The Mysteries of Max Mysteries of Max Box Set 4

Nic Saint

Puss in Print Publications

Contents

The Mysteries of Max Box Set 6

Purrfectly Hidden

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Epilogue

Purrfect Kill

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Epilogue

Purrfect Boy Toy

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Excerpt from Purrfectly Dogged (The Mysteries of Max 19)

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The Mysteries of Max Box Set 6

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Purrfectly Hidden (The Mysteries of Max 16)

Life had been going swimmingly, as life usually does in Hampton Cove, when suddenly disaster struck. Odelia had scheduled a surprise visit to Vena Aleman. Vena is our local vet, and a master at inflicting pain and suffering. And as it happens she was about to have a field day, for I’d been troubled by a toothache, and this fact had not escaped Vena.

So when those awful abductions happened I should have seen them coming, but I was still under the influence of my pain meds. Is it any wonder, then, that Dooley and I were captured by those awful catnappers? I blame Vena, to be honest, though of course that fiendish woman would deny all responsibility, and blame everything on the bad guys.

Add to that Grandma Muffin stomping at the bit to pick a fight with Tex, Odelia chasing the story of a lifetime when the local sausage store ran out of sausages, and you can see why I felt compelled to share these harrowing events with you, dear reader. Will there be a happy end, you ask? Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it, and I’m not a spoilsport.

Purrfect Kill (The Mysteries of Max 17)

As your loyal feline correspondent it is my sad duty to inform you that one of my housemates has lost her marbles and decided to go into showbiz. And in other news, the country’s most successful female pop singer was found murdered.

In other words: business as usual in Hampton Cove, one of the coziest but also (apparently) deadliest East Coast towns. At least for celebrities, who tend to die like flies in this lovely little corner of the world. As far as Harriet’s singing ambitions were concerned, she wasn’t the only one in our family with a sudden craving to step into the limelight and seek fame and fortune. Gran, too, announced she wants to be a star and become the next Beyoncé.

The murder investigation into the death of Chickie Hay, meanwhile, wasn’t going well. Oh, there were plenty of suspects, but no progress being reported. Odelia, my human and sometime amateur sleuth, was at the end of her tether, and even we cats couldn’t give her the breakthrough she was so desperately looking for. But tenacious as we are, we just kept on digging, even as Gran’s ambitions caused a serious rift in the Poole family—she even up and left.

So how did it all end, you ask? Well, do read on in my latest report from the Hampton Cove front lines: Purrfect Kill. I promise you won’t be disappointed. At least if you don’t mind reading a book written from the viewpoint of a cat.

Purrfect Boy Toy (The Mysteries of Max 19)

When Odelia was hired by Opal Harvey, the country’s most famous talk show host, I was happy for her, and eager to help. Until she told me the job involved flying out to LA. Everybody knows cats don’t travel. Not by car, not by boat, not by train and most definitely not by plane!

So why did I decide to throw caution to the wind and catch that flight? Simple. I had no choice in the matter! And so my latest adventure began. Luckily my friends all got to tag along, and so did all of Odelia’s family members—even Grandma Muffin, who decided to bring her boy toy. Or is it toy boy?

It turned out to be a blast. We had pedicures. We had manicures. We got to meet celebrities, we got to visit movie sets. We were also shot at, chased, screamed at, and had the dubious pleasure of meeting Opal’s cloned cat—who revealed we might all be cloned, too! So did we catch whoever tried to permanently retire Opal Harvey? Read on to find out!

PS: no cats were harmed (or cloned) in the making of this story.

Purrfectly Hidden

The Mysteries of Max - Book 16

Prologue

Marge loved these quiet mornings when she had the house all to herself. Tex and Vesta were at the office, and so were Odelia and Chase, and the cats were probably next door having a quiet nap, or out in the backyard wistfully gazing at the flock of birds occupying the big cherry tree. It was a gorgeous morning, and she enjoyed it to the fullest. She’d vacuumed upstairs and downstairs, had put in a load of laundry and was busy in the kitchen, humming along with Dua Lipa’s latest hit blasting from the speakers, when suddenly the kitchen tap sputtered and hissed, then gurgled up a small trickle of brown water and promptly died on her.

“Dang it,” she muttered as she tried the tap again, with the same result. She stared at the recalcitrant thing for a moment, hands on hips, willing it to work by the sheer force of her willpower, but faucets are tough opponents, and it decided to stay dead instead.

She heaved a deep sigh and called her husband.

“Hey, hon,” said Tex as he picked up. “I’m with a patient right now. Can I call you back?”

“It’s the kitchen faucet. It’s broken.”

“Broken, huh? Okay if I take a look at it tonight?”

“Yeah, fine,” she said and disconnected. She thought for a moment, then went into the laundry room. It had been conspicuously quiet in there, and she now saw that the machine had stopped mid cycle. And when she opened the tap next to the washer, it was as dead as the one in the kitchen.

Ugh.

She returned to the kitchen and stood thinking for a moment, wondering whether to wait for Tex, but then her eye caught the pet flap Tex had installed in the kitchen door, the one that had cost him a week to put in place and for which he’d needed the help of her brother and Chase to finish, and she picked up her phone again and called her mom.

“I’m busy,” said that sprightly old lady. “What do you want?”

“I’ve got a problem with my plumbing,” she said.

“Ask Tex. He’s the expert. And wear adult diapers.”

“Not my plumbing, ma. The plumbing of the house.”

“In that case diapers won’t do you any good. And nor will Tex.”

“You don’t think Tex will be able to fix it?”

“Honey, that husband of yours can’t even change a lightbulb without taking down the entire grid. Why don’t you call Gwayn Partington? He’s a licensed plumber.”

“And an expensive one. What about Alec?”

“Forget about it. He’s in your husband’s league.”

“Chase?”

Mom was quiet for a moment. She might not be a great fan of Tex or even her own son Alec, but she had a soft spot for her granddaughter’s boyfriend. “Now I wouldn’t mind seeing that man in coveralls and a wrench in his hand. Or even without coveralls and a wrench in his hand. Though I’m sure he would do just fine without the wrench.”

Both women were silent as they contemplated the image of Chase Kingsley, dressed only in a wrench. Then Marge shook herself. It wasn’t right to think of her potential future son-in-law that way. “Is he any good at plumbing, that’s what I want to know.”

“No idea, honey. But he can always come and clean my pipes, if you know what I mean.”

Double ugh.

“Gotta go,” said Mom. “Some old coot is yanking my chain. No, the doctor won’t see you now, Cooper! You’ll have to wait your turn!” she cried, then promptly disconnected.

Next on Marge’s list of people to call in a case of an emergency was her daughter Odelia. Before she hired an expensive plumber and spent good money, she needed to exhaust all other—cheaper—possibilities, like any responsible homeowner would.

“Hey, Mom,” said Odelia. “What’s up?”

“Does Chase know anything about plumbing?”

“Does Chase know anything about plumbing? Well, he is pretty handy.”

“Yes, but can he fix the plumbing?”

“Honestly? That exact theme never cropped up in any of our conversations.”

“But what do you think?”

“I think you better ask Gwayn Partington. He’s a licensed plumber.”

A deep sigh. “Fine.”

What good was it to have three men in the family when none of them could fix the plumbing? Maybe Odelia should have dated a handyman, not a cop. But her daughter was right. Why postpone the inevitable? So she dialed Gwayn Partington’s number and was gratified when the man picked up on the first ring.

“Hi, Gwayn. Marge Poole. When do you have time to take a look at my plumbing?”

“I could come over right now, if you want. I had another job lined up but that fell through, so…”

At that moment, her phone warned her that Odelia was trying to reach her, so she said, “One moment please, Gwayn. It’s my daughter. Yes, honey?”

“I just called Chase and he says he doesn’t know the first thing about plumbing and you better ask an expert if you ever want to enjoy the blessings of running water ever again.”

“Thanks, honey,” she said, and switched back to Gwayn. “Harrington Street 46. Yes, I’m home.”

Ten minutes later Gwayn’s van pulled to a stop in front of the house and when she opened the door she felt she’d done the right thing. Gwayn Partington did look amazingly capable, with his blue coveralls and his metal toolkit. At fifty he was pudgy and balding and maybe not the image of male perfection Chase Kingsley was, but at least he would get her faucets all working again, even though he might charge a small fortune.

And as he got down to business in the kitchen, she watched with an admiring eye how he didn’t waste time. He fiddled with the tap, then disappeared underneath the sink for a moment, messed around there for a bit, and finally muttered something incomprehensible, took his toolkit and stomped down the stairs and into the basement.

Moments later he was stomping up again, went to grab something from his van and when he returned, soon the sounds of a hammer hitting a brick wall could be heard. Like a regular Thor fighting the demon that had messed up her plumbing, Gwayn swung a mean hammer.

No. This was not a problem Tex could have solved, or Alec, or even Chase.

And as she picked up a copy of Women’s World, a holler at the front door made her put it down again. “You’ve got mail, lady!” the new arrival shouted.

She smiled as she got up to meet the mailwoman in the hallway.

“Hey, Bambi,” she said as she joined her.

