“You’re practically naked!” said Vesta, who was dressed in her usual tracksuit and sensible white sneakers.

  “We’re at the beach, Vesta,” she pointed out. “The whole idea is to get a tan.” She gestured to her friend’s outfit. “You’re not seriously going to keep that on, are you?”

  “Of course I’m going to keep my clothes on,” said Vesta. “It’s dangerous to expose your skin to those toxic sun rays, or didn’t you know?”

  “Oh, puh-lease. I’m using sunscreen so I’m perfectly fine. It’s you who’s not going to be fine in that outfit. You’ll boil to death!”

  “I’m okay,” said Vesta as she took a seat right next to her friend and watched her cat and the turtle in question toddle off toward the ocean.

  “Take that off,” said Scarlett, who hated to see her friend dressed as if she was ready to fly to the North Pole, and started tugging at Vesta’s vest.

  “Leave it!” said Vesta, slapping her hands away.

  “Give that skin of yours some air, woman!”

  “My skin is fine! It’s your skin you should be worried about. You look like a crocodile with that leathery skin of yours!”

  “I do not!”

  “Yeah, you do. You’re too tan.”

  “There’s no such thing as too tan.”

  “You’ll get skin cancer if you’re not careful.”

  “And you’ll get vitamin D deficiency.”

  For a moment, both women sat side by side, a companionable silence hanging between them. They might have turned bickering into an Olympic sport, but they’d been best friends for a long time, except for the fifteen years they fought tooth and nail after Vesta caught Scarlett doing the horizontal mambo on her kitchen table with Vesta’s husband.

  “So are we on for patrol night?” asked Scarlett, having finally finished lathering up her right boob and now starting on her left one. She’d probably need a second bottle soon.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Vesta. “Ready and raring to go.”

  “Good. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “It’s about Wilbur.”

  “What about him?”

  “I think he’s got the hots for you, Vesta.”

  Her friend glanced over, her eyebrows shooting up into her white fringe. “What?!”

  “The man can’t stop talking about you. Says he’s got butterflies in his tummy every time he lays eyes on you. I’m telling you, the man is in love.”

  Vesta’s jaw had dropped and her dentures would have fallen out if Scarlett hadn’t gently placed a finger on said jaw and pushed it back into position.

  “Wilbur Vickery in love with me. Well, what do you know?”

  “I told him to make a move on you, but he’s too chicken.”

  Vesta smiled before herself for a moment, then said, “Wilbur might be something of a jackass sometimes, but he does own his own business so he’s got that going for him.” But then she shook her head. “Nah. I’m too old for that kind of tomfoolery.”

  “You’re my age!”

  “You’re too old, too!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Scarlett, I’m not getting involved with Wilbur, or any man for that matter. Men of Wilbur’s age aren’t looking for a wife, they’re looking for a nurse, and I’m not doing it.”

  “Oh, just give him a chance. Wilbur might not look like much, but I’ll bet he’ll surprise you.”

  “Oh, he’ll surprise me, all right.”

  “Pleasantly!”

  “Mh,” said Vesta, her face having taken on that mulish look that Scarlett knew so well.

  She smiled. “He says he thinks you’re one of the smartest women he knows.”

  Vesta looked up with a frown. “He said that?”

  “Sure! Men confide in me, Vesta. They always have. I don’t know what it is about me, but they like to tell me all of their secrets. Or in Wilbur’s case his heart’s desires.”

  “I don’t know,” said Vesta, wavering.

  “Oh, go on. One date. And if you don’t like it, you tell him and that’s it.”

  “Mh.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Yesss!” she said, pumping the air with her fist.

  Just then, two elderly men walked over, and one of them proceeded to produce a wolf whistle.

  Scarlett simpered a little, but Vesta’s dark scowl quickly sent them skedaddling.

  “Now that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do,” said Scarlett.

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Come on. Take off that jacket.”

  “I don’t wanna!”

  “You’re boiling!”

  “I’m not! In fact I’m cold.”

