“Oh no,” she said. “Something must have happened to her.” She gave her daughter a look of extreme distress. “I’m starting to get a very bad feeling about this, honey.”

  “Same here,” Odelia confessed.

  The two women sat down on a nearby rock.

  “I will never forgive myself for not realizing sooner that she had planned to look for that treasure,” said Marge. She buried her head in her hands.

  “I should have deleted the picture of that map on my phone,” said Odelia.

  “I have no one to blame but myself,” Chase said quietly. “I was so focused on my own problems, I didn’t see what was happening around me.”

  “No, this is on me,” said Tex. “When she didn’t show up for work this morning, I should have raised the alarm. Instead, I just figured she was taking another one of her days off—like she often did.”

  Our four humans just sat there for a moment, looking all broken and quite lost, and I felt for them. So when Clarice suddenly came hurrying up to us, I didn’t even wonder where she had snuck off to—probably to look for something to eat.

  “Max, you have got to see this,” she said, and started leading me away from our grieving humans.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Just follow me,” she said with a smile on her face—which was a rare thing.

  “If this is about your food obsession,” I said, “I have to say I’m not all that interested in food right now, Clarice.”

  “This isn’t about food,” said Clarice.

  She was heading for the ship, and I was starting to wonder if I shouldn’t return and support my humans in their hour of grief. I knew that as soon as Dooley realized that Gran didn’t make it, he would also break down. Fortunately for us, Dooley is a little slow on the uptake, so it might take him a while to understand what had happened.

  Clarice led me straight into the ship, past the room with all the skeletons, and into what looked like a bedroom—though on ships it’s probably called something different. A cabin, maybe? A stateroom? It had been a while since I’d seen Titanic.

  “Over there,” said Clarice, that smile still playing about her lips.

  When I looked where she was pointing and didn’t see anything, I was starting to get a little annoyed.

  “Really, Clarice, this isn’t the time to⁠—”

  “Just look!” she said. “It’s them!”

  I looked a little closer, and then I saw it: lying on what once had been a bed—but now was just a square wooden box with some remnants of material—lay two people, side by side.

  It was Gran and Scarlett, and they looked quite exhausted. Which wasn’t hard to understand, as they had gone through quite the rigmarole.

  As we both watched, Gran opened her eyes and, when she saw us, gave us a smile. “Max. Clarice. Aren’t you guys a sight for sore eyes?”

  “Where are the others?” I asked.

  “No idea,” she said as she rubbed her eyes, then gave Scarlett a poke in the ribs. “We both decided to jump into the same sucky hole you guys disappeared into, but the others thought it was too risky, so they decided to stay behind. I haven’t seen them since.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Scarlett groggily. “Are we home yet?”

  “No, not home,” said Vesta. “But home has come to us.”

  When Scarlett saw Clarice, she practically squealed with delight. “Darling!” she cried, and as Clarice jumped straight into her arms, she squeezed her to her chest, causing Clarice to cry, “Hey, steady on, lady! You’re killing me here!”

  But she looked just about as happy to see Scarlett as Scarlett was to see her.

  The love of a human for their pet is a wonderful thing to see—and vice versa, of course.

  “Is it just you, Max?” asked Gran.

  “No, the others are all out there,” I said. “Odelia and Chase, Tex and Marge, and of course all of the cats.”

  “How did you manage?” she asked as she got up with some effort.

  And so, as we returned to the others, I told her the whole story—which was quite the long tale.

  We arrived where our four humans were still lamenting the passing of Gran and Scarlett.

  “She was a good woman,” said Chase.

  “She could be stubborn, though,” said Tex. “And sometimes a downright pain in the behind, but I will miss her all the same.”

  “She was the best,” said Marge. “The best mom, the best grandmom, the best great-grandmom—and the cats all adored her.”

  Our friends had all seen Gran and Scarlett arrive, but the old lady put a finger to her lips. She wanted to surprise her family.

  “Mind you, she did have her quirks,” said Tex. “Like that one time she demolished the house and then blamed it on the builders.”

  “Hey, it was the builders!” Gran cried indignantly. “You don’t still think I destroyed the house, do you, Tex Poole?!”

  They all looked up at this, quite surprised, and as Marge let out a loud yell, she ran over to give her mother a big old hug. Even Tex joined in, and before long we were given a demonstration of what the term group hug really means.

  CHAPTER 60

  Now that we had found Gran and Scarlett, Chase made the executive decision not to put more lives at risk by starting a search for the missing Wilbur, Father Reilly, and Ida, not to mention Mick and Smilla, and instead to get back to the rest of the search teams and hope that they had made good progress in saving the rest of the Neighborhood Watch.

  And since it was inconceivable for Gran and Scarlett to climb up the rope back to safety, they used the same route that Clarice had found.

  It wasn’t long, therefore, before we were all back aboveground and retracing our steps. And we had just moved to the other side of the mountain, preparing to get back to where we came from, when there was a loud whooshing sound nearby. When we looked over, the earth seemed to spit something out. Something that screamed to high heavens as it was being spat out and subsequently landed in the brush.

  “Father Reilly!” Shanille cried, for it was indeed her human. She hurried to join him and check if he hadn’t been hurt.

