sheet they were hotting up the dance floor, or steaming gently in the saunaor coming to a slow boil in the jacuzzi. It’s one thing to be my friend’s keeper, but another to have to labor under circumstances that are a lot less than ideal.

So I had half a mind to tell Odelia to call the whole thing off and return to the safety and comfort of Hampton Cove, if it weren’t for the fact that Odelia is one of those people that hates to leave a job before it’s well and truly done.

She hadn’t yet gotten to the bottom of this baffling mystery of the disappearing women, and so prematurely leaving the island simply wasn’t in the cards.

Once again half the production crew had come running the moment they saw Fred take an iron to the noggin and go down for the count.

“What happened?!” Kimmy asked as she surveyed the scene.

“He tried to seduce me,” said Odelia simply.

Kimmy’s jaw dropped, then she spoke the immortal words, “Are you planning on taking out the entire field of seducers or do you want to leave a couple for the competition?”

“It was an accident,” Odelia explained, looking appropriately mortified.

“An accident is when you slip on a bar of soap,” said Kimmy. “This?” She gestured to the fallen seducer, who was being tended to by the team’s nurse. “This is overkill.”

Odelia winced at the mention of the word kill.“I’m sorry. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I guess I got a little upset, so I just reached for the first thing I could find.”

“Good thing it wasn’t a knife or he’d be dead.” Kimmy then broke into a wide grin. “I have to say I admire your touch, honey. If every guy who doesn’t take no for an answer took an iron to the head the world would be a better place. And a lot safer for women.”

“Did you hear that gong earlier?” asked Odelia. “Was that the men’s gong?”

Kimmy nodded.“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but I’m afraid the gong sounded for your boyfriend.”

“Oh, no!”

Kimmy’s smile didn’t diminish. Quite the contrary.

“Why are you smiling! Chase just cheated on me!”

“Technically, yes, but I think you’ll find that actually he didn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he was caught in bed with your grandmother and your grandmother’s friend, and from what I understand it was all one big misunderstanding. They were trying to catch him in the act with Donna, and ended up getting caught in the act themselves—the act of giving him a tongue-lashing, that is.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not. I saw it with my own eyes. The techies were laughing so hard they were practically rolling on the floor.” She rubbed Odelia’s back. “I gotta tell you, this is shaping up to be the most interesting season yet, and it’s all thanks to you and Chase.”

“Kimmy, can I ask you something?”

The production assistant turned serious.“Did you discover a lead?”

“Well, Jack claims that Joanna could be up to something.” And in a few words she explained what Jack had discovered.

“I’ll look into it,” Kimmy promised. “Keep up the good work—though try not to knock out all of our seducers. We still need them.”

Odelia sank down onto the living room couch, as we watched the nurse rub something under Fred’s nose. He woke up with a start.

“Wha-wha-wha…” he said, then caught sight of Odelia and his eyes widened considerably. “Get away from me!” he cried, scrabbling to his feet.

“Easy, buddy,” said the nurse. “Let me check those pupils.”

“She tried to kill me!”

“That’s what you get from crawling into a woman’s bed without being invited,” said the nurse, who was the stern and implacable kind. “Look into the little light. That’s it.”

And as she examined the guy, he kept darting nervous glances to Odelia, which told me he was A-okay. Apparently it took more than a blow to the head to give him pause. He did need stitches, though, which was a pretty gruesome sight to behold, I must say.

“So your gong was a false alarm, and Chase’s gong was a false alarm,” I told my human when all the hubbub had finally died down and it was just the three of us again. “Which means you still have a shot at winning this thing.”

“I’m not interested in winning this thing, Max,” said Odelia. “All I want is to figure out who’s kidnapping these women. And I’m still nowhere on that.” She yawned. “But tomorrow is another day, and maybe Kimmy will have some luck with Joanna so I’m not going to start despairing just yet. No, sir, I am not.”

And with these words, she stumbled into the bedroom, tumbled into the bed, and was soon snoring away like a lumberjack—a fine-boned, fair-haired lumberjack, that is.

And since Passion Island was oddly devoid of cats of any persuasion, and I didn’t feel like hanging out with the local creatures of the night, Dooley and I hopped onto the bed and turned in for the night as well.

Like Odelia said, tomorrow was another day, and maybe it would bring us closer to the truth.

And if it didn’t, there were still four seducers left for Odelia to take a whack at.

Chapter 33

It took our human some little while to get out of bed and ready for action. As I’ve indicated before, Odelia is never at her best in the early morning, and usually needs a strong dose of caffeine to get her system into gear. Now, after last night’s events, and less hours of sleep than is her custom, she looked like a shadow of her usual chipper self.

Still, her phone call with Chase was waiting, and she didn’t want to miss it for the world, so on her feet she was, and staggering toward the bathroom for a refreshing shower.

“At least today we won’t run into Scarface, aka Jack Davenport,” I told Dooley as I attended to my morning toilette, which consists of applying my raspy tongue to every part of my physique I’m able to reach, while Dooley did the same. He usually finishes quicker, as he doesn’t have quite as much acreage to cover. Or maybe his tongue is bigger.

“I wonder what Harriet and Brutus have been up to,” said Dooley, proving once again that members of a species are mainly interested in what members of the same species are up to. Cats like to know the latest gossip about other cats, and the same goes for humans.

“I believe Harriet isn’t interested in solving this mystery as much as securing herself a part in Cat Passion Island,” I said. “Though if she really thinks Clint is crazy enough to create a reality show featuring cats, God help poor Brutus.”

It just showed you how far my relationship with Brutus had progressed. When first we met, he’d been a grade-A bully, breezing into our lives with all the cockiness of a cop’s cat. Now, after having spent a couple of years as Harriet’s helpmeet, he was as docile as a newly born lamb, and even a little catpecked. Or a lot.

“I think Brutus would have preferred to be on this island,” said Dooley. “So he could hang out with us.”

“Too bad cats don’t swim,” I said. “Otherwise he could have made the passage and joined us.”

“And Harriet, too,” said Dooley.

“And Harriet,” I agreed after a pause. To be honest there are times when I can do without Harriet’s company. She’s a dear friend but can be a touch overbearing.

Odelia came out of the shower, a towel wrapped around her slender frame and another towel like a turban around her hair, and started going through her closet in search of something suitable to wear.

“No jogging today?” I asked, surprised.

“No, I’m frankly beat,” she said. “If anyone catches me I’ll tell them I’m going for my morning walk.”

It definitely suited me a lot better than the running thing. I really don’t see what’s so appealing about the concept of jogging. It makes one sweat profusely and turns one’s face beet-red. A very unhealthy habit, if you ask me, and even potentially deadly.

Finally having settled on a simple ensemble of jeans shorts, crop top and ball cap, we were off to find Chase at the end of our journey.

Once again, we passed through peaks and vales, languidly watched over by the island’s tallest mountain, named Khao Pom, and finally arrived at our destination without a hitch or a Scarface arresting our progress.

We all moved into the shack, and Odelia took out her phone and waited until the clock struck seven. On the dot, the gizmo started to vibrate happily.

“Hey, babe,” Chase’s sonorous voice sounded, and Odelia smiled.

“Hey, Chase. I missed you.”

“How are things going over there?”

“Pretty okay, though I managed to bean one seducer last night, and another was attacked by my cats. So I guess it’s two-nil for Team Odelia.”

“You beaned a seducer? Not the one you were gabbing with on the beach?”

“No, he was jumped by Max and Dooley. But how did you know I was talking to Mike on the beach?”

“Campfire,” said Chase curtly. “They made a big production of your t?te-?-t?te. So was it? A big deal, I mean?”