Bambi Wiggins had been their mailwoman for years, and was never too busy for a quick chat. And as she talked to Bambi about the new baby, and Bambi’s husband Randi, suddenly a scream rose from the basement. Marge exchanged a look of concern with Bambi, and then both women were hurrying down the stairs. And as they came upon the licensed plumber, who was holding his hammer and chisel and staring at a hole he’d apparently made in the far wall, she asked, “What’s wrong, Gwayn?”

The man looked a little greenish, and stood gnawing nervously at the end of his chisel. Already she knew what was going on here. He’d been a little hasty and had made a hole in the wrong place, possibly knocking out a load-bearing wall or a vital part of the house’s plumbing system with one ill-advised blow of his hammer. And now, unlike Thor, he was too stunned and embarrassed to admit it.

And as she went in for a closer look, she suddenly halted in her tracks when her gaze fell upon a sight that couldn’t possibly be real.

There, sitting and staring at her with its big sockets for eyes, was… a skeleton.

“Oh, my God,” Bambi cried. “Marge. You’ve got a frickin’ dead body in your wall!”

And so she had.

Chapter 1

We were holding a war meeting in our war room. Well, maybe not a room, per se, but at least a war bush. Dooley, myself, Harriet and Brutus, the four cats that are part of the Poole family feline household, sat ensconced behind the tulip tree at the back of Odelia’s backyard for this most important meeting. As befitting a war meeting of the war cabinet in the war bush, there was only one item on the agenda. A very important item.

Mice.

Yes, you read that right. I had called this most urgent and all-important meeting to discuss rodents. You may have seen them scurrying around in your basement or your attic, or even, for the more daring ones, in your kitchen, where they try to steal a piece of cheese, or, let’s not limit ourselves to the clichés, a piece of beef or a slice of apple pie. After all, mice will eat almost anything their little hearts desire. As long as it’s not too heavy they will carry it between their tiny rodent teeth and make off with it before you realize it’s missing.

“We have to do it,” said Brutus now, though he didn’t seem entirely happy, just like the rest of us.

“I don’t know, Brutus,” said Harriet. “I don’t like the idea of murder. And let’s face it, that’s what this is: pure and inexcusable homicide.”

“Not homicide, though,” I said. “Homicide means the murder of a person. A mouse is not a person. It’s a rodent, so technically we’re talking about rodenticide.”

“I don’t care what you call it, Max,” said Harriet. “It’s still a crime against humanity.”

“Again, not a crime against humanity. Rodentity, possibly, if that’s a word.”

“I don’t like this, Max,” said Dooley, using a favorite phrase. “I don’t want to kill mice. Mice are living creatures, just like the rest of us, and we should let them live in peace.”

“Look, I’m all for letting mice live in peace and harmony,” I said, “but the fact of the matter is that Odelia has given us an assignment, and we owe it to her to carry it out.”

“First off, it wasn’t Odelia that gave us the assignment,” said Harriet. “It was Tex. And secondly, what can he do if we simply refuse to carry out his orders? Punish us? Hide our food? I don’t think he’ll do that, you guys. Tex is a doctor, not a monster.”

“It wasn’t just Tex,” I said. “It was Marge, too. And I didn’t hear Odelia or Gran or Chase complain when they told us to ‘take care of the mouse problem,’ did you?”

“If they want the mouse problem taken care of, they should do it themselves,” said Harriet stubbornly. “We’re cats, not hired assassins.”

“It’s common knowledge that cats catch mice,” I explained.

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“It isn’t!”

“I’m not a killer, Max,” said Dooley. “And I don’t want anything bad to happen to that sweet little mouse.”

“I don’t want anything bad to happen to the mouse either!” I said. “But it needs to go.”

“So what if some nice Mickey Mouse chose Odelia’s basement as its new home?” said Harriet. “Odelia should be happy. She should be glad. She should roll out the welcome mat! A new little friend for us to play with, and a source of joy for the Poole family.”

“The mouse has been stealing food,” I pointed out.

“Because it’s hungry!”

“Maybe Odelia could feed it?” Dooley suggested it. “I wouldn’t mind sharing some of my kibble with a sweet little Mickey Mouse.”

“It’s not a sweet little Mickey Mouse!” I said. “It’s a thief, and if there’s one there’s probably others.”

“I don’t see the problem,” said Harriet, shaking her head. “I really don’t.”

“Maybe we should go and talk to the mouse,” Brutus now suggested.

“Exactly!” cried Harriet. “If Odelia really wants that mouse to behave, we should talk to the mouse and make it see reason. Tell it to say no to stealing. Reform. But then we also have to talk to Odelia and make her see reason, too. Tell her to adopt the mouse.”

I rarely put my paws to my head but I did so now. “Adopt the mouse!” I cried.

“Why not? The Pooles love cats, why can’t they learn to love mice, too?”

I leaned in. “Because they specifically told us to get rid of them!”

“We could always ask that sweet little mouse to move,” Dooley now suggested. “That way we don’t commit mousicide, and the Pooles will still be happy.”

It seemed like an acceptable compromise, though I could tell Harriet wasn’t entirely happy. “I’m still going to have a crack at Odelia and make her see the error of her mouse-hating ways,” she said now.

“I think you’re wrong,” I said, drawing a hissed hush from Brutus. Never tell Harriet she’s wrong, he clearly meant to say. But I was getting a little worked up myself.

Harriet drew her nose closer to mine, her eyes like slits. “And when have I ever been wrong about something?” she asked now.

She was going full Terminator on me now, and I almost expected her to shed her white furry skin and reveal the metal exoskeleton underneath.

“Okay, fine,” I said, relenting. “But let’s first have a chat with the mouse. And then you can have a crack at Odelia and the others.”

“Great,” said Harriet, smiling now that she’d gotten her way. “Let me talk to the mouse first, though. I’m sure I can convince it to play ball.”

“What ball, Harriet?” asked Dooley, interested.

“Any ball!”

“You would expect that with four cats on the premises this mouse would have chosen another house to make its home,” said Brutus.

“Maybe mice are not that smart?” Dooley suggested.

“Oh, I think mice are very smart,” said Harriet. “Just look at Jerry. Jerry tricks Tom every time.”

We all fell silent. In feline circles mentioning Tom and Jerry is considered sacrilege. A cat consistently being bested by a silly little mouse? That show has given cats a bad name. It has made people see us as lazy, dumb, vindictive, vicious and downright nasty. No, Messrs. Hanna and Barbera have a lot to answer for, let me tell you that.

We all moved back into the house, single file, then passed through the pet flap. As usual I was the last one to pass through. There’s a silent understanding among the Poole household cats that I always walk through the pet flap last. I’m big-boned, you see, and sometimes the flap refuses to cooperate with my particular bone structure. And as this impedes the free passage of my fellow cats, I’m always last. It was so now, and wouldn’t you know it? I got stuck just as I tried to squeeze my midsection through that darn flap.

“Um, you guys?” I now called out. “Can you give a cat a helping paw here, please?”

“Oh, Max, not again!” cried Harriet, sounding exasperated.

“It’s not my fault Odelia keeps feeding us primo grub!” I said.

We’d recently been catnapped, Dooley, Harriet, Brutus and I. In fact the entire cat population of Hampton Cove had been catnapped, and after that, to add insult to injury, we’d all been forced to eat vegetarian for a while, on account of the fact that the local populace had discovered they’d been fed cat and even human meat for a long time, an important ingredient in the local delicacy, the Duffer. The Duffer is—or was—a popular sausage, and its creators had taken a few liberties with food safety laws. As a consequence all of Hampton Cove had gone on a veggie kick, which hadn’t lasted long.

Also, Vena, who is our veterinarian, and who seems to hate cats so much she likes to poke us with needles and pump us full of something called a vaccine, warned Odelia that cats shouldn’t be deprived their daily ration of meat, or else they’ll get sick and die.

Odelia had quickly seen the error of her ways and had started feeding us those wholesome nuggets of cat food again, kibble and pouches, and as a consequence I may have overindulged.

Or it could be a malfunction of the pet flap, of course. My money was on the latter.

Dooley took one of my paws, while Brutus took a firm grip on the other, and Harriet assumed the stance of the drill instructor that deep in her heart of hearts she is.

“And… pull!” she screamed. “And pull! And pull. Harder! Put your backs into it!”

“He’s not moving!” Brutus cried.

“That’s because you’re not pulling hard enough, soldier!” she bellowed. “Pull! Pull!”

“I’m pulling as hard as I can!” said Dooley.

“Max, suck in that tummy. Suck it in!” Harriet yelled. “Suck! It! In!”

“Yeah, suck in that flab, Max!” said Brutus, panting from the exertion.

“I’ll have you know I don’t have any flab,” I said haughtily, though it’s hard to be haughty when you’re stuck in a pet flap and two cats are pulling at your front paws with all of their might. “I’m as lean as that bowl of lean, mean turkey I just gobbled up.”

“Less talk, more action!” Harriet was saying. “And pull and pull and pull!”

“I think the problem is that this here darn pet flap has shrunk,” I said.

