“You know. They put a bunch of viruses on your computer system, effectively locking the whole thing down, so you can’t do anything, and then they get in touch and tell you that they’ll unlock your systems in exchange for let’s say a million bucks, payable in bitcoin. If you don’t pay, you can kiss your company goodbye, for you’ll have to reinstall everything. And if you do pay, they’ll unlock everything and you can carry on like before.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?” asked Scarlett.

  Kevin gave her one of his looks that said: are you serious? “Yes, Auntie Scarlett, it’s completely illegal. These people are criminals, only instead of putting their hands in your pockets, they do it online.”

  “Well, that’s not very nice,” said Scarlett, eliciting a guffaw from her geeky nephew.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” asked Vesta.

  “Do? I’m not going to do anything.”

  “Can’t you stop them?” asked Scarlett.

  “Um… I guess I can do that… if that’s what you want me to do.” He dragged his eyes away from the screen. “Is that what you want me to do?”

  Vesta thought for a moment, then finally nodded in the affirmative. “Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s exactly what I want you to do.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” said Scarlett, even though she still didn’t understand exactly what Kevin was talking about. “We are the neighborhood watch, after all, so we should fight crime, whether it takes place on the street or on the internet. Right?”

  Kevin was smirking again, so she gave him a light tap on the head.

  “As long as you’re sure,” he said with a shrug. “Though I might have to reveal my IP.”

  She and Vesta glanced at each other, giving each other a look that said that A) They had no idea what an IP was and B) They weren’t sure about any of this, but C) They were willing to go along for the ride. So they both shrugged and said in unison, “Go for it, Kev.”

  “Isn’t this exciting?” said Scarlett after they’d watched Kevin crack his knuckles and bring up even more code on his screen.

  “Just about as exciting as watching paint dry,” Vesta grunted.

  14

  Even though it was the middle of the night, Odelia felt it incumbent upon her and Chase, as responsible pet parents, to confront the person who was guilty of the abduction and subsequent dumping of her precious cats in the middle of the woods.

  And so it was that she and Chase stood on the porch of Mrs. Bunyon and husband, eager to have a word with the woman, and find out what had behooved her to catnap Odelia’s cats—and her own cat, too, for that matter!

  It took a little while before the doorbell was answered and the sound of approaching footsteps could be heard. By then Odelia had already rung the bell three times and Chase had proceeded to pound on the door a couple of times for good measure.

  The door opened and a bedraggled-looking Karl Bunyon appeared, his wife right behind him, both looking wary and ready to engage in a heated discussion with the marauders who’d gotten it into their heads to disturb them at this time of night.

  “Miss Poole!” Kathleen Bunyon exclaimed. “What’s wrong?” She darted a quick glance behind her. “Is it… did Chouchou get taken again?”

  “Yes, she did,” said Odelia, “and so did my cats.” She wasn’t in the mood for beating around the bush. “And I have credible information that the person who took them is—”

  “Odelia!” suddenly Max exclaimed. “It’s not her—it’s him!”

  “Yeah, it’s definitely him,” Dooley chimed in. “I thought it was Mrs. Bunyon but now that I smell them both it’s definitely Mr. Bunyon!”

  Odelia’s eyes shifted from Mrs. Bunyon to Karl Bunyon, and her ire, like liquid fire already sloshing about her ears, increased even more. “As I said, I have credible intel—very credible intel, in fact—that the person who took my cats, and in fact took all of the cats that have been taken tonight, and probably all the other nights, too, is you!”

  And to make sure there could be no mistake she emphasized these words by pointing at Mr. Bunyon, who stood staring at her index finger with a look of consternation on his round features. Karl Bunyon was a man who not only suffered from a receding of the hairline, but also from a weakening of the jawline and a very marked expanding of the waistline. He now stood quivering like a blancmange.

  “Me!” he cried. “What are you talking about?” He turned to his wife. “Who are these people, Kathleen? And what are they doing here in the middle of the night!”

