“Like I said, I’m not sure. He told us he didn’t kill Ray, and I actually believed him, so…” She frowned. “The thing is, he was involved with Regan. They both were, Ray and Toby. Like a love triangle thing? Chase believes in the suicide theory, though. He’s closed the case.”

  She was talking more to herself than to us, I saw. Humans often do that. They talk to themselves on the street, in the shower, in the car, thinking nobody can hear them. It’s a peculiar habit. Then again, I think we can all agree humans are a peculiar breed.

  “You want us to talk to Shanille again?” I asked. “Dig a little deeper?”

  She looked up. “Mh? Oh, no. That’s not necessary. Before I dropped her off at Father Reilly’s I asked her to repeat to me what she told you. She said she couldn’t be sure Toby actually shot Ray. All she saw was this strange exchange between them—which is understandable in the context of a quarrel between two love rivals. Which reminds me…”

  She took a small pill bottle from her pocket and popped the top. I gave it a suspicious look. I don’t like pills. They usually taste horrible and tend to give me a nasty rash.

  “What is that, Odelia?” asked Dooley.

  “Vitamins,” she said as shook two sizable pills into the palm of her hand. “Now are you going to swallow them like big boys or do you want me to mix them into your food?”

  “Vitamins?” asked Dooley. “What’s a vitamins?”

  “They’re good for you,” she said. “They will give you more energy.”

  “I’ve got plenty of energy,” I told her. “I don’t need vitamins.”

  “I think I’ll take one,” said Dooley. “I like energy. Energy is good.”

  She smiled and placed a pill on his raspy pink tongue. He squeezed his eyes shut and dry-swallowed it, then gave her a look of triumph. She patted his head. “Well done, Dooley. You’re a real champ.” Then she turned to me and held up the second pill. “Your turn, Max.”

  I made a face, and Dooley said, “Max likes to roam wild and free on the Serengeti. He probably doesn’t need a vitamins.”

  “Vitamin,” she corrected him. “Plural: vitamins. So you’re a tiger now, huh, Max?”

  “And he likes bacon,” Dooley added.

  She grinned. “A real tiger wouldn’t mind swallowing down a little pill.”

  “Oh, all right,” I muttered, and opened my mouth wide. The things I do for my human…

  Chapter 23

  After Odelia had watched her father and her uncle Alec work on her kitchen door for a while, she felt compelled to remove herself from the scene. By then it was clear to her that her door was not going to survive the efforts of two men who gave the handymen of this world a bad name. They’d begun by shaving off a small sliver of door, in a bid to make the pet door fit Max’s outsized frame. Happy with the result, they’d decided to remove another bit of door, and had soon become addicted to the process. Now, at last count, it would appear they were moving steadily through the door like a pair of beavers chewing down a tree. At the rate they were going, soon there would be nothing left but a pile of sawdust.

  She couldn’t watch anymore, and retreated to the house next door, entering the kitchen to find her mother baking a cake. Marge looked up when her daughter entered the house. Her button of a nose was covered in flour, and her hair was covered with a wrap.

  “Oh, hey, honey. Did they finish your door already?”

  “Oh, yes, they finished my door,” she said with a hollow laugh. “Finished it off. I just hope they won’t start hacking away at the rest of the house as well. Cause if they do, I might be forced to move in with you.” She sat musingly for a spell. “You know? I never realized the kind of damage termites could wreak on a fragile structure. Now I know. It’s not pretty.”

  Her mother made a sympathetic noise. “Oh, honey. I should have told you that your father and my brother are the worst handymen in the world. Remember how they were going to build a treehouse? When the dust finally settled there was no tree house, and no tree, either. You should have hired a professional for that door. They would have installed that thing in a matter of minutes.”

  “You’re telling me now? I’m bound to be homeless by the time they’re through.”

  Marge brought a hand to her face to hide her mirth. “Oh, honey,” she said.

  “It would be funny,” she agreed, “if it wasn’t so sad.”

  “It’s just a door. I’ll tell Tex to buy you a new one, this time with a pet door pre-installed.”

