We moved to the house next door, where Kurt Mayfield lives, a retired music teacher. He seemed reluctant to talk to us, but when Chase reminded him that this was official police business, and not just a friendly neighborly chat across the fence, he stepped out onto the sidewalk. Up and down the street we could see other officers also conducting interviews with Willie Dornhauser’s neighbors, and Kurt frowned when he noticed all the activity. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Someone’s house got burgled last night?”

  “No, Kurt, a neighbor was found dead this morning,” said Odelia.

  “Dead!” The man’s eyes had gone wide. “Who?”

  “Willie Dornhauser,” said Chase.

  “Willie Dorn…,” said Kurt thoughtfully. “Oh, right—the handyman.”

  “Did Willie ever do any work on your place, Kurt?” asked Chase.

  “Nah, the man never set foot inside here. He had a bad rep, you see. For thieving.”

  “Yeah, we heard that,” said Odelia. “Did you know him well?”

  “Not really. I like to keep myself to myself, you know.”

  “Yeah, we do know,” I murmured, causing Kurt to glance down and give me a sort of withering look. Kurt isn’t into cats. Behind him, his Yorkshire Terrier had tripped up. Contrary to Kurt, Fifi is blessed with a sunny personality, and I’m always glad to see her.

  “Hey, Max,” she said. “Dooley. What’s going on?”

  “One of the neighbors got killed last night,” I said.

  “Oh, no!” she cried. “Was it a dog or a cat?”

  “A human.”

  “Oh, no! Was it a man or a woman?”

  “A man.”

  “Figures,” she said.

  “Figures how?”

  “Well, it’s always men who get in trouble with the law, isn’t it? Must have something to do with the hormones.”

  “He didn’t get in trouble with the law,” I pointed out. “He was murdered. Must have happened late last night. According to the coroner between midnight and three o’clock.”

  “I was sound asleep,” she said, “and so was Kurt.”

  “Kurt isn’t really a suspect,” I said.

  “He’s not? Oh, phew. That’s a load off my mind.”

  “Do you think Kurt is capable of murder?” asked Dooley.

  “Oh, sure. He’s got a short fuse, and when provoked can get upset. Not that he’s ever mean to me,” she was quick to add. “In fact I’ve never known a kinder man than Kurt.”

  “He’s probably one of those humans who like dogs better than their fellow humans,” Dooley said.

  We all glanced up at Kurt and saw how gruff he was to Chase and Odelia, answering their questions with great reluctance.

  “Yeah, he’s not Mr. Sociable, is he?” I said.

  “Not really,” Fifi admitted. “I think he’s never happier than when alone in the house with me, the television playing, and seated in his favorite chair with his—”

  “With his microwave dinner on his lap?” I completed the sentence.

  “Oh, no, Kurt doesn’t do microwave dinners. He loves to cook. In fact he cooks every night. And he’s a great cook, too. He often lets me sample the stuff he makes, and it’s never anything short of absolute heaven.”

  Once more I glanced up at that gray-haired retired teacher. His glasses were perched on the tip of a bulbous nose, he was dressed in corduroy slacks and a beige waistcoat, and looked as gruff and unneighborly as ever. The image of the man didn’t exactly jibe with the one Fifi was painting. Then again, what exactly did we know about the guy? Not much, except that he didn’t like it when we rehearsed our cat choir repertoire in the backyard. He’d thrown the odd shoe or two in our direction in the past. But if he loved dogs, he couldn’t be all bad, could he?

  “If you want me to help you find the killer, just say the word, you guys,” said Fifi. She sighed. “It gets boring just sitting at home and going out twice a day for a walk. I could do with a bit of excitement, to be perfectly honest.”

  “Sure,” I said. “If you see or hear anything about Willie, anything at all, please tell us.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” she said. “He didn’t have a pet by any chance, did he?”

  “No, unfortunately he didn’t.”

