“I’ll pay you for your time,” said Dan.

  “But didn’t you hear what I just said? I won’t be able to use any of it for the paper. So what’s the point?”

  “The point is that you will be helping a woman in need. And that’s all that matters.”

  “But—”

  “She can’t go to the police?”

  “No. She doesn’t want to expose her kids to what happened nine years ago.”

  Dan shrugged. “So you help her. And so what if we can’t use it for the paper? Sometimes we simply want to help people, Odelia. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “But, Dan…”

  “Do you think I haven’t hunted down stories and not been able to use any of it in the end—simply because people asked me not to print it? Of course I have!”

  “I see.”

  “Look, we’re reporters, and we’re in the business of looking for great stories. But because of our very specific skillset sometimes we’re able to do what the police can’t. And that’s fine. In fact that’s great.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “Now go out there and make an old man proud. Catch this blackmailer and make sure he never blackmails again.”

  “You’re a very peculiar editor, Dan, has anyone ever told you that?”

  “Oh, many people,” said the newspaperman with a grin. “I consider it a compliment.”

  And as Odelia got on the phone to confer with her husband on how best to handle this situation that had cropped up, I decided to do a little digging into Rosa Bond’s past. Frankly I was intrigued, and curious to find out if the story had indeed played out the way she described it.

  So I settled down with the tablet Odelia bought for us. Harriet and Brutus had left the office to take a little stroll and stretch their legs, so it was just Dooley and me.

  It didn’t take long for us to hit on several news stories describing the events as they’d transpired nine years ago in the fair city of Wilmington, North Carolina. Rosa’s name had indeed been Wendy Atcheson back then, happily married to Clive Atcheson, branch manager of the Capital First Bank. Until the day the man had absconded with the entire contents of his vault, and subsequently run off to Mexico with his secretary Janice Schiller. The total haul of the criminal couple had been a cool five million. Not a bad sum if you wanted to live the good life down South, where cost of living is modest, and it’s easy to fly under the radar with your illegally acquired nest egg. The fact that he had to leave his wife and kids behind didn’t seem to have bothered the banker too much, for he’d never been seen or heard from since, and even though the case had never been officially closed, and he was still a wanted man there hadn’t been a new development for the past nine years.

  “Look at this picture, Dooley,” I said, zooming in on a picture of what looked like a company Christmas party.

  “Oh, look, that’s Rosa Bond,” said Dooley, pointing to a woman who stood with raised champagne flute in the foreground. Next to her was a man who was, according to the caption, the banker-slash-robber himself: Clive Atcheson. They were both smiling at the camera, snazzily dressed and clearly having a great time.

  “They look so happy,” said Dooley.

  “When was this picture taken?” I asked, studying the rest of the article in which the photo had been featured. “Ten years ago. This must have been the Christmas just before it happened.”

  “Their last Christmas,” said Dooley. “Isn’t that a song?”

  “I think it is,” I said, though I wasn’t all that interested in cultural references. I wanted to find out if the secretary was also in the picture, which would have been an interesting find. I studied the caption, where a few names were mentioned. The picture had appeared in the society section of the Wilmington Times. And then I found her. Janice Schiller. A russet-haired voluptuous woman, standing right behind her boss, and looking in his direction with a gleam of what could only be interpreted as smoldering passion in her eyes.

  “Oh, she loved him, Max,” said Dooley. “Just look at the way she’s looking at him.”

  “Indeed she did, Dooley,” I agreed. “She loved him with a passion.”

  “Bonnie and Clyde, they were.”

  “Well, not exactly,” I said. “Bonnie and Clyde left a trail of death and destruction in their wake. These two simply disappeared the moment they crossed the border.”

  I studied the picture some more, and noticed a man looking in Janice’s direction with a sort of wistful look on his face. He was a man with receding hairline and a weak chin, no doubt one of many of Janice’s male admirers. Clearly the woman had been some kind of local femme fatale, twisting men around her little finger without any problem.

  “Poor Rosa,” said Dooley. “Having to leave her old life behind, just because her husband decided to become a fugitive from justice.”

  “Yeah, and think about those poor kids. Todd and Aisha not only lost their dad, but all of their friends—their entire life, in fact.”

  “I’m glad that Odelia decided to help them,” said Dooley. “And I hope she catches this blackmailer in the act and makes him stop.”

  “Yeah, let’s hope she does,” I agreed. “For Rosa’s sake, and her family.” Hampton Cove is a bucolic little town, but gossip can be fierce and vicious, even in a wonderful community like ours, and Rosa wouldn’t be the first person driven away by the wagging tongues of a few gossipmongers.

  “I think this family deserves a break,” said Dooley.

  And never truer words were spoken.

  Chapter 4

  We decided to get a little air ourselves, while Odelia made the necessary arrangements for tonight. Cats don’t like to be cooped up inside for too long. We don’t need to be walked like dogs, since we can very well walk ourselves, thank you very much, but we still like to get out and about at regular intervals. And so as we passed out onto the street, we soon came upon Gran and Scarlett, who were seated in their usual spot, in the Star Hotel’s outside dining area, sipping from their beverages, and conversing with Harriet and Brutus, who’d jumped up on a chair and were taking in a bit of sunshine.

