“Marge deserves to be saved from his fatal charm!” said Harriet.

  “That’s true,” I admitted.

  “So… if Marge moves out, does that mean you move out, too, Harriet?” asked Dooley.

  Harriet gave him a startled look. “I hadn’t even thought of that! You guys, I don’t want to move out and go and live with Randy Hancock! I really, really don’t!”

  “What’s all this about you coming to live with me?” suddenly spoke the deep, booming voice of Lil Ran. I hadn’t seen him there, sunning behind a nearby tree, but clearly he had seen us—and heard us, too!

  “How much have you heard?” I asked.

  “Enough,” said the sharp-eared dog with a smile. “And if it’s any consolation: my human would never conduct an affair with your human.”

  “Why not?” asked Harriet, narrowing her eyes at the big dog. “Isn’t my human good enough for your human?”

  “Oh, she’s definitely good enough. But Randy isn’t into women, that much I can tell you.”

  We all stared at the dog. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “If he’s not into women, what is he into? Apple trees?”

  Lil Ran displayed a slight smile. “He’s into men, of course. What did you think?”

  “Into men!” said Dooley. “But… I don’t understand.” He turned to me. “What is he talking about, Max? What does he mean?!”

  Oh, boy. As if trying to explain about the birds and the bees wasn’t complicated enough, Lil Ran had just added an extra layer of complication.

  22

  “Look, some human men like women, and other human men like men. And the same goes for human women,” I said.

  Dooley stared at me. “I don’t understand.”

  “Um…”

  Harriet decided to take over. “See here, Dooley. Brutus and I are a couple, right?”

  “Uh-huh. You love each other.”

  “That, we do,” she said with a smile. “Now suppose for a moment that Brutus doesn’t love me, but loves you, for instance, or Max. See what I mean?”

  Dooley frowned. “But… Brutus does love me, and he does love Max.”

  “Yeah, as a friend. But not as a, um, as a partner, see?”

  “No, I don’t see.”

  “Look here, Dooley,” said Lil Ran. “You know where babies come from, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sure. Max explained all that to me. A bird loves another bird and then she lays an egg, and then an ostrich drops by and delivers a baby boy bird or baby girl bird. And the same goes for bees, though it’s still not completely clear to me how an ostrich would carry a baby bee.” He paused. “Pollen is involved, though. Pollen and, um, flowers.”

  Lil Ran gave me a pointed look. “The birds and the bees, Max? Really?”

  I shrugged. “Dooley is still young, Lil Ran. So we like to explain things to him at a level he can understand.”

  “Fine,” said Lil Ran, then turned to Dooley. “So a male bee and another male bee—they like each other, see? They like each other a lot!”

  “Oh, sure,” said Dooley, nodding. “Like me and Max. We like each other a lot, don’t we, Max?”

  “Yes, Dooley. We like each other heaps.”

  “So the male bee… um… carries the pollen to the… um…”

  “Flower,” Dooley said helpfully. “Because flowers like pollen.”

  “Oh, forget about it,” said Lil Ran with a gesture of his paw. “You’re on your own here, pal. All I wanted to say is that Randy and Marge having an affair? It’s not possible.”

  “But… Chase saw them,” said Harriet. “In Randy’s bed last night, hugging—naked! And Marge was crying!”

  “Crying,” I said, nodding.

  “Why was Marge crying, Max?” asked Dooley. “Did Randy hurt her?”

  “Um…” I’d heard about women crying after they’d done the ‘deed’ and some men, too, but I wasn’t going to tell Dooley about that—no way! It just cinched it for me, though. In spite of what Lil Ran thought his human did or didn’t like, it was obvious that the tiny fitness giant and Marge were having an affair. And an extremely torrid one at that!

  “Poor Tex,” Harriet reiterated, having come to the same conclusion. “He’ll be crushed.”

  “But I’m telling you guys,” Lil Ran insisted. “No way is Randy having an affair with Marge, unless…” He frowned before himself for a moment. “Unless this whole ‘I’m about to die in three days’ business has fundamentally changed him somehow.”

