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Since the kidnappers hadn’t been in touch since the abduction, it was safe to assume that their demand that the news of his abduction remain a secret was now null and void.

So this had officially become a rescue mission, and the main investigation Chase and the rest of the Hampton Cove Police Department would pursue from now on.

“Do you really think Uncle Alec is being held here somewhere?” asked Odelia.

“I have no idea, babe,” said Chase. “But I’m willing to bet my badge that he is. And if we find this guy,” he added, holding up a picture of the man with the crooked nose and the cauliflower ears, “we’ll be much closer to the truth.” He’d distributed the picture among his officers, and he’d vowed to leave no stone unturned to find the guy today.

“I want to have another word with Solange,” said Odelia. “Though I doubt whether she knows anything. I’m starting to think someone is using her to set up some kind of scam operation.”

“Which begs the question: what do they hope to gain from making people’s wishes come true? Solange was right: for a measly fifty bucks she promises people all kinds of things, so where is the benefit?”

She patted her boyfriend’s chest. “I’m sure you’ll find out, Detective.”

“All right, people!” Chase yelled to his collected colleagues. “Let’s do this!”

And thus Operation Save Chief Alec was finally underway—officially this time.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

The fairground was buzzing with activity. It wasn’t just a fair, but also a circus, and since Madame Solange and her cohorts were part of the circus setup, and circuses, as far as I’d ascertained from extensive research—all the hours spent watching movies and television shows—employ at any given time any number of heavily built men, possibly outfitted with crooked noses and cauliflower ears, I decided this should be our focus.

So it was with a certain measure of resolve that Dooley and I headed that way, while Brutus and Harriet, who had other opinions on how to run an investigation, went the other way, vowing to take a closer look at some of the other attractions, such as there were a hot dog stand, a funnel cake stand, a cotton candy stand, a deep-fried Twinkie stand, an ice cream stand, a jalapeno popper stand, a fried chicken stand, a lobster corn dog stand… In other words: Brutus was probably hungry, and so was Harriet.

“Do you know I’ve never been to the circus, Max,” said Dooley as we approached the area where the large and potentially dangerous circus animals were kept—the man with the cauliflower ears hopefully one of them—all of them preferably behind lock and key.

“No, me neither,” I admitted.

“Circuses really aren’t that popular anymore, are they?”

“No, I guess people nowadays favor other forms of entertainment,” I said.

“Such a pity,” he said. “Circuses are a lot of fun. With the trapeze artists and the clowns, and all the wild animals.”

We’d now arrived at the spot where the cages containing these wild animals were located, and as we walked past them, I felt pity for the poor creatures. “Lions really shouldn’t spend their time traveling around in circuses, though,” I said. “They probably would be much happier in their natural habitat.”

A particularly sleepy-looking lion now stared back at us from his cage, and opened his mouth to yawn.

“Hi, there,” I said. “My name is Max and this is Dooley. Could we perhaps have a moment of your time, good sir?”

“Sure,” said the lion. “What do you want?”

“Well, we’re actually looking for one of our humans who’s gone missing.”

The lion laughed at this.“You misplaced your human, huh? Now there’s something you don’t hear every day.”

“Yeah, he’s gone and got himself kidnapped,” I said. “So now we’re trying to find him.”

“And what does this human of yours look like may I ask?”

“Oh, he’s big and a little heavyset, with a paunch and not much hair on top of his head.”

“You’ve just described pretty much every single male over fifty that walks around this place all day,” said the lion. “So I’m afraid you’re gonna have to be more specific, cat.”

“Max,” I said. “The name is Max.”

“Uncle Alec is a cop,” Dooley specified. “He’s chief of police and is usually dressed in his police uniform, complete with a holster where he likes to keep his gun safely tucked away, and his badge on his chest, and a cap on his head, and he drives a police car, too.”

The lion smiled.“I’m afraid I haven’t seen him, fellas. But maybe ask Bella over there. She gets around more than I do.” He gestured to an elephant who was getting a nice scrub from one of her carers.

“Thanks, Mr. Lion,” I said.

“Leo,” the lion said. “And I hope you find your human. I wouldn’t like losing my own human, to be honest.”

I gave the lion a look of concern.“Do they–do they treat you well here, Leo?”