  Odelia glanced at the cake batter. She could go for a piece. Pity it wouldn’t be ready for another few hours. “And then there’s that Dieber business,” she continued her lament.

  “Oh, that’s right. What’s going on with that?”

  “Turns out they weren’t after Charlie after all. Just a lovers’ tiff gone horribly wrong. One of the female bodyguards was involved with two of the male bodyguards, and one of them killed the other one and then killed himself with the same gun that he used to kill his rival in love. Or at least that’s what it looks like at this point.”

  Mom looked up sharply. “What it looks like? What do you mean?”

  She threw up her hands. “You know how I get these hunches? Chase used to make fun of them, but they’re very real. And not just when the cats tell me stuff either. I could have sworn that this Toby Mulvaney was telling the truth when he said he didn’t do it. And we talked to Regan Lightbody as well—she’s the woman both men were in love with—and she says neither Ray Cooper or Toby ever showed violent tendencies. She was deeply shocked that Toby would kill Ray. Said it was simply not in his nature to do such a thing.”

  “What does Chase think?”

  “Chase is happy that the case is closed and he never has to set foot inside Dieber Castle ever again.”

  Her mother laughed. “Dieber Castle? Is that what they call it?”

  “That’s what Dieber calls it. Oh, Mom, you should see the guy. You wouldn’t like him. He’s this bratty, annoying, self-absorbed pop star. A kid, really. Worse than you can imagine. I think I’ll never be able to listen to his music again without remembering what a pain he is.”

  “You have to separate the art from the artist, honey. I’ll bet if you met movie stars you wouldn’t be able to watch a single movie anymore. And the same goes for musicians.”

  “Oh, and I lost Diego,” she said, deciding to pour her heart out now that she was going so well. “Dieber went on a catnapping rampage last night and I only managed to retrieve Harriet and Shanille.”

  Mom checked the recipe in the latest cookbook she’d bought and frowned. “So much sugar. That can’t be right. Perhaps I’ll use half.” She glanced up. “Diego is not a very nice cat, honey. Maybe it’s for the best that he’s gone missing.”

  “But I can’t just give him up. He belongs to Chase—Chase’s mother, actually.”

  “So?”

  “So Chase asked me to take care of him. I can’t go losing his cats, Mom. What kind of person loses another person’s cat?”

  “Not all cats are created equal, Odelia. And Diego is clearly not cut from the same cloth as the others. So I say good riddance, and if Chase doesn’t like it—tough luck. He’s the one who foisted his cat on you, so I can’t imagine he cares either way.”

  Odelia placed her head on the kitchen counter, enjoying the coolness of the marble against her heated cheek. She had to admit she’d never liked Diego all that much, and apparently he’d been wreaking havoc on her menagerie, stirring up trouble between Harriet and the others, and pestering Max by stealing his food, his water, his litter box and even his space on the bed. She’d hoped the feud would be short-lived, like the one between Max and Brutus had been, but her mother was right. As cats went, Diego was not a very nice one.

  “Too much butter,” her mother was muttering. “Clogging up Tex’s arteries is not what I promised him when we exchanged wedding vows. Who wrote this? A serial killer?”

  Just then, Grandma walked in, her iPhone glued to her ear as usual. Ever since Dad had gifted her the phone, she’d become an iPhone addict, taking the thing to bed with her and even wondering if she could take it into the shower. “Yes, Mr. President. Oh, but of course, Mr. President. I couldn’t agree more, Mr. President.” She held her hand over the phone and said, as an aside, “It’s the President.”

  “I thought as much,” said Odelia, amused.

  Grandma returned to her most important conversation. “You will have to sit down with him at some point, Mr. President,” she said as she took a seat next to Odelia and settled in for the duration. “Yes, everybody will be there. The American President, the German Chancellor, the French President, the Chinese General Secretary, the British Prime Minister, His Holiness Pope Francis, of course.” She rattled off a long list of dignitaries and Odelia exchanged a puzzled look with her mother, who merely shrugged and frowned at her recipe some more.

  “Is she really talking to the President?” Odelia whispered, not wanting to interrupt her grandmother’s apparently important phone call.

