Purrfect Cover. Purrfect Patsy. Purrfect Son

25. PURRFECT COVER

Chapter 1

“Max?”

I lazily opened one eye.“Mh?”

“I have a question for you,” said Dooley. “And I want you to think long and hard before you give me an answer.”

I found myself intrigued.“Okay,” I said therefore. “What is the question?”

“Who can run faster, a hare or a fox?”

I frowned at the questioner. It was a tough one, granted, but even more than that, I failed to see the significance.“I have absolutely no idea,” I said. “Why do you want to know?”

Dooley frowned before him in an idle fashion.“It’s for this quiz show I want to go on.”

“What quiz show?”

“Well, not Jeopardy, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s a new show that Gran likes to watch. They ask you all these questions, and if you give the right answers you can win a car. Or even a house.”

“A house!” I said, properly impressed. “That must be some quiz show, if they’re giving away a whole house.” What with property prices the way they are, winning a house is not a small deal. But I still wasn’t fully satisfied with my friend’s answers. “So… why do you want to win a car? Or a house, for that matter?”

Dooley shrugged.“I just think it would be great if you and I could have our own place, you know. Far away from certain… pets.”

And there it was. And I understood all. Lately Harriet had been throwing her weight around to some extent. Used to be she more or less accepted that as a family of felines we were all equal under the sun. As of late, though, she’d started assuming the role of leader of the pack—telling us what to do, where to go, and, even more importantly, whom to associate with. I could see how this would create the kind of environment that would cause a sensitive cat like Dooley to bridle, and to look for a route of escape.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Dooley,” I said, as gently as I knew how, “but I don’t think they allow cats to participate in game shows. Not the ones I know of, anyway.”

“They don’t?” asked Dooley, with not a little bit of disappointment. “But that’s not fair.”

“Well, seeing as there aren’t a lot of humans out there that can understand what we say, it wouldn’t make for very interesting viewing,” I explained.

This gave my friend some food for thought, and as he mulled this over, I placed my chin on my paws again, and took up my refreshing morning nap where I had left off.

After a while, though, animation returned to Dooley’s form, and he said, “So why don’t we suggest to Gran that she organize a quiz show? She could be the show host and ask all the questions, and all the candidates would be cats. I’m sure it would be a big hit.”

“I’m not so sure,” I muttered. I’d just been dreaming about a fine feline who’d been giving me a look that said she liked what she saw, and I was reluctant to throw off the blanket of sleep just to listen to my friend’s ongoing ramblings about quiz shows.

“Of course!” he said, his excitement building as he thought more about his latest brainwave. “With all the cats in the world, it would be huge. How many cats are there?”

“Not sure,” I said, yawning. “A lot, I guess.”

“Millions, maybe even billions! And since there are no other shows for cats to watch, they’d all tune into our quiz show, wouldn’t they? It would be the biggest hit in history.”

“You’re forgetting one thing, Dooley,” I said, once again being forced to play the party pooper, a role I did not enjoy, I can tell you. “Cats don’t own televisions, and they don’t always control the remote controls. In fact I’d hazard a guess that in most cases they don’t have control over what they can and cannot watch at all. The humans are the gatekeepers to whatever is on offer on the television, and humans would be bored to tears within five seconds at having to watch a bunch of caterwauling cats on display.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

And once again he fell into a deep reverie as he contemplated ways and means of dealing with this new obstacle I’d put on his path to a successful career in television.

This time it took him a little while longer to work out the details of his new proposal, but when finally he woke me again from my slumber, I could tell from the tremor in his voice and the feverish gleam in his eye that he’d managed to come up with a real gem.

“I have one word for you, Max,” he said.

“What’s that?” I asked, sighing a little, as that formidable female feline hadn’t returned in my latest dream. Instead I’d dreamt of a rabbit popping out of a hat and playing hide and seek. You’ll agree with me that rabbits aren’t as fascinating as formidable felines giving you that look. Rabbits simply don’t have thatje ne sais quoi.

“The internet,” he said, thrusting out his chest with an air of accomplishment.

“That’s two words,” I pointed out.

“Oh, right,” he said, deflating only a smidgen before swelling again and practically caroling, “We’ll make it an internet quiz show. Cats can access their humans’ smartphones, can’t they? And sometimes they even have their own personal tablets they can use to watch whatever they like. So we’ll create a YouTube show with Gran as the host, and turn it into the best-watched program on the entire internet!”

I yawned. Not because his idea bored me, but because sometimes Dooley’s ramblings simply have that effect on me. “Mh,” I said noncommittally.

“Don’t you see what a great idea this is, Max?” he tooted. “Cats across the globe will tune in and all of those advertising dollars will start pouring in and soon Gran will be able to give away a house as the first prize and we’ll win it and then we’ll finally be free!”

“Mh,” I repeated. I recognize a pipe dream when I see one, and even though I didn’t want to rain on my friend’s parade—not too much, anyway—I still felt it incumbent upon me, as Dooley’s best friend, to point out another fatal flaw in his scheme. “I’m not sure advertisers are going to pay top dollar to advertise on a show aimed solely at cats,” I said. Once again it was the gatekeeper story. It’s not cats who spend the money on food and other cat paraphernalia but their owners, and since said owners wouldn’t tune into a show with a bunch of cats meowing all over the place, I didn’t see the potential, to be honest.

I explained all this to Dooley in great detail, but failed to put a dent in his excitement.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s just like with parents, you see. When they go shopping the supermarkets put the kinds of things kids love on the lower shelves so kids will see it and grab it and put it in mom and dad’s shopping cart. People will do the same with cats. When they see a commercial for a particular brand of cat food they’ll whine and beg until their humans will click and buy the stuff.” He spread his paws. “It’s a sure-fire blockbuster, Max. And all we need is Gran to say yes and we’re off and running.”

I gave him my trademark look of skepticism but this time his spirits wouldn’t be dampened even if I threw him all the skeptical looks in the universe. He was convinced he was onto something big and he was going to see it through no matter what.

“Let’s ask Gran,” I said therefore. “See what she has to say.”

“Oh, Max, thank you!” he cried, and threw his paws around my neck and moved in for a hug.

“Yeah, yeah, all right, all right,” I said. I’m not one of those cats who go in for all the hugging and other displays of affection, but I like to make an exception for Dooley because he simply is the cuddly kind of cat. And because he’s my friend, of course.

He clasped his paws together and sighed happily.“We’re going to win this quiz show and then we’re going to get a house and then we’re going to live happily ever after, Max. Just you wait and see.”

“Sure,” I said, and promptly dozed off again.

Chapter 2

“Max. Max!”

I think I could be forgiven for thinking‘Now what?’ when this new intrusion upon my peace and quiet came upon me.

Of course I’d immediately recognized Harriet’s voice, and for a split second I wondered about Dooley’s plan to win a house so we could both get away from the slightly annoying feline. A plan borne of desperation, granted, but a plan nonetheless. But then I cast the silly notion aside and opened my eyes to address this new emergency.

“What?” I asked as I watched the prissy white Persian stalk in my general direction.

“This simply cannot go on any longer,” said Harriet with all the forcefulness of her personality.

I would have asked at this point what exactly could not go on any longer, but I had the distinct impression I would soon be placed in possession of all the facts pertaining to the case, whether I wanted to or not.

“Those mice have only just left the house and already a new plague is upon us,” she said, frowning darkly, her tail swishing annoyedly through the air. I followed it for a moment with my eyes, until I got slightly dizzy, then focused on Harriet’s clear green eyes again, something I immediately regretted when I was blasted with the full force of her irritation in a look that hit me amidships and rocked me to the core.

I swallowed a little.“What plague?” I managed to ask.

“Oh, Max,” she said, rolling her eyes and freeing me from their hypnotic influence. “Not you, too. I tell everyone who will listen and no one seems to care. I call it a sad state of affairs when the only one who cares about cleanliness and hygiene is yours truly.”

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but I wisely refrained from voicing this thought. Instead, I asked,“Are the mice back? Is that what’s plaguing you?”

Until very recently the house had been infested with a family of no less than two hundred mice. They’d since skedaddled but clearly some new disaster had befallen us.

“Max! Will you please pay attention!” said Harriet.

Out of sheer habit, I sat upright, and would have saluted if I’d been a soldier in Harriet’s army and she the general. Instead, I blinked a couple of times, and wondered how long I’d slept that I’d completely missed this latest tragedy.

“Come,” said Harriet, so I came. “Look,” she said, so I looked.

Only where she was pointing there wasn’t all that much to see. We were in the living room, near the sliding glass door, and try as I might I couldn’t spot the harbinger of doom that apparently had infested our home and hearth. No mice, no black beetles, no cockroaches, not even a teeny tiny spider was in evidence where Harriet was glaring.

“Um… what am I looking at?” I finally asked.

“Dust!” she cried, and gave an innocent little dust bunny a nudge with her paw.

I stared at the dust bunny. The dust bunny stared back at me. Then I glanced up at Harriet, and I must have given her the wrong look, for she rolled her eyes once more.

“It’s a disgrace!” she said. “Once upon a time this house was the epitome of neatness and cleanliness and now it’s turning into a dump!”

“Hardly a dump,” I argued. After all, one dust bunny does not a dump make. Now if dust bunnies had been littering the place it would have been a different matter altogether. But before I could argue my case, Harriet was charging full steam ahead.

“Something needs to be done. This really cannot go on. What if I was allergic? I could have died!” she said, dramatically pointing at the harmless little pile of fluff with her tail.

“A little bit of dust won’t kill you, Harriet,” I said, but quickly shut up when she gave me a look that could, well, kill.

“It’s not just this pile of dust, Max,” she said. “There’s more.”

“More?” I asked, stifling a groan.

“A lot more,” she indicated, and stomped off in the direction of the couch, which is, I must confess, one of my favorite places in the entire house. “Look,” she instructed, and lifted the sheet Odelia likes to place on top of the couch to protect it from my tendency to dig my claws into itssoftness. And of course the shedding. Let’s not forget about the shedding. However you look at it, cats will shed, there’s simply no denying the fact.

I threw a quick glance underneath the couch in the direction Harriet was pointing, and once again I found myself stumped.“Um…” I said. “I really don’t see…”

“Oh, Max!” Harriet cried, and sighed in an exaggerated fashion, as if she were talking to a three-year-old with mental issues. And to demonstrate what I failed to grasp, she reached into the darkness with her paw and returned… with another dust bunny. “See!” she said, wagging the poor innocent bit of fluff in my face. “This place is falling apart.” She shook off the bunny with an expression of utter distaste, and then proceeded to lay it all out for me. “No cleaning is being done, or at least not in the way that it should be done. Health hazards are allowed to fester and pollute what should be a safe environment. And as a consequence death traps are allowed to spring up left, right and center.” She eyed me expectantly. “So what are you going to do about it, Max?”

I gave her a look of consternation.“Me? What do you want me to do?”

“Odelia is your human, Max. She is your responsibility. You have to tell her that this simply will not do. That her cats are in a situation of clear and present danger and measures must be taken to eradicate the menace to our health and wellbeing.”

“I really don’t think two innocent bits of dust present a danger to our health and safety,” I argued. I don’t mind talking to my human, and pointing out her responsibilities, but this was taking things too far, I felt.

“Do you know how many germs this innocent bit of dust, as you call it, harbors?” Her eyes had narrowed into tiny slits, spelling danger. “And do you know the kinds of diseases that are spread by these germs, not to mention the abundance of fungi?”

I shivered at the mention of the word fungi. I don’t mind the odd germ, but I dislike fungi with a vengeance. Probably because of a horror movie I once saw with Odelia and her boyfriend Chase. It centered around a fungoid growth crash-landing on earth as part of a meteor and proceeding to devour a small town before being stopped by a heroic brace of teenagers and their fearless dog. Why it’s always a fearless dog that accompanies teenage heroes in Hollywood movies and never a fearless cat is beyond me, but there you have it. Typical Hollywood anti-cat bias, I guess.

“Look, I’ll talk to Odelia, if that’s what you want,” I said, “but I don’t think you have to worry about the danger these dust bunnies offer. I’m sure they’re all pretty harmless.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” said Harriet decidedly. “And if you were a true leader of cats you would know this.”

I frowned.“A true what now?”

“A true leader knows when to take responsibility. He wouldn’t allow things to get as bad as this.”

“I’m not a leader of cats,” I pointed out. “I’m just me. Max. A common house cat.”

“Oh, Max,” said Harriet, shaking her head sadly. “You still don’t see it, do you?”

“Um, no,” I said. “I guess I don’t.” I wondered what she was on about this time.

“You are the cat everyone looks up to, Max, whether you like it or not.”

“No, they don’t,” I said, greatly surprised.

“Dooley looks up to you. And I know for a fact that Brutus does, too.”

I laughed what I hoped was a rollicking laugh.“Brutus, looking up to me? No way.”

“Oh, yes. In fact half the town’s cat population looks to you for leadership, Max, and frankly so do I. And all I can say is that you’ve failed us.” She nodded seriously. “You have failed us and you’ve put us all in mortal danger when you took your eye off the ball.”

I stared at the ball of fluff, and wondered if this was the ball she was referring to.

“You dropped the ball, Max, and I’m very, very disappointed in you.”

First I took my eye off the ball and then I dropped it. Or was it the other way around?

Suddenly the idea of moving into a different home, far away from Harriet and her strange theories and bossy ways sounded a lot more appealing than it had before.

Maybe I should participate in this quiz. But first I needed to find out who can run faster: a hare or a fox. Something told me it was one of those trick questions, though.

Chapter 3

“Max—Max, where are you—Max?!”

Oh, dear Lord in heaven!“What?!” I yelled from my position on the couch. Some days are like that: everyone and their grandmother seems to need to talk to you about something, and feels it incumbent upon them to disturb your peaceful slumber.

This time it was my very own human who’d come to bring me great tidings of joy—or sorrow, as the case may be.

“Hey, Max,” said Odelia, sounding and looking a little breathless. She was blushing, and looked as if she’d just run a marathon—or at least a 60-yard dash. “How are you, my precious little Maxie?” she said, and started nuzzling me in the most outrageous fashion: digging her nose into myneck and making the kind of nonsensical gibbering sounds humans usually reserve for the moment they encounter a newly born baby.

“I’m fine,” I said a little frostily. Being rudely dragged from those precious snatches of sleep will do that to a cat. This time I’d been dreaming of a nice piece of fish fillet that had my name on it.

Odelia was still fussing over me, and stroking my fur and even going so far as to tickle my fluffy cheeks, grabbing my face in both hands and rubbing me under my chin. And in spite of the fact that I’d had my imaginary fish fillet rudely snatched away from me, I couldn’t resist to smile at the treatment my human was giving me, and then, of course, I was betrayed by my own body when I started purring. It’s an involuntary thing, I tell you.

“So what’s the emergency?” I asked finally, when Odelia’s fervor started dissipating.

“No emergency,” she said with a smile as she grabbed her phone from the table and made herself comfortable on the couch next to me. “Just happy to see my precious baby.”

I cleared my throat. Maybe this was the time to address the issue Harriet had brought to my attention. No time like the present, right?“There have been some complaints.”

“Oh?” she said distractedly, as she’d started reading something on her phone.

“Yeah, about cleanliness and a general lack of hygiene.”

“Mh,” she responded as she started tapping a message on her phone. Clearly I’d missed my window of opportunity and had lost her full attention.

Still I trudged on.“The thing is… Harriet feels that standards have been dropping precipitously as of late, and she doesn’t think this is necessarily a good thing.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah—it’s all the dust she seems to object to, mainly. Dust bunnies in particular. She doesn’t like them. She found one underneath this couch, and one over by the window.”

We have one of those nice hardwood floors, and with the sun bathing it in a warm glow right now, the dust bunny was clearly visible from where I was lying and looking.

Odelia didn’t even glance up, though, focused as she was on her digital gizmo.

“Odelia?” I said, gently giving her leg a tap.

“Mh…”

“So what do you think should be done about this dust bunny issue?”

“That’s great, Max,” she said, and then got up and moved away, her eyes still glued to her phone, and her fingers too, as she tapped out another message with lightning speed.

I let out a deep sigh and vowed to give it another shot at a later date. Tough to compete with a smartphone for your human’s attention, I mean to say.

But as luck would have it, just then Gran walked in, looking as spry and chipper as ever. Well, maybe not chipper. As a rule Grandma Muffin doesn’t do chipper.

“Gran,” I said, perking up. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Later,” she snapped, as she searched around for someone who wasn’t me. “Odelia,” she said as she located her granddaughter. “The neighborhood watch are organizing a meeting next week and I want you to come. Odelia, are you listening? Odelia!”

“What?” Odelia asked, looking up from her phone.

Gran had pressed her lips together and gave her granddaughter a look of reproach.“I swear to God, one of these days that thing is going to be the death of you.”

“What thing?” asked Odelia.

“So are you coming or not?”

“Coming to what?”

“See? I knew you weren’t listening. Here, let me have that.” And with these words, she unceremoniously grabbed my human’s phone and tucked it into the pocket of her green-and-purple tracksuit.

“Hey, that’s my phone!” Odelia cried, as if she’d just lost a limb or vital body part.

“I know, and now it’s mine. And if you do as I say I just might let you have it back. Now are you going to listen to me or not?”

Odelia frowned, and crossed her arms in front of her. She clearly wasn’t happy to be treated like a recalcitrant child. “I’m listening.”

“I’m organizing a meeting of the neighborhood watch next week. Big meeting. We hope to welcome plenty of new members. I want you to come. You and Chase.”

“I’m sorry, Gran,” Odelia began, shaking her head.

But Gran arched a menacing eyebrow.“No meeting, no phone,” she said.

“You can’t do that!”

“Watch me.” Then she softened. “Look, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. There’s been a spate of burglaries lately, and we need to get on top of it before it’s too late.”

“Burglaries? Have you told Uncle Alec?”

“He’s too busy buttering up Charlene Butterwick,” said Gran with a throwaway gesture of the hand. “No, it’s up to us to save this neighborhood from falling prey to this gang of burglars, and that means you, too. The neighborhood needs you, honey.”

“Okay, sure,” said Odelia with a shrug. “If you think I can help.”

“We can only pull this neighborhood away from the brink if we all work together,” said Gran, sounding so much like a motivational coach even Odelia looked impressed.

“No, of course,” she said. “Anything I can do to help.”

“That’s settled then,” said Gran, and turned to leave.

“Wait, my phone,” said Odelia.

Gran dangled the phone from her fingertips.“Are you sure you want it back? You know smartphones aren’t good for you. They’re like the crack cocaine of the digital age.”

“Please please please can I have it back?” Odelia begged, inadvertently proving her grandmother right.

The old lady sighed, then handed her granddaughter back her phone.“Sometimes I fear for your generation,” she said, then stalked off and slammed the door.

Odelia, a happy smile on her face, immediately was immersed in her phone again.

The dust bunny was swept up from the floor by the draft caused by Gran’s departure. It happily fluttered through the living room, then into the salon, and finally settled right on top of my nose. I squinted at the bunny, cross-eyed, then sneezed, dislodging it from its perch. It flittered down right next to me, and for a moment I watched it for signs of malevolence. When nothing happened, though, I slowly drifted off to sleep again, proving once and for all that dust bunnies and cats can live together in perfect harmony.

Chapter 4

Mort Hodge was seated at his desk, hard at work as usual, when a sudden sound had him look up.

Mort, a popular and successful creator of comics for daily distribution in all the important and even the less important papers in the country, had made his fortune drawing a daily cartoon about a cat. Titled Mort’s Molly, it had been an instant hit and now, forty years into a lucrative and rewarding career, people still clamored for Mort’s creation. Unlike lots of other cartoons, Mort still did most of the work himself, and had turned part of his home into his office, the nerve center of Mort’s Molly’s universe.

“Megan?” he yelled loudly, referring to his wife. “Megan, is that you?”

When there was no response, he got up and went in search of answers. Next to his desk, a radio was quietly playing, and the atmosphere in the studio was mellow and relaxed, just the way he liked it.