  Dooley and I decided to occupy the remaining chair, and enjoy some company while also engaging in one of our favorite activities that we share with the two older ladies: people watching. Main Street spread out before us, and since the heart of town is where all the activity is concentrated, we never stint for something interesting to see there.

  “I think it’s a great idea, Harriet,” Gran was saying, “but I’ve been doing some thinking, and I think I’ve come up with a very important improvement on your original setup.”

  “What improvement?” asked Harriet suspiciously. It was obvious she didn’t feel her brilliant ideas could be improved upon.

  “What are you talking about, Gran?” asked Dooley.

  “You remember how Harriet suggested we launch a neighborhood cat watch?”

  “Oh, of course,” said Dooley. “That’s going to be a lot of fun, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure it will be. Only problem is: how to organize all that information—or like those Silicon Valley whizz kids like to call it: how to handle all that data!”

  “What data?” asked Scarlett, who had a hard time following the flow of words between Gran and her cats. Like Chase, she doesn’t have that special gift that enables her to converse with us.

  “Okay, so let’s assume that there are always a dozen cats on every street, and every cat sends back information about what they see to the neighborhood watch. With me so far?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Scarlett, taking a sip from her cappuccino.

  “Now multiply that by the number of streets in this town. Which is…” She frowned, then, since she couldn’t be bothered, concluded, “a lot. A whole lot of data!”

  “Too much, if you ask me.”

  “I agree. So we need to up our game and come up with a solution. And that solution is… an app!” said Gran with an air of ‘ta-dah!’

  “An app,” said Scarlett with a frown.

  “An app! Apps are all the rage, hon!”

  “I know they’re all the rage, but we don’t know the first thing about app development. In fact sometimes I have a hard time using the apps on my phone.”

  “And that’s where Kevin comes in.”

  “Kevin? As in my grandnephew Kevin?”

  “Exactly! He’s the computer nerd in the family, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So? He can build us an app that can talk to this database… thingie.”

  “I guess so. But I still don’t see…”

  “That’s because I haven’t told you the best part yet.”

  “Which is?”

  “We develop an app and we give it some cool name. Like iCat or whatever. Some name that is easy to remember. And once we have it—we promote the hell out of it, and bingo!”

  “Bingo?”

  “We sell it to one of the big boys and become millionaires!”

  “You lost me again, hon.”

  Gran sighed, like one who has to contend with lesser minds than her own. Einstein probably had to deal with this kind of thing all the time. “Okay, so cats spy for us, see?”

  “I’m with you so far.”

  “Hundreds of cats, or even thousands. Covering the entire Hampton Cove territory. There won’t be an inch of this town we won’t be able to monitor through their eyes.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Now all of those cats will be equipped with smart collars—audio and video included—sending their data back to a database where it’s all collected and analyzed and sent to our app, courtesy of Kevin.”

  “Oh… kay,” said Scarlett, sounding dubious about her grandnephew’s capacity to build such an amazing app, but still prepared to give the plan the benefit of the doubt.

  “So then the system automatically comes up with the threats that need to be addressed: burglaries in progress, domestic disputes, drunks tearing up the neighborhood, vandals spraying graffiti on town hall… what have you.”

  “Car thieves breaking into cars, jealous men keying their neighbors’ new Jaguar,” said Scarlett, getting the gist of the thing.

  “Exactly! And that information is then automatically sent to us, and either we go after the criminals, or we liaise with the police and they send a couple of officers to deal with the crime, while it is still in progress,” she said, stressing this last part by pounding the table with a bony fist, making her hot chocolate drink and Scarlett’s cappuccino jump merrily up and down to the beat of Gran’s pretty excitement.

  “That all sounds wonderful,” said Scarlett. “But I’m not sure how feasible it is.”

  “It’s perfectly feasible. On one condition and one condition only.”

  “And what is that?”

  “That the people handling the data are well-versed in the feline language. I mean, how else are they going to be able to interpret what all of those thousands of cats are saying?”

  “Oh,” said Scarlett, and her face sagged.

  “What?”

  “You know I can’t talk cat, honey.”

  “Yes, I know that, but there’s no reason why you can’t learn.”

  Scarlett frowned. “You mean…”

  “Exactly! With my help, and the assistance of my four precious darlings here, I’m sure you’ll be able to pick up the language in no time. And then it’s simply a matter of taking turns manning GHQ and coordinating the whole thing.”

  “Oh, I would love to learn their language,” said Scarlett, giving me a pat on the head, which I responded to by giving her a soft purr in return. I like Scarlett, always have, even when she and Gran were archenemies and fought tooth and nail at every opportunity.

  “I’ll teach her, Gran,” said Harriet. “After all, this was my idea in the first place.”

  “I know it was your idea, Harriet,” said Gran, giving the prissy Persian a tickle under her chin. “And definitely one of your better ones.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Of course! We could wipe out crime in the whole country if we get this thing rolling.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” said Dooley. “No more crime anywhere.”

