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