Nic Saint's Blog

The Spy Who Killed Me

They say that all good things come in threes, but also that misfortunes never come singly, so I’ll let you decide which of these proverbs applies to the following situation: first we discovered that a thief had been stealing our litter, thereby preventing us from doing our business the way we like to do it. And then one of our country’s most beloved actors was found murdered aboard his private yacht, with plenty of suspects likely to have done the deed. And if that wasn’t enough, Gran and Scarlett decided to reform the Neighborhood Watch Committee and actively insert themselves into the investigation, wreaking havoc and mayhem at every turn. In other words: troubled times lay ahead in Hampton Cove, that peaceful little town on the East Coast that always seems to teeter on the verge of disaster.

Ghost From The Past

Ghost From The Past

The ten-thousand-step craze had descended on my family, and while all around me everyone was busy putting their steps in, I decided that dreaming of ten thousand steps was enough exercise already. So when suddenly a woman who looked exactly like Odelia turned up at the house, the victim of a vicious attack, I was probably the only one rested enough to realize this was a portent of bad things to come. Especially when we discovered what she really wanted.

The most surprising thing of all was that Gran seemed to play a pivotal part in all of this. Our very own human had so many skeletons in her closet that at one point we were starting to wonder if we really knew her at all. And it all began with a love affair gone horribly wrong.

Dooley wondered if he had done his ten thousand steps for the day. Ever since Chase and Odelia had gotten into this new craze with the ten thousand daily steps they needed to do, they had inadvertently transferred the bug to their pets. And now Dooley, Harriet, and Brutus had all gotten into the habit of making sure that at the end of each day they had gotten their steps in. The only one who was lagging behind in this bold ambition was Max, but then he felt that he was healthy enough as it was and didn’t need any fancy gizmos telling him how many steps he had taken or should take or any of that nonsense.

“It’s just a load of commercial voodoo!” Max had said when his three friends had urged him to get on board with the program and join the fun. “And if you think I’m going to allow Corporate America to control my life, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Dooley didn’t know about the American corporation Max kept referring to, but he liked this whole stepping business. Take today, for instance. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and he must have already gotten half of the steps he needed. And then he still had cat choir tonight, which would also require an additional thousand potential steps. And if he took very small steps, as Harriet had advised, he would get there even faster.

Harriet had gotten into the habit of taking very small steps, more like tiptoeing through life than stepping wide and fanciful, and according to her, it was so much better for her health. She hadn’t felt quite so good in ages. “And if everyone took smaller steps, the world would be a much better place,” she had told Dooley. “People would be able to stop and smell the roses, you know.”

Dooley didn’t quite know how smelling the roses and taking small steps worked exactly, but then Harriet was very clever, so he knew she was probably on to something. And so today he had vowed to take small steps all along his morning walk and smell as many roses as he could find. Unfortunately, there weren’t all that many roses in the vicinity, but there were plenty of other plants. So he had taken to smelling those, even though they often didn’t smell all that nice. Then again, if it was good for his health and made the world a better place, it seemed like a small sacrifice to make.

And he had just reached the end of Harrington Street when he came upon a large canine looking at him with menace written all over his features. It was a dog of what he thought was the bulldog variety. And if the globs of saliva dripping from the corners of his mouth were an indication, this dog was very hungry indeed.

Poor creature, he thought. Clearly hadn’t been fed properly. And so he approached the dog, his heart full of the right spirit, and said, “If you want, you can have a bite to eat at our place. There’s plenty of kibble to be found, and I’m sure Odelia—that’s our human—won’t mind that we share some of it with a hungry stranger like you, sir.”

The bulldog looked at him with a strange look in his eyes. “What are you talking about, little fella?” asked the dog in a not unkindly tone.

“Food,” he specified. “You seem awfully hungry, and I know what that feels like, so I figured I’d offer you some of mine.”

The dog’s look of menace immediately lessened to a large extent, and even the slavering seemed to diminish, as if having been turned off at the tap. “You would do that for me?” asked the bulldog. “Even though you don’t even know me?”

“Of course,” said Dooley. “I’ve always been taught to be kind to strangers, and since you’re a stranger and you look very hungry, it’s the right thing to do. And besides, I’m almost home again after putting in my steps for the day. I’m at five thousand already, I just know I am, and so it’s time to take a break.”

The bulldog looked up at his human, who was a very large man, both vertically but also horizontally, and who was checking something on his phone, as all humans seemed to do lately, and gave Dooley a tentative smile, which clearly wasn’t an easy feat, possibly on account of the fact that he hadn’t practiced those specific muscles in quite a while. “I won’t forget this, fella. What’s your name?”

“Dooley,” said Dooley. “What’s yours?”

“Muscles,” said the dog. “On account of the fact that I’m very muscular.”

“Well, Muscles, are you coming?”

“I can’t,” Muscles admitted. “Unlike you, I’m tethered to this person with this chain, you see. So I’m not free to go anywhere without this guy’s approval. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be happy to accept your invitation.”

“Oh, well,” said Dooley cheerfully. “Maybe some other time?”

“Definitely,” said Muscles with a lopsided grin and eyes that spoke of his appreciation for the kind offer. “Until we meet again, Dooley.”

And so he said his goodbyes to Muscles and went on his way. Home was only a few houses away, and before long he was setting paw in his backyard and went in search of his friend Max. Max might not be fully on board with the ten thousand step phenomenon yet, but Dooley knew it was only a matter of time. When he saw how much his friends loved to put in their daily steps, he would come around to their way of thinking. And then they could all go and do their steps as a family: Odelia, Chase, and their four cats. What fun they would have!

He searched around the backyard for a sign of his friend, and when he didn’t see him, passed through the pet flap and into the house proper. As he could have known, he found the voluminous blorange feline stretched out on the couch, putting in his ten thousand naps—possibly dreaming of ten thousand steps.

And since the last thing he wanted was to disturb his friend when he was enjoying his nap time, he toddled over to his bowls for a bite to eat and a sip of water, then joined Max on the couch and closed his eyes for a nice and well-deserved nap.

That was probably the best part about putting in those steps: your nap time was so much better. A qualitative difference that made the exertion all the more worthwhile. And he would have closed his eyes to dream of making new friends and influencing bulldogs when there was a commotion at the pet flap, and in short order, Harriet and Brutus strode in via the passageway.

“Max! Dooley!” Harriet cried, looking very much alarmed. “Come quick! It’s Odelia! Something happened to her, and we can’t wake her up!”

It was with some reluctance that I let sleep slip from my grip and returned to the world of full wakefulness. As it was, I had been dreaming of taking steps—lots and lots of steps! And I fully blamed Harriet for the lessening in the quality of my nap time. If she hadn’t pushed me into joining the program the rest of the family had embarked upon, I would have dreamed of soft meadows filled with flowers, or broiled chickens flying into my mouth or some such felicity. But instead, I had to occupy my most precious resting time with an activity I thought of as mere folly.

Why subject the body to a lot of unnecessary torture? It seems counterintuitive and counterproductive, not to mention against my most basic instincts as a cat. Move when it’s needed, not because some app commands you to. And so when I finally did throw off the veil of slumber, I felt more tired than when I had begun.

But then the message of Harriet’s lament penetrated my admittedly snoozy noggin, and I frowned in her direction. “What are you talking about? Odelia is right there.”

I pointed to the other couch, hidden from view from Brutus and Harriet’s vantage point near the door, and where our human had been taking a nap herself. Which goes a long way to proving my point: all this unnecessary moving around and frantic activity is mostly bad for one’s health. Case in point: Odelia, who had never been in the habit of taking naps in the middle of the day, but ever since she had started monitoring her steps and trying to put in as many of them as she could, had done nothing else but nap, complaining forever how tired she felt.

Harriet and Brutus now joined us and regarded with consternation written all over their features the strange phenomenon of Odelia asleep on the couch.

“Well, I’ll be…” Brutus said as he came this close to scratching his head in befuddlement. He turned to his mate. “Then who is the Odelia lying on the lawn?”

“What are you talking about?” I said. I had a feeling they were deliberately pulling my paw, and if there’s anything I dislike, it’s being made to look like a fool.

“Well, Odelia is right here,” Harriet explained. “But she’s also out there.”

And since I could make neither head nor tails of her statement, I decided to go and see for myself. And so it was with great regret that I deserted my favorite napping location and hopped down to inspect this second Odelia, supposedly napping on the lawn. The four of us moved to the window and looked out, and much to my surprise, they were absolutely right: a second Odelia was lying prone on the lawn, apparently asleep, and she looked so much like ‘our’ Odelia that for a moment, I thought my eyes must be deceiving me.

“She even smells like Odelia,” Brutus said, a touch of awe in his voice at this wondrous occurrence.

“Maybe she’s Odelia’s sister?” Dooley ventured.

“Or a hologram?” Harriet said.

“Holograms don’t smell,” Brutus knew. “And they don’t take up actual physical space. This Odelia is real, sugar plum. I touched her with my paw to ascertain whether she was alive or dead.” He gulped a little. “And she’s all too real!”

Just to make sure this wasn’t some trick being played on me, I returned to the sofa and saw that Odelia was still fast asleep. Then I returned to the window and saw that Odelia II, as perhaps I will name her from now on, was also present and accounted for. So there were effectively two Odelias, and both of them were dead to the world, so to speak.

And since I’m of the inquisitive bent, I decided to take a closer look at Odelia II, just to make sure she was, as Brutus had indicated, a real person and not some figment of our imagination. We hadn’t eaten any magic mushrooms lately, but one never knows. An enterprising cat food manufacturer may have decided to put some hallucinogens in his cat food, and we could be the victims of food poisoning.

So we all ventured out through the pet flap, single file, and approached the woman lying on the lawn with some trepidation, not unlike a member of the bomb squad approaches a live grenade.

“She could be Odelia’s twin,” said Dooley softly as we approached the figure.

“Odelia doesn’t have a twin,” I pointed out. Unless Odelia’s parents had been holding out on us.

“Is she alive or dead?” asked Harriet.

“Her chest is moving,” said Brutus. “So I guess that means she’s alive.”

It is one of those litmus tests for the uninitiated that is proof positive of being amongst the living. It still didn’t explain what she was doing in our backyard and why she looked so much like our own human.

Dooley now directed his gaze heavenward and gasped. “It’s an alien!” he said. “She must have been brought here in an alien spaceship and dumped on our lawn.” He gave us a look of excitement. “You guys—this is an alien clone!”

“Of course it is,” said Brutus as he took a step closer to the mystery woman. “And I’m George Washington’s secret love child.”

“You are?” asked Dooley, much intrigued.

“Of course not.”

He was the only one of us who had the guts to approach the lifeless figure, and Harriet said, “Sugar britches! Don’t go any closer!”

“What could possibly happen?” asked Brutus. “She’s just a human who—”

“She moved!” Harriet cried. “Her arm! It twitched!”

And indeed it did. For a moment, there had been a definite twitch in that arm, as if it was reaching for Brutus and trying to make a grab for him!

But our friend wasn’t deterred. “It’s uncanny,” he said quietly as he now studied the woman’s face. “Spitting image, I’d say. Absolutely the spitting image of our very own Odelia.”

And since we couldn’t contain ourselves any longer—twitching arms or not—we all moved a few steps closer to study the woman’s face. And I had to admit that Brutus was absolutely right. The resemblance was uncanny. If I hadn’t known that the real Odelia was peacefully resting on the couch, I would have thought that this was her.

And just as we all stood gazing at her up close, suddenly her eyes sprang open!

We all screamed like little girls and scrambled to get away from this strange person as fast as we possibly could. Then, once we were at a safe distance, we eyed her in abject terror. Harriet was in a nearby tree, where she had climbed in record time. Brutus was on top of the hedge. I was hiding behind a nearby bush. And Dooley? I glanced around, and when I couldn’t find a trace of my friend, whispered, “Dooley? Where are you?”

“Up here, Max!” his voice came back. When I looked up, I saw that Dooley was on the roof of the house! Actually in the gutter, hunkering down and making sure this ‘alien clone’ couldn’t get at him.

The woman didn’t seem to be overly aware of the powerful effect she’d had on the four of us. She groaned and clutched at her head as she tried to sit up and failed. Her eyes sort of glazed over, and I had the impression she wasn’t feeling A-okay. I had a sneaking suspicion she might have taken too many steps, but wasn’t ready to voice this theory yet.

“The alien is trying to phone home, Max,” my friend whispered from his location in the gutter. “We have to stop her, or otherwise millions of her kind will invade our home!”

“Dooley is right,” said Brutus in a low voice. “She’s one of those pod people. You can see it in her eyes.”

I wasn’t sure about the pod thing or the alien clone business, but one thing was for sure: this lady wasn’t feeling well and was in urgent need of some medical assistance. And since Odelia’s dad happens to be a doctor, I decided to throw caution to the wind and go and get help.

And so I abandoned my safe location underneath those bushes and hurried into the next backyard, hoping to find Tex and persuade him to take a look at this strange woman who had found herself in our backyard.

“Max! Where are you going?” Brutus demanded. “Max! Come back!”

“I’m going to go get help,” I told him before I slipped through the opening in the hedge and started on my rescue mission.

It wasn’t long before I found Gran, who was boiling an egg in the kitchen for some reason and gazing idly out of the window with a smile on her face. “Have you ever felt truly happy for no reason at all, Max?” she asked when I popped in through the pet flap. “I mean, this feeling of happiness just surprising you out of the blue?” Her face sagged. “Yeah, me neither. Now when is this egg finally going to boil!”

I could have told her that to boil an egg, first you have to turn on the gas, but since I had more important things to worry about, I decided to forego giving our human cooking lessons. “Gran, there’s an unconscious woman in our backyard. Is Tex home?”

“An unconscious woman?” asked Gran, immediately alert. “What, next door?”

I nodded. “Well, she’s not unconscious now, since she just woke up. But she doesn’t look well, and I think she needs a doctor.”

“Teeeex!” Gran immediately bellowed at the top of her voice. “We need a doctor!”

Tex came hurrying from the next room, still clutching a magazine he’d been reading. Contrary to what I would have expected, it wasn’t a copy of the New England Journal of Medicine or The Lancet, but Us Weekly, with a picture of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise on the cover and the burning question: ‘What is the secret of their good looks?’

Clearly, even doctors wonder about this strange phenomenon. “What?” he asked, looking greatly perturbed. “Is it Marge? Where is she? What’s going on?”

“Max has found a woman in his backyard, and he thinks she needs a doctor.”

“And don’t be surprised,” I said, “but she looks like the spitting image of Odelia.”

Gran frowned. “What are you talking about? How can anyone be the spitting image of Odelia? Don’t you know that every human being is unique, Max? Take this egg, for instance,” she said and fished the egg from the pot. “It may look like every other egg out there, but I can tell you right now that this egg is totally unique and unlike any other egg. And the same goes for everything in nature, and that includes Odelia.”

“Well, she does look like her,” I insisted. “Down to the color of her eyes.” Which were sea-weed green, just like Odelia’s eyes.

And as Tex and Gran joined me to take a closer look at this strange phenomenon, Gran told her son-in-law about our observations. Judging from his frown, he registered concern at this, possibly professional curiosity, and a slight sense of annoyance that he’d been so rudely interrupted while trying to get to the bottom of the secret to Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt’s eternal youth.

We arrived next door, and I found that the scene was pretty much as I had left it only moments before. Dooley was still hunkering down in the gutter, pretending to be part of the constellation of leaves gathered there. Brutus was on top of the hedge, which must have been very uncomfortable, since those hedges tend to sting. And Harriet was high up in her tree, watching the world below with a baleful eye.

“My God,” said Tex as he crouched down next to the woman, who was awake, but barely so. “Max is right. She looks exactly like my daughter.”

“Who are you?” asked the woman now in weak and croaky tones.

“I’m a doctor,” Tex explained, employing his doctor’s voice as he spoke these words. Soothing, reassuring and avuncular, if you know what I mean, and designed to put the patient at ease. “What happened to you, young lady?”

The woman shook her head. “I… I have no idea. Where am I?” She glanced around, then winced, as if the mere movement of her head struck her a powerful blow all afresh.

Tex did what doctors do on these occasions, and gave her a quick medical examination. He even shone a light in her eyes and touched her head and examined it, then nodded. “You’ve suffered quite a blow. Any headaches?”

The woman nodded. “Terrible. But who… I mean, how did I get here, wherever here is?”

“You’re in my daughter’s backyard,” said Tex. “So you have no recollection of how you got here?”

“Nothing. And when I try to remember, my head hurts even more.”

“We better get you inside,” said Tex and gestured for Gran to give him a hand. Together they managed to get the woman into an upright position and then slowly walked her into the house. As it was, I was the only one who followed them in, since Dooley was stuck on the roof, Brutus was stuck on top of the hedge, and Harriet was stuck in her tree. The three of them mewled piteously for me to call for help, but as I felt my services were needed elsewhere for the moment, I told them I’d be back and hurried after Tex and Gran and the mystery woman.

The moment we walked in, Odelia woke up. And when she came face to face with the new arrival, she blinked a few times.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked.

Gran shook her head with a sort of grim-faced look. “The cats found her on the lawn. She’s been hit over the head and lost her memory. Where do we put her?”

Odelia pointed to the spot where, until a few moments ago, she had been asleep herself, and very carefully Tex and Gran lowered the woman onto the couch. The moment her head hit the throw pillow, her eyes closed again and she was asleep.

“Nasty knock to the head,” Tex said quietly when the trio had convened in the kitchen. “I think we better call your husband, honey. This is clearly a matter for the police.”

Odelia nodded. “I’ll give him a call right now. But the resemblance. Did you also notice the resemblance?”

“Are you kidding?” said Gran. “That woman could be your twin sister.” She now directed a suspicious look at Tex. “You didn’t secretly father a second daughter, did you?”

Tex looked shocked. “Of course not. How could you even think that?”

“Because chances are that she’s Odelia’s long-lost twin. And if that is the case, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Doctor Poole!”

A butterfly had been fluttering from flower to flower, as butterflies are prone to do. However, when she arrived in this particular garden and landed on that particular flower, she was met with a very peculiar scene: three cats were stuck in different places, and all of them were very eager to be saved from their predicament. Mostly what you find hanging from trees is fruit, but on this occasion, a Persian cat was mewling up a storm. Not far from the tree, another cat was stuck on top of a hedge, and he, too, didn’t seem particularly pleased with this. To top things off, a third cat, this one of the fluffy and smallish variety, was sitting in the gutter and seemed not to have a clue how to get down from there.

And since it isn’t every day that a butterfly is treated to such a scene of pronounced suspense, the butterfly decided to stick around and see how things would progress.

Flora, as her name was, didn’t think it would be long before someone came along and freed those cats from their respective precarious positions. For some reason, when a cat is stuck, someone always comes along at some point to save its life. When a butterfly gets stuck, nobody seems to pay them any attention at all. It’s not fair, but then Flora had been taught through long association with humans not to expect too much from their corner. As she had expected, not even five minutes had passed before a man of robust and one might even say muscular aspect stuck his nose around the corner. When he saw the three cats still meowing up a storm, he sprang into action.

Climbing the drainpipe to save the cat on the hot tin roof was but the work of a moment for him. Then, up the tree he shimmied to save cat number two. Cat number three was a little trickier, but he finally managed to extricate it from its position as well. When all was said and done, did the cats show their heroic savior any gratitude? Did they lick his hands and praise his courage? No, of course not. Instead, they all hurried into the house, showing him a lot of catitude instead!

But the man didn’t seem overly surprised by this. He dusted himself off, wiped his hands on a rag he found lying around, and also walked into the house, thus ending a spectacle that Flora had enjoyed very much indeed.

She fluttered off again, strengthened in her conviction that the world of man consists of many different types of people. Today, she had met one of its most heroic representatives she had ever witnessed in action.

***

After Chase had rescued no less than three cats from their respective predicaments, he entered the house to find himself in the company of not one, but two Odelias. For a moment, he thought he was suffering from some eye problem. However, when his father-in-law confirmed that his eyes were not deceiving him, he studied Odelia number two and found that she was so much like his wife that it was almost impossible, even for him, to spot the difference.

“She has a mole,” Gran told him. “On the right side of her neck. That’s how you can spot the difference. But apart from that…” She shrugged. “Spitting image!”

“And you say that you found her on the lawn? Unconscious?” Chase inquired.

“The cats found her, and when they did, they immediately alerted us to her presence,” said Odelia. “Dad examined her, and she seems to have suffered a blow to the head. We decided to put her on the couch for now.”

“She has no recollection of who she is or how she got here,” Tex added for good measure. “But if that bruise on her head is any indication, she must have been hit pretty hard.”

Chase nodded and strode over to the mystery woman to give that bruise a closer look. His father-in-law carefully parted the woman’s blond locks, and he saw what he meant. A pretty nasty bump on the woman’s head, where the blow she had sustained had broken the skin. He could even discern the shape of whatever she had been hit with. If his experience wasn’t deceiving him, he thought that it could have been a branch of a tree or some similar object.

“They certainly did a number on her,” he remarked as he stepped back before the woman woke up.

“I’ve asked Marge to come home,” Vesta announced. “Clearly, her husband has some explaining to do. Like when he had an affair with this poor girl’s mother and why he didn’t bother to tell us!”

“But I didn’t have an affair with anyone!” Tex asserted. “I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.”

The sliding glass door opened and closed again, and Marge strode in. Chase’s mother-in-law looked perturbed. “I had to close the library,” she told them. “So this better be good.” But when she saw the woman, her jaw dropped. “What the hell…”

“Marge—language!” Vesta interjected, gesturing to Odelia and Chase’s daughter Grace, who was playing in a corner of the living room, oblivious to her surroundings and the drama unfolding.

“But…” Marge looked from the mystery woman to her daughter and then back again. “But…”

“I know,” said Odelia. “It’s uncanny, isn’t it?”

“But she looks exactly like you!” Marge exclaimed in a loud whisper.

“Your husband has a confession to make,” said Vesta, her arms crossed in front of her chest as she tapped her foot impatiently and shot angry glances at her son-in-law.

“But I don’t!” Tex assured them.

“It happens,” said Odelia. “I mean, people sometimes find their twin on Facebook, you know, or accidentally bump into them at the post office. I’ve seen some really powerful likenesses in people that had never met before, and there was absolutely no way they could be related.”

“Nonsense,” said Vesta, taking a dim view of the affair. “Clearly, your father has a secret second family he hasn’t told us about, and this girl came wandering in here to find her dad, and this is the way you welcome her? Shame on you, Tex!”

“Tex doesn’t have a second family,” Marge assured her mom. “Where would he find the time? No, this is just an incredible coincidence, just like Odelia says. The important question is who did this to her and why.” She looked at Chase as she said this, and the implication was clear: someone had attacked this poor woman, and it was his job to identify the culprit and bring them to justice.

Four cats stared up at him, as did his wife and his in-laws. So he nodded. “Of course I’ll look into this. But first, we need to find out who she is.”

And to that end, he was about to subject her to a closer investigation, to determine whether she was carrying some form of ID, when she suddenly woke up and looked deeply into his eyes. “Frank,” she said in husky tones. “Is that you?” And before he could stop her, she had wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. “Oh, I was so scared, Frank. I thought I’d never see you again!”

When he glanced back at his family, he could see they were all shocked to the core. Then Vesta spoke up. “I don’t believe this. It isn’t Tex who’s been having the affair, but the detective!”

Copyright © 2023 by Nic Saint

For Skingle and Country

Christmas had come and the four of us were looking forward to a fun time spent warming up to the fire crackling in the hearth, enjoying plenty of delicious snacks and the company of our humans. Unfortunately this was not to be, for an urgent royal summons arrived that whisked us away to Liechtenburg, a small country located in the Swiss Alps. One of Europe’s oldest royal houses found itself besieged by a pernicious thief eager to divest its residents of their most prized possessions. But of course this was before a string of murders rocked the nation and plunged us headlong into a Christmas mystery.

The sun shone through the window of Vaasu Castle, eager as always to spread some sweetness and light amongst the inhabitants of that ancient pile, located in the heart of Vaasu, the capital of Liechtenburg, a pleasant little country wedged in between Liechtenstein and its bigger neighbor Switzerland. For centuries Liechtenburgers, as they were affectionately called, had been ruled by the noble House of Skingle, and even to this day, King Thad, the most recent spawn of his family’s infamously fertile loins, inhabited the family’s royal dwelling and reigned not with an iron fist but with a benevolent hand. Supported by his consort of thirty-five years, Queen Serena, King Thad was a much-beloved sovereign, and if some thought it anachronistic that a monarch would still be as invested in the day-to-day running of his country, at least his subjects didn’t seem to mind. Then again, Liechtenburg was a prosperous country, and so no one had much to cavil at and much preferred things to stay the way they were.

Unbeknownst to many, the king had recently been struck by a mysterious illness that had left him bedridden, his royal duties mostly having been taken up by his two sons: Crown Prince Dane and Prince Urpo. The fact that King Thad’s illness hadn’t been officially communicated didn’t preclude it from being widely commented on throughout his realm, since a thing like that is very hard to keep a secret. And so, gossip had been circulating, with some speculating that the king’s final hour had struck and that very soon now an announcement would be made that Prince Dane had been induced to step up to the plate and was to be crowned the new king and head of state.

But as sunrays fluttered across the noble visage of King Thad, laid up in bed as he had been for the past three weeks, they found the subject of all these rumors and gossip in a most foul mood indeed. Now the king had never been accused of being a ray of sunshine himself, but even for him, his mood today was beyond the pale. His wife, Queen Serena, had entered the royal bedroom with an eye to ascertaining whether the monarch felt up to offering his views on the upcoming Christmas ball, but instead of being enlightened by her spouse’s ideas on the matter, she was subjected to the kind of verbal abuse she had come to expect in recent weeks.

“Oh, get lost with your nonsense about the Christmas ball,” the king grumbled annoyedly. “Who cares about some stupid ball when I’m about to die, you silly woman!”

“You shouldn’t say such things, darling,” said the queen, shaken but determined not be browbeaten by her husband. “You’re not going to die.”

“You’re not a doctor, so what would you know?”

Serena had taken a seat next to her husband’s bed and now studied the man she had said yes to in an unguarded moment thirty-five years ago. Back then, he had been as handsome and charming as could be, and the whole prospect of being married to an actual future king had momentarily blinded her to the fact that her betrothed possessed a certain meanness of character that she had only caught glimpses of. But as the years passed, she had come to appreciate the real measure of the man, and the results unfortunately weren’t much to write home about.

Back then, her mother had warned her that Prince Thad was easily the nastiest of the two princes, but she had thrown caution to the wind, having been swept off her feet by the dashing nobleman who was first in line for the throne. To one day become queen was such an enchanting prospect that it had momentarily made her blind to the man’s faults, of which she would soon find out there were many.

“A letter arrived,” she now announced primly.

“What letter? What are you talking about?” Thad grunted as he idly played with his phone. He might have been struck down with illness, but that hadn’t made him put down tools for a single second. Even though the prime minister had suggested he momentarily place Dane in charge of things, Thad wouldn’t hear of it. He might be down, but he wasn’t out—not by a long shot.

“A letter from Buffy Kurikka,” said Serena. She had positioned her hands in her lap, and it took every ounce of self-control to maintain eye contact with her husband, even as his eyes had suddenly gone a little wary.

“Never heard of her,” he blustered.

“She wants to pay us a visit,” Serena continued, undeterred. “To introduce her son.”

“What son? What are you babbling on about!”

“I probably should have said: your son.” Or she could have said: ‘Your bastard son.’

For a moment, neither of them spoke, then Thad impatiently motioned with his hand. “Tell her to get lost. Her and that son of hers.”

“You better tell her yourself. After all, he is your son, and she was your mistress.”

Thad grumbled something under his breath, and for his doing he appeared unusually abashed. This reminder of his infidelity, at a time when Serena was pregnant with their first child, clearly didn’t sit well with him.

It was, of course, an open secret that King Thad, who prided himself on being a man’s man, had never taken the marital vows he had spoken too seriously. In his view, those vows were more a guideline than a set of rules set in stone. A gentle hint or vague suggestion, in other words. And since he was the king, the man who ruled all and sundry, he felt that he was perfectly entitled to sow his oats wherever he damn well pleased, whether in the nuptial bed or without.

The many affairs Thad had engaged in over the years had driven a wedge between himself and Serena, but that had never stopped him from continuing the much-maligned practice until he was of an age when women started to look at him askance when he made advances. Also, with his sons coming of age, Dane and Urpo had started asking difficult questions, mostly concerned with the impact their father’s philandering had on their mother, whom they both loved very much. And so, the affairs had ended, but not the resentment Serena still felt.

It was no big secret that the king and queen occupied separate wings of the castle, and only when in the public eye displayed some token form of affection. Keeping up appearances was important to both of them, if only for the sake of their two sons, who wouldn’t have taken kindly to an official separation or, God forbid, an actual divorce.

Only one of Thad’s affairs had ever led to actual offspring, and even though he had never officially recognized the boy, his existence was no big secret, even though everyone knew well not to bring it up in conversation with either King Thad or Serena.

She threw the letter down on the bed. “Here. You answer it. I don’t want to have anything more to do with that woman or her son.” She got up and prepared to take her leave when a cough from her husband arrested her departure.

“They’re trying to kill me, you know,” he said.

She glanced down at him with a cold look. “Who is trying to kill you?”

“Well, our boys, of course. They want me dead.”

