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By this time back in Baltimore, the leaves would be a collage of blood reds, burnt oranges, and vibrant golds, but the heat kept its grip tight around New Orleans, and the leaves remained green even as the children returned to school in their long yellow buses.

Still, the days didn’t seem as ungodly hot, or maybe I was just getting used to it. After all, Jade and I had been living in Beulah, the flyspeck of a suburb on the outskirts of the Big Easy, for six months now.

I hadn’t adjusted to everything in our new hometown yet. The humidity still made my fur frizz, and the leash training Jade was insisting upon was somewhere between intolerable and unbearable. Whatever possessed that woman to think a cat could be led around by a piece of string, I would never understand. And those lumbering oversized rats that inhabited the swamps and lowlands were something I wasn’t expecting to ever get used to.

Beulah had accepted us—well, most of Beulah at least. A few of our neighbors weren’t too pleased at the way Jade stuck her nose into town business, even if her heart was in the right place. Still on the whole, the sleepy New Orleans suburb had gotten used to their new part-time librarian and full-time snoop. And most had finally caught on to share a little snack with their favorite new feline detective when he made his rounds.

Which was what I was doing this evening. Jade’s best friend, Char, had stopped by to pick her up for what they were calling “Grub and Gripe Thursday.” Each week, they’d head into New Orleans to some new culinary treasure to complain about work over a fancy dinner. Although if I knew Char, she’d do less complaining and more inhaling of whatever was set in front of her. The poor girl might be allergic to cats, but she’d never met a snack that disagreed with her.

Speaking of snacks, and not the tummy kind, I wished, not for the first time, that I could convince Ethan to move in with us permanently. Char called him a “snack,” which never failed to make Jade blush, although I failed to see the resemblance between the beefy handyman and a food item. At least, I’d never tasted anything special when I’d given him a few test licks. He was human, just like the ladies, although the way he stroked behind my ears was divine.

I knew Jade liked Ethan’s company, which went double for me. So why not invite him to share the ramshackle plantation with us? Lord knew he was there enough, fixing this, repairing that, and always on the lookout for my latest escape route. He wouldn’t find this one, though. Humans, even this human who was quickly becoming my all-time favorite, weren’t that smart.

I’d left the planation this evening, safe in the knowledge that I could easily get home before Char and Jade ran out of complaints and menu items. I was currently jogging along through the underbrush toward downtown Beulah. Although I wasn’t currently on a case, I’d become fascinated with a certain taciturn old woman who never failed to get my roommate’s goat. I was headed to Beulah’s library again to continue my surveillance of the dreaded Luanne Jackson.

I’d started keeping an eye on the head librarian when I’d gotten tired of Jade’s constant complaints. Surely, no human could be as annoying and obstinate as Jade painted her boss to be. It hadn’t taken long to discover that Jade had not been overemploying hyperbole in the case of the spinster Miss Jackson. If anything, she’d underestimated the woman’s withering personality.

Luanne Jackson was a crabby old woman who had long given up caring what other people thought about her. She was also prone to say exactly what she was thinking, a rare trait among humans and one that delighted me. Spying on the old lady had become somewhat of an addiction these past few weeks, in part because I’d discovered something the rest of Beulah didn’t know. Miss Luanne was more than a boring old librarian. She was a woman with a secret obsession.

I arrived at the library after closing time, but I knew she’d still be in there. It seemed to be a habit of hers, lingering at work as dusk settled on the town.

I hopped onto the casing of the air-conditioning unit that still hummed away in the heat, causing a not unpleasant vibration to course through me. The perch afforded me a view through the window outside Luanne’s office.

Like most other nights, she sat at her desk, working away on the project that seemed to take up much of her free time. A stack of books sat beside her elbow as she paged through an old tome, making notes in the journal she kept locked in her drawer during business hours and that she stuffed into her bag each night as she left.

There was something in that journal Luanne didn’t want to come out, some secret she feared being exposed.

