“There is a solution,” said Harriet, and when three pairs of human eyes and three pairs of feline eyes all turned to her, she said, a sort of triumphant note in her voice: “Cats!”

  “Cats?” asked Marge with a frown. “What do you mean, Harriet, sweetie?”

  “So there’s always plenty of cats on the streets at night, or at any other time, right?”

  “Right,” said Gran dubiously.

  “Cats roam the streets at all hours of the day or night, and cover all of Hampton Cove. In fact that’s the reason we always manage to give Odelia the kinds of tips and exclusive stories that she fills her newspaper with. So why don’t we ask all the cats of Hampton Cove to form one big neighborhood watch?”

  Odelia laughed. “But honey, we can’t possibly expect the cats of Hampton Cove to put themselves in harm’s way, just to protect the community?”

  “And why not?” Harriet insisted. “Nearly all of the cats belong to somebody. And I’m sure they’d be more than happy to make sure those somebodies can feel safe in the knowledge that no one will snatch their purses and knock them dead.”

  Odelia, Marge and Gran now shared a look, and I could tell that Harriet’s impassioned pitch had struck a chord.

  “You know, Harriet?” said Odelia finally. “On second thought your idea is not so bad.”

  “No, and that’s because it’s great,” said Harriet, tilting her chin a little. “And so if you make me the leader of the Neighborhood Cat Watch, I’ll make sure that Hampton Cove will be the safest town on the East Coast. In fact it just might become the safest town in the whole country, and a beacon in the annals of crime fighting. And when other towns start following in our pawsteps, we’ll start a revolution in crime prevention—a revolution of which we can be the proud leaders.”

  Gran was nodding, and so were Odelia and Marge.

  “What are you guys talking about?” asked Chase, one of those rare humans who doesn’t speak our language.

  “Oh, nothing,” Gran hastened to say.

  “Why did Gran just say your idea is nothing?” asked Dooley, intrigued.

  “I think she first wants to see if it’s feasible,” said Harriet, studying the old lady closely. “And then if it works, she can take all the credit.”

  “And if it fails?” asked Brutus.

  “Well, since nobody knows about it except us, if it fails no one will know.”

  “Gran should have gone into politics,” said Dooley.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “She certainly has the cunning for it.”

  Gran now gave Harriet a wink. “Let’s talk more soon,” she whispered.

  Chapter 2

  The following morning, the four of us were enjoying a well-deserved nap in Odelia’s office, while our human slaved away at her computer, typing up an article on the murdered woman, when all of a sudden Dan strode in, and took a seat at his star reporter’s desk.

  Odelia looked up with a frown. “Do you think I should talk to the friend? Get some background on Josslyn Aldridge?”

  “Before you do that, I just got off the phone and I think I have an even juicier story for you, my dear.”

  “Oh?” said Odelia, and withdrew her hands from the keyboard. “What story?”

  “How well do you know Rosa Bond?”

  “Tilton Bond’s wife? I’ve bumped into her once or twice at social events. Why?”

  “It was Rosa who phoned me, and asked if she could enlist our services.”

  “Our services?”

  Dan grinned. “And when I say ‘our services’ of course I mean your services. You’re really starting to make a name for yourself as an investigative reporter.”

  “Rosa Bond wants to hire me?”

  “That’s what I understood. She didn’t want to talk on the phone, but I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it when she arrives…” He checked his watch. “In about ten minutes.”

  “Rosa Bond is coming here?”

  Dan nodded and got up. “I told her you’d be more than happy to place yourself at her disposal.” He gave her a smile and tapped his nose. “I have a hunch this might prove to be one heck of a story.” Just then, the door to the outer office opened and closed. The aged editor’s pristinely white beard waggled with excitement. “I think that might be the lady already.” He took a slight bow. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Thanks, Dan.”

  “I thank you,” said Dan, and quickly went to greet Mrs. Bond, or whoever it might be.

  Moments later, the new arrival was ushered into Odelia’s office by Dan, who quickly retreated, but not before saying, “I’ll leave you in Odelia’s capable hands, Mrs. Bond.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Goory,” said the lady, and took a seat in front of Odelia.

  She was a smallish woman, with short ash-blond hair and a sort of squarish face. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had one of those kind faces, which gave the impression she was a good person at heart, and kindness always lends a certain beauty to a person, I’ve always thought, and this certainly was the case with Mrs. Bond.

  “How old do you think she is, Max?” asked Dooley.

  “Forty-something?” I said. “It’s hard to say, Dooley.”

  “It’s always hard to say with humans,” my friend mused. “And I wonder why that is.”

  “It’s because humans try to mask their real age,” said Harriet. “They always want to look younger than they actually are. And so they dye their hair and apply all kinds of creams to their faces, or even have operations like facelifts or nips and tucks.”

  “Facelifts?” asked Dooley. “Why would you want to have your face lifted?”

  “It’s actually not the entire face that’s lifted, Dooley,” I said. “Only the parts that hang a little, like the jawline or the corners of the mouth.”

  “Oh, so they don’t lift the whole face?”