  “Changed him how?” I asked, interested.

  “I don’t know. Made him want to… experiment. One last fling before he leaves this mortal coil. In which case… your human, Harriet, is in a singularly unique position. She will be the last person to have shared Randy’s bed.”

  “Look, I’m sure Odelia and Chase will catch whoever is behind this whole poisoning thing,” I said. “And they’ll make sure Randy gets his antidote and survives this ordeal.”

  “Which means Marge and Randy well get married,” Dooley intoned sadly, “and Harriet will move in with you, Lil Ran.”

  Lil Ran’s eyes went wide. “Move in with me!”

  “Yes, Lil Ran,” said Harriet sweetly. “We’ll be brother and sister. How about that?”

  “But… we have to stop this!” said Lil Ran, who apparently wasn’t a big fan of Harriet. “We have to put a stop to this affair right now!”

  “But how? How do you stop two people falling in love? It can’t be done.”

  We all gave this some thought, then Dooley said, “Remember how I thought Gran was about to get married to Wilbur, and I’d have to move out and go and live with Kingman? So what did Wilbur do to make Gran change her mind?”

  “Wilbur was being his usual obnoxious self,” I said. “And Gran didn’t like it.”

  “So maybe we have to convince Marge that Randy is just as obnoxious as Wilbur?”

  “Randy isn’t obnoxious,” said Lil Ran, immediately going to bat for his master. “In fact he’s the sweetest guy in the world.”

  “I know that, and you know that,” I said. “But Marge doesn’t. She has no idea who Randy really is. All she knows is the man she’s seen on those videos for the past thirty years. So how do we convince her that the real Randy is a terrible person and make her fall out of love with him?”

  Lil Ran gave me a slow nod. “I like what you’re saying, Max. And it just might work.”

  “Or we could simply tell Odelia to let Randy die,” said Harriet. “Problem solved.”

  “We can’t do that,” I said, even as Lil Ran gave his future sister a look of abject horror. “It wouldn’t be ethical.”

  “Ethical schmethical,” Harriet murmured. “Look, you guys figure it out. I’m going to try and find Brutus—and his damn pet turtle.”

  And with these words, she turned on her heel and was off.

  “I think it’s very easy to convince Marge that Randy is a horrible person, Max,” Dooley said now. “We simply tell her that he is, and she’ll believe us, because she trusts us.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Dooley,” I said. “Love is blind. She might not believe us whatever we say.”

  “We still have to give it a try,” my friend said. “We can’t let Harriet become Lil Ran’s sister. She’s our sister, and this is her home.”

  “Absolutely,” said Lil Ran with fervor. “We have to stop this wedding, whatever it takes.”

  And so a new alliance was formed, and a very strange alliance, too: an alliance between three cats and a dog. But with the stakes this high, I was prepared for anything.

  23

  “I want to file a missing persons report,” said Odelia when she’d taken a seat in front of her uncle’s desk. “Brutus is missing.”

  “A missing persons report for a cat?” said her uncle. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Brutus wouldn’t just go off, Uncle Alec. Something must have happened, so if you could ask your officers to be on the lookout for my cat, I’d appreciate it.”

  Alec Lip, Hampton Cove’s Chief of Police and also Odelia’s uncle, moved in his chair, which groaned tiredly under his sizable bulk. Even though the Chief’s girlfriend Charlene had told him numerous times to go on a diet, the big man was reluctant, as he liked to eat, and apparently dieting and eating your fill doesn’t usually go hand in hand.

  He rubbed his practically bald scalp and sighed. “Look, honey, I can’t really tell my people to go look for your cat. They’ve got other stuff to do, if you see what I mean.”

  “What other stuff? What could be more important than finding Brutus? He’s never gone missing before and he must be terrified—wherever he is. In fact I think he’s probably been taken.”

  “Taken,” said her uncle, his voice dripping with skepticism. “No offense, but who would want to take Brutus? He’s not exactly a show cat.”

