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Lil Ran rolled his eyes and suppressed a groan of exasperation. What was all this business about Max? These two mutts seemed to have more respect for a stupid cat than for one of their own!

At least he had secured himself the assistance of two sidekicks. And if things went according to plan, very soon now they’d be out there, chasing the bad guys.

He frankly couldn’t wait!

Chapter 33

I wasn’t exactly feeling on top of the world, and I think you’ll excuse me for feeling like that. Imagine you were kicked out of the wedding of one of your own humans because you were deemed not aesthetically pleasing enough to be allowed to parade in front of the wedding guests. I’d bet you wouldn’t feel so hot either, right?

And I’d been idly wandering through town, my mind a jumble of thoughts, when once again I came upon that van I’d seen before, the one driven by Johnny and Jerry. This time it was parked right outside the same pet shop depicted on the decal: Pete’s Pet Paradise.

Johnny and Jerry are two crooks who’ve been on their way to being reformed for so long it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever get there. They’ve been stumbling back onto the path of crime more than once, but then probably every addict has a hard time staying on the straight and narrow path to sobriety the first time out—or at least so I’ve been told.

And since I’m always curious to know what those two crooks are up to, I decided to take a closer look at this pet shop.

It was of course possible that they’d finally found gainful employ, and were now two law-abiding citizens, but somehow I doubted it.

On the other hand, pet shops aren’t usually associated with the life of crime, and I didn’t see what they could possibly hope to gain by breeding and selling pets to unsuspecting customers.

I glanced through the window and saw Johnny acting the part of a salesman, a hamster in a small cage placed on the counter, the ex-con talking to a man with a small child and presumably extolling the virtues of owning and caring for that hamster.

I then noticed a basement window, set low in a recess. The window had a half-busted metal grille in front of it, and I now wondered what they might be hiding down there.

Call it my natural feline curiosity. Some people say that it has the power to kill, but so far I’d always escaped my nosy parker tendencies with my life, so I was prepared to take my chances.

So I hopped down into that recess, and took a peek through the window. All I could see were very large tanks. They were blue in color, made of some kind of plastic, and reminded me of the inflatable pool Chase had once bought us so Odelia could teach us how to swim. It hadn’t been Chase’s finest hour—or mine for that matter.

Inside those large tanks I could see a mass of writhing forms. They could be fishes, or they could be… turtles. Yes, they were unmistakably turtles, and plenty of them, too.

I frowned at the strange sight. What would a pet shop need this many turtles for? The market for pet turtles might be larger than I thought—I will readily admit I’m not exactly an expert on turtles kept as pets—but surely not to this extent.

And then I saw the other half of the criminal duo: Jerry was walking along the tanks, dumping in fish food from large bags placed against the basement wall. He was strewing the fish food with a generous hand, like a farmer sowing seeds onto fertile soil.

The little turtles all scrambled to gobble up the tiny nuggets of food, and I watched the spectacle with a curious eye.

I now remembered how Brutus’s turtle had recently escaped a pond, and had roped Brutus into finding this pond and freeing her friends from that selfsame pond.

The turtle theme seemed prevalent lately, and as I hopped up from my perch, back to street level, I wondered once more where Brutus could possibly be.

There is only one pond in Hampton Cove, located at our local park, and since I didn’t have much else to do, I decided to wend my way there, and hopefully find my friend. I needed to tell my tale of woe to someone, and Brutus would do as well as the next cat.

And as I set paw in the direction of the park, a loud voice alerted me someone wanted speech with me. When I looked back, I saw that it was Dooley, and it honestly warmed the cockles of my heart to see him.

“Max!” he said as he drew level with me. “Why did you leave all of a sudden?”

“I didn’t think I was needed anymore,” I said. “Shanille made it clear she didn’t want me to attend the wedding, so I just figured I’d leave you guys to it.”

“But I don’t want to be in that wedding either, Max. I don’t want to walk behind Gran and Wilbur with flowers in my hair.”

“You don’t?”

“Of course not! I want to be in Odelia’s wedding, and in Uncle Alec’s wedding, if he ever decides to go ahead and propose to Charlene, but I don’t want Gran to marry Wilbur Vickery, and I told Shanille.”

“And what did she say?”