“Oh, nonsense,” she said with some vehemence.

“They hate me,” he insisted. “I can see it in their eyes. Especially Dane. He can’t wait for me to die so he can become king. But I won’t let him, you hear.”

“Nobody is trying to kill you, Thad,” she said emphatically. “You just haven’t been taking good care of yourself, that’s all. Or did you really think you could eat and drink with abandon and not suffer the consequences?”

In no way did Thad even remotely resemble the man she had married more than three decades before. For one thing, he had tripled in size due to his intemperance, and with the amounts of alcohol he liked to imbibe, his liver had probably gone down the same road. According to the Physician to the King, the only way he might be able to save himself was by going on a very strict diet. That and a prolonged period of complete rest. But of course, Thad would have none of that. He wasn’t merely the supreme ruler of the realm but also of his own body, and no silly doctor was going to tell him what he could and could not eat or drink.

He made an impatient gesture. “They’re poisoning me!” he insisted. Then he frowned as he regarded her strangely. “My God!” he suddenly cried. “It’s you, isn’t it? You are trying to kill me!”

“Oh, Thad,” she said with a shake of the head, causing her platinum tresses to envelop her well-preserved features. Contrary to her husband, even at sixty, she still cut quite a handsome figure and was admired by all for her timeless sense of style, her grace, and her patience and kindness. “You’re out of your mind.”

“No, but it’s true!” he insisted, sitting up straighter. “I thought it was the boys, but it’s you, isn’t it? You are trying to get rid of me.” He picked up the letter and waved it angrily in her face. “And it’s all because of this. Revenge!”

“I don’t have to listen to this nonsense,” she announced, head held high in a regal fashion.

But as she made her way to the door, he yelled after her, “I’m on to you, Serena! And I’m going to beat you at your own game. You hear me? You can’t kill me! Not if I get you first!”

Having returned to her own suite of rooms in a private wing of the castle, Serena lost some of her regal fervor. It wasn’t that she was about to break down into tears over her husband’s latest delusional rant, but the fact of the matter was that they had suffered another security breach last night, this time resulting in the theft of a very precious brooch, one that used to belong to her grandmother.

She entered the sitting room and as she did, her good friend Tiia Pohjanheimo immediately rose from the settee where she had been enjoying a cup of jasmine tea, her favorite.

“And?” asked Tiia anxiously. “How did he react?”

“Badly,” said Serena. “As was to be expected.”

“He’s not going to invite the woman, is he?”

Serena shrugged. “He actually accused me of trying to poison him, can you believe it? I’m telling you, Tiia, the man is becoming more and more delusional with each passing day.”

“What do the doctors say?”

Serena had taken a seat next to her friend on the settee, but found she was too wound up to sit still, so immediately she rose again and paced the room, wringing her hands as she did. “They’ve advised him to go on a very strict low-fat diet. Cut out all alcohol, for one thing, which is exactly what he doesn’t want. Oh, Tiia, maybe we should postpone the Christmas ball? With Thad in the state he’s in, I don’t feel up to it. He seems to be getting more belligerent with each passing day.”

“Nonsense,” said Tiia, who might look like the sweetest woman in existence but could be quite forceful if she wanted to be. “As far as I can tell Thad only has himself to blame for the condition he is in right now. You can’t expect to spend all your life eating and drinking and… to put it bluntly, whoring, and not have your body break down at some point. It’s a miracle he’s made it this far, considering he’s put on about a hundred pounds in the last five years alone. The man looks like a whale, honey. And a very unhealthy whale at that.”

In spite of her anxious state, Serena had to laugh at these words. “Thanks for that,” she told her friend. “If there’s anyone who can cheer me up, it’s you.”

She had known Tiia longer than she had known Thad, having met in kindergarten. The two had become firm friends from the first day, and even after fifty-five years, that hadn’t changed. Throughout it all, they had shared joy and pain, heartache and personal triumphs, and frankly, Tiia was in many respects the best thing in Serena’s life, apart from Dane and Urpo and Serena’s grandkids.

“It’s that brooch, isn’t it?” said Tiia, who had an uncanny knack of reading her friend’s mind. “Why don’t you get the police to investigate?”

“Oh, you know what the police are like. Before you know it, the story will be in all the papers, and that’s the last thing I need right now. More scandal and gossip.”

Tiia nodded. “I see. Well, then there’s only one thing for you to do.”

She looked up in surprise. “There is?”

“Do you remember Opal telling us last year how she was being threatened?”

“Of course. Such a terrible business.” Their good friend Opal, who was a big thing in the States, having had her television show for many years and now her own television network, had been plagued by someone sending her threatening letters and messages and even going so far as to try and kill her.

“Then you’ll also remember how Opal enlisted the help of a woman named Odelia Kingsley and her husband, who is a police detective. Together Odelia and her husband managed to expose the culprit and bring them to justice. They did what the police couldn’t do, and in all discretion. So what I would advise is to get in touch with Opal and ask her to arrange for the Kingsleys to come here and catch this jewel thief for you. That way at least one problem will be dealt with, leaving you to handle Thad without the Tiffany Thief adding to your worries.”

Tiia was right. She had enough on her plate right now without the added anxiety over this thief making their lives miserable. So far only a few items had gone missing, oddly enough all of them pieces at one time or another acquired from Tiffany’s, one of the jewelry houses the family favored. Which is why Dane’s wife Impi had decided to christen the thief the Tiffany Thief. She also had one of her favorite pieces of her collection stolen only a couple of nights ago. In her case, it was her engagement ring that had disappeared. Dane had been on the verge of calling the police when Serena had intervened and told him to wait.

“Maybe you’re right,” she now told her friend. “If these Kingsleys are as good as Opal believes they are, maybe we should ask them to look into this for us.”

“The only problem will be that it’s such short notice,” said Tiia. “And of course… it’s Christmas.”

Serena glanced out of the window of her sitting room at the snow carpet covering the ground outside. It had been snowing steadily for the past ten days, and the whole world had suddenly been magically transformed into a winter wonderland. With the castle as its backdrop, the scene now closely resembled a fairy tale. She could see a group of tourists being led through the grounds, eagerly taking selfies with Vaasu Castle as a backdrop. The sleigh that took the tourists around the gardens shimmered brightly, and as the sun hit a patch of snow, it glittered like diamonds. Serena even thought she could hear Christmas music drifting in from down below. One of the tourists must be playing it on their phone.

If only they knew what the actual situation was behind the fairy-tale walls of the castle, they would probably be shocked, she thought with a touch of bitterness. Then she abruptly turned. “Let’s do it,” she said, displaying her usual knack for making snap decisions. “Call Opal and ask to get in touch with the Kingsleys. If they’re available over the holidays, I’ll cordially invite them to join us here.”

Tiia smiled as she took out her phone. Then she frowned. “What time is it in LA?”

“Better wait until they wake up over there,” Serena agreed. The Tiffany Thief might be something of an emergency, but the last thing she wanted was to wake Opal up in the middle of the night. Or the Kingsleys. She just hoped they hadn’t planned anything for Christmas. Most people did. And they might not take kindly to having to suddenly change those plans just because some queen on the other side of the world was faced with a problem.

Then again, no doubt Opal would give it her best shot. And knowing the former talk show queen, she could be very persuasive indeed.

The living room was abuzz with activity as Dooley and I rested peacefully on the couch. Our humans were enjoying one of their oft-organized family dinners, and for the occasion had also invited Uncle Alec and his wife Charlene. As it was, it was one of the last times we’d see the new couple for a while, since they were leaving to go on their honeymoon soon.

“Honeymooning in the sun!” Uncle Alec caroled loudly as he raised a glass to his new bride. “Finally!”

It had been a little while since the couple had been married, and except for a brief vacation, they hadn’t actually had time to go honeymooning. But now, with a lot of businesses closing down over the holidays, and hopefully criminals deciding to spend time with their families instead of relieving hard-working families of their possessions, they had decided it was now or never.

“So where are you going again?” asked Scarlett Canyon.

“The Maldives,” said Charlene with a smile. She looked more relaxed than I’d seen her in a long time. Being mayor of a small town may sound like a great proposition, but Hampton Cove can hardly be called a typical small town, in that we do get our fair share of trouble and mayhem visiting these shores, causing both Charlene and her new husband to be on their toes. But now it sounded as if they were about to dig those same toes into the warm white sands of a sunny tropical beach.

“God, I’m so jealous,” said Marge as she pronged a piece of lettuce with her fork and started eating it with small nibbles. For some reason, she reminded me of a rabbit. “I wish I could join you guys. I could really use a vacation.”

“Well, why don’t you?” said Charlene.

“Take a vacation,” she means,” Uncle Alec hastened to add. Clearly, the last thing he wanted was for his family to gatecrash his honeymoon. “Plenty of last-minute destinations to book,” he added for good measure.

“As long as they’re far away from the Maldives,” said Gran with a wink. “Isn’t that right, son?”

Alec grimaced. “Oh, you can come if you like,” he said reluctantly, making it sound as if the prospect of traveling with his sister was about as enjoyable as having his teeth pulled.

“That’s all right,” said Marge with a smile. “The last thing I want is to disturb you and Charlene on your honeymoon.”

Uncle Alec looked relieved. “I hear San Diego is very nice this time of year. Or what about Puerto Rico?”

“What I would like most of all,” said Odelia, “is a nice vacation in the snow. We haven’t had snow in Hampton Cove for a while, and I think it would be great if we could build a snowman with Grace and get our sleds out.”

“I would love that,” her husband grunted. “Christmas isn’t really Christmas without a nice thick carpet of white.”

“That’s the spirit!” said Uncle Alec. There definitely was no snow in the Maldives. Not even a single flake anywhere to be found. “Go up to Canada if you want snow. Plenty to be found there. Or how about Alaska?”

“Or Europe,” Scarlett suggested. “Though you’d have to go to the north, of course. I doubt they get a lot of snow in Spain or Italy.”

“Oh, but they do,” Tex assured her. “They’ve got some great ski resorts in the Italian Alps if that’s your bag.”

Judging from the dreamy faces all around the dinner table, it was obvious that a nice Christmas vacation was on everyone’s mind. Except mine, of course, or that of my three friends.

“Imagine having to wade through a couple of inches of snow,” said Brutus with a shiver. “Yuck!”

“And the slush and the muck it leaves behind,” Harriet added.

“Oh, I don’t mind snow,” said Dooley, offering the contrarian view. “As long as it’s still fresh, it’s a lot of fun to traipse through it. Though it is a little chilly on the paws.”

“It is chilly on the paws,” I agreed. The moment those snowflakes started to flutter down was the moment I’d hunker down next to the heating and not move an inch until springtime. I don’t know about you, but there’s something very disagreeable about the cold. I much prefer to stay indoors while all those foolish humans rush to be outside at such a time. But then I guess humans are a little weird. At the first sign of snow, they can’t wait to race one another to the door and head out into that world of white. Brrr!

“I hope they won’t go anywhere for the holidays,” Brutus confessed.

“Same here,” I said, adding my voice to the choir.

Unfortunately for us, our most fervent wish wouldn’t be answered, for even at that moment, and unbeknownst to us, dark forces were already conspiring to get us out of the safety and comfort of our own homes and into the wild open spaces of the European heartland, where snow and freezing temperatures would await us. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t as dramatic as all that. But suffice it to say that the moment Odelia picked up that phone—yes, the phone that you can hear ringing if you pay close attention—our dreams of staying would be rudely interrupted.

“Oh, hi, Opal,” we heard Odelia speak into the device.

We shared a look of apprehension. Twice before, this woman had entered our lives, and each time a period of some turmoil had preceded. Once to induce us to pay her a visit in a place called Los Angeles, where we had been instrumental in catching a wannabe murderer, and once when a friend of hers had more or less invaded our home and caused us no small measure of grief.

So it was with a sense of impending doom that we now paid close attention as Odelia exchanged pleasantries with the former daytime talk show host. Before long, she was listening intently, a frown on her face, as no doubt Opal poured yet another story of heartache and sorrow into her ear, requesting her assistance in a matter of the gravest importance and the greatest urgency.

Finally, she nodded and said, “I’ll have to discuss it with my family. But I’ll let you know as soon as possible—I promise.”

That same family was also looking on with a distinct sense of expectancy, and when Odelia hung up, Marge was the first to speak. “And? What did she want?”

Odelia smiled. “You guys, we have all been formally invited by Queen Serena of Liechtenburg to spend Christmas with her and her family at Vaasu Castle! That’s in Europe!” she added for good measure.

The four of us closed our eyes in abject dismay.

“I knew it,” Brutus grunted. “I just knew it.”

Copyright © 2023 by Nic Saint

Read in Order to Die

A wedding between Chief of Police Alec Lip and Mayor Charlene Butterwick had been announced and would soon be taking place in the cozy little hamlet of Hampton Cove. Unfortunately the groom seemed less than overjoyed at the prospect of plighting his troth, and even the bride had second thoughts.

And then of course there was the murder of Vernon Langridge, member of a local writers’ group found dead in The Mighty Pen, a bookstore known for hosting frequent author signings and high-profile events. It didn’t take long for Detective Chase Kingsley to make an arrest when a valuable first-edition book is discovered in the possession of an ex-convict. But when a series of poison-pen letters start arriving that point to the other members of the writers’ group, revealing their dark secrets, it soon transpires that a lot of people had good reason to want Vernon dead.

Now it’s up to Max, that formidable feline sleuth, to figure out what’s going on. Will the blorange detective be able to save an innocent man from being convicted for a crime he didn’t commit? Will the society wedding of the decade go off without a hitch? And will Harriet write her autobiography and become the star she knows in her heart she truly is? Find out in Purrfect Bookshop, the cleverly plotted new installment in the popular Mysteries of Max series.

Odelia Kingsley had been looking forward to the day the new Chanel Birdsey book would finally be available. Blair Beacock only wrote one book a year about her plucky private detective, and since the bestselling author was also a resident of Hampton Cove, the honor of receiving one of the first copies hot off the press was usually reserved for her fellow Hampton Covians. Last year, Blair had selected their local library, where Odelia’s mom Marge worked, as the place for her first reading from the new book. But this year, the honor had been bestowed on The Mighty Pen, that pleasant local bookstore that prided itself on being the heart of the mystery readers’ universe, a haven of everything to do with crime fiction and detective stories.

Which is why Odelia now sat next to her mom in eager anticipation for Mrs. Beacock to put in an appearance. The small room at the back of the store was abuzz with excitement. Many of Blair’s fans practically vibrating with joy at this unique opportunity to meet the woman responsible for so many hours of reading pleasure over the years. The occasion was even more significant than usual due to the fact that it was exactly thirty years ago when Chanel Birdsey had first burst upon the scene, taking up her rightful place next to other fictional heroines like Kay Scarpetta, Kinsey Millhone, and Stephanie Plum. It was a milestone that made this year’s entry into the series extra special.

“I just wish she had given us advance copies,” said Odelia’s mom. “Having to wait this long is like agony, don’t you think?”

The year before, when Blair had picked the library as the venue for her reading, her publisher had been so kind as to offer advance copies to all those organizing the event. After Mom had finished reading the book, she had passed it on to Odelia, who had then passed it on to her grandmother, and so on and so forth until every family member and then some had read the book. This year they hadn’t been so lucky and had to wait along with the rest of Blair’s million-reader-strong global audience for a first glimpse of the book on the day it actually went on sale.

“It’s going to be another great one,” Odelia knew. “It’s bound to be, especially since it’s the thirtieth book in the series. It’s nothing short of a milestone, isn’t it?”

“Oh, of course,” said Mom, who popped a peppermint into her mouth and crunched down on it. She had a sort of ecstatic look in her eyes, as if she was on the verge of meeting a celebrity, which in a sense she was since Blair had long since transcended the kind of life mere mortals lived and had become one of the world’s most beloved authors. The fact that she was a Hampton Cove girl born and bred only augmented her stature in the eyes of her loyal local fans.

“Who’s that guy?” asked Odelia, referring to the little man with the bald pate and the funny-looking mustache rearranging things on the table where presumably Blair would soon take place.

“Vernon Langridge,” said Mom. “He owns The Mighty Pen. He’s an author in his own right, though as far as I know, he hasn’t published a book yet.”

Mom knew all about the local literary scene. Having been in charge of the library for many years now, she had met pretty much every writer or wannabe writer living in Hampton Cove and was a veritable who’s who of authordom. “And that guy sitting in the front row is Kenton Clarey,” she said, referring to a tall and distinguished-looking older man. “He’s a thriller writer. Pretty good, actually. Rumor has it that he’s been tapped by his publishers to write one the next Patterson books.”

Odelia’s eyes scanned the audience and settled on a tall man with gray hair swept back in a ponytail. She knew from last year’s reading that this was Blair’s husband, Teddy, who always accompanied his wife on her book tours. Next to him sat their son Dylan and daughter Carey, also fixtures at these events.

“So nice of Blair’s family to support her career,” she said.

“Oh, absolutely. Blair has never made a secret of the fact that she wouldn’t be where she is today if it wasn’t for her family.”

“I just wish they would finally turn the Chanel Birdsey books into a television series,” said Odelia. “Now there’s something I’d watch.”

But her mom didn’t respond. Her eyes were fixed on the door leading into the room, where Blair had now appeared. Even though the author was probably older than Mom herself, she looked absolutely smashing for her age. Her hair was a bright and vivid red, her pantsuit aquamarine blue and her face didn’t show a single wrinkle. She wore the same engaging smile that she always seemed to have and carried herself with grace and poise as she strode into the room, to the applause of the entire audience and not a few whoops and hollers, which she took in stride with a laugh.

Moments later, she had taken her place on the small makeshift stage, put on her reading glasses, and gave her audience what they had all come for: a few brief words of introduction to the new book, a word of thanks to her loyal readership, but also to her family for their enduring support. Then she launched into the first chapter of the new book.

All around, Odelia saw happy faces and big smiles as their favorite author read from the latest installment in their favorite series. And when Blair recounted how Chanel Birdsey stumbled upon a dead body in typically whimsical fashion within the first three pages, laughter filled the room.

“Looks like it’s another superhit!” Odelia whispered in her mother’s ear.

Mom nodded. “Can’t wait to get my hands on it and dig in!”

The reading didn’t last all that long, and then it was time for a Q&A, first with Vernon Langridge on stage asking Blair some of the more obligatory questions about her inspiration for the new book and a few snippets about the plot and what they could expect. And then it was time to turn it over to the audience. Just in time, remembering she wasn’t merely there as a fan but also as a reporter, Odelia got up and asked, “How would you explain Chanel’s enduring appeal, Mrs. Beacock? Even after thirty books still going as strong as ever?”

Blair smiled. “To be honest? I have absolutely no idea. When I wrote the first Birdsey novel, of course I hoped Chanel would find a readership, but I had never expected her to be this popular, and that I would still be writing her after thirty years. I guess Chanel must have touched a chord, and people really like her. I have to say I like her, and not only because she has changed my life.”

“Are you Chanel Birdsey, Mrs. Beacock?”

“Well, partly I am, of course. Though I don’t think I’d have the courage to go chasing the bad guys the way Chanel does.” She laughed. “If someone pointed a gun at me, I’d run for cover!” She turned serious. “I have to say I still work very hard at the books and don’t take their success for granted. I still get up at five o’clock every morning, plant my butt in my chair, and work all the hours that God gives me to bring you the best book I possibly can—seven days a week, twelve months a year. And then in the evenings Teddy mixes me a drink and we spend time relaxing in our Jacuzzi.” She spread her arms. “Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it!”

This got a big laugh since they all knew that success had bought the Beacocks a very nice beachfront property and all the perks that went with being a bestselling author. It was rumored that Blair had bought Dylan and Carey their own adjacent properties and that the Beacock clan now pretty much owned the entire street. Still, nobody begrudged Blair her success, exactly since she worked so hard to achieve it. Plus, according to Odelia’s mom, she was considered something of a patron saint of the local writers’ scene since she could always be relied upon to give her fellow scribes the benefit of her extensive knowledge or put in a good word for them with her agent or publisher. ‘A rising tide lifts all boats’ was one of her favorite quotes, something she liked to put into practice.

Once the Q&A was over, it was time to get those copies signed. A long line formed in front of Blair’s table, and before long, both Odelia and her mom had finally laid their hands on the latest shiny copy of ‘Get Ready!’ the thirtieth installment in the Chanel Birdsey series. It had that new book smell that Odelia loved so much, and when they reached Blair’s table, the author was so kind to tell the reporter that she and her family were all avid readers of the Gazette, and especially Odelia’s articles.

“You should try your hand at a book,” Blair said. “I think you’d be great at it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Odelia modestly. “There’s a big difference between writing an article and a book, Mrs. Beacock.”

“Blair, please.” She scribbled, ‘To Odelia—the real-life Chanel Birdsey,’ which gave the reporter no end of pleasure. “Just think about it,” she said as she closed the book. “And if you want advice, you know where I live, Odelia. My door is always open to aspiring talent like you.”

“Thanks, Mrs. B… Blair,” Odelia murmured, suddenly feeling bashful.

Blair signed Mom’s book, ‘To the best librarian on the East Coast,’ and then it was time to move along, both women clutching their treasures to their chests and walking out in something of a daze after having briefly rubbed shoulders with greatness. Exiting the store, for a moment they were at a loss where to go next. But then Mom suggested they get a cup of coffee at a nearby coffee shop.

As they took a seat in a window booth, the conversation soon turned to a topic that was perhaps a little more mundane but no less important or close to their hearts: the upcoming wedding of Odelia’s uncle—Mom’s brother Alec—and Charlene Butterwick, mayor of Hampton Cove. For both the bride and groom it was their second marriage, and they wanted to keep things small: family and friends.

“I’m glad Alec is finally tying the knot,” said Mom as she sipped from her cappuccino. “He’s such a great guy, and Charlene is a real sweetheart.”

“They’re so lucky that they found each other,” Odelia agreed.

After Uncle Alec had lost his first wife a couple of years ago, the police chief had been in a real funk for a while. He had dated sporadically, most recently a woman who created commercials for a well-known brand of liquor, but with the peripatetic life Tracy Sting led, their romance had soon come to an end. So it was like a bolt from the blue when Alec and Charlene had somehow hit it off, much to the relief of the man’s family, who thought it couldn’t have happened to a better person.

Odelia, who had ordered herbal tea since she felt she drank too much coffee as it was, thought about the upcoming wedding and felt a little guilty for not having written her speech yet. Being a professional writer by trade, the family had naturally turned to her to give the speech at the wedding ceremony, representing Uncle Alec’s loved ones. She had started several times but felt it quite hard to hit the right notes. Then again, she still had time and hoped inspiration would strike at the eleventh hour. The last thing she wanted was to have to improvise, though, so very soon now she would have to sit down and hammer something out—something meaningful, heartfelt, and poignant.

No pressure!

Vernon Langridge was happy with the way the reading had gone. He had sold a fair few copies of Blair’s new book, but most importantly, the presence of the bestselling author in his store had put The Mighty Pen on the map as the place to be for the book-loving audience. In this day and age of online bookstores and the digital revolution, it wasn’t always a given that readers would purchase their favorite reading material from their local bookshop, so the fact that they had shown up en masse for this reading gave him hope that next time they were thinking about getting some new reading material, they would patronize his store first.

The last stragglers were chatting with Blair, who was giving them as much of her time and attention as she could, and in the most gracious way possible, showing what a true professional she really was. Vernon had been on hand to pass her the books and make sure they didn’t run out, and as the famous author put the final couple of signatures in the final books for the day, he approached her with a smile. “Pretty great stuff, Blair. Thanks so much.”

“Don’t mention it, Vernon, dear,” said Blair as she massaged her painful right wrist. “Though it has to be said that one of those automatic pens is starting to sound really good right now.”

“It’s not the same and you know it, honey,” said Blair’s husband Teddy, who had been keeping track of the number of books sold just as much as Vernon had. Blair’s son and daughter now also joined them. The Beacocks were a tight-knit family and functioned as a well-oiled unit running the Blair Beacock brand. Dylan was in charge of contacts with publishers and agents and went over everything from movie rights to merchandising and translations. Teddy took care of the logistics of the book tours the publisher organized around the time a new Chanel Birdsey came out, and also the financial aspects of the business, and Carey handled her mother’s social media, website, and general marketing. All in all, the family functioned like a small business, though small was perhaps not the right term for the multimillion-dollar empire they had built around Blair’s phenomenal talent.

“So I wanted to ask you,” said Vernon now as he took a seat at the table. “We’ve got our monthly writers’ group tonight, and I was wondering if you would like to join us. I’m sure we’d all be honored,” he added for good measure.

“And I’m honored you would think of me,” Blair said. “But I couldn’t possibly come, Vernon. After a reading, all I want is to relax and soak in a hot tub for a couple of hours.”

“And a massage,” Teddy added. “How about a nice massage?”

“It’s almost as if you read my mind,” said Blair as she directed a grateful look at her husband.

“Another time, maybe,” said Vernon. He had known it was a long shot but felt he had to ask anyway. To have a writer of Blair’s stature at their meeting would have been a major coup, and the other members had talked about nothing else since he had revealed the news that Blair had selected The Mighty Pen as the venue for her book launch this year.

Blair signed the remainder of the books to be sold in the store, and then the Beacocks said their goodbyes, with Blair giving Vernon a quick hug before impressing upon him to, “Keep up the good work.”

He watched as they walked out of the store and was about to close for the day when a motorcycle roared up and pulled to a stop in front of the store. Immediately, his general feeling of benevolence was replaced by a sudden rage—the same rage that always assailed him whenever Jerald Exton entered his life. As he watched, the good-for-nothing punk helped Vernon’s daughter off his bike. She took off her helmet and shook out her honey-colored hair. It was like a dagger to her dad’s heart when he watched the two exchange a brief hug before Jerald got back on his bike and roared off again.

Gwen stood staring after the kid for a moment before approaching the store. When she caught sight of her dad staring daggers at her from behind the shop window, she paused, then seemed to steel herself and crossed the few yards to the entrance of the apartment they shared, located above the bookshop.

With long strides, Vernon walked to the back of the store and yanked open the door that led to the corridor in the private area.

“Didn’t I tell you not to see that boy again?” he demanded heatedly.

Gwen, who had just put her foot on the first step, shrugged. “He came to pick me up. What was I going to tell him?”

“You should have told him no!” said Vernon as he joined his daughter. “Just like your mother and I have arranged.”

Gwen lifted her chin defiantly, and Vernon recognized the gesture. She was so much like her mother it was uncanny. “You can’t tell me what to do, Dad. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not a child anymore.”

“You’re seventeen!”

“So?”

“So, you are still a child! And as your parents, your mother and I are telling you to stop seeing that boy!”

“That boy has a name, Dad. And by the way, Jerald’s mom and dad have specifically told me how happy they are that Jerald has finally met a nice girl for a change. At least they’re not being all hysterical about our relationship.”

“Relationship!” he cried, and had to resist a sudden urge to grab his hair and pull. As it was, it wouldn’t done him a lot of good, since he didn’t have any hair anymore to speak of—and consequently to pull at. “You’re a child and he’s a man! I should go to the police and report him!”

She gave him a look of concern. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Daddy? You wouldn’t want to stand in the way of true love?”

“This isn’t true love,” he said, stabbing an angry finger in her direction. “This is… this is… this is child molestation!”

She giggled. “God, you’re such a drama queen. Even Mom is starting to come around to our way of thinking. She can see how happy Jerald is making me.” She started mounting the stairs. “By the way, he wants to meet you and Mom. Jerald? With my eighteenth birthday coming up, he says it’s time that we make things official, and meeting my parents is part of that.”

At this point, steam was practically pouring from Vernon’s ears. “Well, I don’t want to meet him. And you can forget about things becoming serious between you and this… this… this hooligan! From now on, you’re grounded, young lady.”

Gwen giggled again. “Of course I am.” And with these words, she tripped up the stairs and into the living room upstairs.

Vernon stood glaring after his one and only daughter, slightly panting and wondering how he had failed as a father. And then he thought that maybe he should make good on his threat. After all, when a nineteen-year-old kid dates a seventeen-year-old girl, there were probably laws against that kind of thing, right? Shaking his head, he returned to the store, then walked into his office located at the back and took out his phone. Moments later, he was in communication with his ex-wife Diana.

“Now what?” Diana asked, sounding harried, as she often did when he called.

“Gwen just came home,” he announced. “On the back of Jerald’s motorbike. They’re in a relationship now, Diana. A relationship! And she says Jerald wants to meet us. Make things ‘official.’”

“Look, I really don’t have time for this,” said Diana, and Vernon could hear the clanging of pots and pans. Either she was washing the dishes or cooking. Since she and her new conquest had moved in together, she seemed to spend all of her time in the kitchen. Cesar had political aspirations, and felt that it was important that he entertained the kind of people who were potentially instrumental in furthering his ambitions. Hence the endless string of dinner parties he and Diana liked to throw.

“I told her she’s grounded. But I got the impression she’s not taking me seriously.”

“I think we’re just going to have to accept that she’s at a stage right now where she insists on dating this young man,” said Diana, quite infuriatingly relaxed about the whole business.

“But she’s a child!”

“She’s turning eighteen next month, Vernon. So not exactly a child, I would say.”

“I was thinking about reporting Jerald to the police,” he said. “After all, what he’s doing is probably illegal, right? He could go to jail for this.”