He emerged from his workspace, located at the back of the garden, and glanced around. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he decided he could use a snack, as his tummy was rumbling, and he felt like taking a break. That, and a chat with his wife, to bounce a couple of new ideas off her, and to sit down for that snack and a cup of joe.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and Mort had already been busy since six, having risen at five as was his habit. He was an early riser and liked that whole gag about the early bird and the worm. Not that he was into worms, per se, but he did enjoy getting an early start on his day, and getting the bulk ofhis work done before lunchtime.

“Megan?” he asked as he walked into the house. “Did you just…” The rest of the sentence got stuck in his throat, though, when he observed the mess that was his cozy home. Documents strewn about, couch cushions ripped up, feathers covering every available surface. Tables had been upended and chairs lay like so many fallen soldiers on the battlefield that was his living room. “Megan,” he whispered when his eyes had taken in the devastation, then, louder, “Megan!”

And as he went in search of his helpmeet, a sense of panic took hold of him, and gave him wings as he went from room to room, everywhere finding the same mess and evidence of a recent breakin. Finally he hurtled up the stairs with a speed and alacrity belying his sixty-eight years, and swept into the bedroom. And there, tied to the headboard of the conjugal bed, was his wife. The first thing Mort ascertained was that she was still alive, her eyes wide and fearful, then hopeful when she saw it was him. He moved over to the bed, and started removing the rope with which she’d been tied to the bed, and the gag that had been pressed into her mouth.

“Megan, thank God,” he said. “What happened?”

“There were two men,” she said, a little breathless. “They said they were from the gas company, but once they were inside they overpowered me and dragged me upstairs.”

“Oh, Megan,” he said, and clasped her into his arms. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

She held him close, and for a moment they both relished the fact that no harm had come to them. Then Megan said,“Did they… take anything?”

“I’m not sure. But they did make an awful mess downstairs.”

“The safe,” said Megan, massaging her wrists. “Did you check the safe?”

Together they went into Mort’s old office, which had been turned into a small storage room for all paraphernalia connected with his work, and headed to the safe that was conveniently hidden behind a large portrait of Mort’s Molly. Immediately it became clear to Mort that the safe was quite safe: the portrait hadn’t beenmoved, and when he did move it, swinging it open on its hinges, he saw that the safe hadn’t been messed with.

He heaved a small sigh of relief. Inside was a minor cache of gold and valuables.

“Weird thieves,” said Megan, as Mort tapped in the code and opened the safe, just to be sure nothing had been taken. “Why would they ransack the house but not touch the safe?”

Mort quickly checked the contents and saw that at first glance everything was still present and accounted for.

“Yeah, weird thieves indeed,” he agreed, then shrugged. “Or maybe we got lucky.”

“We did get lucky,” Megan agreed, as she hugged her husband. “By the same token they could have turned violent when they didn’t find what they were looking for.”

The thought had occurred to Mort, too. Material possessions were all well and good, but mostly he was relieved that no harm had come to his wife, or himself for that matter.

“I think it’s time to call the police,” said Megan.

It was only then that Mort noticed something that really shook him: the door to the big metal bookcase was slightly ajar, the padlock broken and lying on the floor.

And when he looked inside, his heart sank.

“It’s gone,” he said, disbelief suddenly making him weak at the knees.

“Gone?” asked Megan, hurrying over.

“All of them,” he said. He turned at his wife. “They took everything.”

Megan was crestfallen.“So they got what they were looking for after all.”

Chapter 5

I woke up again when Odelia left the house and pulled the front door closed behind her. I found myself staring at that inoffensive dust bunny again, and wondering what the bunny would say if it could talk. Probably a lot of very interesting and fascinating stuff.

It just goes to show I was in the throes of a sudden and unexplainable case of ennui. It happens to all of us at some point, and usually out of the blue. My ennui probably had to do with the fact that nothing much of interest had happened in my life of late.

No particularly juicy cases had come Odelia’s way, no shocking or exciting events had come to pass, and pretty much the only excitement I’d had in a long time was this exact dust bunny, which suddenly had turned into the bane of my existence.

“What are you looking at, Max?” asked Brutus, who’d chosen this moment to walk in through the pet flap.

“Oh, nothing special,” I said. “Harriet told me to take a firm line with dust bunnies, and to tell Odelia to run a tighter ship, hygiene wise, and I’ve been looking for the right opportunity to talk to her about it.”

The big black cat draped himself down right next to me and looked in the direction I was looking.“Harriet should lighten up,” he said as he casually observed the dust bunny and didn’t seem particularly troubled by its presence in our house.

“She’s afraid it will spread fungi and germs,” I said. “The kind of fungi and germs that could prove hazardous to our health and safety. She sounded extremely concerned.”

Brutus’s robust features displayed a slight grin. He did not look like a cat susceptible to the deleterious effects of germs or fungi. “I don’t think we have much to worry about, buddy,” he said. “A germ or even a fungus is not exactly the danger to life and limb that Harriet is making it out to be.”

He got up and walked into the kitchen, in search of something edible, no doubt.

“So you don’t think dust bunnies are dangerous?” I called after him.

“Maxie, baby,” he said after swallowing down a particularly tasty-looking piece of kibble, “I always say ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ and as far as I know fungi have yet to kill a cat, so there’s your answer. Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

First off, Brutus, as far as I knew, was not a horse. And secondly I’d never even once heard him say anything about stuff that didn’t kill him but made him stronger, but I was prepare to let these minor verbal transgressions slide. His words had provided me with a certain buoying up of the mood, and I was grateful for that.

“Harriet made it sound as if I was neglecting my duties as a cat, and responsible for potential disaster and mayhem in our home,” I explained when Brutus had eaten his fill and joined me once more on the couch.

“Like I said, Harriet should lighten up,” he said, and emitted what can only be termed a gastro-esophageal eruption. Or in other words a tiny burp, showing that his late breakfast—or early brunch—had arrived at its chosen destination in one piece.

“Lighten up about what?” asked a voice from the door. We both looked up in surprise, and found ourselves once again in the presence of Harriet, quite possibly the most gorgeous white Persian in these parts. But also the most high-maintenance one.

Brutus gulped a little, then said,“I was just telling Max here how every day spent with you is a delight, snookums,” he blustered. “And how much you light up my life.”

The tiny frown that had formed on Harriet’s brow relaxed its grip on her musculature and she smiled. “Oh, sugar cookie, that’s such a nice thing to say. You light up my life, too, you know.”

“Do I?” asked Brutus, gulping a little more.

“Oh, sure.” She then turned to me, and her smile vanished like breath on a razor blade. “I see you haven’t done as you promised. This place still looks like a pigsty. But no matter. I’ve called in reinforcements. They should be here shortly, and I suggest you watch and learn.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, and a question was just forming on my lips when the glass sliding door was shoved open and Marge walked in, carrying a hefty vacuum cleaner and looking ready to do some serious damage with the apparatus.

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I have a thing about vacuum cleaners. I loathe them. I detest them. I hate them. I cannot be in the same room with them without falling prey to the most abject sensation of naked fear. Fear of being deafened by their horrific sound, or possibly fear of being sucked into their belly never to be seen again.

So it was with a slight cry of panic that I hopped down from my position on the couch and raced up the stairs as fast as my short legs could carry me. Before long, Marge had started up that machine from hell and was hoovering away to her heart’s content, while I was safely ensconced on top of the bed, hoping that this, too, would soon pass.

You might ask why Marge brought her own vacuum cleaner and didn’t use her daughter’s, and I will tell you that something happened to Odelia’s dust sucker recently that made it break down. Someone, it might have been a mouse, or maybe even a rat, had chewed through its power cord, and had rendered the thing useless. Okay, so I chewed through that power cord. Can you blame me? That thing is a menace! A danger to life and limb! If ever the police come to drag me to jail for causing criminal damages, I’ll plead self-defense, and I’ll bet any judge in the nation would readily see my point.

Before long, another, smaller cat had joined me in the form of Dooley. He hates vacuum cleaners, too, and must have walked in through the pet flap before finding himself cornered by Marge’s furious burst of cleaning frenzy.

“She’s cleaning, Max!” he cried, as he jumped up onto the bed and tucked his head underneath the covers, not unlike an ostrich. “She’s going to suck me up and kill me!”

“Kill us,” I corrected him.

“Oh, but you’re safe, Max,” said Dooley. “You’ll never fit inside that machine. You’re too big. Me? I’ll fit just fine!”

I know I should have been upset by these words, spoken by a friend, no less. But I knew Dooley was simply telling it like it is. Like a child, he means no harm, and words sometimes fall from his mouth that may come across as harsh but mean no malice.

And oddly enough his words inspired hope, not anger. Dooley was right. I would never fit inside that vacuum cleaner. Which meant I was probably, and perhaps for the first time in my life, saved by my big bones.

Just then, a third cat came jumping on top of the bed covers. It was Brutus. He may be a tough cat—one of those tough babies who look the world in the eye and spit—but he, too, has an unholy fear of vacuum cleaners and other suctional devices from hell.

“What’s with humans and their obsession to suck dust into a weird machine,” he lamented as he cast anxious glances at the door.

“It’s Harriet,” I said. “She asked Marge to drop by and give her daughter’s house a quick once-over.”

“She should have left well enough alone,” said Brutus, earning himself nods of agreement from both myself and Dooley.

And as if she’d heard our words, Harriet came sashaying into the room, then hopped up onto the bed and Odelia’s fearsome foursome was complete.

“Also hiding from the vacuum cleaner?” asked Dooley.

“I don’t need to hide from a machine that is doing a great job eradicating everything that is hideous and odious about the world we live in,” she announced primly. But she wasn’t fooling me. Like Brutus, she kept darting anxious glances in the direction of the door. And the moment Marge came stomping up the stairs, no doubt intent on giving the upstairs the same treatment she’d awarded the downstairs, the Persian actually whimpered and slipped under the covers, joining Brutus, Dooley and, of course, myself.

We may be fearless in the face of murder and mayhem, but if there’s one thing that can beat us, it’s a simple contraption designed to extract those dust bunnies from their hiding place and deposit them into either a plastic receptacle—Hoover’s bagless variety—or a strange shapeless bag, never to be seen or heard from again. Oh, the horror!

Silly, of course, but I never claimed cats are perfect creatures.

So you’ve discovered our Achilles’ heel.

Don’t use it against us!

Chapter 6

Marge frowned as she applied the vacuum cleaner to her daughter’s upstairs bedroom floor. Harriet had been absolutely right. The house was a mess. Dust and dirt everywhere, clothes still in the hamper in the bathroom, dishes in the sink… She didn’t mind cleaning up after her daughter from time to time, but since this was already the third time this month, she was starting to think something was seriously wrong.

Odelia worked hard, of course, and so did her boyfriend Chase, a cop with the local police force. But she shouldn’t have to rely on her mother to take care of basic household stuff like this. And if she didn’t have the time, maybe she should hire a cleaner.

And as she vowed to have a talk with Odelia that night, she thought she heard the doorbell chime out its customary tune.

She shut down the vacuum cleaner and listened intently for a moment. Yep, there it was again. She wondered for a moment whether to open the door or not, but then decided she might as well have a look.

“You can come out now,” she said as she walked out of the room. “I’m done in here.”

Four cats gratefully stuck their heads from under the covers and sighed a collective sigh of relief. Marge smiled. It was funny to see them go into hiding the moment the vacuum cleaner came out. Well, funny for her. Not as much fun for them, poor babies.

She quickly walked down the stairs and headed for the door. The moment she opened it she thought she experienced d?j?-vu, for the two men standing there looked very familiar indeed.

“Johnny? Jerry?” she asked, taken aback a little by the sight of the twosome. “Is that really you?”

The two men appeared equally surprised by this meeting, for they goggled for a moment, then Johnny, the biggest of the two, opened his arms, his face breaking into a wide grin, and cried,“Mrs. P! It’s so nice to see you again!”

Marge wasn’t prepared to allow herself to be hugged by the big guy, though, so she took a step back, folded her arms across her chest, and frowned. “You have a lot of explaining to do, Johnny Carew. And you better make it good, or I’m calling the police.”

Jerry, Johnny’s ferret-faced partner in crime, contrived to beam at her, which oddly enough made him look like a ferret in heat. “Now, Mrs. P,” he said, his voice smooth like butter. “No need to be like that. We mean you no harm. Isn’t that right, Johnny?”

“Yeah, that’s right, Jer,” said Johnny, a mountain of a man whose face displayed all the hallmarks of a goofy kid, including a certain guilelessness that was remarkable in one who’d seen the inside of a prison cell for a big chunk of his life. The two career criminals had, once upon a time,been assigned to Marge for their community service, to be carried out at the library she managed. Apart from stacking books on their designated shelves, they’d also knocked out a wall in the basement, tunneled into the Capital First Bank, absconding with the contents of no less than fifteen safe-deposit boxes. They’d escaped to Mexico, but had recently been apprehended in Tulum after Johnny had posted a selfie on the beach, sipping a daiquiri and having a great old time.

“So you’re back,” said Marge, who still hadn’t forgiven the bank robbers for taking advantage of her good heart.

“Yeah, they caught us in Mexico,” said Johnny sadly.

“No thanks to you,” Jerry grumbled. “You just had to post that selfie, didn’t you?”

“But, Jer, how else were people going to know how we were doing?”

“They weren’t supposed to know how we were doing, you great lummox.”

“The cops shipped us back stateside,” Johnny explained. “Even though I told them we liked Mexico a lot better. The weather is much nicer,” he said. “And the beaches, too.”

“So why aren’t you in prison, serving your sentence?” asked Marge.

“The nice judge let us out,” Johnny said.

“Community service,” said Jerry. “Again.”

Marge shook her head.“You keep getting lucky with your judges.”

“This time we’re going to be good,” said Johnny. “Isn’t that right, Jer?”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Jerry, glancing behind Marge at Odelia’s hallway. “So this is your place, is it, Mrs. P?”

“My daughter’s,” she said. “What community service?”

“You’re not going to believe this, Mrs. P,” said Johnny with a wide grin.

“Try me,” said Marge a little acerbically.

“We’ve joined Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

She stared at the guy.“Is this a joke?”

“No joke,” said Johnny. “We found religion. Isn’t that right, Jer?”

“Or religion found us,” Jerry grumbled. “No thanks to that idiot Judge Lockhart.”

“Our lawyer is a Jehovah’s Witness himself,” said Johnny. “He was the one who suggested Judge Lockhart we sign up.”

“We didn’t exactly sign up, though, did we, Johnny?” asked Jerry with a good deal of pique. “We’re doing our three months and that’s it. We’re out, free and clear.”

“Unless we like it so much we want to stay. And so far I’m liking it a lot. It’s so much fun knocking on people’s doors and telling them all about Jesus. Isn’t that right, Jer?”

“Grmbl,” said Jerry, his scowl deepening.

“Well, at least you can’t do any harm going door to door,” Marge allowed, thinking that maybe this was for the best. If two hardened criminals like Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale could be induced to find religion, there was still hope left in the world. Though judging from the way Jerry kept eyeing the painting on Odelia’s hallway wall, something told her the recently reformed criminal’s heart wasn’t entirely in his reformation.

“So can we interest you in the word of Jesus, Mrs. P?” asked Johnny.

“Not right now, Johnny,” said Marge. “I have to go to work.”

“At the library,” said Johnny with a big grin. “I loved working at the library with you, Mrs. P. All those books… and stuff.”

“Let’s not bother Mrs. P any more than necessary, Johnny,” said Jerry, tugging at his compatriot’s elbow. “Can’t you see she’s busy?”

And as the two gangsters retreated, only now did Marge notice how they were both clasping a Bible in their hands. The sight was so incongruous she did a double-take.

“See you, Mrs. P,” said Johnny with a little wave.

“See you,” said Marge, and found herself returning the wave, before closing the door.

At least they couldn’t rob banks while spreading the word of Jesus, could they?

Chapter 7

Wilbur Vickery made a face when this customer counted out the sum she owed him down to the last cent.

“One cent, two cents, three cents…” the woman murmured as she put a pile of coins on the counter.

Wilbur, even though he was of an age when most people stop losing interest in technological advancements, had embraced the digital revolution wholeheartedly. He liked nothing better than when people paid with plastic. Coins were such a nuisance. You had to count them, you had to make sure you didn’t shortchange people and, most of all, you never knew where all those coins had been. People paid a visit to the bathroom, didn’t wash their hands, and then brought out their coins to pay for their wares. Yikes.

He glanced over the counter and out into the street, where passersby enjoyed a relaxing stroll in the sun, while small business owners were cooped up inside having to patiently wait for customers to empty the contents of their wallets, counting out coins and keeping an entire line of customers waiting.

Wilbur’s big piebald, Kingman, sat on the sidewalk, on an overturned plastic crate, chatting with other cats. Well, at least Wilbur thought Kingman was chatting. With cats it was hard to know what it was they were doing, but it sure as heck looked to him as if they were chattering away like a bunch of gossiping old maids.

“Thank you for your business,” he said dutifully when the lady had finally divested herself of her last copper coin and he’d dumped them into his cash register.

He cast a quick glance at the bank of screens located next to the till, where he could monitor any of the dozen or so cameras he’d installed in his store. Right next to that was a television screen tuned to ESPN, where currently two newscasters were arguing the pros and cons of LeBron James’s state of fitness for next month’s game.

“It’s a disgrace,” said the next customer in line.

He stared at the woman.“Disgrace? What are you talking about?” He recognized her as Ida Baumgartner, one of his regulars.

“And you call yourself a member of the neighborhood watch,” she said, shaking her head and looking at him with clear reproach in her eyes.

She was a formidable woman, of sizable proportions, with no less than three chins, or it could have been four. All of her chins were waggling now, and her eyes, behind those square-shaped horn-rimmed glasses, were hard and unforgiving.

“Burglars are running amok in our town and you’re sitting here twiddling your thumbs as if you don’t have a care in the world.”

He would have pointed out that he wasn’t exactly twiddling his thumbs but making a living selling his wares to all who wanted them, but Mrs. Baumgartner was already continuing her tirade. “If I were you I’d take down that sign,” she said now, pointing to the sign on the wall behind them that read, ‘Proud member of the Neighborhood Watch.’

“Well, I…”

“The police are doingnothing to stop these miscreants, nor do I expect them to, since they are, after all, civil servants, and can’t be bothered, but I’d really expected more from you, Wilbur, seeing as you’re supposed to be one of us.” She dropped a twenty dollar note and it fluttered down to the conveyor belt. “But all you care about is our money, not our safety. I should have known.” And with a shake of the head and a final dark frown, she grabbed her large canvas shopping bag containing her frankly meager haul, and stalked off, leaving Wilbur to stare after her, feeling bewildered and slightly annoyed.

“Don’t listen to her, Wilbur,” said his next customer, Father Reilly. “It’s not your fault that criminals are running circles around our law enforcement officers.”

“My fault? Your fault, you mean,” said Wilbur, for Father Reilly was as much a member of the newly launched neighborhood watch as he himself was.

“Myes, you’re probably right,” said the priest, fingering his tuft of white hair. “Maybe we should get together and see if we can’t put a stop to the latest crime wave to hit these shores.”

“Have you heard from Vesta yet?” asked Wilbur, referring to Vesta Muffin, the heroic founding mother and current leader of the watch.

“Can’t say that I have. But rest assured, if this crime wave is as bad as Ida seems to think it is, I’m sure that Vesta will be on top of it, and so will Scarlett.”

“I hope so,” said Wilbur. “We pledged to keep this town safe from crime, Francis, and if what Ida is saying is true, we’re failing in our sacred duty.”

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that,” said Father Reilly soothingly. “Ida tends to see danger where there is none. We all know that about her.”

