“Because… they’re not alive anymore?” he tried. That was certainly true. If Captain Quidd had lived two hundred years ago, he probably wasn’t among the living anymore, and neither were the people he stole from.

  “But their descendants are, right? So maybe we can give the treasure back to them?”

  Dooley nodded. He could recognize a good argument when he heard one. “You’re absolutely right,” he said. “I’ll tell Gran, and by the time we find the treasure and bring it back to shore, we can give it all back to the rightful owners’ descendants. It might take a while to track them down, though.”

  “That’s all right,” said Minnie Mouse. “They’ve been waiting two hundred years for this. They can wait a couple of months more.”

  Dooley gave the tiny doggie a look of admiration. “You know? You’re a very clever dog, Minnie Mouse.”

  Minnie smiled. “Thanks, Dooley. You strike me as a very clever cat.”

  This warmed Dooley’s heart. Looked like he had found himself a new friend. She might not be as clever as Max—no one was—but for a dog as small as she was, she had quite a big brain. And a big heart, too.

  CHAPTER 36

  We had finally arrived on the island, and so far, so good. Nobody had drowned, and we hadn’t lost any of our luggage. Gran had suggested setting up camp on the beach, and since it was late and she proposed an early start, no time was wasted pitching the tents.

  It wasn’t exactly glamping, as Harriet would have liked, but sleeping in a tent wasn’t as bad as we had all expected.

  “It’s quite cozy,” Harriet admitted as we looked around. “Small but cozy.”

  Gran and Scarlett had opted to share a tent, and so had Father Reilly and Wilbur. Ida Baumgartner had brought along her own tent, and the final tent had been earmarked for the pets. Which meant that the seven of us ended up sharing our tent with Minnie Mouse.

  This didn’t sit well with Ida, who promptly snatched up Minnie and took her back to her own tent.

  “I’m sorry, you guys,” the tiny doggie had said. “Looks like we’ll have to get to know one another tomorrow.”

  Ida had disappeared from view, Minnie tucked safely against her sizable bosom.

  “Poor Minnie,” said Dooley. “I’ll bet she doesn’t even know how to walk properly. Ida probably doesn’t allow her to put her feet on solid ground.”

  “She is very tiny,” said Shanille. “For every single step Ida takes, Minnie would have to take a dozen. At any rate, she’d never finish her daily walk. She’d be too exhausted.”

  “I eat dogs like Minnie for breakfast,” Clarice growled. But when we all gave her a look of concern, she quickly added, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to eat her. She may look like a rat, but I’m willing to bet she doesn’t taste like one.”

  “She’s a dog, Clarice,” Shanille pointed out for good measure. “Cats don’t eat dogs. Do they?” She cast a curious glance in my direction.

  “I’m sure that dogs do not feature on our menu,” I said.

  “Still,” said Clarice. “She looks really yummy, that little one. And we all know that dog meat is quite tasty. Chewy, but tasty.”

  I shivered at the thought of eating a dog. “I do not want to eat Minnie,” I said firmly.

  “It’s her own fault!” Clarice cried when Shanille continued to give her a reproachful look. “Her name is Mouse, for crying out loud. And everyone knows that cats love mice.”

  “I guess,” I said. In a weird sense, she had a point. If you name a dog as tiny as Minnie, Mouse, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility a cat might come along to try and have a nibble.

  In the end, we all settled down, and for a while, everyone was quiet. Then Kingman said, “Who is snoring? I can’t sleep when someone is snoring.”

  We all listened carefully and discovered that Kingman was right. Someone was snoring, but it wasn’t anyone in our tent. The snoring was coming from the tent right next to us. And so we all snuck out to have a look.

  The tent the snoring was coming from belonged to Father Reilly and Wilbur. When we poked our heads in, we saw that both men were snoring. They were also spooning, which was not something we had ever expected to see.

  “Yikes,” said Kingman. “They look like an old married couple!”

  “Force of habit, probably,” said Shanille. “Humans are like that. Once their conscious mind is switched off, their subconscious takes over, and old deeply ingrained patterns come to the surface.”