I could tell that Chase was trying to sound casual, but that watching Odelia chat up one of the seducers must have hit him hard.

“We were just talking,” said Odelia. “Mike isn’t interested in me, Chase. He’s engaged to be married and this is just a way for him to further his modeling career.”

Chase blew out a sigh of relief.“I’m so glad we have these daily phone calls. I don’t know what I’d do. They make it look as if you and this Mike are practically an item.”

“It’s what they do,” said Odelia, nodding. “It’s how they make people lose their heads and do foolish things they later regret.”

“I hate this show. I think there should probably be a law against this kind of thing.”

“So Kimmy tells me you and Gran and Scarlett had a great time last night?”

Chase uttered a groan.“Two seductresses in my bed, and a gong. My night was a big hit.”

“I got a gong, too, only my seducer needed stitches after the stunt he pulled.” And in a few words she regaled Chase with the story of seducer Fred and his injudicious initiative.

“Wait till I get my hands on that sneaky little—“

“He’s learned his lesson,” Odelia said with a laugh. “In fact I have a feeling the entire contingent of seducers will run a mile when they see me coming. Word spreads pretty fast around here.”

“Good,” said Chase decidedly.

The topic of seducers and seductresses exhausted, they turned the conversation to the topic of the missing women. And Odelia had just started telling Chase what Jack Davenport had said about Joanna, when suddenly a loud banging sound interrupted us.

The door to the shack flew open and revealed Clint Bunda, looking appropriately aggrieved, and accompanied by no less than two cameramen, both pointing their cameras at Odelia, who was holding the phone.

“Chase?” she said now. “I’m going to have to call you back.” She carefully hit the disconnect button, then sheepishly grinned at the producer. “Hi, Clint. You’re up early.”

Chapter 34

After the producer had confiscated her phone, and escorted her from the shack, he gave her a thorough dressing-down.

“I could have you sent away for this,” he growled, hands on his hips and looking like a disappointed parent. The words ‘I’m not angry but I’m disappointed’ clearly trembled on his lips.

“I’m sorry,” said Odelia, looking as contrite as she could manage. “I miss Chase, and these daily phone calls keep me going.”

“The whole point of the show is to keep you separated from your boyfriend!”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she repeated, hanging her head.

“Look, I’m going to give you a pass,” said Clint. “Just this once. And only because you’re our most popular contestant.”

Odelia looked up at this.“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been posting snippets of the footage we’ve shot so far on social media and our YouTube channel, whetting the public’s appetite for the upcoming season, and your clips are consistently number one. In fact the clips of your cats clobbering Mike and you knocking out Fred have gone viral. People can’t wait to see you in action, Odelia!”

“Um, that’s great, I guess,” she said, not knowing exactly how to feel about this.

“So I want you to continue—but no more secret phone calls to the boyfriend, okay?”

“I promise, Clint. I’ll be good from now on.”

Unless Kimmy had another spare phone she didn’t have a lot of choice, did she?

“Listen,” he said as he placed a hand on her shoulder and started steering her away from the shack. “If you could keep this up, there might be a bonus in it for you.”

“Keep what up?” she asked.

“The public loves what you’re doing, so if you could do more of it, they’ll lap it up.”

“You mean knock out more seducers?”

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Well, yeah, maybe. I don’t know. Just do what you do, and I’ll make sure you get the best coverage. I’m talking prime placement on the network’s website, paid ads, the works. If I’m not mistaken—and I rarely am—you’re going to be this season’s star, sweetheart. And we’re going to milk it for all it’s worth.”

She gave the producer a watery smile. She hadn’t exactly come to Thailand to be a star, and she had a feeling all this attention might even be detrimental to her chances of solving this case. Detectives rarely work well when placed under the limelight. Being in the shadows, unnoticed, working away in the background is more their thing.

“That’s great,” she said, without much excitement. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” And with a pat on the back, he was off, leaving her to consider her new role as Passion Island’s rising star.

Max and Dooley had come trotting up, and they looked as surprised as she was.

“So you’re going to be a reality star now?” asked Max. “Like Kim Kardashian?”

“I doubt it,” said Odelia as she started the hike back to the resort at a slower pace than the producer, who’d already disappeared out of sight. “I’ll get my fifteen minutes of fame and that’ll be it. And a good thing, too. I don’t think I’d like that kind of scrutiny.”

“You could start your own show,” Dooley now suggested. “Keeping Up with the Pooles. I’m sure lots of people would be interested.”

“No, thanks,” said Odelia. “People don’t want to see me talking to my cats and sniffing around town for obscure clues and suspects.”

“Gran would like it,” said Max. “In fact I’m pretty sure she’d love it.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. But I’d hate to live my life under a magnifying glass, a bunch of people with cameras filming every second of it.”

“You do know that reality shows are completely scripted, right?” said Max. “You show the public whatever you want to show. None of it is even remotely real.”

“Still, I think I’ll pass,” she said. Just the thought of her family being on national TV gave her the creeps. Though, as Max had said, Gran would probably love it, and so would Harriet. “Look, we’re here to solve a case,” she reminded her feline friends. “Not to become famous. So let’s focus on figuring out what’s going on, shall we?” She had a jacuzzi meeting with the three other contestants scheduled after breakfast, and she hoped to pump her fellow candidates for information, especially Joanna.

“Maybe you can drop by the main villa again,” she suggested. “Keep your ears to the ground and see if you can’t pick up something valuable.”

“Will do,” said Max promptly.

It was too bad that she wouldn’t be able to coordinate her investigation with Chase, but that couldn’t be helped. She did wonder how Clint had found out. She’d been so careful. Then again, he might have simply decided to have her followed, in an attempt to get some extra footage of the show’s breakout star.

They’d arrived at the resort, and she decided to head straight to breakfast. She wanted to talk to Kimmy before the others arrived, and tell her what had happened.

She found Kimmy chatting to one of the servers. It was the production assistant’s task to make sure the candidates were being treated like royalty, and part of that task was to ensure they were properly fed.

She gave Kimmy a sign and the assistant immediately took the hint and came over.

“I just got busted,” she said under her breath, and explained how Clint had confiscated her phone.

“That’s bad,” said Kimmy. “That means they’ll probably send you home for breaking the rules.”

“No, they won’t. Apparently I’m too popular to kick me off the show.”

Kimmy’s eyebrows shot up. “Huh. That’s a first. Clint has never allowed anyone to get away with such a serious breach before.”

Odelia stared at the other woman.“He probably never kept a candidate after she incapacitated a seducer either, right?”

Kimmy slowly shook her head as the significance of Odelia’s words sunk in. “You think Clint himself could be involved?”

“You tell me. You’ve worked with the man for, what, six years?”

“He seems hell-bent to keep you in the show.”

“And everyone tells me I’m the spitting image of the five women who went missing.”

Kimmy flung a hand to her mouth.“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes,” said Odelia, grim-faced. “It would be so easy for Clint to select a certain type of woman for his show.”

“And so easy to make them disappear.”

“But why? Why would Clint kidnap the contestants of his own show?”

“I have no idea. But I’ll tell you what. His wife is also blond and slender, so he’s definitely into the type.” Her face displayed a horrified expression. “Oh, God. I’m working for a pervert, aren’t I? He kidnaps women he likes and does whatever with them.”

“We don’t know that for sure, Kimmy,” said Odelia. “But I do know your boss makes for a very credible suspect.” She suddenly got an idea. “Can’t you, you know, sneak into his office and check his laptop or something?”