  “It’s raining men,” Clarice remarked, directing a look at the sky. “Curious phenomenon.”

  And as we all gathered around the stricken priest, who looked quite discombobulated, there was another whoosh and another scream, and this time Wilbur came rocketing up out of the center of the mountain and landed with a dull thud on top of a bush.

  “Christ!” he cried. “What a rush!”

  “What happened?” asked Vesta.

  “No idea!” said Wilbur. “After you guys were sucked up by that hole, Francis and I decided to try the same thing, only instead of being sucked in, we were propelled out!”

  “It didn’t matter, though,” said Father Reilly, picking up the story. “The water that had started to rise began to drop again, so we were safe. We waited a couple of hours until it had dropped all the way before returning to that earlier cave—the one where Frick Pinkerton had held us all at gunpoint? Only when we got there, Wilbur and I were suddenly sucked up by another one of those treacherous spillholes—and ended up being spat out right here!”

  “Where is Ida?” asked Scarlett.

  “She must still be down there,” said Wilbur. “With Mick and Smilla. They were going to try and get back out the way we had come.”

  “That’s a long way out,” said Vesta, who looked concerned about Ida.

  “They’ll make it,” said Wilbur, getting up with some effort and some assistance from Odelia and Chase.

  Tex examined both men and gave them each a clean bill of health. He had done the same for Gran and Scarlett and had determined that apart from some scrapes and bruises, they were both all right.

  And so the long trek began—back to the entrance to the caves, where we hoped that the rest of the party had managed to escape.

  “I hope Minnie Mouse is all right, Max,” said Dooley. “I really like her.”

  “What about Blizzard and Storm?” Brutus teased. “Are you worried about them too?”

  Dooley thought for a moment. “Not so much,” he admitted. “They look like two dogs who can take care of themselves, you know. Unlike Minnie, who is vulnerable and tiny.”

  He was right. Of all the people and pets that had gone down into those caves, Minnie was the most vulnerable one, and I sincerely hoped she had survived.

  “Blizzard and Storm will take care of her,” said Shanille. “They seem to like her a lot.”

  “I think there’s only one word to describe how they feel about Minnie,” said Kingman. “And that word is L-O-V-E.”

  We all laughed at this, for it was certainly true.

  “Okay, so you guys found a dead body down there, right?” said Chase, becoming the detective again. “Can you tell me anything about the circumstances of his death?”

  “Well, he held us at gunpoint,” said Wilbur. “Before he ventured into the next cave to look for the treasure.”

  “And then we heard a gunshot,” said Father Reilly. “By the time we had managed to get out of our restraints—with the help of the pets—and found Mr. Pinkerton, he was already dying.”

  “He said something to his daughter,” said Gran. “What was it again?”

  “To encourage her to look for the treasure,” said Scarlett. “And to apologize for being a lousy dad.”

  “He also said he loved her,” said Gran.

  “Yeah, it was a touching scene,” said Wilbur.

  They were all quiet for a moment, but then Chase started with his probing again. What kind of gunshot was it? Did they see anyone suspicious? Where was the body now?

  “I saw someone on the roof of that cave,” I told Odelia. “I can’t be sure, but I think it was Anthemia.”

  Odelia frowned. “Anthemia was there?”

  I nodded. “I think so. And then later we saw her again in the big cave, where she helped us escape.”

  “The strange thing is that Anthemia and Frick were dating,” said Odelia. “Chase talked to Frick’s neighbor, Mrs. Nowak, and she said as much. She also said that Frick Pinkerton murdered his first wife, though we haven’t been able to get confirmation on that.”

  “Frick murdered his wife?” I asked.

  “That’s what his neighbor told us. She knew both Frick and his wife, and said the wife was young and rich. She implied Frick killed her for the money. She also said Frick had a type: young, pretty, and rich. And Anthemia fit that bill perfectly.”

  “Could be that Frick and Anthemia fell out over something,” I said. “And that she killed him out of revenge.”

  “Chase and I think Frick may have been the person who killed Anthemia’s parents—to get his hands on that treasure map. He may have wanted to marry Anthemia but then found out that her parents weren’t as rich as he thought they were, and so he dumped Anthemia and went after the map instead. The Eiderducks didn’t want to give him the combination to the safe, so he tortured them and then killed them.”

  “It’s possible,” I agreed.

  We had arrived back where we had set out on our adventure, and much to our elation, we saw that Mick and Smilla were sipping from cups of hot tea, space blankets wrapped around them.

  But of Ida and Minnie, there was no trace.

  Which meant that they were still inside.

  CHAPTER 61

  It had been an exhausting couple of days, and so by the time we finally arrived home, I have to confess all I wanted was a bite to eat and my favorite couch to crash on. Dooley had the same idea, and so did Harriet and Brutus.

  Kingman had returned home with Wilbur, who was determined, in spite of everything, to open the General Store (‘My customers don’t care about no stinkin’ treasure—they want the store to be open!’). Shanille had gone home with Father Reilly, who was determined to open the church (‘My parishioners don’t care about no silly treasure—they want the House of God to be open!). And Scarlett had picked up Clarice and decided never to let her go again.