This was true. Ida was one of those people with hypochondriacal tendencies, and spent more time at the doctor’s office than out and about. Still, it’s one thing to imagine yourself the victim of every disease on WebMD and another to accuse the neighborhood watch of gross negligence in the face of a violent crime wave sweeping through the town. “I’ll talk to Vesta,” said Wilbur therefore. “Tellher to organize a meeting. If there really is a gang of burglars hitting our town, we need to get on top of this pronto, Francis. Or we’ll be tarred and feathered for not doing what we promised people we’d do.”

After Francis had walked out carrying his two bottles of wine and a nice block of Brie cheese, Wilbur took his phone and called Vesta. He didn’t like being accused of gross negligence, but what he liked even less were criminals taking what didn’t belong to them. And as he waited for Vesta to pick up, suddenly he saw that some teenager was grabbing a can of Red Bull and tucking it into the waistband of his cargo pants, then pulling down his Bugs Bunny sweater over it. “I saw that, Bart Stupes!” he yelled, and disconnected again, just when Vesta’s voice called out, “Wilbur? What do you want?”

But the store owner was already stalking down the aisles en route to catching a sneak thief in the act.

Chapter 8

“And what did they take, exactly?” asked Tex as he studied his patient with a measure of exasperation.

He’d known, when becoming a doctor, that he’d have to deal with his fair share of annoying patients from time to time, but never in his wildest dreams had he expected to encounter a hypochondriac stalker who’d walk into his office on a daily basis. Ida Baumgartner was every doctor’s worst nightmare. She scoured the internet for new and fascinating diseases she was absolutely sure she suffered from, and even though Tex explained to her time and time again that, apart from a slight tendency to suffer from hypertension, she was as healthy as a young oxen, she wouldn’t take his word for it, and demand he examine her for whatever new disease she’d discovered online.

This morning, however, Ida had other things on her mind apart from the precarious state of her health. Someone had broken into her home the night before, and she was anxious to tell anyone who would listen all about it, and even those who wouldn’t listen, too. Or those who had a waiting room full of patients, like Dr. Tex Poole.

“They took my painting,” she declared now, with a sense of importance that had put a blush on her cheeks. “My priceless painting, if you please.”

“What painting would this be?” asked Tex, casting a sad glance at his monitor that fed him a live image of his waiting room, where six patients were more or less patiently waiting for Ida to finish her tale of woe and damnation.

“My late husband got it at an auction in Auckland,” Idea explained as she clasped her purse a little tighter, as if afraid those same thieves would suddenly spring from under the desk and abscond with her faux crocodile Louis Vuitton. “It’s a Picasso, if you please.”

“A real Picasso?” asked Tex, trying his darndest to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

“That’s right. My Burt knew his art.”

“Wasn’t your husband a traveling salesman for Crockpot?”

“He was—and a damn fine one at that. Burt was a man of the world, and if he said it was a real Picasso, you can bet your bottom dollar it was. Worth a small fortune, too.”

“And someone stole it,” said Tex, wondering how much of the story was true, and how much Ida had picked up from the Lifetime movie she’d been watching the night before.

“It must have happened while I was home, too,” said the eternal patient. She shivered visibly. “Can you imagine? Being home in bed with a burglar prowling through your apartment. I can only imagine what might have happened if I’d been suffering through one of my insomniac episodes you told me I didn’t suffer from.” She gave Tex a look of reproach. “Good thing you decided to give me those pills anyway, or else I might have woken up and run straight into that burglar. And who knows what would have happened. He’d have probably knocked me out cold—or worse!”

Tex couldn’t imagine what fate worse than being knocked on the head could have befallen Ida, but kept his tongue. He’d learned a long time ago to simply let Ida do all the talking, at the end write her a prescription for a harmless potion or draught, and send her on her way, happy that yet another lethaldisease had been nipped in the bud.

“I probably should have sold the painting a long time ago,” said Ida with pretty regret. “Burt told me it’d probably net us a million. But I simply couldn’t bring myself to part with something that was a gift from my dearest late husband—God rest his soul.”

“So did you tell the police?” asked Tex, in spite of himself gripped by this tale.

Ida pressed her lips together.“Of course I did. And do you want to know what she said, that horrible Dolores Peltz? That it was probably a fake, and to buy myself another copy at the dime store. Can you believe the gall of the woman? The impertinence?”

Tex made the appropriate noises of commiseration, while he mentally commended Dolores for her good sense.

“I’m sure Chief Alec will take the matter in hand,” he said. “If there really is a gang of thieves going house to house as you suggest, he’ll be on top of it—don’t you worry.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Ida with a disparaging shake of the head. “Our chief of police is too busy with other, more important matters, to bother about a silly little thing like a crime wave upsetting his fair town.”

“You mean…”

Mrs. Baumgartner nodded primly and scooted a little closer to the desk.“The Chief is carrying on with the Mayor, if you please. Acting like a couple of teenage lovebirds, too. I saw them walking out of the police station, hand in hand, giggling and behaving like a couple of silly kids.” She produced a loud snort of disapproval. “The safety of Hampton Covians be damned—as long as the Mayor and the chief of police can have their little carnal fun, who cares about ordinary tax-paying citizens like myself?”

“I’m sure Alec is on top of things,” said Tex as he got up from behind his desk, the clearest indication he could give that as far as he was concerned, the consultation was at an end. Ida Baumgartner didn’t take the hint, though, and remained firmly seated.

“I’m telling you, Dr. Poole, when both the Mayor and the chief of police take their eye off the ball, we’re in for a very bad time indeed. You know what they say. When the cat’s away, the mice will play. And this is the exact same scenario playing out right now, only with potentially devastating consequences for us little people.” And with a final loud snort, she got up and walked out. “You tell that brother-in-law of yours to get his act together fast, or else this town will become like the Wild West. Lawlessness will reign, and Hampton Cove will go down in flames and so will hiscareer and the Mayor’s.”

Chapter 9

Long after Marge had left, along with her contraption of doom, we all stayed safely hidden in Odelia’s bed. Finally I decided to brave all and venture out into the world again. Much to my delight, of Marge there was no trace, and neither of her Hoover.

“You can come out now, you guys,” I said therefore. “The coast is clear.”

Harriet, who was the first to follow my lead, blew out a sigh of intense relief.“When I talked to Marge and implored her to do something about the lack of hygiene in this place I didn’t think she’d be this quick to give service,” she said, looking slightly mussed. She immediately started rectifying the situation by applying raspy tongue to fur.

Brutus, who was next to emerge from under the bed covers, glanced left and right, then lifted his head and walked out into our midst as if nothing had happened. He stretched and yawned.“Nice nap, you guys,” he said. “We should do this again sometime.”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t as afraid as the rest of us of that vacuum cleaner,” I said.

“Afraid?Moi?” he asked, assuming a careless stance. He laughed a light little laugh. “What a silly idea. Me, afraid of a vacuum cleaner. Of course I’m not afraid. I simply saw that you were afraid and decided you needed a strong paw to guide you through this dark time, that’s all.”

“You’re as afraid of vacuum cleaners as the rest of us, Brutus,” I said. “Just admit it.”

“I will do no such thing,” he grunted, and lifted a paw as if to strike me, then used it to smooth his ruffled brow instead. I flinched and he flashed me a triumphant grin.

Even though Brutus has mellowed out a lot in the time he’s been with us, he can still be his old obnoxious self if he wants to be.

The final cat to emerge from the safety of the makeshift burrow was Dooley.“Are you sure she’s gone?” he asked, giving me a piteous look.

“Yeah, she’s gone. She said the coast was clear, and then the doorbell rang and then I heard her talking up a storm with whoever was at the door, so we’re perfectly safe.”

“For now,” Harriet muttered as she inspected herself in the mirror Odelia likes to use when getting ready to go out and Chase likes to use to see if his left bicep is the exact same size as his right bicep.

“At least there are no more health hazards lurking around every corner,” I said. “No more bacteria, fungi or germs in evidence.”

“Yeah, at least there’s that,” said Harriet with the sigh of a long-suffering health fanatic.

“I wonder who was at the door just now,” I said, my natural curiosity asserting itself once again.

“Probably the mailwoman,” said Brutus as he licked his paw then applied it to his brow, smoothing out a few errant hairs located there.

“So did Max tell you about my great idea?” asked Dooley now.

“What great idea?” asked Harriet, striking a pose in front of the mirror.

“Max! You didn’t tell them?”

“When would I have told them? You only told me an hour ago or so.”

“I’ll tell you now,” said Dooley, “shall I?”

Harriet didn’t seem particularly excited by the prospect, and neither did Brutus, but that didn’t bother Dooley, for he launched into his pitch for his cat quiz show with marked glee. When it was all over, Harriet was frowning, and so was Brutus.

“So you want Gran to reveal her big cat-talking secret to the world so you can win a house, while you already have a perfectly nice set of houses to live in?” asked Harriet. “I’m sorry, Dooley, but that doesn’t make any sense at all. None whatsoever.”

Of course Dooley had neglected to add one crucial detail: that he wanted the new house so he could get away from Harriet’s overbearing ways. I wasn’t going to supply this information either, so Harriet naturally remained mystified.

“I think it’s a great idea,” said Brutus. “Cats from all over the world will love it. Humans won’t, though, unless you provide subtitles.”

“Subtitles! What a great idea, Brutus!” Dooley cried. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I think it’s a disastrously ill-conceived idea, but who listens to me? No one,” said Harriet as she studied her paw with interest. “Is it just me or did my paw pads look pinker yesterday?”

“You probably shouldn’t involve Gran, though,” said Brutus. “She might get in trouble. What you need is a seasoned show host. A cat who exudes natural charm and that air of debonair flair you want to see.” He tapped his chest. “And as it so happens I’m between engagements right now soI’ll gladly pick up the baton and fill the position.”

Dooley, who’d been listening intently to this speech, seemed to have missed the point. “So you want to win a house, too, Brutus?”

“I want to host your show,” Brutus corrected him. “But only if you call it something appropriate. Like The Brutus Show.”

“Oh, no,” said Harriet. “If anyone is going to host Dooley’s new show it’s me. I’ll be a regular ratings hit.”

“It’s a YouTube show,” I pointed out, “so there won’t be any ratings, only views.”

“Well, rack up the views for here I come,” said Harriet, tilting her head and looking every bit the quiz show queen of the new era.

“I don’t know,” said Dooley, taken aback a little.

“Of course you don’t. A quiz of this caliber needs a firm paw to navigate the rocky cliffs of the interwebs,” said Brutus, and tapped his chest again. “Me, myself and I will do the job. And no one else.” But when Harriet gave him one of her trademark icy looks, his self-assurance wavered,and soon he mumbled, “Or it could be you, sweet pea.”

“Of course it’s me,” said Harriet. “But you can hold the camera,” she allowed.

Dooley cast me a look of confusion, and I shot him back a look of commiseration. With Brutus and Harriet on board his little quiz show had just entered a new, more challenging era. That’s what you get when you hire talent as capricious and prone to temper tantrums and diva behavior as Harriet and Brutus.

Things get complicated. Very complicated indeed.

Chapter 10

Odelia had just started typing up the story of the latest farmer’s market to spring up in Hampton Cove, when her editor Dan Goory walked in, his white beard waggling excitedly and his eyes sparkling the way they always did when he was onto a good story.

“Stop the press,” he cried as he took a seat on the edge of her desk. “I’ve got tomorrow’s cover right here.”

He was holding his phone, and now handed it to her.

She frowned as her eyes adjusted to the small screen, then frowned even more when she recognized the people depicted in the picture on the screen. They were none other than her uncle Alec Lip, chief of police, and his girlfriend Charlene Butterwick, town mayor. They were locked in a tight embrace, gazing into each other’s eyes intently, the epitome of the loved-up couple.

Dan swiped through to the next picture, which showed the same couple, only now their eyes were closed and their lips were touching in a touching display of public affection—at least Odelia thought it was a public place.

“Where were these taken?” she asked immediately.

Dan didn’t respond, but merely swiped again. The next shot showed the couple’s surroundings: Caf? Baron, right in the heart of town, with patrons to the left of them and patrons to the right, all doing their darndest not to look too closely at the couple in their midst and failing miserably.

“I think it’s beautiful,” said Odelia. “They’re clearly very much in love, and I think it’s wonderful that they’re not afraid to show it to the world.”

“Yeah, but as the sender of these pictures rightly states, aren’t they supposed to be at work? These were taken yesterday afternoon at two o’clock, when by all accounts both the Mayor and the chief of police should have been at the office, doing whatever it is that a mayor and a chief of police are supposed to be doing at that time.”

Odelia leaned back and shook her head.“Don’t these people have anything better to do than to take pictures of my uncle and his girlfriend and send them to you?”

“It’s news, Odelia, and like it or not news is the business we’re in.”

“You’re not seriously considering printing these on the cover of the Gazette, are you?” she asked, horrified.

The editor shrugged his bony shoulders.“Like I said, it’s news, and people have a right to know what their civil servants are up to when they’re supposed to be working, earning their paycheck, paid for by your taxes and mine.”

“Oh, come on, Dan. It’s sweet! It’s romantic!”

“And I’m sure the majority of our readers will think so, too,” he said with a grin.

“Oh, no, they won’t. They’ll think my uncle and the mayor are playing hooky.”

“Then maybe they should be more careful next time,” said Dan as he got up, taking his phone from Odelia’s hands. “Look,” he added when he saw her expression, “I’m all for romance, and personally I think it’s pretty sweet, too. But you have to admit that when the mayor and the chief of police of a town like ours hook up, and don’t bother to hide their affection, it’s news. And if we don’t carry this story, I’m sure plenty of others will.”

Dan had a point, of course. Even if he didn’t print the story, it would still wend its way across the digital landscape and arrive in inboxes and social media pages around town.

“I better tell my uncle to be more careful next time,” she said, picking up her own phone.

“Yeah, you do that. And I’ll think up a nice headline to go with these pictures,” said her editor. “Something like… CHIEF OF MY HEART. Or… CAN I HAVE SOME MAYOR!”

Her uncle picked up at the first ring.“Odelia, honey, just the person I need. Your dad just called me and said Ida Baumgartner was robbed last night. Something about a Picasso. Could you go over there and talk to her?”

“Sure. But isn’t that something your officers should be doing?” She didn’t mind doing a bit of legwork for the local police department from time to time, but the citizenry didn’t always appreciate it when she did.

“I’m, um… a little busy right now,” said her uncle.

“Busy doing what?”

“Um… well, it’s a long story, but, um… Please be a dear and do this for me, will you?”

“But how about Sarah or Randal?” she asked, referring to two of her uncle’s officers.

“Both on holiday.”

“Or Chase?”

“Working a case.”

“Okay. Um, so what do I tell her?”

“Just tell her I sent you. I’m sure it’s just a storm in a teacup. You know what Ida is like. A lot of fuss about nothing. Thanks, honey. I owe you one.” And before Odelia could say more, he’d already hung up. And when she rang him back a couple of seconds later, her call went straight tovoicemail. “Listen, Uncle Alec, there’s something you should know,” she spoke into the machine. “You and Charlene are going to be in tomorrow’s—” And she would have said more, but the beep of her uncle’s answering service cut her off. So instead she typed out a message and hit send,biting her lip and wondering what could be so important her uncle didn’t have time to look into a simple burglary.

Chapter 11

We’d only just emerged from the relative safety of the bedroom and trepidatiously set paw into the living room—practicing extreme caution lest that terrible vacuum cleaner was waiting for us around the corner to jump us and tear us into little dust-sized pieces—when both the front door slammed open and so did the kitchen door. Odelia came homing in on us from the front, while Gran performed the same maneuver from the back. We were cornered, and awaited further developments with bated breath.

Odelia was the first to speak.“Are you guys up for a new adventure? I’m heading out to talk to Ida Baumgartner, who’s been the victim of a burglary.”

“They can’t come with you, Odelia,” said Gran. “I need them to come with me. I’ve set up an interview with Mort and Megan Hodge, whose house has just been burgled.”

For a moment, both amateur detectives faced off, the four of us stuck in the middle, our fate being sealed without our say-so. Now I know how the lesser countries in the UN must feel, when the Permanent Members decide the fate of the world over their heads.

“Fine,” finally said Odelia. “Why don’t I take Max and Dooley, and you take Harriet and Brutus? That way we both get what we want.”

“Fine,” said Gran, in the same measured tones as her granddaughter. “Harriet. Brutus. You’re with me. On the double!”

Harriet and Brutus trotted off in the direction of the kitchen door, and soon it slammed shut and the threesome was gone.

“Thanks for picking us,” I told my human. “It’s not that I don’t like Gran, but she looked a little… worked up.”

“She’s got a lot on her plate right now,” said Odelia, crouching down to give me a scratch behind the ears. “What with this neighborhood watch thing she started. People are relying on her, and it’s making her a little antsy.”

“Berserk is the word I’d go for,” I intimated, earning myself a smile from my human, and a cuddle. Dooley emitted a plaintive meow, and Odelia laughed and included him in the cuddle.

Group cuddle over, we set out for Odelia’s car, an aged pickup that nevertheless refuses to break down, and soon we were hurtling away from the curb, leaving the house on Harrington Street behind. And as we rounded the corner, and our home disappeared from view, I wondered briefly if it was safe to head out like this. “Don’t you think you should install an alarm?” I asked. “I mean, with this plague of burglaries maybe you should take some extra precautions, and so should Marge and Tex.”

“There’s nothing worth stealing, Max,” said Odelia, hunched over the wheel and steering the car through mild mid-morning traffic. “Apart from the television, which is old, and the stereo, which is even older, I don’t see why burglars would even bother.”

“They might take Chase’s fitness equipment,” Dooley said.

Odelia laughed.“I’d like to see them try. They’ll be in the hospital with a hernia before they manage to get it down the stairs. That stuff weighs a ton—literally.”

“Why does Chase spend so much time pulling all of those weights, Odelia?” asked Dooley, deciding now was the time to voice a question he’d been asking himself for ages. “And why does he make all those weird noises when he does?”

Odelia grinned.“I’ll be sure to ask him, Dooley. I’m not really sure myself.”

“It just seems as if he likes to torture himself,” Dooley continued, not afraid to offer the theory he himself had conjured up. “There was a documentary on the Discovery Channel the other night, about people who call themselves mosaicists.”

“Masochists,” I corrected him.

“These people like to suffer,” Dooley said. “In fact the more pain they suffer the more they like it. Do you think Chase is a masochist?”

This time Odelia laughed so hard the car swerved across the white line in the center of the road, earning herself loud honks from a panel van heading in our direction in the other lane.“Chase a masochist,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “You know what, Dooley? I think you might be onto something there.”

“See, Max?” said Dooley. “And you told me my theory couldn’t possibly be right.”

“All I said was that Chase wants to have bigger muscles, and the only way to have bigger muscles is to subject those muscles to a lot of strenuous activity, like lifting weights. The heavier the weights, the more the muscles are taxed, and the bigger they grow in response. It’s simply biology.”

Dooley frowned and directed a curious look at my belly, which was neatly placed between my paws, and spread out a little beyond the boundaries of what is usually termed fashionable or beautiful.

“Is that why you have so many muscles on your belly, Max?” he asked. “Because you make it work so hard lifting all of that kibble?”

“Yes, Dooley,” I said dryly. “That’s exactly why.”

Of course Odelia had another laughing fit, which caused the car to swerve once more into the wrong lane. Lucky for us she’s an excellent driver, and managed to get back where the car belonged before colliding with other occupants of the road.

Before long, we arrived at the home of Ida Baumgartner, one of Odelia’s dad’s most fervent patients. In fact it isn’t too much to say she’s probably Tex’s biggest fan, seeing as how she’s in his office all the time, always discovering some new disease to suffer from.

“Best to be on your best behavior, Dooley,” I said. “Ida Baumgartner is a very sick woman. And we don’t want to send her to the hospital just by our mere presence in her home.” I directed a worried look at Odelia. “Are you sure she’s not allergic to cats?”

“I’m sure Ida is allergic to everything,” said Odelia, “but don’t let that stop you from poking around her place and gathering clues.”

