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“I couldn’t have done it without you, Odelia,” I said. Which was absolutely true.

“We make a great team, don’t we, buddy?”

“Yes, we do.”

Suddenly Dooley raised his eyes, and started saying,“Shoo! Shoo! We don’t want you here, stork! Shoo!”

“That’s not a stork, Dooley,” I said. “That’s a pigeon.”

“Oh, phew,” he said, and sank down onto the porch swing again, not meeting Odelia’s eye.

“Dooley, for the last time, Chase and I are not going to start a family just yet. Okay?” She gave him an extra cuddle. “You guys are my family. And right now you’re all I need.”

And wasn’t that the best endorsement any cat could hope to get from their human?

Dooley leaned over to me and whispered,“Do you think I should take down that ‘Stork, go home!’ sign now, Max?”

“Yeah, I think that’s probably a good idea, Dooley,” I whispered back.

33. PURRFECT RUSE

Chapter 1

Look, don’t get me wrong: I enjoy a murder even less than the next cat, even though it isn’t necessarily my own species who’s affected by this tragic loss of life. But when the only cases coming Odelia’s way are spouses wanting to catch their other spouses in the act of cheating on those selfsame spouses—the first spouses, not the second ones, if you see what I mean—life becomes pretty dull and monotony soon reigns supreme.

Dooley, though, didn’t seem to mind all these people being cheated upon—or is it cheated on—from finding their way into Odelia’s office. But then again, Dooley watches a lot of daytime soaps, and eighty percent of the storylines on these soaps are exactly the cheating kind of stuff. The other twenty percent isprobably illegitimate children suddenly popping up out of the blue, which frankly speaking is the same thing.

So it was with a sigh of relief that I greeted the next person entering our human’s office at the Hampton Cove Gazette. She was a large woman with red-rimmed eyes, clearly suffering from some acute or life-threatening trouble. Immediately I assumed murder, which just goes to show how warped my mind has become after having spent the formative years of my life in Odelia’s presence and that of her cop husband, her cop uncle and her neighborhood watch grandma. And it was with bated breath that I pricked up my ears as the woman took a proffered seat and launched into her tale of woe.

“My Chouchou has gone missing,” she lamented.

“Murder,” I told Dooley, my friend and housemate who was lounging right next to me in the cozy little nook of the office Odelia had reserved for us. “Just you mark my words, Dooley. Chouchou is this woman’s husband and he’s been brutally butchered.”

“Strange name for a husband,” said Dooley.

“Who is Chouchou?” asked Odelia, not missing a trick. She had looked up from her computer where she’d been busily typing up a report of her recent visit to the town library, where a recital by some local children’s orchestra had taken place.

“My sweet baby,” said the woman, sniffling and pressing a Kleenex to her eyes.

“Not a husband, a kid,” I corrected my earlier statement. “Bad business, Dooley. A child killer on the loose.”

“Strange name for a kid,” was Dooley’s opinion.

“And when did Chouchou go missing?” asked Odelia.

“Last night,” said the woman, waving a distraught hand in the general direction of the street. “She usually goes out at night but by the time I get up in the morning she’s always lying at the foot of the bed, sleeping peacefully. Only this morning she wasn’t there!”

“Does your daughter always sleep at the foot of the bed?” asked Odelia with a curious frown. It isn’t up to her to judge people, so she never does, but she couldn’t hide her surprise at this strange way to spend a night.

“Oh, but Chouchou isn’t my daughter,” said the woman. “She’s my little gii-ii-ii–rl!”

“So is Chouchou a… dog?” Odelia guessed.

The woman promptly stopped wailing, and gave Odelia a look of surprise.“Of course she’s not a dog. She’s my precious sweetheart. My sweet and lovely Maine Coon.”

“Huh,” I said, sagging a little as a sense of slight disappointment swept over me. Cats going missing is not exactly the kind of case I live for. Cats go missing all the time, you see, and usually they show up again within twenty-four hours, when their sense of adventure is sated and they return, utterly famished and happy to be home again.

“So Chouchou went missing last night,” said Odelia, summing up the state of affairs succinctly. I could see that she was less than excited at the prospect of traipsing all over town in search of a missing cat. “So does Chouchou usually stay out all night?”

“She does, but like I said, she’s always back in the morning. I have no idea where she goes, and frankly I don’t care—live and let live, I say, and that goes for my pets, too.”

“Pets as in… you have more than one cat?”

“I have a gerbil,” said the woman.

“Gerbils aren’t pets,” I muttered.

“So what are they?” asked Dooley.

“Pests,” I returned.