My two benefactors decided to take a short break and let go of my paws.

“Nonsense. You’re fat, Max,” said Harriet, never one to mince words. “You should go on a diet again.”

“Pretty sure it’s the flap,” I said. “This door is made of wood, and everyone knows wood contracts when it gets cold and wet. It must have contracted. Like, a lot.”

“How would this door get wet?” asked Brutus, puzzled.

“It gets really humid at night, Brutus,” I pointed out. “Cold and humid.”

“The sun has been up for hours. It’s warm outside, Max,” said Harriet. “So that theory doesn’t hold water, I’m afraid. If anything that door should have expanded.”

“Someone should go to the other side and push,” said Dooley, not taking his eye off the ball, which in this case was me. “One of us could push while the other pulls.”

“And how can we go to the other side when Max is blocking the exit?” asked Brutus.

“Maybe we can push from this side,” said Harriet. “Make him pop out like a cork.”

So the three of them put their paws on my face and started pushing!

“This isn’t working,” Brutus said after a while. “He’s not moving an inch.”

It wasn’t a pleasant experience, three cats putting their paws on me and poking me in the snoot with all of their might. And Brutus was right. I wasn’t budging. On the contrary. I had a feeling I was more stuck now than I was at the start of the proceedings.

And as we all contemplated our next move, I suddenly noticed we had a visitor. A very large mouse had casually strolled up to us and now sat watching the events as they unfolded before its pink whiskered nose.

“So this is what you cats are up to when you’re not sleeping or eating or pooping, huh?” said the mouse with a slight grin on its face.

“We do a lot more than sleeping, eating and pooping,” said Harriet.

“Oh, sure,” said the mouse. “You’re also supposed to be chasing me, but I see very little of that going on.”

“We’re not chasing you because we choose not to chase you,” said Harriet. “Because we’re all felinists at heart and respect the sanctity of rodent life.”

“Yeah, we’re vicious mouse hunters,” said Brutus, unsheathing a gleaming claw. “The only reason we haven’t hunted you down is because we’re not into that kind of stuff.”

The mouse was studying its own teensy tiny claws, though, clearly not impressed. “You probably don’t even know what those claws are for, you big brute.”

“I know what these are for,” said Brutus, and now showed his fangs, then even managed to make a hissing sound that sounded very menacing and convincing to me.

The mouse produced a slight smile. “You huff and you puff but you can’t even get through that silly little pet door, so forgive me for not being too impressed, fellas.”

And with that parting shot, the mouse started back in the direction of the basement stairs, which apparently was its new home. At least according to the Pooles.

“We should probably…” Brutus began, giving Harriet a hesitant look.

“Talk to it!” said Harriet. “We agreed to talk to the mouse so let’s talk to the mouse.”

Brutus cleared his throat. “Um, mouse? Come back here, will you?”

“That’s Mr. Mouse to you, cat,” said the mouse, glancing over his shoulder.

“Um, the thing is…” Brutus darted another glance at Harriet, who gave him an encouraging nod. “We’ve actually been asked to tell you that you’re no longer welcome in this house. So if you could please move to some other house that would be really nice.”

“Well done,” Harriet said with an approving smile. “Very felinistic.”

But the mouse laughed. “You’re telling me to take a hike? You’ve got some nerve, cat.”

“We happen to live here,” said Brutus, stiffening visibly. “And as the co-inhabitants of this house we have every right to ask you to clear out and to clear out right speedily, too.”

“Well said, sugar muffin,” said Harriet, who seemed to be hardening her stance. Whereas before she’d been a strong defender of rodent rights, she was now eyeing the mouse with a lot more frost than a rodent rights activist should.

“Well, for your information, I like this place, so I’m staying put. And there’s nothing you or your dumb chum cat cronies can do about it. So buzz off already, will you?”

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” said Brutus, finally losing his equanimity. And then he performed the feline equivalent of rolling up his sleeves: he rolled his shoulders and extended his claws. I would have helped him square off against this obnoxious little mouse, but unfortunately I was still stuck in the pet flap, and being stuck has a strangely debilitating effect on one’s fighting spirit. Still, he had my most vocal support.

“You don’t scare me, cat,” said the mouse. “If you want a fight, I’ll give you a fight.”

“Don’t be stupid, mouse,” said Harriet, the master diplomat. “We’re ten times bigger than you. We can squash you like a bug, and we will if you don’t get out of our house.”

The mouse wasn’t impressed. “It’s true that you’re bigger than me, cat. But you’re also a lot dumber. Besides, much of that size is flab, like your fat red friend who’s stuck in that pet flap can tell you, and why should I be scared of a bunch of hairy butterballs? Now if there’s nothing more, I’ve got things to do, mice to see, so cheerio, suckers.”

And with these fighting words, he was off, scurrying back to wherever he came from.

He left four cats fuming. Or actually one cat fuming (Brutus), one cat wondering how to get out of the pet flap (yours truly), one cat counting on his digits how much bigger than a mouse a cat could possibly be (Dooley) and one cat looking like the Terminator about to go full metal menace (Harriet).

“Oh, I’ll show that little jerk what’s what,” Harriet hissed. Apparently rodent rights were suddenly the furthest thing from her mind. And as she stalked off in the direction of the basement stairs, Brutus right behind her, I wondered how I was ever going to get out of my pet flap predicament now.

“I think we’re actually thirty times bigger than a mouse, Max, or maybe even more. What do you think?”

“I think I want to get out of here,” I said.

“I think the situation will take care of itself.”

“You mean the mouse situation?”

“No, your situation. If you simply stay stuck for a while and don’t eat, you’ll automatically get thinner and get unstuck before you know it.”

And having delivered this message of hope, he plunked down on his haunches, and gave me a smile, entirely ready to keep me company while I accomplished this rare feat.

“It will take me days to slim down and get unstuck, though,” I said, pointing out the fatal flaw in his reasoning.

“I don’t think so. A lot of weight gain is fluids,” said Dooley. “So the key is to get dehydrated.” He nodded wisely. “You need to sweat, Max, and sweat a lot. And then all of that extra weight will simply melt away.”

And to show me he wasn’t all talk and no action, he got up, jumped on top of the kitchen table, flicked the thermostat to Maximum, and jumped back down again.

“There,” he said, satisfied with a job well done. “It’s going to turn into a sauna in here and you’ll be free before you know it.” He gave me a reassuring pat on the head.

Odd, then, that I wasn’t entirely reassured.

Chapter 2

Over at the office, Tex was watering his spider plant while listening to the radio. He’d turned up the volume, as the song that was playing happened to be one of his favorites. It was a golden oldie from that old master of melody Elton John. And as he sang the lyrics, exercising the old larynx, he suddenly realized how much he actually liked to sing.

“Humpty Dumpty doo wah doo wah,” he warbled softly.

The spider plant was one of his favorites. He’d gotten it as a present from his daughter a couple of years ago, after she’d been in to see him about a suspicious mole that had developed on the back of her hand, and had told him his office looked dark and gloomy and could use sprucing up. In the week that followed she’d assumed the role of head of the sprucing-up committee and had redesigned his office, making it lighter and airier.

It had been her idea to put in the skylight, and to throw out the old rug that had developed a strange odor after years of use. She’d had the original wood floor sanded and refinished so it shone when the sun cast its golden rays through the new skylight, and as a finishing touch had thrown out his old furniture and replaced it with a nice and modern-looking desk and chair. Now the office didn’t look like it belonged to a nineteenth-century sawbones but a modern young physician hip with the times.

“Doo wah doo wah,” he sang, louder now that he decided that he had a pretty great singing voice. “Doo wah doo wee wee weeh…”

On the other side of the door, Vesta was watching a YouTube video on her phone. There were no patients in the waiting room, and no patients in with Tex either, so she had all the time in the world. But this video was something else. And as she watched, suddenly a horrible noise intruded on her viewing pleasure. It sounded like a cross between the howl of a wolf and the yowl of a cat in heat. It took her a while to trace the source of the sound, and when she had, she got up and marched over to the door.

Without knocking, she opened it and stuck her head in.

“Tex? Are you all right?” she asked, showing a solicitude she rarely displayed when dealing with her son-in-law.

“I’m fine,” said Tex, looking up from watering his plant. “Why?”

She shook her head. “The weirdest thing. I thought I heard someone being mangled by a timber wolf but now it stopped.”

“You’re imagining things, Vesta, cause I heard nothing.”

“Yeah, that must be it,” she murmured, then made to close the door, only to push it open again. “Say, have you ever considered we may be about to be annihilated, Tex?”

“Mh?” he said, looking up from plucking something from his precious plant.

“The coming apocalypse,” she explained. “I was just watching a great video about the coming apocalypse and what we should do to get ready for when it comes.”

“What apocalypse?” he asked, getting up and staring at whatever he’d plucked from his plant.

“The one that’s about to start. There’s a nuclear holocaust about to happen, Tex, or hadn’t you noticed?”

“No, actually I hadn’t. What nuclear holocaust?”