  “This is Miss Poole, remember? She was here yesterday. I asked her to find Chouchou when she went missing, and she found her.” She gave Chase an uncertain look. “And you are…”

  “Chase Kingsley,” said Chase. “Hampton Cove PD.”

  “Police!” Mr. Bunyon squeaked, and already was starting to show a certain moistness about the temples. He was dressed in his pajamas, and looked very ill at ease indeed.

  “That’s right,” said Chase, giving the man a steely look—the look he gave his most hardened criminals and which only rarely failed to make them tremble at the knees.

  “Are you here to… arrest me?” asked Karl Bunyon nervously.

  “We just want to know what’s going on,” Odelia explained. “Why you would kidnap these cats, Mr. Bunyon?”

  Kathleen turned to her husband questioningly. “Is this true, Karl?”

  “Of course it isn’t true! Darling, I would never—ever…” He swallowed uneasily.

  “I know of nine cats that have been taken and released in the middle of the woods,” Odelia said. “Four of which are mine, by the way.” She gestured to the foursome at her feet, who all stood staring up at Mr. Bunyon with fury in their eyes.

  “It’s him,” said Harriet now. “Dooley called it. It’s definitely him. I can smell it now.”

  “Yeah, no doubt about it,” Brutus confirmed. “He took us and bagged us and then dumped us—he’s the Hampton Cove catnapper, all right!”

  “Karl, did you really take Miss Poole’s cats and dump them in the woods? Tell me the truth.”

  Karl blinked a couple of times, now subjected to the combined scrutiny of four cats, one police detective, one reporter-slash-sleuth and his own wife and cat lover. “I-I can explain,” he finally said, a little lamely, Odelia thought.

  Kathleen’s eyes went wide. “You did this?! You kidnapped my precious Chouchou?”

  “Maybe we should take this inside,” Chase now suggested. “No sense in talking this thing through out here on the porch.”

  And so the discussion proceeded inside, where they gathered in the living room. Chouchou sat eyeing her master with wide-eyed consternation. “I thought I smelled something familiar when he took me,” she now explained. “But I would never have believed it possible—my very own human! Kidnapped me and left me to die!”

  “Well, not to die, exactly,” said Harriet. “You had plenty of food out there in the woods, Chouchou, so let’s not get overdramatic, shall we?”

  “Okay, so…” Karl began, as his wife regarded him with unmitigated consternation. “So look, Kathy. The thing is…” He sighed deeply, then finally blurted out, “I’m allergic to cats, all right!”

  “Allergic!”

  “Yeah, I just didn’t want to tell you because… Well, you know how it is. You meet someone and you try to make a good impression on that person, and so when she asks you if you love and adore cats as much as she does, you obviously say yes, because you don’t want to make her think you’re some kind of cat-hating freak. And then one thing leads to another and…” He suddenly sneezed and said, “I’ve been allergic to cats all my life. It’s not that I hate the creatures, though I’m not terribly fond of them as you can imagine, but they make me sick—and I mean that in the kindest way possible,” he hastened to add.

  “You are allergic to cats…” said Kathleen, sounding skeptical.

  “I am! Always have been.” He sneezed again.

  “So is that why you’re always sick?”

  “Partly, yeah,” he said. “I have other allergies, too, but mainly it’s cats.” He shrugged. “I probably should have told you from the beginning, when we first started dating, but I fell for you like a ton of bricks, and I had a feeling this whole cat thing was kind of a deal-breaker, so…” He gave her a sheepish look.

  “So you decided to lie to me.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.”

  “But how did you go from being allergic to cats to prowling around at night collecting them off the streets and dumping them in the woods?” asked Odelia.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Max said at her feet.

  “Well,” he said, giving Chouchou an uncertain glance, “the thing is, I just thought at some point that the best solution would be to simply get rid of Chouchou once and for all. And I’d read an article that cats are never happier than when in their natural habitat, so I just figured…”

  “You just figured you’d take my sweet precious baby and dump her in the woods,” said Kathleen, her anger still building.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said, hanging his head. “And to make sure you wouldn’t suspect me I just thought I’d collect a few of those creatures and put them all in the same place.”