  “But… Wilbur has never been married, or even had a long-term relationship,” said Kingman. “So why is he suddenly clutching Father Reilly like they’ve been married for years?”

  “Maybe some kind of primal instinct?” Brutus suggested. “You know, the innate primate that takes over?”

  Be that as it may, I did not need to see this, and so I quickly retreated.

  Once I had returned to my own tent, Shanille quickly walked up to me and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Let’s not discuss this,” she said.

  “Discuss what?” I asked, curious what she was going on about.

  “This!” she said, pointing at the next tent. She lowered her voice even more. “Whatever happens on Devil’s Island, stays on Devil’s Island. Is that understood, Max?”

  “Um, yes,” I said. “But nothing has happened… has it?”

  “Not yet,” she said with a grimace. “But it’s early days, and who knows what isolation and the lure of island life might do to these people? Before long, they might lower themselves to the level of the beasts in the field. And I do not want these stories to be spread around Hampton Cove.”

  “They won’t hear it from me,” I promised her. “My lips are sealed.”

  “Good,” she said. She sighed. “I didn’t think it was a good idea for Father Reilly and me to come along on this expedition. And it looks like I was right.”

  As the others all joined us again, Kingman said, “I’ve just seen a strange light, you guys.”

  And since I had a feeling we weren’t going to get a lot of sleep, we followed him to where he had seen this strange light.

  As it turned out, he was right. Out at sea, we could definitely see a light, and not only that—it was coming closer and closer to where we were camped. As it did, we could hear the soft chug-chugging sound of a boat engine.

  “Somebody’s coming,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s Odelia and Chase?” Dooley suggested. “Maybe they regret not coming along on this trip?”

  “They don’t know about this trip,” I pointed out. “Gran chose not to tell them.”

  Since Gran thought that the family wouldn’t agree with her plans to dig up the treasure, she had simply decided not to tell them. She’d left them a note, though, and stuck it on the fridge with a magnet. It simply said, ‘Gone camping with Scarlett for a couple of days. Will be back before you know it! PS: I’ve taken the cats. Hope you don’t mind!’

  As we watched, the boat gradually drew closer to the beach. In the end, it stopped, and a loud splash told us it had dropped anchor. But apart from that, everything remained quiet. So it looked like whoever was on board this vessel, they weren’t coming ashore.

  “Could be tourists,” Shanille suggested.

  “Devil’s Island isn’t exactly a tourist destination,” said Harriet. “Or is it?”

  We had Googled Devil’s Island before we left on our trip, but there hadn’t been a whole lot known about it. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t inhabited and didn’t contain any rare species, all it said was that allegedly it contained a treasure Captain Quidd had buried there. Though over the course of centuries many people had tried to find the treasure, no one had succeeded, and in recent years the island’s allure had faded, attracting far fewer treasure hunters than it once had.

  “I’m sure they’ll be gone again by morning,” said Harriet. “Like you said, Shanille. Probably just tourists.”

  And since there wasn’t anything more for us to see, we decided to follow our humans’ example and turn in for the night.

  Moments later, we were all sound asleep.

  Which is probably why we didn’t notice that in the middle of the night, someone folded back the flap that constituted the entrance to our tent, shone a light inside, and then slowly retreated again.

  CHAPTER 37

  “Okay, so this is us,” said Gran, pointing to a specific location on the map. “And this is where the treasure is. So now all we have to do is go from here to there, grab that treasure, and get out of here.” She grinned. “Easy peasy!”

  “Do we need shovels, you think?” asked Wilbur. “From what little I know about treasures, they’re usually buried, right? So I’m thinking we’d better take the shovels?”

  “Yes, Wilbur,” said Ida. “We need to take the shovels. Or what do you expect? That the treasure will be hanging from a tree?”

  Wilbur shot her a curt glance. “No, Ida. I don’t think the treasure is hanging from a tree. But I was thinking maybe it’s in a cave somewhere. You know, like The Goonies?”