  “Brutus is a gorgeous cat,” said Odelia, finding her uncle’s behavior repulsive to the extreme. “So you’re actually going to sit there and tell me there’s nothing you can do?”

  “You could put up flyers,” he suggested. “It’s what most people do when their cats go missing. And have you tried asking your neighbors?”

  “Yes, I have,” she said. “They haven’t seen him. And Harriet says he must have slipped out of the house somewhere between midnight and early this morning, for they arrived home together last night, after cat choir, and he wasn’t there when she woke up.”

  Her uncle shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll be back. Cats are like that. They just wander off from time to time, and they show up again when they’re tired or hungry or both.” He gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m sure he’ll turn up soon, honey. Just you wait and see.”

  “Hopeless,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Why do we have a police force if they’re not going to help find people when they go missing?”

  “The key word being people,” said her uncle. “When people go missing, we turn out in force. Cats? Not so much.”

  “And why is that may I ask?”

  “Probably because cats don’t pay taxes?”

  “Oh, Uncle Alec!”

  “Okay, all right! I’ll see what I can do. But have you considered asking your grandmother? This seems like a perfect job for that neighborhood watch of hers.”

  “Yes, I’ve asked her, and she’s already going door to door, doing whatever she can to find Brutus.” She got up and raised her voice. “Because she knows how important that cat is to me—to us—contrary to some people I know!”

  “Honey, don’t be like that,” said her uncle, holding up his hands in a gesture of supplication. “If every time a cat goes missing I have to mobilize the entire police force nothing would ever get done!”

  “I think I’ve heard enough,” she said, and opened the door, then added, “I’m very disappointed in you, Uncle Alec. Very, VERY disappointed!”

  “Honey!”

  “Good-bye!”

  And she left his office, slamming the door as she went. He made a pretty good case, she thought in spite of herself, but her cats meant so much to her that however specious her uncle’s arguments might be, she simply couldn’t imagine him just sitting there and blithely telling her not to worry. If he fed the same line to parents whose kids had gone missing… Frankly it was a miracle he’d been chief of police for so long!

  She walked out of the police station and wondered how to proceed. She had interviews to conduct with Randy’s staff, and also the man’s sister. She really didn’t have time to go look for Brutus. At least her grandmother was on the case, and her mom had promised to print up flyers they could use to paper the entire neighborhood.

  Her stomach turned as she thought of poor Brutus, out there, alone and scared.

  She got back into her car, and when Max and Dooley and Harriet gave her hopeful looks, she felt horrible having to tell them her uncle was going to do exactly nothing to help find their friend.

  “He says the police are there to find people, not pets,” she said as she started the car.

  “He’s not going to help us find Brutus?” asked Dooley.

  “He’ll see what he can do. Which, as we all know, means he’ll do diddly.” She backed up the car and left the parking lot. “At least Gran is on the case. And maybe you guys should be out there, too. Looking for Brutus.”

  “But we want to help you, Odelia,” said Max. “Otherwise Randy will die, and that’s not good.”

  “No, I guess not,” she said, though ever since Chase had made his shocking discovery that Mom and Randy were having an affair, she’d started to see the fitness guru in a completely different light—an extremely unfavorable one!

  She drove the short distance to the apartment building where the man’s manager lived, and parked the car out in front. “Are you sure you want to come?” she asked. “I don’t think there’s a lot you can do here.”

  “No, we want to come,” said Max. “We need to save Randy, Odelia. It’s very important.”

  She frowned at her cat. Max wasn’t usually this adamant, but apparently he and the others had taken a liking to Randy, and were now prepared to do whatever it took to save the man’s life.

  “All right,” she said, holding open the door for her cats. “Let’s go, then. The sooner we finish these interviews, the sooner we can go back to finding Brutus.”

  She walked up to the apartment block, hiking her purse higher up her shoulder, and glanced up. It was a newly built block of flats, and looked very expensive. Randy’s manager had done well for himself. Then again, if he took ten or fifteen percent of everything the fitness guru made, and had been with the man for the bulk of his career, he’d have amassed a pretty sizable pile of money.