She didn’t mention Max had already sifted through the man’s emails and hadn’t found anything suspicious. But he’d only had a very narrow window of opportunity to work with. A more thorough search could reveal something incriminating.

Kimmy nodded, looking worried as she clasped her clipboard to her chest.“I’ll try to sneak a peek when he’s taking his after-lunch nap.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe this. Clint Bunda. A criminal.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” said Odelia, placing a comforting hand on the young woman’s arm. “We need proof before we start throwing around accusations. By the way, have you talked to Joanna yet?”

“No, haven’t had the chance.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“How will you bring up the subject?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll think of something.”

Chapter 35

Chase frowned at his phone, as if it had personally insulted him. All he could think was that another seducer must have thrown himself into Odelia’s arms to try and break down her defenses and in the process of fending him off she’d dropped her phone.

Odd, he felt. Ominous. And as he set foot for his villa, only a short walk from the beach where he liked to conduct these early morning phone calls that did so much to cheer him up, he was thinking dark thoughts of Mike and Fred and the other seducers.

He glanced in the direction of the other island, and not for the first time wondered if he shouldn’t brave the heaving seas and simply make the swim down there.

He was greeted at the breakfast table by Vesta and Scarlett, who looked a lot rosier and healthy than they had any right to, considering their age and lack of sleep.

“And? All is well on the women’s island?” asked Gran.

“She hung up on me,” he grumbled as he took a seat. “Probably trying to fend off more seducers. Those guys are on her like bees on a pot of honey.”

“So what about the gong?” asked Scarlett.

“And that second gong?” Gran added eagerly.

“First gong was for Jackie, the second was a false alarm. Odelia found a guy named Fred in her bed and kicked him out, then beaned him in the head with an iron. Guy needed seven stitches.” He smiled at this. For some reason the image of a seducer named Fred needing to be stitched up bucked him up in no small measure.

“Seven stitches?” said Scarlett, then whistled.

“Yeah, the guy wasn’t happy when she turned him down.”

“Remind me never to get on your granddaughter’s bad side,” said Scarlett.

“So you see?” said Vesta. “Nothing to worry about. Your fianc?e can handle herself, like I always knew she would.”

“I feel like we’re wasting our time here,” said Chase as he directed a listless glance at Gary, Arthur and Nick, who looked like they hadn’t slept a wink last night. Probably too busy entertaining their respective seductresses. “The real action is over on the other island, not here. And Odelia is all alone, facing not only a gang of seducers but probably a dangerous criminal, too.” He slammed the table with his fist, causing his fellow contestants to look up in surprise. “I should be over there, dammit!” he growled.

“Odelia isn’t all alone. She’s got Kimmy,” said Vesta. “And she’s got Max and Dooley.”

“What good are two cats against an army of seducers and a kidnapper?!”

“I’ve known Odelia all her life,” said Scarlett now. “And if there’s one thing I know it’s that she can look after herself. Don’t you worry about her. She’ll nail that bastard.”

“And if you’re really that worried, we could always take the boat and pay her a visit,” Vesta remarked as she eyed her omelet suspiciously, as if expecting it to come alive.

Chase looked up at this.“Boat? What boat?”

“The same boat that brought us here,” said Vesta. “They make the trip every morning. Probably to bring in supplies and stuff. Is it just me or does this omelet smell funny?”

“It’s just you,” said Scarlett.

“Why didn’t you tell me before!” Chase cried.

“I thought you knew,” said Vesta, giving him an owlish look. “You’re the big detective guy, aren’t you? I always figure you know everything.”

Chase threw down his napkin.“Show me.”

“Not where there are cameras!” Scarlett said indignantly.

“The boat!”

“Oh.” the older lady sounded disappointed, then sighed. “Very well. Come along.”

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“Where are they going?” asked Brutus as they watched Chase, Gran and Scarlett leave the breakfast table.

“Probably back to the villa for a conference,” said Harriet.

They were both lazily luxuriating on the edge of the dining room, which wasn’t a room as much as an area covered with a thatched roof supported by wooden beams.

Even though it was still early, the temperatures were already rising.

“This ocean breeze is so great,” said Harriet with a happy sigh. “I could get used to the climate. Rain is very bad for you, Brutus.”

“It is?” asked Brutus.

“Oh, sure. Bad for the bones, and joints, and probably a lot of other things, too.” She sighed again. “Maybe we could somehow convince Odelia to move to Thailand?”

“I think I’d miss Hampton Cove.”

This surprised Harriet, as Brutus hadn’t even known Hampton Cove existed a couple of years ago.

“You’d miss Hampton Cove?”

“Yeah, I would,” he confessed. “It may be rainy and cold in the winter, but it’s home. It’s where my friends are, and… my family.”

She smiled.“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Even though I can kick Shanille’s butt sometimes, and strangle Kingman with my bare paws, and I’m not even going to mention Clarice, who frankly scares the living daylights out of me half the time, it’s still home.” She looked up. “I kinda miss Max and Dooley. I mean, I know they’re only one island over, and we see them all the time, but I still kinda miss them being around, you know.”

“Yeah, me, too,” said her mate.

They were both quiet for a moment, then Brutus said,“I think I heard them say something about a boat. You don’t think they’re planning on leaving this island and ferrying over to the next one, do you?”

This had Harriet jerk up.“And leave us behind? Stranded? No way!”

“Pretty sure I heard the word boat.”

Harriet’s happy mood vanished. “Come, Brutus,” she said, and got up.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re catching that boat. If they think they can just leave us behind like this, they’ve got another thing coming.”

And then they were hot in pursuit of their treacherous humans.

Chapter 36

Walking back to her villa after breakfast to get changed, Odelia almost bumped into a chunky-looking individual with thick-rimmed glasses who made a strange bird-like sound. The moment she came face to face with him, he grimaced as if he were suffering from acute toothache, then scooted off in the direction of the staff villa.

And as she walked in, she caught a man crawling out of her bedroom window, looking flustered. He was carrying a small toolbox in one hand while he tried to negotiate the window with the other.

When she entered the bedroom, he froze, eyes wide, and broke into a stream of apologies.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Poole. I was just in here to fix one of the cameras. The one in the corner of the room. I’m not supposed to be caught by the contestants, or there will be hell to pay, so if you could please, pretty please, not tell Clint, I’d be so grateful. He doesn’t like it when the candidates are reminded this villa is chockablock with cameras in every nook and cranny, filming their every move, which is why we try to keep out of sight, but the darn feed dropped away this morning so I thought now would be a good time while you were having your breakfast.”

“It’s fine,” she said, laughing as she held up a hand to stem the flow of words. “I know you have a job to do, so just go ahead and do it.”

“Oh, thank you so much, Miss Poole,” said the man, who was skinny, and pale with pretty bad skin. “I hadn’t finished when my buddy gave me the alarm but I guess you were too quick for him.”

“Oh, so that’s what that was, huh? I was wondering why he would be making that strange sound.”

“It’s the sound of the hoopoe. I’ve been trying to teach him. I figured people wouldn’t notice when we used it. It’s the hoopoe’s mating cry,” he added helpfully as he crawled back in and made for the bed. Frowning, Odelia watched as he stepped on top of the bed and started unscrewingwhat looked like an innocent circular ornament from the ceiling.

“Is that… a camera?” she asked.

“Um, yeah. Offers a great view of the bed.”

“Oh, my God,” Odelia muttered.

“See, this is why Clint doesn’t want us in here when you guys are watching. He figures you might get upset when you realize how many cameras are rigged up in here.”

“Well, Clint is right. It is a little upsetting.”