And with these words, she got out of the car and Dooley and I followed suit.

I won’t conceal I was feeling a little jolt of excitement. It had been a while since we’d tackled a case together, and even though burglary isn’t exactly high on the list of high crimes, it was still a case, and therefore something to dig our teeth into.

Whoever had burgled Ida was now in our crosshairs. The game was officially afoot!

Chapter 12

Ida Baumgartner’s apartment was the picture of cleanliness and hygiene. From the moment we walked in, I couldn’t detect a single dust particle, or a germ, for that matter. Of course, the moment we did walk in she gave both me and Dooley the evil eye.

“Cats!” she cried, utterly dismayed. “Why are you bringing cats into my home?”

“I like to think they bring me luck, Mrs. Baumgartner,” said Odelia. “Also, they seem to have a knack for sniffing out clues. Just like dogs.”

Ida sniffed loudly.“Cats sniffing out clues. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” She sneezed and looked even more dismayed. “My allergies. Those beasts of yours are triggering my allergies.”

“Just let them take one look at the place where it happened,” Odelia suggested. “You won’t be disappointed.”

Ida looked unconvinced.“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. And why did your uncle send you? Why didn’t he come himself? Or is he too busy cavorting with Mayor Butterwick to bother about the crime wave that’s sweeping our town?”

“You’ll have to ask him,” said Odelia, who’s never been one for idle gossip. “So my father told me you owned a genuine Picasso?”

“Come on, Dooley,” I said. “Let’s take a quick look around, before Mrs. Baumgartner’s allergies really kick in and she kicks us out.”

“She doesn’t seem to like us very much, does she, Max?” asked my friend as we started our tour of the apartment.

“Some people are like that,” I said. “They don’t like cats.”

“I don’t understand. How can anyone not like cats?”

“I know, Dooley. I find it hard to understand, too, but there you have it.”

I couldn’t help checking underneath cabinets and couches as we traversed what I assumed was the living room, and much to my surprise I didn’t find any evidence of dust there either.

“Amazing,” I muttered.

“Did you find a clue already, Max?” asked Dooley.

“Will you look at how clean this place this? Not a dust bunny in sight. How does she do it?”

“Maybe whoever stole her Picasso also stole her dust bunnies?” Dooley suggested.

“I doubt it,” I said. “Dusty bunnies don’t sell for millions at Sotheby’s, as far as I can tell.”

“Millions? Did Mrs. Baumgartner own a painting worth millions?”

“According to her she did. Or at least that’s what she told Tex this morning.”

Odelia had been briefed by her dad before she set out on her trip to Mrs. Baumgartner. As a connoisseur on all things Ida Baumgartner, he was the best source of information where she was concerned, and Tex hadn’t disappointed, with his sensational story about the stolen Picasso.

We checked the living room and poked around in the kitchen, mainly to ascertain whether our reluctant host didn’t own a pet and kept a nice spread of pet food in the kitchen. Unfortunately she did not. So we soon doubled back and joined the conversation, which was in full force in an office off the hallway.

“This was my husband’s office,” Mrs. Baumgartner was explaining to her captious audience. “He was a self-made man, and this is where he conducted his business affairs and ran his empire.”

I glanced around. The walls were bedecked with portraits of a stern-faced man with a weak chin and a pronounced nose. His beady little eyes seemed to stare out at the world in perpetual wonder.

“What business was he in?” asked Odelia.

“Burt sold crockpots, but in his heart of hearts he was an inventor,” said Mrs. Baumgartner proudly. “He invented a new type of vacuum cleaner, then sold his invention to Hoover, only for them to bury his design, deeming it too revolutionary for their taste.”

“Vacuum cleaners again,” Dooley whispered.

“Yeah, they keep popping up,” I intimated with a sense of alarm.

“What was so revolutionary about his invention?” asked Odelia.

“Well, the Burt 1000 didn’t merely suck up the dust as much as obliterate it with laser beams. It zapped the dust particles into oblivion. Only problem was that the first prototype Hoover built mistook its CEO for a dust particle and zapped his nice new Brooks Brothers suit into oblivion, too. He ended up looking very silly dressed in his pink unicorn boxer shorts in front of his entire staff.” Ida shook her head. “Every great inventor suffers these minor setbacks. Just ask Thomas Edison. Or Alexander Graham Bell. But of course Burt was labeled a crackpot and his prototype was destroyed.”

“Too bad,” said Odelia. “A vacuum cleaner that zaps dust sounds like a great idea.”

“Sounds like a terrible idea to me,” said Dooley, looking panicked at the thought of being zapped by a vacuum cleaner.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the thing either,” I agreed.

“So is this where the painting hung?” asked Odelia, getting down to business.

An empty spot on the wall was a sad reminder of the theft. Ida nodded.“I know I probably shouldn’t have kept it in the apartment. But what’s the point of buying a Picasso and then putting it in a vault at the bank, never to be seen again? Burt always said art should be enjoyed, not tucked away. And I wholeheartedly agree.”

“Can you tell me what happened, exactly?” asked Odelia, taking out her notebook.

“Well, it was right here yesterday. I know because I dusted it and adjusted one of the lights.” She gestured to the LED lamp that was placed to provide the Picasso with favorable lighting. “And then when I got up this morning it was gone.”

“And you didn’t hear anything?”

“Nothing! Though I have to say I’m a sound sleeper. I take ZzleepIt every night before going to bed, and of course I sleep with noise-canceling headphones, a sleeping mask and a sleep apnea device. So even if the burglars made a lot of noise, I wouldn’t have heard them.” She shivered. “But just imagine—they could have been in my room—looked at me while I was sleeping. And I didn’t even know!”

“And nothing else was stolen?” asked Odelia. “Apart from your… Picasso?”

The slight pause indicated she wasn’t convinced Mrs. Baumgartner’s Picasso was an actual Picasso. Ida had picked up on the pause, too, for her brow furrowed and her expression darkened. “You don’t believe me, do you? Nobody does. They all think Burt was hoodwinked when he got his Picasso. Well, I’ll have you know that whenhe was still with us he had an expert come in to look at the painting, and the expert—an actual professor from Italy—ascertained that it was genuine. And worth a small fortune.”

Odelia nodded and frowned as she glanced around.“Who knew about your Picasso, Mrs. Baumgartner?”

“Oh, plenty of people. Over the years I must have told all of my friends, and of course the Picasso was the pride of Burt’s collection, so whenever we entertained he always made sure he showed it off to our guests.”

“His collection? You mean you have more paintings?”

“Oh, yes, I do. Though nothing comes close to Burt’s Picasso, of course.”

“Where are your other paintings?”

“Unfortunately I had to sell them off. Burt was a great success in life—he was top Crockpot salesman of the year three years in a row, so that will tell you something. But after he died I unfortunately discovered my dear husband possessed a flaw in the form of a gambling addiction. Turns out heleft me nothing but a pile of debts. So I had to sell off the entire collection to pay off those debts.” She gazed lovingly at the portrait of Burt. “I don’t blame him, though. The man was a genius. And as we all know, with a brain that size something has to give, and with Burt it was the ponies, unfortunately.”

As we left the house, and returned to the car, Dooley made an interesting suggestion.“I think I know what happened, Max.”

“Oh?” I said, intrigued.

“I think Burt Baumgartner kept a prototype of his revolutionary vacuum cleaner, and last night it malfunctioned and zapped his Picasso into oblivion, mistaking it for a dust bunny.”

I smiled.“You just might be right, Dooley,” I said. “In fact you may just have cracked the case.”

His excited smile was my reward.

Chapter 13

Harriet wasn’t too sure she’d bet on the right horse when being picked by Gran to form a sleuthing alliance. Then again, it wasn’t as if she’d had a choice in the matter. Gran had been the one to pick which cats she wanted, and not the other way around.

The reason Harriet thought Odelia would have been the better choice was that Grandma Muffin had a tendency to let her temper get the better of her, and when it came to sleuthing, it was always the cool intellect that won out over raw emotions.

She herself was an excellent sleuth, of course, exactly for that reason: she never let her emotions get the better of her, and always allowed the cold facts to prevail.

They were in Gran’s little red Peugeot, with the old lady behind the wheel, and Brutus and Harriet ensconced on the backseat.

“Wait here,” Gran suddenly ordered as she stomped on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt in front of a modest apartment building, causing Harriet and Brutus to tumble forward and straight into the footwell.

As Gran got out and slammed the door, Harriet and Brutus shared a look of concern.“I thought we were supposed to join the investigation, and now she wants us to stay in the car,” said Brutus, neatly summing up the state of affairs.

“Oh, I think I know what’s going on,” said Harriet, as recognition dawned. “Isn’t this where Scarlett Canyon lives?”

They stared out at the apartment building, which seemed to have been built two decades before, and was nice enough, as apartment buildings go, but not as nice as the house they themselves occupied.

Brutus frowned.“Am I glad that we don’t have to live in a place like this,” he said. “I was an apartment cat for far too long. You wouldn’t believe how much nicer it is to have a backyard to strut your stuff in, to breathe fresh air when you want, or let grass blades tickle your belly.” He sighed. “If there is a God, he sure must like me, to have placed me with the Pooles.” He directed a loving smile at Harriet. “And with you, twinkle toes.”

Harriet simpered a little. She never got tired of listening to her mate pour such sweet nothings into her ear.“Aww, Brutus,” she murmured, well pleased. “Yeah, I wouldn’t like to live in an apartment either.” Though truth be told she wouldn’t know the difference, as she’d lived with the Poole family from the moment she was a little kitten.

The door swung open and Gran and Scarlett walked out, talking animatedly.

“See?” said Harriet with a note of triumph in her voice. “I knew I was right.”

“You’re a great detective, princess,” said Brutus, nodding. “I’ll bet you’ll crack this burglary in no time.”

“Of course I will,” said Harriet. “Have no fear, honey lips. I’ll be onto those nasty burglars before you can say ‘Gotcha!’”

Scarlet dropped into the passenger seat, and Gran took up her position behind the wheel again, then stomped on the gas and the car shot forward, Brutus and Harriet tumbling back. Harriet thought ruefully that not only was Odelia probably the better sleuth, she was also the better driver.

It only took them another ten minutes or so to arrive at a very nice villa in a quiet neighborhood not all that far from where they themselves lived. And as the car skidded to a halt and hit the curb with a thud, they all filed out, Harriet feeling a little queasy after the wild ride they’d had.

“You really should learn how to drive, Vesta,” said Scarlett reproachfully as she checked if all of her body parts were still attached. She was dressed in an extremely tight leopard-print dress that showed off a lot of leg, a lot of cleavage, and made Scarlett look like a lady of the night morethan a respectable sleuth. She’d put on bright red lipstick, expanding beyond the boundaries of her mouth, which gave her a clownish look.

“You should talk. You don’t even have a driver’s license,” said Vesta.

“Because I don’t believe in cars,” said Scarlett. “Cars kill hedgehogs, and I happen to like hedgehogs.”

“You like any animal whose sole claim to fame is an erect quill,” Vesta grunted.

“Why didn’t we simply walk here? We should all avoid driving as much as humanly possible and save the planet.”

“I don’t like to walk,” said Vesta. “Walking makes my feet hurt. Besides, with the kind of shoes you like to wear you should be grateful one of us can drive a car.”

They all stared at the nine-inch heels Scarlett had opted to wear, and Scarlett frowned. At least Harriet thought she was frowning. It was hard to see with all the Botox injections Vesta’s friend liked to apply to her suspiciously wrinkle-free brow.

“Let’s just go and talk to this guy Mort Hodge,” said Scarlet with a little toss of her head. “Before I accidentally stab you with something hard and erect.”

They walked up the short garden path to the front door and Vesta pressed the bell, applying so much pressure Harriet wondered if she was trying to push it through the panel.

“Please be on your best behavior, Vesta,” said Scarlett as the sound of the bell echoed through the house.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, be less like yourself.”

“And be more like you? Fat chance.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“It means what you want it to mean.”

But before Scarlett could launch a sharp retort, the door swung open and an older man appeared. He was bald on top, with a fringe of white hair around the sides, had a round, friendly face, and a pronounced stoop.“Police?” he asked.

“Neighborhood watch,” Vesta said, conjuring up her best smile for the occasion.

The man frowned a little uncertainly.“I called the police, and they said they’d send someone to take our statements.”

“Well, they sent us,” said Scarlett sweetly, and walked right past the man, who blinked when he caught sight of her jiggling d?colletage, visibly suffering from a slight sense of vertigo.

“My son is chief of police,” Vesta explained. “And he’s asked us to look into the matter. With half the police force on vacation, and the other half otherwise engaged, he asked us to take a stab at the case.”

“Okay,” said Mr. Hodge, clearly not fully convinced. Then again, if you are a tax-paying citizen, you probably expect a real police person to show up when you need them, and not two old ladies and their cats.

When he caught sight of Harriet, though, Mr. Hodge’s eyes lit up with sheer delight. “Oh, what a gorgeous fur baby you are,” he said, and crouched down with a creaking of the knees, and tickled Harriet under the chin. He glanced up. “Are they yours?”

“Yeah, both of them,” said Vesta. “I like to take them along wherever I go.” She shrugged. “You never know what they’ll pick up. Cats are smart. A lot smarter than dogs, if you ask me.”

“Oh, I know,” said Mr. Hodge, getting up again with some effort. He gestured to a large painting in the hallway depicting a big orange cat with lively eyes and a wide grin. “I don’t know if you read my stuff, but I’m a cat person all the way.”

“Oh, you’rethat Mort Hodge!” said Scarlett. “The creator of Mort’s Molly!”

“You’re Mort’s Molly’s Mort?” asked Vesta, surprised.

“Yeah, that’s me,” said Mr. Hodge with a light chuckle. “So you see, you can bring all the cats you like. The more, the merrier!”

And on that cheerful note, they stepped into the house and Mr. Hodge closed the door.

Chapter 14

The house was nice, Brutus thought. High ceilings, large rooms, and so much space!

He sniffed the air, trying to detect whether there were any other cats or pets nearby, but to his surprise couldn’t pick up any sign of them. Mort’s Molly did not live there.

“You own a cat yourself?” asked Scarlett.

“No, unfortunately I don’t,” said Mr. Hodge. “My wife is allergic to cats and dogs. Very ironic, I know, for the creator of Mort’s Molly not to own a molly himself. But there you have it. I like to think I’m the owner of a fictional cat, and that’s good enough for me.”

Mrs. Hodge had joined them. She was a lively woman with a kind demeanor. A full head shorter than her husband, and dressed in a floral-pattern dress that showed off a well-rounded physique. Mrs. Hodge might be allergic to pets, Brutus thought, but she clearly wasn’t allergic to the good life. All in all she and her husband looked like a very lovely couple, and as Mort placed an arm around his wife’s shoulder and gave her a quick peck on the temple, it was obvious they were a devoted one, too.

“So what happened, exactly?” asked Vesta. “My son said something about a safe being burgled?”

“Not the safe—it’s actually worse than that,” said Mort. “You better tell the story, honey.”

“I opened the door this morning when I heard the doorbell and was surprised when I found two individuals announcing they worked for the gas company. They immediately overpowerd me and shoved a rag or something into my mouth and tied my hands behind my back and walked me up the stairs into our bedroom and pushed me down onto the bed.” She had tears in her eyes. “I feared the worst—the absolute worst.”

“These men, did you recognize them?” asked Vesta, taking the lead as usual.

Mrs. Hodge shook her head.“I did not. Both of them were dressed in black from head to toe. Black leather jackets, black pants, black shoes, and a black mask to hide their faces. One was big and the other one small, though, so that might be important.”

“One big, one small,” murmured Scarlett while she tapped all this information into her smartphone, her tongue between her lips as she navigated the little keyboard with her inch-long gel nails.

“And then what happened?” asked Vesta.

“Well, they just left me there and walked straight into the next room, Mort’s old office, which we’ve turned into a storage space for some of his stuff.” She glanced at her husband. “They seemed to know their way around the house, which makes me think they must have been here before.”

“They didn’t bother with the safe,” said Mort with a frown of concern. “Instead they emptied out my big metal bookcase, which I keep padlocked.”

“What was in that bookcase?”

“All my originals,” said Mort. “Everything, down to my very first preliminary sketches, before I even launched the first Mort’s Molly cartoon.”

“Worth millions,” said Megan Hodge quietly.

“Our retirement fund,” said Mort. “Gone.”

“Wait, so they didn’t touch the safe?”

“Nope. There is a small cache of gold and valuables in there, but it’s not even worth a fraction of what was in that bookcase.”

“Millions?” asked Scarlett, pausing from her note-taking to gawp at the couple.

“Yeah, those originals easily fetch thousands upon thousands of dollars when auctioned off.”

“People actually pay that much money for a cartoon?” asked Vesta, earning herself a slight look of reproach from Mrs. Hodge.

“Mort has sold a couple of his originals over the years, and they never sell for less than ten thousand each. And the bulk of his collection he kept all these years.”

“I was going to sell more, but kept postponing. It’s hard to say goodbye to your original work, even though the money is good.”

“We don’t need the money, Mort,” said Megan. “We’re fine the way we are.”

“I know,” said Mort ruefully. “Megan has been telling me for years to put my originals in a vault at the bank or some specialized security company, but I like the idea of having my work close by. I like to take it out from time to time. Go over some stuff from the past. See how far I’ve come. And be inspired by things I did that I’ve completely forgotten.”

“Poor guy,” said Harriet. “He seems to be more sorry that he lost his drawings than about the money.”

“Yeah, well, it was his creation,” said Brutus. “Mort’s Molly is his baby.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us about your attackers, Mrs. Hodge?” asked Vesta.

Megan frowned as she thought back to the horrible events of that morning.“Um, at some point one of them said something that sounded a lot like, ‘Do you want to take everything, Jer?’ And then the other one said, ‘Shut up, Johnny!’ and then the first one did shut up.”

Vesta and Scarlett shared a look of excitement, and so did Brutus and Harriet.

“Johnny and Jerry!” said Brutus.

“Oh, this is too easy,” said Harriet, shaking her head. “Those two? At it again?”

“I think we can safely say that we’ve solved the case already, Mr. Hodge, Mrs. Hodge,” said Vesta. “We’re familiar with these Johnny and Jerry characters. They’re career criminals. I’ll tell my son and they’ll be behind bars before you know it.”

Both Mr. And Mrs. Hodge looked much relieved.“Oh, that’s wonderful news,” said Megan Hodge. “Did you hear that, Mort? They think they know who did it already.”

Mort smiled.“I hope you’re right, Mrs. Muffin. I was thinking about offering a reward for the safe return of my originals.”

“Better wait,” Vesta advised. “If it is who I think it is, it won’t be long before you have your drawings back safe and sound.”

“And this time we’re putting them in a vault,” said Megan. “Not keeping them at home.”

“Do you still write and draw everything yourself, Mr. Hodge?” asked Scarlett, putting away her phone now that the case was solved.

“Why, yes, mostly,” said Mort. “I think up the jokes, and I create the original drawing in pencil, then send it to one of my collaborators who puts it in ink—not actual ink, mind you, nowadays everything is digital. And then a third person puts it in color and back it comes to me for a final check. It’s how I’ve been working for the past, oh, twelve years?”

“I think it’s great what you do,” said Scarlett with a smile.

“I think so, too,” said Vesta. “Wonderful cartoons. Always make me laugh.”

“And so true to life,” said Scarlett. “You really know your stuff.”

“Like I said, I may not be the lucky owner of a real cat, but Molly is as much a pet to me as these guys.” He gestured to Brutus and Harriet, who purred their appreciation.

“Oh, they’re hungry, the poor darlings,” said Megan. “Come. I think I have just what you need in the kitchen.”

Brutus and Harriet eagerly followed the artist’s wife into the kitchen, and before long they were both snacking on a nice piece of liverwurst.

“Case cracked and some great food to boot,” said Harriet between two nibbles. She was beaming. “Let’s see Max and Dooley beat that!”

