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Johnny watched his associate storm up the stairs and sighed.“He didn’t mean all that,” he told the little turtle on his hand. The turtle was looking up at him with its teeny tiny eyes, listening intently. “Jerry’s not a bad person,” he explained. “But he’s been associating with bad people all his life. And also his wife left him, and it’s made him cranky.” He tickled the little turtle behind the ears and smiled. “Cute,” he said, and placed it back into one of the tanks. “Now go play with your friends, little fella,” he said encouragingly and watched as it swam deftly to the nearest bit of flotsam and jetsam that Johnny recognized as a piece of fish food, and gobbled it up eagerly. “Way to go,” he said fondly, and took a sniff.

Jerry was right. There was a pervasive smell down there, and it couldn’t possibly be the turtles, as they’d installed state-of-the art filtering systems to keep those tanks clean.

And as he sniffed the air, walking around and trying to determine the source of the smell, he thought it smelled a little bit like… cat poo.

Which was impossible, of course. No cats were down there.

He did remember that the basement window had been open before. He’d closed it, not wanting his precious turtles to catch a cold from the draft. Had a cat managed to sneak in? But that would mean the poor creature was stuck there, without food or water.

He followed his nose and soon arrived at a pile of old fish tanks the previous owner of the pet store had placed there. The stench was getting stronger the closer he got to the pile of junk. And when he got down on hands and knees to look under the rubble, he suddenly found a pair of cat eyes intently staring back at him.

“Oh, hey, there, kitty,” he said good-naturedly. “Got stuck down here, did you? Come on out, cutie pie. Johnny will take care of you.”

The cat didn’t respond, but merely kept staring right back at him, brazen as dammit.

And that’s when Johnny thought he recognized the cat.

It looked like one of Marge Poole’s cats, the librarian he and Jerry had once done community service for.

“Aren’t you one of Marge’s cats?” he asked now. “So what are you doing down here, buddy?”

And as he reached out to grab the cat, it suddenly hissed then raised a claw at him.

Oops. Better let the creature be. And maybe give Marge a call. She was probably worried sick about her cat.

And as he took out his phone, he was careful to keep his voice down. Jerry wouldn’t like it that he called Marge. In fact his associate had given him strict instructions never under any circumstances to allow anyone to set foot down there in that basement.

Jerry always with his silly rules.

And then the call connected and he said,“Marge? Marge Poole? It’s Johnny!”

Chapter 37

“Does she spend a lot of time looking at the television?” asked Vena as she shone a bright light into Harriet’s right eye.

“Not really,” said Vesta as she watched the proceedings closely. “She does spend an awful lot of time on her tablet, though.”

Vena looked up.“Tablet? Your cats have their own tablet?”

“Oh, sure. They love it. Spend all their time playing games. You know the kind: where they have to follow a ball across the screen and try and catch it.” She didn’t want to tell Vena that her cats were a lot smarter than that, and actually spent their time surfing the internet, Harriet most of all.

“I don’t spendthat much time on my tablet, Gran,” said Harriet, who was in a bad mood, feeling that she’d been tricked into going to Vena, even though it was for her own good. “Besides, my eyes will be fine once I get used to my carrot diet.”

“Carrot diet?” said Vesta, and when Vena frowned, added, “Yeah, she’s been eating a lot of carrots lately. My granddaughter thought it was a good idea. For the eyes?”

“You’ve been feeding your cats carrots? Not very smart, Vesta,” said Vena, who was a forceful woman, built like an oxen and with a hale and hearty manner. “Cats aren’t rabbits, you know. No, I think she’s been spending far too much time on that tablet of yours and you should probably hide it in the closet for a while where she can’t get at it.”

“No more tablet!” Harriet cried, extremely dismayed. “But I need that tablet, Gran! It’s got all my favorite sites. Like Goop and US Weekly and Cosmo and TMZ!”

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t spend another minute on that tablet,” said Vesta decidedly.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with her,” said Vena, having concluded her examination. “So let’s hope that does the trick. Even though cats have superior eyesight compared to humans their eyes can deteriorate with age or because of disease. So I’m going to prescribeher some eye drops and please please please put her on her regular diet again. You can give her the odd carrot—but only if sheabsolutely loves them.”

“I hate carrots,” Harriet announced morosely. “I hate the taste and I hate the texture. It’s like eating a piece of cardboard.”