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Odelia looked taken aback by this outburst.“Blanche and Bella did what?” she asked.

“They locked the pet flaps,” I said. “But first they kicked us out.”

“Oh, dear,” said Odelia. “I’m sure they only did that to make sure they could clean without being disturbed.”

“You think so?” I said, not fully convinced.

“You know how jumpy you get around a vacuum cleaner, Max,” said Odelia, getting up from behind her desk and crouching down next to us. “She probably wanted to spare you the trouble of having to hide each time she turns on the machine.”

“She did turn it on and we did run and hide,” I admitted. “Straight into the bed.”

“And then Blanche came and chased us out and said cats shouldn’t be in the bed, or inside the house,” said Dooley, “and then she locked the pet flap so we couldn’t get back in.”

“I’m sure she’ll have unlocked it by now,” said Odelia with a smile as she petted us. “It doesn’t take all day to clean the house, you guys. As soon as she’s done she’ll let you in again. It’s your house too, you know. And she can’t keep you out.”

“She can’t?” I asked, a glimmer of hope returning.

“Of course not. But as long as she’s cleaning, I think it’s best if you don’t get in her way. She’s a good cleaner, with excellent references, but she strikes me as a forceful person, who doesn’t like it when cats run underfoot and make her trip and fall.”

“We would never make her trip and fall,” I said earnestly, though the thought of making Blanche trip and fall suddenly gave me the warm fuzzies when I pictured the scene. Her landing smack dab into her own bucket of sudsy soapy water? The notion actually put a smile on my face for the first time since we’d been chased out of our own home by the evil cleaner.

“See? You’re all better again,” said Odelia, noticing my smile and giving me another pat on the head. “Now run along, I have work to do. Unless you have some juicy gossip for me?” She arched a meaningful eyebrow, but I had to disappoint her. The only gossip I had was that Wilbur was dating, and that wasn’t something anyone wanted to hear.

It was with renewed fervor that we left the office. Things were looking up again. Though I have to say I was getting whiplash from the up-and-down motion my mood had been going through that day.

“I have to say I’m feeling much better, Max,” said Dooley. “Now that I know that Odelia is not going to kick us out.”

“Of course she’s not going to kick us out,” I said, the idea suddenly sounding silly even to my own ears. “Blanche is just a cleaner who comes in once a week. And being locked out of the house once a week for a couple of hours is not that bad, is it?”

“I thought Odelia said she’d hired her to come in three times a week,” Dooley said.

I stared at my friend.“Three times a week!”

“The house is very dirty,” he said. “She’ll probably have to do some of that deep cleaning that cleaners like to do. I once saw an episode of General Hospital where deep cleaning took a week. And at the end Frank Zucker, the homeowner who’d hired the cleaner, had slept with her in his ownmarital bed and nine months later she delivered two healthy baby boys, twins and heirs to the Zucker fortune. It was the season finale.”

I couldn’t imagine Chase sleeping with Blanche in Odelia’s bed and Blanche delivering twins nine months later, but it did strike me as ominous that she was going to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future at the clip of three times a week. That was a lot of pet flap locking!

And as we wended our way home, and finally arrived at our destination and moved straight inside through the pet flap, we found that the darn thing was still locked!

And when we moved next door, we found Harriet and Brutus lying in wait on the porch, and when I threw them a questioning glance, they both shook their heads.

Locked out of our own homes.

Oh, the horror!

Chapter 37

“So you want me to hit you?” asked Johnny, surprised.

“How many times do I have to explain it?” said Jerry annoyedly. “Yeah, hit me and I’ll hit you and the cops will come to break up the fight and that’s when we turn on them and escape.”

“But… I don’t want to hit you, Jer. You’re my friend and I like you.”

“You don’t have to hit me hard, Johnny. Just a light tap on the chin.”

“But I don’t know my own strength, Jer. I’ll probably hit you too hard and I don’t want that. What if you get hurt?”

“Look, we’re not really going to fight. It’s just acting, see? Like in the movies? Or did you really think those actors actually hit each other? It’s all fake!”

“Oh,” said Johnny, his face lighting up. “So I just have to pretend to hit you. Now I get it.”

“Yeah! Just like in the movies!”

“I can do that!”

“Great. Let’s get this show on the road. I’ll throw the first punch, and you retaliate.”