  But Scarlett had already taken hold of the zipper and was yanking it down. Moments later she managed to divest her friend not only of her tracksuit jacket but also of the pants, and lo and behold: Vesta was wearing a bathing suit underneath. Scarlett grinned.

  “I knew it!”

  “Oh, shut up,” Vesta grumbled, but she was smiling when she said it, and when the same two guys came by again, this time licking ice cream cones, she didn’t even glower.

  Yep. There was hope for Vesta still.

  6

  Brutus stood gazing out across the vast expanse of water, and wondered where it all came from. So much water—who had put it there? But instead of bothering his new friend with these existential questions, he simply said, “Well, it was sure nice to meet you, Pinkie. I guess this is goodbye, huh?”

  For a moment, Pinkie didn’t speak, then she said, “The thing is, Brutus, that there are many more of my friends in the exact same situation I was.”

  “Oh, sure. I’ll bet this ocean is full of turtles. And you’re about to meet them all.”

  “No, I mean back at the pond. I wasn’t the only turtle in that pond, if that’s what you thought.”

  Brutus hadn’t thought anything about the pond. Now that he did, he pictured a nice duck pond with ducks and fishes and nice little turtles like Pinkie. “Yeah, I’ll bet that must have been nice,” he said vaguely. To be honest he wasn’t a big fan of ponds. He’d once fallen into one and had had to be fished out by Chase. Not his finest hour.

  “It was nice, in a way,” Pinkie agreed, “but not nice in another sense.”

  Brutus blinked. These philosophical discussions were a little too deep for him. “Uh-huh,” he said therefore, wondering what was taking so long. If he were a turtle he’d have jumped into that ocean the moment he’d taken his first sniff of that briny ocean air. Then again, he was a cat, and not all that fond of water, so what did he know?

  “I left my friends behind, Brutus, when I escaped that pond, and now I’m starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I should go back and save them, too.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? Very noble of you, Pinkie.”

  Brutus glanced behind him, and saw that Gran and Scarlett were still there. Gran had taken off her clothes for some reason, and so had Scarlett. Humans. So unpredictable.

  “Do you want to help me, Brutus?” now asked Pinkie, giving him a hopeful look with those beady little eyes of hers.

  He stared at the tiny turtle. “Help you? Help you with what?” He thought he had helped the turtle, by taking her to the beach. Apparently it wasn’t enough. Maybe she wanted to go to the country club next? Or skiing in Aspen? Brutus didn’t know much about turtles, and what they did or didn’t like to do.

  “Free my friends, of course,” said Pinkie. “I’ll never really be free while my friends are still stuck back there, prisoners of that awful pond.”

  Brutus frowned. “I don’t get it. One minute the pond was nice and now all of a sudden it’s awful? Make up your mind, Pinkie, and stick to it is my advice.”

  “It was nice because my friends were there, but it was an awful experience to be locked up in there.”

  “Locked up? In a pond?”

  “You’ll see what I mean once we get there. So will you help me, Brutus? I’ve got no one else I can ask, and you’re so big and strong…”

  Brutus swelled a little. “I guess when you put it that way, maybe I will help you.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! You won’t regret it, Brutus. The joy you feel when you do a good deed will make you forget all about that carrot diet your girlfriend put you on.”

  And… Brutus’s good mood went straight out the window again. The thought of eating carrots had that effect on him. He sighed. “Let’s just get your buddies out of that pond, shall we?” And hopefully Vena would be able to talk some sense into Harriet. Though when she found out her boyfriend had been blabbing about her eye thing, there would probably be hell to pay.

  Fifi was sniffing at a tree, wondering when Rufus, her owner’s neighbor’s sheepdog, had last dropped by, when she suddenly saw a man with a lot of frizzy hair grab a bulky suitcase from his car, quickly look left and right, then hurry into Odelia Poole’s house.