  “No, only specific sections.”

  He stared at the woman, who’d placed her purse on the floor and was gathering the courage to launch into her story. “But if they lift their faces, where does the part that’s been lifted go? Or do they simply lift it and then trim it at the top, like a hedge?”

  “Sure, Dooley,” said Brutus with a grin. “They lift it and chop off the top part.”

  Dooley looked horrified at this. “But… what happens to the bottom part?”

  “The bottom part stays where it is,” said Brutus. “They grab them by the hair and simply pull from the top, see, then tie it off with a piece of twine and chop off the excess skin, and since the skin is then stretched out, the wrinkles all disappear like magic.”

  “But that’s terrible!” said Dooley, as I could see he was picturing the gruesome procedure in vivid detail.

  “And some of them do it more than once,” Brutus continued, relishing in his sordid tale.

  “More than once!”

  “Oh, sure. They have three or four or five facelifts in a row.”

  “But soon there won’t be any skin left!” Dooley cried.

  “And that’s exactly the problem with facelifts. Everything ends up in the wrong place. Their eyes are on their foreheads, their mouths are where their noses used to be, and their chins are where their mouths used to be. So they end up talking through their chin, blow their noses through their mouths and watch television from the top of their heads.”

  “But that’s terrible!”

  “Don’t listen to Brutus, Dooley,” I said. “He’s exaggerating.”

  “I’m not,” said Brutus with a touch of indignation, but his grin was still firmly in place, which detracted from his righteous indignation, effectively nullifying it.

  “So what can I do for you, Mrs. Bond?” asked Odelia, placing her hands on her desk and interlacing her fingers.

  “I find myself in something of a pickle, Mrs. Kingsley,” said the woman, looking nervous as she launched into her tale.

  “So you told Dan,” said Odelia, nodding.

  “Before we begin, I wanted to ask if I can rely on your complete discretion?”

  “Absolutely,” said Odelia. “Nothing of what you tell me will leave this room, unless you want it to.”

  The woman nodded, satisfied. “The thing is that all of a sudden I find myself the victim of… well, blackmail.”

  “Someone is blackmailing you?”

  The woman nodded, and an expression of extreme concern slid over her face, the mask of composure slipping. “You see, before I married Tilton, I was married to another man—in fact I had a completely different life before I settled into the one I now share with my husband.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The woman seemed to hesitate. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

  “I promise,” Odelia said.

  “I used to be married to a man named Clive Atcheson.” She gave Odelia an anxious look. “Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

  “I don’t think I have.”

  “This all happened nine years ago, in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I used to live at the time. Wilmington is where I was born, and so was Clive. You see, Clive used to run the local branch of Capital First Bank, and for a long time we were very happy. I married Clive straight out of college, and we settled down and had two kids very quickly. I was a stay-at-home mom for a while, and Clive made quite a career at the bank. We lived a good life, Mrs. Kingsley, and I can say that I was happy then. Very happy.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Clive robbed the bank.”

  “He robbed his own bank?”

  Mrs. Bond nodded. “One night he didn’t come home, and instead two police officers showed up, and told me that Clive had taken all the money from the big vault, and had disappeared.”

  “My God.”

  “And the worst part is that his secretary also disappeared. Janice Schiller. The police told me they figured Clive and Janice were having an affair, and were in it together, and had run off with the money.” She looked up, and a sad look had stolen over her face. “So you see, from one day to the next I discovered not only that my husband had been cheating on me with his secretary, but that he was a thief and that he’d robbed his bank.”

  “So what happened?”

  She shook her head. “Later the police discovered that Clive had rented a car and had driven it across the border into Mexico. And from there the trail went cold.”

  “So your husband robbed the bank, then ran off to Mexico with his secretary.”

  “Yes. He left me with two small kids, and with a lot of questions from the police, who didn’t seem to believe I wouldn’t have known what he was planning. They kept a close eye on me for the next couple of months, believing that sooner or later get Clive might get in touch. Of course he never did. He’s probably lying on some sandy beach somewhere, sipping cocktails and living the good life with Janice by his side. And since I found myself the subject of a lot of foul gossip, and my kids as well, I decided to leave my hometown. I changed my name from Wendy Atcheson to Rosa Gale, and we settled down here, far away from the place where I was born, and where my life had been shattered by a selfish thieving cheat. Then before long I met a man, this time a good and decent man.”

  “Tilton Bond.”

  “We hit it off, and I’m happy to say that we’ve been happily married for the past eight years.”

  “So what about this blackmailer?”

  “I got a phone call last night. A male voice I didn’t recognize. This man said that he knew who I was—that he knew all about my past, and if I wanted to make sure my secret didn’t get out, I could buy his silence by making a generous donation. Five thousand dollars seemed like a good start, he said.”

  “Five thousand. That’s a lot of money.”

  “It is, and I’m lucky enough that I can afford it. But since he said this was only the beginning, I know it won’t end there. He’ll just keep asking more and more. And even though my husband has money, I can’t possibly ask him to hand over his entire fortune, only because he married a woman with a dark secret in her past.”

