“You know perfectly well that Chickie is dead,” growled Uncle Alec. “You killed her.”

  “What? No! You–you’re kidding, right? Chickie is fine and you’re just joshing me.”

  “Do I look like I’m joshing you?” asked Uncle Alec, his face a thundercloud. “Where were you between six thirty and seven this morning?”

  “I–I was out there,” he said, pointing to the window.

  “Out where? Be specific, Olaf.”

  “Out there by the fence, waving at Chickie.”

  “So you waved at Chickie and then you jumped the fence.”

  “No! I’m allergic to ivy so I would never jump that fence. Eww.”

  “It’s just ivy, Olaf, not poison ivy,” said Tyson. “So there’s no way you’re allergic.”

  “So you didn’t scale the fence, go into the house, and murder Chickie,” said Chase. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes! Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying!”

  They all stared at the pink-haired kid for a moment. He was the perfect suspect, Odelia thought. He was obviously obsessed with Chickie, and he’d already proved he could scale the gate. Still, it was hard to prove he was the one they were looking for. First they would need some more information from Abe. Fingerprints, maybe, or DNA.

  “Arrest him,” said Uncle Alec.

  “Wait, what?!” said the kid, now looking distinctly terrified.

  “I think you did it,” said Uncle Alec. “I think you’re exactly the kind of creep who would do such a horrible thing and I don’t want to risk you fleeing the scene. Get him out of my face,” he told Chase.

  “Wait, I didn’t do anything!” said the kid. “I didn’t do it, I swear! Tyson, you have to believe me. You know I would never harm Chickie. Never! I’m her biggest fan!”

  “And her soulmate, yeah, we get it,” said Alec. He got up into the kid’s face. “You did it, Olaf. And I’m going to prove it.”

  14

  The good news was that I’d managed to get off the fence. The bad news? I was on top of an ambulance which, as we all know, is like a big box on wheels. So I was still stuck.

  Suddenly a voice rang out behind me. “Hey, Max!”

  “Dooley!” I said when the familiar figure of my friend gracefully dropped down next to me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m keeping you company until someone can take you down.”

  “But… you shouldn’t be up here, Dooley,” I said, even though I was touched by the gesture.

  “Harriet and Brutus have gone in to tell Odelia, so it’s only a matter of time before help arrives. So I thought I might as well come up here.”

  I traced the route my friend had followed: he’d climbed a tree, then hopscotched across an overhanging branch and hopped onto the ambulance like a feline Tarzan. “Well done,” I said admiringly. “Well done indeed.”

  “Thanks, Max. Nice view from up here.” I followed his gaze and had to admit the view was nothing to cavil about. Cats like to seek out high places where they have a perfect overview of their surroundings and we got all that and more.

  “The only thing that’s missing is food,” I said. I’d secretly hoped to catch a bite to eat from Boyce Catt’s food bowl but instead found myself on top of a food-less ambulance.

  The ambulance stood parked in front of the house, and soon two of Abe’s people came walking out, carrying a stretcher on which a form was placed covered with a sheet.

  “Chickie,” said Dooley softly as we stared down at her inert form.

  “Yeah, Chickie,” I confirmed. “Poor woman. She could sing like an angel, and now her voice will forever be silent.”

  The stretcher was placed inside the ambulance and the doors slammed shut.

  “This is our opportunity, Dooley,” I said, and so we both opened our throats and meowed up a storm to attract the attention of the two paramedics. Unfortunately, they either didn’t hear us or chose to ignore us. At any rate, suddenly the ambulance lurched into motion, and we were on the move!

  “Max!” Dooley cried. “We’re moving!”

  “I know!”

  “I don’t like this!”

  “Me neither!”

  The ambulance gained speed, even as we hollered up a storm. No one was listening, though, and soon we were zipping through the gate and then the ambulance really picked up speed and was racing away from Chickie’s house at a fast clip.

  “Where are they taking us?” asked Dooley.

  “Hauppauge,” I said. “That’s where the county coroner’s offices are located.”

  “But I don’t want to go to Hauppauge, Max! I don’t even know where Hauppauge is!”

  “Me neither!”

  So we both hunkered down on top of the roof, and as the wind played through our manes and our ears were flattened against our heads, I reflected this was definitely not the most pleasant adventure I’d ever participated in.

  Odelia had told us to help her figure out who had killed Chickie, but this was taking our zeal for the case a little too far: we were actually escorting her body to the coroner!

  “Odelia will come and get us!” I shouted to Dooley over the noise of the wind.

  “I hope so!” he shouted back. “It’s much nicer inside a car than outside, Max!”

  “I know!”

  “I don’t know why dogs like this so much!”

  “Me neither!”

  It was true what he said. Dogs love to stick their heads out of windows of driving cars. Why, I don’t know. To feel the wind tugging at you is not a pleasant sensation at all.

  It felt like hours before the ambulance finally slowed down and entered the parking lot of a squat white building that looked like a space ship.

  “I think we’ve arrived,” I said.

  “I hope they have food,” said Dooley. “I’m hungry from the trip.”

  “I doubt they’ll have food for us here, Dooley.”