  “I do not know what Goonies are,” said Ida with a touch of hauteur.

  “It’s a movie,” Scarlett explained. “About kids looking for a treasure.”

  “It isn’t just a movie,” said Wilbur. “It’s a classic. And I can’t believe you haven’t seen it.”

  “It’s impossible to see all the movies that have ever been made,” said Ida. “If I wanted to watch every movie ever made, I’d have to be glued to my television set twenty-four/seven, and even then one lifetime probably wouldn’t suffice.”

  Wilbur seemed to see the logic in that, but he still didn’t want to give up without a fight. “The Goonies is a classic, Ida. And I can’t believe you, of all people, haven’t watched it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘you of all people’?”

  Wilbur realized his faux pas and quickly backtracked. “What I meant to say was: a woman as culturally refined as you.”

  A hint of a smile graced Ida’s lips at this statement. That’s more like it, she seemed to think. “As you say, I’m a culturally refined woman, with eclectic taste. I enjoy the occasional opera performance, Broadway productions, the theater. There is more to art than just movies, Wilbur. So these Goonies of yours will have to wait until I find time in my schedule.”

  “Did you guys also see the boat last night?” asked Minnie now. “I heard it before I saw it, but then it turned off its lights and its engine, and this morning when I looked, it was gone.”

  “Like I told the others last night,” said Harriet, “probably tourists who wanted to stop over for the night. They’re probably on their way to Nantucket or Cape Cod by now.”

  “Ooh, I can’t wait to go treasure hunting,” said Minnie. “Is this the first time for you guys?”

  “It is,” I said. “We’ve never hunted for treasure before. Neither have our humans.”

  “Same here,” said Minnie with satisfaction. “And I think this will do Ida a world of good. She’s been suffering a lot with her health lately, and this will take her mind off all of that.”

  “Oh, we know,” said Harriet. “She’s one of Tex’s most faithful patients.”

  “That’s right,” said Minnie, her eyes lighting up. “One of your humans is Tex Poole. He’s such an amazing doctor, isn’t he? Ida simply adores him. She often says Tex is the only doctor who takes her seriously. All the other doctors she’s seen over the years tell her to take a hike. Well, they don’t say it like that, but that’s what it boils down to. They don’t like her. But Tex is ever so nice. He never patronizes her and always has time for her.” She sighed. “It’s been so hard, being troubled with so many health issues. Good thing she has Tex.”

  “And good thing Tex has her,” Dooley pointed out. “That way he was able to pay off his mortgage.”

  This would have elicited a gurgle of mirth from yours truly, but since that would have been disrespectful toward Minnie, I refrained.

  “Okay, I guess this is it,” said Gran. “Let’s get going. Let’s go hunt for that treasure!”

  Wilbur picked up his shovel, and so did Father Reilly. Gran grabbed her map, which she had printed out and blown up since she hated reading on her phone, while Scarlett asked Ida how she looked in her new outfit.

  “I bought it especially for this occasion,” she explained. “The girl in the shop told me it brings out my toned legs, but I’m not sure.”

  She was wearing a pair of khaki short-shorts, pink socks, and a pair of sturdy hiking boots. On top of that, a skimpy top that brought out—not her toned legs—but her toned bust. Though I’m not sure if toned is the right word for an outsized chest.

  “You look amazing,” Ida said begrudgingly. “I don’t know how you do it, Scarlett. How do you manage to look so young? I mean, you’re the same age as Vesta, right? And yet you look completely different.”

  Scarlett beamed at this. “There is a secret,” she admitted.

  Ida leaned in. “Well? What is it?”

  “You have to moisturize,” said Scarlett with satisfaction. “You have to start young, and never stop. It provides elasticity to the skin, you see—and elasticity is what you want.”

  “I’ve been moisturizing all my life,” said Ida, “and I don’t even look half as good as you do. Are you sure you haven’t, you know… surgery?”