  “It would also mean that there wouldn’t be cops anymore,” Brutus pointed out, “which would mean that Chase and Uncle Alec would be out of a job.”

  “I doubt it,” said Harriet. “There will still have to be cops to respond to the tips they receive from the Neighborhood Cat Watch.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Brutus admitted.

  “Crime will only disappear as long as we remain vigilant, sugar pants. Those criminals will always be criminals, and they’ll still want to engage in their acts of criminal activity. It’s us who will stand in their way, and so vigilance is key.” She turned to Gran. “Did you mention something about us becoming millionaires, Gran?”

  “Well, as soon as the app is working the way it should, we’ll get a lot of attention. And you know what that means, right?”

  “That… I’ll need to have new pictures taken?”

  “That the big boys will fall over each other to buy us out! Google, Microsoft, Facebook—they’ll stand in line with their checkbooks, offering us millions for the app. There will be a bidding war, because let’s face it—who doesn’t want to get rid of crime? In fact it wouldn’t surprise me, when the dust settles, that we’ll make a hundred million dollars.”

  “A hundred million dollars!” Harriet cried.

  “At the very least!”

  “How many nuggets of kibble is that?” asked Brutus.

  I could already see the dollar signs flashing in Harriet’s eyes, and even though I could have told her there were major flaws in Gran’s plan, I knew she wouldn’t be susceptible to my counter-arguments, so I wisely conserved my energy and kept my tongue.

  “Okay, but so first things first,” said Gran. “Scarlett, you need to talk to Kevin, and tell him to start working on that app. Also, you need to sit down with Harriet and start learning the language.”

  “Oh, goodie,” said Scarlett, as she high-fived Harriet at this point. Okay, so maybe it was a low-five. Cats are, after all, vertically challenged when compared with humans.

  And since it seemed clear that our presence was no longer required, Dooley and I took our leave. Harriet might be getting ready to become a multimillionaire, but we had a blackmailer to catch, and frankly that seemed more important than Gran’s elusive app.

  Chapter 5

  “Do you think that Scarlett will be able to learn our language, Max?” asked Dooley.

  “Somehow I doubt it, Dooley,” I said.

  “Why? Don’t you think she’s clever enough?”

  “Oh, I think she’s certainly clever enough, but my impression has always been that being able to talk to cats is a gift, not something that can be taught.” A gift passed along the female line, otherwise Uncle Alec would have been able to talk to us as well.

  “So that means that Gran and Harriet’s plan is a bust?”

  “Not necessarily. It is true that if you outfit a cat with a camera and a microphone, they’ll be able to pick up certain things, but unless they’re trained to pay attention to criminal activity, what they’ll pick up is simply the kinds of things cats are naturally interested in: what birds are tootling in the trees, or a piece of fish filet someone left on the windowsill to cool off. And those things aren’t necessarily indicative of a crime.”

  “If the cat steals the fish filet it is a crime,” said Dooley.

  I smiled. “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s the kind of crime that will make Gran a multimillionaire.”

  We’d arrived at the General Store, where our friend Kingman likes to hold forth in front of the store. His human Wilbur was behind the counter as usual, scanning the wares as they passed him by on the conveyor belt, meanwhile keeping an eye on the television screen, where an old black-and-white episode of Zorro was playing.

  “Hey, you guys,” said Kingman when we came trudging up. “How are things in the world of crime?”

  “Not too good,” I said. “A woman just walked into Odelia’s office hoping to get rid of a blackmailer.”

  “A blackmailer, huh?” said Kingman. “Nasty business, blackmail.”

  “Yeah, especially since a blackmailer never stops, unless the big secret is out in the open, and that’s exactly what this woman can’t afford.”

  “So who’s the woman, and what is her secret?”

  And so in a few short words I told him the story as Rosa had conveyed it to Odelia.

  “Five million bucks. I can understand why she wants to keep it a secret. Though if I’m being totally honest, my suggestion would be to stop worrying about the secret, and catch that blackmailer before he makes any more victims.”

  “But what about her future? And the future of her kids?”

  “Look, her husband already knows, so from that side she will get all the support she needs. And the kids are nine years older now, and probably not as vulnerable as they used to be. And frankly I don’t think people will care that much. It’s all ancient history now. And also, it didn’t happen here, and you know how people don’t care a hoot about what happens elsewhere. And thirdly, she didn’t do anything wrong, if I understood you correctly. It’s the ex-husband who committed a crime, so why should she and her kids suffer?”

  “Good points,” I said, nodding. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “I think if people found out what this woman went through, they’d show her compassion and support instead of scorn and suspicion. Just my two cents.”

  “No, but you’re absolutely right.”

  “Do you think cats can get a facelift, Kingman?” asked Dooley now.

  Kingman frowned. “What do cats need facelifts for?”

  “Well, when their jawlines starts to sag,” said Dooley. “To lift them, you know.”

  “Look, Dooley, we have one advantage over humans: our faces are covered with fur. So if we get a sagging jawline or the odd wrinkle, who cares? No one will notice.”