“Well, it only stands to reason that with so many nuclear weapons in the world someone is gonna launch one any second now, and that someone may be a rogue agent, or it may be a rogue nation, or it may be a rogue organization. Something rogue at any rate. And then there’s the tsunamis that are about to rock our world, not to mention the volcanoes that are about to go active, and the rising oceans. We need to get ready, Tex. It’s imperative we build ourselves a bunker and store it with enough food to survive this thing.”

He gave her a strange look. “Vesta, there’s not going to be a nuclear holocaust. The people in charge will never let that happen. And as far as those oceans and those volcanoes are concerned, I’m sure it will all be fine.”

“All be fine! You sound like those animals that stick their heads in the sand! Kangaroos? No, ostriches.” She pointed a finger at him. “You, Tex, are an ostrich, and it’s because of ostriches that things are quickly going to hell in a handbasket.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, not sounding all that interested. “What do you think these are?” he asked, staring at his own finger like the ding-dong he was. “Is that a bug, you think, or a fungus?”

“Oh, you’re a fungus, Tex,” she said, and slammed the door shut.

It didn’t matter. Even though Tex was a lost cause, that didn’t mean she couldn’t take matters into her own hands. Wasn’t that always the case, though? Didn’t it always come down to simple, honest, hard-working women to get the job done?

So she got behind her desk, took pen and paper in hand, and started scribbling down a list of things she needed to get cracking on to survive this coming nuclear winter.

“It’s been in there an awfully long time,” said Uncle Alec, staring at the skeleton.

“And how long is an awfully long time?” asked Odelia. “In your expert opinion?”

“Heck, honey, I’m just a cop, not a coroner. So I have absolutely no idea.”

“I’ll bet it’s been in there a thousand years,” said Marge. “Look at the state it’s in.”

“I doubt it’s been a thousand years, though, Marge,” said Chase. “This house isn’t a thousand years old.”

“So what? It could have been there from way before this house was ever built.”

“Impossible, mom,” said Odelia. “It’s in the wall, so it was put there after the house was built.”

“Oh,” said Marge. “You think?”

“I’m not an expert either, but yeah, that’s what I think.”

“Abe should be here any minute now,” said Alec, checking his watch. “We’ll know more when he arrives.”

Abe Cornwall was the county coroner, and as such more qualified than any of the small band of onlookers who now stood gathered around the skeleton, staring at it as if hoping it would magically reveal its secrets somehow.

“I still don’t have water,” Marge pointed out. Her initial shock had worn off.

Odelia placed a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, mom. As soon as the body is taken out, I’m sure the plumber will be able to get the water running again.”

“Yeah, but the laundry still needs to be done, and I need to cook, and I wanted to mop the floors—though now with all these people running in and out of the basement I guess it’s not much use anyway.”

“If you want you and Dad and Gran can eat at ours tonight.”

“Thanks,” said Marge. “But what about showers tomorrow morning?”

“You can take a shower at ours, as well.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” said Marge, biting her lip nervously.

“So Gwayn took a whack at this wall and this skeleton popped up,” said Alec, jotting down a couple of notes.

“Yeah, Gwayn figured there was an issue with the connection to the water main—a leak maybe—so he wanted to take a closer look before he called in the people from the water company. And that’s when this old skeleton suddenly popped up,” said Marge.

Gwayn Partington had gone home already. Or, as was more likely, to his favorite bar.

“Clothes are mostly gone, too,” said Alec. “Though they look like a man’s clothes to me.”

The skeleton had a few rags draped around itself. It was hard to see what they’d been, though, in spite of what Odelia’s uncle said. Everything looked old and ragged.

“Look, just get it out of here, will you?” said Marge. “So I can call Gwayn and he can fix my plumbing and I have water again.” And with these words she moved up the stairs.

“So how long do you really think it’s been there, Uncle Alec?” asked Odelia.

“Hard to say, sweetie. These houses were built in the fifties, so it has to be less than that, and bodies take a little while to turn into skeletons, so it can’t be recent, either. But like I said, it’s up to the experts to tell us the age of the body, or how it died.”

“And how it got stuck inside this wall,” Chase added.

“But it didn’t get stuck inside the wall, did it?” said Odelia. “Someone put it there.”

Alec moved a little closer and stuck his head in to look up. “Yeah, doesn’t look like a chimney or anything, so it’s definitely not some wannabe Santa who got stuck.”

“Ha ha,” said Odelia. “Very funny.”

“No, it happens,” said Alec, retracting his head. “I once heard about a case where a guy went missing. Years later a house in the same neighborhood was sold and when the builders came in to do some remodeling they found a body stuck inside the old chimney. Turns out he’d been burgling the house and had gotten stuck and died.”

“You know what this means, right?” said Odelia.

“What?”

“This is a murder case.”

“A murder case!” said Alec.

“Of course. What else could it be?”

“Anything! A very elaborate suicide. An accident. Um…”

“It’s murder, and whoever put this poor person in there managed to get away with it for all this time.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you think we should…” Alec began.

“Investigate who killed him or her? Of course. It doesn’t matter if it happened yesterday or fifty years ago, we need to get to the bottom of this.”

“But—”

“There’s people out there who lost a brother, a sister or a mother or a father. And who never had closure. People who want to know what happened, and who deserve answers, and to see justice done. And the murderer is probably still out there, happy they got away with it. Well, I would like you to promise me you’re not going to let that happen. That you’re going to do whatever it takes to bring this person to justice.”

Chapter 3

“I’m getting very hot, Dooley,” I said.

As you may or may not know, cats don’t sweat, unless it’s through the soles of their paws. But since the available acreage for sweating is so limited we usually seek other ways of cooling our overheated bodies down, like placing ourselves on top of a cold surface, seeking shade, or drinking cooling liquids. But since none of those avenues were available to me, I was suffering.

“That means it’s working, Max,” said Dooley. “Just hang in there.”

I was frankly melting, so if that’s what Dooley meant when he said it was working he was probably right. But I was still stuck in that door, and if anything I had the feeling I was expanding, not shrinking.

“I think you’ve got this all wrong, Dooley,” I said. “I shouldn’t be heating up, I should be cooling down. Physical objects exposed to heat expand, and when exposed to cold, they contract. So you should be turning down the heat and turning up the AC full blast.”

He thought about this. “There’s something in that,” he admitted. “So what are you saying, Max? That we should turn this house into a freezer?”

“I think what I’m saying is that I’m about to expire,” I said, puffing some more. “And if you don’t turn off the heat you won’t even have to bother getting me out of this door. The county coroner will do it for you before arresting you for murder by central heating.”

“Just hang in there a little bit longer,” he encouraged me. “I’m sure it’s working. Have you tried to move again?”

“Yes, Dooley. What do you think I’ve been doing? I’m completely stuck!”

“Let me give it another try,” he said, and put his paws on my nose and pushed.

“Owowowow!” I said.

“What?” he asked, pausing to listen to my complaint.

“Retract your claws already, will you?!”

“Oops, sorry. Force of habit.” So he tried again, only this time without claws.

“It’s not working!” I cried as I wriggled to get some traction.

“Uncle Alec should have made that door a lot bigger,” said Dooley, giving up.

“Uncle Alec, Tex and Chase,” I said.

For a moment, we both lay there, staring at each other, then he said, “I’ve got it. Repeat after me, Max. ‘Every day, in every way, I’m getting thinner and thinner and thinner.’”

“Every day, in every way, I’m getting thinner and thinner and thinner,” I said.

“Now say it like you believe it!” he said, like a regular new age guru. “And try to visualize yourself getter thinner, too. The power of the mind, Max. It’s all about the power of the mind. I saw it on the Discovery Channel. This is what Olympic athletes do. Before they start their routine they visualize success. Picture it in their minds.”

“Every day, in every way…” I muttered. Just then, the door started moving. My eyes popped open. “It’s working!” I cried. “I’m not doing anything and my body is moving!”

Unfortunately it wasn’t me popping out of that door as if nudged by the invisible hand of Louise Hay, but someone actually opening the door. And since the door swung inwards, any moment now I could be squashed between door and kitchen wall.

Lucky for me Dooley had the presence of mind to yell, “Stop! You’re squishing Max!”

My progress towards the wall halted, and I heaved a sigh of extreme relief.

“Max!” said Odelia, for it was she. “What are you doing down there?”

“I’m making a study of the floor,” I said. “What do you think I’m doing? Your uncle, dad and boyfriend made this door much too small.”

“He got stuck again,” said Dooley.

“I knew it,” said Odelia, crouching down and placing her hands underneath my armpits. “I should never have fed you all of that soft food. I knew it would make you balloon up in size again.”

“I’m not a balloon!” I cried. “The door has shrunk since the last time I passed through.”

With expert hands she pulled, and finally the flap released its hold on me.

“You did it!” cried Dooley. “You saved him!”

“I don’t know about that,” said Odelia, “but at least he’s not stuck in the door anymore. How long have you been down there?”

“Oh, just a couple of minutes,” I said.

“Over an hour,” said Dooley.

“And why is it so hot in here?”

“That was my idea,” said Dooley. “I turned up to heat so Max would lose weight.”