  “President Putin,” Mom clarified. “She’s been trying to reach him all morning, and she’s finally succeeded.”

  “Putin? The Russian dude?”

  “Yep. For some reason she was very anxious he be included in her list of acquaintances.”

  “But… why? What’s going on?”

  “I haven’t got a clue, and neither has Tex,” said her mother. “We’re just happy she’s found herself a hobby that doesn’t involve bees or horny old goats or running up a huge credit card bill. Ever since Tex got her that phone and a great deal on a mobile phone plan, it’s been pure bliss. We hardly see her anymore. Just drops by for breakfast, lunch and dinner and that’s it.” She put her index finger and thumb together. “Model citizen.”

  Odelia studied her grandmother, who was now exchanging pleasantries with Putin. If she was happy, and Mom and Dad were happy, what harm could it do? Probably none. Besides, she had other issues to tackle. Like what to do about Diego. And what to do about this Dieber business. Chase might be happy with the way the case had concluded, but she wasn’t. Something wasn’t right, and she couldn’t walk away until she figured out what.

  Chapter 24

  Watching Tex and Alec at work proved a great soporific. Very soon my eyes closed, and after a while I was sound asleep, perched on the hot stone floor of the deck. I only woke up when something prodded my ribcage, and I made a valiant attempt to slap them away.

  “Lemme… sleep,” I muttered.

  “Max!” a voice intruded on my peaceful slumber. “She’s gone!”

  “That’s great,” I said, smacking my lips and turning over to my other side. I wasn’t done sleeping. Not by a mile.

  “Max!” the voice insisted, and finally I opened my eyes to see who this horrible disturber of the peace could be. I was about to give him a piece of my mind when I found myself staring into Brutus’s green eyes. Once upon a time those green eyes had haunted my nightmares, but that was before Diego had come to town, and our enmity had turned into an unexpected alliance over shared grievances. The enemy of an enemy is a friend and all that.

  “Brutus?” I asked, instantly awake. It’s one of my finer qualities. Us cats can be asleep one second and wide awake the next. And we don’t even need liters of caffeine to accomplish this amazing feat. “What’s wrong, buddy?”

  “Harriet’s gone, Max. Said she couldn’t live without him.”

  “Without who?”

  I should probably have said ‘whom’ but I didn’t think Brutus would care.

  “Diego, of course! She was pining for him and whining about him and finally she left.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Dieber’s place, of course! Where Diego was last seen.” He placed a pleading claw on my front leg. “We have to go after her. She’s going to get herself in all kinds of trouble. That place is like the Bermuda Triangle for cats! Enter Dieber Castle and never be seen again!”

  “No, it’s not. Dieber collects cats and then he gives them away to deserving Bediebers. Odelia told me all about it. To the Dieber cats are like swag. He puts them in gift bags and hands them out like so many pieces of candy or keychains or beauty products.”

  “That’s… sick, Max.”

  “Yeah, it’s not very cat-friendly,” I agreed.

  Brutus’s eyes had gone wide. “He’s going to give Harriet away! To who-knows-who!”

  “He can’t. She’s not his to give away,” I pointed out. Deep down, though, I knew he was right. The moment the Dieber laid his hands on a pretty Persian like Harriet, he would probably give her away to his biggest fan, which might mean she could very well end up in war-torn Afghanistan, Somalia or Syria. The kid had fans all across the globe. And even though Harriet and I rarely saw eye to eye, I would hate for her to meet such a terrible fate.

  I gave Dooley, who was snoring softly next to me, a prod in the ribs. He woke up with a start and a snuffle. “Who’s your daddy now?” he mumbled, promptly opening his eyes.

  “I don’t want to know,” I told him. “Harriet’s gone, and if we don’t get her back she’ll be on a plane to Kabul, Mogadishu or possibly even Damascus before we know it.”

  He blinked a few times. “Kabul? What’s a Kabul, Max?”

  “It’s a city, Dooley, and not one Harriet will enjoy. It’s hot there, and not so safe.”