  I wasn’t sure if this would sit well with Clarice, but for the moment she seemed to enjoy the attention.

  After a refreshing nap on the couch, I stretched out and lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling. Inevitably, my thoughts drifted back to the murder case. Three people were dead now, and it was clear the murders were connected. The Eiderducks had been killed at home, and Frick Pinkerton had taken their treasure map—only to meet his end on Devil’s Island. But by whose hand? The general consensus pointed to Anthemia.

  According to Odelia and Chase, the girl had done this after she found out that her boyfriend had murdered her parents. And so they had set out to place her under arrest.

  I wasn’t entirely convinced, so I asked Odelia to have another word with Brendon Hetman and Christi Windley. She agreed, and while I slept the sleep of the dead—or rather, the sleep of a cat recently returned from Devil’s Island, where I’d been batted around like a pinball by its devilishly tricky cave system—Odelia and Chase were, presumably, wrapping up the case.

  Or maybe not. After all, Chase wasn’t a detective anymore, which meant he no longer had the legal authority to make arrests—or even conduct official interviews.

  Which made me wonder what Odelia had meant by, “We’re going to arrest Anthemia Eiderduck.” How could they arrest her, if they weren’t cops?

  Next to me, Dooley stirred, and so did Harriet and Brutus. Cats like to nap, but we also like to eat, and so the time for napping had passed and the time for eating had come.

  Still a little unsteady on our paws, we all got up, stretched out, and padded over to the kitchen for a bite to eat.

  “I could get used to this,” said Brutus. “The good life, I mean. No flooding caves, no skeletons, no being shoved around like a ping-pong ball.”

  “I think I’m going to drop this balancing-a-ball-on-my-nose business,” Harriet confessed. “After what happened on the island I just want to take it easy for a while, and that means no show business, no press interviews, and no adoring crowds. They’ll just have to wait. And besides, now that we found that treasure, we’re rich, right? So I don’t even need to launch an international career. I can simply lounge around for the rest of my life and have fun.”

  “I very much doubt that we’ll see a single cent from that treasure,” I said.

  Harriet looked shocked. “But why? We found it fair and square. That is our treasure. Okay, so we’ll have to divide it between all of the finders, but there will still be a big piece left.”

  I shook my head. I had overheard Odelia and Chase discuss things with Uncle Alec over the phone. The latter had said that, according to him, the treasure belonged to the entire community, and would probably go to the town of Hampton Cove—not to one particular person or even a group of people.

  Uncle Alec had sounded particularly relieved that everyone had been saved—except Ida, whose whereabouts had still been unaccounted for when we arrived back in Hampton Cove.

  “The money will probably go to the Hampton Cove Town Council,” I said. “Who will use it to erect a museum to commemorate Captain Quidd and the history of his ship, and use the rest to fund various local projects and initiatives. Like, possibly, develop Blake’s Field.”

  “But that treasure is ours!” Harriet cried. “We all found it! This is so unfair!”

  “It’s the law,” I pointed out.

  “Well, then change the law! It’s not a good one—so change it!”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, Harriet,” I said, and dug in for another few kernels of delicious kibble. Frankly speaking, I didn’t care one hoot about that treasure. I mean, how much does a cat need? Cuddles from my human, a few nibbles of kibble. What else is there?

  And as I returned to the couch for part two of my monster nap, all of a sudden Odelia came barging in. She looked quite pleased with herself.

  “Max, you better come with me,” she said. “There’s been a development.”

  I gave her a pleading look. “But I was just about to continue my nap,” I said.

  “You can nap later,” she said. “Right now you’re all coming with me.”

  And since Odelia is basically the boss of us—since she’s the one who provides a roof over our heads and food in our tummies—we reluctantly followed her out.

  “What is this development?” asked Brutus.

  “Yes, Odelia, what is being developed?” asked Dooley. “And is it a big development?”

  “It’s a huge development,” said Odelia as she drove her dinged-up old pickup in the direction of the downtown area.

  She parked in front of her father’s doctor’s practice and got out. When we didn’t move—since I wasn’t all that interested in looking at Tex’s office (I’d seen it many times)—she opened the door and said, “Well? Let’s go.”

  It was with dragging paws that we followed her in.

  “I know what this is,” said Harriet. “She wants to have us examined. After what happened on the island, she probably thinks we’ve contracted some disease, and now she wants her dad to check us out.”

  “She would have taken us to Vena if that were the case,” I pointed out. Though on occasion, Tex has given us an examination—that much was true.

  The moment we walked into the office, though, it became clear what she wanted us to see: on Tex’s examination table, a familiar figure lay—sound asleep.

  It was none other than Ida Baumgartner. Tex’s most loyal patient lay curled up on the table, Minnie Mouse tucked in her arms.

  It was quite the sight.

  Tex, who had been keeping an eye on the woman, whispered, “She was in here when I arrived. No idea where she came from.”

  “Looks like she’s finally decided to make herself at home here, Dad,” said Odelia with a grin.

  She was right. For a hypochondriac like Ida, the best place to live is at a doctor’s office—where she can always chat with Tex about any new diseases she feels she’s contracted.