  She knew exactly who the man was, as Dooley had told her all about him, and she was excited now to catch her first glimpse of Odelia’s celebrity guest. But then she picked up the scent of Marcus, the German Shepherd from down the street, and she forgot all about the incident. And when moments later Kurt Mayfield, her human, gave her leash a little yank, she obediently tripped along.

  They were on their way to the local park, where Kurt liked to take his Yorkshire Terrier for her daily walks. Kurt didn’t mind. In fact he loved it. The retired music teacher didn’t get out much, and this gave him an excuse to interact with other dog owners.

  “Hey, Jackie,” he said as they met one of his neighbors walking her Chihuahua.

  Jackie gave him a smile. A widow, she and Kurt had developed a warm friendship, and never failed to find a topic of conversation: the behavior of their little balls of fur.

  Kurt let Fifi off her leash, and the tiny white doggie now sprinted along, happily panting and taking in the sights and sounds and, especially, the smells of the dog park.

  Fifi had spotted Rufus, and saw that the big sheepdog’s owner Ted Trapper stood chatting with an old lady who owned a Dalmatian.

  “Hey, Rufus,” said Fifi. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Rufus laughed his big, booming laugh. “Very funny, Fifi.”

  The joke never got old.

  “So did you hear about Brutus going missing?” asked Fifi, who loved gossiping about their neighbors as much as Rufus did.

  “Missing? What do you mean, missing?”

  “Harriet came over to ask me if I’d seen him, and when I told her I hadn’t, and asked her if she’d mislaid her boyfriend, she gave me a dirty look and took off. So what I think,” she said, continuing her exciting tale, “is that they had a fight, and now he’s gone and left her!”

  “Impossible. Brutus would never leave Harriet. Those two are in love, Fifi.”

  “If that is so, why did he take off? Tell me that, Rufus.”

  “I have no idea,” said Rufus with a good-natured smile, “but I’m sure you’ll find out.”

  “And then there’s the celebrity guest staying at Max’s place.”

  “What celebrity guest?”

  “Randy Hancock!”

  “The fitness guy?”

  “One and the same! He dropped by this morning, all atwitter, and now it looks like he’s going to be staying with them for a while. At least I saw him carry in a big suitcase just now, and Dooley told me that Odelia made an extra bed upstairs in the guest room.” She lowered her voice. “Dooley also told me that Randy Hancock is dying, Rufus. Dying!”

  “Dying of what?”

  “He doesn’t know! And neither does Max! So it must be pretty bad, and mysterious, if even Max hasn’t been able to find out what’s going on!” Her tail was wagging excitedly. So much news to share, and so little time! “Oh, and I saw a turtle this morning.”

  “A turtle?”

  “A turtle! Walking through the backyard. And when I asked what it thought it was doing, walking in MY backyard, eating MY grass, and breathing MY fresh morning air, it said it was just passing through. Passing through! Cheeky little bugger.”

  “You lead a pretty exciting life, Fifi,” said Rufus with a smile.

  “That, I certainly do, Rufus! So how about you? Any news to share?”

  “Nothing much,” said Rufus, glancing over to his human, who still stood chatting with the old lady. “Ted got rehired by the same company where he used to work before.”

  “Oh, that’s right. He quit his job, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he thought he’d won the lottery, but then it turned out that he didn’t, and so he had to beg his boss to get his old job back. Very humiliating.”

  “Listen, I had this idea,” Fifi began, and paused when Rufus barked a booming laugh. “What’s so funny?”

  “Every time you get an idea, I know there’s trouble ahead.”

  “What trouble? What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. Just tell me. What’s your big idea?”

  “Well, you know how the cats always get together for cat choir, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Even though Rufus had never attended cat choir, he’d heard a lot about it. In fact all of Hampton Cove had. “So?”

  “So why don’t we launch a new tradition and start a choir for dogs? Dogs like to sing, too, right? And we sure love to socialize.”

  “But… how are we ever going to be able to get away?”

  “Easy. We dig a hole under the fence. I’ve already dug my hole.” In fact Fifi had dug many holes. Kurt kept filling them up again, but that didn’t stop his dog from digging another one.