  The ambulance drove into a garage bay and then came to a stop. The paramedics hopped out and opened the doors. This time they carried Chickie off to God knows where, and soon we were left in that garage, not a soul in sight.

  “Look, Max,” said Dooley, gesturing to a car that stood parked right next to the ambulance. It was only a short jump from the roof of the ambulance to the roof of the other car, and only a short jump to the hood of the car and then to the garage floor.

  “I feel very strongly we should stay put,” I said. “Otherwise Odelia will never be able to find us.”

  “Or we could go home on paw.”

  “It’s a long walk back to Hampton Cove.”

  For a moment, we stayed on top of that roof, but then one of the coroner’s people came walking up to the ambulance, got in, and started up the engine.

  “Now or never, Dooley!” I cried, and we made the jump. Just in time, for the ambulance peeled out of the bay, probably to pick up more dead people.

  And that’s how we found ourselves on the concrete floor of the garage of the medical examiner’s office, with no plan of where to go or how to get out of our predicament.

  “I suggest we hang around here,” I said. “Odelia will come and find us sooner or later.”

  So we hunkered down and decided to wait for our savior to show up.

  “It’s not very nice in here,” said Dooley after a while.

  “No, it’s not.”

  It was a garage, and looked like any garage: all concrete and very smelly.

  “Let’s go and find us something to eat,” I finally said, making a decision.

  “But I thought you said we needed to stay put?”

  “Yeah, but it will take Odelia a while to find us, and in the meantime we might as well eat. This place is full of humans. And wherever humans are, there’s food to be found.”

  “Especially considering how big Abe is,” said Dooley. “He must need a lot of food.”

  Abe Cornwall is the county coroner and looks as if at some point he swallowed another county coroner. The man is large. And since large people like to stay large, they need a constant supply of fatty and starchy foods. And since we just lived through a very harrowing adventure I felt I urgently needed to get my paws on some of Abe’s stash.

  We soon found ourselves in a series of long and sterile-looking corridors, all white walls and concrete floors. Just like a hospital—or a veterinarian’s office. Yuck.

  “I don’t like this place, Max,” Dooley intimated. “It’s not very cozy.”

  We wandered here and there, and finally became aware of the sound of voices. They came from a large room that reminded me even more of a hospital, complete with an operating table at its center. And on that operating table lay… Chickie Hay!

  “Max, what are they doing to her!” Dooley cried.

  “Don’t look, Dooley! Cover your eyes!”

  “They’re operating on her, Max, even though she’s dead!”

  The sight was so upsetting we decided to flee the scene, and soon found ourselves in yet another room, this time a very cold one. The door behind us slammed shut and as I glanced around I had the impression that all those white sheets on all of those metal tables were covering something that could only be…

  “Dead people!” Dooley cried as he caught sight of one person without a sheet.

  And as the truth came home to me that we were surrounded by dead people from all sides, my appetite suddenly went right out the window. I was hungry no more!

  “This place is full of dead people, Max!” cried Dooley.

  “I know, Dooley!”

  “I don’t like it!”

  “I don’t like it, either!”

  Unfortunately the door was shut, and so we were pretty much stuck in there. I might mention that it was also very cold in there—freezing cold, in fact.

  “Scream, Dooley,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”

  And so scream we did. We meowed, we yowled, we mewed, and we screamed up a storm. Before long, a human person, a live one, yanked open the door and when he saw us scratched his head and muttered, “Well, I’ll be damned.” Then he shouted, “Abe! There’s two cats in the freezer!”

  Abe came waddling up and when he saw us frowned deeply.

  “Those are Odelia Poole’s cats,” he said. “How did they get in there?”

  “Max!” Dooley cried. “He’s got blood… on his hands!”

  And so he had. Abe’s gloved hands were covered in blood, and so was his apron. In fact he looked more like a butcher than a doctor!

  So we both screamed some more.

  “Call Odelia,” said Abe. “Tell her that her cats somehow got shipped back here.”

  “Probably hitched a ride with the body,” said the man who’d opened the door for us.

  “Yeah, probably.” He chuckled freely. “Funny.”

  I didn’t think it was all that funny, though. Not funny at all.

  “Take them in the kitchen,” Abe instructed. “And give them some milk, will you?”

  And so the guy picked us both up and carried us out of the horrible dead people freezer. He took us into a kitchen, where it was warm and didn’t smell like a hospital, and gave us a saucer of milk, and a couple of slices of liverwurst. And by the time Odelia finally showed up, we’d both settled down a little from our most terrifying ordeal.

  “Oh, my sweet pets,” she said as she knelt down. “What happened to you guys, huh?”

  “I got stuck on top of an ambulance,” I said.

  “And I kept him company,” said Dooley.

  “And then we suddenly found ourselves in a room full of dead people.”

  “And Abe with his hands full of blood.”

  “And Chickie on an operating table.”

  “So horrible!”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Let’s get you guys home, shall we?”

  She brought us back to her car and we happily jumped in. To our surprise, Harriet and Brutus sat waiting for us in the backseat. Before Odelia closed the door, though, she said, “Let me just check something. I’ll be back in a sec.” And stalked off.