  She pressed her finger to the bell announcing that here lived Saul Garter, and moments later was buzzed in.

  Riding the elevator up to the upper floor, she hoped that the man had pets, or otherwise Max and the others would really have come along for nothing.

  The door to the manager’s apartment opened, and a short man appeared, with a shifty-eyed demeanor, and one of those faces only a mother could love. It took her a while to determine what animal he reminded her of, but she finally settled on a rodent. With his prominent nose, his overbite, his shifty dark eyes and his pronounced stoop, he’d have felt right at home at a rat colony.

  “Hi, Mr. Garter,” she said. “My name is Odelia Poole and I’m a reporter with the Hampton Cove Gazette. We talked on the phone last night. I was hoping we could have a chat about one of your clients—Mr. Hancock?”

  “Of course,” he said, and ushered her in. “Ever since you called I’ve been trying to get a hold of Randy. In vain, I might add. Do you know where he is?”

  “He contacted me via email,” said Odelia, reiterating the story she and Randy and Chase had agreed upon for these interviews with the man’s staff. “He told me he’s gone into hiding after certain threats had been made against his life, and has asked me to look into the origin of these threats.”

  “Death threats?” asked the manager, looking much surprised by this startling bit of news.

  Odelia nodded, and glanced around. The flat was as modern on the inside as it was on the outside: plenty of glass and chrome, beige decorative epoxy flooring, a cassette-style wood stove providing heat, and a glass-enclosed balcony offering sunlight in all seasons.

  “Nice place you’ve got,” she said.

  “Yeah, I got it on the cheap,” said Mr. Garter. “The guy who built it is a former client. Used to run a chain of fitness clubs before he went into real estate. So how can I help you, Miss Poole?” He glanced down at the three cats who sat obediently awaiting further instructions. “I see you brought your cats?” he said, looking startled.

  “I couldn’t find a cat sitter,” she explained, “so I had to bring them along. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, no, sure,” he said vaguely, though he didn’t look all that happy about the feline contingent setting paw into his neat home. “Please take a seat.” He gestured to the leather couch in the living area.

  “Randy wrote that you’ve been his manager for the past thirty years? Is that correct?” she said as she took out her writing tablet and stylus. They replaced her trusty notebook. That way she could save her notes to the cloud.

  “Yeah, I’ve been Randy’s manager from the very beginning,” said the man as he nervously licked his lips. His eyes kept darting to the liquor cabinet, and it was obvious he was in need of a stiff one but afraid to take it in front of this reporter hired by his client. “He was just a fitness club owner back then, but had plans to make it big, and eventually he did. Videos first, instruction videos, and then his own TV show, and over the years he built himself a regular fitness empire. A chain of gyms, books, magazines… He’s done cameos on numerous movies and shows, and is one of the most recognizable faces of the fitness culture as it exploded onto the scene in the eighties. Only Jane Fonda is probably more famous than Randy Hancock.”

  “And does your client have enemies, Mr. Garter?”

  “Oh, sure. What celebrity hasn’t? Jealous competitors, disgruntled customers, the inevitable nutjobs. You name it, Randy’s got it.”

  “Anyone in particular you can think of who could be behind this recent campaign of threats?”

  The man shifted on the leather couch, making it squeak a little and causing him to blush. “Um, what form did these threats come in? I mean, did he get letters with the words cut out of newspapers, like in the old days?”

  “He received a video that contained the threat,” said Odelia, who didn’t want to go into detail.

  “A video, huh?” The man licked his lips again, and once more his eyes shot to those liquor bottles safely tucked away in the glass liquor cabinet. “I don’t understand why he didn’t tell me. I mean, he just disappeared. Doesn’t pick up his phone, left his house—even his housekeeper doesn’t know where he is.”

  “In the email he said he was going off the grid for a while. At least until the person threatening him is caught.”

  “Has he gone to the cops?”