“Dehydration, huh? Clever pussy,” said Odelia as she gave Dooley a pat on the head.

He looked like a million bucks while I merely gave him a dirty look. I was the one who’d practically sweat his entire body weight out through his paws and was now leaving soggy paw prints all across the kitchen floor. I made a beeline for my water bowl and began to drink with big, greedy gulps.

“We found a dead body, you guys,” said Odelia.

“A dead body?” I asked. “Where? Who? Why?”

“Well, a dead skeleton, to be more precise. And I want you to sniff around and try to figure out whose skeleton it might be, and how long it’s been stuck there.” She was rooting through a kitchen drawer in search of something. “So ask around, will you? I know the house next door used to belong to the Bakers, but I doubt they were the first owners. Besides, I don’t think the Bakers were capable of murder, or burying a body in their basement. My family have known the Bakers for a long time and they’re not killers.”

“Is this a new case, Odelia?” asked Dooley.

“Yes, a cold case,” she said.

I was in desperate need of a cold spot to sit, but I refrained from mentioning this.

“A cold case?” asked Dooley. “Because the body is cold, you mean?”

“No, because the case has probably been dropped by the police a long time ago, if it was ever a case at all. It could be that no one ever bothered to report this person missing, in which case we don’t even know who they might be.”

“Sounds very complicated,” I grumbled. I was in no mood to take on a case, cold or otherwise, having just suffered through such a harrowing and embarrassing ordeal.

“Well, you’re going to have to help me,” she said. “Ah, I’ve found it.” She picked what looked like an old diary from the kitchen drawer.

“What’s that, Odelia?” asked Dooley.

“My old diary. I remember once wanting to write a story about the history of this neighborhood, and doing some preliminary research, before Dan told me to drop the story.” She opened the old diary and sat down at the kitchen table. “Can you turn down that thermostat, Dooley? It’s like an oven in here.”

Dooley did as he was told, and Odelia frowned as she studied her notes.

“This entire block of houses was built in the early fifties,” she said. “One of the first neighborhoods of its kind ever to be built in this part of Hampton Cove, in fact.”

“Maybe Dan remembers who lived here in the fifties?” I suggested.

“Or Gran,” said Dooley. “She’s probably as old as the house. Or older.”

Odelia smiled. “Don’t let her hear you say that. Gran is very sensitive about her age. But you’re right. Gran may know something we don’t, and so may Dan.” She got up. “I’m going next door again. I want to be there when the coroner shows up to take that skeleton out of the wall. Meanwhile, I want you guys to go out there and find out anything you can about that house and its occupants. Anything that might help us figure out what happened.” And as she moved to the door, she added, “Oh, and Max? Please don’t try to fit through the pet door again. I’ll open the window. You can come and go that way.”

“But isn’t that dangerous?” said Dooley, wide-eyed. “A burglar could get in.”

She laughed. “Oh, Dooley. I think I can take that chance. After all, there hasn’t been a burglary in this neighborhood in years. Besides, I’ll come and close the window before I leave for work.”

And with these words she let me and Dooley out, and then closed the door, but not before opening the glass sliding door to the living room a crack.

And then Dooley and I were on our way, a new investigation to sink our teeth into, and a reprieve from our old assignment, which Odelia seemed to have forgotten about.

“No more mice to get rid of, Max,” said Dooley happily, having reached the same conclusion.

“And a good thing, too,” I said.

We bumped paws, and then we were off, ready to tackle this newest assignment.

Chapter 4

“I’m not so sure about this, Jerry,” said Johnny Carew, leaning across the steering wheel of the van and looking out at the house they were currently staking out.

“You don’t have to be sure, you moron,” said his friend and partner in crime Jerry Vale. “As long as I’m sure that’s what matters.”

“Uh-huh,” said Johnny. He was a bear of a man, while Jerry looked more like a scrawny chicken. They’d been friends and colleagues for a very long time.

“Can you explain the plan to me again?” asked Johnny. “I think I missed something.”

“You didn’t miss something,” growled Jerry, who was in a foul mood. “You probably missed everything. Look, if we’re gonna do this, we need to know what the cops are like in this godforsaken town, all right?”

“Uh-huh,” said Johnny, taking this information and storing it in his brain, such as it was.

“So we pull off a minor B&E and see how fast the local fuzz gets here, see?”

“Yup,” said Johnny. “But what if they get here real fast, Jer? What if they get here so fast they catch us and throw our ass in jail? I don’t wanna go back to jail, Jer. Nuh-uh.”

“They won’t throw our ass in jail. Not for a minor little thing like this. And even if we get caught, which is unlikely, because nobody cares about some shitty little house in a shitty little neighborhood like this with so many multi-million-dollar mansions to protect, we can always tell ‘em we thought it was our own place and we made a mistake.”

“You think they’ll buy that?”

“If the local fuzz are as dumb as I think they are? Sure.”

“I still wish Chazz hadn’t kicked us out, Jer.”

“Yeah, well, that can’t be helped, Johnny. The big guy did what he thought was right, and I’m sure he’s already sorry he acted so rash.”

“You really think so, Jer? You think he’s sorry he canned us?”

“Sure! We were the best he got! And even more than that, we shared a bond.”

“We did. We really did.”

Chazz Falcone, the man they used to work for, was one of the richest men in the country, known for his real estate deals and the empire he built in his home town of New York. Johnny and Jerry had worked for the guy for so long they considered Chazz family. At first they’d been hired muscle to put the squeeze on stubborn tenants who needed to get muscled out of the buildings Chazz bought for a bargain so he could tear them down and build one of his high-rise monoliths. They’d graduated to important positions on Chazz’s staff when the latter had decided to run for president, and when that hadn’t worked out, Johnny had become Chazz’s dog handler, and Jerry the man’s dietician.

Unfortunately Johnny and Jerry were old crooks who had a hard time keeping to the straight and narrow, so when the opportunity presented itself to dip their hands into the company till, they hadn’t held back and had dipped with abandon and obvious glee.

Chazz hadn’t been happy when he found out and had immediately terminated their employment. And since they’d been forced to pay back every penny they pinched, they now found themselves on a road they thought they’d left behind: graciously allowing other, more law-abiding citizens, to pay for their way of life. And because the Hamptons were a place they knew well, and where a lot of money was located on an area the size of a postage stamp, they now found themselves back on their old stomping ground.

They watched as a car drew up to the house next to the one they were targeting, and when a fat man stepped out carrying a small suitcase, Jerry said, “Looks like a doctor.”

“Yeah, has to be a doctor,” Johnny agreed.

“Weird, though, right? People have been coming and going in the place next door, but ours hasn’t seen any sign of life yet. At least if you don’t count the two cats that came hotfooting it out from behind it.”

“I like cats,” said Johnny. “I think cats are a good sign, Jer. A good omen.”

Jerry muttered something about what he thought of omens and where Johnny could stick them. He hunkered down in his seat and watched the house with eyes half-closed.

“So when do we strike, Jer?” asked Johnny, rubbing his hands. Now that he’d decided this was a pretty solid plan, he couldn’t wait to get started.

“Tonight,” said Jerry as he closed his eyes. “Tonight’s the night, Johnny. So keep your eyes peeled, will you?”

And as Johnny did as he was told, Jerry’s chin dropped to his chest and soon he was snoring like a chainsaw.

From behind Johnny a little dog came snuffling, then climbed onto Johnny’s lap. It was Spot, one of the dogs Johnny had dog-watched for Chazz. As a parting gift, and proving that he had his heart in the right place, in spite of being betrayed by his two associates, Chazz had gifted Johnny the dog he loved so much.

“Hey, little buddy,” said Johnny. “So do you like cats, too?”

Spot barked a curt bark of agreement.

“Oh, I thought you would. You love those funny-looking creatures, do you? Do you, buddy? Huh?”

Spot barked happily. He did, he did!

“Will you shut that dog up already,” Jerry growled without opening his eyes.

“Shush, Spot,” said Johnny, placing a sausage-sized index finger to Spot’s lips. “Daddy is napping, so we must be very quiet now, you hear?”

Spot seemed to smile, but didn’t bark, showing what a clever little doggie he was.

And then Johnny gave himself up to silent surveillance, something he was very good at. So good, in fact, that five minutes later he was fast asleep, his deep and regular snores competing with Jerry’s for volume and pitch.

Chapter 5

“Come out of there, mouse,” said Harriet. “And if you don’t come out I will…” She hesitated. Brutus gave her a questioning look. What would she do if the mouse refused to leave its hiding place in the walls of Odelia’s basement? She couldn’t very well crawl in there and bodily drag it out. She was too big for that, and the mouse entirely too small.

“We’ll smoke you out,” said Brutus, having a bright idea.

She rolled her eyes. “How are we going to smoke it out?”

“Well, with smoke,” he suggested.

“And how do we do that? Do you have something to create smoke?”

“No, but Odelia has, and she’ll only be too happy to give us credit for the idea.”

“Humans don’t like it when you set their house on fire, Brutus,” she said, with a little less than her usual warmth and affection, “on account of the fact that when their house burns down they don’t have a place to stay. Which means we don’t have a place to stay.”