“Please don’t go to the police,” said Diana with a sigh. “It will only make matters worse. Best-case scenario, she will get bored with this kid in a couple of weeks, and he’ll be out of her life.”

“And the worst-case scenario?”

“We’ll be stuck with Jerald Exton as a son-in-law for the rest of our lives. In which case, it’s probably a bad idea to report him to the police. So just relax, Vernon. It’s not the end of the world.”

It sure felt like it. His little girl, a child still, being involved with this grown man! “You know he’s got a criminal record, don’t you?”

“He was picked up for dealing,” said Diana, continuing to be infuriatingly unconcerned and frankly flippant about the whole Jerald thing. “That doesn’t exactly make him a hardened criminal.”

“It makes him a drug dealer. Aren’t you concerned that our daughter is involved with a drug dealer?”

“He’s not a drug dealer, Vernon! And now I have to go. I’m organizing a garden party. My guests will arrive any minute, and the caterer just announced he’ll be half an hour late.”

“But what about Gwen?”

“Gwen is fine. Everything is fine. Just chill already, will you? Stop making such a fuss.”

And with these words, she simply hung up on him!

Chapter Three

Vernon was actually glad that the monthly writers’ group meeting coincided with Blair’s book launch. The excitement that Blair’s customary energetic reading elicited would hopefully carry over into the meeting, since all of the writers’ group members had also been present at the big event. He’d exchanged a few brief words with Kenton at the reading but hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to the other two members of the group, Marina and Tarsha, though he had seen them taking their seats at the back of the room, as eager as the rest of them to enjoy ‘The Blair Show,’ as Tarsha liked to call it.

There was a certain measure of jealousy hidden behind these words, but then that was only to be expected, as Tarsha’s own books didn’t exactly garner the level of interest Blair’s did.

“I thought Blair was amazing, as usual,” Marina gushed. The young writer—the latest addition to their group—was a self-proclaimed fan of Blair and never stinted when heaping praise on their bestselling colleague. “She’s just so amazingly witty, you know. Not only a truly gifted writer, but also great at these public events.” She sighed deeply. “I just wish I had the gift of the gab. I only have to think about a reporter peppering me with questions, and already I start feeling flustered!”

“It’s important to hone that part of our craft as well,” Kenton professed. The thriller writer spoke in his usual slightly pompous style, but then they were used to that by now. Of the four of them, Kenton was easily the most successful at what he did, and he had the book sales to prove it. He was the only one with an actual book deal in place, and so far, six of his Marvin Amis thrillers had been published to great acclaim. Kenton now assumed the position he often took when about to pontificate on one of his favorite subjects. But this time he wouldn’t get the satisfaction of waxing philosophically on the requirements put upon the successful scribe, because Marina interrupted the man’s harangue.

“I think in this day and age, it’s probably more important to hone your Zoom skills,” Marina said. “Or your online marketing skills. At least that’s how I manage to sell my books to my audience—to the tune of thousands of them.”

A silence followed these words, then Tarsha practically squeaked, “Thousands? You mean…”

“Yes, I did!” Marina triumphantly exclaimed. “The Dark Princeling launch was a resounding success! The most I’ve ever sold of any single book!”

Cheers rang out, heartily and earnestly expressed by Tarsha, a little less exuberantly by Vernon, and tepidly by Kenton.

They were in the same back room of the bookstore where that afternoon Blair had held forth about her new book. Gwen was upstairs, hopefully doing her homework, and since night had fallen, all was quiet except for the excitement expressed by Marina about the recent windfall she had experienced.

Vernon had to say nobody deserved it more than Marina, who worked tirelessly at honing both her craft and her marketing skills to turn her books into a resounding success. As a writer of steamy romance, the young woman had recently moved away from trying to secure a book deal and had tried her hand at self-publishing instead, following in the footsteps of many other romance writers. And it had to be said that so far, the signs were very promising indeed. So much so she was actually thinking about ditching her day job as a teller at the bank and becoming a full-time writer.

It was certainly something Tarsha couldn’t hope to accomplish any time soon. Even though she was nearing retirement, the septuagenarian had yet to make a splash. Like Marina, she had opted to self-publish her cozy mystery books, but not successfully. If she sold a handful of copies it was a lot.

Her protagonist wasn’t into high-speed chases or thwarting global conspiracies like Kenton’s but was more the Miss Marple type of amateur sleuth, forever snooping around other people’s private lives and mining them for possible clues and secrets from their checkered pasts.

“I’m being faced with a different problem right now,” Tarsha admitted. She patted her tiny white curls and wrinkled up her face. “I’m supposed to be writing my next Katrina Ford book, but I’m having trouble thinking up a plot.”

“But I thought you had already started writing?” said Marina.

“Well, I had, but then I decided that the plot wasn’t good enough, so I’ve decided to scrap the whole thing and start over. Only now inspiration seems to be in short supply, for I have absolutely no idea what new mystery Katrina should tackle next.” She shrugged her bony shoulders. “As far as I can tell, everything has been done already, and the last thing I want is to repeat myself. So I’m stuck!”

“Writer’s block only exists in the mind,” Kenton professed severely.

“Well, be that as it may,” said Tarsha, “but I’m still dealing with it.”

“Maybe we could organize one of our brainstorming sessions,” Marina suggested. Even though both women wrote in vastly diverging genres, they had been known to brainstorm together and come up with some good ideas for their respective works in progress that way.

“Oh, could we?” said Tarsha gratefully. “I don’t know why, but every time we sit down together, my brain simply seems to open up like a flower, and the most amazing things start emerging.”

“Same here,” said Marina. “Every time I get stuck, I only have to talk to a colleague, and before I know it, the old noggin is buzzing again like a busy little bee, spewing ideas like nobody’s business.”

“A real writer writes alone,” Kenton said with an air of dismissiveness. He was a tall man with an almost-military bearing, which wasn’t surprising since he had been a colonel in the army at one time. Now he devoted his life to expounding on the wild and crazy adventures of his indomitable and daredevil hero Marvin Amis. The fact that Kenton was ex-military was part of his books’ appeal, as he promised a sense of verisimilitude to his fans, which he seemed to deliver to some extent. Though as far as his publisher was concerned—not nearly enough.

“So what’s going on with your contract?” Vernon asked, for there had been rumblings of trouble.

Kenton shrugged. Clearly, the subject wasn’t one he liked to elaborate on. After having established himself as the pre-eminent example of the successful working writer, it was quite the comedown to be having problems with his publisher like this. “My agent is still in talks with them. The latest seems to be that they feel that readers are tired of Marvin Amis and want a different character. Younger and more dynamic. So either I ditch Marvin and launch a new series, or I’ll have to try different avenues.”

“A different publisher, you mean?” asked Tarsha, who wasn’t unfamiliar with the fractious relationship that often existed between a writer and their publisher. At one time she had signed a book deal with a small publisher who had promptly gone belly up, locking up her rights for years.

“That’s what my agent is trying to determine now—if there is any interest with other publishers in taking over Marvin Amis. If not, I guess I’ll have to say goodbye to the man.”

“You could always try self-publishing,” Marina suggested. As an avid proponent of publishing her books herself, she couldn’t understand that there were still writers out there who insisted on chasing a contract with a publisher.

“I very much don’t want to go that route,” said Kenton, repeating a point he’d made on several of their meetings. “I need an advance, Marina. Without my advance, what am I going to live on while I write the actual book?”

“You could get the rights to your old titles back,” Marina suggested. “Publish those, generate sales, and live on that while you write the next book in your series.”

But Kenton shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I’ve already told you that I can teach you all you need to know.”

At their last meeting, she had regaled them with the skills you had to develop in order to be a successful self-published author, and frankly speaking, it was daunting. It wasn’t enough to simply write the book and then hand it over to the publisher. You had to write the book, format the book, get a cover designed or design one yourself, then publish the book, and most importantly, work out a detailed and what sounded like a very elaborate marketing plan to sell the book! Just thinking about it made Vernon feel very tired indeed. And since Kenton had a few years on him, he could imagine the man wasn’t chomping at the bit to go down that particular road this late in his career.

“I’ll wait for the agent to get back to me,” said Kenton. “I’m sure my publisher will see reason and decide to give it another go. Things can turn on the drop of a hat in this business, and who knows, maybe something will happen to make Marvin hit the big time—just like Blair’s Birdsey has done.”

It certainly had been a minor miracle and a major accomplishment for Blair to have become so successful. The Birdsey books weren’t bad, but they weren’t all that great either, and frankly speaking, Vernon was hard-pressed to point out why they were so popular. But then, wasn’t that often the case? As a famous Hollywood screenwriter had once pointed out: nobody knows why one thing bombs and another thing becomes a hit. So maybe Kenton was right. Maybe things would turn around for him, and his books would suddenly start selling like hotcakes, like apparently Marina’s now did.

“So what about you, Vernon?” asked Tarsha, leaning forward and studying the bookseller with interest. “What news on the book front?”

“Not much news, I’m afraid,” said Vernon. Last month he had been able to deliver quite a coup himself, not unlike Marina now, when he had been able to announce, with a distinct sense of pride, that he was in the process of setting up his very first actual book deal at a genuine big-five publisher. “These things take a lot longer than I anticipated.”

“So no white smoke yet?” asked Kenton.

“Not yet,” he said with a smile. “They’re still squabbling over some minor details in the contract. Auxiliary rights and ancillary rights and foreign rights and all of that jazz. It all sounds very technical to me, but my agent assures me it’s crucial to get everything nailed down tight before I sign.”

“You’re effectively signing over your rights,” Marina pointed out. “In perpetuity, Vernon. So if I were you, I’d think twice before I sign that contract.”

They’d had this exact conversation many times before, with Marina arguing in favor of Vernon publishing his book himself, just like she had. But since Vernon’s dream had always been to become a big-name writer, just like Blair Beacock, he simply couldn’t see himself turning down a lucrative offer from a publisher. Not after all the work he had put into securing such a major deal.

“Let’s just see how it all plays out,” he said. He realized that as long as the contract wasn’t signed, everything was up in the air. But he was essentially a glass-half-full kind of person and hoped his agent would be able to pull off a hat-trick and push the deal through the way they both envisioned.

“Any other news we need to be aware of?” asked Tarsha, and so the conversation swiftly moved on to more general subjects, like the rising price of printing costs and paper and the shifts in reader taste, which was something Vernon was a privileged observer of since he was a bookseller himself.

Before long, he was regaling his audience with a remarkable change he had observed, away from the supernatural romance trend and back to the billionaire romance trend that had dominated the market in years past. Kenton wasn’t all that interested and seemed to revert to a brooding stance, presumably still thinking about his book deal. But Marina, especially, hung on his every word since she was a great proponent of ‘writing to market’ and liked to closely follow the trends as they came and went.

It certainly pleased him to no end that he could be instrumental in the success of at least one of his fellow writers.

***

The meeting ended at ten o’clock as usual, and after everyone had left, Vernon retreated into his office to work on his accounts for a while. As a small business owner, it was important that he didn’t get behind on getting all those numbers to add up. Otherwise, both his accountant and the tax man wouldn’t be happy! And he had just been poring over some bills that he couldn’t make head nor tail of when he heard a noise coming from the bookstore. Frowning, he wondered if it could possibly be Gwen, sneaking out to meet her no-good boyfriend again.

“Gwen? Is that you?” he called out. When no response came, he got up from behind his desk and figured he might have forgotten to lock up again after the writing group contingent left. Wandering into his store, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then he saw it: a shadow stood next to the display case where he kept some of his most prized possessions, including a first edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a few books from less famous authors that were nevertheless worth a pretty penny.

He was about to retreat back into the safety of his office when the dark figure sprang forward and lunged at him. A shot rang out in the darkness, and Vernon clutched at his chest where a sudden pain had bloomed. His legs refused to function, and moments later, he was lying helpless on the floor.

The last thing he saw was that same dark figure hovering over him. Then a second shot, and Vernon Langridge knew no more.

It had been a long day, and I was fully ready to enjoy a long night and an even longer nap. Somehow, I had missed out on an outing that Odelia and her mother had engaged in when they decided to pay a visit to a bookshop, of all places, to listen to a writer talking about her latest book. Even though Odelia had suggested we tag along, we had procrastinated to such an extent that by the time the event had finally taken place, Dooley and I were on the other side of town, investigating an urgent clue—the disappearance of a perfectly fine piece of cheese from our fridge overnight. Okay, so I guess I should probably make a full confession now: I had eaten that piece of cheese. But since I know that Odelia doesn’t think cheese is all that great as a source of nourishment for her cats, I had refrained from admitting to this capital offense. As a consequence, Odelia had insisted we find out who had taken the cheese and where they had taken it, which is why Dooley and I had conveniently been in a situation where we could forgo having to listen to yet another author drone on and on about their perfectly boring book.

When one of your humans is a librarian, you can probably imagine that books and writers are quite prevalent and present in our daily lives, even though I still have to discover their purpose in the grand scheme of things. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s probably a good thing that writers exist, but in this day and age, what’s the point? Where is their usefulness? We have television now, after all, and TikTok and YouTube. So who is interested in books, except of course librarians like Marge or writers themselves, who are still hoping to sell those books? Little do they know that the reading audience is dwindling year by year, and pretty soon, nobody will be reading anymore. And that’s a good thing, too. Bad for one’s eyesight, I’d say. And also bad for one’s imagination if everything you put into your head has been conjured up by another person. Better to make up your own stories, am I right?

Our search for the missing piece of cheese led us to our local park, where we had spent a pleasant afternoon lounging in the shade of a tall tree and generally having a wonderful book-free time. When we figured the danger of being forced to attend the book thingy had passed, we returned home.

At the dinner table, Odelia regaled her husband with anecdotes from the reading and even read him snippets from the latest book of a woman answering to the unlikely name of Blair Beacock. It was all perfectly foul, I have to say. As we waited in vain for a piece of pork to fall from the table and land in front of us, or a slice of sausage, I finally decided to give up. Clearly, Odelia had forgotten all about the responsibility she shared with the rest of her family to take care of the well-being of her feline household—for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to perish, till death us do part. She was too entranced by her latest book-reading experience.

Dooley and I left the house through the pet flap and decided to head next door to see if we had better luck over there. Oftentimes, the whole family will share dinner together, and those are more often than not the best of times. Especially Uncle Alec doesn’t stint on sharing the culinary wealth located on his plate with the rest of us and slips us some tasty morsels under the table, even though his sister Marge often tells him he shouldn’t. The most stingy ones are actually Odelia, her mother, and grandmother. They have a firm policy in place that cats shouldn’t be beggars, and they hate it when we circle the table, rub against their legs, or generally make a spectacle of ourselves.

They seem to think that it shows them in an unfavorable light, as if they’re not feeding us well enough, and on more than one occasion they have told me to behave and to stop scrounging. But can I help it that our humans are such excellent cooks? And that the scent of their cooking is enough to cause our tummies to rumble with increased appetite for all the goodies they’re cooking up?

The best persons to approach are the menfolk: Uncle Alec, Chase, and Tex. They are the ones who take pity on us and then feed us from their hands, when the womenfolk aren’t watching, of course.

“So what happened to that cheese, Max?” asked Dooley as we traipsed across the backyard in the direction of Odelia’s neighbors, who just happen to be her mom and dad and grandmother.

“I ate that cheese, Dooley,” I pointed out. “I told you, remember?”

He frowned. “But… if you ate that cheese, then why did we have to go look for it in the park?”

“Because I can’t admit to Odelia that I was the one who stole her cheese. She’d only get mad, and the last thing you want is for your humans to get mad at you.” They might decide to put you on a diet, as Odelia has been known to do on more than one occasion, and always without reason.

Dooley laughed. “Odelia won’t get mad at you for eating that cheese, Max. Odelia loves you! She would never get mad at you for exercising your right as a resident feline to eat a piece of cheese.”

“It wasn’t just ‘a’ piece of cheese,” I said. “It was ‘the’ piece of cheese. The cheese that Odelia had earmarked for her own.” Not all that long ago, a new cheese shop had opened its doors in town. It boasted its own cheese dairy where it created delicious cheeses entirely from its own cows. I’d passed by the store on more than one occasion, and I had never seen a single cow present in the store, so I had a hunch this was simply hearsay. But it was true that the cheese they produced was delicious beyond compare. In fact, it wasn’t too much to say that it was probably the best cheese I had ever tasted—bar none. Unfortunately, it was also the most expensive cheese Odelia had ever bought—perhaps on account of the fact they had to provide those precious cows of theirs with room and board. So when Odelia arrived home a couple of days ago with the cheese she had bought, she had told her husband that this was her cheese and the precious piece was out of bounds for anyone. She had also told her grandmother, her mom, and her dad, and even had gone to the trouble of telling me! As if I would ever touch a piece of property that did not strictly belong to me.

And I would have kept my promise if she hadn’t made one big mistake: last night she had decided to cut herself a piece of her precious cheese, and in the process of doing so, had dropped a sliver to the floor. Unbeknownst to her, I had licked up that sliver, and it had tasted so moreish that I had been unable to think of anything else from that moment onward. I guess I had fallen victim to a state that doctors like to describe as the addictive state. So last night, when the house was quiet and all were fast asleep in their beds, instead of venturing out to join my friends at cat choir, I had managed to pry open the fridge, locate the cheese, and taken a nibble. One nibble led to a second, and when all was said and done, all that was left was the wrapping paper, which I had carefully replaced in the fridge.

That morning, when Odelia opened the fridge in search of her precious and outrageously expensive delicacy, she had kicked up quite a fuss when all she found was the paper, devoid of its contents. In turn, she had accused her husband, her grandmother, her mom, and dad of absconding with her beloved cheese, and when they all claimed not to have touched the stuff, she had finally turned to me and had beseeched me to put my best paw forward and find her cheese for her!

I was on the verge of pointing to my tummy, where the cheese had found a second home away from home, but seeing the look on her face, I decided against it. Like I told Dooley, it’s always best not to antagonize one’s human—a simple matter of common sense and instinct of survival.

“Please don’t tell Odelia,” I now beseeched my friend.

“Oh, of course,” said Dooley vaguely, as he didn’t meet my eyes for some reason.

“You’ve already told her, haven’t you!” I cried, much dismayed.

“Oh, no, of course not,” said Dooley. “But I have told Harriet, and she has told Brutus, and they probably have told about a dozen other cats, and so…” He swallowed uneasily.

I hung my head. It’s all well and good that your humans can understand you, but it’s not so good when you have a secret to hide. “They’ll probably tell Odelia,” I said resignedly.

“Unless you tell all of them not to tell her,” Dooley said hopefully. But even he seemed to realize how unfeasible this suggestion was. Tell a cat not to pass on a secret, and the first thing they’ll do is pass on the secret! That’s what cats are like, after all, and why they’re such great spies.

“She’s going to be so mad,” I said, as I placed my head on my paws. “So very mad.”

Dooley gave this some thought, then finally seemed to have hit upon the solution. “You’ll just have to get her another piece of cheese,” he said. “Bigger and better than the cheese you ate.” He then gave me a look of slight reproach. “By the way, why didn’t you share that cheese with me, Max? If it was as good as you say it was, why didn’t I get a piece? I’m your best friend, after all.”

I gave him a shamefaced look. “I wanted to, I really did, but I simply couldn’t stop myself from eating all of it, you know.”

“That good, huh?”

“That good,” I confirmed with a sigh.

My friend’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Max! Oh no!”

I looked up in alarm. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re a cheeseaholic!”

Copyright © 2023 by Nic Saint

All Aboard!

I know I promised never to set foot aboard another cruise ship, but when Marge and Tex decided to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary by taking a cruise, and invite the rest of their extended family to join them, we couldn’t possibly stay home at some pet hotel. Which is how we found ourselves on board the Ruritania for a ten-day Caribbean cruise.

And I think I may have finally started enjoying myself to some extent, if not a murder had been committed, and Odelia’s dad was being fingered by the ship’s detective as one of the possible killers. As it was, we soon were roped into the investigation, interviewing suspects, gathering clues and generally traipsing all over the giant cruise liner in search of a killer.

Going to the Dogs

When a screenwriter was found dead in the dog park, it soon transpired that a lot of people had an excellent reason to want him dead. Unfortunately they also had excellent alibis. And so it’s safe to say we had our work cut out for us, especially when we learned that the dead man had discovered the secret to eternal life. A pill he had developed that would make people live forever. But was he for real or a fraud? And was this Infinity pill the reason he was killed?

I would have given the case my full attention if Marge hadn’t decided to take us all to the pet salon, figuring we were in need of a beauty treatment. She demanded I receive the ‘full package’ and so I did. If only I had known what was in store for me I would have refused in the strongest possible terms. And then there was the fact that our home was being invaded by no less than two pets: a French poodle and an anole lizard. It was enough to make any detective despair!

Raoul Cauvin had been working hard all morning. He had just finished the final draft of his new screenplay, and even though he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure, he had a feeling this might be it. This was the masterpiece to trump all masterpieces and would turn out to be his chef d’œuvre.

He had been working on the screenplay for many months now, laboring incessantly to whip it into shape. And now, after another sleepless night burning the midnight oil, he felt he’d gotten it just right. As he closed his laptop and sat back, stretching his arms over his head and experiencing a gentle crackling in his neck and upper back, he smiled, knowing he’d managed that rare feat: to write a blockbuster movie. Nobody knows what makes one movie a hit and another a painful and costly flop, not even studio executives, directors, producers, or anyone else who shepherds a flick through the different stages of production to the final release. But Raoul knew. He had discovered the secret.

The movie industry had always fascinated him to a great degree, and he had been its keen student for many years. What fascinated him first and foremost was trying to nail down the formula of what it took to create a blockbuster. And now he finally had it. Even though he knew he could probably make a fortune writing a book about his secret formula, he actually had an even better idea: to write a movie following the brilliant ideas as he had outlined them in his head. Then, once the movie was the surefire hit he knew it would be, he would release his book outlining how he had gone from the initial nugget of an idea to the final product and turn it into a blockbuster movie. The kind of picture people would talk about for decades. The ultimate flick that would blow all the others out of the water.

With his modest ambitions thusly outlined, he had set about creating the perfect hit movie, and now that he had finally put the finishing touches to his screenplay, he knew it was only a matter of time before it was snapped up in a bidding war between the different studios, and he would be on velvet.

“So what do you think?” he asked his dog, a French poodle answering to the name Gina Lollobrigida. “Should I send it out right now, or let it rest for a couple of days and take another look?”

Gina barked once, indicating that he shouldn’t waste time second-guessing himself and simply send off his masterpiece right now.

He grinned and decided that Gina was probably right. And so he opened his laptop again, exported the screenplay in the correct format, and called up his list of agents, managers, and producers he had painstakingly collected over the past couple of months while he was slaving away on his script, engaging other wannabe screenwriters in conversations in the different groups he was a member of. He had collected a list of about a thousand names and now put them all in BCC in an email, attached his screenplay, added a few words of introduction about himself and his hit script, then hit send.

“Done,” he said with satisfaction. 

Gina barked her approval. She never was one for procrastination and favored quick service.

And since now all he had to do was wait until the multi-million-dollar offers started rolling in, he decided to take Gina for a walk. After all, she deserved it, as she had been more than instrumental in the creation of his script. She was, after all, one of the main characters in the story and had been an inspiration throughout.

The story revolved around a retired police officer and his dog who traipse around the country solving crimes his not-retired colleagues find impossible to solve. Through his intuitive approach to policing and with the assistance of his gifted French poodle, man and dog solve case after case, even the ones that are most baffling. In the end, they both become highly sought-after consultants and launch into a second career as private detectives, becoming the best-paid private eyes in the country.

And the secret sauce to this admittedly rather pedestrian set-up? Saul Barker, the main character in the story, can actually talk to his dog, Gina! Now that’s a twist nobody would see coming, he was convinced of it. Almost as if Sherlock Holmes had a dog to assist him in solving his cases instead of Doctor Watson. And the best part was that nobody else knew about this big secret, which had come about after Saul had been struck by lightning one night, and the next thing he knew, he could talk to dogs!

Highly original, he knew, and guaranteed to find an eager audience in both mystery lovers and dog lovers alike. It just could not go wrong with this kind of premise.

He got up to grab Gina’s leash from the hook near the door. The dog immediately jumped to attention. She recognized the gesture and started running circles on the floor, then jumped up at him in anticipation. He hooked the leash onto her collar, and then they were off to the dog park. Already Raoul could see a sequel to his movie, and maybe even a complete series. There could be ten movies with the same characters, or two dozen, or maybe the series would run indefinitely! Or possibly the studio would prefer to turn it into a hit series instead. Whatever the case may be, he was on velvet, and so it was with a song on his lips and a spring in his step that he walked along the sidewalk in the direction of the dog park, where he could let Gina off her leash so she could fraternize with her fellow canine friends while Raoul thought some more about possible sequels and beyond. And merchandising, of course. Action figures of Saul Barker and his dog Gina. Games. Books. The possibilities were endless!

From time to time, he checked his phone to see how many agents and managers had already gotten back to him. Plenty had, but so far only the canned standard response that regrettably they weren’t interested.

It only took one, he knew. One person who saw the amazing potential and decided to take a chance on a new and unknown screenwriter. But so far, nothing.

He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one up. And as he stood there, nervously dragging from his cigarette, a woman sidled up to him. She was accompanied by a small dog, and soon they were chatting amiably about this and that, but mostly about their dogs. He had discovered when he got Gina that dog owners are a most talkative group of people, and that for some, having a dog is simply an excuse to go out and about and meet other dog owners. It sure gives you a great excuse to strike up a conversation since you’ll always have something in common to talk about.

“So, what do you do for a living, Raoul?” asked the woman, whose name was Jill Wheeler.

“I’m a screenwriter, actually,” he revealed.

“Oh, that’s so interesting. Have you written anything I’ve seen?”

The question was one dreaded by all aspiring writers and screenwriters.

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m very much in the beginning stages of my career. But I just finished a script, and I feel it’s probably the best thing I’ve ever written.”

“That sounds intriguing,” she said and gave him a curious look. “What is it about?”

As a rule, he didn’t feel comfortable revealing to anyone what he had written or was working on since he was superstitious that way. But Jill had such a disarming way about her that he soon found himself telling her all about the story. He could tell it was gripping her, as he had known it would.

“And so the dog can talk to his owner?”

“That’s right. That’s how he’s got such a high crime clearance rate.”

She grinned. “The dog helps him out every time.”

“He does!” He was glad that she got it so quickly. But then of course he had known that people would respond favorably to the set-up since it fully adhered to the blockbuster formula he’d created.

Jill had a great smile, he thought. When she laughed, dimples formed in her cheeks that gave her a lovely look. Odd that he had never seen her at the dog park before, but then maybe she was new in the area.

“If you like, I could send it to you,” he suggested.

“Oh, I would love that.”

“It looks a little weird since it’s not a book but a script, but I think you’ll soon get the hang of it.”

“Oh, but I’ve read screenplays before,” she said.

“You have? Not many people read screenplays.” In fact, he only read them because he wrote them himself and liked to keep abreast of the trends and what his competition was up to.

“I work for Nickelodeon as a script consultant, so it’s actually my job to read through all the scripts that come in and separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Now wasn’t that an amazing coincidence? “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone interested in a story like mine, would you? I mean, it’s not a kids’ story, obviously, but if you work in the industry, maybe you could give me a recommendation?”

“Of course,” she said, much to his amazement. “I could even do you one better. Send me your script, and I’ll give it a read. And then if I like it, I’ll send it on to some of my contacts. I know plenty of production companies who might be interested in your story.” She gave him a radiant smile, and for a moment, he felt a little dizzy. Not only had he potentially made a breakthrough with his script, but as he took her in, he felt the early stirrings of something deep and wonderful in the vicinity of his heart.

This woman, he decided, was the full package: beautiful, smart as a whip, and she worked in the same business he was desperately trying to break into!

A sudden urge to impress her came over him, and so he decided to stray from his golden rule not to talk about his book. “I’ve actually been working on something else. It’s a book that tries to analyze what makes a story blockbuster material. And I think I’ve finally cracked the code.”

She gave him an appropriately impressed look. “You have? But that’s great, Raoul. Could you send me a copy of the book? I would love to read it.”

“It’s not out yet,” he said. “First, I wanted to test the theory for myself, you see.”

“By writing a blockbuster movie,” she said, nodding. “Good thinking. And then if you succeed, you can add the script as an addendum to the book.”

“That’s exactly what I was going to do!” he said, feeling exhilarated that there stood a woman so like-minded they were practically finishing each other’s sentences. They loved dogs, they were in the same line of work, and they obviously shared a powerful rapport. And as a certain giddiness took hold of him, he said, “I’ll send you a copy. Then you can tell me what you think.”

“I’d love that, Raoul. I think it’s absolutely brilliant what you’re trying to achieve, and I think you’ll sell your screenplay in no time.”

“That’s what I hope.” And then turn it into a blockbuster motion picture, of course, and prove to the world that he, Raoul Cauvin, had finally cracked the Hollywood code. Which incidentally was the name of his book: ‘Cracking Hollywood: How to Write a Blockbuster Movie.’

They exchanged email addresses, and he promised he would shoot her an email the moment he was back at his desk, both with the script and the book.

“Don’t forget,” she said. “I really want to read what you’ve written, Raoul.”

“I won’t,” he promised. How could he? He’d probably never forget about this auspicious meeting.

