“I love your workouts, sir,” said Chase, who couldn’t stop grinning like a kid now that he’d gotten over his initial shocked surprise at meeting his hero in the flesh. “I’ve watched all of your YouTube videos and my mom owns all of your videos on VHS—she used to play them to me as a kid, and I just loved watching her work out to them.”

  “Is that so?” said Mr. Hancock, who’d taken a seat at the living room table, and took this hero-worship in stride with the ease of a man who’s been in the limelight for most of his adult life. “They’ve all been transferred to DVD,” he said now. “So you might want to give them to your mom as a birthday present so she can continue her fitness routine.”

  “Oh, but Mom doesn’t work out anymore,” said Chase.

  “No? And why is that?”

  “Her health doesn’t allow her to, so…”

  “Yeah, I can see how that would complicate things,” said the fitness guru politely.

  Odelia gestured to the television. “We were just doing one of your routines, sir.”

  “Just call me Randy, will you?” said the man. “And good for you, Miss Poole.”

  “Odelia,” said Odelia quickly. “And this is Chase. We’re your biggest fans, sir—Randy.”

  “Yes, this is such an honor,” Chase gushed.

  “That’s great,” said Randy with a tired smile, then swallowed with a slight sense of unease. He was probably wondering if he’d done the right thing by ringing Odelia’s bell. Talking about his workout tapes clearly wasn’t what he’d come here for.

  “It’s so weird to see a person on TV and then to see them in the flesh, Max,” said Dooley. “I think he looks better on TV, though.”

  “That’s probably because he was years younger when he taped that video,” I said.

  “He looks gaunt and pale. And not very fit.”

  “He just told us he’s about to die, Dooley. You wouldn’t look too hot when you only had four more days to live,” I pointed out.

  A look of concern clouded my friend’s face. “Is it cancer, Max? Is Randy Hancock dying from cancer? Or maybe because he did too many of his own workouts and his body simply couldn’t take it anymore?”

  “I don’t know, Dooley,” I said. “But the moment Odelia and Chase stop telling him how great they think he is, I’m sure he’ll tell us all about it.”

  Odelia had provided the fitness giant with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and Chase had finally switched off the workout video still playing on the TV, and Randy, who seemed to have calmed down a little, cleared his throat and said, “First off, you have to promise me you won’t write a single word I’m going to tell you, Odelia.”

  “Oh, no, sure,” said Odelia, though she looked a little disappointed. The worst thing for a reporter is to have a national celebrity and cultural icon walk into their home and then tell them they can’t write all about it in an article.

  “If it’s medical advice you need, Randy,” said Chase, who’d planted one leg firmly on the floor and the other one on a chair, airing his nether regions after the intense workout he’d enjoyed, “just tell us. Odelia’s dad is a doctor, you see, and he’ll be more than happy to give you a free checkup. Isn’t that right, babe?”

  “Oh, sure. And I can promise you my dad is very discreet, Randy. Absolutely.”

  “My health is fine,” said Randy with a weak smile. “Though thanks for your concern. No, it’s my entourage I’m having trouble with.” He heaved a deep sigh. “It’s like this. A couple of months ago I accidentally fell from a stepladder and broke my pelvis. The whole thing was extremely painful, and very inconvenient. As you can imagine, a fitness instructor who can’t teach his classes anymore, and can’t shoot any instructional videos is not much of a fitness instructor. The situation forced me to take it easy for several months while I convalesced at home.”

  “That must have been terrible, Randy,” said Chase with feeling. He looked taken aback that his personal hero proved fallible and had, like all mortals, bones made of, well, bone, and not rubber, as he’d clearly supposed.

  “Yeah, well, the incident forced me to take it easy for a while, and it got me thinking. You know, I’m sixty-five years old. I’ve been in this business for over forty years. Taught thousands and thousands of classes, did more workouts than any other human alive, and so I found myself wondering if maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t time for me to take a break.”

  “A break?” said Chase, looking shocked at this strange conceit. “What do you mean?”