“But we get rid of the mouse,” he said with a grin.

She gave him the kind of look that quickly made him lose the grin.

“If you don’t come out right this instance,” she said as inspiration finally struck, “I’m going to lock the door of the basement and you’ll be trapped down here, without food or water until you agree to leave.”

A laugh suddenly sounded from nearby. She immediately leaped to its source and saw that it had come from a tiny little hole in the wall right behind the big furnace.

“Who cranked up the heat like that?” said Brutus as he puffed a little. “That furnace has been blasting away non-stop since we came down those stairs.”

He was right. For some reason the furnace was working overtime, emitting a dry heat that was searing Harriet’s sensitive features.

“You don’t get it, do you, cat?” said a voice from within the wall. “We don’t need doors. We move around this house and never use any of those passageways humans like to use, or cats.”

“He’s right,” said Brutus. “Mice are notoriously clever little creatures. They can probably move through the walls and reach any part of the house without being seen.”

“So how do we fight the annoying critters?!”

“You can’t!” said the mouse from within the safety of the wall. “Just accept it, cat. We’re here to stay. Now beat it. I’m trying to take a nap and you’re bothering me.”

In response, Harriet moved fast as lightning and jammed her paw into the tiny hole. “Come here, you annoying little beast!” she cried. For a moment she thought she could feel something soft and squishy being impaled by her sharp claws. But when she retracted her paw she saw it was just a piece of old styrofoam.

“Beat it, you stupid cat!” said the mouse. “You’ll never catch me. Never, you hear? Never, never, never!”

And with these words, suddenly a piece of cheese was projected from the tiny hole. It wasn’t so much a piece of cheese as a rind, though, neatly nibbled down to the plastic. It hit Harriet right on the nose.

“Oh, you horrible little…” she growled.

“Oh, well,” said Brutus, who didn’t seem overly concerned by the cheek of the cheese-eating little mite. “Live and let live, right? So maybe we should go back upstairs? I’m burning up down here. Place is turning into a sauna.”

“I’ll get you!” Harriet cried, shaking her paw. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get you, you stupid mouse!”

The sound of laughter echoed through the basement, and this time, even though she tried to locate its source so she could jam her paw in and grab the miscreant, it could have come from anywhere. The mouse was right: it moved through the walls like a ghost.

“Let’s go,” said Brutus again, “before we both melt.”

Grudgingly, Harriet agreed. And they were moving up the wooden staircase to the door when it suddenly slammed shut. And when they tried to shove it open, they couldn’t!

“Great,” said Harriet. “And now we can’t get out.”

“Take that, cat!” the mouse shouted, and tiny little feet could be heard scurrying away from the basement door.

“Did he do that?” asked Harriet. “Did he really lock us up down here?”

“Looks like,” said Brutus. A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Clever little…” He swallowed the rest of the sentence when Harriet threw him a furious look. “Nasty critter,” he muttered instead, and hunkered down at the foot of the stairs.

They’d have to wait it out, until Odelia found them missing, and decided to go look for them. Until then, they were prisoners down there.

Prisoners of a mouse. How absolutely embarrassing was that?

Odelia was glad to finally see Abe Cornwall arrive. The big guy with the mass of frizzy hair was panting as he lumbered down the stairs into the basement. “So what do we have here?” he asked, ducking for a low-hanging wooden beam and then again for the canoe Tex had once stored there and promptly forgotten about.

“A body,” said Uncle Alec dryly. “But a very peculiar one.”

“Oh, goodie,” said Abe, rubbing his hands as he caught sight of the skeleton.

This was what Howard Carter must have felt like when he entered Tutankhamen’s tomb, Odelia thought. The coroner actually looked thrilled with this new assignment.

He moved closer and eyed the body from top to toe. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“Well?” said Alec finally, when the doctor had muttered as much as he seemed willing to. “What can you tell us about the poor bastard?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Abe. “In fact there isn’t anything I can tell you right now, apart from the fact that it’s a human being and not a dog or a cat.”

“Yeah, well, I could have told you that,” said Alec. “But how long has it been here? And how did he or she die—and is it a she or a he?”

“I’d say it’s a male, judging from the width of the pelvis, the shape of the jawbone and the length of the long bones, but to be absolutely certain I’ll have to take this fine specimen back to my lab and perform a series of tests on it.” He was actually rubbing his hands now, in obvious glee. “I’ll call in my team. They’ll be absolutely thrilled.”

“So when will you be able to tell us something?”

“Not soon, Alec,” said Abe. “Though of course I’ll do my best for you.” He suddenly frowned and moved in for a closer look, using a small penlight. “Will you look at that,” he murmured, and then they all moved in closer. The coroner’s light shone down into the space between the two walls, and hit something shiny and glittering located at the feet of the body. And as the coroner carefully lifted it from its hiding place, Odelia gasped when she saw what it was: a diamond brooch. Very large, and obviously very, very valuable… “Ta-dah,” Abe said with satisfaction, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Chapter 6

“So how are we supposed to find out who that body belonged to?” asked Dooley.

“Good question, Dooley,” I said. “And I have absolutely no answer for you.”

We were walking along the sidewalk, pretty much going where the wind led us. Odelia and Marge and Tex’s houses are part of a neighborhood of similar houses. Maybe not tract housing, necessarily, but since they were all built around the same time they all look similar in design and construction. Both Marge and Odelia’s houses, for instance, have a small entrance, that leads straight into the living room, a sitting room now mainly used to watch television and in the olden days where people entertained their guests.

The living room is also the dining room, though not in Odelia’s house, since she usually eats in the kitchen, which is connected to the living room. Off the kitchen is the laundry room. Upstairs there are three more rooms and a bathroom: the master bedroom where Odelia and Chase sleep, and of course me and Dooley, though sometimes Dooley favors Grandma’s bed in the house next door. Then there’s the guest bedroom, which Odelia and Chase are converting to an office slash home gym, and then finally there’s a small room where Odelia stores a lot of her junk. It’s filled with all the stuff she can’t fit in the rest of the house. Oh, and there’s also a crawl space she calls an attic, and a basement, which apparently has become the home of a mouse or mice.

We wandered idly through the neighborhood, trying to come up with a plan of campaign.

“No animal is old enough to have witnessed the events that killed that person,” I said.

“We don’t even know how old it is,” Dooley pointed out.

“He must be younger than the house, though, or else how would he have managed to get stuck in its basement?”

“How do you know it’s a he?”

“Just a hunch. Only men are dumb enough to get stuck inside a basement wall.”

“True,” Dooley admitted. “Harriet would never allow herself to be trapped like that.”

“I think I once read that the oldest living organism on the planet is a fungus,” I said.

“So where do we find a fungus to interview?”

“Not sure. And I’m not even sure Mr. or Mrs. Fungus would want to talk to us. I hear they’re very private organisms.”

We both lapsed into silence. This was a tough assignment Odelia had given us. One of those impossible missions Tom Cruise likes so much. Only Tom’s missions usually end up with him dangling from high-speed trains, skyscrapers or the outsides of airplanes. At least our mission didn’t involve that kind of hair-raising stunt. At least I hoped it wouldn’t. I’m not all that keen on hair-raising stunts, and I don’t think Dooley is either.

We’d ambled along through the neighborhood without meeting a single fungus and decided to wend our way into town. There are always fellow cats to be found downtown, and maybe they’d be able to give us some ideas. Show us in the right direction.

We took a left turn at the end of the next street and saw a very old cat lying in the window of a house. It opened one eye to give us a curious glance, then closed it again. Apparently it didn’t like what it saw, for it went on sleeping as if we weren’t even there.

“How old do cats get, Max?” asked Dooley now.

It was a point I’d often wondered about myself. “I honestly don’t know, Dooley,” I said. “Though I’m guessing very old. We’re very wise creatures, you know, and wise creatures usually get very, very old.”

“I think so too,” Dooley agreed. “I once saw this documentary about how the Egyptians loved cats so much they thought they came from the gods, and we all know that gods can get very old indeed.”

“I know, just look at their beards. Only very old beings have beards like that.”

We’d arrived on the outskirts of downtown Hampton Cove and decided to go in search of the feline mayor of our town, a title worn with pride by Kingman, a voluminous piebald who likes to hold forth on Main Street, in front of his owner’s general store. When we arrived, Kingman was dozing on top of the checkout counter, while his human Wilbur Vickery was busy ringing up his customers’ purchases.

I cleared my throat. “Hey, Kingman.”

He opened his eyes and yawned. “Oh, hey, guys. How’s it hanging?”

Dooley looked at me, I looked at him, and then we both looked at Kingman.

“How is what hanging?” I asked.

“How should I know? It’s an expression.”

“Oh, right,” I said. I’m not always hip to the finer points of the feline language, even though I am a feline myself. I wasn’t going to let that stop me from asking a most important question, though. “What is the oldest animal in Hampton Cove, Kingman?”

He thought about his for a moment, then said, “I guess that would be Camilla.”

“Who is Camilla?” asked Dooley.