He watched Jill walk off to take her dog home, and ambled over to a copse of trees nearby, lit a cigarette and dreamed about going to see his own movie in his own local cinema with Jill by his side. Now wouldn’t that be something? They’d be eating popcorn from the same bucket and laugh at the same jokes and generally behave like any couple would. They could call their son Saul, like the character of his hit movie. And if it was a girl, Gina. And as he stood there basking in the afterglow of a wonderful conversation with an amazing lady, he checked his watch. Now what was taking so long?

Parker Jones had just fed her chickens and wondered if she’d done right by them. She was a lively young woman who believed in growing her own produce, raising her own chickens, and generally reducing her ecological footprint as much as possible. In that sense, she took after her mom, who had been young in the sixties and part of the peace and love generation. And even though Parker was very much in favor of peace, she wasn’t all that sure about the love bit. After all, her dad had left her mom to raise her daughter all by her lonesome, so obviously there hadn’t been all that much love to share. Or maybe her dad had so much love to share he didn’t think it fair to limit that vast output to one woman.

Parker watched as her chickies pecked away at the grain she had supplied with a generous hand, and a smile lit up her face. Even though they hadn’t laid a single egg yet, she knew that any day now they could and would give her all the eggs she needed.

She moved over to her small patch of green located behind her lovely little home. It was a rental, but she had asked for and received permission to turn the concrete deck into a small city garden. And so she had planted a few tomato plants, some lettuce and radishes, and a few herbs, and hoped they would all produce a nice harvest at some point in the near future. She didn’t think it was feasible to grow all of her own veggies, but it was a start. And if she kept this up, she might even be able to prove to her colleagues at work that homegrown tomatoes are that much juicier and tastier than the supermarket variety.

As a graphic designer, she worked for a small start-up engaged in providing artwork for businesses that didn’t have their own in-house art department. Mostly, this involved flyers and websites and such, but from time to time, she got to create some truly unique pieces. Only last week, a shoe store had commissioned artwork to liven up their shop. The theme, of course, was footwear, but she had received carte blanche to do whatever she liked. The store was small and the commission was modest, but it had given her such joy to create these unique pieces she had immediately asked her boss that if any more of such commissions came in, to ask her first. And her boss, bless his heart, had said yes!

It wasn’t much, but it represented a definite stepping stone to greater success in the future.

As an art student, she had dreamed of creating her own designs, of course, but had soon realized this wasn’t all that feasible. And so her mom had told her that if she wanted to get a job that would provide a decent income, she would have to compromise. And truth be told, the company she now worked for was exactly the kind of compromise she thought was suitable for her. The work was varied and challenging, her colleagues fun and quirky, and her boss was kind and open to suggestions—not the kind of corporate shark you find in some places.

All in all, she felt she had landed the perfect first job, and now if she could find the time to keep evolving her own personal style and creating her own stuff, that would be just excellent.

The doorbell jangled, and she rose from her inspection of her tomato plants to see who was at the door. Much to her surprise, it was her best friend Carol, who worked as a buyer for a big supermarket chain. Carol appeared to be on the verge of tears, and as she ushered her into her living room and instructed her to take a seat on her pink couch—in the shape of a pig—she had an inkling of what her friend was going to say.

“I left him,” Carol declared sniffishly.

Parker dragged a few tissues from the dispenser and handed them to her friend, who proceeded to burst into a flood of tears. In gulps and sniffles, the whole story came tumbling out. Apparently, Carol’s on-again-off-again boyfriend of five years, Tim Eltis, had cheated on her and then had the nerve to deny it.

“He lied to me!” Carol cried. “He straight-faced lied to me, Parker!”

“I know, I know,” she said, as she patted her friend on the knee. For some reason, Carol kept forgiving the man, even though he had cheated on her with different women many times. He had even hit on Parker once during a Christmas party, then later denied the fact vehemently and said Parker was mistaken, and he only tried to be friendly. At first, she had hoped that Carol would finally see the light and break up with the guy, but she kept going back to him, only to have the whole cycle start up again, with the same predictable result. None of Carol’s friends could make head nor tails of her behavior. She was a hard-working, extremely competent, and intelligent woman who had made a stellar career at Starmart, and yet she kept associating with this loser.

It was a mystery, and one Parker didn’t think she’d ever be able to solve.

“This time it’s over,” Carol declared solemnly. “I won’t take him back, no matter how much he begs and pleads. He’s really done it this time.”

“Who was it?” asked Parker, even though she wasn’t really all that interested.

“A colleague from work,” said Carol with a wave of the hand. “I caught them in the toilets. They were in the cubicle next to mine, and I thought I recognized his voice. So I stood on the toilet seat to take a look, and there he was: kissing Francine from accounts! Only this time, I took a picture since I knew he’d only deny the whole thing later on. But then when I showed him the picture, he said it was photoshopped and nothing happened!”

“The louse,” said Parker without a lot of emotion.

“Exactly! The man is a louse. Worse, a parasite on a louse! Worse: a speck of dust on a parasite on a louse!”

Parker checked her watch. She should be getting ready for work, and if she wasn’t mistaken, so should Carol. “Maybe we should get going?” she suggested.

“I quit,” Carol announced, tilting her chin in a gesture of defiance.

“Oh, Carol.”

“I can’t work for the same company as that man! So I told him he should quit, and when he wouldn’t, I said I’d quit. And you know what he did?”

“No idea.”

“He laughed! Said I’d never have the guts to quit. So I walked straight to the HR department, and I told them I was quitting—effective immediately.” Then she sagged a little. “They wouldn’t accept my resignation, though. Said I couldn’t leave them in the lurch like that—especially over such a trivial thing as Tim hooking up with Francine.”

“Wait, they knew?”

“I told them,” Carol admitted.

“Of course you did.” Carol was the kind of person who wore her heart on her sleeve. Everyone always knew whether things between her and Tim were at an all-time high or an all-time low. In that sense, her life was like a soap opera that everyone could follow along. Or maybe a sitcom, though Carol wouldn’t have agreed with that characterization.

She now sighed. “I need a different boyfriend, Parker. A boyfriend who won’t keep cheating on me with every single woman he meets.”

“That’s exactly right,” Parker said, for once in full agreement with her friend’s assessment of her complicated love life. “So why don’t you join me and Frank tonight? We’re going to that new place on Boulevard Square. It’s supposed to be amazing.”

“What new place?” asked Carol, dabbing at her eyes with the Kleenex.

“Bae Square. They serve finger food and hors d’oeuvres, and their chef is this French guy who used to work for this five-star hotel in Paris.”

“So what is he doing in Hampton Cove?” asked Carol.

“No idea. But their loss is our gain. So will you join us?”

It was a high-risk proposal, of course, because chances were that Carol would tell them all about Tim all night. Then again, maybe meeting Frank would strike a match, and the two of them would hit it off together. Like most of Carol’s friends, Parker never stopped trying to set her up on a date. They all fervently hoped that she would get rid of that awful Tim Eltis once and for all. And to that end, they had introduced her to a great number of eligible suitors. The only problem was that mostly Carol spent all of her first dates complaining about Tim, which proved a big turn-off for them, and as a consequence, a second date never materialized, proving to Carol that Tim was the only man for her. Then, after they had made up and things were going great again, Carol was on top of the world and forgot all about her boyfriend’s tendency to stray. Until the next time. And so the cycle continued.

Parker grabbed her phone and shoved it into her backpack along with a bottle of purified water, the lunch she made herself, and her wallet. She practically hoisted her friend up from the couch. “Let’s go,” she said.

“If that man so much as looks at me,” Carol warned.

“You’ll tell him to go to hell,” Parker suggested.

“Oh, I’ll do more than that. I’ll slap him so hard—”

“Maybe don’t slap him.”

“No, I’d better not.”

After giving her Persian cat Minnie a peck on the head and a cuddle, she and Carol hurried out of the house and to Carol’s car. Conveniently, they both worked in the same industrial park, located on the other side of Hampton Cove. Carol was at the regional headquarters for Starmart, and Parker worked for Artsy-Fartsy, the modest little start-up. Still, she wouldn’t want to trade with Carol for the world. Working in such a corporate environment would probably stifle her to such an extent that she’d want to run away screaming. And vice versa, Artsy-Fartsy was certainly too low-key and quirky for Carol, who was blessed with a lot of talent and a towering ambition to become a corporate superstar. If only she’d apply that same ambition to her personal life, Parker thought.

Carol navigated the early morning traffic with practiced ease, even a touch too aggressively for Parker’s taste, and before long, they had arrived at their destination. Carol dropped her off in front of her office, and she waved goodbye to her friend, but not before reminding her that they were meeting for dinner that night. At least if Carol hadn’t made up with Tim before then.

Stranger things had happened.

Paul Dolmen looked through his office window and saw that a bird had suddenly appeared out of the blue and started pecking at the kernels of wheat he had liberally strewn on the balcony. He smiled with satisfaction at the sight. Boredom made his life at the company a near-constant struggle, and the idea to entertain a few of these feathered friends hadn’t been his but had been supplied to him by his good friend Raoul Cauvin. The notion that he might look up from his excruciatingly tedious job as a debt adjuster and watch the birds from time to time had immediately appealed to him, both in its simplicity and the fact that it was essentially risk-free.

The debt relief company he worked for didn’t condone its workforce spending precious working hours surfing the web or engaging in counterproductive extracurricular activities. If his boss caught him checking his email on his phone or scrolling through his Facebook feed, there would be hell to pay. In this day and age of the ubiquity of social media and the internet, management did its utmost to keep those productivity black holes as far removed from the work floor as possible. Cell phones had to be placed in drawers, not on top of the desk. Taking a call was permitted if it was related to an urgent family matter. A mandatory cell phone policy was part of the onboarding package for new hires. And managers were always on the lookout for employees who didn’t abide by the rules.

Paul had been caught checking his Facebook feed once and had promptly been called into his supervisor’s office, where he had received a verbal warning, with the understanding that his next offense would elicit a written warning, and a third meant his immediate dismissal.

So birds seemed like a much more elegant option. At least he’d have something to look at during the day apart from the numbers on his screen from people who had gotten themselves into debt and couldn’t claw out of it. And he had just closed the window and returned to his desk when a shadow fell over him. He didn’t even have to look up to know that his office manager Brad had joined him. The man employed the type of rubber-soled shoes that didn’t make a sound and had a habit of creeping up on his employees, then hovering over them as he intently watched what they were up to.

“Those birds,” Brad now said.

“Yes, sir?” said Paul.

“Is that your doing, Dolmen?”

“What do you mean?”

The manager sighed. “Someone has been feeding those birds. Why else would they suddenly show up here en masse?”

“Would you say they’re en masse, sir?” he asked.

“I would, yes. So I ask you again, Dolmen: is that your doing? Are you responsible for those birds suddenly flocking to our windows en masse?”

“Well…”

The manager pinned him to the chair with one look as he leaned a little closer. “You do know that birds poop, don’t you, Dolmen? They poop on the windows, they poop on the balcony, they poop on the street below.”

“Is that a fact, sir?”

“It is. And it’s also a fact that the entrance to the building is right beneath this balcony, causing our clients entering or leaving, as well as your own colleagues, to be bombarded with bird poop. Do you want your colleagues and the company’s clients to be bombarded with bird poop, Dolmen?”

“Well, no, sir, I do not.”

“Then I suggest you refrain from feeding those birds.”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I will, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He watched the manager walk off, checking left and right at some of his other colleagues as he did. Marjorie Mooney had just taken a call, presumably from the daycare where her kids were at, and the manager stopped long enough to listen in on her conversation before giving her a warning look.

She shrugged, as if to say that it wasn’t her fault that her daycare provider kept running into trouble. Brad walked on, shaking his head as he did. Clearly, the man didn’t have a family of his own, or maybe his wife took care of all of that.

Paul sighed and saw how the birds picked up the final remnants of the little bag of grain he had provided that morning. Soon it would all be gone, and so would the birds, and then he’d be forced to look at nothing other than his computer screen and the backs of the heads of his colleagues, who were all busy doing the same work he was doing.

He decided to get up and get himself a cup of coffee in the small canteen. On his way back, he almost bumped into Marjorie Mooney, the same colleague who had been on the phone before. She looked as if she’d been crying, and when he asked her what was going on, she said that a drunk had walked into the daycare center where her kids were and had fallen asleep in the play corner, causing the owner to wonder if they were running a daycare or a bar.

The man had, in due course, been escorted from the scene by the police, but it made her wonder if she shouldn’t stop working and stay home with her kids.

“But I can’t,” she said. “I have bills to pay, and we won’t make it on my husband’s salary alone.”

He nodded in an understanding way, but then Brad caught sight of them schmoozing and directed a keen look at them. He would have said, ‘Break it up,’ but then he must have remembered they weren’t in a prison and he wasn’t a prison guard. Yet.

So Paul and Marjorie hurried right along, with Paul feeling slightly guilty at having been caught chatting with this colleague, even though he could see that the woman was clearly distraught and could have used a hug or a word of encouragement.

Back at his desk, he wondered if maybe he wouldn’t be allowed to bring a fish to work. He could buy a small fish tank and position it on the edge of his desk with a couple of fish. It sure would be nice to look at those little fishies swimming along. Or he could get a hamster and put a hamster cage on his desk. Then again, possibly that was a little too depressing, as watching that hamster run on its wheel would remind him a little too much of himself. And also, he was pretty sure that, like birds, fish and hamsters were against company policy.

All in all, he didn’t have a solution for the touch of ennui that had assailed him. Mostly, he probably should work hard and eventually rise to the position of manager himself. That way, he could tell other people what to do and make sure they did it. It would definitely break the routine—even the rut he was in.

But as he sat staring out of the window, devising ways and means to liven up his work life, suddenly he caught Brad’s incandescent eye, and quickly hunkered down over his computer once more, intent on suggesting ways and means for his clients to ease their burden. And as he sat thusly engrossed, suddenly a ladybug landed on his desk, glanced around for a moment to get its bearings, then started exploring his desk.

Which is when Paul got his brightest idea yet. If he couldn’t have birds, or fish, or a hamster, he could keep a personal ladybug on his desk. He could train it and take it home with him in a little matchbox, and it could be his constant companion. It could be his emotional support bug. He was pretty sure there was no company policy that outlawed ladybugs. And if there was, he could simply grab the bug from his desk and tuck it inside its hiding place, and no one would be any the wiser.

It was the perfect solution to combat that dreaded ennui that threatened to derail an otherwise promising career as a debt adjuster. And as the ladybug started its exploration of Paul’s keyboard, he decided to name it Mike. Though on second thought, maybe he’d better call it Alice, since ladybugs, by definition, are probably ladies, otherwise they’d be called gentlemanbugs.

“Hey, Alice,” he whispered as he brought his face closer to the creature. “I’m Paul. Nice to meet you.”

It could have been his imagination, but for a moment he thought that Alice fluttered her wings, as if to say, ‘Great to make your acquaintance, Paul!’

Gaston looked up when he heard a noise. As was his habit, he had been basking in the sun while reposing on a flat stone. His tongue stole out of his mouth as he pricked up his ears. As a lizard, he knew better than anyone that he had to be on high alert at all times. Any moment, a bird might swoop down and gobble him up whole. Or some other predator might be lurking nearby, coiled and poised to spring. Life in the jungle of Hampton Cove was never without danger. The noise seemed to come from somewhere nearby. It was partly drowned out by the noise of a lawnmower being employed by one of the neighbors. Treacherous devices, lawnmowers. You might be resting on the lawn, enjoying the coolness of the shade, when all of a sudden—zap! This monstrosity would take your head clean off!

His beady little eyes scanned the perimeter, taking into account every possible contingency that might imperil his existence. And that’s when he saw it: a cat, lurking behind a bush. It was staring at him intently, its mean eyes locked on him in abject menace. Of all the foul creatures the good Lord had put on this planet, felis domesticus was without a doubt the absolute worst. Always hungry and with a mean streak that seemed inherent to the species, cats disgusted him. And then, of course, there was the fact that they were trained killers, designed to sneak up on their prey undetected until it was too late.

But they hadn’t counted on Gaston’s innate sense of self-preservation. And as the cat sat ready to pounce, the lizard slipped off that stone as if powered by a battery: one moment he was there, the next he was gone. Poof. Like a puff of smoke. Gaston, the stealth lizard, had done it again. He thwarted his wannabe captor’s evil designs and, in one fell swoop, dealt it a devastating psychological blow.

***

Dooley, who had been admiring that nice green lizard from afar, wondered where it had suddenly gone off to. He had just been about to engage the fascinating creature in conversation when all of a sudden, it just vanished. Almost as if it had gone up in smoke somehow. Which, of course, was physically impossible. Unless the lizard had been a figment of his imagination. A mirage, so to speak. It had seemed real enough, though. And so nice and green that he just had to touch it. Now, of course, he wouldn’t since it was gone.

He turned to his friend Max, who was lying on his back on the lawn, his four paws in the air, his mouth slightly open, enjoying a refreshing nap.

“Max, did you see that lizard?”

“Mh?” said Max, indicating he wasn’t all that eager to talk.

“The lizard? Did you see it? It’s just that it suddenly disappeared. Almost as if it disintegrated or something.” And then he had it. “Max! It was probably a time traveler! Arriving here from the future—or the past—to look around. And then after it saw what it came here to see, it simply returned to its own time.”

“Time travel doesn’t exist, Dooley,” Max remarked stoically, without even opening his eyes once or moving an inch from where he lay.

“Are you sure? ‘Cause I could have sworn that lizard was traveling through time.” At the very least, it was traveling through space. Or maybe space and time!

“Time travel doesn’t exist, and time-traveling lizards don’t either. They are fast, though. One moment you see them, but blink and they’re gone.”

“They must move in a different dimension, then,” Dooley suggested. “They pop up in our dimension for a moment and then pop out again.”

“They’re simply fast, Dooley,” said Max. “So forget about dimensions or time travel or whatever. That lizard must have seen you, figured you represented a clear and present danger, and decided to skedaddle.”

“But I don’t represent any danger,” said Dooley. “I just wanted to have a chat.”

“Obviously, the lizard didn’t feel the same way. Now leave that creature alone and take a nap.”

Dooley wasn’t in the mood to take any naps. He had his mind set on talking to that lizard, and now that it was gone, he felt like a person who expects a final step going down a stairwell and discovers there isn’t one. A sort of general feeling of disorientation. “Can’t you ask it to come back?”

“No.”

“But Max—I want to talk to him—or it—or she.”

“Why?”

Clearly, Max wasn’t in an overly garrulous mood. Then again, he had been napping, and apart from his eating times, Max considered nap time sacred. If he didn’t get enough sleep, he could get cranky.

“I saw a documentary about lizards the other day, and it said they’re really interesting creatures. So I wanted to ask it how it felt to be so fascinating.”

A sort of gurgling sound emanated from the resting form of his friend, and it took Dooley a moment to identify it as Max chortling with perfect glee.

“You want to ask a lizard why it’s so fascinating?”

“That’s right. And also, why it’s got that nice green color. So vivid.”

For a moment, there was no response. Then Max turned himself the right side up and came wandering over to where his friend was still seated, looking at that flat stone which was now decidedly lizard-free.

“Mr. Lizard?” asked Max. “Are you there? My friend here would like to ask you a few questions. He’s a keen student of nature, you see, and to talk to you in the flesh would be an honor and a privilege.”

“Well put, Max,” said Dooley admiringly. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

The lizard didn’t seem to agree with this assessment, for despite Max’s eloquence, it didn’t show its bright green form. And since the surrounding lawn and bushes were all the same color, it was probably tough going to spot it, which of course was part of its enduring appeal. Camouflage, the nature documentary he had seen called it. Lizards knew how to hide in plain sight.

For a moment, he scanned his surroundings to find a trace of the creature, but try as he might, he simply couldn’t find it.

“Mr. Lizard?” Max tried again. “My name is Max, and this is Dooley. We might be cats, but we’re not out to harm you in any way.”

“We’re vegetarians,” Dooley pointed out.

“No, we’re not,” said Max. “But as a rule, we don’t eat lizards.”

Dooley shivered. “How could anyone want to put lizard on the menu, Max?”

“Oh, there are plenty of creatures who eat lizards,” Max pointed out. “Every animal has natural predators, Dooley, so I’m sure lizards aren’t too keen on making our acquaintance, figuring that we are part of this predatory horde.”

“We are not going to eat you, Mr. Lizard!” Dooley yelled. “We don’t even like lizards. I mean, to eat. We like you better alive than dead.”

Max chuckled again. “You’re on fire today, Dooley.”

Dooley had absolutely no idea what his friend meant by that, but since he often didn’t understand his friends when they discussed things amongst themselves, he decided to let it go. First, they needed to attract the lizard’s attention, then engage it in conversation and impress upon the creature the fact that they weren’t in the business of eating lizards, and then he could start asking it all the questions he had saved up after watching that documentary.

“What do you want?” suddenly a gruff voice asked. It seemed to emanate from somewhere in the vicinity of the large mushroom that had recently sprung up at the edge of the lawn. It was part of a family of mushrooms, and even though Gran said she abhorred mushrooms, Odelia had forbidden her grandmother from removing them with a spade, as she had threatened to do.

“We just want to talk to you,” Max said. “Well, my friend especially.”

“I have nothing to say!” the lizard announced.

“That’s all right,” said Dooley. “I’ll talk, and you can just listen if you want. But I have to say that I have a lot of questions for you, Mr. Lizard.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, so do you use a litter box like we do, or do you do your business somewhere else? And do you eat kibble, and if so, what brand do you prefer? Who is your human, and where does he live? And where do you sleep?”

For a moment, silence reigned. Then the lizard shot back, “What kind of questions are those?”

“Just some things I’ve been wondering,” Dooley said. “Questions I had after watching your documentary on television the other day. They didn’t say anything about all of those things, and I, for one, think it’s very important to know where a pet sleeps, or eats, or does his business. These are the building blocks of life, you see, and if you know this stuff, you also know the pet.”

“What makes you think I’m a pet, cat?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

The lizard was silent.

“You’re a green anole,” Dooley pointed out, “which doesn’t naturally occur on Long Island. Our climate is too cold. So I’m guessing you escaped from your terrarium, figuring you’d have a blast. But once the weather turns inclement, you’ll have a hard time adjusting, Mr. Lizard. And besides, your humans were probably worried sick when they found you gone, so you should take that into consideration.”

“How did you figure all of that?” the lizard asked, sounding incredulous.

Dooley smiled. “I learned a lot from my best friend Max. He’s a detective, you see, and I’m always by his side when he conducts his investigations.”

“Okay, fine,” said the lizard. “So I’m a pet. And yes, I did escape from my home since I don’t like being cooped up inside a small tank. But if you think for one moment that I’ll be guilted into going back, you’re sadly mistaken, cat.”

“Dooley. And this is Max. What’s your name, Mr. Lizard?”

“Gaston. And now please leave me alone. I don’t trust you, and I don’t trust your kind. You can talk a good talk, but at the end of the day, all you want is to eat me.”

“Oh, but I can assure you that we’re not interested in eating you at all,” Dooley said. “We’ve got our own food in the kitchen, and that’s quite enough for us.”

“Mh,” said the lizard and clearly wasn’t buying what Dooley was selling.

“So what do you eat?” asked Dooley, prepared to make mental notes of the interview, vowing to add it to his little pile of information on all of God’s great creatures, great and small.

“Well, crickets, of course,” said Gaston. “And worms and other assorted bugs. Why, do you have some for me?”

Obviously, the poor lizard was starving. Which just goes to show that if you bite the hand that feeds—or escape from it—you will regret it later on.

“I don’t have any crickets, if that’s what you mean. But if I could make a suggestion, I’d say you better return home, Gaston. I’m sure your humans will be so happy to see you they’ll organize a feast for you, and you will be able to eat to your heart’s content. The prodigal lizard returns and all that.”

“I told you, I’m not going home,” said Gaston coldly. “But if you have some food to spare, I’d be most appreciative.”

“Just leave him be,” Max suggested. “Clearly, he doesn’t want to talk to us or listen to your advice. So if he wants to brave the bad weather spell that’s been announced, he’s welcome to it.”

“Bad weather?” asked the lizard. “What bad weather?”

“Temperatures are reported to drop precipitously, and we’ll have some rain and maybe even a hailstorm.”

“A hailstorm!”

“This isn’t Florida or the Caribbean, Gaston,” Max pointed out. “This is Long Island, not the tropics. So if you want to survive, you should let bygones be bygones and return home. Otherwise, you might not survive these coming weeks.”

“Oh, dear,” the lizard said. “That doesn’t sound good.” He sighed. “Look, it’s not that I have anything against these people. Just that they keep staring at me, you know. And not only that, but they’ll also grab me from my terrarium at all hours of the day or night and start messing with me. I don’t like it.”

“Kids, probably?” asked Max.

“How did you know? There’s a little girl, and she’s the absolute worst. Seems to think I’m a toy or something. Only last week she tried to put makeup on me. Said I looked a little pale and she was going to fix me right up. Oh, the horror!”

“If you like, our human can take you back, and then add some pointers on how to take care of a pet lizard,” Max suggested. “Maybe the parents don’t even know what their kids are up to.”

“You can say that again.”

For the first time since they had started their conversation, the lizard now came peeping out from behind a clump of grass. He still looked trepidatious about showing his face, but at least he wasn’t hiding anymore, which was progress as far as Dooley was concerned.

“So you’re not going to eat me?” Gaston asked.

“Absolutely not,” Dooley assured the bright green lizard. “Now, about that color of yours. How do you get it to look so nice and green?”

“Dooley, maybe not now,” Max suggested.

And maybe Max was right. Gaston didn’t seem to be in the mood to answer a lot of personal questions. Instead, he probably just wanted to go home, provided these kids left him alone and didn’t mess him about too much.

And since essentially Dooley wanted Gaston to be happy, he decided to drop the questionnaire he had prepared and instead focus on how to get Gaston home again. As it turned out, he lived not all that far from them, which was to be expected, as lizards probably aren’t great travelers. Then again, he had traversed several gardens to arrive in theirs, so he had lived through quite the adventure.

Before long, they had alerted Odelia of the presence of a guest in her backyard, and with his permission, she had captured the lizard, placed him in a large plastic container with holes for ventilation and a newspaper as a base, and they were on their way to the family Gaston had escaped from.

Copyright © 2023 by Nic Saint

Holly Mitchell checked the big chest of toys in the living room for a sign of her daughter’s security blanket. Ruby, who was four, had been crying up a storm all day, wondering where her precious rabbit-shaped blankie could be. She had probably dropped it somewhere, or possibly their teacup Chihuahua Babette had taken the blanket and buried it out in the backyard. But wherever it was, she better find it. Ruby’s big brother Sylvester had been trying to comfort his little sister, but to no avail. Without Mr. Longears she simply would not be comforted.

“Here, give her this,” said Holly’s mom, and surreptitiously handed Holly a blankie that looked almost indistinguishable from the original. “I got it from the same store,” she added under her breath. The four of them had gone to the mall that evening, and had just now arrived home.

“I guess it’s worth a shot,” Holly said, and proceeded to make a big display of ‘discovering’ Mr. Longears under one of the couch cushions. “Ooh, look who I found!” she cried.

Ruby’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, but as she grabbed for her precious toy, she said, “He smells funny!”

“That’s because I washed him,” Holly explained. “Even rabbits need a bath sometimes.”

Ruby gazed up at her with those big eyes of hers, then smiled a gummy smile and proceeded to bury her face into her blankie. “I missed you, Mr. Longears!” she declared solemnly. “Don’t run away again!”

“Mission accomplished,” Holly told her mom with satisfaction. The mystery of the missing blankie hadn’t been solved, but at least Ruby was happy again, and that was all that mattered.

It wasn’t always easy to raise two kids on her own, but fortunately she got a lot of help from her mom and dad. After her husband Eric had died in a freak accident four years ago, she suddenly found herself a widow, and the adjustment, coming on top of the grief of Eric’s death, had been painful. But somehow they had all managed to find a new normal and adjust as well as they could. Even though the kids still asked about their daddy from time to time, especially Sylvester, who had been four at the time, they didn’t seem to have been adversely affected too much. They both did well in school, and Holly tried to make their home as warm and cozy and happy as she could.

“I don’t think you should go,” her mom now said.

“Why? Can’t you babysit them?” she asked.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just that…” Mom made an ineffectual gesture with her hand. “I don’t know. Maybe this is just me being silly, but I’ve just got a bad feeling about this, you know. Especially since…” She glanced over to where the kids were sitting on the couch, both admiring Mr. Longears.

“It’s not going to happen again, Mom,” Holly assured her. “Freak accidents are exactly that: freakish in their rarity. It’s not going to happen again,” she repeated, more to herself than to her mom. It was true that the same thought had entered her mind when her boss had selected her to give a sales presentation to their Boston team. Eric, too, had been on his way to an important presentation when his car suddenly veered off the road and had crashed into a ditch. No other drivers had been on the road that night, and the brakes on his car had functioned perfectly. The insurance company and the police had conducted their investigations, but neither had been able to explain what caused Eric’s car to careen off the road like that. And now she would be heading to the same hotel in the same city to give a presentation. If her boss had known about what happened to her husband, maybe he wouldn’t have selected her. But then she wasn’t the kind of person who liked to discuss her private affairs.

“Okay, so maybe you can tell them that now is not a good time,” her mom suggested. “That you need to be with your family right now? Maybe tell them that Ruby is, I don’t know, teething?”

Which wasn’t a lie, since the last of Ruby’s baby teeth had recently started appearing. In that sense she was definitely a latecomer, but according to the dentist it was nothing to worry about.