  If he had, it would have made our jobs that much easier. A cat or dog belonging to Willie would have been able to tell us exactly what had transpired last night. Now all we could do was some good old-fashioned police work to find out what was going on.

  “One thing we do know for sure,” said Dooley, “is that Willie was a blackmailer.”

  “A blackmailer!” said Fifi, her eyes shining excitedly. “Oh, my.”

  “He was blackmailing Odelia’s client.” And we proceeded to give Fifi the short version of the events as they transpired the day before. She was duly impressed by the fascinating tale, and promised to let us know if she heard anything relating to Willie’s murder.

  Chapter 10

  We moved to the house next to Marge and Tex, where Ted and Marcie Trapper already stood talking to an unknown female. When we walked up to the small group, the woman smiled at Chase and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Trapper knew Mr. Dornhauser well, detective.” Chase stared at the woman, and no recognition registered on his face, so her smile faltered somewhat and a blush crept up her cheeks. “I’m sorry, sir. Sally Mortensen.”

  “Officer Mortensen, of course,” said Chase, though clearly he had no idea who she was.

  “I’ll go and interview the people next door,” she murmured, and hurried off.

  “A new colleague?” asked Odelia.

  “Looks like,” said Chase. “I didn’t recognize her.” He turned to the Trappers. “I’m sorry, Ted—Marcie, but what can you tell us about Willie Dornhauser?”

  “I think he did some work on the house not so long ago,” said Ted. He turned to his wife with a quizzical look on his face. “Or am I thinking of some other person, honey?”

  “No, I remember him well,” said Marcie as she stared at the picture Chase was holding up to her. “He fixed the roof. And after the job was finished, he broke into the house.”

  “I’m sorry, but are you saying Willie broke into your house?” asked Chase.

  “We don’t know it was him, Marcie,” said Ted.

  “The hell we don’t. Who else could it be?”

  “Did you go to the police?” asked Odelia.

  “We did, yes,” said Ted.

  “Nothing ever came of it,” said Marcie, who’d folded her arms across her chest and looked angry at the memory.

  “What was stolen?”

  “Not much,” said Ted, who looked almost apologetic. “Just some money.”

  “And my rings!” said Marcie. “Don’t forget about my rings!”

  “Did you give a description when you filed a report?” asked Chase.

  “I certainly did, and provided pictures, too.”

  Chase and Odelia shared a look. “We’re checking Willie’s house right now,” said Chase.

  “If you find my rings, I’d like to have them back.”

  “Like I said,” Ted said, “we don’t know it was Willie.”

  “Look, when you talk to the other people on this block you’ll hear the same story over and over again,” said Marcie. “Willie did some work on the house, then the next night, or at least within the week, the house would be burgled and stuff would be stolen. And okay, so maybe he was never caught, so we can’t know for sure it was him, but I’m pretty sure it was. I mean, what are the odds?”

  “Could be that he was staking out the place for a partner,” Chase suggested.

  “Could be,” Marcie agreed. “But whoever it was, those burglaries had something to do with Willie. And you’ll see that now that he’s gone, those burglaries will magically stop.”

  “Unless his partner is still at it,” said Odelia.

  “Do you know if he was also into blackmail?” asked Chase.

  Marcie shook her head decidedly. “I don’t know anything about that. Though it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “I think Willie got involved with a bad crowd,” said Ted. “I always found him an agreeable sort of person. And the man had hands of gold.”

  “That’s true,” said Marcie. “Willie could do anything. And the work was always great. Then again, I never had any complaints about his work. What I didn’t like was him breaking in and stealing my rings.”

  “And my gnome,” Ted said quietly.

  Like Tex, Ted is a big gnome aficionado, and loves his gnomes almost more than he does his wife. Then again, aren’t a lot of men like that? They dive headfirst into some weird hobby, and never look back. Ted and Tex have their gnomes, but other men collect cigar bands, or stamps, or toy trains. Or comics or soap bars or everything Coca Cola. Lucky for us Odelia had married a man who suffered from none of these quirks. Chase just liked to spend time with our human when he came home after a long day at the office. And of course he was proud of his arrest record. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

  “Who was the officer that Chase didn’t know, Max?” asked Dooley as our humans thanked the Trappers for their cooperation and moved on to the next neighbor.