  Scarlett looked utterly scandalized. “Never!” she cried. “I would never let anyone cut up my face. What you see is what you get, honey—one hundred percent natural. Well… except for a little Botox.”

  “Amazing,” said Ida, expressing an opinion that many people had voiced over the years.

  “Maybe we should also moisturize?” Harriet suggested. “To keep that healthy and rosy complexion, I mean?”

  “We have fur covering all of those important places,” said Shanille. “So we don’t need to moisturize at all.”

  “Yeah, if only humans were covered in hair like we are,” said Clarice, “the beauty industry would lose hundreds of billions in profit overnight.”

  We had left the beach and were now on our way to the spot Gran had marked on her map with a big X. It wasn’t far as the crow flies, but unfortunately none of us are crows—and we can’t fly either—so I had a feeling it might take longer than Gran had anticipated.

  “Are we there yet?” asked Shanille after we’d been traipsing along a path that cut right through the forest that seemed to stretch across a large chunk of the island.

  “No, we’re not,” said Kingman.

  “Don’t you find this odd?” said Clarice, gesturing to her paws.

  “What is odd?” I asked.

  “Well, this path. If this is an island where nobody lives, and that nobody ever visits, then who made this path?”

  “Um…” Frankly, I was at a loss for how to answer that.

  “Maybe more people come here to look for treasure?” Brutus suggested.

  “Judging from the width of this path, plenty of people must have passed through here,” said Clarice. “Which means this treasure is really, really popular.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Harriet. “We have what those other treasure hunters don’t: we have a map.”

  “Maybe they also had a map,” Clarice said. “And if that’s the case, we might be in for a big disappointment.”

  Before long, we found ourselves deep into the forest, but the path was still there, which proved to me that Clarice was absolutely right: we definitely weren’t the first people in recent times to come looking for that treasure.

  The odd thing was that none of our humans noticed this rather obvious clue. But then Scarlett was too busy explaining her beauty routine to Ida, Father Reilly was too busy talking to Wilbur about the church roof and the terrible state it was in, and Gran was too busy trying to interpret her treasure map.

  The problem with forests is that everything looks exactly the same. There are no street names. If the map had said, at Elm Street take a left onto Oak Avenue and follow the road for a hundred yards until you see a chapel on the left—well, that would have helped.

  In a forest, none of that applies. All the trees look the same. So do all the plants. And even the fox that had just crossed our path.

  “A wolf!” Scarlett suddenly yelled. “Did you guys see that? It was a wolf!”

  “Wolves always travel in packs,” said Wilbur, his brow furrowing. “We have to be careful from here on out. If you’ve seen that movie with Liam Neeson, the wolves pick off their targets one by one until there’s no one left. We need to stay together, people. Stay together!”

  I was pretty sure that so-called wolf had been a fox, and I would have told Gran, but since she was busy reading and interpreting her map, I decided not to distract her.

  The worst thing that could happen now would be to get lost in this forest.

  And I really didn’t want that to happen.

  CHAPTER 38

  As we traipsed along, I soon became aware of a persistent sense of discomfort in my stomach. In other words: I was hungry—and getting hungrier by the minute. Our humans must have experienced the same thing, for soon Gran suggested we stop for a moment and enjoy a nice picnic.

  We had reached a pleasant spot where a brook gurgled through the forest, with a waterfall just up ahead. And so we positioned ourselves on the bank of the little lake that had naturally formed at the base of the waterfall, and our humans took off their backpacks to prepare the picnic.

  “I like it here,” said Scarlett. “I think I might go for a swim.”

  “Don’t,” Ida advised. “This water probably teems with all kinds of bacteria. Not to mention piranhas.”

  Scarlett subjected the water to a scrutinizing look. “Piranhas? Are you sure?”

  “Just try it,” said Ida. “Throw something into the lake and you’ll see—it’ll be devoured by piranhas within seconds.”

  Scarlett looked around and soon found an apple that had fallen from a tree. She threw it into the water, and both women watched carefully.

  The apple bobbed up and down on the surface of the lake, and… nothing happened. No piranhas.