“Fixed,” said the guy, sounding apologetic. “I’ll be out of your hair now, Miss Poole,” he added, and crawled down from the bed again. “Have a nice continuation of your day.”

And with these words, he was gone.

Odelia heaved a deep sigh, then headed to the bathroom to get changed for her jacuzzi date with the other contestants.

Now this was exactly why she didn’t want to become a reality star. She didn’t think she’d enjoy being scrutinized on a daily basis.

Walking out again, this time dressed in a bikini, she walked down the path on her flip-flops and headed for the spa area.

“Wait up!” suddenly spoke a voice behind her. Turning, she perceived it was Joanna, looking flustered.

“Ready for some jacuzzi fun?” asked Odelia.

“Not really,” said Joanna. “I woke up with a headache this morning and had half a mind to stay in bed today.”

“The jacuzzi will do you good,” said Odelia. “It might release some of the tension.”

The soft-spoken redhead fell into step next to her.“Is it true that you knocked out a seducer last night?” she asked, her eyes wide and wondering.

Odelia smiled and nodded.“I found him in my bed, if you can believe it.”

“Oh, I can. I found a seducer in my bed, too. I didn’t try to kill him, though I had a good mind to.”

“Who was it?”

“Antonio, the Italian stallion.”

“He’s very pushy, isn’t he?”

“They’re all pushy,” Joanna lamented.

“I guess it comes with the territory.”

“Don’t they realize that kind of behavior won’t get them anywhere? On the contrary, it’s a real turnoff for most women.”

“Not for everyone,” said Odelia as they passed Jackie’s villa.

“No, I guess not.”

“Listen, I happened to be talking to one of the techies this morning, and he told me you were caught cheating on Arthur.”

Joanna turned to her, looking shocked.“What?”

“Yeah, in Bangkok. He says you slipped out of bed in the middle of the night and went to visit another man in the next room.” It was a long shot, but she felt it might do the trick.

“I did not!” Joanna cried, indignant.

“So you didn’t crawl out of bed in the middle of the night?” asked Odelia pointedly. “Cause this guy swears up and down they filmed you.”

“They were filming us at the hotel?”

“Yeah, I guess they were.”

Joanna didn’t speak for a moment. She seemed to consider this. “Well, if they had caught me, don’t you think they’d have kicked me out of the competition even before it got started?”

“Good point,” Odelia agreed.

Joanna swallowed.“I did sneak out of bed that night, but not to visit another man.” She eyed Odelia keenly. “Promise you won’t tell Arthur?”

“I promise,” said Odelia.

“His thirtieth birthday is coming up, which is a big deal, and I’m organizing a surprise party. I’ve been making arrangements for weeks now. It’s supposed to take place when we get back from Thailand. I just wanted to make some final arrangements before they took away my phone. I’m arranging it with Arthur’s baby sister, and she can be a bit wishy-washy, so I wanted to have everything nailed down before we left.”

“Oh,” said Odelia, strangely elated. She’d quietly hoped Joanna was innocent.

“Arthur doesn’t suspect a thing. It’s going to be a big surprise. I even hired his favorite singer Jimmy Buffett, the Margaritaville guy.”

“That sounds great, Joanna,” said Odelia. “I think he’ll be thrilled.”

“Yeah, I hope so. It’ll be his last birthday before we tie the knot, and thirty is a big deal, right?”

“Oh, sure,” said Odelia. She was relieved Joanna wasn’t involved in some kidnapping ring, but also disappointed she’d lost another promising lead. It meant her only suspect now was Clint Bunda, the guy up top.

They’d arrived at the building where the spa was located and walked in. Tina and Jackie were already in the jacuzzi so they joined them. It would have been fun, having a soak with the contestants, if it hadn’t been for the three guys filming the whole thing.

How people managed to be spontaneous while being filmed was beyond her. There was probably a trick to it, but so far she hadn’t yet mastered it. And neither had the others, as the conversation was wooden and proceeded haltingly along familiar topics like the weather and the quality of the seducers.

And all the while Odelia’s mind kept drifting back to Clint.

His words to her that morning suddenly sounded more ominous than before: how she was his new star now. His favorite.

In other words, ripe to be kidnapped!

Chapter 37

As Odelia had instructed, Dooley and I snuck into the villa where the production team had set up shop, and started snooping around. Frankly I didn’t have high hopes that this time would be different than last time we’d inspected this place. Then again, the work of a detective, even a feline one, often consists of small repetitive tasks, not unlike that of a gold digger, who keeps sifting mud until finally one day he hopes to strike gold.

“Do you really think Clint is our guy?” asked Dooley.

Odelia had intimated the producer was her most likely suspect, and for us to look at him with renewed attention.

“I don’t know, Dooley, but he is the one who ultimately selects the candidates, so if he’s the kidnapper, that would make sense in that he can personally guarantee he’ll get what he wants.”

“But why would a man kidnap so many women, and all of them so similar? What does he do with them?”

I wasn’t prepared to lay it all out for him. It was obvious, though, what a man like Clint would do with all of those women. At least if he was the kind of man Odelia thought he was.

And as we walked into the villa, once again we passed the control room.

“Is it fixed?” asked the man named Frank.

“Yeah, it’s fixed all right,” said Rick. “No thanks to you, though. You couldn’t have given me the signal sooner, could you? She caught me crawling out the window.”

“She surprised me! She’s a fast walker.”

“You were probably playing Pok?mon on your phone again,” Rick said as he surveyed the wall of screens.

Every single one of the screens was now displaying the jacuzzi, and as I watched in surprise, I saw that most of them were featuring one particular candidate: Odelia. That’s what you probably get when suddenly you’re deemed the star of the show.

Rick’s phone started belting out a tune. I recognized it as the same sound he’d produced before: the mating call of the hoopoe. The guy really had a thing for birds.

We decided to leave them to it. We had other fish to fry, so we repaired upstairs, and once again tried every door until we found one that was unlocked. Soon we were out on the balcony, traipsing past room after room.

“Maybe we should search every room,” Dooley suggested.

“Odelia told us to focus on Clint,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, but what if Clint is innocent? Odelia has been wrong before.”

He was right. Odelia has been wrong more times than she’s been right. So I shrugged and we entered the first room we found. If we were going to do this, we might as well go about it in a methodic fashion.

The first room told me that whoever stayed there was not a fan of cleanliness and hygiene, as the place was a big mess. Clothes were strewn about all over the place, wet towels covered the furniture, candy wrappers littered the floor, and in all of that mess there wasn’t a single sign of a laptop, cell phone or tablet computer. Probably the guy or gal who occupied the room liked to keep these possessions close to their person.

We did find a crumpled up note in the wastepaper basket. It appeared to be some kind of sweepstakes: the names of all of the candidates had been written on the left, and on the top of the page a series of names I didn’t recognize, except for Rick and Frank. Underneath these names, scores had been awarded each candidate. When tallied, Odelia’s name had received the highest score.

“This is a little thick,” I said when the significance of the document hit me. “These people are actually holding a wager, presumably putting money on the contestants.”

“You mean they’re gambling on the show’s outcome?” asked Dooley, surveying the document.

“Looks like it,” I said. “And Odelia’s name is at the top of the list. Meaning they figure she’ll probably succumb to the wiles of the seducers more likely than the others.”

“Was this before or after she hit Fred in the head?” asked Dooley pointedly.

I smiled.“Probably before. Looks like this person, whoever he is, lost a great deal of money betting on her to fall for Fred’s charms.”

“Or Mike’s charms,” Dooley added as he took a tentative sniff at a piece of underwear, then crinkled up his nose when its sheer rankness hit him.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Plenty of rooms to check and only so much time.”