Chapter 15

Since Tex was between patients, he was surfing on his phone and checking the news. The Gazette was leading with breaking news about Alec Lip and Charlene Butterwick canoodling into their allotted lunch break, causing hundreds of comments wondering if the mayor and chief of police of Hampton Cove didn’t have anything better to do than enjoy each other’s company. Like catching the burglars terrorizing the town.

Tex shook his head, and skipped to the next article. This one detailed some salient tidbits about the most recent victims of the gang: famous artist Mort Hodge and his wife.

And as the good doctor put down his phone, a sudden fear struck him. He’d recently come into the possession of some very valuable gnome art. The painting, spray-painted with a steady hand by famous gnome artist Jerome Metzgall, had cost him a pretty penny. First Mrs. Baumgartner’s Picasso had been stolen, and now Mort Hodge’s original drawings taken from his home. And in recent weeks other people had been robbed, too. Like the Wigginses, Bambi and husband, where a sculpture had been taken, and the Sudses, Rory and husband, where a plastic mushroom had been yanked from its base.

What would stop the burglars from stealing his gnome painting? Nothing!

And it was with a sense of urgency that he called his wife. The moment the call connected, he blurted out,“Marge—you have to get home now! My gnome painting—you have to take it off the wall and hide it!”

“Tex, honey, what are you talking about?”

“The art thieves—they took Ida Baumgartner’s Picasso last night, and Mort Hodge’s entire collection of original Mort’s Molly art. I’m afraid they’ll go for my painting next!”

“I don’t think your painting is that popular, Tex,” said Marge, a little acerbically he thought. She’d never approved of his love for garden gnomes, and even less of his love for gnome art, even though he’d tried to explain to her it was an investment, not a whim.

“Look, you can take down that painting yourself tonight.”

“But…”

“I’m busy, Tex. Your gnome will have to wait.” And with these words, she disconnected, leaving him to consider hanging up a ‘Closed’ sign on his office door and legging it home himself to safeguard his precious painting from theft. But just then a patient walked in and he sank down in hischair again.

Marge was right. His gnome would have to wait. He just hoped it wouldn’t be too late!

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Charlene Butterwick was smiling widely before herself, seated at her desk at Town Hall, and thinking roseate thoughts about the new man in her life. And as luck would have it, just then this new man chose that moment to call her.

“I was just thinking about you, hunk,” she spoke into the phone, having picked up on the first ring.

“And I was thinking of you, sexy.”

She walked over to the window and glanced out in the direction of the police station. She watched how Alec Lip, chief of police of the town she was responsible for, waved at her from his office. She smiled and waved right back.

“Did you see the news?” asked Alec.

“What news?”

“Well… us, I guess,” said her boyfriend, though he was more man than boy.

“Us? Someone’s written about us?”

“Yeah, and not very favorably either. Check the Gazette home page. Some member of the public was snapping pictures of us while we were out having lunch yesterday.”

She walked over to her computer and pulled up the home page for the Hampton Cove Gazette.“Oh, dear,” she said as she saw the pictures of herself and Alec lunching and kissing and clearly having a whale of a time.

“Check the comments. If you have the stomach for it.”

She checked the comments, and her stomach turned a little. That’s what you got when you lunched past your regular lunchtime, and were high on love and good food. “Oops,” she said. “Looks like people aren’t too happy with us right now.”

“No, you can say that again.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Not get caught canoodling during office hours?”

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, she giggled.“Canoodling. I like that.”

“Not my word,” grunted the Chief. “Something commenter #113 seems to be fond of. Unlike commenter #225, who uses much stronger language—the kind of language Dan probably shouldn’t have allowed to pass moderation.”

“I’ll talk to Dan. Tell him to take down the article. And the comments.”

“You mean you want to use your position to curtail the free press?” chuckled Alec.

“Of course not. I’ll simply tell him we won’t do it again, and could he please not feed the trolls and unleash the online lynch mob.”

Alec paused for a moment, then said,“I’m looking forward to lunch, poppet.”

“Me, too, muppet.”

They both giggled like a couple of teenagers in love, then disconnected.

And with a sigh, Charlene called Dan Goory. She was all for freedom of the press, but she failed to see the significance of an article dealing with a mayor and chief of police’s love life. They might both be public figures, but even they had a right to a certain measure of privacy, and that was exactly what she intended to tell Dan. But even before the call connected suddenly two intruders, both dressed in nice suits but with their faces covered with black masks, waltzed into her office and pointed a gun at her head.

“One word and you’re history,” barked the biggest of the twosome. “Now sit down.”

Chapter 16

Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale were walking along the sidewalk, en route to their next potential convert. Jerry was dragging his feet, while Johnny was actually feeling pretty good about himself. He’d long known that a life of crime doesn’t make you happy, and had learned his lesson when kicking his heels in a Mexican prison cell. Contrary to the prison cells back home the one they’d been confined to in Tulum hadn’t offered the kinds of creature comforts he’d become accustomed to. No television privileges, and no friendly conversations with his fellow inmates, making friends and influencing people.

The only thing he’d liked was the food, which was Mexican, probably obvious as they’d been in Mexico. He’d gained a couple of pounds, on top of a frame that was top heavy to begin with. The only one who hadn’t gained an inch around the waist, or anywhere else for that matter, was Jerry, but then Jerry had always been a nervous eater, with stomach problems on top of bowel problems on top of whatever else ailed him.

“I think I’m starting to get the hang of this Jehovah’s Witnesses stuff, Jer,” said Johnny now, clutching his Bible and a copy of The Watchtower and feeling like a new man ever since he’d been baptized by that nice elder back at Kingdom Hall. “I think we finally found what we were looking for.”

“Oh? And what were you looking for, exactly?” asked Jerry, a nasty sneering quality to his tone that Johnny decided to ignore.

“Well, a sense of belonging for one thing,” said Johnny. “It’s nice to be part of a great group of people.”

“And what was wrong with our old group?” asked Jerry.

“Nothing,” said Johnny, deciding that his friend Jerry was in one of his moods again, and when Jerry was in one of his moods there simply was no talking to the guy. “Have you managed to get a hold of Marlene?” he asked instead.

“Nah. She keeps blocking my calls. I tried friending her on Facebook but she blocked me there, too. Maybe you should call her. She probably doesn’t recognize your number and then you can hand me the phone.”

Marlene was Jerry’s ex-wife, but the ex-crook still carried a torch for her, and had never given up hope winning her back. Marlene had moved on, though, and rumor had it she was seeing an investment banker. Tough for an ex-con to compete with an investment banker.

“You know what, Jer? I think once Marlene hears you’re a Jehovah’s Witness now she’ll probably want to talk to you.”

“You think so?” asked Jerry, a glimmer of hope lighting up his weaselly features.

“Oh, sure. Women love a religious man. Just look at how many women always flock around our local church priest.”

“Old crones, mostly,” Jerry muttered.

“Not just old crones. Young crones, too.” He got out his phone. “In fact why don’t I call her right now? She’ll be happy to talk to you once I tell her you found religion.”

Jerry licked his lips.“But what do I tell her? How do I win her back, Johnny?”

“Just tell her what’s in your heart, Jer. Women can tell when you’re being honest.”

Jerry nodded earnestly.“Okay, fine. Yeah, call her. Call her and tell her Jerry wants to talk to her. No, scratch that. Don’t tell her anything. Um, or better yet, tell her an old friend wants to talk to her. Yeah, that’s better. Though she’ll probably hang up the moment she recognizes my voice. Um…”

Johnny placed one of his ham-sized hands on his friend’s back. “You think too much, Jer. That’s your problem right there.” He dialed Marlene’s number and waited for her to pick up, giving his friend a reassuring smile. Jerry was nervous, which was a good sign. It meant he wouldn’t say anything dumb. He’d think before blathering like a silly fool.

“Marlene?” he said, the moment Jerry’s ex-wife picked up with a melodious, ‘This is Marlene, and who are you?’ “It’s Johnny. Johnny Carew.”

“Oh, it’s you,” said Marlene, not exactly sounding over the moon with joy.

“Yeah, it’s me. Listen, Marlene, Jerry and I are back in the country.”

“I didn’t even know you were out of the country.”

“Ha ha. Still as funny as ever. Listen, Jerry and I have joined Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“You did what now?”

“They were the only ones prepared to let us do our community service.”

“I should have known. What did you do this time? Rob a bank?”

“How did you know?”

“Oh, Johnny,” Marlene sighed.

“Listen, Jerry wants to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Yeah, but he’s found religion, see. He’s a changed man, Marlene. A religious man, if you see what I mean.”

“Tell him he still owes me six months’ worth of alimony.”

It didn’t really sound encouraging, but Johnny was an eternal optimist, who believed in the essential goodness of all people. So he handed the phone to his friend. “She’s very eager to talk to you, Jer,” he said, adding a little fib to the mix, just to keep the ball rolling.

Jerry’s little face lit up like a Christmas tree as he eagerly grabbed the phone. “Marlene?” he bleated. “It’s Jerry!” He paused for a moment, then cried, “Marlene?” He glanced up at Johnny, his face falling. “She hung up on me. She actually hung up on me.”

Johnny listened for a moment, then bellowed,“Marlene?” When no response came, he had to concede that Jerry had a point. “Must be a bad connection,” he said. “We’re probably too far from the nearest cell tower. Lemme give it another shot.”

But Jerry made a throwaway gesture with his hand.“Nah. Don’t bother. Obviously she’s still mad at me for landing my ass in prison again.”

Johnny placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder and squeezed, causing Jerry to wince. “Don’t give up, Jer. Marlene will come around, I just know she will. You just have to keep to the straight and narrow and all will be well. Just you wait and see.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Jerry dejectedly, and followed his friend to the next house, where they proceeded to try and interest a pensioner in the word of Jesus.

Chapter 17

“What do you want?” asked Charlene, as her hands were tied behind her back and her ankles to the legs of her chair.

“Where is it?” asked the guy again. He was waving some sort of gun in her face, and as far as she could ascertain it looked real enough.

“Where is what?”

“The collection of gold coins,” said the guy.

Charlene bit her lower lip. Of course. She should have known that those gold coins would lure the unsavory element to her office at some point. When her predecessor had shown her the coins with a sense of pride, he’d advised her to transfer them to a safe place, something he felt he should have done a long time ago. So she had a safe installed only the week before, and had transferred the coins to the safe, figuring it was safe there.

The gold coins had once been donated to the town by the Duke of Middleforth, an English nobleman, whose life had been saved by local fishermen when his yacht had gotten in trouble off the coast of Hampton Cove. As a token of his appreciation the Duke had awarded the town with the coins, bearing his likeness. They’d been worth a great deal of money at the time and now, after nine decades had passed, even more, due to inflation and the particular history related to them.

Charlene gestured with her head to the other side of her office, where a wood-paneled wall hid a door into a secret room.“They’re in the safe,” she said.

“Combination,” barked the gangster.

“1234,” said Charlene, a little shamefacedly. She hadn’t gotten round to changing the factory-installed code yet. Not that it mattered now.

The crook immediately walked over to the panel and opened it, drawing a surprised gasp from Charlene. Obviously these gangsters were well informed, if they knew the location of the secret room. The crook strode inside. His colleague, meanwhile, kept an eye on the Mayor, telling her not to try any funny business.

She glanced at the door of her office, hoping someone would walk in and notify the police. But the crooks had probably locked the door from the inside.

Very brazen, she thought, to rob the mayor in broad daylight. And she wondered how they thought they’d get away with it.

Moments later, the gangster returned from the secret room.

“Did you find them?” asked his colleague, waving a gun in the vicinity of Charlene’s ear.

“Yup. All good,” said the guy. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You won’t get far, you know,” said Charlene. “So you better give up while you still can.”

“Oh, be quiet, Madam Mayor,” said the tallest of the two, and then pulled a bag over her head. She listened intently, and heard the two men conduct a short whispered conversation, then open the door of her office and walk out.

She wriggled against her restraints but it was no good. They’d tied her up pretty good. And with a sigh, she settled back, hoping someone would walk in and find her.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Alec Lip had been trying Charlene’s phone for the past fifteen minutes but for some reason his call kept going to voicemail. She simply wasn’t picking up and he was starting to get worried. Had he upset her in some way? He didn’t think so. Being in a relationship was a new thing for him, since being widowed fifteen years before, and sometimes he felt a little out of his depth.

Though Charlene made things really easy for him. She had a good heart and a great sense of humor and everything simply flowed when they were together. In fact it was if they’d known each other forever, and every day he felt blessed they’d met.

And now this. She’d never ignored his calls before. Even if she was busy doing whatever politicians did, she took the time to send him a message. So this radio silence took him by surprise.

He’d glanced in the direction of her office a couple of times but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Often when he called she would appear in her office window and give him a wave. And he kept expecting her fair-haired head to appear but so far nothing.

After fretting for a while, he decided to call her secretary and ask her if Madam Mayor was busy. Normally he would never do that, but he was getting anxious and more than a little antsy. If she was breaking up with him, better he find out sooner rather than later.

“Um, hi, Imelda,” he said when Charlene’s secretary picked up. “Do you have any idea if Madam Mayor is busy at the moment. It’s just that… I’ve been trying to reach her about, um, something important—police business, you know—and she’s not picking up.”

“Well, she did have two visitors just now,” said Imelda. “But they left ten minutes ago, so she should be free. Do you want me to go check?”

“Yeah, could you?” He felt increasingly silly now, like a schoolboy with a crush, asking a girl’s parent to see why she wasn’t answering his calls.

For a moment, there was only Tony Bennett crooning about a cold, cold heart, which was exactly how Alec’s own heart was feeling, then Imelda was back. This time she didn’t sound quite so sanguine. “Get over here, Chief. Get over here quick. Charlene—she was robbed! Robbed at gunpoint!”

Alec’s heart skipped several beats as the blood drained from his face. Within seconds he was out of his chair, out of his office, and running as if his life depended on it.

Chapter 18

There are moments in a cat’s life that stay with him for the rest of his days. I’m sure it’s the same for humans. Everyone knows where they were when JR was shot—at least if you were alive and old enough to be glued to the screen in the eighties. And of course everyone remembers when John Travolta finally ditched his toupee. And it was just such a moment when Odelia received that call.

I remember she picked up and her jaw actually dropped. Now I know fiction writers mention dropping jaws all the time, but how many times have you actually seen a jaw drop in real life? It’s a tough proposition, and would probably require a trip to the ER.

Well, I can now say that I’m the rare witness of an actual jaw-dropping event.

“Wait, what?” she cried.

We were in the car, on our way to Odelia’s office where she was going to start compiling her notes on the crime wave that was sweeping Hampton Cove, and more in particular Ida Baumgartner’s stolen Picasso, bought for her by her husband, inventor of the world’s first laser-beam vacuum cleaner.

“I’m on my way,” Odelia said, once she’d reeled in her jaw sufficiently to allow for speech. And to show us she meant what she said, she put down her phone, started up her car and was racing off at a respectable rate of speed, causing Dooley and me to tumble back against the backseat.

“What’s going on?” I asked, once I’d ascertained whether all of my limbs were still attached to their parent body.

“Charlene has just been robbed at gunpoint,” said Odelia. “And the town’s gold coin collection has been stolen.”

“I didn’t even know the town had a gold coin collection,” I said, much surprised.

“Well, it did—only now it doesn’t,” said Odelia, and I could see her point.

She was focusing on the road and applying her foot to the accelerator in a way that would probably be frowned upon by the local authorities if the local authorities hadn’t been busy with this spectacular denouement.

“Is she all right?” I asked. “Charlene, I mean. She wasn’t hurt by these attackers, was she?”

“She’s shaken but otherwise fine,” said Odelia in clipped tones, indicating the events that had unfolded at Town Hall had not only shaken Charlene but Odelia, too.

“Why does a town need a collection of coins, Max?” asked Dooley.

“Gold is usually considered a sound investment,” I ventured. “Probably the folks that run this town have chosen to invest their money wisely.” In other words: I had no idea why Hampton Cove’s founding fathers would have chosen to acquire a set of gold coins.

“The coins were a gift from a duke,” Odelia explained. “Once upon a time, in the nineteen-thirties if I’m not mistaken, a local fisherman saved this duke’s life when his boat had hit some rough weather off the coast of Hampton Cove. To show his gratitude he donated a set of gold coins with his likeness to the town the fisherman hailed from.”

“They must be worth a lot,” I said, imagining large gleaming plaques of gold, now in the hands of a couple of dastardly thieves.

“Yeah, I guess they are,” said Odelia. We’d arrived at destination’s end and got out, Odelia hurrying to the entrance, where already several police vehicles stood trundling.

“I thought half the police force were on holiday?” I said as I watched a couple of cops milling about.

“This must be the other half,” Dooley suggested astutely.

Once inside, we hurried after Odelia, who was setting a brisk pace, causing us to have to switch into higher gear. So by the time we arrived at the mayor’s office, I was already panting, my short legs not exactly fit for short sprints—or long ones, for that matter.

The office of the town’s mayor is a very large and spacious one, located on the second floor of Town Hall. Its large windows offer a nice view of the town square, and even the police station, which made me wonder why the police officers had all thought it necessary to drive there, as they could just as well have walked.

Charlene Butterwick, our mayor, looked not only shaken but also stirred, like a freshly poured Martini, and was surrounded by the cream of Hampton Cove’s police crop: Uncle Alec was there, of course, but also Chase Kingsley, and several others.

Charlene’s secretary was also there, a heavyset woman with a kindly demeanor who now looked as shaken and stirred as the Mayor herself.

“If only I’d known!” she cried, throwing up her hands. “I would have stopped them!”

“Best you didn’t,” said Uncle Alec.

“Yeah, good thing you didn’t, Imelda,” said Charlene. “They were armed to the teeth, and they would have hurt you.”

“I could at least have called the police,” said Imelda, now applying a handkerchief to her teary cheeks. “They could have caught them before they got away.”

“What did they look like?” asked Odelia.

“One was big and one was short. The short one had a face like a weasel, and the big one had a round face and looked kinda goofy. They said they were businessmen. Though they didn’t look like no businessmen to me.”

Just then, more people arrived at the scene, in the form of Grandma Muffin and Scarlett. And they’d brought their own feline entourage: Harriet and Brutus.

“It was Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale,” said Gran, the moment she stepped into the room. “We just talked to Mort Hodge and his wife Megan and she overheard the thieves call each other Johnny and Jerry.”

Uncle Alec’s head snapped up so fast I could actually hear it crick. “Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale? Are you sure?”

Gran nodded furiously.“Absolutely.”

“Absolutely,” Scarlett echoed, and even Harriet and Brutus were nodding, though I’m not sure the humans in the room took any notice of us lowly pets.

Chase had taken out his phone and was now frantically scrolling through it, then offered it to Charlene’s secretary. “Are these the men you saw, Imelda?”

Imelda took one look at the picture Chase offered and nodded.“That’s them! I’ll never forget those terrible faces. Real hardened criminals, both of them.”

Chase held up his phone for the rest of the small gathering to see. I only caught a quick glimpse, but it was a picture of Johnny and Jerry, who’d recently worked for Marge, before absconding with the contents of the Capital First Bank’s vault to Mexico.

“It’s very nice to have two home-grown criminals you can always pin a crime on,” said Dooley. “Makes things a lot easier for the police.”

I almost had to smile, if the situation hadn’t been so serious. “That’s because they are responsible for a large part of local crime,” I replied.

“Listen up!” Uncle Alec said, raising his voice and also his head to address his troops. “We’re looking for Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale. Chase, send that picture to everyone present.”

“Will do, Chief,” said Chase.

“This is now priority number one.”

“I think I know where they are, Uncle Alec,” said Odelia, earning herself the attention of the entire police contingent and more necks making creaking noises as they all turned to her. “Mom sent me a message this morning telling me Johnny and Jerry had been at the door, spreading the word of Jesus. They’re doing community service for Jehovah’s Witnesses and going door to door. They were in Harrington Street two hours ago, so they’re probably still in the area.”