  “Dig a hole,” Rufus said doubtfully.

  “Sure! It’s easy! You know how to dig a hole, don’t you?”

  “Of course I know how to dig a hole,” said Rufus. “What do you take me for? Every dog knows how to dig a hole. It’s what we do. But what if Ted or Marcie find out I’m gone?”

  “They won’t find out. They’re asleep, and so is Kurt. And by the time we get back they’ll still be asleep—no harm done. So how about it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rufus. “Where would we meet?”

  “At the park, where else?”

  “But isn’t that where cat choir meets?”

  “Who cares! The park is big enough, Rufus. We’ll simply gather at the other side of the park, far away from the cats.”

  “You think?” asked Rufus, giving Fifi a look of uncertainty.

  “Look, we have a right to sing as much as cats do, don’t you agree? Or do you want to be your human’s sweet pet all your life, and never set paw outside Harrington Street?”

  Fifi could tell that the prospect of seeing something of the wide, wide world beyond Harrington Street clearly appealed to the big woolly dog, then finally Rufus’s furry face displayed a set look. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it. What time?”

  “How about midnight?”

  “Midnight it is,” said Rufus, and held up a big paw. Fifi placed her own tiny paw against it.

  “Tonight’s the night,” she said. “The night we bust loose!”

  7

  Odelia wasn’t entirely sure that inviting Randy Hancock to stay with them for the time being was a good idea, but she could hardly turn the man out again after what he’d told them now could she?

  While Randy unpacked, she and Chase returned downstairs to discuss the matter.

  “Did you see that video?” she said quietly. “Terrible, isn’t it? Who would do such a thing?”

  “Yeah, pretty brutal stuff,” Chase agreed, also keeping his voice down lest Randy overhear them talking about his terrifying predicament.

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “I’ll get on his case straightaway.” He glanced down at the man’s phone. “I’m pretty sure there are ways to find out who’s been sending him these messages. Do you think Randy would mind if I take his phone?”

  “I’m sure he’ll be happy to be rid of the thing, at least until this is all over.”

  “I’ll head into town tomorrow,” said Chase thoughtfully.

  “NYPD?”

  “Yeah. An old colleague of mine will know what to do with this.” The burly cop glanced up at the staircase. “Though I wonder why Randy didn’t go to them and came to us instead.” He directed a pointed look at his girlfriend. “Or you, to be specific.”

  “I have no idea.” Odelia wasn’t exactly the world’s biggest expert on stalkers. But she hadn’t wanted to ask Randy more questions, as the man looked absolutely knackered. “Let’s give him some space,” she suggested. “We can talk again when he feels up to it.”

  She suddenly became aware of a strange noise. It sounded like a kettle going on the boil, but when she looked over, she saw it wasn’t a kettle but Max!

  “Hey, buddy,” she said. “Everything all right?”

  “What. Was. On. That. VIDEO!” Max practically bellowed.

  “Inquiring minds want to know,” Dooley added.

  Oh, dear. Of course. Cats being the curious creatures that they are they must have been dying to find out what was going on, exactly.

  “Can you access Randy’s phone?” she asked her boyfriend.

  “Sure. I asked for his password—wait a minute… here we are. Why?” He followed her gaze and saw two pairs of cat’s eyes eagerly following their every move and smiled. “Of course.” Then his smile disappeared. “Are you sure you want to show them? This is not the kind of stuff they might like to see.”

  “Oh, they’ve seen worse,” she assured her boyfriend.

  “Yeah, but this is pretty gruesome.”

  “You think? So maybe I shouldn’t—”

  “SHOW US!” Max cried, and hopped up onto the chair, then onto the table, and practically slapped that phone from her hand!

  “Okay, okay,” she said, and started the video that had given Randy such a fright.

  The video started innocuous enough with an image of the front of a house. Though to call it a house was probably doing it a disservice, as it was a pretty fancy mansion with two white columns supporting a portico and a white wrought-iron gate out in front.