Unfortunately that first room was a harbinger of things to come. It soon became clear that every single member of Clint’s team engaged in betting on the candidates’ likeliness to fall for this or that seducer or seductress, and the pool must have been a pretty large one, judging from the numbers scribbled on the documents we found in most rooms. It was also the only clue we found, and not the kind of clue we were looking for. And when finally we made our way to Clint’s room, the man in charge, we were none the wiser.

We snuck into the big guy’s room and were surprised to see it occupied by none other than… Kimmy, eagerly going through the man’s personal affairs. She didn’t see us come in, as we treaded as softly and surreptitiously as usual, but we saw her clear as day as she dug through Clint’s laptop, darting anxious glances at the door from time to time.

“What is she doing?” asked Dooley as we hunkered down behind a chair near the window.

“Spying on her boss,” I said.

She probably shouldn’t have done that, for at that moment footsteps sounded in the corridor, and suddenly the door swung open and Clint walked in.

Kimmy, an athletic lass, leaped behind the bed, then rolled underneath before Clint caught sight of her. And as she did so, she saw us looking at her, and pressed her index finger to her lips. I nodded once, which appeared to surprise her greatly.

“Now where did I leave the darn thing,” Clint muttered as he rooted around his desk. “Ah, there it is,” he murmured as he grabbed his laptop. His phone chimed as he opened the door.

“Who is this?” he boomed after a moment’s pause. “Her uncle! A cop! Are you kidding me!”

He closed the door again and started pacing the room.

“No, I didn’t know Odelia Poole’s uncle was a cop. Someone could have told me!” he said, still speaking in that booming voice of his.

The person on the other end must have said something to upset him, for suddenly he sank down on the bed, making it creak.“She did what?!” he bellowed.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Looks like Odelia’s cover is blown.”

“We have to do something, Max!” said Dooley. “Clint is going to try and grab her!”

Dooley was right, so we snuck from behind the chair posthaste, then out onto the balcony.

We had to warn Odelia before it was too late!

Chapter 38

Odelia had just stepped out of the jacuzzi when there was a sort of commotion nearby. When she glanced over, she saw that Max and Dooley were running full tilt in her direction, but so were Clint and Kimmy. All of them were screaming something she couldn’t quite catch.

“What’s going on?” asked Tina. “Why are your cats being chased by Clint?”

“Probably stole a fish,” Jackie sneered. “Isn’t that what cats do? Steal things?”

Obviously Jackie didn’t know Max and Dooley very well, Odelia thought. And then she caught what her cats were yelling.

“He knows!” Max cried. “Clint knows about you!”

“Oh, darn,” she muttered, and blinked. Clint wouldn’t dare grab her with all these witnesses around, would he? There was a reason those women had only been kidnapped after their return from Passion Island. So she decided to bear the brunt of the man’s displeasure bravely.

“Help me out here, girls,” she said. “I think Clint is about to blow his top.”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” said Tina. “We’ve got your back.”

“Yeah, us girls have to stick together,” said Joanna.

Only Jackie wasn’t in a solidarity frame of mind. “What did you do?” she asked.

But then Clint was upon them, and he was looking like a steam engine about to explode.

“You’re a cop!” he screamed accusingly. “You’re a damn cop!”

“No, I’m not a cop,” said Odelia calmly as she came face to face with the women snatcher. “But my uncle is, and he’ll be very interested to know what kind of operation you’re running here, Mr. Bunda.”

“Oh, so now suddenly it’s Mr. Bunda, huh?” He grabbed Odelia’s arm. “Come. All of you. You, too, Kimmy.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kimmy quietly.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” said Odelia defensively as she yanked her arm free from the man’s grasp.

“I’ve got them all lined up and we’re going to get to the bottom of this thing once and for all,” said Clint.

“Lined up who?” asked Tina.

“All of my people, who do you think? One of them must be involved in this thing, and I wanna know who. I wanna know who’d betray me like this!” he screamed, raising his fists to the sky and shaking them violently.

The man was losing it, Odelia thought, and she was starting to get a little scared.

But Clint was already heading back to the main villa, and Kimmy was shrugging her shoulders. She clearly didn’t see a way out either.

“Where’s the boat?” asked Odelia. “There’s got to be a boat we can take to get off the island.”

“It’s not what you think it is, Odelia,” said Kimmy, quite surprisingly. “Your uncle called Clint just now, telling him the whole story.”

“What?!” Odelia cried.

“Yeah, I was hiding under the bed, and I heard the whole thing. Alec even told him about my involvement. He says he’s found the women.”

“My uncle has found them?”

“Apparently the FBI got wind of the affair and got in touch with Alec, and together they managed to convince the families that something very bad was going on. They finally managed to track down all five women. They’re safe now.”

“But… Clint?”

“Clint’s got nothing to do with it. But someone on the team does. And he’s going to try and figure out who it is.”

Odelia glanced down at her cats, who both shrugged.“Okay,” she finally said, and joined Kimmy and the other three women in pursuit of Clint, whom they could hear screaming all the way to the jacuzzi as he made his way back to the main house.

“What’s all this about kidnapped women?” asked Joanna.

“I’ll explain later,” said Odelia.

“You’re a cop?” asked Jackie, sounding distinctly unhappy.

“No, I’m a reporter.”

“I asked Odelia to come and look into a possible kidnapping ring centered around Passion Island,” Kimmy explained, drawing gasps of shock from the other three women.

But by then they’d arrived at the villa, where Clint was pacing in front of his collected staff, all gathered in front of the main house.

“Someone here has been working against me!” he announced. “One of you has decided to use my show—MY SHOW—for nefarious purposes! And I want you to step forward right now and reveal yourself!”

Odelia had crossed her arms in front of her and stood watching the scene with some trepidation. She didn’t know what to think. She’d figured Clint was the man behind the kidnapping ring, but apparently her uncle didn’t think he was, and Uncle Alec was a smart cookie, so he probably had his reasons.

“No one?” asked Clint. “All right. So be it.” He picked his phone from his pocket and quickly dialed a number.

“What’s happening?” asked Tina, as bewildered as the rest of the small crowd that had gathered in the rising sun.

“No idea,” said Odelia truthfully.

“Alec? Yeah, nobody’s talking. So you do as we arranged. Yeah, you place that call now.” He disconnected, then let his gaze rake across the faces of his people, none too friendly. If looks could kill, they’d all have fallen to the ground, dead.

Suddenly, a ringtone pierced the silence—it was the sound of birdsong.

“You’re busted!” Clint bellowed. “Busted!”

Everyone looked around with consternation written all over their features, as Clint dove into the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea before Moses. And there, on the ground, was a phone, buzzing away, still blasting out a steady whoop-whoop-whoop.

Clint picked it up.“Who does this phone belong to! Who, dammit!”

Eyes swiveled, and heads turned left and right, but whoever the phone belonged to didn’t make themselves known, causing Clint to stomp the ground like a petulant child. “Reveal yourself!” he demanded heatedly.

“It belongs to Rick,” said Max. “I’d recognize that ringtone anywhere.”

“It belongs to Rick,” Odelia echoed.

“Oh, crap,” the pale techie muttered, and suddenly broke into an awkward run!

“Stop!” Clint screamed. “Stop that man!”

But since everyone was gathered around him, there was no one left to stop Rick, as the skinny techie disappeared around the bend.

“After him!” Clint ordered. “Whoever catches that bastard gets a fat bonus!”

As one man, all of those gathered now moved off in a minor stampede, all in pursuit of the man named Rick, whom Odelia had recognized as the guy who’d installed a camera right above her bed.