  “I don’t know, Dooley, and I guess Chase doesn’t either.”

  “I think she’s probably one of those invisible colleagues,” my friend remarked.

  “Invisible colleagues?”

  “There are always colleagues that nobody notices, aren’t there?” he said. “They work diligently at their desk for years, but they are, well, invisible.”

  “You don’t mean that literally, do you?” I asked, just to make sure.

  “No, of course not,” he said with a laugh. “I just mean that nobody seems to take any notice of them. They do the work, but stay in the background. Like this officer. Probably she’s been working at the precinct for months, or even years, but Chase has never seen her before—nobody has noticed her, and that’s because she’s one of the invisible ones.”

  He had a point, of course. There’re always colleagues everybody notices, and then there are the ones who stay in the background, unobtrusively putting in the hours.

  Just then, Uncle Alec came driving up, and called his deputy and Odelia over for a quick chat. “And?” said the Chief, crawling out of his car with some effort. His belly had gotten stuck behind the steering wheel, and he had trouble getting it unstuck. “Any luck?”

  “Well, as far as we can tell Willie Dornhauser was a handyman with a particular hobby,” said Chase, leaning against the hood of the car while Uncle Alec hoisted up his pants.

  “Stealing from the people who hired him,” Odelia clarified. “He would fix their heating and then a couple of days later he’d break into the place and steal their valuables.”

  “He was never arrested, though,” said Chase, “which either makes him very good at what he did….”

  “Or very lucky,” said Odelia.

  “Or he had an associate who did the dirty work,” Chase said.

  “I think you’re right there, son,” the Chief grunted. He handed a piece of paper to Chase. “I did some digging, and turns out that Willie was arrested once, ten years ago, for a B&E, and served time with this guy.” He tapped the document.

  “Edwardo Yuhas,” Chase read.

  “And Edwardo is not a stranger to the Hampton Cove PD,” said Uncle Alec. “His MO was to break in and abscond with people’s valuables. And a lot of his victims were located in this very neighborhood, until he moved on to other, more affluent parts of town.”

  “This could very well be Willie’s partner,” said Chase, nodding.

  “Better go and have a chat with Mr. Yuhas,” said Uncle Alec.

  Chapter 11

  As we passed back to the house, I saw how Harriet and Brutus were in congregation with Gran and Scarlett, no doubt discussing their new venture. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to listen in, for Odelia and Chase were anxious to visit the address Uncle Alec had provided, and have a word with Willie’s former—or current—criminal associate.

  “What are Brutus and Harriet up to, Max?” asked Dooley as we were whisked away in Chase’s squad car.

  “The Baker Street Cats, Dooley,” I said. “What else?”

  “Why cats?” asked Dooley. “Why not Baker Street Pets?”

  “I don’t know, Dooley. Maybe they feel that only cats make good detectives?”

  “I think any pet can be a good detective,” said my friend. “Dogs are great at sniffing out clues, and birds have a great overview of what goes on beneath them, as they fly from tree to tree, or perch on rooftops, and imagine what a valuable source of information a gerbil could make? Or a hamster or even a goldfish? When they say that walls have ears, what people actually mean is that pets have ears—and pets are literally everywhere.”

  “You’re absolutely right.”

  “I’ll tell Brutus to include them in his new network.”

  “His army, you mean.”

  Odelia turned to us. “What’s all this about Brutus’s army?” she asked.

  “Brutus wants to train an army of cats who’ll be deployed to look for criminals,” I explained.

  “And Brutus will be the general of this army?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So if Brutus is the general, what does that make Harriet?”

  “Um… the general’s wife?” Dooley suggested.