  “Retirement, Chase. Hang up my sequin spandex gym shorts and call it quits.”

  “But… you can’t quit, Randy,” said Chase. “You’re an icon, a monument, a national treasure. As you always say yourself: we should practice fitness until the day we die!”

  “Yeah, and of course it’s important to stay fit, but the kind of life I was leading wasn’t exactly conducive to good health. All this running around, traveling the globe, shooting videos, entertaining people—it’s worn me down, Chase. Anyway,” he said, waving a hand. “That’s not important. What is important is that I told my people that I was quitting. Or at least taking a year or so off to have a think. And that’s when all hell broke loose.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Odelia.

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that from the moment I said I was taking a well-deserved break, I started getting threatening letters in the mail, weird phone calls in the middle of the night, and a barrage of emails and private messages on my social media pages.”

  “Saying what, exactly?” asked Chase.

  “Wait, I’ll show you,” said the fitness man, and took out his phone. “Here—read this.”

  Chase and Odelia leaned in, and read from Randy’s phone. It must have been a doozy, for I saw two jaws drop, and Odelia even clutch a shocked hand to her face in dismay.

  “They’re all like that,” said Randy. “Dozens and dozens of them.”

  “Randy Hancock we know where you live and you’re a dead man,” Chase read. “Randy Hancock prepare to die.”

  “Nice, huh?” He took his phone and scrolled for a moment. “And then last night this came.” He placed down the phone and once more Chase and Odelia leaned in curiously.

  “Randy Hancock better make your final arrangements for you will die in exactly five days,” Odelia read from the man’s phone.

  “Look at the video,” said Randy, patting his fluffy frizzy-haired mane.

  Odelia tapped the phone, and a video started playing. All I could hear was the sound, which was awful enough. Like the score of a horror movie, which it probably was.

  “Oh, my God,” said Odelia.

  “No way!” said Chase.

  “What’s going on!” cried Dooley.

  “So you see?” said Randy. “If you don’t help me I’ll be dead in exactly four days!”

  4

  Vesta was happy for this opportunity to spend some time at the beach. When you live all your life in a beach town you’d think you spend every waking minute enjoying the surf, or lazing about on that same beach. The opposite is true. Vesta could count the number of times she’d been to the beach this year on the fingers of a single hand.

  “Are you sure your turtle wants to go to the beach, Brutus?” she asked now as she put her foot down on the accelerator, her little red Peugeot hurtling through town.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” said Brutus. “In fact she can’t wait to take a dip in the ocean. Isn’t that right, Pinkie?”

  The turtle probably said something, though it was hard to hear over the noise of the engine whining and complaining about the treatment Vesta was putting it through.

  “What did it say?”

  “She says she’s never been, but she’s heard a lot of good things!” Brutus shouted over the din.

  “Never been? I thought turtles lived in the ocean?”

  “She was born in a pond,” said Brutus. “Though I have no idea what pond she’s talking about. None of our neighbors have ponds, have they?”

  “Nah, not that I’m aware of,” said Vesta as she overtook a particularly slow driver—a real turtle—then yanked the steering wheel abruptly to the right to get back to the correct lane as one does, almost causing the turtle to crash into her, the doofus. If there was one thing she hated it was bad drivers. “So didn’t Harriet want to come?” she asked. Brutus and Harriet were usually inseparable, and it surprised her to see them apart now.

  “No, Harriet is trying out a new diet,” said Brutus.

  Vesta darted a keen eye in the rearview mirror. “Had a fight again, huh? Should have known.”

  “No fight,” said Brutus. “It’s just…” He sighed and said, “Can you keep a secret, Gran?”

  “Does a dog like to lick its own ass? Course I can keep a secret. Come on—out with it.”

  “Harriet is having problems with her eyesight.”

  “Her eyesight, huh? Join the club!”

  Brutus gave her a worried look. “You are wearing the right glasses, aren’t you, Gran? The ones you need to drive?”

  “Absolutely,” she lied, having once again forgotten to take off her reading glasses and put on her regular ones. “So what does Harriet having trouble with her eyes have to do with you wanting to take your turtle to the beach?”