I adjusted my position, figuring I might get some bathing done while the old woman worked. Licking my thick fur until it shone, I peeked up periodically to make sure I didn’t miss anything important. It was near dark when Luanne closed the book and tucked her journal away. My eyes followed as she left her office and closed the door.

Soon, Luanne was locking the front door of the library behind her and starting off down the sidewalk. I jumped down and tagged along behind her, sticking to the lengthening shadows so the old woman didn’t know she had a tail. This wasn’t the first time I’d followed her home, and she hadn’t yet noticed me. We cats were naturally stealthy, and I preferred to believe I could give an authentic Japanese ninja a run for his money.

The old librarian followed a familiar path, and I darted off to the left, knowing I could cut through the old cemetery to shave off some time. It was a place of hanging vines and graves that sat above ground. The water table was such that nothing could stay buried for long, it seemed, so mourners had built fancy sarcophagi for their loved ones, white stone decorated with weeping angels and Celtic crosses.

Ducking behind a stone box covered in stylized stone roses, I watched as Luanne paused across the street, coming to a stop in front of a rambling old house. Its windows boarded up and its paint peeling, the house was a reminder of stately times gone by. Whenever the librarian came this way, she would stand in front of the house for several minutes, watching it as if she were waiting for someone to step out of the faded blue door and walk out over the rotting porch to wave a hand in welcome.

But unless that hand belonged to a skeleton, anyone substantial who walked across that porch was likely to fall right through it. Frankly, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see an honest to goodness skeleton shamble out of that old house. It was creepy.

I’d considered trying to find a way in, but to be honest, I didn’t want to. The house smelled off, and whatever secrets it was holding, they weren’t anything I cared to know.

Luanne heaved a sigh and started walking away, her brisk pace indicating she’d put away whatever dark thoughts compelled her to stop at that house night after night. I was just about to dart out from my hiding place and scurry across the street when a noise startled me into stillness.

Around the corner came a station wagon that had to have been manufactured around the time of Jade’s birth or earlier. Attached to the top of the ancient vehicle was a loudspeaker, and from that speaker blared a message that reverberated around the neighborhood, making me hiss as a shock of feedback rent the twilight.

“Mayor Travis Landry has let you down. He’s failed to keep his friends and neighbors safe at night. His backdoor deals with shady characters mean more violence, more crime, and more headaches for all of us. It’s time for a new mayor, Beulah! One who will restore this town’s dignity and banish the criminal element from our streets for good.”

My ears twitched, thinking whoever’s voice it was blasting from the speakers was really laying it on thick. “Vote for Marlene Marshall for mayor!” the voice said, its tone rising to near-shriek levels and making my ears lie flat against my skull.

I gave up on tailing the librarian, instead intrigued by this new development. Mayor Travis had been Beulah’s leader for several cat generations, and he generally ran unopposed. It seemed as if his time of taking his office for granted was over.

I slipped back through the cemetery, headed to the dumpster behind Sparky’s Diner. If the girls could have their Grub and Gripe, then I could have my Sniff and Snack. The garbage bags old Sparky threw out usually held a treat or two, even if I did end up bringing back up some of what I gobbled down.

As I jogged back to downtown, I wondered what excitement was in store for the not-so-quiet town of Beulah. It might not be the same fervor that accompanied the discovery of a body, or a whole field full of them, but I had a feeling things were going to get crazy quickly.

Although I’d often struggled to understand human concepts, there was one institution that I grasped intuitively. Politics. Cats were instinctively political because the tom at the top got the choicest morsels and finest females. Hierarchy was everything, and jostling for position was something we came out of the womb knowing. We even fought over our mother’s milk.

If the same kind of pandemonium was about to settle in Beulah, I wanted to have a front-row seat. Would the town cast its vote for the tried and true, or would the passionate newcomer have a shot at stealing the mayor’s seat?

My whiskers were twitching with excitement to find out.