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“I’m going to insert you into Charlene’s life and you’re going to feed me information. A bug can’t pick up everything, but two feline spies can.” She gave us a beaming smile, as if expecting a warm round of applause.

“So… you want us to go live with Charlene?” I asked, still not seeing the full picture.

“Bingo! You’re my wedding present to that treacherous woman, but secretly you’ll report to me the whole time. And to that end…” And before I knew what was going on, she was suddenly strapping a collar around my neck. A collar, if you please!

“Hey!” I said, shocked and not a little bit surprised. “What are you doing?!”

“Oh, don’t be a baby, Max,” she growled. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m giving you a collar. And Scarlett is going to put a bug inside that collar.”

“A bug!” said Dooley. “But I don’t like bugs. Bugs can kill you!”

“Not that kind of bug,” said Gran as she placed a collar around Dooley’s neck, too. “There. That should do the trick. Now all we need to do is to make sure the connection is A-Okay and we’re ready to get this show on the road.”

I didn’t know what show she was referring to, or even what road, exactly, but I was already pretty sure I wasn’t going to like either show or road. And as she drove off, practically taking out Kurt Mayfield’s mailbox as she did, I shared a look of extreme distress with Dooley. Suddenly we’d been thrust in the middle of an adventure we hadn’t bargained for.

And the worst part? We were going to be introduced into the home of the woman who’d just been the victim of a home invasion!

Yikes!

Chapter 9

“I wonder what Gran is planning to do with Max and Dooley,” said Harriet as she watched Gran take off.

“Probably run some errands,” said Brutus.

“I doubt it. You know what I think? I think Gran knows what’s going on, and she’s just recruited Max and Dooley to help her find her son.”

“Sounds plausible.”

“Well, it’s not fair. Why is she recruiting Max and Dooley and leaving us behind?”

“Because… Dooley is hers?” Brutus suggested.

“Yeah, I know, but Max isn’t. So why does he get to go and not us? And have you noticed how Odelia hasn’t even told us to help her find her uncle? We’re being railroaded here, Brutus. Simply put out to pasture. And I’m not standing for it.”

“Standing for what?” asked Brutus, who seemed content just to lie there on the couch and do nothing whatsoever. The whole situation frankly infuriated the prissy Persian.

“Come on,” she said now.

“Come where? “asked Brutus, alarmed.

“We’re going to find Uncle Alec before Max and Dooley do, and prove once and for all that we’re the premier sleuths here, and not them.”

But… nobody asked us,” said Brutus, causing Harriet to give him a furious look.

“I’m asking you, Brutus. In fact I’mtelling you. Let’s go and find Uncle Alec before he’s delivered back to his family in lots of little pieces.”

“Little pieces!” Brutus cried, horrified by the word picture she was painting.

“Didn’t you hear what Odelia said? Uncle Alec has been kidnapped by professional criminals. The kind that like to outfit their victims with shoes made of concrete and dump them in the nearest river. Or dissolve their bodies in a bath filled with acid. Or, and here I want you to follow me carefully, cut them into little pieces and mail them back to their family! Now do you want that to happen to your favorite police chief or not?”

“No, I don’t,” said Brutus, sobered by this horrifying prospect, which seemed to come straight from the pages of a James Patterson novel.

“Well, then,” she said. “Let’s go. And make it snappy.”

“But…”

“Do youwant Uncle Alec to die a gruesome death? His body fed to the fishes?”

“Um, is this a trick question?” Brutus asked after a pregnant pause.

“Oh, for crying out loud. Up!” said Harriet, and gave her mate a shove against the rear.

“Easy, easy,” said Brutus, as he defied gravity and raised himself up from the couch. “So where are we doing?”

“Out there into the world,” said Harriet, vaguely gesturing to the great outdoors. “We’re going to find traces and snoop clues, and we’re going to find Uncle Alec and save him from certain death and a very painful and humiliating disfiguration.”

And to show her cohort how it was done, she stuck her nose in the air and started sniffing.

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Gran had parked her car in front of Scarlett’s apartment, and the latter now came hurrying out, carrying a bulky canvas shopping bag. She got into the car and dumped the bag on the backseat, right next to the two cats who, for some reason, were also present.

“What’s with the cats?” she asked.

“They’re going to help us find out what’s going on,” Vesta announced.

If Scarlett was surprised that cats were a fixture whenever Vesta was about to go on one of her adventures she didn’t show it. It was part and parcel of being friends with the surprisingly spry septuagenarian. Wherever Vesta was, cats were never far away.

“So is that the stuff?” asked Vesta as she put the car in gear.