“If I did that, they’d simply select someone else to give the presentation, Mom.”

“So? Is that so bad?”

“It would also put me down a few pegs in the pecking order. Next time a big presentation comes up, they’ll think twice about asking me. And before you know it, I’ll be gently pushed toward the exit.”

“That’s a pretty inhumane way to run a company.”

“Inhumane or not, they want to know they can always rely on me.”

“It’s the anniversary of Eric’s…” She glanced over to the kids, then whispered, “Well, you know.”

“Of course I know, Mom. But if I let Eric’s death control my life like that, I’ll never go anywhere ever again. Accidents happen, and just because it happened to Eric doesn’t mean it will happen to me.”

“Maybe you could ask someone to drive you,” Mom mused. “Book an Uber, maybe?”

“It’s fine. I’ll be careful,” she promised.

“And call me every hour on the hour to let me know how you’re doing.” She frowned. “Or maybe we should turn it into a family trip? We could all join you. The kids, me, your dad. You know, we could see the city while you do whatever it is that you have to do, and then we’ll meet up at the hotel and have a good time. That way I won’t spend the whole weekend worrying about you.”

She smiled at her mom. “That’s sweet of you, Mom, but it’s really not necessary. I’ll be all right.”

“Who’s talking about you? I’ll be worried sick, and I’m not even talking about your dad. With his heart condition, he shouldn’t be put through the wringer like this.”

Holly thought about this. Her mom was right, of course. It was bad enough that Dad had lost his beloved son-in-law. If he ever lost his daughter too, that would be the end of him. But then she knew she couldn’t think like that, or she would never venture out of the house again—ever. So instead, she decided to change the topic. “So have you and Dad decided on the big move yet?”

Mom made a throwaway gesture with her hand. “Oh, forget about that. Your dad will never go along with me on that one. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he wants to keep on living in that house forever—until his dying day. I keep telling him that place is much too big for us, and we should sell and move into something smaller. But you know your dad. The man is as stubborn as a mule. He keeps telling me that when you repot a plant there’s a good chance that it will die. And so if we repot ourselves, there’s always a chance we won’t survive.”

“People aren’t plants, Mom,” she pointed out.

“I know that, and you know that, but try telling that to your dad!”

“Anyway, sooner or later you’ll have to move. That garden doesn’t take care of itself, and neither does the house.”

Mom and Dad had bought the big house anticipating they’d raise a big family. And they had. With five kids in the house, at one time it had seemed too small to accommodate them all, especially when they had hit their teens and needed a lot of personal space. But since they had all left, the house definitely was too big to maintain, and even though they had been gently pushing their dad to sell up and move into a comfortable apartment in town, with an elevator and all the comforts he and Mom needed, the man was refusing to budge.

“Until he finally sees the light,” said Mom, “I’ll have to keep paying Maria to come in twice a week, and Arturio to keep up gardening duties. At least those two are very happy with your dad’s stubbornness.”

To Holly and her siblings their parents’ marriage was the gold standard by which they measured their own relationships. Even after forty years the love and respect they had for each other was still palpable. According to Mom it hadn’t always been that way, and shortly after they were married they had hit a rough patch. But as she liked to tell the story they had worked to overcome their differences, and after having raised five kids who now all had kids of their own, their marriage was stronger than ever. Now if only Dad would let go of the old house. Holly understood, though, and secretly didn’t want them to sell the place either. After all, there were so many memories there—all happy ones.

Holly and her mother watched for a moment as the kids sat transfixed by the new and improved Mr. Longears, with Ruby giving him a million kisses and Sylvester giving his sister a big protecting cuddle. Then Holly went in search of Babette, who had been barking up a storm in the kitchen. She had almost reached the back door, assuming Babette wanted to be let out of the house—they always locked the pet door when they went out—when she almost stumbled over something lying on the floor. She switched on the light and, as she took a closer look, discovered to her horror that it was a man she had never seen before. And if she wasn’t mistaken, the man was very much dead!

Mark Cooper watched the hullabaloo going on across the street from his bedroom window. There were a lot of lights flashing and police cars coming and going, and he wondered what was going on. As a retired math teacher, he knew the odds of a tragic event taking place in the same family were slim to none, so a second death taking place in the same family was highly unlikely. Probably the mother had taken a bad fall and had to be taken to the hospital, he thought. Or maybe the dad had suffered a cardiac arrest. He hoped the kids were all right. Even though he didn’t like Holly, he wouldn’t want to see any harm come to her kids. After all, they couldn’t help it if their mom was an annoying so-and-so.

The family had definitely suffered through their share of tragedy, with Eric Mitchell dying a couple of years ago. Though this idea that Holly and Eric had been a dream couple was nonsense, of course. Once he’d passed by their house late at night walking Melvin, and he’d heard the couple engaged in a screaming match that had turned his ears red and had even caused Melvin to look up in alarm. Young love, he thought at the time. One minute they’re crazy about each other, and the next they can drink each other’s blood.

According to the scuttlebutt, Eric had died in a road accident. Driven his car into a ditch. Holly had turned from a blushing young bride into a widow overnight, and now, four years on, there was still no sign of a new man in her life. Maybe there would never be one. Some women were like that. They lost the love of their lives and never wanted to remarry again. To be honest, he had also been like that. But then he and Jackie had been together fifty-five years before she passed, which was more than Holly and Eric ever had.

Next to him, Melvin also looked at the house across the street, fascinated by all the bright lights.

“What do you say if we take our walk now, Melvin?” he suggested. He could linger across the road for a while, joining the other rubberneckers and ambulance chasers, and maybe find out what was going on over there. He’d read all about it in tomorrow’s paper, of course, or on the Gazette website. For he’d already seen that Odelia Kingsley woman arrive, along with her husband Chase, the police detective. As usual, they were accompanied by their cats, which struck him as very strange indeed, but then such was life in Hampton Cove. All the eccentrics seemed to flock there. “Must be something in the water,” he told Melvin. And as if he understood what his human was saying, the poodle yapped in agreement.

***

Mae West was just on her way back from the dog park, where she had walked her Alsatian, Roger Moore, when she was struck by the presence of all those police cars on her street. When she drew closer, she saw that they had all gathered at the place where the Mitchells lived, though it was probably more accurate to say that Holly Mitchell lived there, since Eric had died a couple of years ago now, in some tragic accident she didn’t know the details about, nor did anyone else as far as she knew.

“Now what do we have here?” she asked as she approached. The police had cordoned off the area, so she couldn’t actually get close to where the action was, and she joined the other people gawking at the events as they unfolded. She found herself standing next to Mark Cooper. Mark had come out accompanied by his poodle, Melvin, and as the two dogs proceeded to sniff at each other, she and Mark exchanged a greeting. Even though she had never particularly liked Mark, she had always tried to maintain a cordial relationship with the man, if only because they were neighbors and forced to bump into each other on a regular basis, especially since they were both dog owners and met one another in the local dog park every day. All the dog owners on the block were members of the same WhatsApp group and kept in touch that way. But Mark, being one of the more overbearing neighbors she had ever encountered, liked to boss the others around to some extent, something she hated.

Her husband, Julio, had always said about Mark that if he had been a general in the army, his own soldiers would have turned against him and shot him. But since they were merely neighbors and Mark wasn’t a general but a retired math teacher, no shootings had occurred so far.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“No idea,” said Mark. “It started about an hour ago. First, one police car arrived, then an ambulance, then this whole fleet of police cars. That Kingsley reporter went in with her detective husband, so it must be something big if those two are involved.”

Mae knew just what Mark was referring to. Chase Kingsley and his wife were big on handling murder inquiries, of which there had been far too many recently. So if they had gone in, this couldn’t be Holly’s mom who had stumbled over the dog and taken a nasty tumble.

“Do you think… It’s murder?” she asked.

“Has to be,” said Mark, “if the Kingsleys are involved. And the Kingsley woman had her cats along with her, so that probably means they’ll be here all night, sniffing out clues and generally making a big spectacle of things.” He sniffed audibly, and contempt was written all over his features. Not every dog owner hates cats, but Mark sure did. In fact, it wasn’t too much to say he abhorred the species with a vengeance and wouldn’t have minded if cats became extinct at some point.

“I can’t imagine. Murder? Here on our street? But who? And why?”

“Like I said, no idea,” Mark confessed, and he sounded disappointed as he said it.

“You don’t think… Holly?” asked Mae. Even though she wasn’t overly fond of Holly Mitchell, she couldn’t help but feel some measure of sympathy for the woman. After the tragedy that had befallen her, she still did her best to give those kids of hers a good upbringing. Her parents had been a big help, of course, especially Holly’s mom, who was always there to take care of her grandkids.

“I think it must be the mother,” Mark now said. “Maybe they got into a fight and things got out of hand. I just can’t see what else it could be,” he hastened to add when Mae expressed her shock and dismay at these words.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said. “I only hope… It’s not one of those family tragedies you always hear about. You know, that she first killed her kids and then herself.”

Mark’s face contorted into a frown. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “Now that would be a tragedy.”

She glanced up at her neighbor. Rumor had it that Mark Cooper had been sweet on Holly for a while. Though he was far too old for the woman, of course. But it had to be said that Holly Mitchell was an attractive woman. Possibly too attractive for a widow. But then she had become a widow at a very young age. They had only been married a few short years when tragedy struck.

Roger Moore was straining at the leash to take a look, and now she saw what had caused him to become restless. The Kingsleys were walking out of the house, accompanied by their cats. Roger Moore barked at the cats, and so did Melvin. The cats looked a little intimidated, she thought. They were a big red cat and a small fluffy beige-gray one. Odd, she thought, that the Kingsley woman wouldn’t go anywhere without her cats in tow. Then again, she never went anywhere without Roger Moore, so maybe it wasn’t all that odd. Just that people didn’t usually take their cats with them. They might be companion animals, but not when you ventured out of the home.

One of their neighbors shouted a question at the passing detective, but Kingsley merely held up his hand. No comment, the gesture seemed to suggest.

“Who died?” she suddenly found herself piping up. But the couple passed by without deigning her with a response. Looked like they’d have to read about it in the paper or see it on their local news. And since Roger Moore had started tugging on his leash, eager to get home and have a bite to eat, she said goodbye to Mark and headed on home. On the way there, she passed Norma Parkman, the butcher’s wife, and wondered what the woman had done to her face this time.

***

Norma Parkman wondered why that Mae West woman was staring at her as if she had something stuck to her face. But then she was used to being gawked at on a regular basis. Most people she met seemed to find her fascinating to look at, and so over the years, she had begun to consider it a compliment. Her husband Mikel always said it was because she didn’t look like most people, and so they had to adjust their expectations when they first met her. He said she was exotic and had an interesting face. She knew this to be all too true, for when she looked in the mirror in the morning, she sometimes had to adjust her own expectations too. Then again, it was a tough struggle trying to remain as youthful-looking as she did. Oddly enough, it only seemed to become more difficult as the years passed. At fifty-seven, she sometimes felt she was fighting a losing battle, but then Mikel said that was nonsense and she looked every bit as lovely as she had when they first met, back when they were both fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds.

She gave Mike’s leash a light yank and wondered why it was always her who had to take the damn pug for a walk and why Mikel was inside watching television while she was out there being bored to tears while Mike took his sweet time to do his business. When she caught sight of the flashing lights and the array of police vehicles parked in front of the Mitchell place, her first thought was that Holly’s dad had had another stroke. After that first one he’d had a couple of years ago, it was only a matter of time before he suffered a second one, more debilitating this time and possibly deadly. It was always the way, wasn’t it?

She just hoped he hadn’t died. Holly had already had her share of heartache over the years. First Eric had died, and then, as a consequence, Eric’s own dad had suffered cardiac arrest and had turned into a vegetable, only to die six months to the day his son had died. And then Eric’s grief-stricken mother had also died, wilting like a flower, as one of their neighbors had described it. She was a nurse in the hospital where both Eric’s parents had been admitted and said it was as clear a death from grief as she had ever seen.

So now Holly only had her own mom and dad left, and if the good Lord took those away as well, that would be terrible.

Oh, life just wasn’t fair sometimes, was it? Just look at her. Her last boob job had been botched by that terrible surgeon, and now her left boob was slightly bigger than her right, and not only that, but it hung lower than its cousin. Mikel said he didn’t mind, but she sure as heck did. She had already made another appointment at the clinic, but if she had to go under the knife again, it would be her fifth boob job in as many years, and frankly, she was starting to wonder when this would end. And then the girl who’d done her Botox this time must have been asleep on the job, for she had ended up with excruciating pain in her left eye and an eyelid that had refused to remain in place. Almost as if the girl had hit a nerve or something. It was a ghastly sight, and for a whole three days, she had been nervous about waiting on people in the butcher shop, afraid they’d start making comments again behind her back as she knew they always did.

She joined the group of neighbors looking at the scene, and when she saw Chris Goldsworthy, she tiptoed up to him. Chris always knew what was going on in their neighborhood. The man was a veritable fountain of wisdom. Chairman of their local watch committee, he made it his business to be informed. It didn’t hurt that he was also drop-dead-gorgeous handsome. He reminded her of Don Johnson, who she always thought aged very well. “What’s going on, Chris?” she asked. “Who died?”

“I’m not sure,” said Chris, much to her surprise. “I think it must be serious, though, I just saw that detective come and go. Chase Kingsley? And also, the county coroner was in there. Abe Cornwall. So if they were here, it can’t just be a heart attack or some accident—someone falling from the stairs or cutting themselves with the kitchen knife.” He shook his head decidedly. “I think this just might be…”

She stared at him with a mixture of anticipation and dread. “What?”

He turned to her and lowered his voice. “Murder,” he said, and she had the impression he actually took relish in the ghoulish fact.

She shivered. “Murder? But how can that be?”

“Murder happens everywhere, Nonnie,” he said, using his favorite name for her, though he always made sure that Mikel didn’t hear it, since he would only get jealous. That was the problem with Chris: all women adored him, and all men hated him, exactly because of that fact. “Even on our street.”

“Maybe some burglary gone wrong,” she suggested, for she simply couldn’t imagine one member of Holly’s family murdering another member. Holly herself was always so distinguished, so kind and unruffled, in spite of the tragedies that had befallen her. And Holly’s mom was just the same. Nice, well-respected people, Charlie and Bethany Williams.

“You’re probably right,” Chris agreed. “Maybe they caught a burglar, and there was a struggle, and in the process, someone died.”

Norma stared intently at the house, hoping to catch sight of either Holly, the kids, or her parents. But nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“I better run on home,” she announced.

Chris’s lips morphed into a smirk. “To tell Mikel what’s going on?”

“Of course not,” she said, even though he had guessed right. Whenever she had big news to impart, she couldn’t wait to get home and tell her husband. He loved all the gossip from the neighborhood, and she loved supplying it to him. And this was certainly the most exciting gossip they’d had in ages. Not since old Mrs. Rutherford had fallen out with her long-time friend Mrs. Davis, and the two old ladies had engaged in a shouting match that had quickly turned physical, did they have the kind of news that earned the qualification ‘shocking.’

She just wished she could ascertain who had died. Now that would be a scoop! But if even Chris Goldsworthy didn’t know, she certainly wasn’t going to find out any time soon. Unless…

She took out her phone and opened her WhatsApp app to check the dog walkers’ group.

“Checking the dog walkers’ scuttlebutt?” asked Chris with amusement.

She nodded. Though if Chris didn’t know what was going on, chances were the other members of the WhatsApp group wouldn’t know either, since he was one of the group’s most active members.

“And? Any luck?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said sadly. “Even Mark Cooper doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, and he lives right across the street.”

They both glanced behind them at the Cooper place. The lights were on, but of Mark, there was no trace.

“Too bad,” said Chris with a sigh. “I probably won’t be able to sleep until I know exactly what’s going on. You?”

“Yeah, I’m the same way,” she admitted. “Stuff like this keeps me up at night.”

“But not Mikel, right?”

“No, not Mikel,” she admitted with a smile. Mikel was an excellent sleeper. Her husband fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow, while she could be tossing and turning all night. Or she would finally nod off, only to be wide awake at three, not able to go back to sleep. It was very annoying, especially since they both had to get up early to open the store. But then that couldn’t be helped.

“That’s because he’s a man with a clear conscience,” Chris declared, and it could be her imagination, but he seemed to be looking at her just that little bit more intently as he said it.

“I better run,” she said. Mikel had sent her a message, she saw, asking her what was taking her so long. He was the best husband in the world, bar none, but he had the annoying habit of being very jealous. Even if a guy looked at her funnily in the store or paid her a compliment, Mikel could get worked up. Good thing he had the good sense never to act on his emotions, especially with the customers, or they could have kissed their business goodbye a long time ago. But even though he rarely said anything, knowing how much it annoyed her, she could feel it when the temperature in their otherwise cozy living room would drop to zero, and he’d sulk and mope all evening before suddenly doing a full about-face and becoming sweet like a pussy cat, showering her with kisses.

One of those psychological quirks, according to a survey in Cosmo she had once read. When you marry a guy, you take the good with the bad, and after all these years, she knew that every guy came with a flaw of some kind. Even Chris Goldsworthy, the most perfect man she had ever met.

But oh boy, did he come with a major flaw!

It isn’t often that Dooley and I have to postpone our trip to join cat choir because some tragedy happened elsewhere. Mostly, murderers like to stick to business hours and make sure we don’t have to interrupt our regular schedule to mop up the unfortunate aftermath of their nefarious activities. But today was different. Odelia and Chase had already settled in for the evening and were watching some instructive program on television—Project Runway if I’m not mistaken—and Grace had retired to bed for the night, while Dooley and I were just about to step out and join our friends in the park to practice our singing voices when the call came in.

Chase was the one to pick up since he’s the designated cop in our pleasant little household. From his demeanor I could tell that something not all that pleasant had taken place. Normally, when in a resting state, Chase is mostly easygoing, warm-hearted, one might even say fun to be around. But when he turns his mind to murder and mayhem, which basically is what his profession revolves around, his brows knit together in a frown, the corners of his lips turn down, and generally, he behaves as if there’s been a shooting somewhere, which more often than not there has been.

As it turned out a shooting had, in fact, taken place, and our urgent attention was required.

The body had been found by one Holly Mitchell, who happened to live on Russell Street, which is right around the corner from Harrington Street, where we live.

As we walked over there to ascertain how truthful Mrs. Mitchell’s 911 call actually was, Chase gave us some more information to go on. “Body of an unknown male discovered by homeowner Holly Mitchell. Mrs. Mitchell lives alone in the house with her two kids and had her mother over for a visit, something that happens very frequently, when she decided to go into the kitchen to let the dog out. That’s when she practically stumbled over the body of this man she had never seen before.”

“Could be a vagrant who decided to try his luck through the back door,” Odelia suggested.

“Could be,” Chase agreed in a noncommittal way that is common with him. As long as he hasn’t taken in the scene with his own two eyes and ascertained what could have happened, he’s reluctant to commit himself to this explanation or that, or generally put the cart before the horse, so to speak.

In due course we arrived at the address indicated and saw that we weren’t exactly the first to arrive. Quite the contrary, in fact, as the coroner was there, an ambulance, but also several police vehicles, with officers cordoning off the area and making sure nobody could pass through and take a look at the unfortunate victim.

We walked into the house, having to hurry up since Chase has very long legs and Odelia is pretty quick off the mark as well, and traversed a cozy-looking living room where an older lady sat on the couch with two kids, accompanied by a younger woman who did not look happy to see us. This was probably Holly Mitchell, the person who had stumbled across the dead man, her mother and two kids.

Odelia and Chase introduced themselves to the woman, who was indeed the lady of the manor, and then we proceeded into the kitchen. The victim still lay where Mrs. Mitchell had found him, and for a few moments, Odelia and Chase studied the body from every angle before finally reaching the conclusion that, “The man is dead.” This from Chase, who is a professional at this kind of thing.

“Yeah, looks like it,” Odelia agreed, also a professional.

And because all good things come in threes, Abe Cornwall, the county coroner, added his own two cents to the conversation by stating, “He’s dead, all right.”

“I think the man is dead, Max,” Dooley said.

“Yes, we’ve established that,” I said.

We moved closer to the body, and immediately I was struck by the strong body odor the man emitted, and also the terrible state of his clothes, an old pair of stained jeans and an equally stained sweater. Almost as if he had lived on the street for a long time and hadn’t seen a shower in a while.

Abe pointed to a crimson spot on the man’s chest. “Shot through the heart,” he announced. “Twenty-two-caliber gun, most likely. The body was still warm when I got here, so I’d say he died between one and two hours ago.”

“How many shots?” asked Chase, who looked all business as he studied the dead man, who was lying on his back.

“One bullet, as far as I can tell,” said Abe. “Though I’ll send you my report later, once I know more about what happened here.”

“I think it’s obvious what happened,” said Odelia. “Mrs. Mitchell caught this man breaking into her house, and so she shot him. But then she realized she might be in serious trouble, so she decided not to mention the break-in or the shooting and claim she had nothing to do with the man’s death at all.”

“There’s no gun registered in Holly Mitchell’s name,” said Chase, checking something on his phone.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Odelia pointed out. She had crouched down next to the victim. “Any ID?”

“Nothing,” said Abe. “So we’ll have to find out who he is some other way.”

“Mrs. Mitchell claims she’s never seen the man before,” said a police officer, likely the person who had arrived first on the scene. “She says she walked into her kitchen to let the dog out and almost stumbled over the man.”

Odelia shot us a meaningful look, and I knew just what that look meant: talk to the dog! And so we went in search of the dog to interview the creature.

We found the dog in the living room, where it sat huddled on the couch, snug and safe behind its human. As far as I could tell, it was a teacup Chihuahua, which is like a regular Chihuahua, only a lot smaller. The dog didn’t seem happy to see us as it burrowed even deeper into the couch when we approached.

“What are these cats doing here?” asked the dog’s owner, giving us a curious look, as if she had never seen a cat before in her life. Then again, we often get that look, as people don’t usually expect a police officer to be accompanied by two cats. But then Odelia isn’t a police officer but a police consultant, and we’re not regular cats but Odelia’s consultants. So you could say that we’re a consultant’s consultants and have every right to be present at the crime scene, no matter how odd people will look at us.

“Hi there,” I said to the little doggie. But instead of replying, the dog merely stared at us, its tongue sticking out between its lips, giving it a funny look.

“My name is Dooley, and this is Max,” said Dooley helpfully. “What is your name?”

But the dog either wasn’t aware of its own name, or it wasn’t talking. So Dooley and I decided to move into the second play in our playbook. It’s something we’ve picked up from Chase himself.

“You did this, didn’t you!” I said, adopting a harsh tone of voice. “You killed that man!”

“Oh, don’t listen to my friend,” said Dooley. “He’s just a little cranky because he hasn’t eaten.”

“I’m cranky because I hate it when dogs misbehave!” I shouted.

“It’s all right,” said Dooley. “You can misbehave all you want, Mr. Dog, or is it Mrs. Dog? Or possibly even Miss Dog? I mean, it’s your home, you can do whatever you want in here, even murder a trespasser. Because that’s what happened, right? This man trespassed, and you killed him?”

“But I didn’t kill anyone!” said the dog, proving once again that the good cat, bad cat routine never fails to bring the required result. “He was lying there on the floor, dead, when I first laid eyes on him.”

“And who made him that way?” asked Dooley.

“I have no idea!” said the doggie, whimpering slightly and quivering from stem to stern. “You have to believe me, good sirs. I would never cause harm to anyone. I’ve never even bitten a person in my life.”

“You’ve never bitten anyone?” I asked with a touch of gruffness. “A likely story! Now talk, dog, ‘cause you’re in a heap of trouble here!”

“What’s your name?” asked Dooley.

“Babette,” said the dog, eyeing me as if I was the worst cat in history, which maybe I was at that moment. Though I have to say, it felt strangely exhilarating to unleash my inner monster for once. “And I honestly don’t know what happened, sirs.”

“You’ve never seen this man before?” asked Dooley in kindly tones.

“Never!” Babette said. “I swear. He’s certainly not from around here since all the people on the block have dogs, and they walk them every day, so I know all our neighbors, and this guy was never here.”

“You walk every day?” asked Dooley. “Isn’t that bad for those short legs of yours?”

“Oh, but I love walking,” said the dog fervently. “It’s my favorite time of the day when my mistress decides to take me out of the house, and we go down to the dog park. I get to hang out with the other dogs while our humans all shoot the breeze. It’s great fun.”

“Odd that we’ve never met,” I said. “We hang out at the dog park from time to time.”

The doggie’s eyes went even wider now. “If we had met, I would definitely remember, Mr. Max. I could never forget a cat like you!”

I had a feeling I’d done my work a little too well and had put the fear of God into this dog. So I now relaxed. “I’m sorry for scaring you,” I said. “But like my friend Dooley says, I haven’t eaten, and when I’m hungry, I tend to get cranky.”

The dog’s face broke into a huge smile. “Oh, but I can totally relate. When I don’t eat, I also get cranky. Very cranky indeed!”

“You wouldn’t… happen to have some leftovers for us, would you?” asked Dooley. “It’s just that all this murder business always makes me hungry.”

“Me too,” I admitted.

“Follow me!” said the dog, having become animated now that she realized we weren’t going to bring out the handcuffs and place her under arrest. So we followed her into the kitchen, and she led us straight to her bowl, which contained some delicious-smelling kibble. But before we could dig in, Odelia actually swooped in, scooped up the bowl, and placed it on the kitchen counter!

“Hey!” I said, still holding on to my alternate persona, which I tentatively would have called ‘Mad Max.’ “What do you think you’re doing? We were going to eat that!”

“No, you’re not,” said Odelia decidedly. “We’re guests here, Max, and guests don’t go around eating food from their host without first receiving an invitation.”

“But she did offer us an invitation,” I said, pointing to Babette.

Odelia smiled. “The owner needs to offer an invitation,” she clarified, “not the owner’s dog.”

“A new rule,” said Dooley with a touch of sadness. “Always new rules to follow, Max. It does get complicated after a while, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does,” I said with a sigh.

“Just dig in!” Babette whispered invitingly. “I’ll cover for you!”

“Cover for us?” I asked with a frown. But since Babette clearly believed in giving service, she now suddenly jumped up, dug her teeth into Chase’s calf, and didn’t let go again. It was a funny sight: the dog hung from Chase’s leg, her tiny teeth just sharp enough to provide some traction against his jeans but not sharp enough to cut through the fabric and into Chase’s actual leg and do damage.

The cop lifted his leg and studied the dangling dog for a moment, then smiled. “Aren’t you just the cutest, sweetest little dog?”

I could tell that Babette wanted to respond to this, but since that meant she had to let go of her quarry, she decided to give the cop the silent treatment instead.

Unfortunately she was no match for the cop, so he simply plucked her from his leg like one plucks an apple from a tree and held her in the palm of his hand. “And what’s your name, huh?” he said. “Isn’t he just the cutest, babe?”

“He is,” Odelia confirmed as she tickled the doggie behind the ears.

“Now, Mr. Max!” said Babette. “They’re distracted!”

Normally, I’m not all that quick off the mark, but I was feeling peckish, so I didn’t need to be told twice. And while our humans enjoyed themselves with Babette, Dooley and I quickly nabbed the few remaining nuggets of kibble from her bowl. They certainly hit the spot.

“Thanks, Babette,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” said the doggie.

But when Odelia looked back and saw the empty bowl, her expression clouded. And I had the impression she would have said something, but at that moment, Abe walked back in, accompanied by one of his assistants, so she merely proceeded to glower at us.

Somehow, I had a feeling she wasn’t happy with our work. But at least my stomach wasn’t empty anymore, so we could get on with the case. I mean, it’s hard to detect and hunt for clues on an empty stomach! Even detectives have to eat.

Copyright © 2023 by Nic Saint

The Spy Who Killed Me

They say that all good things come in threes, but also that misfortunes never come singly, so I’ll let you decide which of these proverbs applies to the following situation: first we discovered that a thief had been stealing our litter, thereby preventing us from doing our business the way we like to do it. And then one of our country’s most beloved actors was found murdered aboard his private yacht, with plenty of suspects likely to have done the deed. And if that wasn’t enough, Gran and Scarlett decided to reform the Neighborhood Watch Committee and actively insert themselves into the investigation, wreaking havoc and mayhem at every turn. In other words: troubled times lay ahead in Hampton Cove, that peaceful little town on the East Coast that always seems to teeter on the verge of disaster.

Jane Collins was walking along the quay and gazing out at the pretty boats and yachts that were moored in the Hampton Cove marina. It was a nice change of pace from being cooped up inside her home, where she had been hunched over her latest sewing pattern design. As a fashion designer, Jane had made quite a name for herself on sites like Etsy, selling her patterns to a great number of happy customers.

She wouldn’t have minded boarding one of these yachts now, she thought as she looked upon their owners and passengers with a certain measure of envy. What she wouldn’t give to be far away from Hampton Cove and to lie on deck, her hand trailing in the warm azure waters of some tropical paradise, cloud gazing and generally letting the world go by. It would certainly be a nice change of pace from what she was used to. As a mother of four, she knew what responsibility was, and had been taking care of her offspring and her husband Bert for so long now that she often forgot that she also existed and also had a right to lead an exciting, wonderful and fulfilling life. Not that her patterns didn’t give her a certain measure of satisfaction, and she certainly had received plenty of acclaim. Only not from the people who really mattered to her.