“Camilla is a bird, and not just any bird, mind you. Camilla is a macaw, and currently lives with her owner out on Morley Street. Why do you want to know?”

“Marge found a body in her basement,” said Dooley.

“Well, not a body,” I said. “A skeleton.”

“A skeleton is a body, though, right, Max?”

“No, a body is more than just a skeleton, a body still has all of its fixtures attached.”

“The juicy bits,” Kingman confirmed. “A skeleton is a body without the juicy bits.”

“Oh,” said Dooley, nodding. “You mean like a fishbone after we eat the meat?”

“Yeah, exactly like a fishbone,” I said.

“So a body, huh?” said Kingman. “Why is it that the Pooles keep stumbling over bodies everywhere they go?”

“Not a body,” I said. “A skeleton.”

“Same difference. It must have belonged to a human once, right? And that human is now presumably dead?”

“I would think so,” I said. “I didn’t see the skeleton but I imagine it wasn’t jumping around and dancing the hornpipe.”

“So who is it?” asked Kingman. “Anyone I know?”

“Odelia seems to think it must have been there for a very long time, possibly many decades,” I said. “And now she wants us to figure out who it could have belonged to.”

“Many decades, huh? Now I see why you want to find the oldest animal in town. Well, your best bet will be Camilla, though there are other, maybe even older organisms, of course. Mollusks tend to get very old, too.”

“Mollusks?”

“Sure. The oldest known clam lived to be over five hundred years.”

“A clam, huh?”

“I doubt whether a clam would be able to tell us a lot about the skeleton in Marge’s basement, though,” said Dooley, echoing my thoughts exactly.

“Yeah, I guess you may have a point,” Kingman conceded.

“Well, thanks, Kingman,” I said. “And if you find out anything else about the former owners of Tex and Marge’s house, you will let us know, right?”

“Sure thing, boys,” said Kingman, and promptly dozed off again.

“Kingman must have had a rough night,” said Dooley as we walked on. “He seemed more sleepy than usual.”

“He was probably up all night chasing mice,” I said. “Kingman loves to chase mice.”

“Most cats love to chase mice,” said Dooley. “We’re the only ones that don’t. Why is that, Max?”

“Um, I guess we’re the only cats with a moral compass?”

“I wonder if Harriet and Brutus have caught the mouse in Odelia’s basement.”

“I’ll bet she has. Harriet seemed dead set on catching that mouse.”

“Poor Mr. Mouse,” said Dooley, shaking his head in dismay.

“Are you actually rooting for the creature now, Dooley?”

“I am. We are all members of God’s great flock, Max, and I feel for that poor thing, with Harriet on his tail, trying to eat him at every turn. I’ll bet that poor Mr. Mouse is scared stiff right now, running for his life and wondering where the next attack will come from, and then, just before the final blow lands, looking into Mrs. Mouse’s eyes, and together gazing at all of their sweet little baby mice…”

My heart sank at Dooley’s words. Poor Mr. Mouse. Poor Mrs. Mouse. Poor baby mice.

“We have to save that mouse, Max,” he said. “What are those precious little baby mice going to do when Harriet and Brutus have brutally slain and eaten their mom and dad?”

The picture Dooley had painted was so poignant I felt compelled to wipe away a tear. “I think it’s probably too late, Dooley,” I said. “That poor mouse has probably gotten it in the neck by now.”

“That poor, poor Mr. Mouse,” he said in sad lament.

Chapter 7

“That horrible, horrible mouse!” Harriet was yelling as she stomped around the basement, furious.

“Maybe we should preserve our energy,” Brutus suggested. “We could be down here for a long time.”

“I can’t believe this. Imagine what the members of cat choir are going to say when they find out we’ve been bested by a stupid little mouse. They’re going to turn us into the laughingstock of Hampton Cove. They’ll make fun of us until the day we die!”

“Speaking of dying,” said Brutus as he nervously glanced at the locked door. “How long do you think we can go without food or water?”

“Oh, days and days and days,” said Harriet with an airy wave of the hand. “And even then we’ll find something to sustain us down here.” She glanced at the fungus-covered wall in the more dank part of the basement. “Do you think that’s edible? It looks edible.”

Brutus shivered. “I don’t want to find out, do you?”

“No, maybe not,” said Harriet. “Though it looks a lot like that chlorella Odelia likes to eat, or even spirulina, and that’s supposed to be very good for you. She says they’re superfoods, and superfoods are very beneficial to the health of your gut, Brutus.”

Brutus took a hold of his gut. It felt very empty, but even then he wasn’t so far gone he was willing to eat mold from the walls. Something told him his gut wouldn’t like it.

“And we can always drink our own pee,” said Harriet. “I could drink yours and you could drink mine. People have been known to survive that way,” she explained. “It was on the Discovery Channel last week.”

“I thought you hated the Discovery Channel?” asked Brutus.

“Oh, it’s all right. Tex loves to watch it, and Gran does, too, from time to time, and since us cats don’t have control over the remote, we’re forced to watch with them.”

“There must be a way out of here,” said Brutus, searching around. “Some secret passageway or hidden door?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Brutus, but this isn’t like the kind of place Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys always end up in,” said Harriet. “No trap doors or secret passageways. There’s only one way in or out of this basement and that’s through that door.” Harriet sat down on the cold stone floor and heaved a deep sigh. “We’ve been had by a mouse, Brutus, and we probably have to learn to accept that horrible truth.”

He took up position next to his mate and both sat there for a moment, contemplating what could have been, when suddenly a squeaky voice sounded from right behind them.

“Can I help you with something?”

They both looked in the direction the voice seemed to be coming from, and Harriet was the first one to discover its source.

“Oh, hey, mouse,” she said.

“You can call me Molly,” said the mouse.

“A member of your family managed to lock us up down here,” Harriet explained, “and now we’re kinda stuck.”

“That will be Rupert,” said Molly, a frown on her face, her tiny paws planted on tiny hips. “If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a million times: don’t mess with the humans or their pets. But does he listen? Of course not. He thinks he’s engaged in some sort of noble battle with our mortal enemy or something. Are you our mortal enemy, cats?”

“I guess… we are, in a sense,” said Harriet. ‘”Or at least Odelia sent us down here to get rid of you, so there’s something very enemy-like to that.”

“Look, we don’t want any trouble,” said Molly. “And if Rupert has given you trouble, my sincerest apologies. He runs a little wild, my Rupert does.”

“Is he…”

“My husband? Yes, he is. And also the father of my four hundred babies.”

“Four hundred babies,” said Brutus, gulping slightly. “How about that?”

“Four hundred is a lot,” Harriet admitted.

“Yeah, they’re a handful,” Molly agreed.

“Brutus and I can’t have babies, you see,” said Harriet. “We tried but it turns out our humans had him castrated and had me spayed, so now we can’t have kittens.”

“We thought about adopting,” said Brutus, “but it’s such a hassle, with all the paperwork and the home visits and all, so we just figure, why bother, you know?”

“Yeah, I’m not even sure I want to be a mother at this point,” said Harriet. “We live a very full and happy life, Brutus and I, along with our dear friends and of course the humans who graciously take care of us. So why have kids, I mean? We might regret the decision and then what?”

“It’s not as if we can give them back,” said Brutus.

“Well, technically we could,” said Harriet.

“You mean…”

“Yeah, we could always tell the adoption agency it didn’t work out and then they’ll probably find another family to place them with.”

“But that’s not fair on those kids.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Well, all I can say is that kids are a lot of work,” said Molly. “But it’s worth it.”

“You think?” said Harriet, placing her head on her paws so she was closer to Molly’s level. “It’s very interesting to hear you say that.”

“She hasn’t completely given up on her dream,” Brutus explained.

“No, I haven’t,” said Harriet. “Though it took this conversation to realize that.”

“Not for me,” said Brutus. “I’ve always known that about you, snookums.”

“You have? That’s so perceptive of you, my turtle dove.”

“You’re lucky in that you have a good partner,” said Molly. “A good partner is key. If I had to do this all by myself, I wouldn’t have done it. But with Rupert it works great.”

“Oh, so Rupert is a good father, is he?” said Harriet, surprised to hear that the obnoxious and frankly annoying rodent they’d met had another, softer side to him.

“Oh, yeah, he’s great with the kids. Likes to play with them, but can also be strict when he needs to be.”

“You have to be strict,” said Harriet. “You need to raise them with a firm paw.”

“They need to know their limits,” Brutus said, nodding.

“I think you’d make a great daddy, buttercup,” said Harriet.

“You really think so, honey bug?” he said, touched.

“Yes, I do. I’ve always thought that.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet of you to say. I think you’d make a great mother.”

“You do? Why, thank you, pookie bear.”

“And I think you two would make great parents,” said Molly, adding her two cents.

“You know, Molly,” said Harriet. “Now that I got to know you a little better, I have to say my entire idea of mice as a species has taken a radical turn for the better.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Harriet,” said Molly. “Likewise. I mean, listening to Rupert it’s almost as if cats are the worst creatures on the entire planet, and I always told him, ‘Rupert,’ I say, ‘cats are probably a lot nicer than you think if only you would bother to get to know them a little better.’ You know? But does he listen? Of course not. ‘Get to know them better!’ he’ll say. ‘Do you want to be eaten? Huh? Do you want to become breakfast, lunch and dinner to a bunch of vicious hairy monsters?’”