Uncle Alec clapped his hands twice, like a schoolteacher, or a football coach.“You heard my niece. Let’s roll out, people.”

And he didn’t have to tell his people twice, for already they were filing out the door, en route to their respective vehicles, to organize what is commonly termed a manhunt, or a dragnet.

We soon found ourselves alone in the room with only Charlene, Charlene’s secretary and Uncle Alec, and then the secretary made herself scarce, and when Uncle Alec wrapped Charlene into his arms and started whispering words of comfort into her ear, we figured we better skedaddle, too.

And we were walking down the stairs when Dooley said,“If Johnny and Jerry are spreading the word of Jesus in Harrington Street, how did they steal Charlene’s coins?”

“What a dumb question,” said Harriet. “The Jehovah’s Witnesses thing is just a cover. They use it to get into unsuspecting people’s homes and case the place, before returning under cover of darkness to steal whatever valuables they can lay their hands on.”

“But it’s not dark now,” said Dooley.

“Oh, Dooley. Please be quiet,” said Harriet.

“Pretending to be a religious person is a great cover,” Brutus said. “People tend to let their guard down and reveal things they shouldn’t.”

“Anyway, case closed,” said Harriet. “And of course we cracked it.” She shared a high five with her mate, and they both grinned. “We beat you fair and square, Max,” she added.

I frowned.“I didn’t know this was a competition.”

Brutus slapped me on the back.“Haven’t you learned anything, Maxie, baby? Life is always a competition. And you lost, bro.”

And with a raucous laugh, he tripped down the stairs, Harriet in his wake, leaving me and Dooley to follow at a much slower pace.

“Brutus isn’t being very nice today, Max,” said Dooley.

“No, I guess he isn’t.”

“Success really doesn’t become him.”

“No, it definitely does not.”

Brutus is one of those cats who get a little obnoxious when they’re feeling on top of the world, and really nice when they’re down in the dumps. And right now he was flying high. I had the distinct impression it wouldn’t last, though. Success and failure are never far apart for the Brutuses of this world. For now, though, we’d have to suffer Obnoxious Brutus, and hope Nice Brutus would soon make a triumphant return.

Chapter 19

Tex, hurrying home after a day spent examining people’s throats, ears, noses and other orifices for signs of disease or decay or both, made a beeline for his living room, where his pride and joy greeted him with a jolly smile: it was a large painting of a jocular-looking garden gnome, its blushing cheeks round and plump, its black eyes dark and sparkling with mirth, its white hat slightly askance, giving him an odd rakish look.

Tex breathed a sigh of relief.

“You’re home early,” said Marge as she walked in. She watched as he flicked a tiny speck of dust from the painting and frowned. “Are you all right, honey? You look a little feverish.”

“It’s still there,” he announced. “They didn’t take it.”

“Of course it’s still there,” she said. “Who would want to steal that thing?”

He wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought he detected in her tone of voice a slight diminution of the kind of appreciation he expected people to award his new acquisition.

“When Ida told me about her Picasso being stolen, I feared the worst,” he explained, figuring it wasn’t fair of him to criticize one who wasn’t fully informed about the dangers that lurked out there for owners of works of art like his precious Big Gnome #21.

“Don’t worry, honey,” said Marge, placing a soothing hand on his arm. “No one in his right mind would steal the painting of your gnome.” And with a smile, she left the room.

He stared after her, a little puzzled. What exactly did she mean by that? Everyone in their right mind would steal a masterpiece of the first order like this, and he now wondered if he shouldn’t give it another, safer place. Only question was: where?

The basement was too humid, and might cause damage to Jerome Metzgall’s work of genius. The attic was too dusty, the kitchen too greasy, the family room too busy. Then he remembered watching something on TV not so long ago, about a couple who’d kept a very expensive stolen painting in their bedroom for years, hidden behind the bedroom door. So that when the doorto the bedroom was closed they enjoyed its full splendor.

His face lit up with a smile. He didn’t often get brainwaves like this, but when he did, it was a doozy.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

By all accounts the hunt for Johnny and Jerry had proven successful, and the two crooks were now in custody and presumably being grilled over a slow fire by Uncle Alec and Chase.

I just hoped they’d be able to retrieve the stolen Picasso, and the other works of art the two thieves had snatched.

Unfortunately my attention wasn’t really focused on the crooks, but on the strange contraption that awaited us when we walked through the door and into our home.

The four of us halted in our tracks the moment we saw it.

“What is it, Max?” asked Dooley.

“It’s a toaster,” said Brutus.

“Don’t be silly,” said Harriet. “Who in their right mind would put a toaster on the floor?”

“It’s a humidifier,” I ventured. “Remember how Odelia often complains how the air in here is too dry? I’ll bet she bought herself a humidifier.”

“It doesn’t look like a humidifier,” said Harriet. “Oh, I know what it is. An air freshener.”

Whatever it was, it simply sat there, on the floor of the living room, looking very ominous indeed. It was round, a little over a foot in diameter, and about four inches high.

The thing took Odelia by surprise, too, or at least that’s what her first words seemed to indicate: “What the heck is that thing doing here?”

Just then, the kitchen door opened and closed and Marge walked in.

“Oh, you saw my surprise, did you?” she said. “And? Aren’t you going to thank me?”

“What is it?” asked Odelia.

“What do you think it is? A Roomba, of course. Thank you, Mom. Thank you for saving my sanity and hours of my precious time.”

“Thank you, Mom,” murmured Odelia, still staring at the thing. “How does it work?”

“Well, you simply switch it on and it takes care of the rest.” And to show us she wasn’t all talk but action, too, she pressed a button on the contraption and immediately it whirred to life, making one hell of a noise and moving—moving straight at me!

I yelped and jumped in the air, then sprinted in the direction of the nearest couch and burrowed underneath. It wasn’t the best idea, though, for the thing—whatever it was—hit the wall, then did a slow ricocheting movement and came zooming at me again!

“Heeeeelp!” I cried. “It’s coming for me!”

“Save yourselves!” Brutus screamed. “Women and children first!”

“It’s just a vacuum cleaner,” Marge said. “It’s not going to hurt you.”

I wasn’t too sure about that. My friends had scattered to the four winds, and were hiding wherever they could. But it soon became clear that there was no hiding from this machine from hell!

So I wormed myself from underneath the couch again, and jumped up onto the couch instead. I had a feeling—call it survival instinct—that it might be able to kill anything on the ground level, but wasn’t able to take off and fly.

I was right, for as I watched on, the machine did its terrible devious work on the floor, but never made any attempts to have liftoff.

“I found its fatal flaw, you guys!” I shouted to all who would listen. “It can’t fly! So better hide where it can’t get at you! Aim high! The higher the better!”

Marge and Odelia were laughing their asses off, which was very rude, I thought. But that’s humans for you. They love nothing better than to watch their pets suffer indignation.

“What is it, Max?!” Dooley yelled from the second shelf of the bookcase, where he had somehow managed to worm himself between a copy of John Grisham’s The Firm and Deepak Chopra’s latest bestseller.

“It’s a vacuum cleaner!” I yelled back.

“But it moves all by itself! How is that possible?!”

“It has wheels,” I said, for even in those scary moments when the machine had almost caught me and devoured me whole, I’d noticed the tiny wheels it operated on, and the essential mechanics behind this contraption had immediately become clear to me.

“I don’t think the cats like the Roomba,” said Marge.

“I don’t think so either,” said Odelia. “Which is strange, for some cats love vacuum cleaners.”

“Did you notice I cleaned your entire house this morning, missy?” asked her mother.

“Thanks, Mom,” said Odelia, and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. “I would have done it… eventually.”

“You work too hard,” said Marge. “Maybe you should get a maid.”

“On my salary? No way.”

“Better a maid than to live in a pigsty.”

“My house is not a pigsty!” said Odelia, laughing.

“Have you seen your bathroom lately?”

“I was going to clean it last weekend, but then Dan called and asked me to cover that new farmer’s market…”

“You need a maid,” said Marge decidedly.

From my vantage point I was hoping and praying that Marge wouldn’t get her way. I mean, first this Roomba and then a stranger taking over the household? I mean, yikes!

Chapter 20

The doorbell rang and since Marge had stepped out to visit their daughter next door, and Vesta hadn’t arrived home yet, Tex opened the door. He found two women on the doorstep, one tall, one short, who were beaming at him.

“Dr. Poole?” asked the short one. “Doctor Tex Poole?”

“Yes,” he said cautiously. Patients sometimes had a tendency to show up unannounced at the house, drop their pants and show him a suspicious spot on their buttocks. It had already caused some hilarity amongst the neighbors, and not a small measure of embarrassment for Tex himself.

The tallest of the twosome stuck out a hand and showed him a card.“My name is Iris Johnson. And this is my sister Mira. We’re insurance brokers. We specialize in art. Are you an art collector, Dr. Poole?”

“Well, yes, I am,” he said.

“May we come in for a moment? Many art collectors neglect to insure their precious collections until it is too late.”

“What my esteemed colleague means to say is that a private home is often less than ideal for storing valuable works of art,” explained Mira Johnson.

“A fire, a burglary, a water leak… They can all have devastating effects on your collection. And that’s where we come in.”

“Johnson and Johnson will insure your collection at a reasonable price.”

“A very reasonable price.”

“So you don’t have to lose sleep over any contingency that could occur.”

It all sounded very plausible to Tex, and he found himself nodding along as the two insurance brokers explained to him the ins and outs of their unique offer.

“Come in,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought of insurance, but you’re absolutely right.”

“Thank you, Dr. Poole,” said Mira as they accepted his invitation and entered the house.

And as they stepped into the living room, Iris caught sight of Big Gnome #21 and said,“Ah!”

“A-ha!” said her sister and colleague.

“Wonderful.”

“Beautiful.”

“Stunning.”

“But is it insured?”

“Um, no, actually it’s not,” said Tex, a little sheepishly. Both women tsk-tsked freely, and took a seat on the sofa, offering a great view of the painting of the grinning gnome.

“First we need to ascertain its value,” said Miss Johnson. “Isn’t that right, Iris?”

“Absolutely right, Mira.”

“Do you have any idea of its value, Dr. Poole?”

“Actually, I do. Apart from the emotional value, which is considerable—”

“Obviously.”

“The artist is a man named Metzgall. Jerome Metzgall.”

“Ah, the famous Jerome Metzgall,” said Iris, nodding like one who knows.

“You’ve heard of him?” asked Tex, well pleased. It was the first time anyone acknowledged what he’d known all along: that he’d made the right choice when he’d sunk a large chunk of his savings into the painting.

“Oh, of course. In our line of work it’s important to be well informed,” said Mira.

“How much did you pay for it?” asked Iris, taking a more direct approach.

Tex licked his lips, then darted a quick look in the direction of the living room door. The price he’d paid was a sore point between himself and his wife. Marge hadn’t approved of the purchase, and had told him he might as well have put their money on fire. “I bought it direct from the artist. A real bargain.” He cut another glance in the direction of the door, then lowered his voice. “He took twenty-five thousand for it. And when you know that some of Metzgall’s paintings now go for a hundred thousand on the specialized sites…” He let his words trail off, but raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

Mira and Iris Johnson needed to hear no more.

“A real bargain, Dr. Poole,” said Iris. “A genuine Metzgall for that price? You are a very lucky man indeed.”

“Very lucky,” said her sister, nodding seriously.

They both openly admired the painting, and it warmed Tex’s heart to such an extent, after the distinct froideur with which his own family had welcomed his purchase, that he actually got up and asked if he could offer the ladies coffee or tea.

They both declined, however, and he sat down again.

“Now imagine a flood, Dr. Poole,” said Iris.

“Or a house fire,” suggested Mira, just throwing it out there.

“Or, God forbid, a burglary.”

“Your painting—your precious Metzgall—would be gone.”

“Poof!”

“Destroyed.”

“All of your money lost!”

“That would be terrible,” said Tex, swallowing with some difficulty as he gazed at the beloved portrait of his beloved gnome.

Iris took a sheaf of documents from her briefcase and placed them on the coffee table.“Johnson and Johnson has a solution for you, Dr. Poole.”

“A plan!” said Mira.

“For a small price you can insure your painting so you’ll never have to worry again.”

“Never have to think about that flood, that house fire—that devastating burglary.”

And as both women launched into their sales pitch, Tex found that he’d already made up his mind to take them up on their offer. They were absolutely right: why spend twenty-five thousand dollars on a painting and then cavil over a measly couple of hundred bucks for the insurance?

“Done deal,” he said finally, even before they’d finished outlining paragraph 16 of their policy and stipulating contingency 623 and exceptions 1022 through 2025.

It was only after they’d left, and Marge walked in and found the documents he’d signed with a flourish, and heaved the exaggerated sigh of the much-put-upon wife of a rabid collector, that he wondered if he’d done the right thing.

But then he looked at Big Gnome #21’s smiling face and he was strong again.

Yes, he’d done the right thing.

A real collector took out insurance.

And he was a real collector. A collector all the way.

Chapter 21

“But I’ve got nothing to do with the whole thing, Marlene—you’ve got to believe me!”

Jerry Vale had used his one phone call to call his ex-wife, and much to his surprise she’d actually picked up. Then it turned out she’d already seen the local news about his arrest, and wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth what he’d been up to this time.

“That’s what you said last time, Jer. So forgive me for not taking your word for it. Why did you do it? Stealing that poor Mr. Hodge’s drawings. You know I’m a big fan.”

“Just like I’m a big fan—I would never steal from Mort’s Molly’s Mort.”

“Oh, Jerry. You know the best thing I ever did was file for divorce. I saved myself so much trouble.”

“But baby.”

“Don’t call me baby. I’m not your baby anymore.”

“You will always be my baby, baby,” he said, suddenly feeling sentimental. It wasn’t like him to go all teary-eyed but lately, and ever since he and Johnny had started working for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, he’d been more prone to stormy emotions than usual. “Look, can you arrange a lawyer for me? I think I’m gonna need it.”

“Arrange one yourself, Jer. And next time when you decide to rob an old man of his life’s work, maybe don’t do it.” And with these harsh words, she hung up on him.

He slumped a little, and as he was escorted back to his cell he thought how unfair it was to be accused of a crime he didn’t commit. It was bad enough to be arrested for the ones he did commit, but this simply wasn’t playing fair and square.

Johnny glanced up from his metal bunk.“And? What did she say?”

“No dice,” said Jerry. “She thinks I did it.”

“Well, I’m starting to think we did it, too, Jer. Are you sure we didn’t rob those people? Maybe in our sleep or something?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, Johnny.”

“That cop looked pretty convinced.”

“Cops are always convinced. Until you convince them otherwise.”

“They even took my Bible, Jer,” Johnny lamented. “And my copy of The Watchtower. I feel kinda naked without my Bible and my Watchtower.” He held out his hands to show his friend what he meant. They looked empty without his trusty reading material.

“Oh, to hell with your Bible and your Watchtower,” Jerry growled, getting a grip on himself. He was turning into a mushy crybaby and he hated it. “We gotta get out of here. I’m not going to sit in prison for a crime I had nothing to do with.”

“You mean… escape?” asked Johnny, his already cow-like eyes widening even more.

“Sure! We got rights. I’m not going to sit here paying for some other goon’s crime.” He glanced around at the cell they were confined to. “There’s gotta be a way to spring this joint.”

“I tried the window. Those bars are pretty solid, Jer.”

Jerry walked over to said window and gave those iron bars a good yank. He had to admit his partner’s words were as solid as the bars: they didn’t budge.

He sank down on his own metal bunk and gave himself up to thought. And soon his little gray cells were buzzing with ideas.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Ted Trapper happened to be passing by his neighbor Tex’s house when he happened to be glancing in through the window and happened to see his neighbor take a large painting off his wall.

It was a painting of a gnome, and Ted blinked as he caught a glimpse of the smiling impish figure, immortalized in vivid gorgeous color.

Before he could stop himself, he was stepping into the front yard and moments later his nose was plastered against the window, watching Tex maneuver the painting this way and that, until finally he became aware of being watched and looked up. He walked over to the window and opened it, then directed a pointed look at the smudge his neighbor’s nose had made on the pane and frowned censoriously.

“Ted?” he asked. “What are you doing?”

“Is that… a Metzgall?” Ted asked, his voice slightly choked with emotion.

Tex’s frown deepened. “What do you know about Jerome Metzgall?”

“Only that he’s the most accomplished painter of gnomes in the universe,” said Ted, inadvertently licking his lips at the sight of a real Metzgall only a couple of feet away.

Moments later he was inside and holding the painting in his hands, admiring the artistry, the vividness of the colors, the play with light, and the artist’s impeccable technique. “It’s gorgeous,” he announced unreservedly. “Absolutely gorgeous, Tex.”

“Got it from the master himself,” said Tex. “Paid a fraction of the price. Metzgall said he could sense I was a real gnome fan, and decided to slash his regular asking price.”

“Amazing,” said Ted, and he meant it. The mild-mannered accountant was, just like his neighbor Tex, a big fan of garden gnomes. He had them in all shapes and sizes. He had big gnomes and small gnomes, fat gnomes and skinny ones, even pretty ones and ugly ones—though to him all gnomes were beautiful. He’d been dreaming of a Metzgall for years, but the price was a little too steep for his budget. Plus, his wife Marcie would probably kill him if he even considered spending their hard-earned money on a real Metzgall. And even though he liked gnomes, he didn’t think he’d enjoy being bludgeoned to death with one.

“Do you think I should go and see him?” he asked now.

Tex’s sunny mood darkened to some extent. “You want to get one for yourself?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, before he could stop himself.

Tex’s demeanor changed. He grabbed the painting from his neighbor’s hands and offered him another frown instead.

Ted swallowed. He hadn’t forgotten how Tex had only recently accused him of grand theft gnome, and even though the misunderstanding had been cleared up, and Ted declared innocent of the terrible offense, it was clear that the episode still lingered.

“I think you better leave now, Ted,” said Tex coldly.

“Oh, all right,” said Ted. “You–you’re not mad at me, are you, Tex?”

“Not mad,” said Tex, though he sounded pretty mad to Ted. “Not mad at all. But I’ve got things to do, so…”

“Oh, sure, Tex. I’ll be on my way.” He cast one final glance at the painting, but then Tex quickly held it behind his back, making it obvious Ted’s company was no longer wanted.

With a sense of regret, Ted left the house and returned home. He needed to walk his dog Rufus. And he needed to think. Think hard.

Chapter 22

That Roomba was still rumbling through the house, and we were still hiding in our respective safe places, to wit: I was on top of the couch, Dooley was hiding on a bookshelf, Harriet had escaped onto the windowsill, and Brutus lounged on one of the high kitchen stools. All in all we were safe for the present, but that isn’t to say we weren’t feeling the strain—intensely!

“Max—you have to do something before it kills us all!” Harriet yelled from the windowsill. She could have made the leap to freedom and into the backyard but that meant she had to jump to the floor first, and she wasn’t taking any chances. Not with this monstrosity roaring through the livingroom, like a life-sized out-of-control Pac-Man.

Though I should probably say Pac-Cat!

“Max has to do something?” asked Brutus. “Why are you askingMax to do something? What am I? Chopped liver?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, sugar plum!” said Harriet. “I just figured… Max might have inside information about this machine that we don’t.”

Brutus didn’t look happy by this development, and already his cocky demeanor was waning fast.

“I think it’s a UFO,” said Dooley, adding his two cents. “Except it doesn’t fly. So it’s probably more like a UNFO, an Unidentified Non-Flying Object.”

“It’s just a vacuum cleaner, Dooley,” I said, as I couldn’t stop staring at the Roomba as it rumbaed past me. It was eating its way through a stack of dust bunnies, that was for sure. Like a serial killer, whacking them one by one. I just wondered when it was going to tire of the bunnies and start on us. After all, even a serial killer moves from drowning kittens to his first human kill—there’s a definite progression there—or worsening.