She joined the runners, as did everyone else. No one wanted to miss the grand finale to this very strange and unexpected drama. Even the cameramen, who’d dutifully filmed the entire scene, broke into a jog, and kept right on filming.

They finally arrived at a small dock, where a boat was moored. Rick, who had secured himself a nice head start, was already climbing aboard, and throwing off the moorings.

“He’s getting away!” Clint cried. “Stop him!”

But it was obvious they’d never get there in time. As they neared, Rick was pushing the boat away from the dock, and had started up the engine. He was going to make a clean getaway while they all watched.

And he was waving at them, looking pretty triumphant, when suddenly a second boat appeared out of nowhere. And as Rick was looking in their direction he never noticed the other boat sailing alongside and a tall, lanky figure leaping from boat to boat, like a regular Jack Sparrow, though minus the funky eyeliner.

“It’s Chase!” Odelia cried happily, and she now saw two more familiar figures on this second boat: Gran and Scarlett!

“Gotcha!” Clint yelled, shaking his fist. “Well done, son! Well done!”

Chase had managed to capture the errant technician, and was now steering the boat back to the dock, leaving the other boat drifting aimlessly, and Gran and Scarlett looking a little ill at ease at the prospect of soon becoming prey to the Gulf of Thailand’s relentless currents and ending up in the Philippines.

But before long, several people had jumped into the water, and were making their way over to assist Chase in subduing Rick, while others swam over to the second boat and managed to bring it to the dock in next to no time, no doubt earning them a debt of gratitude, and a kiss from Scarlett, the oldest seductress in Passion Island’s history.

“Why!” cried Clint as soon as Rick had been brought safely to shore. “Why did you do it!”

Rick shrugged, and didn’t look entirely happy, faced with a minor mob and several cameras pointed at his pockmarked face. “For the money, what do you think?”

“So you’re behind this kidnapping business?” asked Chase.

“I’m just a minor cog in a big wheel,” said Rick. “I’m the guy who sends the footage, and arranges for the personal information of the candidates to be sent to the potential buyers.”

“Potential buyers?” asked Clint, making a powerful effort not to smack the man in the face.

“Yeah, you’d be surprised how many people out there are willing to pay through the nose for the privilege of acquiring one of Passion Island’s contestants,” said Rick. “I’m talking millions.”

“People are buying Passion Island contestants?” asked Tina, shocked.

“Yeah, five of them,” said Chase.

“They’ve all been found,” Clint assured them. “And I swear I didn’t have a clue.”

“You could have taken the reports that those women were missing a little more seriously, though,” said Kimmy accusingly.

Clint, perhaps for the first time in his life, contrived to look moderately contrite.“Yeah, I probably should have done that little thing,” he confessed.

“Instead you wanted to keep the show running, and didn’t care one hoot that you were putting people in danger,” Kimmy continued.

“I didn’t know, okay!”

“So who are these buyers?” asked Odelia.

Rick shrugged.“Russian oligarchs, Arabian billionaires, Chinese mobsters… Passion Island isn’t just wildly popular with your regular audience, but with the criminal element, too, and those with enough money to burn decided they wanted a piece of the action—literally—and so a couple of very enterprisingpeople set up a business to give them what they wanted.”

“This is sick,” said Joanna, looking nauseous.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” said Clint. “They only targeted blondes. Like Odelia.”

Chase then strode forward and gave the producer a single punch to the face. It was enough to land the man on the sandy ground, wondering who’d turned off the lights.

Loud cheers and applause broke out amongst Clint’s staff.

Apparently the man wasn’t as popular as he thought—nor as free of responsibility in the drama that had just unfolded.

Next to Odelia, Tina heaved a little sigh.“I guess this is the end of Passion Island.”

“I think so,” Odelia admitted.

Tina broke into a smile.“Good. I was fed up with being stalked by seducers anyway.”

Chase walked up to Odelia, and grabbed her into his arms for a bone-crushing hug.

“I missed you, babe,” he breathed passionately.

“And I missed you,” she said.

And then they kissed, and more applause broke out.

They might not have won that fifty grand, but they had caught their guy.

Epilogue

“I’ve never been contacted by the FBI before,” said Uncle Alec, sounding particularly proud of the fact. “So when they told me they’d freed the women and arrested the bad guys, all I needed to do was call Clint Bunda and get him to play ball. The feds had the number of the kidnappers’ contact on the island but didn’t have a name, so I placed the call, and the rest is history.” Next to him, Charlene Butterwick was beaming, clearly proud of her man, as evidenced by the fact that she kept patting his hand.

“You did a wonderful thing, Alec,” said Hampton Cove’s mayor. “A wonderful, wonderful thing.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Uncle Alec, modestly plucking an imaginary piece of lint from his polo shirt. “Some people call me a hero, others call me a savior. I just like to think I did my duty, same as anyone would.”

We were finally home again, after a long journey, and not a moment too soon. Traveling by plane and car, I was happy to be back, and so were my friends.

Harriet and Brutus, who’d risked life and limb by traveling on that boat with Chase and Gran and Scarlett, had had the scare of a lifetime when Chase had steered the vessel straight into Rick’s boat. For a moment, Harriet had told me, she’d feared the boat would be lost with all hands—and paws. Luckily that hadn’t happened, but she’d been happy to feel terra firma under her shaky paws, that’s for sure.

As for Rick, he’d been collected by the police and locked up with the rest of the human traffickers. The women had been freed from the clutches of the rich men who’d had them snatched for their own personal enjoyment, and justice had finally prevailed.

As far as Passion Island was concerned, the network had decided to take the show off the air, as well as every other reality show like it. Lawyers would presumably have a field day working out culpability, as the families of all five women had decided to sue.

“It’s a pity that they canceled the show, though,” said Gran, offering the contrarian view as usual. “I think it had potential. Especially with Scarlett and myself on board.”

“Yeah, I think we could have taken that show to the next level,” Scarlett agreed, as she subjected the sausage Tex had deposited on her plate with a touch of suspicion. Like the proverbial pit, it was black from pole to pole, and didn’t look fit for human consumption.

Tex and Marge had returned from their trip the moment they heard what danger their daughter had escaped from. They’d missed a big chunk of their European vacation, but had vowed to make up for it next year, turning this travel bug into a regular thing.

“If I’d known how much trouble you were putting yourself in I’d never have allowed you to go through with it,” Marge said censoriously, clucking like a worried mother hen. “Promise me you’ll never put yourself in danger like that again, Odelia. Promise me now.”

“I promise,” said Odelia, but I could see she was crossing her fingers behind her back.

“What is she doing, Max?” asked Dooley, gesturing to the strange custom.

“She’s lying to her mother,” said Harriet. “Making promises she won’t keep.”

“You mean she’d go through the Passion Island ordeal again?” asked Dooley, surprised. “Willingly?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Brutus. “Let’s face it, though. She was never in any danger.”

We’d all heard the reports of the unmarked vans snatching the five other women off the street, their takers setting up an elaborate ruse to make the families believe they were all right—four to get married to the men of their dreams, the fifth on a spiritual kick. What had tipped off the FBI was that one of the women had managed to escape, and had started a chain of reactions leading to the arrest of Rick on Passion Island.

Tex, working relentlessly at the grill, was happily flipping burgers like a pro again, providing his family sustenance. If anything, though, his very particular set of skills was getting worse, which seemed impossible. Usually humans get better with practice, but not our good doctor Poole. Still, he was clearly having a ball, and that’s all that matters.