“We’re not vicious monsters, are we, Brutus?” asked Harriet.

“I don’t feel like a vicious monster,” said Brutus. “I really don’t.”

“Live and let live has always been my motto,” said Harriet. “There’s a place under the sun for every creature on this planet. Isn’t that what I always say, Brutus?”

“It is,” Brutus confirmed. He couldn’t actually remember ever hearing those exact words from his partner’s lips, but it did sound like something she could have said.

“I think we should all try to live together in perfect harmony,” said Molly now. “That’s what I teach my kids, and that’s the kind of life I try to live as an example for them.”

“Inspiring,” said Harriet, nodding. “You’re an inspiration, Molly. My hat off to you.”

“Likewise,” said Brutus, who wondered why Harriet was suddenly talking about non-existent hats. Then again, a large chunk of the conversation had gone right over his head, including but not limited to the virtues Harriet had suddenly extolled of motherhood.

“A quick question, though,” said Harriet now.

“Shoot,” said Molly. “Anything for my new best friends.”

“Could you tell your husband to open the door so we can get out of this basement? He accidentally closed it.”

“Oh, you don’t need that door,” said Molly. “There’s plenty of ways in and out. Just follow me.”

And with these words she headed to a corner of the basement, Harriet and Brutus right on her heels. The mouse moved beyond an old toboggan, and they followed suit, though they had to displace the object to fit behind it. And then the mouse vanished from view. Harriet and Brutus searched around, but found no trace of her, until her tiny head with the long whiskers came peeping out of a tiny hole at the bottom of the wall.

“Over here,” said Molly. “If you follow me I’ll lead you straight to the next floor.” And then her little head popped off again.

“Um, Molly?” said Harriet.

Molly’s head reappeared, her nose twitching as she sniffed the air. “Yah?”

“Um… not to put too fine a point on it, but we’re too big to fit in there.”

“Nonsense,” said Molly. “You’ll fit just fine. Just make yourself small.”

“But…” said Harriet. “I’m not sure if…”

“Oh, don’t be such a pussy,” said Molly. “You know what they say, if your head fits, the rest of your body does, too. So just follow me, and you’ll be out of here in no time.”

“Oh, all right,” said Harriet finally, and proceeded to stuff her head into the tiny hole.

And then she was stuck.

She couldn’t move forward, in spite of the theory about the fitting head Molly had expounded, and she couldn’t move back either, as her head was wedged in too tight.

“Um… Molly?” she said. “You’re not going to believe this, but I think I’m stuck.”

And then Molly appeared right in front of her nose. Harriet had to squint a little to get a clear view of the mouse, but she was right there, and much to Harriet’s surprise the cute little mouse, mother of no less than four hundred baby mice, was smirking at her.

“You stupid cat,” she said.

“Pardon me?” said Harriet, shocked by this sudden change in demeanor.

“I got you good, didn’t I? Did you really think I’d help you out of this basement? So you could hunt us all down and eat us whole? I know what you cats are like. All sweet talk and surface charm until you pounce on us and gobble us up without batting an eye.”

“But-but-but I thought we were friends,” said Harriet, shocked at this denouement. “I thought we were kindred spirits.”

“Kindred spirits my tush. I’m a mouse and you’re a cat, cat, and we will always be mortal enemies, no matter how you look at it.”

Just then, Molly was joined by a familiar figure. It was her husband Rupert, who’d slung an arm around his wife’s shoulder. “I’m so proud of you, darling,” he said. “You trapped the beast!”

“Of course I did. If I had to leave it all up to you she would still be roaming around, probably thinking up ways and means of feeding on my babies.”

“Good riddance,” Rupert agreed.

“Hey, you have to let me out,” said Harriet, getting a little nervous. “I don’t like small spaces!”

“Oh, shut up, you whiny pussy,” said Molly, nothing like the nice and sweet mouse she’d appeared before. She was a tough little creature, and gave Harriet the evil eye.

“Try to catch us now, cat,” said Rupert.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” said Molly.

“And now we bid you adieu.”

“Adieu. That’s French for ‘Goodbye and good riddance.’”

“Hey!” said Harriet. “You can’t leave me here!”

“Watch us,” said Molly, and then both she and her husband disappeared down the hole and all Harriet could hear was the laughter of what sounded like hundreds of mice.

Either it was the echo of Rupert and Molly, or that of their four hundred kids.

Whatever it was, the sound struck Harriet as very unpleasant, but what was even more unpleasant than the stinging ridicule or the fact that she’d gotten her head stuck in a mouse hole, was the sheer indignation of the situation. Now who was the fool?

Chapter 8

Vesta was still thinking about the end of the world, and when it might happen, when the outer office door swung open and Scarlett Canyon walked in from the street.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Vesta muttered, then sat up a little straighter. Scarlett might be her mortal enemy, but she was also an inveterate gossip, and if she found Vesta slumped at her desk, looking less than her best, word would be all over town that she’d been in a terrible state and had probably turned to liquor, just like her late husband had done.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“That’s no way to greet one of your patients,” said Scarlett, pursing her blowfish lips.

Scarlett probably spent her entire pension on the kind of treatments popularized by Gwyneth Paltrow or Jennifer Aniston, designed to make them stay young forever. At one time even Gran herself had been an avid fan of Goop, and had ordered several items that she’d hoped would clear up her skin and add to her eternal youth, like those bees Gwyneth was so crazy about, and that you needed to allow to sting you for some reason.

“You’re not a patient of mine,” said Vesta now.

“Thank God for that,” said Scarlett, then laughed a light laugh. “Imagine me, being a patient of yours. That simply wouldn’t do, would it?”

“Tell me you’re here for a lobotomy and I’ll gladly do the honors,” Vesta growled.

“I just wanted to make an appointment.”

“You could have called.”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Still. Why bother a hard-working woman like me if you could have simply picked up the phone?”

“I thought I’d have a nice little chat with an old best friend.” She glanced around and heaved a wistful little sigh. “Do you remember when I used to work here? The waiting room overflowing with patients? The place buzzing with business?” She directed a pointed look at the empty waiting room.

“It’s one of our quiet moments,” said Vesta. “The lull before the storm.”

Scarlett rapped her knuckles on the counter. “I hear they found a skeleton in your basement? One of your old boyfriends? Couldn’t hack it anymore and decided to brick himself up inside your wall?”

“Ha ha. Very funny. If your jokes were any funnier I’d bust a gut. Besides, it wasn’t a body, it was a skeleton.”

“Isn’t a skeleton, like, an old body that lost its pep? Like a certain person we know?” She cocked an eyebrow at Vesta, who decided to ignore the slur.

“I’m sure that skeleton has been there forever. From what my daughter told me it’s probably been there from when the house was built, way back in the fifties.”

“Is that right?” said Scarlett, clearly not believing a word of this. “I’ll bet it’s that no-good husband of yours. Do you think the police are going to exhume his coffin now? To find out if it’s really Jack we buried, or a pile of bricks?”

Vesta directed her most fiery glare at the woman. “How dare you speak of my husband like that?”

“Well, he was my husband as much as he was yours, now, wasn’t he? At least in the biblical sense.”

She had half a mind to grab the woman’s blond hair and give it a good pull, to find out once and for all if it was a wig or her real hair, but restrained herself with a powerful effort. Tex had recently reminded her, after a similar altercation with Scarlett, that she was the public face of this office, and that if she misbehaved it reflected badly on him, and might even put him out of business. She’d argued that, if anything, a fight put bodies in seats, as everybody likes a good scuffle, and none more so than those cheapskate patients of his, who never enjoyed their entertainment more than when it was free of charge. So he should probably give her a pay raise each time she and Scarlett squared off.

Scarlet had casually taken a small black object from her purse and placed it on the counter. “Oh, look at the time,” she said. “I have to be going.” And then, before Vesta’s widening eyes, she folded the object open and the screen suddenly doubled in size.

It was a foldable smartphone—the holy grail of smartphones.

“Where did you get that?” she demanded heatedly.

“Oh, Dick Bernstein gave it to me,” said Scarlett.

“No way,” said Vesta. “Dick gave one to me.”

“I know! But you broke it, didn’t you?” She held up the nifty little gadget and tapped at the screen with her freakishly long fake nails. “So lucky for him he was fully insured, so he bought himself another one.”

“And then gave it to you? Has he lost his mind?”

Scarlett shrugged. “He knows I’m more careful with his gifts than you are.”

“Can I help it if he gave me a lemon?”

“The story he told me was that you dropped it in the soup.”

“It broke first. I only dumped it in the soup to put out the fire.”

“A likely story,” said Scarlett with a little laugh, and once again Vesta had to suppress a strong inclination to put her hands around the woman’s neck and squeeze. “At least he gifted me this phone. He only loaned you his, before you decided to dunk it in your soup.”

“I’m telling you, it broke and caught fire!” ...