  “She wants to go on a diet,” said Brutus. “A carrot diet. She figures it will clear up her eyesight once and for all. And she wants me to join her.” He directed a forlorn look at her. “But I don’t like carrots, Gran. I’m not a rabbit. I can’t live on carrots alone.”

  “Nor should you,” Vesta grunted. “I’ll take Harriet to Vena tonight, don’t you worry.”

  “Vena?” said Brutus as if she’d just told him he was about to die. “Please don’t.”

  “Oh, don’t be a baby, Brutus. I’m taking her to the doctor and that’s all there is to it. Now tell your buddy that we’re nearly there and ask her if she’s got her bathing suit. This is not a nudist colony and they don’t like skinny-dippers around these parts.”

  She chuckled lightly as Brutus related her message to the tiny turtle, and laughed loudly when both cat and turtle looked at her in surprise. Oh, how she loved pulling people’s legs—and cats and turtles, too!

  Harriet had been searching around for her mate for a while now, and when she couldn’t find him had asked her human Marge Poole if she’d seen Brutus anywhere.

  “No, sweetie,” said Marge, a fair-haired forty-something librarian. “Have you looked next door? Maybe he went to pay a visit to your friends.”

  So Harriet had passed into the next backyard, the one belonging to Marge’s daughter Odelia, and had come upon a surprising scene: a man she’d never seen before was seated at the living room table with Chase and Odelia, and all three of them were dressed in the same type of outfit, though the unknown male was wearing the most outrageous outfit of all: sequin spandex shorts and a sequined colorful bodice. He also had a thick head of frizzy hair that really stood out from his head and a careworn expression on his face.

  Max and Dooley were on the couch, listening to the conversation with rapt attention, so she walked up to them and asked, “What’s going on? Who is that funny-looking guy?”

  “Randy Hancock,” said Max.

  “He’s a fitness guru,” said Dooley. “And he’s about to die.”

  “Oh, Dooley,” she said with an eyeroll. “You really should stop thinking everyone you meet is about to die.”

  “No, but he’s really going to die,” said Dooley. “He said so himself. In exactly four days.”

  “Of course he is,” she said with a shake of the head. “Have you guys seen Brutus? He seems to have vanished from the face of the earth.”

  “Nope,” said Max. “Haven’t seen him.”

  “Maybe he’s gone out for a walk?” Dooley said.

  “No way,” said Harriet. “Brutus would never leave without telling me.” She frowned as she glanced over to the man talking to her humans. He did look sick, she thought, so maybe Dooley was right for a change. After all, even a broken clock gets it right twice a day. “Why is he here?” she asked. “If he’s dying he should be in hospital, shouldn’t he?”

  “He wants Odelia to stop him from dying,” said Dooley.

  “I don’t get it,” said Harriet. “Odelia is not a doctor, so why ask her?”

  “We don’t get it either,” said Max, looking distinctly frustrated. The big orange cat didn’t like to be kept in the dark, and it was obvious he had no idea what was going on.

  “Look, if you see Brutus tell him that I’ve asked Marge to buy us a big bundle of carrots and our diet starts tonight without fail.”

  “Carrots?” asked Dooley. “Why do you want to eat carrots? You’re not a rabbit.”

  “For your information, carrots are very good for you,” she said prissily, sticking her nose in the air. “Full of vitamins and minerals and everything a healthy cat needs.”

  “I think you’re mistaken,” said Max. “A healthy cat needs protein, and plenty of it, and since carrots don’t have protein you’re going to get sick if you go on this diet, Harriet.”

  “Look, I know what I’m doing, all right? And if I were you, I’d ask Odelia to put you on the same diet as me.” She poked a paw in Max’s pudgy belly and grinned. “You could do with losing a couple of pounds, Maxie, and eating carrots will get you there.”

  Now it was Max’s turn to get prissy. “I just went on a diet, and Odelia says I’m fine.”