  After a moment, Dooley said, “She’s probably gone to get us some more liverwurst.”

  15

  It had been a long time since Odelia had set foot inside the medical examiner’s office, and she did so with a sense of unease. The clinical feel of the place did little to encourage her to venture into its inner sanctum: the operating room where Abe conducted his autopsies. He was a dedicated professional and actually enjoyed his work, which she found both admirable and a little hard to fathom. Cutting open dead people seemed like a strange way to make a living. Then again, to each their own, of course.

  She found Abe as he removed his plastic gloves. He was humming a little tune. His assistants, meanwhile, returned Chickie to a semblance of good form for the funeral.

  “And?” she asked, deciding to ignore the work in progress lest she lose the bagel she’d eaten while driving over here for her urgent cat rescue operation.

  “Oh, hey, Odelia,” said Abe as he glanced up. He walked into his office and gestured for her to follow him. The office was a mess, documents strewn about, his desk piled high with work-related files. He sat back for a moment as he frowned. “Um… you’re here for…”

  “Chickie Hay? The woman you just examined?”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Chickie Hay. Well, as I suspected she died from strangulation. And the person didn’t use a cord or a rope or anything like that.” He held up his hands instead, and wiggled his fingers. “He or she used this.”

  Odelia gulped. “Anything on the perpetrator?”

  “Nothing yet, except that they must have really hated Chickie. Strangulation usually indicates a personal motive. The killer has to get in there, up close and personal.”

  “So was it a he or a she? I mean, you can probably tell from the size of the hands?”

  But Abe shook his head. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be pinned down. “I’m sorry. Could be a man. Could be a woman. I can’t tell you with absolute certainty, Odelia.”

  She sank down onto a chair. “Incredible. Usually we don’t have any suspects and in this case we have too many.”

  “Hasn’t your uncle made an arrest?”

  “Yes, but I’m not entirely convinced he’s the person we’re looking for.”

  “Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you, then. What about your cats? Are they all right?”

  “Yeah, they’re fine. They must have been dozing on top of the ambulance when it took off.”

  He chuckled. “Funny little creatures.” He lifted his hands. “Well, if there’s nothing else, I need to write my report. Your uncle is waiting, and I’ll bet a great deal of other people are, too. She was quite the celebrity, wasn’t she, this, um…” He frowned.

  “Chickie Hay.”

  His face cleared. “That’s right. Chickie Hay. I’m not into her style of music, I have to confess. Pop singer, was she? I’m more of a jazz man myself. This pop music…” He indicated a hand flying right over his head to show her what he thought of pop music. “Here today, gone tomorrow, whereas jazz will always survive the test of time, whether its performers are alive or have been dead for years. Now that’s real music for you.”

  She got up. “Thanks, Abe, for giving me the scoop on this.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. I know you’re not one of those annoying reporters who are always ready to screw up an investigation by printing stuff they have no right to. Well, good luck with your investigation, and let me know what you find.”

  “Will, do, Abe,” she said, and raised a hand in farewell before leaving the office.

  This case was quickly proving a real head scratcher. Usually they had a limited number of suspects but in this case they seemed to multiply the longer she worked on it. There was Laron Weskit and his wife Shannon, Charlie Dieber and his girlfriend Jamie, Nickie Hay and Yuki Hay, Hortense, Tyson, Olaf Poley, and a dozen others, members of Chickie’s staff and security team. And then there was the worrisome fact that anyone could have scaled the fence that morning and snuck into the house to commit murder.

  For a person who was as universally beloved and popular as Chickie Hay, the pop star had collected a surprising number of enemies.

  What she needed to do, Odelia thought as she reached the car, was make a list of all possible suspects and their motives. Maybe then she’d finally start making some progress.

  She got into the car and turned to the four cats anxiously waiting in the backseat.

  “And?” she said. “What have you guys discovered so far?”

  “Not much,” said Max.

  “Except that a coroner’s office smells like a hospital,” said Dooley, “and that it’s full of dead people kept in a very big freezer.”

  “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “But where do all these dead people come from?” asked Harriet.

  Clearly Max and Dooley had been regaling the others with the story of their eventful trip.

  “This is the medical examiner’s office for the entire county,” Odelia explained, “so all the suspicious deaths, all the suicides, and all the murders are brought here to be examined. And if you know that nine hundred autopsies are performed in Suffolk County every year, you can imagine Abe and his team have their hands full processing them.”

  “Creepy,” said Brutus, who looked a little freaked out.

  “Yes, it’s a very particular profession,” said Odelia, turning back to face the front and inserting her key into the ignition, “and personally I don’t have the stomach for it.”

  “Me neither,” said Max. “I wouldn’t want to do what Abe does. No way.”

  “Well, that probably goes for a lot of professions out there,” she said as she started up the car and put it in gear. “There’s lots of people who wouldn’t want to be a doctor, or a baker, or a plumber, or a painter. That’s why it’s important to choose a profession you know you’re passionate about. Like me. I love being a reporter. It’s more than just a job for me. It’s something I enjoy, and would probably even do if no one paid me to do it.”

  “So what professions do you advise for us to take, Odelia?” asked Harriet.