Which was why she was now walking along the marina and wondering about the choices she’d made. If she hadn’t married Bert, for instance, but decided to somehow hang on to the other man in her life—in many respects the only man she had ever loved. She hadn’t seen Robert in years, which hadn’t stopped her from wondering if her life would have been different if they had stayed together. The man had certainly done very well for himself. So much so that he was being presented with an award by the Hampton Cove Chamber of Commerce. Ever since she had heard the news that her ex-boyfriend would be in town, she had felt unusually restless and wondered if she shouldn’t leave town while he was there, almost as if she wanted to avoid him. On the other hand, she wanted nothing more than to clap eyes on the man who had broken her heart twenty-five years ago.

She paused for a moment in front of a particularly huge yacht that lay at anchor. Called the Aurora, she was sleek and gorgeous, and as Jane stood admiring her graceful lines, suddenly a person emerged on deck who looked vaguely familiar. But as she looked closer, she realized it was none other than Robert himself. He looked older, of course, but still as handsome as ever. He must have recognized her, too, for he did a double take, then slowly removed his sunglasses as he took her in. For a moment, the two ex-lovers simply stared at each other, then Jane saw that a single tear glistened in the man’s eye, which is when she decided that maybe second chances existed after all, and she set her foot onto the gangway and stepped aboard.

Dooley had been snoring softly and was generally lost to the world when a strange sound made him prick up his ears and immediately return to full wakefulness. The sound seemed to come from somewhere nearby, and even though his first thought was that Max had produced the sound, upon further inspection he discovered that his friend was still sleeping peacefully by his side and hadn’t moved an inch since they had fallen asleep together on the couch.

Dooley now lifted his head to take in the rest of the living room, turning his ears like antennae to scan his surroundings for a bead on the source of the sound, but try as he might, his ultra-sensitive ears could not pick up the sound again. Almost as if its design had been to bring him out of his peaceful slumber and then down tools, knowing its work was done and nothing more was required.

He yawned and stretched and decided to have a bite to eat, take a trip to his litter box, and generally do what cats do when they wake up and before they go right back to sleep. It wasn’t too much to say that today was a day like most other days, with the marked difference that he didn’t think the sun had been out in such splendor in quite a while. Hampton Cove had been blessed with plenty of rain lately, but now nature had apparently decided that enough was enough and had turned off the tap, bathing the world in a sunny glow for the first time in about a week. Nature was celebrating, for the birds were tweeting up a storm outside, the bushes and trees in the backyard all looked green and lush, and even the lawn looked as if it was in urgent need of a trim.

As he walked to the kitchen to see if his bowls were still filled to his satisfaction, Dooley noticed that the pet flap was gently swinging, as if someone had recently passed through there and had quickly left again when they became aware of his presence. He didn’t pay any mind to the strange phenomenon, figuring it was probably either Brutus or Harriet, the other two cats in their household. In due course he reached his bowls, and saw they still contained sufficient amounts of the good stuff, then made a beeline for his litter box for a tinkle. And that’s when things turned a little weird. For when he arrived there, he saw that all the litter was gone, and not just in his personal litter box but also in Max’s!

For a moment he simply stared at his empty box, scratching his head in wonder. That someone would have entered the house through the pet door to steal food from his bowl or drink his water was something he could have wrapped his head around, but why would anyone decide to steal his litter? As far as he knew, litter wasn’t one of the major food groups. It wasn’t nutritious, and possibly might even be harmful when ingested. And as he sat staring at his empty litter box, the front door of the house opened and closed, and moments later Odelia entered the kitchen, Grace on her arm, and he shared with her the gist of his complaint. Namely, that as a healthy grown-up kitty, he wasn’t merely in regular need of sustenance but also of a receptacle to deposit the end result of his mastication and digestive processes.

Odelia, who clearly was as surprised as he was, promised she would look into the matter post-haste. At which point she simply walked out of the kitchen and left Dooley to his own devices, making him wonder if maybe he had failed to impress upon her the urgency of his request. Then again, he now realized she had looked a little distracted. In fact, she had only listened to him in a sort of half-hearted way and looked upon him as only a human could: her eyes seeing him, her ears hearing him, but her mind a million miles away. Almost as if she was dealing with problems of her own. Which was impossible, of course, for what could be more important than a sneak thief who went around stealing litter from innocent cats?

Shaking his head at such a lack of cooperation, he decided to return to the couch and pour his lament into Max’s ears. Max would listen. Max would understand what was going on here, and most importantly, Max would act and fix things. Max always did. Dooley didn’t know how, but his friend was one of the great fixers in the world. Anything that was wrong, anything that went missing, any person or persons engaged in some form of wrongdoing, Max managed to right those wrongs and generally make things fine again. It was his greatest quality and what had made him Hampton Cove’s very own feline Sherlock Holmes. And the great benefit of being friends with such a powerhouse of detection was that Dooley had access to that formidable brain at all times, which was both a blessing and a curse. A curse in the sense that a lot of people lay claim to Max’s time, often causing Dooley’s problems to take a back seat, just as they now had with Odelia. But also a blessing, for often Max only needed a single word to know how to proceed. But as he now approached the couch with the intention of uttering just this single word to place his friend in possession of the facts pertaining to the strange case of the missing litter, he saw that of his friend… there was not a single trace!

Somehow, in the five minutes that Dooley had been gone, Max had skedaddled. This made Dooley realize that the worst had happened—the thing he had feared the most for the longest time. Along with his litter, this mysterious sneak thief had also… stolen Max!

Odelia wasn’t feeling at the top of her game. Not only did she have several articles to finish and multiple looming deadlines hanging over her head like the proverbial swords of Damocles, but the woman who ran the daycare Grace attended had sent a message in the parents’ WhatsApp group stating that due to a family emergency, the daycare would be closed for the next couple of days. This meant alternative solutions had to be found. Consequently, Odelia had paid scant attention to Dooley’s litter lament and had immediately rushed out the door in search of her grandmother, hoping she would find the old lady next door.

She found Gran gazing intently at a caterpillar that had taken up position underneath a leaf on one of her precious rose bushes, seemingly transfixed on the bug. Observing the intensity with which her grandmother regarded the caterpillar, Odelia thought she wanted to zap it with her eyes, laser-beam it into oblivion. When Odelia cleared her throat to alert her of her presence, Gran redirected her gaze and, for a moment, something stirred within Odelia as she experienced the full impact of the old lady’s baleful eye. But then Gran’s gaze softened, and she even managed a smile. She probably had realized that Odelia was not a caterpillar.

“I’ve been keeping an eye on that one,” she announced. “The old Vesta would have killed it dead, but the new Vesta wants to protect life. It’s all about the preservation of life, you see. If we want to save the planet from destruction, we need to do it one caterpillar at a time.”

“So you’re going to let it eat your plants?” Odelia asked, surprised by this position.

“I didn’t say I’m going to stand idly by and watch it destroy my lovely garden,” Gran replied. “I said I’m keeping an eye on the little bugger. And if I see it take so much as one bite out of this here rose bush of mine, I’m going to pounce.” She wagged a bony finger at the caterpillar. “Consider this your first warning, buster! One bite and you’re out. Is that clear?”

“Gran, could you babysit Grace for me? Chantal at the daycare sent a message saying she’s dealing with a family emergency and she has to close the daycare for the next couple of days.”

“Oh, sure, honey,” her grandmother said vaguely, her attention still riveted on the caterpillar, indicating she wasn’t paying much attention elsewhere.

“Could you do it now?” asked Odelia. “I’m already late for work. I didn’t see Chantal’s message until I arrived at the daycare with Grace.” She hadn’t been the only one either. Three other moms had also arrived, surprised to find the daycare closed for the day, with a sign on the door informing them of Chantal’s unexpected unavailability. It was highly unusual since Chantal Jones was a most conscientious and dedicated daycare owner, who loved the kids in her care as if they were her own. For her to suddenly close up shop was disconcerting, and when Odelia had more time to spare, she would definitely pay her a visit and see what was going on. She sincerely hoped Chantal wouldn’t be inconvenienced indefinitely. Otherwise she’d have to find a different daycare, which might prove to be a tough proposition, as most of them were already full and didn’t accept any new charges, especially a couple dozen of them.

“Sure, sure,” said Gran with a wave of the hand. “Just leave it with me.”

She would have pointed out that her daughter was not an ‘it’ but a ‘she,’ but then she knew it would be pointless. Once Gran had her mind set on something, it was pretty much impossible to shift it. So she placed Grace on the porch swing, kissed the top of her head, and hurried off again. Not only did she have several articles to write, but she also had an interview scheduled with the one and only Robert Ross, the multimillionaire actor whose yacht had arrived in the Hampton Cove marina just the other day and had attracted so much attention.

Robert Ross was a local man who had left his home town many years ago to try his hand at different endeavors. According to local lore, he had worked as a handyman in a maharajah’s harem, had competed in several boat races alongside the Prince of Brunei, and had even been the personal bodyguard of the Crown Prince of Jordan. He earned the man’s eternal gratitude when he saved his life from an assassination attempt. During that particular act of heroism, he had sustained a gunshot wound to the stomach, which had been successfully remedied with the first pig-to-human stomach transplant in history, earning him an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

After his checkered career, he had been selected as the next James Fox, and had now finished no less than six very successful Fox movies in a row, becoming one of the most popular actors ever to play that famous British spy. In other words, the man was a legend. When the rumor spread that his yacht was arriving in the marina, all of Hampton Cove showed up to greet him and give him a hero’s welcome. Even Mayor Butterwick and Odelia’s uncle had been there, although the latter’s presence was for professional reasons only, to prevent anyone from trespassing or assaulting Mr. Ross aboard his vessel.

She hopped into her pickup and raced away, although the behavior of her aged Ford pickup was more akin to rattling away, as the noise the car made could probably be heard three streets over. She really should get a new one, but when she had asked Dan if he couldn’t by any chance provide her with a company car, the editor had chuckled amusedly, pointing out that the newspaper trade was a dying industry and she was lucky to still have a job. Perks like company cars were not in the cards, unfortunately, and would never be as long as she insisted on working as a reporter, as opposed to, say, an investment banker or a stock broker.

She arrived at the marina in due course and parked her car between a Porsche Cayenne and a Tesla, doing her best not to scratch either. She knew that these wealthy yacht owners didn’t take kindly to scratches on their precious cars’ paintwork. She hurried across the boardwalk to the quay where all the fancy yachts were moored. It didn’t take her long to spot the Aurora, Robert Ross’s personal yacht. It was easily the largest one in the small harbor. Recently, the marina had been completely redesigned and now featured a few luxury boutiques and fancy restaurants catering to the yacht owners who liked to visit these shops before heading into town. A more rustic experience awaited them there. If it were up to Charlene Butterwick, she would probably redesign all of Hampton Cove. However, she would face opposition from the locals, most of whom preferred things the way they were and had always been. Not that Odelia could blame them. Hampton Cove was a pretty pleasant town, even though it appeared a little sleepy to the more hip and cool segment of the tourist class.

She stepped onto the gangway to board the vessel, hoping Mr. Ross wouldn’t be too upset that she was running late. But when she arrived on board, she was surprised to find that the yacht seemed to be deserted. Normally, for a man of Mr. Ross’s stature, she had expected to encounter a small regiment of security personnel, personal assistants, and other crew members. However, she had boarded the vessel without being stopped, causing her forehead to wrinkle up in a frown. Having been on yachts before, she had some understanding of how they operated. Therefore, she headed to the bridge first, hoping to find a sign of life. The door was, of course, locked, which was understandable. As she walked along the deck, lightly placing her hand on the bulwark, she traversed the vessel from bow to stern. To her disappointment, she found no trace of the famous movie actor.

She had reached the stern of the yacht and gazed up at the upper deck, where she knew a Jacuzzi and a small pool were located from the pictures she had seen. But there was still no sign of the boat’s current resident. That’s when she decided to climb the small metal ladder leading to the upper decks, hoping to find the actor sunbathing on the top deck, possibly having fallen asleep and forgotten all about their meeting. As she rounded the corner, she laid eyes on the small pool, a gorgeous azure blue in contrast to the beige wood of the deck, and noticed something floating in it. Moving closer, she saw that it was a person’s body. Without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped into the pool, swam with a couple of powerful strokes of her arms to reach the person, and started dragging the lifeless body back to the side of the pool.

Moments later, with a supreme effort, she hoisted the body out of the water and placed it face up on the decking. It was Robert Ross, and he appeared very much dead.

When Dooley started messing about in the kitchen, and then Odelia walked in with Grace on her arm, I decided to desert my pleasant spot on the couch and go in search of more peaceful pastures to continue my nap in an uninterrupted fashion. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy consuming my naps in one long session. So, I relocated to the rose bushes at the bottom of the garden, hoping to find them uninhabited by our housemates Brutus and Harriet, who often like to spend time there, engaged in their lovey-dovey activities.

I was in luck, as I found the location free of any lovers, whether pet or otherwise, and with a sigh of relish, I settled down for the long haul. Or at least that was my intention. It soon became clear to me that it simply was not to be. Above me, an insect that looked vaguely familiar drew my attention to its plight, and before long, it was talking a mile a minute.

“Yo, Max,” said the creature, which at this point I had positively identified as a caterpillar, “I’ve got a problem that’s been giving me a headache.”

I had the impression that the caterpillar was about to transfer this headache to me if I didn’t get to take my nap, but nevertheless, I asked, “What is it?”

“Well, I’ve been hounded by this huge monstrous beast that seems intent on eating me, for some reason I can’t possibly fathom.”

“What beast, and why does it want to eat you?” I asked as I marveled at the mass of feet this creature had. I wondered how it never got them entangled. I guess there must be some kind of system in place.

“I’m not sure,” said the caterpillar. “Oh, my name is Joe, by the way.”

“Max,” I said, “but then I guess you already knew that.”

“Of course!” said Joe. “Who doesn’t know the great Max? So the thing is, I’ve been hanging out here and minding my own business, when all of a sudden, this huge… thing homes in on me. Sometimes it’s carrying a can and threatens to ‘zap me to kingdom come.’ Other times it tries to grab me and says it will ‘turn me to mush.’ Now, is that nice, Max? Is that kind? No, it sure ain’t. So, I would like you to go and talk to this monster and tell it to lay off already. As far as I can tell, I never did anything to upset the beast, and still, it keeps hounding me!”

“What does this beast look like?” I asked.

“Like a scarecrow,” said Joe, “but uglier.”

“Okay, so an ugly scarecrow.”

“Exactly. And it’s not just me this scarecrow keeps harassing. It’s been happening to all of my friends too. It just goes around threatening us with destruction, and for what? Just because we happen to be alive? That’s no way to treat any creature, Max, and it’s definitely not the way I like to be treated.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a name for this scarecrow, would you, Joe?”

The caterpillar thought for a moment, then finally nodded. “I think I’ve heard it being referred to as… Pesto?”

“Pesto.”

“Yeah, must be a nickname.” Suddenly, the caterpillar glanced up, and a look of alarm came over his tiny face. “Don’t look now, but there it is. There, the monster comes!”

Ignoring Joe’s strict instructions, I did look up and saw that Gran had approached the rose bush and was peering at it intently. She did have a can of some kind in her hand, I now saw, and I understood what was going on.

“Gran, don’t use that bug spray on me,” I told her immediately.

“Oh, Max,” said the aged relative. “I didn’t see you there for a moment. You wouldn’t have seen any caterpillars, would you? It’s just that my backyard has been invaded by the species, and they’re eating all the leaves and destroying my precious plants and flowers.”

Joe, who had taken to hiding underneath a leaf, now made frantic gestures in my direction to attract my attention. “Don’t tell Pesto where I am!” he whispered loudly.

I shook my head as a sign that I wouldn’t, causing his features to relax.

“No, I haven’t seen any caterpillars,” I lied to Gran. “But why are you trying to destroy them? You do know that eventually caterpillars become butterflies, right? And that they’re a boon to any garden, a source of infinite pleasure with their colorful displays and graceful flights and flutterings.”

“I don’t care about any flutterings,” said Gran, a bit more harshly than I would have liked. “All I care about is the survival of my flowers, and with all these voracious bugs hanging around, that won’t be happening.”

I eyed the can of bug spray with a curious eye. “I thought you were against the use of bug spray?”

She eyed the can with a look of wonder. “Oh, will you look at that? Who put that there?”

Gran had been going on about ethical gardening a lot lately, which as far as I could make out meant that she wasn’t going to use any chemicals when she tilled her modest little patch with her claw rake, carefully removing weeds and making the soil ready to give of its best.

“Chemicals destroy everything and turn the earth into one big garbage dump. Isn’t that what you said, Gran?” I asked.

“Of course, of course,” she said. “Which is why I don’t understand what this is doing here,” she added, then proceeded to throw the can as far away from her as she could. It sailed across the hedge dividing our backyard from the next. There was a sort of loud thunking sound, followed by a soft yelp of pain, and moments later, Tex Poole, Gran’s son-in-law, appeared in the opening in the hedge, rubbing his head and looking understandably irate.

“What’s the big idea!” he cried. “Pelting me with cans!”

“That wasn’t me,” said Gran, even though she was the only one present.

“Of course it was you! Don’t think I haven’t seen you secretly using that spray on my flowers.”

“Those are my flowers, and there’s nothing secret about it. I was simply trying to get rid of those caterpillars.”

“So you admit that you threw the can,” said Tex.

“I will admit to no such thing!” said Gran, tilting her chin a little higher in a posture of indignation. “It was Max!” she said, pointing an accusing finger at me.

“A likely story,” Tex scoffed. “Max couldn’t throw a piece of kibble, let alone a can.”

I would have told the doctor that I can indeed throw a mean piece of kibble, but since my opinion clearly wasn’t required, I kept my tongue. Instead, I lay down again, watching the proceedings like one of those spectators at the US Open. I had a feeling this might prove extremely entertaining. I was even willing to postpone my precious nap to take it all in.

“Not only have you been using these horrible chemicals on my flowers, thereby poisoning the soil and endangering every species on the planet, but you threw that darn thing at my head!”

“That was an accident,” said Gran quickly. “Max probably thought he was doing us a favor, but in his haste to get rid of the can, he failed to take into consideration that a certain person or even persons might find themselves in the flight plan of said can.”

“You threw that can,” said Tex, directing an accusatory finger at his mother-in-law. “Besides, why is it so important to get rid of those caterpillars? They’re a very beneficial species, and besides, they turn into butterflies. You wouldn’t murder a nice, innocent butterfly, would you?”

“Of course not, are you crazy? I would never raise a hand in anger at any creature, great or small. You know this, Tex. You know that I’m essentially a peaceable person and abhor violence of any kind.” Tex actually rolled his eyes at this, and it wasn’t that he was about to experience a fainting spell, but more to express his reservations about Gran’s statement.

“Whatever,” he said finally with a throwaway gesture of his hand. “But I’m confiscating this,” he said, holding up the can. “And I better not see any more of this poison in my backyard.”

“It’s my backyard, too!” Gran cried indignantly.

But Tex had already left to return to his own backyard—having lost a few of his illusions but gained a tiny little bump on the head.

“That man drives me crazy,” Gran grunted as she resumed her search for any trespassing caterpillars. “He always thinks he’s right, even though half the time he’s not.”

“Shouldn’t you both be at the doctor’s office?” I asked. “Or have all of your patients been cured?”

“We’re taking a day off,” said Gran. When she saw I was staring at her with a sort of puzzled look on my face, she said, “Even doctors can take a day off, you know. It’s hard work having to treat all of those patients, so from time to time, we need to take a break and not see any patients for an indefinite period of time.”

“How long are you and Tex going to be out of commission?”

“Like I said, for an indefinite period of time.”

“Is that your definite answer?”

She smiled. “Smart-ass.”

I don’t mind caterpillars or my humans taking the day off, or even half a day, but what I do mind is if all of this hullabaloo prevents me from doing what I consider my most sacred duty as a feline: taking long, extended naps. After all, my humans often like to consult me on minor and major mysteries that have left them baffled. But what they don’t understand is that for a brain to work at full capacity, plenty of rest is needed. So, I decided once again to relocate, this time to the house next door, where I hoped I wouldn’t be disturbed.

And I was traipsing along when I was arrested by a loud yell or scream.

“Max! You’re alive!”

I turned back to see that my friend Dooley had uttered these immortal words.

“Yeah, last time I checked, I was still alive,” I said in response.

“But… I thought you’d been grabbed by the litter monster!”

Now I’ve heard of the cookie monster, of course, but this was the first time the term ‘litter monster’ was used in my presence. For a moment, I wondered if I should take the bait or not. Doing so might lead us off on some tangent that most probably would eat into my nap time. But then my natural curiosity asserted itself. “Who or what is the litter monster?”

“The monster that ate our litter,” Dooley explained, making his meaning not all that clear. “And abducted you.” He gave me a keen look. “Have you been abducted, Max?”

“No, Dooley. I escaped from the house under my own steam.”

He visibly relaxed. “Oh, phew. For a moment there, I thought you were dead.”

“I almost was,” I admitted. “If Gran had used her bug spray on me, I might not have survived the ordeal. But as luck would have it, I caught her just in time, saving both myself and Joe in the process.”

“Who is Joe?”

“The caterpillar whose life I saved,” I explained and gestured to the rose bush where Gran was still giving Joe the evil eye, even though by all rights she should be keeping an eye on Grace instead. “I was just going next door,” I told my friend. “Seeing as it’s too busy out there, and I can’t seem to get any shut-eye. Wanna join me?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Now that Odelia’s house is being targeted by the litter monster, we need to get away before it attacks us next!”

I would have rolled my eyes at this, but since my eyelids were growing heavier by the second, I didn’t. Instead, we ventured into Marge and Tex’s house, and moments later, we found ourselves staring into Brutus and Harriet’s litter boxes, which oddly enough, were both empty!

“Oh, no!” said Dooley. “It’s the same monster. It must have been here too!”

“That’s impossible,” I said, even though the facts were clear. Both litter boxes were devoid of litter, having been neatly cleared out. In fact, whoever had done the job had been so meticulous there wasn’t a single piece of litter left. Almost as if they had been cleaned out with wet wipes.

“It’s probably Gran,” I now suggested. “She must have decided to clean out our litter boxes and then forgot to refill them.” Gran walked into the kitchen, looking like a woman on a mission. So when we posed the question, she seemed annoyed. “Not now,” she barked. “I’ve got a hot date with a caterpillar.”

“A hot date with a caterpillar?” asked Dooley. “But Gran, isn’t that… weird?”

She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s not a date date, Dooley. And it’s only hot for him, not me.” Her lips twisted into a vicious grin. “In fact, it isn’t too much to say it will be very hot. Very hot indeed.” With these words, she grabbed a lighter from one of the kitchen drawers.

“But Gran!” said Dooley. “You can’t set fire to a nice caterpillar! Don’t you know they turn into beautiful butterflies?”

She grumbled something under her breath, looking caught, and quickly dumped the lighter back into the drawer. “So I just let them destroy all of my plants, is that it?”

“I’ll talk to Joe,” I assured her. “I’ll tell him to take his business elsewhere and leave our plants alone.”

Gran gave me a look of such devotion I felt a little tingle travel up my spine. She had clasped her hands together as if in prayer. “You would do that for me, Max?”

“Of course. Now, about this litter business.”

“What litter business?” she asked, the look of devotion quickly being replaced by one of annoyance.

“You cleaned out our litter boxes,” I said. “But forgot to refill them.”

“I did not clean out your…” She crouched down to look into one of the two boxes and now frowned. “Well, I’ll be damned. Tex! Tex, come here a minute, will you?”

The kitchen door opened and Tex walked in. Like before, he was dressed in his gardening outfit, which, in his case, consisted of a pair of old jeans and an even older sweater with holes in them. “Now what?” he asked.

“Did you clean out the cats’ litter boxes and then forget to refill them?”

He stared at her. “Of course not. That’s your job, Ma.” Even though we have lived with Tex for many years, he still considers us ‘Marge’s cats’ or, conversely, ‘Odelia’s cats’ or even ‘Vesta’s cats.’ Maybe he has a point, since we also consider these ladies our humans, with Tex and Chase their appendages. Like spin-offs from the main feature. And it is true that Tex never feeds us or takes care of our litter boxes. He did install our pet doors, which is something, I suppose. And he tolerates us, which is very kind of him.

“So, who cleaned these litter boxes?” asked Gran.

“Marge, probably,” said Tex. “Or Odelia. And now, can I go back to my tomatoes?”

As an experiment, Tex has been trying to grow his own vegetables. Ever since the prices of common household items and foodstuffs have risen precipitously, our humans decided to put the small plots of land they possess to good use and try to yield a modest harvest. To that end, Tex had planted several seeds and was hoping for a good crop when the time came. He’s also been thinking about raising chickens for their eggs, but so far, Marge has put her foot down and is refusing to budge. I guess she feels four cats are enough denizens of the animal kingdom to contend with and doesn’t want to add a dozen chickens to the mix.

The good doctor had left the kitchen, and Gran, hoping to get to the bottom of this minor mystery, now put her phone to her ear and called her daughter. But when Marge told her that she hadn’t touched our litter that morning and had no idea who had, the mystery only deepened. Which is why when Gran’s phone rang next and she picked up, she barked, “Odelia, did you clean out the cats’ litter boxes this morning? No? Then who the hell did!” She listened for a moment, then redirected her gaze to us. I could see that whatever Odelia was telling her, clearly concerned us. And to confirm this, she said, “Yeah, I’ll tell them. Right now? The marina? Yeah, okay. So do you need me? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

Dooley looked at me, I looked at him, and I think we both had the same expression of curiosity written all over our faces.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” said Gran, not really giving us a lot to go on.

“What’s with all this ‘uh-huh,’ Max?” asked Dooley.

“It’s an expression of confirmation,” I said. “Instead of saying ‘I understand’ or ‘I see,’ people simply say ‘uh-huh.’ Like a sort of shorthand.”

“Gran’s hands are short,” he confirmed, taking in the elderly woman’s hands. “But I still don’t see why she can’t use her words, like any grown-up.”

Grace had toddled in through the door and now stood stock-still, taking us in. She did that sometimes, and it often made me wonder what went through her head at moments like these. Possibly she saw dead people, like that kid in the Bruce Willis movie, and listened to what they were telling her. She now redirected her attention to us. “So is it true what they’re saying?”

“What are they saying?” I asked. “And who are they?”

“Well, Brutus and Harriet, of course. They’re saying that you and Dooley have been using their litter boxes, and they were so dirty that Marge had to clean them ahead of time, and now they have nowhere to do their business except in Blake’s Field, so they did.”

And as if to prove she wasn’t kidding, Brutus and Harriet now walked in through the door. “Max!” Brutus growled, taking a menacing stance in front of us. “You did your business in my litter box, didn’t you? And now it’s empty.”

“It’s the litter monster,” Dooley explained. “It’s been eating our litter.”

Brutus frowned at my friend. “What are you talking about, Dooley?”

“Oh, can’t you see what’s going on?” asked Harriet. “He’s simply protecting Max.”

“Protecting Max?” asked Dooley. “From what?” But then his eyes went wide. “Oh no, it’s the litter monster, isn’t it? He’s eaten our litter, and now he’s coming for us next!”

“Don’t talk nonsense, Dooley,” said Harriet in a snappish way. “Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as a litter monster.”

“There is! There definitely is! And it’s eaten all of our litter!”

Brutus and Harriet shared a look of surprise. “I don’t get it,” Brutus finally admitted as he plopped himself down on his tush. “Start from the beginning, will you, and omit no detail, however slight.”

But before Dooley could do just that, Grace decided to step in. “Someone or something is eating your litter,” she explained. “And that someone or something just might still be in the house!” At this, she glanced around in a meaningful fashion, causing the hair at the back of my neck to stand at attention. We all gave the kitchen a look filled with trepidation and downright fear.

“The litter monster is still here?” asked Dooley in a shaky voice. “Are you sure?”

“Where else could it be?” asked Grace. “First, it ate all of your litter, Dooley, and Max’s, and then it polished off Brutus and Harriet’s litter, and now it’s taking a nap. Just like me when I’ve eaten too much.”

“But, but, but…”

“Oh nonsense,” said Harriet. “There’s no such thing as a litter monster. Max simply couldn’t hold it in, and so instead of running home to his own litter box, he decided to do his business in mine. And then, since Dooley always has to do whatever Max does, he did the same thing in Brutus’s box. And when Marge got up this morning and found our boxes unusually soiled, she decided to clean them out, and then since she was busy with a million other things, like humans always are, she completely forgot about it.”

“I’ve been going to Blake’s Field,” Brutus lamented. “And I think I sat on a nettle. My tush is itching.”

“You should lick it,” Harriet advised. “Lick it until it stops itching.”

“But I don’t want to lick my tush!” said Brutus. “What am I, a dog?” He glanced up at Gran, who was still engrossed in her phone conversation, seeking her urgent assistance, but the old lady ignored us. So he now asked Grace, “Could you do the honors?”

“What honors? What are you talking about?” asked the little girl.

“Clean my tush? Normally, Marge always does it, or Odelia, or even Gran. But since they’re all otherwise engaged…”

Now it was Grace’s turn to roll her eyes. “Oh, all right. But just this once, you hear?”

“Marge always uses antibacterial scented wet wipes,” Brutus explained. “They make my tush smell like lavender. It’s very nice.”