“So when is the show coming out?” asked Scarlett now. “I can’t wait to see myself in action.” She preened a little as she spoke the words.

“The show isn’t coming out, sweetheart,” said Gran. “The show has been canceled. As in buried deep within the archives of the network, never to be seen again, except maybe by wizened old scholars working on a dissertation on reality show history.”

“But… what about all that footage?”

“Buried. Deep,” said Gran. “Like Indiana Jones’s Ark of the Covenant.”

“So I worked my seductive ass off for nothing?!” cried Scarlett, visibly upset.

“The joy is not in reaching your destination, but in the journey,” said Charlene, earning herself a scathing look from Scarlett and wisely shutting up. A good politician knows when to speak, but also knows when to be quiet.

“I’m glad Odelia wasn’t kidnapped,” said Dooley. “I don’t think she would have liked to spend time with a Russian oligarch, an Arabian billionaire or a Chinese mobster. And I don’t think we would have liked it either.”

“They wouldn’t have kidnapped us, Dooley,” Harriet said. “They would have snatched Odelia, not her cats.”

“But… they’d have simply left us behind?” He looked shocked at the prospect.

“These people aren’t exactly cat lovers, Dooley,” said Brutus. “Probably they like dogs, though. Big, mean, tough canines. Not sweet pussies like you and me.”

“Or me,” said Harriet.

“Or me,” I said, nodding.

Dooley shivered visibly.“Imagine. Having to spend time with a mean dog when you’re a cat person like Odelia. The horror.”

I shared a look with Brutus and Harriet, and we were in silent agreement that we weren’t going to tell Dooley that when being kidnapped by a human trafficker to be traded to a rich pervert having to spend time with dogs probably wasn’t the worst part.

Instead, I snapped a piece of steak out of the air that Odelia threw me. She’d already cut off the burnt parts, and had saved only the succulent center. I nodded my thanks and gulped the whole thing down eagerly.

For a moment, only the sound of chewing filled the air, as four cats devoured their portions. Then, Harriet said,“You know? Being on Passion Island has really made me think.”

“Oh?” I said, swallowing with relish.

She gave me a sweet smile.“I missed you guys. I mean, I know we don’t always get along. And I know I can be something of a pain in the patootie sometimes—“

“Oh, no,” I began to say, but she stopped me with a gesture of her paw.

“No, it’s true, Max. But deep down you know that I love you guys, right?”

I nodded, swallowing again, only this time it wasn’t a tasty morsel of meat but a lump in my throat.

“I love you guys, too,” said Brutus a little gruffly. “And if you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.”

“I love you guys so much!” said Dooley, sniffling unabashedly.

And thus ended our Thai adventure. And as a mild summer rain suddenly started falling from the sky, instigating a mad dash for the great indoors from all those present, and a mad scramble from Tex to safeguard his grill, I smiled. After the sweltering heat of the Thai isles, and the hair-raising antics of Passion Island producers, a light drizzle was just what we all needed.

And when I jumped off the porch swing and padded into the backyard, to sample some of that soft rain on my skin, I was accompanied by my three friends. The scent of summer and fresh grass tickled my sense of smell, and I whooped with joy. The humans, all ensconced on the porch now, probably thought we were crazy, but for once we defied the old adage that cats hate to get wet.

I was getting soaked and I loved it.

Home sweet home!

24. A PURRFECT GNOMEFUL

Chapter 1

In spite of the fact that it was a glorious morning—one of those mornings that makes you happy to be alive—I was brooding. Yes, brooding. Now I know what you’re going to say. Why would a cat who has everything his little heart desires be spending precious time brooding, when he could use that time to rejoice and count his blessings instead? Well, I’ll tell you why. Or in fact I might as well show you. Show, not tell, right?

Here, let me take you by the hand and accompany you from my perch on the couch to the kitchen. Do you see that fridge? That’s my human Odelia’s fridge. And do you see the trail of leftovers leading all the way from the kitchen to the living room and beyond?

Mice did that. Or more specifically, the colony of mice that has been using our basement as its refuge, and our fridge as its main source of nourishment.

I could also point out the fact that my bowl was now devoid of kibble, and so were the bowls of my friends Dooley, Harriet and Brutus. Or I could have led you into the pantry, where Odelia and her boyfriend Chase like to stock their stuff, and which was also a mess now.

The thing is, I recently negotiated a peace treaty with the mice, ceasing all hostilities, and in exchange Hector and Helga gave me their solemn word they wouldn’t treat the house as their personal Walmart. Unfortunately it would appear they had a hard time keeping their offspring in check, and the upshot was that both Odelia and Chase were starting to lose their patience… with me!

Yes, the mice were misbehaving, but yours truly was taking the rap.

That’s what you get when social media is filled with story after story extolling the so-called mouse-capturing capabilities of your common domestic short-haired feline.

Fake news, I say, and it’s high time the owners of those social media sites did something to stem the flow of this false and frankly misleading information.

No, not every cat is a ruthless killer.

No, not every cat likes to eat mice for breakfast.

And no, not every cat is a Tom, eager to catch himself a Jerry.

So I watched the carnage and heaved a deep sigh. I’d been out last night, you see. Cat choir, if you must know. And by the time I got back, Hector and Helga’s offspring obviously had been at it again.

The pet flap flapped and Dooley walked in. When my friend caught sight of my careworn expression, he immediately came tripping over, concern written all over his features.

“Max!” he said, a generous dose of sympathy lacing his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you really have to ask?” I asked.

He studied me for a moment, then nodded seriously.“It’s cancer, isn’t it? Don’t worry, Max, we’ll find you the best doctor money can buy.”

I stared at him.“What are you talking about?”

“It’s just like in that movie I saw last night with Gran. About a man who only has three months to live. And he looked just like you. Round-faced and orange, I mean. I cried a lot. Gran didn’t. But then Gran never cries, except when one of her soap stars dies.”

I held up a paw, for Dooley has a tendency sometimes to go off course.“About that man. The one who looked like me. And by the way I’m not orange, Dooley—I’m blorange. And I’m not round-faced—I’m just naturally furry. So what happened with that man?”

“Oh, when all else failed his dear old mammy advised him to try laughter therapy. And it worked! He laughed himself back to health, Max, and I’m sure you can, too. So start laughing and start healing.”

I shook my head. I’m sure Dooley meant well, but laughter therapy wasn’t going to solve the mice issue.

“A priest, a rabbi and a hippopotamus walk into a bar,” said Dooley, undeterred. “The hippopotamus says, ‘What does a hippopotamus have to do to get a drink around here?’ And the bartender replies, ‘Find religion!’” He laughed loudly, but when I didn’t join him, he stopped. “Max, you have to laugh. You’re my best friend and I don’t want you to die.”

“I’m not going to die in three months, Dooley.”

“You could die in one month. The guy in the Lifetime movie didn’t know he was going to die at first. It was only when he lost feeling in his patootie that he figured something was wrong.” He gave me a slight tap on the patootie. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes, I can feel that. And the reason I’m not my usual sunny self is not because I only have three months to live but because the mice made a terrible mess again last night, and the moment Odelia walks down those stairs she’s going to be very upset with me.”

“Why? It’s not your fault the mice are making a mess, Max,” he pointed out, and very sensibly, too, I thought. But I was afraid Odelia wasn’t going to see it that way.

“Yes and no. Rightly or wrongly she feels that with a house full of cats she shouldn’t have to worry about a mice infestation.”

Just then, and right before our eyes, two small mice came tripping past us into the kitchen. Moments later they returned, both carrying large chunks of cheese. When they saw us gaping at them, the first mouse, presumably the leader of this small battalion, gave us a toothy grin and said,“Hiya, fellas. Almost forgot I dropped this last night.”