  “No, Harriet will be in charge of training humans to talk to cats,” I said.

  Odelia’s eyebrows shot up into her fringe. “Training humans to talk to cats!”

  “Yeah, Gran believes that for the new neighborhood watch to succeed, all its members should be able to talk to cats, so cats can tell them all the little bits of gossip they spy out. All of this will be fed into one big database, and on top of this database an app will sit, constructed by Scarlett’s computer-savvy grandnephew Kevin, and once everything is up and running, they’ll sell it to Microsoft or Google for a hundred million dollars.”

  Odelia stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Max, are you serious?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “A solid plan, no?” I added with a smile.

  “A cockamamie plan,” she remarked, turning back to face the front.

  “What are they talking about?” asked Chase.

  “Gran has hatched out another get-rich-quick scheme. This time it involves an app, an army of cats, and language lessons to learn to understand cats.”

  “But I thought your gift couldn’t be taught?”

  “Tell that to my grandmother. Apparently she thinks differently.”

  We’d arrived at the house of Willie’s former cellmate, and got out. The house was in a not-so-nice part of town, where all the houses looked like the one where Willie lived. Only this particular house looked even more rundown than the others. And when Chase rang the bell, there was no reply.

  “His name is on the bell,” the cop grunted as he glanced through the window in an attempt to locate the tenant.

  And since a good cop is never beaten, he rang the bell of Edwardo Yuhas’s next-door neighbor. An old man came shuffling to the fore, and gave Chase a kindly smile.

  “Edwardo? Oh, he doesn’t live here anymore, detective.”

  “When did he move out?”

  “He didn’t move out. He was kicked out, for being late with the rent.”

  “And when was this?”

  “Oh, let me think. Must be six months now, maybe more.” He jerked his thumb to the house next door. “House needs work, don’t you think? Can’t you go and talk to the owner? Ask him to tear the whole place down and just build a new one?”

  Chase smiled at the pensioner. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir.”

  “Well, you should. It’s a damn shame the way they let this whole neighborhood go to the dogs. Soon the houses will start falling down all by themselves.”

  And shaking his head he shuffled inside again, closing the door behind him.

  Chase scratched his scalp. “Maybe we can talk to the owner?” he said. “Ask him if Edwardo left a forwarding address?”

  We glanced around, and I said, “I think I can do you one better, Chase,” and approached a stray cat licking its behind nearby. “Hey there, buddy,” I said.

  The cat looked up and gave me a suspicious look. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Cool your jets,” I said. “I just want some information about a guy who used to live here.”

  “And why would I tell you anything?”

  “Because you’re a cat, and I’m a cat, and us cats should stick together and help each other out, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” he said. I noticed how his tail looked a little ratty, and his ear looked as if someone had taken a big bite out of it at some point.

  “Look, a man has been killed,” I said, “and we are trying to find out what happened.”

  He shrugged, indicating he didn’t really care one way or another.

  “Are you part of the Baker Street Cats?” asked Dooley, also wandering up.

  “Baker Street what?” asked the cat with a frown.

  “Brutus’s army,” Dooley clarified.

  “I don’t know any Brutus, and I don’t know any army, so just get lost already, will you?”

  “Do you know Clarice, by any chance?” I asked, deciding to try a different tack.

  This time a gleam of interest appeared in his pale green eyes. “Sure I know Clarice. She’s a legend around these parts. Why, do you know her?”

  “She’s a great friend of ours,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you say so!” he cried, and suddenly his whole demeanor changed. “Any friend of Clarice is a friend of mine. It’s been a long time since she showed her face around here.”

  “I have to admit I haven’t seen her in a while either,” I said.

  “She used to hang out a lot in Dumpster City,” he said.

  “Dumpster City?”

  “Main Street is what the locals call it. Plenty of dumpsters out there. So what do you wanna know?”

  “The guy who used to live here,” I said, pointing to Edwardo’s last-known address. “Any idea where we might find him?”