“Yeah, they’ve got aloe vera,” Harriet added. “It helps soothe irritated skin and greatly reduces the presence of blemishes and wrinkles. It’s also hypoallergenic.”

“God, you guys are spoiled,” said Grace as she climbed a chair to reach the box of wet wipes located on the kitchen table. Moments later, she was applying a wet wipe to Brutus’s tush, much to the latter’s enjoyment. And since he looked so thoroughly satisfied, the rest of us stood in line for the treatment, waiting patiently until Grace had finished with him so she could apply those wonderful wet wipes to our tushies as well. “And to think that I’m the baby here,” she grumbled, “and that I’m supposed to be the one who gets her tushy wiped.”

Even though her hand-eye coordination might not be up to snuff yet, and she had a hard time focusing on the job at hand, ending up wiping half of my belly in the process, she still did a pretty good job, and besides, it’s the thought that counts. At the end of the process, the box of wet wipes was empty, and we had never smelled more like lavender before.

So when Gran finally ended her phone call and saw the floor littered with used wet wipes and the four of us looking happy as clams, she shook her head. “I won’t ask what happened,” she said. Then she turned to us. “Odelia needs you out by the marina.”

“Oh no,” said Dooley. “Not another boat trip!”

“No boat trip,” said Gran. “Another murder!”

Copyright © 2023 by Nic Saint

Keeping up with the Pooles

It isn’t often that a distant cousin you didn’t even know existed decides to leave you five million dollars, so when Odelia’s cousin Beatrice passed away, and was gracious enough to include Odelia in her will, it was the start of a new adventure for all of us. Because one of Cousin Beatrice’s stipulations was that we should take over her Alaskan zoo, which housed no less than three hundred cats. And also, camera crews had to film the process. Which is how we became the stars of our own reality show, with cameras filming our every move.

This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, if we didn’t also have a triple homicide to solve. Three members of the same  family had been killed, and the only witness to the crime had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. And since there was no evidence and plenty of suspects to choose from, we had our work cut out for us.

Robert Ross looked down at the dog he was walking and wondered if he’d ever seen a finer specimen of the canine species. Marlin was perfectly proportioned, with the perfect type of fur, the perfect tawny color, and from the way he looked up at him, you could see that he was without a doubt the most intelligent dog that had ever lived. His gaze exuded smarts and just a hint of arrogance, which actually suited him well. Marlin had been his trusty canine companion for going on three years now, and Robert wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. If he’d listened to Kimberly back when they’d first dropped by the pound to look at prospective candidates to fill the rather large shoes Marlin’s predecessor Franklin had left, they would have taken a Chihuahua. “It fits so nicely on your lap,” she had said. “And we can take it anywhere with us, even when we’re traveling by plane.”

But Robert had wandered off to look at some of the other canines while Kimberly stuck with the Chihuahua, asking the pound owner about a million questions. That’s when he spotted Marlin, tucked away at the back of his cage, looking sad and forlorn. He didn’t even respond when Robert crouched down in front of his cage and tried to engage the creature in conversation. Clearly, something traumatic had happened to the dog, and he had become locked in his own shell, retreating from the world.

For some reason, the dog had appealed to him in a big way, so he’d interrupted his wife’s harangue and asked the pound owner about Marlin’s history. It was the typical litany of being shifted from one owner to the next until the dog’s proud spirit had been broken, and he had given up hope and belief that he’d ever find a true forever home.

That’s when Robert decided to do just that. And so he’d taken Marlin home—funny name for a dog, but the pound owner didn’t think it was wise to change his name now, since he was already used to it—against Kimberly’s protestations, and he hadn’t regretted it a single day.

It had taken a while for them to gain Marlin’s trust, as the dog hadn’t believed this could be it. That these people wouldn’t return him to the pound after a couple of days, with a nasty case of buyer’s remorse, but eventually he’d started to relax and become accustomed to his new home and his new humans. Pretty soon, Marlin and Robert had become inseparable, with Kimberly complaining that he seemed to like the damn dog more than her. But then Marlin was so loyal, so loving, and so giving it wasn’t any wonder that Robert adored the creature, and in due course, the dog had also become fond of him, the man who had saved him from that dreadful fate back at the pound.

The dog barked once, and Robert knew exactly what that meant. He was ready to go to the dog park, to do his business but also to play with the other dogs while Robert chatted with the other dog owners.

And as they set foot and paw to the dog park, Robert thought not for the first time that he may have saved the dog, but the dog had also saved him.

The dog park was pretty busy at this time of the morning, but he didn’t mind. He knew most of the other people there, and by now Marlin knew most of the other dogs and got along with them very well indeed.

Robert let Marlin off his leash, and immediately the dog made a beeline for a small group of fellow canines. They were a big sheepdog answering to the name Rufus and a small Yorkie answering to the name Fifi, and he got along with those two particularly well for some reason.

Robert walked over to the dogs’ respective owners: Ted Trapper and Kurt Mayfield, and the men greeted him with a curt nod of the head.

“Marlin is looking good today,” said Ted, the most talkative of the duo.

“Yeah, he’s been feeling good,” he said with satisfaction. “I gave him some extra-juicy leftovers this morning, and he seemed to like it. He’s had some tummy trouble the last couple of days, and the vet said we shouldn’t feed him kibble for a while, only food straight from our table, and see if it makes a difference.”

“If I gave Fifi food straight from the table,” grunted Kurt Mayfield, “she’d be hopping all over our table all the time.” He grinned. “I wouldn’t mind, though. Once you’ve got a dog, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for the furry creature, is there?”

“Yeah, isn’t that just the case?” said Ted with a happy sigh. “Though I gotta admit, Marcie doesn’t always feel the same way.”

“Yeah, my girlfriend doesn’t either,” Kurt confessed. “She likes Fifi and tolerates her to some extent for my sake, but if she’s totally honest, I think she wouldn’t mind if she wasn’t there.”

“My wife had her doubts about Marlin,” said Robert. “When we picked him up at the pound, she actually wanted to adopt a Chihuahua, but I managed to talk her into adopting Marlin instead. I mean, Chihuahuas are popular, and that dog would have been adopted by anyone, but Marlin was one of those rejects that nobody seemed to want. He kept being shifted back to the pound by the respective adoptive parents that took him in until he was so demoralized he just retreated into a world of his own. You should have seen him when I first laid eyes on him.”

“And look at him now,” said Kurt. “The happiest and liveliest dog in the dog park.”

Robert watched as Marlin, Fifi, and Rufus played happily together, not a care in the world, and felt gratified once again that he had followed his intuition and decided to take a chance on the mutt. It was only fair since Marlin had to take a chance on his new pet parents. And it had worked out to their satisfaction — both human and dog.

He looked up where a sort of commotion alerted them that something was going down on the street side of the dog park.

“Who’s that?” asked Robert, referring to an older lady who was passing by in the company of no less than four cats.

“Oh, that’s Vesta Muffin,” said Kurt. “She’s my neighbor.”

“Yeah, my next-door neighbor too,” said Ted. “She’s crazy but also nice.”

“That describes her to a T,” said Kurt with a grin. “The whole family is nice but crazy. And I’ve had to endure the presence of those four cats for a while now, and I gotta say, it hasn’t always been easy. They have this habit of caterwauling in the middle of the night for some reason, and when I say something about it, Vesta gets upset, and so does the rest of the family.”

“Crazy cat family, huh?” said Robert. He didn’t mind. He was crazy about Marlin, so he could understand that there were folks out there who were crazy about their cats. To each their own.

“The daughter works at the library,” Kurt continued, “and is married to a doctor. Then there’s the granddaughter who’s a reporter and sometime amateur detective. She’s married to a cop. And there’s also a great-granddaughter who likes to toddle around the backyard and play with the cats.”

Robert winced. “Isn’t that awfully dangerous? I mean, cats and toddlers, that can’t be a great combination, right?”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Ted assured him. “They’re very well-behaved, those Poole cats. In fact…” He glanced over at Kurt, then quickly closed his mouth, as if he’d said something wrong.

“In fact, what?” asked Robert.

“Nothing,” Ted said. “Oh, will you look at that? Our dogs and Vesta’s cats are hanging out together. Isn’t that cute?”

Robert eyed the strange scene with interest. It was true: their dogs and that old lady’s cats did indeed seem to enjoy spending time together, which was unusual, he thought, since cats and dogs don’t always get along.

“It’s almost as if they’re… talking to each other,” he said.

Kurt and Ted shared another look, and he had a feeling there was something they weren’t telling him.

“What?” he asked then. “What is it?”

Kurt shrugged. “It’s just a rumor, but…”

“I don’t believe it myself, to be honest,” said Ted.

“Me neither,” Kurt assured them.

“What rumor? What are you talking about?”

“Well, rumor has it that the three ladies—grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter—are able to communicate with their cats.”

Robert waited for the punchline, but when it didn’t come and the two men remained serious, he frowned. “But that’s impossible. Humans can’t communicate with cats, just like we can’t communicate with dogs.” Though wouldn’t it be nice if he could? He sure would like to know what Marlin was thinking sometimes. And he wouldn’t mind telling him what he was thinking.

“It’s just a rumor,” Ted said with a shrug. “I’m not sure if it’s true.”

“It can’t be true,” said Robert decidedly. “The laws of nature don’t allow it. If all species had the ability to communicate with each other, that would mean we could talk to birds, to chickens, to… to ducks in the pond.” He laughed. “It would be like living in a Disney movie!”

“Like Ted said,” said Kurt. “It’s just a crazy rumor. Frankly, I don’t believe a word of it. Just gossip, you know. I mean, you know what people are like, especially in a small town like ours.”

“Oh, I sure do,” Robert said. He and Kimberly had only moved to Hampton Cove six months ago, and already Kimberly was regretting their decision, complaining that Hampton Cove was like a dead zone where nothing ever happened, and where the people weren’t friendly to her. She claimed that when she went shopping, they simply ignored her, then started gossiping about her behind her back. Robert had suggested she join some clubs, but Kimberly said there weren’t any, which he found hard to believe, since every town has clubs.

At least they had their jobs, which guaranteed some human interaction with their colleagues. And of course, there were Ted and Kurt at the dog park. Those guys had taken him in from the beginning and hadn’t even looked down their noses at him even once. That was the beauty of being a dog owner: whether you lived in Hampton Cove, Albuquerque, or the moon, you always had something in common. Like a secret club you were all members of.

The cats seemed to have moved on, and the old lady disappeared around the corner. It seemed a little weird to Robert that she would be walking her cats, just like the rest of them walked their dogs, but then she probably was a little eccentric, if those rumors were circling around that she could talk to her cats. Maybe she did talk to her cats, and maybe she even believed that her cats talked back to her. But all in all, it was nonsense, of course, and the woman probably had a screw loose.

“So who’s the new guy talking to Ted and Kurt?” asked Brutus.

“Um… I think his name is Robert,” said Gran. “He moved into the old Michaelson place down the street. That house that was totally run down? They’ve fixed it up nice, and now it’s a real credit to the neighborhood. I haven’t actually met them yet, but talk around the block is that the woman is really snooty. The guy is all right. Friendly with all the neighbors.”

“He sure seemed friendly with Ted and Kurt,” said Brutus. “But then he probably has to be if he wants to become part of our local community.”

“It’s not easy,” said Gran. “Some of our neighbors aren’t always as welcoming as they could be. They don’t like newcomers, especially when they’re not from around these parts and if they haven’t lived here for at least ten generations.”

Brutus laughed. “Ten generations!”

“Have you lived here ten generations, Gran?” asked Dooley.

Gran nodded. “I guess so. I’ve never actually tracked my pedigree, you know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if my forebears arrived here many years ago and helped put this town on the map.” She frowned. “I just hope that the Rosses will start to feel at home here. A community needs fresh blood. And I have to say, Ted and Kurt have some great things to say about Robert and Kimberly Ross. They’re both schoolteachers, and by all accounts, they’re both real popular with their students.”

“Snooty or not, that’s nice,” said Max.

Vesta grinned at the big red cat. “Kids never think anyone is snooty, and I think that even if you are snooty, it’s very difficult to be snooty with kids since they’re so disarming and don’t care what you wear or what you look like. They haven’t been spoiled by the world yet.”

“Like Grace?” asked Dooley.

Vesta nodded. “Yeah, exactly like Grace.” She adored her great-granddaughter and thought she was just about the most gorgeous little treasure that had ever been put on this planet.

She quickly walked on, suddenly remembering the whole reason she had come out in the first place. “We better get a move on, you guys,” she said, urging on her small clowder of cats. “We don’t want to be late for our next visit.”

She had been selected, along with a couple of other cat parents, to present an award to the best pet parent in Hampton Cove. It was a prestigious thing, and she was happy that they’d chosen her to give out the award, as organized by the Hampton Cove Pet Owners Society. All the pet parents in town were eligible to select candidates and award points. She would have selected her granddaughter, who she thought was simply wonderful with their cats, but that’s not how the competition worked. You couldn’t select members of your own family. Otherwise, everyone would do that, and nobody would get enough points to qualify for the big prize.

So over the course of the next couple of weeks, the members of the jury, of which Vesta was a member, had to pay a visit to the different pet parents and monitor their activities, interview them about their habits and their everyday life, and generally decide how well they were treating their pets and how happy those pets were. At first, Vesta had balked at the whole idea of pitting pet parents against one another, figuring there was no need for such an award. But after having spoken to the organizing committee and especially the chair of that committee, Marjorie Sooms, she understood that there was a reason they had decided to organize the competition. There had been rumors about people neglecting their pets and not treating them as well as they should. So this whole award business was an opportunity for them to discreetly take a closer look at some of the dynamics at play between pet and pet parent and possibly offer suggestions on how to improve that relationship. And if they happened to come across a flagrant case of neglect or even outright abuse, they’d notify the proper authorities, and they could launch an official inquiry and even remove the pet from that home.

It was a noble cause, and so Vesta had wholeheartedly given it her support.

Which is why she was now on her way to talk to just such a family. And because she couldn’t talk to dogs herself, she had decided to take one of her cats along, knowing that they could talk to dogs and would alert her if there was anything out of the ordinary. But since she couldn’t just pick one cat, since the others would feel neglected or left out, she had to take all four of them. It was a strange sight, but then as the official representative of the Hampton Cove Pet Owners Society, it wasn’t unheard of for her to be accompanied by her own pets. People might look at her a little strange, but by now most of them knew that she often ventured out with her four fur-balls in tow, and so did her daughter and granddaughter.

They had arrived at their destination, and she applied her finger to the buzzer. When no response came, she glanced through the little window next to the door to see if she could spot the owner of the house.

“Strange,” she said. “I confirmed our appointment last night.”

“Maybe they’re out back,” Max said. “And can’t hear the bell.”

“I guess so,” said Vesta. And since she didn’t want to stand on that porch all day, she figured she might as well do a little harmless trespassing to see if Max’s theory was correct.

The cats were already heading that way, and she followed. And it was when she arrived in the backyard that she saw it: the lady of the house was seated on the swing at the back of the garden, looking dead to the world. She smiled and headed over there. She knew that Chloe Fisher was a well-known interior designer, married to an ad exec, and they were the proud owners of a lovely little Bichon Frisé who answered to the name Bella. And it was Bella she now saw, seated at the feet of her mistress, and barking up a storm the moment they arrived on the scene. And she had just reached the duo when she saw, to her dismay, that Chloe still hadn’t moved an inch. And as she reached out a hand to alert the woman of their presence, suddenly Chloe Fisher… dropped from the swing and fell to the floor.

Her eyes were open, but she was very obviously dead.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a dead person, but if you haven’t, I can’t say I’d recommend the experience. It’s a little disconcerting, to say the least, and even though I have witnessed my fair share of the deceased, it never fails to give me the willies, to be honest. Especially as this particular person dropped right in front of me, causing me to gaze into her eyes for a moment before I finally managed to drag my attention away and look elsewhere.

We had come to the home of Mrs. Fisher with the express purpose of investigating a complaint we had heard that she had been mistreating her canine friend. But now it seemed clear that we’d arrived too late, for the person we were supposed to investigate under the guise of a visit from the Pet Owners Society was no longer with us.

Behind her sat the Bichon Frisé under consideration, and as we transferred our attention to the small white fluffy lapdog, it was clear that she wasn’t taking too well to this sudden demise of her human.

“Bella, right?” asked Harriet, who was the first to recover from the shock of discovering our hostess dead. “My name is Harriet, and these are my friends Max, Dooley and Brutus.”

Bella simply stared at us, clearly very impressed with these recent shocking events that had visited her home.

“Give her some space,” Brutus advised. “She’s obviously had a great shock and probably is in need of a little breathing room to process what happened.”

“Oh, I know what happened,” said the doggie, speaking up for the first time. “In fact, I know exactly what happened, and…” Suddenly she performed a sort of impromptu jig on the spot. “And I’m so happy! So happy I could sing! Sing my little heart out! The witch is dead—the witch is dead, yippee!”

I think it’s safe to say we all stared at the small lapdog with horror written all over our features. It was no way to behave in the face of the tragedy that had just befallen the dog. And I think Dooley said it best when he stated, “It’s the shock. It’s made her go mad, the poor thing.”

“I’m not mad, I’m glad!” the doggie caroled happily. “This is the gladdest, happiest day of my whole life! The dragon has been slain, and I couldn’t be happier!”

“Look, I’m all for the freedom of expression and all that,” said Brutus, “but there are limits, Bella. Your human died, and you shouldn’t celebrate. It’s not done.”

“Well, I’m doing it,” said Bella. “And you can’t stop me!” And to show us she wasn’t kidding, she went skipping off in the direction of the house, singing a happy song all the while. And Brutus, as she had indicated, didn’t stop her.

“Poor thing has gone completely crazy,” said Harriet, shaking her head sadly.

“It’s understandable,” said Dooley. “If something were to happen to our humans, we would probably go a little crazy ourselves.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Brutus, who was staring after Bella as she passed through the pet flap and disappeared into the house. “But not so crazy we’d say a lot of very awful things about them. Calling the woman a witch. My God. After she probably starved herself so she could feed her dog. Maybe that’s why she died, sacrificing herself for her precious pet.”

“Maybe Bella wasn’t all that fond of her human?” Dooley suggested finally, having given the matter some thought. “She did seem happy that she’s dead.”

But before we had a chance to go further into this peculiar example of the human-canine bond, Gran alerted us to the importance of keeping our wits about us and paying attention.

“I think she was murdered,” our aged human now claimed. She had been taking a closer look at the dead woman and now straightened again.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“My main clue is the big butcher knife that’s sticking out of her back.”

We all moved to where Gran was pointing, and I saw she might just have a point. There was indeed a very large knife sticking out of the unfortunate Mrs. Chloe Fisher’s back.

“That should do the trick,” I agreed.

“Yeah, I don’t think she put it there herself,” Brutus indicated.

“Unless she fell from the swing and landed on top of the knife?” Dooley suggested, offering us an alternative view.

“She only fell off the swing after we arrived,” Gran pointed out. “So she couldn’t have fallen on that knife, Dooley. No, this woman was murdered, and if I’m not mistaken, it happened right before we arrived, so the murderer could still be in the area.”

We all scanned the boxwood hedge that lined the backyard. Located behind the swing, it obscured the view of whatever was behind it, or whoever was hiding in there!

“You better take a look,” Gran suggested, and for some reason, she was looking at Harriet and Brutus as she said it.

“Why us!” Harriet cried indignantly.

“Probably because we spend most of our time in the bushes,” Brutus grunted, and with hanging paws, he and Harriet did as they were told and disappeared into that hedge. A couple of breathless moments later, they returned empty-pawed.

“No sign of any murderer in there,” said Brutus. “There is a fence, though, so maybe he scaled it after having done the dirty deed and is now escaping via the neighboring gardens.”

Gran decided that now that the coast was clear, she might as well take a gander herself, and so she headed for that fence and hoisted herself up to take a look at those neighboring gardens Brutus had mentioned.

“Nothing doing!” she announced after a moment. “I see a nice garden, a barbecue set, a pool, but no murderer.”

She sounded relieved as she said it. It’s one thing to come upon a dead body, but another to come upon the person who made it so. The evil might not have expended itself yet, and the murderer just might turn his homicidal rage on the poor hapless witness!

Dooley must have followed the same line of thought, for he said, “I just hope he doesn’t have more knives in his collection, Max.” He shivered. “I don’t think I would enjoy getting a knife planted in my back.”

“No, I wouldn’t either,” I confessed.

Moments later, Gran was calling the police, and as she was relaying the facts of the case as they had presented themselves to us, I wondered where Mrs. Fisher’s husband could be. The couple were supposed to meet us and talk to us together.

Gran must have asked herself the same question, for she now told the dispatcher, “And of the husband, there’s no trace. So chances are that he’s the killer.” She listened for a moment. “Yeah, a big knife of the kitchen variety. The brand?” She glanced over at the hilt. “I’m sorry but I can’t make out the brand since the knife has been shoved in all the way to the hilt. Yeah, all the way. Why?” She listened some more. “Yeah, I’m sure it must be a great quality knife, Dolores, nice and sharp. And I can understand how important it is for you to sample different brands for your big kitchen remodel that’s coming up, but I’m not going to pull it out to check the brand on this one. You’ll just have to ask the coroner when he gets here. Bye now.”

She disconnected and shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s me, but Dolores seems to be going nuttier and nuttier.”

“It’s just you,” Harriet assured her. “Dolores is a policewoman, so she’s been dealing with murder all her life, making her jaded. We, on the other hand, are still pretty new at this, so we see it as a life-changing event, whereas to professionals like Dolores it’s just one of those things.”

It certainly seemed like a life-changing event to Chloe Fisher, I thought, as I overcame my natural aversion to dead people and studied the woman’s body. Gran was right. That big knife would have done the trick. And as it had indeed been shoved in to the hilt, whoever the killer was must have used a lot of strength, for I didn’t think it was easy to accomplish such a feat.

From the house, the sound of a doorbell sounded, and Gran shook her head. “I told Dolores the body was in the backyard, so why ring the front door?” But as she was heading for the house, suddenly a woman dressed in a red summer dress rounded the house, and when she saw us, hesitated for a moment before asking, “Is this Mike Fisher’s house? It’s just that I rang the bell but when no one answered I just figured…” She had now glanced behind us and saw the body, lying prone on the ground. The woman brought a distressed hand to her mouth and gasped in shock. “Is that… is she…”

“Dead,” Gran confirmed. “No idea who made her that way, though. The police are on their way, so they should be here soon. Who are you, by the way?”

“Suzette,” said the woman, still staring in horror and shock at the body. “Suzette Peters. I’m Mike’s new colleague, and he told me to drop by so we could work on a project together.”

“I haven’t seen Mike, actually,” said Gran, and now turned her attention to the house. “You don’t think…” She glanced down at us, and I knew exactly what she was thinking.

“We’re on it,” I therefore announced and set paw for the house. We zipped through the pet flap Bella had disappeared through, and the four of us spread out to go in search of Mike, whose body just might be lying around somewhere, as dead as his wife. If Mike was supposed to be home, and Suzette’s words seemed to confirm that, the killer might very well have murdered both members of the household, or maybe even more if the Fishers had kids.

It was a contingency I found very hard to take into consideration, but then you sometimes hear these stories about entire families being murdered. But try as we might, we didn’t see any sign of another presence in the house, whether dead or alive, except for Bella, of course, who was in the kitchen eating from her bowl and didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

So after confirming to Gran that Mr. Fisher was absent from the premises, I returned to the kitchen and took a seat next to Bella. “So about your human,” I said.

She looked up, a happy smile on her face. “Isn’t this the gladdest day of all, Max? The most wonderful day? The sun is out, the witch is dead, and all is right with the world!”

“About that,” I said, deciding to broach the topic gently, lest she suddenly snap out of whatever mood had taken her as a consequence of the shock of seeing her human being murdered in front of her own eyes, and attack me. “Did you see what happened just then? With the knife and the murderer and all?”

“Oh, no,” she said immediately. “I know what you’re doing, Max.”

“You do? What am I doing?”

“You’re trying to turn me into a witness to this crime. But I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to tell you who killed Chloe just so you can turn around and tell your human, who will tell the police, who will arrest the killer and put them in jail. No way. As far as I’m concerned, the killer did the world a great service, and should get a medal, not be punished with prison.”

“You do realize that murdering people is generally frowned upon.”

“I don’t care. I laugh in the face of these artificial societal constructs, Max. I laugh in the face of justice being done. And I laugh at Chloe’s killer and thank them, for they rescued me from a life of constant strife and turmoil.”

“Chloe wasn’t a nice person?” I ventured.

“Nice!” she scoffed. “She was horrible! Always shouting at me, and sometimes she would even pinch me, Max. Pinch me hard!”

“But why would she pinch you?”

“No reason at all! Just because she liked it! She was cruel, Max. Very cruel. And cruelest of all to Mike and to their daughter Allison, who could never do anything right.”

“Did she pinch them also?”

“Oh, she did worse than that. She destroyed them with her tongue.”

Dooley, who had joined us, now frowned. “How do you destroy someone with your tongue, Bella? Unless she had a very long tongue that could lash out like a whip?”

“Words, Dooley,” said Bella. “She destroyed people with words. She wasn’t just physically violent, but she was also mean and cruel and could say the most horrible things.”

“Okay, so where is Mike?” I asked. “And where is Allison?”

She gave me a keen look. “Now, wouldn’t you like to know that?”

“Yeah, I would like to know that,” I confirmed. “Because if what you’re saying is true, then either Mike or Allison or both have just graduated to the position of prime suspect.”

But if I had hoped this would cause Bella to give us a clue as to the whereabouts of Mike or Allison and whether either of them was Chloe’s murderer, she wasn’t giving an inch. “No way am I helping you guys capture Chloe’s killer. Unless you want to give the person a medal.”

“We could give them a medal,” I said, “for the best arts and crafts made in prison.”

She smiled a sly smile. “I think you’ll find that you won’t be able to break me, Max. I’ve been at the receiving end of so much verbal abuse that your words can’t hurt me.”

“I have no intention whatsoever of hurting you, Bella. But in polite society, murder is generally discouraged, and whoever perpetrates it is typically punished, otherwise everyone would start murdering each other with impunity. And we can’t have that, now can we?”

“Oh, yes, we can,” she said. “If the victim deserves to be murdered I think it’s fine.”

I decided that my attempts to get a witness statement out of her were in vain and decided to leave it for now. Dooley wasn’t giving up so easily, though. “You can’t really defend a murderer, Bella,” he said. “Murder is wrong!”

“A social construct that I think you’ll find isn’t always appropriate,” she said, causing Dooley to goggle at her to some extent.

“But, but, but…”

“I know it’s unusual to side with the murderer of one’s own human,” said Bella, “but in this case, I can assure you it’s the only correct position to take, Dooley. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to head to the dog park to tell my friends the good news!”

And with these words, she was off, leaving us dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and even nonplussed!

Copyright © 2023 by Nic Saint

All Aboard!

I know I promised never to set foot aboard another cruise ship, but when Marge and Tex decided to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary by taking a cruise, and invite the rest of their extended family to join them, we couldn’t possibly stay home at some pet hotel. Which is how we found ourselves on board the Ruritania for a ten-day Caribbean cruise.

And I think I may have finally started enjoying myself to some extent, if not a murder had been committed, and Odelia’s dad was being fingered by the ship’s detective as one of the possible killers. As it was, we soon were roped into the investigation, interviewing suspects, gathering clues and generally traipsing all over the giant cruise liner in search of a killer.

Jack Harper had been lying on his towel, minding his own business, when he was alerted to the presence of an interruption of the peace and quiet of his pool time by droplets of cold water sprinkling on his person. He opened his eyes but could only see that a person or persons unknown were blocking the sun. He tried to shield his eyes to take in this person but found it hard going. Finally, the person spoke, and as his eyes adjusted, he finally saw her steadily, and he saw her whole. She was a woman of considerably handsome aspect, and when she spoke, there was a lilt of something exotic in the way she formed the words.

“You’re in my spot, mister,” she said. The way she said it suggested that she didn’t think it all that important that he move forthwith. More like amusement that he would have the sheer gall to occupy a spot that had clearly been assigned to her.

“I-I’m sorry,” said Jack. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s all right. I guess I could just as well take the spot next to you, Mr…”

“Harper,” said Jack, mesmerized by the presence of such a gorgeous creature standing a mere foot away from him. “Jack Harper. And you are…”

“Madeline,” said the woman, and proceeded to position herself on the sun lounger right next to his.

As they were pretty much the only people present at the pool at this early hour, there were plenty of spaces to choose from, which is why he hadn’t really considered that any of these spots would have been reserved. As a cruise ship newbie, he was still trying to come to terms with the ins and outs of cruise ship traveling, and so if he stepped on a few toes from time to time, it wasn’t out of malice but simply because he didn’t know what the correct etiquette was.

“You a first-time traveler, Jack?” asked Madeline now as she languidly started applying what looked like sunscreen to her bronzed skin. It looked like satin, he decided. And for some reason, he felt a powerful urge to reach out and touch it. But of course, he refrained from doing so. He might be a cruise ship newbie, but at least he knew he shouldn’t go about touching completely strange women. That kind of behavior might see him kicked off the boat, and then where would he be?

“Yeah, this is my first time traveling on the Ruritania, actually,” he confessed. “Why? Is it that obvious?”