  “So we would think a catnapper was on the prowl,” said Odelia, understanding dawning.

  Karl Bunyon shrugged. “It sounded like a good idea at the time.”

  “Karl, it’s the worst idea possible!” Kathleen screamed, and gave him a good whack on the arm.

  “I’m sorry, all right!” he wailed. “I just didn’t know what else to do! My allergies were getting worse and worse, and I had to do something!”

  “What you should have done is to come clean and then we could have taken the necessary steps,” said Kathleen.

  “You mean give Chouchou away to your folks?” he said hopefully.

  “No! To take you to a doctor and get you the proper medication to treat those allergies of yours!”

  “Oh, God,” he said, burying his head in his hands. “I’m a horrible person, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are, Karl,” said Kathleen with grim-faced annoyance. “God! And you tell me he’s gone and kidnapped your cats, too?”

  “All four of them,” Odelia confirmed.

  “Karl!” Kathleen cried and gave her husband another well-deserved whack.

  “I’m sorry, all right! How was I supposed to know those cats belonged to someone?”

  “Hello—they’re all wearing collars!”

  “Collars with trackers,” Chase specified. “Which is how we knew they’d been taken, and where they’d been taken.”

  “Trackers,” Karl murmured as he studied Odelia’s foursome. “I should have known.”

  “So now what?” asked Kathleen, as she regarded Chase with a touch of trepidation. “Are you going to arrest my husband?”

  “Are you pressing charges?” Chase shot back.

  Kathleen stood regarding her husband for a moment, then said, “Karl, go upstairs for a moment will you?”

  “But why?” asked her catnapping other half.

  “Because there’s something I want to discuss with Miss Poole and Officer Kingsley.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Karl, and repaired upstairs.

  “Look, I know this looks bad,” said Kathleen once her husband was out of view and out of earshot, “but there’s something I need to explain to you about Karl.”

  “We already know about his allergies,” said Odelia. “And we already know he did a very stupid thing here, Kathleen.”

  “I know, and I’ll deal with him in my own way. But here’s the thing about Karl: he’s been through the wringer and I think it’s taken its toll on him—no, I know it’s taken its toll on him. See, when I met him he was really down in the dumps. He’d just gone through a terrible divorce, and he was feeling at a very low ebb in his life. So even though it sounds odd that he would lie about his allergies, when you know what he was like back then it’s actually almost understandable why he did what he did.”

  “How come?” asked Chase. “Why was he in such a bad way?”

  “It’s a long story, and I’ll save you the details. But let’s just say that Karl used to be something of a big shot at Kramer Kitchen Kreation, Fred Kramer’s outfit?”

  Odelia shared a look with her husband. “Isn’t that where Mom and Gran went to pick out a new kitchen?”

  “I think so,” Chase said.

  “Well, Karl was their chief accountant—Fred Kramer’s go-to financial guy. Karl’s then-wife Grace was Fred’s secretary, and for a while things were going great. Until Fred started an affair with Karl’s wife, and Fred accused Karl of embezzlement and had him kicked out of the company. So suddenly Karl not only lost his marriage, but also his high-flying job and his social esteem. He went from being the cat’s meow to being a nothing.”

  “Did Fred press charges?”

  “Oh, no. And according to Karl there never was any embezzlement and I believe him. I think the embezzlement charge was just an excuse to get rid of Karl, and to convince Grace that her husband was a crook so she’d leave him for Fred, which she did.”

  “But that’s terrible,” said Odelia.

  “And you haven’t even heard the worst part. Karl and Grace had two kids, and ever since the divorce Grace has been trying to take the kids away from him. She got custody of the kids, based on those embezzlement charges, which were all dropped, by the way, a clear sign they were bogus, and now she’s trying to take Karl’s visitation rights away.” She gave Odelia a knowing look. “So you see, if it gets out that Karl has been grabbing cats and dumping them in the woods, Grace is sure to use it as more ammunition in the divorce battle against her ex-husband, and he’ll almost certainly lose his kids for good.”