  “You went on a diet months ago. All those pounds you lost you’ve gained again, and a good few extra, too, so if you’re so worried about your health, why not simply join me and Brutus on our carrot diet?”

  “Brutus is going on your diet, too?”

  “Of course he is. Because contrary to you, Max, Brutus cares about his waistline.”

  And with this parting shot, she stalked out.

  She hadn’t told her friends about her deteriorating eyesight and she wasn’t planning to either. A couple of days eating nothing but carrots and she was sure she’d have twenty-twenty vision once more. Now if only she could locate her diet buddy…

  5

  “I’m dying of curiosity,” I said.

  Dooley gave me a startled look. “You’re dying?!”

  “It’s just an expression, Dooley. I really want to know what’s going on—and no one is telling us anything!”

  Odelia and Chase had disappeared upstairs with the fitness guru in tow, and we still had no idea what was happening.

  “As far as I understand someone is trying to kill him,” said Dooley.

  “That’s not completely true,” I said. “Someone says he is going to die, but how—and why?”

  “Probably cancer,” said Dooley.

  I glanced at the table, where the man’s phone was still lying. Odelia had taught us how to operate a tablet computer, and had even bought us one, but lately Harriet had more or less monopolized the thing, watching her favorite sites and YouTube videos on the gadget. Still, there wasn’t a lot of difference between a tablet and a phone, right?

  So when I heard our humans stumble about upstairs, still busy doing whatever it was they were doing up there, I decided to take my chances and satisfy my raging curiosity and hopped down from the couch, waddled over to the living room table, hopped up onto a chair, then onto the table to take a closer look at Randy Hancock’s phone.

  Odelia doesn’t like it when we sit on top of the table. She says it’s unhygienic. I have no idea why she would think that, since the table usually looks pretty clean to me.

  I’d arrived at my destination and was closing in on the fitness guru’s phone, when the thing suddenly started to ring out a cheerful tune! Something from the disco era.

  I jumped up in surprise and promptly toppled from the table and to the floor below. Luckily I managed to—more or less gracefully—turn in midair and land on all fours then scamper off back to my couch, much embarrassed.

  Moments later Randy came hurrying down the stairs and when he saw his phone went white as a sheet. He even recoiled at the sight of the thing, as if it had suddenly developed a set of razor-sharp teeth.

  “Randy!” said Odelia, who’d followed the fitness man. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s them!” said Randy, gesturing to his phone. “Look at what they sent me!”

  And then Odelia did look, and she, too, gasped in shock and reeled.

  “What’s going on?!” I cried, beyond frustration now. “What’s the message? What’s in that video? What’s happening!”

  But of course Odelia blithely ignored me. She can’t very well go and blab to all and sundry that she belongs to that rare species of humans who can talk to their cats, and Randy, certainly, probably wasn’t in the frame of mind to take this news well. The man was under a great deal of stress already, after all, and didn’t need the added aggravation.

  “Probably his doctor,” said Dooley. “Sending him his latest prognosis. The cancer must have spread, Max.” My friend shook his head sadly. “I don’t think he has four days. Four hours, maybe. Or four minutes.”

  “Oh, Dooley,” I said with a sigh as I sank back down on my couch. Looked like I’d have to practice the most difficult thing in the world for a cat: patience!

  “Vesta! Fancy meeting you here!” cried Scarlett Canyon when she caught sight of her friend Vesta Muffin. Scarlett had just spread out her beach towel and was smearing her bronzed skin with a thick layer of sunscreen. She was the same age as Vesta, but looked a decade younger. Good genes, Vesta liked to say, and not having had to raise two kids.

  “I’m taking my cat and his pet turtle to the beach,” Vesta announced as she glanced around.

  “Of course you are,” said Scarlett with a grin. Wherever Vesta was, her cats were usually not far behind. She caught Vesta staring at her. “What?”

  “You’re not going to sit there dressed like that, are you?”

  “Dressed like what?” asked Scarlett, glancing down at herself. She was wearing a minuscule bikini, that barely held her sizable assets in place, and an equally tiny thong.