She laughed, a tinkling sort of laugh. “Yeah, pretty much,” she said. “But you picked a great one for your first trip, Jack. The Ruritania is probably the best ship traveling the seven seas at the moment. Built in Germany, she’s one of the highest quality and largest cruise liners ever built. And it shows.”

“You seem to know a lot about cruise liners,” he said admiringly. “I take it this isn’t your first time traveling on the Ruritania?”

“Oh, no, I’ve traveled on her loads of times. All the time, in fact.” She gave him a radiant smile that could compete with the sun for first place in sheer radiance. “I live on board, you see. I’m part of the crew.”

“Oh, you are? That’s so great. So what do you do?” he asked, glad for this opportunity to have a chat with the woman before she turned away and disappeared into her own world, as most of the people on board seemed inclined to do. Since he was traveling alone, he had more or less hoped to strike up friendships with some of his fellow passengers, but so far, that hadn’t happened yet, so this opportunity to engage someone in conversation was one he wasn’t going to pass by.

“I’m the captain,” said the woman simply, causing him to goggle at her to some extent. In his mind, captains were these gray-bearded distinguished older men who stood erect and tall and had a sort of iron grip and a look of steel in their icy blue eyes. But this epitome of loveliness looked probably as far removed from the typical image he had of a captain as he could have imagined.

“Your mouth is hanging open, Jack,” said Madeline, looking amused.

“I… I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that… I mean you… I mean to say…”

“You don’t think a woman can be the captain of a cruise ship?” she asked sweetly. “Is that it?”

“Oh, no!” he hastened to say. “Of course not. It’s just that…” He finally gave up. It was probably obvious that he was both baffled and deeply impressed by this revelation.

“There are lots of women captains now,” she said. “So you better get used to the idea, Jack. At least if you plan to become a regular cruise ship traveler. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to lie here for ten minutes and work on my tan. As you can imagine, captains of cruise vessels don’t get a lot of time off, so I was actually hoping to make the most of my off-time.”

And with these words, she closed her eyes, and it was clear that their conversation time had come to an end. At least for now. Jack lay back on his sun lounger, but try as he might, he couldn’t quite see himself capable of relaxing after the startling revelation that the most gorgeous creature that he’d ever met—the woman lying right next to him, in fact—was also by way of being in charge of this entire vessel. It certainly put a very interesting spin on things, and as he gave himself up to thought, he wondered if he should have told her about the reason he was on board the Ruritania. If he had, she might not have smiled at him with such radiance or talked to him with such enjoyment.

No, if she really knew what he was doing on board her boat, she probably would have had him arrested on the spot and locked him up below decks in one of the brigs. Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and so he decided to take a leap of faith.

Vesta Muffin and her friend Scarlett Canyon hurried to their designated spot at the pool. After having spent a couple of days aboard the Ruritania, they were slowly starting to become acquainted with the habits and the mores on board the vessel. For one thing, if you wanted to have a great spot by the pool, you had to hurry and make sure you beat the other passengers to it. And since some of these passengers were perfectly ready, willing, and also able to kick you in the shins if they thought that would suit their purpose, it was paramount to develop a strategy. And so, along with Scarlett, she had devised just such a method of securing the best spot. It was all about the wrists, she knew. You had to race to the sun loungers from the moment the pool deck was being opened for the day, then flick your towel from afar and cause it to land in the right spot. For the moment your towel had landed on the sun lounger, that lounger was officially yours, and nobody could touch it. It took some doing, and she and Scarlett had spent the better part of their second day on board practicing their throwing technique, but now they were experts, and Scarlett was even better at it than Vesta was. She could throw a mean towel from no less than twenty feet away, beating all the other contestants of the daily race and thus securing herself the perfect spot by the main pool.

It was just one of those things that the travel agency hadn’t mentioned in the glossy brochures these companies like to publish, extolling the many advantages and virtues of traveling aboard the cruise line’s flagship, the Ruritania, but it was one the two friends had learned in record time.

The same thing applied to breakfast, of course. Even though the crew prided itself on making sure that all passengers were always fed and the breakfast buffet was supplied on a continuous basis during official breakfast hours, Vesta had discovered that if you arrived even half an hour late, a lot of the good stuff was gone, and the buffet looked as if a horde of ravenous wild beasts had attacked it and left nothing but crumbs for those who came behind. So it was important that you lined up in front of the restaurant twenty minutes before the doors were officially opened, and used your elbows to muscle to the front of the line and get in there first. She knew what she wanted, and so did Scarlett, and so the moment they burst through those doors, they were already making a beeline for the sushi rolls filled with raw fish and avocado, getting in there before the vultures arrived.

Others might have said it was a stressful way to start the day, but not for Vesta and Scarlett. It was simply part and parcel of traveling with hundreds or possibly even thousands of other passengers on the same boat. And since they were determined to make the most of their time on the ship, the strategy the two friends had devised suited them perfectly. The only thing they hadn’t managed yet was to secure themselves a seat at the captain’s table. But they had plans in that regard. Big plans, and they were determined to see them through. Before their voyage was over, Vesta and Scarlett would become the captain’s new best friends, even if the man didn’t know it yet.

Vesta had seen the captain, and she had decided that he was going to become her second husband, or conversely, Scarlett’s first. Handsome as could be, with a distinguished white beard and those cool blue eyes that set him apart from all the other males of the species, she knew that wedding bells would ring out in her near future. But since Scarlett had confessed to her that she had also heard those very same wedding bells ring in her ears, Vesta was quite willing to forgo the big prize and become Scarlett’s maid of honor if that’s how the dice rolled. But until then, it was every woman for herself, and if Scarlett didn’t make a move, she most certainly would.

“Oh, isn’t he just the most gorgeous man you have ever seen?” she asked now as she smeared a liberal amount of sunscreen on her chest. “He’s just so… captainy, isn’t he?”

“He is very captainy,” said Scarlett. “But something tells me that we’re not the only ones in the running for the big prize, honey.” She gestured with her head to the captain as he lay next to a woman of bronzed and exotic aspect, who was amiably chatting with the captain. And if Vesta’s eyes weren’t deceiving her, the captain wasn’t fully impervious to the devious vixen’s charms either, as he was grinning like a moron while he listened to whatever the woman was pouring into his ear.

Vesta’s face clouded. “Treacherous little minx,” she muttered under her breath. “You see that all the time, don’t you? Women throwing themselves at the captain like that. Making a total fool of themselves.” She could have added that she was just such a woman, and in all likelihood, so was Scarlett. But then they had both determined that the captain was theirs for the taking, and so by all rights he shouldn’t engage this other woman in conversation and revel in the dubious privilege.

“She’s pretty,” said Scarlett, and if Vesta wasn’t mistaken, there was a touch of jealousy in her voice.

“I guess so,” said Vesta reluctantly. “If you like the type.”

“The captain certainly likes the type,” said Scarlett.

And as they watched on, the conversation between the two seemed to have come to an end, and they both lay back on their respective sun loungers and closed their eyes. Clearly, the captain had decided that enough was enough and had told the woman in no uncertain terms what he thought of passengers becoming entirely too fresh with him.

Vesta relaxed. And as she started thinking up ways and means of approaching the man and snagging his attention, she knew she was in for a tough time since she was obviously facing stiff competition. But she was nothing if not determined and knew that she would come out the victor in this ruthless campaign she was about to engage in. A captain’s wife. Now wouldn’t that be something? Then she could move out of her daughter’s place and travel the seven seas by the side of her handsome captain, being awarded all the perks that probably went with the position. For one thing, she would never have to struggle to get first dibs on a sun lounger in the morning ever again, for the captain’s wife probably had her very own lounger reserved especially for her. Maybe even her own private deck with her own private pool. And she would get the best food at the breakfast buffet, the best cabin, and the best service supplied to her free of charge. And as she freely indulged in her daydream of the kind of glorious life she would lead once she became the Ruritania’s First Lady, she didn’t notice that a hidden hand had snuck up behind her, grabbed the bag she had brought along that contained her wallet and her phone, then retracted again, removing the items and securing them for its own. The same procedure was repeated seconds later with Scarlett’s bag and about a dozen other passengers all enjoying those first rays of sun heating up the pool deck. It was a nice haul, and all perpetrated under the nose of the ship’s actual captain, who wasn’t the gray-haired man who answered to the name Jack Harper but the woman lying next to him.

Marge wasn’t all that keen on the fact that their cruise wasn’t going to take them to the one island she had been looking forward to visiting. It had been on the itinerary when they set out on this journey, but apparently something had gone wrong, and now all of a sudden it wasn’t on the schedule anymore. It was a small island in the Caribbean, and she had read great things about it, both about the local population’s hospitality and friendliness, but also about the springs located in one of the island’s spas, which were supposed to possess rejuvenating qualities and be able to cure any diseases you might be suffering from. And since she had been experiencing a slight pain in her right hand lately, she had been hoping that bathing in that healing spring water, which allegedly sprang up straight from the Earth’s core, might alleviate the malady she had.

As it was, her husband of twenty-five years, who was a doctor himself, had told her it was all hogwash, and she shouldn’t give credence to a bunch of nonsense stories and local hoodoo. Just a way to fleece the tourists, he had said. If she gave into that sort of thing, she was simply perpetuating a myth and allowing these crooks to continue swindling naive people.

Still, when she read on that day’s schedule that the trip to the island had been canceled and the boat would steam ahead to their next destination, she felt a distinct pang of regret. The pain in her hand was one thing, but her granddaughter Grace had developed a sort of skin rash lately on her upper back, and she just knew that a dip in that healing spring water would have cleared it right up.

“I don’t understand,” she told her daughter while the family was enjoying a nice breakfast. “Why did they decide to skip a trip to Marker Island?”

“Probably because King Kong has been spotted,” her husband said in a weak attempt at humor.

She made a face at him. “It’s not funny, Tex. I was really looking forward to visiting those springs. They’re world-famous, and on TripAdvisor there are lots and lots of very positive comments. Hundreds of them, in fact. It would have cleared up Grace’s rash.”

Odelia gave her a look of commiseration. “Maybe you can ask the captain?” she suggested. “There must be a reason they decided to change the itinerary. Though if you’re worried about Grace’s rash, don’t be. It’s practically gone already, with that new cream Dad prescribed.”

“They’re probably behind schedule,” said Chase, Marge’s son-in-law. “So they figured they’d better make up for lost time by skipping a destination or two. It happens.”

Chase and Odelia were experienced cruise ship travelers, Marge knew. They had done a cruise for their honeymoon, taking along their cats for that occasion, or at least two of them. This time, to celebrate Tex and Marge’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the rest of the family had all chipped in and decided to offer the happy couple a Caribbean cruise, something Marge had been dreaming of for years but which had never materialized. But now it was finally happening.

“I’m sure there will be springs on other islands,” said Tex now, giving her a rub across the back. “And if you really want to pay a visit to this particular island, we could always come back next year and do it all over again.”

She gave him a grateful look. She knew it probably wouldn’t happen, but then again, it might. So she decided to put the whole Marker Island business out of her head and focus on the bright side, which was that she was there with her family, and they were having a great time.

“Where is Gran?” asked Odelia now, looking around. “She wasn’t in her cabin when I knocked on the door just now to tell her we were heading out.”

“She and Scarlett are lounging by the pool,” said Tex. “They got up early again so they could get first dibs on the best spots by the pool and also be the first at the breakfast buffet.” He shook his head. “They seem to believe that if you’re not first to attack the buffet, there will be nothing left.”

“Well, it is true that some food items already seem to be finished,” said Odelia as she took a bite from her pancake.

“I thought they kept refreshing all morning,” said Marge.

“That’s the idea,” said Tex. “But sometimes they run out of stuff before everyone has had a chance to sample all the items on display, so they simply move some of the other stuff around so it doesn’t look obvious things have run out. Which is something Vesta seems to know very well.”

Vesta and Scarlett had quickly become experts at this cruise liner thing, and it was obvious that the two older ladies were having a whale of a time. First dibs on the breakfast buffet, first dibs on the best spots by the pool. And their next plan was to get first dibs on a seat at the captain’s table for dinner. So far, that particular honor had escaped them, but Marge was convinced it wouldn’t be long before they were glued to the captain and wouldn’t let go until the man had promised either of the two friends to marry them.

“They certainly have taken to cruise life like a fish to water,” said Chase with a grin.

“They’ve been looking forward to this cruise so much,” said Marge. “They’ve been reading everything they could lay their hands on and watching documentaries, YouTube videos, and movies about cruise life for months now.”

“If I didn’t know any better,” said Tex, “they might even consider becoming fixtures on the Ruritania.” A sort of wistful look had come into his eyes, and Marge knew what he was thinking. If he could unload his mother-in-law onto the cruise line company, it would probably be the best day of his life. But since Ma was one of those people who are an acquired taste, Marge didn’t think that would happen. They would simply return her to sender as soon as possible.

She glanced around, and when she saw that their four cats were seated next to the table and snacking from their bowls, she relaxed. She hadn’t thought they’d be allowed to bring their cats on board. Pet dogs, yes, by all means, but pet cats? She didn’t think she had ever heard of people taking a trip aboard a cruise ship with their cats in tow, but the Ruritania was one of the only cruise liners that allowed pets on board, so they had applied for and received permission to do just that, and so now Max, Dooley, Brutus, and Harriet were all aboard, and even though they were still getting used to it, they didn’t seem to be overly put out by the sudden shift of environment.

She picked up the remnants of her soft-boiled egg and deposited it onto Max’s plate. She watched with interest how he discarded the white and concentrated on the yolk for some reason. He ate it all, then proceeded to start licking himself, blithely ignoring his benefactor, as most cats do.

She shared a look of amusement with her daughter, who had been watching.

Cats. They love you when they need something, then when they get it, they simply ignore you.

Suddenly there was a sort of commotion near the entrance to the restaurant, which was one of many different restaurants on board the gigantic vessel but had quickly become their favorite. When Marge looked up, she saw that her mother and Scarlett were approaching, and they didn’t look happy. Both ladies were dressed in their bathing suits, which wasn’t allowed in the restaurant, something the hostess at the entrance of the restaurant was pointing out to them. But Ma being Ma, she simply ignored the woman and steamed on the moment she caught sight of her family.

“We’ve been robbed!” she shouted from thirty yards away. “Someone stole our phones and our wallets!”

“Oh, Christ,” said Chase under his breath.

“And we weren’t the only ones,” Scarlett added. “At least a dozen people lost their personal possessions, some of them their passports and other valuables!”

“And we tried to complain to the captain, but he said he’s not the captain at all!” said Ma and seemed even more aggrieved by this betrayal of her confidence than the actual theft of her stuff.

“What do you mean, the captain isn’t the captain?” asked Odelia.

“Just what I’m telling you: we told the captain about our stuff being stolen, and the man had the sheer audacity to claim that he wasn’t the captain! Probably trying to shirk his duty!”

“You do know that the captain of the Ruritania is a woman, right?” said Odelia.

The look on both Ma and Scarlett’s faces was something to behold.

“A woman!” Ma cried, much aggrieved. “But why?!”

“Because women can captain a boat just as well as men can,” Odelia pointed out. “So the man you thought was the captain is probably just another passenger, just like us.”

“But… but… but…” Ma sputtered, looking like a kid whose candy had been taken away. “But that’s not fair!”

“I get first dibs on the passenger,” Scarlett said quickly. And when her friend eyed her in abject dismay, she shrugged. “He may not be the captain, but he’s still a very handsome man, honey.”

Ma threw up her hands. “This cruise is going to hell in a handbasket!” she yelled, and then she pointed a finger at Chase, for some reason. “You have to find our stuff and arrest this thief, Chase.”

“Why me?!” Chase cried.

“Because you’re a cop, and it’s your duty to do… cop stuff.”

“I’m on vacation!” said Chase. “And besides, I don’t have any jurisdiction here. Go talk to the captain. The actual captain this time, not some passenger who looks like a captain. He’ll probably refer you to the ship’s security team, and they’ll take your statements and catch this thief.”

But Ma wasn’t so easily appeased. “I don’t trust this captain,” she said.

“Why?” asked Odelia. “Because she’s a woman?”

“Because she’s been cheating us! Making us believe this other guy is the captain.”

It was the kind of specious logic Marge’s mother excelled at. Only this time she was about to be put in her place, Marge saw, for the actual captain had appeared at their table. She was a woman of Marge’s age, with red hair tied back in a ponytail and perfectly attired in a captain’s uniform. She gave Ma a look of censure. But when she opened her mouth to speak, she was nothing if not perfectly civil and professional. “The deck steward has informed me about the thefts,” she told them. “And I want to apologize on behalf of the crew and tell you that we will do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen again and that the thief will be apprehended, and your property returned.”

“You shouldn’t have put this other guy in charge,” said Ma.

The captain gave her a look of confusion. “You mean the deck steward?”

“No, the other captain! When we told him what happened, he said he wasn’t the captain, and I don’t think it’s fair.”

The captain simply stared at her and gave her a look that Marge had become quite accustomed to over the years. It was the kind of look a lot of people gave Ma Muffin when she was going well. “I don’t understand,” she finally confessed.

“Don’t listen to her,” Tex advised since he never did so himself. “She’s had a big shock.”

The captain’s expression instantly morphed into one of compassion. “Of course you have. And like I said, we’ll catch the person responsible and return the stolen items as soon as possible. In the meantime, we would like to offer you free drinks for the rest of your trip, and that goes for your entire party.” She made a gesture encompassing all those present at the table, and Marge gave the woman a look of approval. Free drinks all around were a nice way to compensate them for the trouble this thief had caused.

But of course, Ma wouldn’t have it. “Who cares about free drinks?” she asked. “You should never have allowed this thief to come on board in the first place. So what you’re going to do is hire my granddaughter and her husband, and they’ll make sure this never happens again.”

“I’m sorry, your granddaughter and her husband?” asked the captain.

“They’re cops,” said Ma proudly. “And they’ve solved a lot of cases back home. In fact, they never fail at any task they set themselves, so if you add them to your personnel roster, you can be safe in the knowledge that this thief is as good as caught.” And when the captain opened her mouth to speak, Ma waved a hand. “You don’t have to thank me. It’s the least I can do. And now I would like you to introduce Scarlett to your captain who isn’t a captain because she’s got first dibs, and even though I like the guy myself, Scarlett is my best friend, and if she wants to marry this guy, I’m not going to stand in the way of her future happiness. So lead the way, my dear, and we will follow.”

The captain closed her mouth again, and if the dazed look in her eyes was any indication, she was probably already regretting that she had ever welcomed Vesta Muffin aboard the Ruritania in the first place. But then she wasn’t the first, and probably wouldn’t be the last, to have a feeling of being sandbagged after making Marge’s mom’s acquaintance. She often had that effect on people.

Okay, so I know what you’re going to say. After our last terrible ordeal aboard a cruise ship, why did we ever agree to board another one of these horrible contraptions? The thing is, if we hadn’t come along, we would have had to stay in Hampton Cove without the benefit of our humans’ presence. And since the whole family decided to join Marge and Tex on this trip, they would have had to leave us with one of their neighbors or friends, or even one of those pet hotels that are all the rage. And since the last thing I wanted was to spend the next ten days at a pet hotel, no doubt surrounded by the scum of the earth in the form of canines and other pets, we had no other option but to buckle up and join the journey. So far, I hadn’t found my sea paws yet, but I was getting there. Who was enjoying the trip even less than I did was Brutus, whose otherwise nice black shiny fur had acquired a distinctly dull look and who looked a little green around the gills.

“I don’t like this, Max,” he confessed. “I don’t like this at all.”

“You mean the thefts?” I asked, for we had been following the back-and-forth between our humans and the captain with keen attention.

“Oh, who cares about the thefts?” he said miserably. “I don’t like this trip, I don’t like the boat, I don’t like anything about it.” He sagged to the floor. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me how absolutely terrible being aboard a boat can be.”

“You’ll get the hang of it soon enough,” I told him. Though when he gave me such a pitiful look that my heart bled, I had the impression that maybe he’d never get the hang of it. Maybe he’d be miserable throughout the whole trip and only be happy again once we returned to port and were home safe and sound once more.

“I like it,” Harriet announced happily. She had just stowed away a pretty impressive meal and looked as chipper as she had ever looked. “Say, maybe we could ask the captain if she needs another artist for tonight’s entertainment. I could sing a couple of songs and become part of the ship’s crew.”

We had sat through last night’s show, and I had to admit that adding Harriet to the program probably would be a major improvement, since even though she’s not the world’s best singer, she’d do a better job than the scheduled performer. Not that any of the passengers seemed to mind since they all sang along and generally had a ball. Though the copious amounts of alcoholic beverages most of them had imbibed might also have had something to do with that.

“How about you, Dooley?” I asked. “How are you finding this trip?”

“Oh, it’s fine,” said Dooley.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You don’t sound all that excited to be here.”

“No, it’s okay,” he assured us. “It’s just that…” He glanced up at the table where our humans were still partaking of breakfast and were now discussing the recent events surrounding the theft of Gran and Scarlett’s wallets and phones. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Max, but there’s something in the water, and it’s been following us all along. I think it probably started following us the moment we left port, and it’s been following us ever since.”

We all stared at our friend. “What is following us?” asked Brutus, his face turning even paler than before.

“I’m not sure,” said Dooley. “Though if I were to hazard a guess, I would say it’s probably a giant squid. Or it could be a shoal of sharks, of course, hoping one of the passengers will fall overboard so they can eat them. But like I said, I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “I would need to do more research.”

I think it’s safe to say we all shivered after this shocking announcement from our resident sea expert. In anticipation of this trip, Dooley had watched even more Discovery Channel than usual and had even gone online to brush up on his knowledge of everything to do with taking long journeys aboard a boat. He’d even watched videos of Captain Cousteau, who had been something of a legend in French maritime circles and an avid explorer of sea life. So if Dooley said the boat was being tracked by a large squid or a shoal of sharks, then he probably wasn’t too far off the mark.

“But why would a giant squid follow us?” asked Harriet.

Dooley nodded wisely. “For the exact same reason the sharks do. To feed on human flesh. And since people fall overboard all the time, they stand a pretty good chance at being rewarded for their patience.” He gave us a serious look. “So whatever you do, don’t fall overboard, you guys. You’ll be snapped up immediately and become giant squid or shark food. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

And with these words, he returned to his breakfast, which today consisted of shrimp. But even though I love shrimp, something we rarely get to feast on at home, somehow I’d lost my appetite. And as I thought about the prospect of being eaten by a giant squid or a shark, I vowed not to set another paw on deck for as long as we were guests on the Ruritania. Best not to take any chances!

Gran and Scarlett had joined our humans at the breakfast table, and as I glanced up, I saw that two more members of our party had decided to participate. They were Uncle Alec and his fiancée Charlene Butterwick. Apparently, they had slept in, and only now were induced by the rumbling sensation in their stomachs to join the rest of the family.

“I was robbed, Alec!” Gran immediately announced, effectively wiping the happy and relaxed smile off her son’s face. “Robbed, I tell you. So what are you going to do about it, huh?”

“What are you talking about?” said Uncle Alec as he briefly glanced over to the buffet. Seeing it was still moderately stocked, he relaxed.

“Scarlett and I were at the pool discussing Scarlett’s wedding plans when suddenly we both noticed that someone had stolen our wallets and our phones from our bags.”

“Tough,” was Uncle Alec’s only comment. He then excused himself and hurried to pick up a tray and fill it to his heart’s content with breakfast items.

“Tough!” said Gran, sounding incredulous. “Is that all he’s got to say? First Chase refuses to help us out, and now my own son! What good is it to have cops in the family when they won’t even lift a finger to help you when you’re being robbed at gunpoint!”

“Gunpoint?” asked Marge, alarmed. “Did the guy have a gun?”

“It’s just a matter of speech,” Gran clarified, “but it wouldn’t surprise me if this miscreant did indeed wield a gun, just in case one of his victims caught sight of him in action and decided to do something about it.” She turned to her friend. “Looks like we had a lucky escape, honey. For the same token, he could have shot us both stone-cold dead!”

“I don’t think he had a gun,” said Scarlett, offering an alternative view. “Guns probably aren’t allowed on board. And we did have to pass a guy waving a wand when we boarded, remember?”

“Oh, they’ve got ways to sneak a gun past the wand,” Gran assured her friend. “No, I’m telling you, there’s a gang of thieves on board this ship, armed to the teeth, and if we don’t do something about it, they’ll probably lay waste to the entire group of passengers!”

Charlene, who had joined her future husband to load her tray full of breakfast goodies, now returned, looking fresh as a daisy and with a happy smile on her face. Being away from the office and the business of managing the town of Hampton Cove of which she was the mayor became her.

“This is so nice, you guys,” she announced. “Though I’m probably going to gain about ten pounds if I keep this up. This buffet is so amazing, and I just want to keep loading stuff onto my tray!”

“That’s both the beauty and the danger of these buffets,” said Tex. “Everything is so delicious, you want to try it all, and before you know it, you need two trays to carry everything and two stomachs to digest it all.”

“Okay, so I’m going to give myself permission to go all out,” said Charlene as she took a seat at the table and eyed her little haul with gratification. “And then once we’re back home, I’m going on a diet. How does that sound?”

“Lousy,” said Gran. “So are you just going to sit there and stuff your face while Scarlett and I are being robbed of our possessions?”

Charlene frowned. “You guys were robbed?”

“Yes, we were! And at gunpoint, no less!”

“Not at gunpoint,” Marge hastened to say.

“But we were robbed,” said Gran.

“The captain has promised us she will catch the thief,” Odelia told Charlene. “And she’s going to return everything that was stolen to the rightful owners.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Gran, continuing to offer the critical view.

Meanwhile, Uncle Alec had returned, his tray full to overflowing.

“Are you going to eat all of that?” asked Marge with a laugh.

“I’m going to give it my best shot,” said Uncle Alec with a happy grin. He then sighed happily. “Now isn’t this the life? I could get used to this, you know.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Chase as he settled back in his chair. His tray was empty, having transferred its contents to his inner trencherman, and he looked ready to take a little siesta by the pool. The only one who didn’t look as if she had overdone herself was Grace, but then she only ate what she was being given, and to Odelia’s credit, she was limiting the toddler’s intake of food to what she needed.

“I like the cruise,” Grace now announced. “I like it almost as much as daycare.”

“You’re a very lucky girl,” said Harriet. “To be going on a cruise at your age.”

“I just wish there were other kids,” Grace said, offering a minor note of critique.

“I’m sure there are lots and lots of kids,” I said. “You just haven’t met them yet.”

Even though the cruise ship offered daycare and even supervised mealtimes for kids who stayed on board during port days, Odelia and Chase had opted to stay with Grace themselves, and to accompany her while she had fun on the waterslides, played in the different pools on offer, and generally had a ball. They were there to have fun as a family, and so the whole family had been joining the activities geared for kids so they could spend this vacation together. The adult contingent, meanwhile, had mainly been relaxing and staying in the vicinity as much as possible, though I have to say that this whole pool aspect didn’t sit well with me. Frolicking in a pool isn’t my idea of a fun time being had by all. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything less fun than being submerged in a very large receptacle filled with water, dozens and dozens of people splashing about, kids sliding down waterslides, and generally getting wet all the time. Brrr.

But then, since I’m not a spoilsport or a wet blanket in any way, I had decided early on not to voice my reservations, and my friends clearly felt the same way, for when Odelia had asked us at the end of our first full day on board the Ruritania if we were having a good time, we had all nodded enthusiastically and said we’d never enjoyed ourselves more. And she actually believed us!

But let’s be honest: who in their right mind would voluntarily set foot on board a gigantic floating metal tub and head out in the middle of an entire ocean? You’d have to be crazy to think this constitutes ‘fun’ in any way. More like suicide, in my personal opinion, or the figments of a deranged mind. But then of course I’m just a cat, so what do I know?

Breakfast over, the human contingent returned to their cabins to get ready for a day of poolside enjoyment, while the four of us dragged our paws to some extent as we patiently waited until our humans were ready so we could spend the day in the shade, a safe distance from the pool, and take long naps while we dreamed of feeling dry land underneath our paws once more.

For the next couple of hours, Marge read her thick tome, which she called a beach read, even though there were no beaches on the ship, Tex simply closed his eyes and promptly fell asleep, Chase and Odelia spent all day in the pool with Grace, Uncle Alec did his best impression of a beached whale, and Charlene surfed on her phone, a pair of oversized sunglasses on her nose, looking like a movie star of old in her stylish bathing suit. As for Gran and Scarlett, there was no trace of them, so I assumed they were probably on the hunt for the captain who wasn’t a captain.

As far as I was concerned, I decided to follow Tex’s formula. So I closed my eyes and took a prolonged nap, as did my friends.

Except perhaps Dooley, who kept darting anxious glances to the ship’s stern, or is it aft? Presumably on the lookout for that giant squid or that shoal of sharks. If you’re the group’s designated sea life specialist, you have a responsibility to act as a watchcat, and clearly he took this responsibility very seriously indeed!

And I had just been dreaming of my spot on the couch back home when a sort of roar arose in my vicinity. Immediately, I opened my eyes, fully expecting to see a giant squid tentacle reaching out and picking up people left and right. But instead, all I saw was a very large woman with a very red face looking down at me and shouting something that at first I didn’t understand. Finally, I tuned in and heard her say, “Who brought these cats on board! Don’t you know I’m allergic?!”

As if people splashing in a pool, giant squids, sharks, and thieves weren’t enough to contend with, now we had to deal with a cat hater too!

Copyright © 2023 by Nic Saint