“Do you think there are little green men inside?” asked Dooley, following his own train of thought, regardless of my input. “Little green men who control the machine?”

“It’s not a UNFO, Dooley,” I said. “And there are no little green men inside.”

“Maybe little green gerbils?” he suggested. “Or little green mice?”

“Don’t mention the word mice!” Harriet yelled. “Whatever you do, never mention the word mice around me ever again—I told you, Dooley!”

Harriet has had it in for mice ever since we were overrun with that large family of mice. Luckily they’ve since relocated, after an intervention by Clarice, one of our more heavy-handed feline friends.

“I think you could have asked me for a solution, that’s all,” said Brutus, still moping. “I mean, what’s Max got that I don’t? Seriously.”

“Oh, Brutus,” said Harriet. “Don’t be like that.”

“Maybe we should talk to the little green gerbils and ask them to stop,” Dooley suggested. “I’m sure they can hear us, so why don’t we try to negotiate a truce?”

“Okay, so Max is smart, but so am I,” said Brutus. “And frankly I’m a lot stronger than Max, so if it’s muscle you’re looking for, I’m your cat, not Max.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Harriet. “Brutus, please save us from the horrible machine.”

Brutus looked nonplussed at this.“I’ll have to come up with a plan first.”

Harriet rolled her expressive eyes.“Max! Save us, please!”

“If we could just talk to the little green gerbils,” said Dooley, “I’m sure they’d listen.”

Finally I’d had enough. Between Dooley’s little green gerbils, and Brutus’s whining, and Harriet’s panicky screams, and of course the Roomba’s relentless rumbling, like a World War II tank crushing all resistance, I needed to put a stop to this thing. But how?

“Or it could be a terminator,” Dooley babbled on. “Sent from the future to hunt down the leader of the human resistance.” His eyes went wide. “You guys—do you think Odelia could be the mother of the future leader of the human resistance? She’ll have to watch out for this thing. It will probably try and kill her!”

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore, and I jumped. Yes, I jumped right on top of the thing. Now when twenty pounds of (more or less) lean feline beef rocket through the air and land from a great height, consequences will be had. In this case the consequence was a loud crack. The Roomba crashed right through its wheels, gave one final death rattle… and died.

I glanced down, and discovered the little blinking LED light on top of the thing had died, like the light in the eyes of The Terminator. And much to my relief, the terrible hoovering sounds had stopped, too, as had the relentless forward motion.

“You did it, Max!” said Harriet. “You killed the machine!”

“Any green gerbils that you can see?” asked Dooley, interested.

“No green gerbils,” I announced. “Only batteries.”

Slowly, my friends all approached, still keeping a safe distance, lest the Roomba rumbled back to life and started zapping them with its laser beams, like Ida Baumgartner’s late husband’s invention.

“I think it’s dead,” I said as I stepped down from the thing, then gave it a slight tap.

My friends all did the same now, and when a moment later Odelia entered the room she found four cats tapping away with their paws at her mother’s precious Roomba.

To her credit, though, instead of being upset that we’d killed this latest toy she burst into laughter instead. Marge then hurried in to find out what was going on, and when she saw us hitting the slain machine, she, too, had a laughing fit.

And so it was that the episode with the Roomba ended. The machine might have come from the future to kill the mother of the future leader of the dust bunnies, but it was no match for four determined and highly motivated felines.

And may I just add: good riddance!

Chapter 23

Ted was still thinking hard about ways and means of reconciling his neighbor when he looked up and saw that Kurt Mayfield had chosen that exact moment to walk his dog, too.

Kurt was a retired music teacher and lived next door to Odelia, Tex Poole’s daughter. He was walking his Yorkshire Terrier Fifi and didn’t look all that happy to see Ted. Kurt was one of those people who liked to keep himself to himself and didn’t enjoy those conversations between dog walkers most dog owners love so much, and view as a welcome opportunity to socialize.

“Hey there Kurt,” said Ted.

“Mh,” said Kurt as Fifi lifted her hind leg for a tinkle against a deserving tree.

“Have you heard about the arrests of those art thieves?” he asked, never lacking for something to talk about, contrary to Kurt.

“Art thieves?” asked Kurt, looking up. “What art thieves?”

“The fellas that robbed Mort Hodge—the Mort’s Molly guy? They caught them after they robbed Mayor Butterwick this afternoon. Got away with the town’s collection of gold coins.”

“The Duke of Middleforth coins?”

“Yup, and they pulled off a couple of other robberies, too. Ida Baumgartner was one of their victims. Claims they lifted a genuine Picasso off her.”

Kurt made a scoffing noise, which sounded as if a seal was spitting out a wad of phlegm.“Picasso my ass. If Ida owned a real Picasso my name is Tom Brady.”

Ted looked at him in confusion.“I thought your name was Kurt?”

“My name is Kurt,” grunted Kurt. He glanced around for a moment, then lowered his voice. “The trick is never to let them know that you’re in possession of something of value. That way you can never be robbed. Trouble is people go around bragging about owning Picassos. Naturally that’ll attract the criminal element.”

“So… do you own a Picasso?” asked Ted, who might not be the fastest mind in the Western hemisphere but could put two and two together just as well as the next man.

Kurt smiled and tapped his nose.“That’s for me to know and for you to find out, Ted.” And with a sour smile, he gave Fifi’s leash a goodish yank, causing the little Yorkie to yelp in surprise, then trip after her master.

Ted stared after Kurt for a moment, wondering if he did or did not own a Picasso, then shrugged and turned his mind to the problem that had been vexing him all along: how to be a better neighbor to Tex, and remove that touch of frostiness that had existed between them. And it was with a frown on his brow that he proceeded to walk Rufus, a happy and fluffy big sheepdog, who gamboled along and deposited little puddles of pee at regular intervals, and even one little pile of doo-doo, too. For that’s what dogs do.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Jerry and Johnny were listening intently to the words of their spiritual advisers who’d been so gracious to join them in their prison cell. Elders Thaddeus and Marcus were responsible for their local Kingdom Hall and had heeded Jerry’s call of distress with the kind of alacrity one likes to see in one’s church leaders.

In fact it had been Chief Alec who’d placed the call, at Jerry’s instigation. The chief of police had been pleasantly surprised that these two convicts, instead of asking for a lawyer, had asked for a priest instead. He probably hoped they were in need of their Last Rites. With prisons as overpopulated as they were, this must have appealed to the cop.

And it was with bowed head that the two career criminals listened as Elders Thaddeus and Marcus read from the scripture and words like‘final revelation’ and ‘repent, ye sinner’ and ‘Jesus saves’ flew through the small prison cell fast and furious.

Jerry had specifically asked for Thaddeus and Marcus, not because of their religious fervor but more for their physical appearance. Thaddeus was about the same size as Johnny, and Marcus could have been Jerry’s spitting image. Both elders had come dressed in their usual garb: nice new suits with clean white shirts and matching ties.

And it was after the third hallelujah that Jerry felt the time had come to thank the two elders for their services, and proceeded to knock them both out with a well-aimed tap to the noggin with the sturdy Bibles they’d brought for the duo’s edification.

“I don’t think you should have done that, Jer,” said Johnny. “God doesn’t like it when you knock out his priests.”

“God doesn’t like it when his people are imprisoned for no good reason,” Jerry countered. “Now help me undress them, and be quick about it.”

Within moments, both men had been stripped of their outer garments and tucked onto the metal bunks and covered with state-issued threadbare brown blankets.

“How do I look?” asked Johnny as he showcased his snazzy new outfit.

“Perfect fit, just like I thought,” said Jerry, well pleased as he inspected himself.

Being dragged from the street into the paddy wagon and straight into the police station holding tank had soiled their own outfits to a certain extent. But even before that, since they were on a budget, and they’d been forced to return the money stolen from Capital First Bank, they’d never been able to splurge on these kinds of super-duper suits.

“Now for the next part,” he said, and took a deep breath. “Let me do the talking.”

“Okay, Jer,” said Johnny.

“I mean, not a peep, okay?”

“Sure, Jer.” The big guy glanced at the two elders. “Are you sure they didn’t suffer?”

“Nothing that two ibuprofen won’t fix,” grunted Jerry, then hollered, “We’re ready in here, officer!”

A young officer came ambling up, noticed the two inert figures tucked into bed and grinned.“You managed to sermon them to sleep, did you? Good job.”

“They are contemplating their evil deeds,” said Jerry, adopting Elder Thaddeus’s high reedy voice and holding his Bible in front of his face, as did Johnny. “Thinking hard about their sins and possible redemption.”

The sound of a key turning in a lock and the iron door swinging open was like music to his ears.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Vesta and Scarlett were celebrating the latest win for their neighborhood watch seated outside Pier’s Pont, the popular bar in downtown Hampton Cove.

“The watch is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with,” said Vesta. “Pretty soon now Alec will have to admit we can’t be ignored.”

“Yeah, we did great,” said Scarlett as she checked her look in a small pocket mirror. And as she did, she couldn’t help but notice how Vesta’s son and Mayor Butterwick were seated only a couple of tables back, talking with Dan Goory.

“Don’t look now, but Alec and his girlfriend are chatting with Dan Goory,” she whispered.

Of course Vesta had to glance over, though she did manage to be discreet about it.

“Probably talking about the article on Dan’s website,” said Vesta, lowering her voice and darting occasional glances at her son over Scarlett’s left shoulder.

“What article?” asked Scarlett, who didn’t read the Gazette. Or any other newspaper for that matter.

“They were both caught playing hooky. Skipping work so they could spend a late lunch together. I could have told Alec that if he wanted to do some canoodling to do it either at his place or hers. Though he probably wouldn’t listen,” she added with a mother’s proper pique. “That’s kids for you. Always getting themselves in trouble.”

“Canoodling? You mean they were…”

“Nah. They kept it strictly PC, but some sourpuss still took offense and snapped a couple of shots on a smartphone and sent them to Dan, who published it on his website, the jerk. As if public servants aren’t entitled to enjoying a proper love affair.”

“Do you think Alec and Charlene will get married?”

Vesta shrugged.“Kids these days don’t get married anymore, honey. Not like in our day. They hook up, move in together, and that’s it. No muss, no fuss. Too bad, I say. I like a nice wedding.”

“I think they make a great couple,” said Scarlett, glancing surreptitiously over her shoulder. “I hope they stick it out.”

“I think they will. It takes more than an amateur paparazzo to break up that band.”

And as Vesta smiled a rare smile at the thought of her one and only son finally finding love again, suddenly she thought she saw two familiar figures walking across the street. They were both dressed to the nines, only something wasn’t quite right about them.

And then she got it.

“Hey!” she said, getting up. “It’s those two crooks! They’re getting away!”

Her shouts hadn’t missed their effect: Alec was also looking in the direction she was pointing, and so were Charlene and Dan Goory.

Johnny and Jerry, for that’s who they were, must have discovered they’d been discovered, for they broke into a frantic run.

Alec went in pursuit, stomping across the street, and so did Charlene and Dan, followed by Vesta and Scarlett. Scarlett, on her high heels, was last, and soon fell behind.

Vesta, who hadn’t run a race in forty years, was soon huffing and puffing, and had to give up. Her son, too, quickly lost his puff, due to his voluminous size, and supported himself against a parked pickup, sucking in breath by the cubic meter, red in the face.

Dan, on the other hand, was still going strong, his white beard flapping in the wind, but it was actually Charlene who was in pole position, and gaining on the two crooks. The robbery to which they’d subjected her clearly still rankled and she was determined to get her men.

Vesta watched the drama unfold from her position on the sidewalk, and even climbed a chair to get a better view.

Johnny was slowing down, while Jerry clearly suffered from a stitch in his side. What actually finished it for them, though, were Wilbur Vickery and Father Reilly stepping out of the General Store for a chat, and accidentally stepping into the fleeing duo’s flight path.

There was a big collision, and it was up to Charlene to identify the crooks in the tangle of arms and legs. Soon Johnny and Jerry had been duly arrested by Alec, still puffing like a cigarette smoker after his second pack of the day, and the race was run.

“You did it again!” Scarlett cried, finally catching up. “The neighborhood watch is on fire!”

“We did it,” Vesta corrected her friend. She grinned at Father Reilly and Wilbur. “If you guys hadn’t stepped out when you did, they might have gotten away.”

“We caught them,” said Father Reilly, checking his chassis for scuffs, scrapes or dents.

“Glad to be of assistance,” said Wilbur, gingerly touching his jaw where presumably one of the two gangsters had smashed into him.

“Now this is the kind of stuff you should be writing about,” said Charlene, addressing Dan, who was snapping a couple of shots of the neighborhood watch for his newspaper.

“I know, I know,” said Dan, looking a little rueful. “But you gotta admit it’s not a good look when the mayor and the chief of police spend their time fondling each other when they should be handling their workload.”

Charlene winced a little at the man’s words, then nodded. “Fine. You’ve made your point. Now can we leave this episode behind?”

“Less talk, more pictures!” Scarlett said.

And so Dan shot more pictures of the four neighborhood watch members who’d made all the difference and had caught the bad guys. Again!

Chapter 24

That evening, I was sitting in the window for a change. Yes, I know cats sitting in the window looking out into the street is a clich?, but I never said I was Mr. Original, did I? Besides, Dooley was also there, snoozing and enjoying a pleasant break from the excitement of before.

“I really thought it was a UFO, Max,” said my friend now. “It looked like a UFO, and it sounded like a UFO, so why wasn’t it a UFO?”

“Maybe the people who designed it are UFO fans,” I suggested. I didn’t care what it was, I was simply glad Odelia had gotten rid of it, and had promised us she’d never buy another. Which didn’t mean much, of course, as she hadn’t bought this one either.

“I don’t understand why people buy all these horrible machines, Max. Haven’t they learned anything from watching The Terminator?”

I smiled.“The Terminator is just a movie, Dooley. It’s not real.”

“It looked very real to me,” he said.

I heaved a big sigh of contentment. A cat really doesn’t need much, you know. My belly was full, and so was my bowl, I had a nice roof over my head, my best friend was right next to me, my human was watching television on a couch nearby, where I could keep an eye on her, so as far as I was concerned everything was A-okay with the world.

Chase walked in and sank down onto the couch.“You’ll never guess what happened,” he said.

“What?” asked Odelia, turning down the volume on the movie she was watching.

“Vale and Carew tried to escape. They knocked out the two priests they’d asked to help them come to terms with their misdeeds, donned their clothes and walked out!”

“But you caught them, right?”

“I didn’t catch them—your grandmother did, along with her cronies of the neighborhood watch.” He placed his hands behind his head and leaned back. “What a day. At least they’re behind lock and key, and this time there will be no visits for their spiritual nourishment.”

“Did you get Ida’s Picasso back, and the other stuff they stole?”

Chase shook his head.“Nope. They’re playing dumb. Insist they’re innocent. But they’ll crack sooner or later. Alec will make sure of that. And in the meantime it’s back to insurance fraud for me.”

“Poor baby,” said Odelia. “I can’t believe my uncle is letting you handle what must be the most boring case in police history.”

“It’s not that bad,” said Chase. “But it’s definitely not as exciting as chasing a couple of crooks dressed up like Jehovah’s Witness elders. Here, did you see this video?”

He took out his phone and showed Odelia a video. Unfortunately I couldn’t see from my vantage point, and I was frankly too lazy to get up.

Lucky for us, Odelia carried Chase’s phone over to us and showed us the video. It was clearly shot by someone with an unsteady hand, but it was still entertaining to watch: Johnny and Jerry running at full tilt, chased by a motley crew of crime fighters: Dan Goory, Charlene Butterwick, Uncle Alec, Gran and Scarlett. And the ones who actually caught them were Wilbur Vickery and Father Reilly!

“A regular team effort,” I said.

“Yeah, the watch did good today,” said Odelia as she handed Chase back his phone.

The lanky cop yawned and stretched.“I’m beat. Early to bed tonight, babe?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty bushed, too. Let’s make it an early night.”

And as the humans turned in for the night, Dooley and I were only just getting started. But first I needed a quick power nap, too.

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Marge was still smiling when she thought back to the cats and their heroic fight with the Roomba. She should have been upset that they managed to destroy the thing, but she wasn’t. The Roomba wasn’t a real Roomba but a cheap knockoff she’d found in a store off Main Street and had bought for a bargain. Odelia had suggested getting it fixed but she thought that was probably not a good idea. If the cats had destroyed it once, they would probably do it again. Besides, the poor darlings were clearly terrified of the machine.

And as she walked into the bedroom, much to her surprise she found her husband seated on the bed, a beatific smile on his face and apparently staring off into space.

“Hey, honey. Boy, do you look happy.”

Tex seemed to wake up as if from a dream.“Mh?”

“I said that you look happy.”

“Oh, it’s because I finally found the perfect place to put my Metzgall.”

The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees as Marge’s mood plummeted. She hated that Metzgall with a vengeance. Tex had paid twenty-five thousand bucks for it, claiming it was the perfect investment, and a bargain at that price. She’d wanted to throttle him when she found out what he’d done with their hard-earned savings: spent it on an ugly painting of a hideous troll.

Sometimes she didn’t understand her husband. Really she did not.

And it was when she closed the bedroom door and discovered that the painting of the troll was hanging on the wall behind the door that she yelped in horror and surprise.

“What the…” she said, staring at the thing. So that’s what Tex had been looking at.

“I saw it in a documentary,” said her husband, sounding proud of himself. “Thieves will never find it, as the bedroom door is always open except at night, and we can still enjoy it by simply closing the door and looking at it from the bed.”

Marge stared at her husband.“You want me to look at that thing from the bed? Are you nuts? I’ll have nightmares knowing that gnome is staring at us all night.”

Tex’s smile faltered. “You don’t like it? It is a real Metzgall.”

“When did I ever give you the impression that I like that horrible thing?” she said, her voice rising both in pitch and volume. “I hate it. I want you to give it back to this Metzgaff guy.”

“Metzgall,” Tex corrected her. “And I don’t think he’ll take it back.”

“I don’t care! It’s revolting to look at and I want it gone. Out of my sight!”

“All right, all right,” said Tex, getting up from his perch on the foot of the bed. “Where do you want me to put it? The basement is too humid, the attic too dusty, the kitchen too smelly, and in the living room it’s going to attract too much unwanted attention.”

“Put it in the garden shed,” she suggested.

“But honey!”

“Or bury it for all I care. I want it gone—out of my life—gone, you hear?”

Tex looked like a kicked puppy when he took down the painting and carried it out of the bedroom. Marge shook her head. Men. They really were impossible sometimes.

Chapter 25

As we walked out of the house, to go for our midnight stroll, strange noises drew our attention to the next-door backyard. And even though we are by no means guard dogs, we decided to go and have a look anyway. We may not be watchdogs but we are very, very curious, in case you hadn’t noticed.

“Do you think it’s burglars, Max?” asked Dooley when we set paw into the backyard belonging to Marge and Tex. The noise was coming from the garden shed, and for a moment I thought that Dooley just might be right. Then again, what burglar would target a garden shed? Unless hoping to fetch a nice price for a bunch of gardening tools that have seen better days and a lawnmower that has been in service for so long it will fetch more when sold as an antique than an actual mower.

But still we approached the shed, anxious to find out what was going on. When we took a peek inside, we discovered to our surprise that it was none other than Tex who was making all the noise. He was holding up a painting of a garden gnome for some reason, positioning it here and there, apparently looking for the perfect place to put it.

The best place to put it, I could have told him, was six feet under, although subjecting moles and earthworms and other creatures of the freshly dug soil to the hideousness of the painting would probably be considered cruelty to animals so that was out, too.

I’d never understood Tex’s obsession with gnomes, and this was taking his love for all things garden troll to new and increasingly worrisome heights.

“What is he doing, Max?” asked Dooley.

“I think he’s looking for a place to hang up his painting,” I said.

“Did he paint it himself, you think?”

“Odelia told me he bought it off a guy named Jerome Metzgall, who specializes in gnome art. He paid twenty-five thousand dollars for it and now Marge is upset with him.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money for a painting,” said Dooley.