“You’re not supposed to do that, you know,” I said, righteous indignation making me quiver. “It’s not okay.”

The mouse took a nibble from the cheese.“Tastes okay to me, bud.”

“No, I mean—it’s not okay that you would steal my human’s food.”

“It’s not stealing when it’s just lying around,” argued the mouse, whose brother or sister had already disappeared down the basement stairs. “In fact your human should thank us. If not for us this cheese would go to waste. At least now it’ll end up feeding at least a dozen…” He tookanother big bite. “Or half a dozen…” He devoured the last of the cheese. “Well, at least one mouth.” He glanced back to the kitchen, clearly still hungry.

“Don’t you dare,” I said, taking a step closer.

The mouse held up its tiny paws.“All right, all right. Cool your jets, you big pussy. The way I see it? Us mice provide a vital and important service.”

“And what service would that be?”

“This place could be crawling with beetles and roaches. Can you imagine?” He gave us a cheeky wink. “Think about that.” And with a cheerful wave of the paw, he was off.

After a moment’s silence, as I slowly came off the boil again, Dooley said, “He’s right, you know. If not for Hector and Helga and their kids Odelia’s house could be swarming with beetles and roaches. And maybe even spiders and other creepy crawlies.”

It was a point to take into consideration, though secretly I doubted whether Odelia would take this benign view.

Just then, the pet flap flapped again, and Harriet and Brutus came walking in, both looking highly perturbed.

“Something needs to be done,” said Harriet, a gorgeous white Persian. “This simply cannot go on.”

“But they keep out the beetles and the roaches,” I pointed out, earning myself a look of confusion.

“Whatare you talking about, Max?”

“The mice. I’m starting to think they just might be one of those necessary evils you hear so much about.”

Harriet tsk-tsked freely, and shook her head.“I’m not talking about the mice, Max. I’m talking about the gnomes.”

“Someone stole Tex’s gnomes last night,” Brutus said. He’s Harriet’s mate, and a butch black cat of particularly shiny hue.

I silently wished that whoever had stolen Odelia’s dad’s gnomes would steal Odelia’s mice instead, but obviously Harriet didn’t share my preoccupation with the murine colony.

She frowned, and so did Brutus, clearly thinking hard thoughts about the gnome thief, while I was frowning because of my recent encounter with one of Hector and Helga’s offspring. The only one who wasn’t frowning was Dooley. And to show us his mind was otherwise engaged, he suddenly burst out laughing, then said, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but a priest, a rabbi and a donkey walk into a bar.”

And he probably would have gone on to tell us all about this exciting event, if not the glass sliding door had slid open and Gran walked in, her cheeks flushed with excitement.

“Where’s Odelia?” she asked.

“Still in bed,” I said. “Why?”

“Odelia!” Gran bellowed at the foot of the stairs. “Get down here now!” And her eyes shining, she announced, “The crime of the century has just been committed, so Scarlett and I are launching a neighborhood watch, and I want you guys to join us!”

Chapter 2

“What are we looking at here?” I asked.

Gran had led us into Tex and Marge’s backyard and triumphantly waved her arm at… nothing in particular. The lawn could use a trim, and the big cherry tree probably needed pruning, but apart from that I saw no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

“Can’t you see?” asked Gran, her voice rising as it often did when she was in the throes of excitement. “They’re gone!”

“Who’s gone, Gran?” asked Dooley.

“The gnomes! Someone took the gnomes!”

“Oh, the gnomes,” I said, deflating a little. Why did everyone and his grandmother keep harping on about gnomes, when it was mice that were the main issue here.

“Yes, Max, the gnomes,” said Harriet. “Why, isn’t this mystery big enough for you? Or important enough to occupy your highly intelligent mind?” Since she made air quotes and rolled her eyes, I guess she didn’t think all that highly of my mind—such as it was.

“No, it’s not that,” I was quick to assure her. “It’s just that…”

“Max has mice on the brain,” Dooley explained.

“Oh, God, when are you going to stop talking about your mice!” Harriet cried, even going so far as to stomp her paw on Tex’s semi-smooth lawn.

“They’re not my mice,” I said. “And they pose a big problem. They keep eating our stuff.”

“Probably because they ran out of beetles and roaches,” Dooley said, nodding in my direction. “Isn’t that right, Max?”

“Look, can you guys please focus on the problem at hand?” Gran said, starting to get a little impatient. All this talk about mice and roaches clearly wasn’t gripping her. “This is a serious problem and I think it’s the perfect first case for our neighborhood watch, of which I’m the founding mother and you’re now the founding cats.”

I didn’t really want to be the founding cat of anything, but I had the distinct impression I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. When Gran’s mind is made up about something it’s very hard to dislodge the idea.

“I’m also nominating Scarlett, of course,” she said. “And maybe Rock and Dick.”

“What’s the big to-do?” asked Marge, stepping into the backyard from the house. She was dressed in her dressing gown and looking a little disheveled, with bed hair and sleep wrinkles on the side of her face. Like her daughter Odelia, Marge is fair-haired and slim, and a genuinely good and kind person. Her eyes now widened as she took in the backyard, and she actually clutched the sides of her head. “Oh, no—the gnomes!”

“Yes, the gnomes,” said Gran grimly. “Tex is not going to be happy.”

“Happy about what?” asked Tex, as he joined the conference. He dragged a hand through his white mane as he took in the crowd that had gathered in his backyard. He was smiling, probably the only member of the Poole family who’s always in a happy mood, even when just having rolled out of bed and not having had his morning coffee.

“Your gnomes, Tex,” said his wife of twenty-five years. “Someone took your gnomes.”

Tex’s amiable face fell, and his lower jaw drooped. “My gnomes!” he cried. “Oh, no!”

Honestly I couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about, but then humans often develop these strange attachments to inanimate objects. And it was just such a case with Tex, who’d suddenly gotten it into his nut that collecting garden gnomes was a good idea. I didn’t see the attraction, and even found the colorful little fellas slightly creepy, but humans will be humans, and clearly gnomes held a certain kind of strange fascination, as Tex wasn’t the only one who liked to litter his backyard with the quaint creatures.

“What’s going on?” now asked Odelia as she and Chase stepped through the hole in the hedge. Odelia was looking even more frumpy than her mother, and Chase was dressed in boxers and a T-shirt as usual, showcasing his muscular physique.

“Someone stole your father’s gnomes,” Marge said.

Chase suppressed a smile, indicating he didn’t think the news was especially worrisome, but quickly rearranged his features in the recommended look of concern your small-town copper knows how to perfect when faced with these trifling matters that are nevertheless of great concern to the ordinary citizenry that pays his salary.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, Tex,” said Gran, clapping her son-in-law on the back. “I’m launching my new neighborhood watch, and your gnomes are my first case.”

“A neighborhood watch?” asked Marge. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. With this crime wave sweeping our town I think it’s high time someone stepped up and did the right thing.”

“I think you’ll find that the police department has matters well in hand, Vesta,” said Chase, who clearly wasn’t a big fan of Gran’s new initiative.

“I’m doing this to help you, young man,” said Gran, taking the diplomatic approach for once. “I know you have your hands full and this will take some of the pressure off.”

“Mh,” said Chase, not convinced.

“Oh, and I’ve recruited your cats,” said Gran, addressing her granddaughter. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“By all means, recruit away,” said Odelia, yawning. Then she crooked a finger in my direction and said, “Max? A word, please?”

Meekly, I followed her back through the hedge and into our own backyard.