  “She’s gone back to Dieber’s place,” Brutus explained urgently. “And we all know what happens to cats once they enter that compound. They vanish! Without a trace!”

  “Oh, no,” said Dooley, fully on board now, his brain firing on all cylinders—which was just the one, in his case, but he definitely made it count. “Max, we have to save her!”

  Dooley, who was president of the Harriet Fan Club long before Brutus had entered the picture, seemed even more anxious than his rival in love.

  “The problem is that she went there of her own volition,” I said. “Which makes it hard to organize an extraction.” I’d seen plenty of action movies where SEAL Team Six goes in to save some hapless civilian, only to discover that said civilian has sold our heroes down the river, to be faced with the drug kingpin’s wrath until all that’s left is SEAL Team Zero.

  Dooley stared at me, wide-eyed. “You mean…”

  “I mean that Harriet could very well sell us to the Dieber, and before we know it we’ll be the ones stuck in Kabul, Mogadishu, Damascus or possibly even Kinshasa, Congo.”

  “I don’t want to go to Congo, Max,” Dooley intimated. “I’ll bet they don’t even have Cat Snax there.”

  “Who cares about Cat Snax?!” Brutus thundered. He’d been following the discussion with rising impatience. “We go in. We snatch Harriet. We get out. It’s as simple as that.”

  “And what if she doesn’t want to be snatched?” I asked. “We can’t very well force her to leave with us, Brutus.”

  “We could sedate her,” Dooley suggested. “Give her a shot of some mysterious clear liquid that will knock her out until she’s safe and sound back here. It’s what Bruce would do.”

  “And where are you going to find this mysterious clear liquid?” I asked.

  “Um…”

  “Exactly.”

  “Look, you guys, we have to at least try,” said Brutus. “She doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into. This Diego character will prove her downfall, and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t know I’d done whatever it took to save her from a fate worse than death.”

  “What’s a fate worse than death?” asked Dooley.

  “Being shipped off to some rabid Bedieber, of course!” Brutus cried. “Now are you with me or not? If not, I’m going out there alone—do or die!”

  “I’m with you, Brutus,” said Dooley. “Though I’d rather do than die.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “I’m a doer not a dier.”

  And so we touched paws on it. Mission Save Harriet was officially a go.

  Chapter 25

  We were back at the Dieber compound, a place I thought I’d left in my rearview mirror. Then again, one has to put aside one’s misgivings when one’s friend is in grave danger. It may surprise you that cats, who have a reputation for being selfish and individualistic, would come to the aid of a friend. But if I didn’t do this, I’d never hear the end of it from Brutus and Dooley, Harriet’s biggest champions in the entire world.

  And I had to admit I kinda liked the feisty Persian, too. She might be a pain in the patootie but she was also a dear friend. Even though her Diego fixation was exasperating.

  The moment we were past the gate, we moved in single file, just in case the enemy was lying in wait, and kept our ears to the ground and our eyes peeled, so to speak.

  “Enemy activity at our six,” Brutus suddenly whispered.

  “Six? What’s our six?” asked Dooley.

  “Our rear!” he hissed.

  I looked over my shoulder while Dooley checked out his butt. A guard was having a smoke and taking a stroll in the garden. He didn’t look particularly dangerous to cats.

  “Another bogey at one o’clock!” Brutus warned.

  “A booger?” asked Dooley.

  “Not a booger! A bogey!”

  “What’s a bogey?”

  “I have no idea, Dooley,” I said. I did see a cat lying on his back on the lawn, four paws in the air, his mouth open and a trickle of drool on his fur, clearly enjoying the feel of the sun on his jelly belly. How Brutus would know that this cat’s name was Bogey I did not know, nor did I care. All I cared about was making sure we weren’t captured by the Dieber and shipped off to some godforsaken place to live with one of his crazed Bediebers, no Cat Snax in sight.

  Brutus suddenly held up his paw, claws clenched into a fist. “Sitrep! Stat!”

  “Please speak English, Brutus,” I said. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “We need to draw up a plan of campaign. I suggest we split up. Max, you cover the left flank, Dooley draws a bead on the right flank, and I’ll engage from the front. Oorah!”