“It is. Tex reckons it’s an investment, and he’ll double his money in due course.”

“It’s not a very nice painting though is it, Max?”

“No, it’s not,” I agreed.

“So that’s a gnome?”

“Yeah, Tex seems to have a thing for gnomes lately.”

“Poor Marge,” said Dooley, taking the words right out of my mouth.

We decided to leave Tex to it. We had an appointment at the park for cat choir, and we didn’t want to be late. Shanille, cat choir’s conductor, hates it when cats are late, and we don’t want to provoke her ire.

So we took a late-night stroll along the roads and pathways that crisscross our fair town, and soon were inhaling that bracing ocean air the Hamptons is so rightly famous for. The park is close to the ocean. In fact you can walk from the park down to the beach in next to no time. Not that we’d ever do that. Cats are not all that fond of the ocean, you see—or water in general, I should probably add. Water makes you wet, and we hate wet.

We arrived at the park and found it already teeming with fellow felines. Harriet and Brutus had arrived, of course, and so had Shanille, and Kingman, Wilbur Vickery’s cat, but also Buster, the barber’s Maine Coon, and many other friends and acquaintances. In fact it isn’t too much to say that the feline population of Hampton Cove is one big family. I almost said a big happy family, but since that isn’t always the case, I won’t.

“Did you hear what happened this afternoon?” asked Kingman the moment he clapped eyes on us. “My human caught two serial killers!”

“They’re not exactly serial killers,” I said. “Or even regular killers. They’re thieves.”

“Well, they’re bad news anyway, and Wilbur caught them.”

“The way I heard the story Wilbur accidentally stepped in front of the crooks as they were running along the sidewalk,” I said. “So it’s not that he actually caught them. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Or the right place at the right time,” Dooley said.

“That, too,” I said.

“I don’t care how you want to tell the story,” said Kingman. “I’m still sticking to my version of the truth.” He’d spotted another cat—a female one, of course—and I could hear him tell her the same story he was probably going to tell cats all night, and all the nights to come: “My human caught two serial killers. Caught them red-handed!”

“My human was there, too,” said Shanille. “Father Reilly happened to step out and got in the way. They all tumbled to the ground and by the time he knew what was happening, Chief Alec had already made the arrest.”

“Well, good riddance,” I said. “Let’s hope this spate of burglaries will now finally be over and done with.”

“Of course it will be over and done with,” said Harriet, who’d also joined the conversation. “We caught the killer, Brutus and I. Isn’t that right, baby boo?”

“Yeah, we caught the bad guys,” said Brutus.

“So many people caught the bad guys,” said Dooley admiringly. “They really didn’t stand a chance, did they?”

I smiled at this. He was right. But then of course success has many fathers—or mothers—and failure none.

Still, it was time to give credit where credit was due.“I think you guys did a great job,” I said therefore. “And Hampton Cove is a safer, better place because of it.”

“Why, thanks, Max,” said Harriet, pleasantly surprised. “And I still haven’t thanked you properly for saving us from that monstrous device.”

“Monstrous device?” asked Shanille. “What monstrous device?”

“A Roomba,” I said. “You know, one of those vacuum cleaners that are fully automated.”

“It was terrible,” said Harriet. “I thought for sure it was going to kill us.”

“Max jumped on top of it and destroyed it,” Dooley said. “He saved our lives.”

“I could have jumped on top of it and it wouldn’t have put a dent in the thing. It needed a fat cat like Max to do real damage,” said Brutus, quite nastily, too, I thought.

“It’s not my weight that made me successful,” I pointed out, “but my technique.”

“Yeah, you have to know where to jump, boogie bear,” said Harriet. “And Max must have studied the intricacies of the machine long enough to know its weaknesses and to know exactly where he should land to put it out of commission. Isn’t that right, Max?”

“Oh, sure,” I said, though of course I’d simply jumped the thing and, like Brutus had indicated, my sheer big-bonedness had done the rest. Though I’d never admit it—ever.

I could tell that Brutus wasn’t happy, though.

“Cheer up,” I said, clapping him on the back. “The next Roomba is yours to tackle.”

“There won’t be another Roomba,” he grumbled. “I heard Marge tell Odelia she wasn’t buying a second one.”

“Father Reilly has a Roomba,” said Shanille now, surprising us all. “I love it.”

I blinked.“Love it?” I asked. “How can you love a Roomba?”

“It’s great fun,” she said with a shrug. “He uses it to clean the church, and I like to ride it from time to time. Very entertaining.” And with a light laugh, she assumed the position of choir director and raised her voice. “Gather around, cats! Rehearsal is about to start!”

“She likes the Roomba,” said Harriet, flabbergasted. “Shanille really is a weird one.”

“Maybe she’s a terminator herself?” Dooley suggested. And for the rest of choir practice he didn’t let her out of his sight, just in case she turned out to be a killer robot from the future.

I felt a little bad now. Maybe I shouldn’t have destroyed the thing. Now what was Odelia going to do about her dust bunnies?

Chapter 26

Cat choir had been a smashing success as usual, and it was with uplifted spirits that the four of us returned home.

Harriet, especially, was feeling on top of the world. She’d sung her solo performance, and it had earned her a spontaneous round of applause. The fact that the applause was muted—it’s those darn paw pads, you see—hadn’t detracted from the warm sense of accomplishment Harriet had experienced, and it wasn’t too much to say she was walking on air.

“Once we get started with our quiz show,” she said now as we wended our way home along deserted streets, “I think I’ll sing a couple of songs in between the rounds. It will motivate and inspire the candidates, don’t you think, doodle bug?”

“Oh, sure,” said Brutus. “The candidates will be over the moon, and so will the millions of viewers at home.”

“Do you really think we’ll attract millions of viewers?” asked Harriet, her eyes shining at the thought of becoming a global superstar.

“Did I say millions? I meant hundreds of millions, of course. Seeing as there are a hundred million cats in the United States alone, I think it’s safe to say this show of ours is going to go viral and hit the stratosphere.”

“It’s going to leave Ed Sheeran and that Despacito guy in the dust,” said Harriet.

And as Harriet and Brutus shared their roseate dreams of global stardom, I saw that Dooley didn’t look happy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You don’t seem excited about the new quiz show for cats?”

“Harriet took it over,” he said quietly. “It was my idea and Harriet and Brutus took it and now they’re saying it was their idea all along. But it was my idea, wasn’t it, Max?”

“Of course it was your idea, Dooley,” I said. “And Harriet and Brutus know this.”

“You think so?” He didn’t look entirely convinced.

“Of course they do. Besides, don’t tell them I said this, but I think their ambitions just might be slightly overoptimistic. Since cats don’t own smartphones, or tablets, and only very rarely have access to computers or laptops, I think the chances of a show made by cats for cats being a hugesuccess are slim.”

“Oh,” he said, taken aback. “So maybe we should bring the show to television?”

I shook my head.“Apart from the four of us, do you know any other cats that have a certain measure of control over the remote?”

“You mean cats don’t have any say in what they get to watch on television?”

“No say whatsoever, buddy. None.”

“Poor creatures.”

“Yeah, you can say that again.”

“Always having to watch whatever their humans like to watch.”

“Can you imagine?”

“Having to watch things like Game of Thrones.”

“Or NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL. Or even NASCAR!”

He shivered at the thought.“We really are very lucky cats, Max.”

“I know, Dooley. We have the best humans. Who let us watch whatever we like to watch.”

“Like cat food commercials.”

“And the Cartoon Network.”

“And the Discovery Channel.”

I grimaced.“I’ll leave that to you.” Dooley is a big fan of the Discovery Channel, and likes to watch it with Gran of an evening. Of course he also watches soap operas and other daytime television with Gran, too, but that can’t be helped. At least the Discovery Channel gives him some food for thought,and a paw up for his general education.

We’d arrived on Harrington Street and were about to enter the house when I became aware of some strange goings-on at the house next door. Two dark-clad individuals came sneaking out along the narrow strip that divides Odelia’s house from Kurt Mayfield’s.

“Kurt has some late-night visitors,” said Dooley.

“Visitors? Or burglars?” I said with a worried glance in the direction of the odd pair. One was big and tall, the other thin and short, though I couldn’t tell who they were because they were both wearing some type of face coverings. They were also carrying some large and bulky object, and making haste as they picked their way along the hedge.

“Maybe we should tell Odelia,” Dooley suggested. I glanced back at the house. Brutus and Harriet had already disappeared inside, and both Odelia’s and Marge and Tex’s houses were dark and quiet.

“By the time Odelia is out here they’ll be long gone,” I said. “Better to follow them and see what they’re up to instead.”

And so Dooley and I snuck behind the sneaky twosome and followed them as they hit the sidewalk, then hurried along toward a black van. One of the pair opened the side door and placed the bulky package inside, then both got in and soon the engine roared to life.

“Let’s take a closer look at the license plate,” I suggested.

Unfortunately, before we could, a large cloud of black smoke blasted from the exhaust, obscuring said license plate. All I could see as the van peeled away from the curb in a haze of diesel fumes were the letter A and the number 5.

“A5,” I said. “What did you get, Dooley?”

“I got nothing,” he said, coughing. “Except a lungful of smoke.”

“If nothing else, Uncle Alec will probably be able to arrest them for nocturnal pollution,” I said. At least if a law existed against pollution, nocturnal or otherwise.

Coughing, we both returned to the house, and vowed to tell Odelia about these suspicious marauders in the morning.

So we passed along the strip of lawn between Odelia’s house and Marge and Tex’s, and got in through the pet flap, then had a bite to eat and a sip of water before heading upstairs to enjoy a nice nap.

We hopped onto the bed, Chase automatically retracting his long limbs to provide Dooley some space at the foot of the bed while I made myself comfortable at the foot of Odelia’s side of the bed, and very soon we were both snoring along with Odelia and Chase’s snores, the picture of familial bliss.

Chapter 27

When Odelia opened her eyes the next morning, she found herself staring into a pair of green-golden cat eyes. They were about half a foot removed from her face and gazing steadily at her with an intensity and fixedness only cat owners are accustomed to.

“Hi, Max,” she groaned, not fully awake yet. He’d already walked over her to reach his favorite spot: right in the middle of the bed between her and Chase, where he liked to lie and purr until one of them woke up and proceeded to stroke his fur so he could bury his nose into an armpit or elbow and continue to purr up a storm. His preferred armpit was Odelia’s, but he wasn’t choosy, and if Chase happened to be better positioned he didn’t mind digging his nose into his pit.

Cats didn’t seem bothered by smelly pits, or else Max would have reeled back in horror. And neither did they mind smelly breath, for Max loved to smell her and Chase’s breath in the morning, something she wouldn’t advise anyone—unless they had a death wish.

“Something happened last night,” Max said now.

“Mh?” she said, her brain only now starting to boot up, and even then only to a minor degree.

“I think Kurt was visited by two midnight prowlers. They were both dressed in black and carried a big bulky object tucked in a canvas bag or sack. And then they got into a black van and drove away.”

“In a cloud of black smoke,” Dooley added. He was lying on Odelia’s other side, and so now she was compelled to divide her attention between the two cats.

“Two prowlers dressed in black, carrying a black bag and escaping in a black van. Anything else you want me to know?” She finger-combed her long blond tresses away from her face but got stuck halfway. She really needed to go to the hairdresser soon.

“What’s going on, babe?” asked a sleepy-sounding Chase.

“Max and Dooley caught two suspected burglars last night, walking out of Kurt’s house carrying a large canvas bag with an unknown object inside. They then got into a black van and took off.”

“Description,” Chase muttered, his police brain asserting operational control.

“One was short and thin, the other one big and tall, and the license plate number started with A5,” Max said, his words translated by Odelia for Chase’s benefit.

“Gotcha,” Chase muttered, then rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Don’t you think it’s a strange coincidence that an amateur sleuth like you, and a professional detective like me, have managed to be adopted by two amateur sleuth cats?”

Odelia smiled.“No, I don’t think that’s a coincidence at all. We’re a family of sleuths, after all. And Max and Dooley are probably even better at this stuff than we are.”

“Oh, that’s for sure,” said Chase as he leaned over and gave Odelia a peck on the lips.

She kept her mouth tightly closed. Cats might not mind her morning breath, but she sure as heck wasn’t going to allow her boyfriend to smell it. At least not until after the wedding.

“I’ll check on Kurt later,” said Chase.

“What will you tell him?”

“That one of the neighbors happened to walk his dog last night and thought he saw a couple of unsavory types snoop around the house.”

“What I find strange is that Fifi didn’t warn her human,” said Max now. “She might not be much of a watchdog but I’m sure that if a couple of burglars burgled the house she would bark up a storm.”

“Yeah, that is strange,” Odelia agreed.

“What’s strange, babe?” asked Chase, yawning and stretching his lanky frame, causing the bed to creak dangerously.

“That Fifi didn’t bark.”

“I’ll tell you all about it once I’ve talked to Kurt. Don’t get your hopes up, though, you guys,” he added with a wink in the direction of Max and Dooley. “Chances are it’s a false alarm. But nevertheless: great job, cat sleuths one and two.”

“I wonder which of us is cat sleuth number one and which is number two,” Dooley said as Chase got out of bed and in the process dislodged Max from the blanket he’d claimed for his own.

“I’m sure it’s not important,” said Max as he walked across Odelia again, causing the latter to huff out a surprised ‘Oof!’ as he dug his paws into her stomach.

Cats. You had to love them. Especially early in the morning.

She followed Chase’s cue and got up, too, slipping her feet into her pink Hello Kitty slippers and dragging her sleepy frame down the stairs and into the kitchen where she proceeded to put on a fresh pot of coffee.

She wondered if Max and Dooley’s story was true. If it was, could it be that Uncle Alec had arrested the wrong people in Johnny and Jerry, just as they steadfastly claimed? Or maybe there was more than one gang of burglars active in their small town.

She thought it odd that Kurt would be the target of a burglary, though. He wasn’t exactly the kind of person brimming with unknown riches and chests full of gold and diamonds. Then again, Ida Baumgartner wasn’t known as a rich woman either, and still the thieves had found out about her Picasso.

Chase came ambling down the stairs, his muscular frame clad in stretchy lycra.

“Going for a run?” asked Odelia.

“Yeah, just a quick one. Wanna come?”

She hesitated. She knew she should join him on his morning run, but the temptation of a fresh cup of coffee and breakfast was too strong, so she shook her head.“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “I wouldn’t go for a run either, but I kinda need it, knowing the kind of day I’m heading into.”

“More insurance fraud hunting?”

“If your uncle wanted to punish me he couldn’t have done a better job than to hand me this particular assignment. I know white-collar crime is on the rise and all, but going through piles and piles of documents looking for traces of fraud is not my idea of fun.”

She smiled.“Who ever said being a detective was all fun and games?”

“No one, but I’d kinda hoped it was,” he said with a grin. He pointed to the coffee. “Save some for me, will you?”

And then he was out the door, braving the elements to keep himself in shape.

And as Odelia took her first cup of coffee of the day, she glanced out the window and saw Kurt Mayfield step into his backyard and call out for his dog. Usually Fifi immediately responded and came jumping and skipping up to her owner. This morning, though, there was no happy yapping and no equally happy Kurt playing around with his little Yorkie.

Frowning, Odelia opened the sliding glass door, then stepped out into her own backyard to take a closer look. And as she glanced across the fence and into her neighbor’s backyard, she was shocked to find Kurt leaning over the inert body of Fifi. The big guy, usually so aloof and grumpy, was sobbing like a small child. And when he looked up and saw Odelia, he cried, “She’s dead! My sweet baby is dead!”

Chapter 28

Attracted by sounds of anguish, Dooley and I stepped out of the house and found the door that led from our backyard into Kurt Mayfield’s backyard wide open.

It was a sight to behold, to be honest, for as far as I could tell that squeaky iron door had never been opened. It must have taken a strong hand to open it even now, as it was pretty rusty and covered with weeds on Kurt’s side—purposely so, I would have thought, to prevent nosy neighbors from entering his yard unannounced and uninvited.

We moved into Kurt’s domain with some trepidation, as Kurt is not exactly a friend of cats in general, or Dooley and myself in particular. He mostly disapproves of the impromptu singing sessions we sometimes engage in in the backyard in the middle of the night, when, having only just returned from cat choir, the muse strikes and we decide to sing a couple of bars.

Kurt is a retired music teacher, you see, and his musical sense is quite refined.

What we saw, though, when we passed across the threshold and into Kurt’s backyard, drove all thought of Kurt as some kind of ogre from our minds, as we watched the pensioner hunched over Fifi, thick tears sliding down his cheeks, as the little doggie lay motionless at his feet.

“Fifi!” I cried, and hurried to the scene.

“I’ve called Vena,” said Odelia. She’d placed a hand on her neighbor’s shaking back. “I’m sure she’ll know what to do.”

Normally the thought of Vena Aleman paying a house call fills me with dread. She’s our veterinarian, and in that capacity not exactly our favorite person in the world, armed as she usually comes with needles and poking fingers, but this time I hoped she would fly like the wind to save Fifi’s life.

“Is she… dead?” asked Dooley.

“She’s not dead,” said Odelia. “I think she was drugged, but that’s for Vena to decide.”

Just then, Chase returned from his morning run and came to see what all the fuss was about.

“I think the same people that your anonymous witness saw prowling around Kurt’s house last night must have drugged Fifi,” Odelia told her boyfriend.

“My Jackson Pollock,” sniffed Kurt. “It’s gone. When I woke up this morning I noticed it immediately. I’ve put it on my bedroom wall, behind the door. I saw this documentary once about a couple that stole a famous painting and kept it behind their bedroom door for years. So I figured I would do the same. Only this morning when I opened my eyes it was gone!” He gestured at Fifi. “But I don’t care about the painting. All I care about is my sweet baby. The sweetest dog in the world, and now look what they did. They killed her!”

“She’s still breathing, Kurt,” Odelia reminded him. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

She grimaced when she looked in our direction, though, so I knew she was just saying this to make Kurt feel better.

“Is it cancer, Max?” asked Dooley. “Is that what killed her?”

“She’s not dead, Dooley,” I said. “Probably the people who robbed Kurt’s house last night gave her something to drug her and keep her quiet. Which is why she didn’t bark.”

“Oh, that’s not very nice,” he said, eyes wide.

“No, that’s not very nice,” I agreed.

Fifi is our friend, and if there’s anything I dislike it is people hurting our friends.

Just then, Ted Trapper stuck his head over the fence—our fence. When he saw the commotion, he joined us in Kurt’s backyard. “What’s happened?” he asked. “I heard all the hullabaloo and I thought—ooh, my God the poor thing. Is she dead?”

Suddenly, Kurt reared up and roared,“You did this, you two-bit bean counter! You stole my painting and you killed my dog!”

Ted reeled back at this.“Wa-what?” he stuttered.

“I talked to you yesterday about Ida’s Picasso and Tex’s Metzgall and now my painting is gone. Admit it, Ted—you’re behind this whole thing!”

“But—no! I’m not a thief, Kurt. No way, Jos?!”

“And here we go again,” I muttered. It wasn’t the first time that Ted was being accused of being a thief. Last time it was actually Tex who accused him, after a number of garden gnomes had mysteriously found their way into Ted’s possession—garden gnomes that had hitherto been in Tex’s possession. The entire thing turned out to be a big misunderstanding, and Ted was cleared of all suspicion.

“I don’t think Ted has anything to do with this, Kurt,” said Odelia, coming to her neighbor’s defense.

“And I’m sure he’s guilty. Just look at that face. It’s the face of a guilty person. And will you look at that smile? He’s proud of himself—proud that he got away with it!”

“I’m not smiling!” said Ted.

It was true. Ted just has one of those rosy smiley faces—he can’t help it.

“One of your neighbors says he saw two people get away with your painting,” said Chase, inserting his formidable frame between the two men. “They got into a black van and raced off. Now why would Ted make his getaway in a black van if he lives two doors down?”