  “Does your husband know about your first husband and the bank robbery?”

  “He does. When we met, at first I didn’t want to tell him, but the night before our wedding, I decided I couldn’t go through with it unless I told him who the woman was he was about to marry.” She looked up, and had tears in her eyes now. “So I said I was going to tell him something very important, and give him the opportunity to back out before it was too late. To his credit, not only didn’t he back out, but he also told me that he thought I was the victim here, and had nothing to blame myself for. He also said he would have understood if I’d kept quiet about my past, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to go into this marriage with absolute honesty as a basis to build a solid relationship. No lies.”

  “Did you tell him about the blackmail?”

  “I did, actually.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He told me to go to the police. He said blackmailers will never stop asking for more and more money, especially when they see how easy it is to get it. I told him I couldn’t go to the police, since the blackmailer would make sure the story of my first marriage would get out, and frankly I don’t think I could face it. More importantly, I don’t want my kids to face the consequences of my mistake in marrying their father.”

  “So what do you propose? No police?”

  “Absolutely no police,” said the woman adamantly.

  “So you’re going to pay?”

  “I’m going to pay—but only this once.” She gave Odelia an anxious look. “Several of my friends have told me that you are very clever and very resourceful, Mrs. Kingsley. So I was hoping that you might know of a way out of this. Without involving the police.”

  Odelia took a deep breath. “So you want this blackmailer to stop, but you don’t want him arrested.” She leaned back and thought this over.

  “There must be a way to make sure my secret doesn’t get out, but also that this blackmail stops.” She gave Odelia a look filled with hope.

  “Frankly, in my experience blackmailers can only be stopped when the truth comes out and the secret they use as a weapon against their target is no longer a secret.”

  “My secret cannot come out—that’s absolutely out of the question. Nobody can know that once upon a time I was Wendy Atcheson. For my children, for their future.”

  “How old are your kids?”

  “Todd is sixteen and Aisha is fifteen. And then of course there’s the baby. Alisa.”

  “So what age were Todd and Aisha when this happened?”

  “Todd was seven and Aisha was six.”

  “Do they still remember their dad?”

  “Yes, they do, though we hardly ever talk about him now. It just wouldn’t be fair to Tilton—though I’m sure he would take it in stride. He’s the most wonderful and patient man I know, and has raised Todd and Aisha as if they were his own flesh and blood—which is more than I could ever have hoped for.”

  “Let me think about this, Mrs. Bond. I have an idea, but I will need to discuss it with my husband first.”

  Mrs. Bond’s face clouded. “Your husband is a police detective, isn’t he?”

  “He is, but I can assure you that he won’t breathe a word about this to anyone.”

  Mrs. Bond didn’t look entirely convinced, but since she didn’t have a lot of options, she reluctantly agreed. “All right, but you’ll have to think quick. The drop-off is arranged for tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “That’s right. I’m to drop off the money in the park at midnight, and make sure I’m not being followed, and that there is no police anywhere near the drop-off point.”

  “Which is where?”

  “The playground. I’m to put the money in a plastic bag and put it in a nearby trashcan, then immediately walk away.”

  Odelia nodded thoughtfully. “That doesn’t give us a lot of time.”

  “I know. I think he’s doing it on purpose. Make sure I don’t have time to think this through, or to set up some kind of counter… initiative.”

  “You know what? We’ll make sure that we’re ready for him.”

  “He said no police.”

  “Don’t worry. He won’t see us. The important thing to remember is that a blackmailer relies as much on his anonymity as he does on the secret he’s got on you, and the fear he can put into you. So when we know who he is, we’ve already won half the battle. At that point, if we want, we can confront him.”

  “But won’t he simply start spreading rumors about me? Or whatever evidence he has of my real identity?”

  “To be honest with you, Mrs. Bond, at this point I’m as much in the dark as you are. And I think we need to play this by ear, and the first step we can take right now is to make sure we know who we’re dealing with. Find out who this man is.”

  The woman nodded. “Of course. You’re right.”

  “Now let’s go over this again, only this time in more detail, and if you can give me your phone, and show me the number this person called you from, I think we can start to find out what we’re dealing with here.”

  And as Mrs. Bond handed Odelia her phone, and they started making arrangements on how to handle this blackmailer, Dooley said, “I don’t think she’s had a facelift, Max.”

  “And why is that, Dooley?” I said, ruminating on Mrs. Bond’s predicament.

  “Can’t you see? Her nose is where it should be, and so is her mouth and all the rest.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “Imagine having to talk through your chin. That would be awkward, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, it most certainly would, Dooley,” I said with a smile.

  Chapter 3

  After Rosa Bond had left, Odelia had gone into her editor’s office, to talk the thing through. I could see from the expression on my human’s face that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with this latest assignment. And this is what she told Dan.

  “She specifically asked me not to write about the blackmail,” she said. “So frankly I don’t see how this will work, Dan. I mean, she isn’t paying me, and the police department isn’t paying me for my time, but I still want to help. So how do we do this?”