  “So I take it you’re not going to press charges,” said Odelia, getting the gist.

  “Look, I think what he did is terrible, and he should never have touched my cat or your cats, or any of those cats, but Karl has been under a lot of pressure lately.”

  “The custody battle.”

  Kathleen nodded. “It’s really taken a toll on him, and he’s not thinking straight at the moment.”

  “Okay, all right, I get that,” said Odelia. “But the thing is, close to the place where your husband dumped the cats—yours and mine—a man was found. A dead man.”

  “Oh, I saw something about that,” said Kathleen, nodding. “A vagrant, wasn’t he?”

  “We’re not sure yet,” said Chase. “But we were actually looking for the catnapper because we figured he might be involved with this murder business.”

  Kathleen’s eyes went wide. “Karl? A murderer? You must be joking!”

  “I’m afraid I’m dead serious.”

  “At the very least he’s a potential witness,” said Odelia. “So can you perhaps tell him to come back down so we can ask him if he saw something when he was out there?”

  Kathleen had gone a little white around the nostrils, and looked even more distracted than before. “Karl!” she yelled. “Come down here a minute, will you?”

  Dutifully her husband came pounding down the stairs, and within moments had joined them again. “And?” he asked, looking nervous and sweating even more than before. “What’s the verdict?”

  Just then, a pink-haired teenage girl appeared behind Karl Bunyon, and said, “What’s going on? What’s with all the yelling?”

  She was dressed in an oversized Minnie Mouse T-shirt and looked sleepy-eyed.

  “Go back to bed, Suzy.”

  “But, Mom!”

  “Go back to bed! I’ll explain everything in the morning.”

  “Oh, all right,” she grumbled, and stomped back up the stairs.

  “There’s something I need to ask you, Mr. Bunyon,” said Chase.

  “Of course, officer,” said Karl with a nervous chuckle.

  “Not this night, but last night, when you took Chouchou into the woods the first time, along with several other cats, did you happen to notice something out of the ordinary?”

  Karl frowned and looked from Chase to Odelia and back. “Something out of the ordinary? Like what?”

  “Well…”

  “They want to know if you killed that bum,” his wife now supplied. She’d crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  Karl didn’t respond at first, then he blinked and said, “Killed that bum? What bum?”

  “A bum was killed out in the woods and buried there,” Kathleen supplied. “It was all over the news, Karl! God, I can’t believe you didn’t see that. Anyway, Miss Poole and Officer Kingsley want to know if you had something to do with that.” She gave her husband an angry look. “More specifically they want to know if, apart from kidnapping cats, you’re also in the habit of murdering bums and burying them in the woods.”

  A high-pitched whinny was Karl’s response, but when no one joined in, Karl seemed to realize this wasn’t a joke but serious business. “Of course not!” he finally exclaimed. “I’m not a killer. I only did what I did because of my allergies, and because I was afraid to admit to my wife that I’d lied about loving cats as much as she does. But murder!”

  “Okay, all right, “said Chase, holding up his hands in an appeasing gesture. “Look, the body was found close to where you left those cats, and on the same night. So did you happen to see anyone out there?”

  “No. No, I didn’t,” he said, and looked truthful enough as he said it.

  “Okay, Karl,” said Chase. “I want you to come into the precinct tomorrow and make that statement official, is that understood?”

  “But, officer…” said Kathleen.

  “We’re not going to talk about the cats,” Chase said. “If you’re not pressing charges, we won’t press charges either. Isn’t that right, Odelia?”

  “No, I’m not pressing charges,” Odelia confirmed. More than being angry with Karl, she felt sorry for him now, and didn’t want to add to the problems he was already facing.

  “Okay, so as far as we’re concerned, the cat business is over and done with. But only on the condition that you don’t go out and start kidnapping cats again—are we absolutely clear on that, Karl?”