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She placed her hand over the phone and addressed her friend, who now stood pressing her legs together awkwardly in an attempt to hold her pee.“You better start putting out that fire while I try to explain to Dolores what’s going on here.”

“Put out that fire? I’m not a fire putter-outer kinda girl, Vesta.”

Vesta crooked an eyebrow.“You need to pee, right? Well, better get started.” And as Scarlett gave her an eyeroll, she grinned.

Just then, she saw the curtains move at one of the houses located directly across the street from the crack house. And as she watched, the face of a woman briefly appeared, then disappeared into the shadows again.

Looked like they weren’t the only ones keeping an eye on things.

Chapter 7

In spite of the fact that Shanille had told us we weren’t welcome anymore at cat choir, the four of us decided to defy her outrageous dictum and go anyway. After all, who was Shanille to decide we couldn’t join the biggest social gathering in town?

Harriet, specifically, was outraged, as she kept referring to the whole thing asShanillegate, though I wasn’t exactly sure what she was talking about.

“What if she throws us out?” asked Dooley, who abhors physical violence of any kind.

“She can’t throw us out,” I said. “She would need the support of the entire cat choir and I’m sure they don’t feel the same way Shanille does.”

“But what if they do? What if all the cats in Hampton Cove hate us from now on?”

“I’m sure they don’t,” I assured my friend.

And so we decided to risk it, and set paw for the park that night. And I have to say that things weren’t as harrowing an experience as I’d surmised. Frankly, I’d been bracing myself on our trek over, mentally countering all the arguments Shanille might throw at us, and even testing the muscles in my right paw in case one of her lieutenants took a swing at me. Well, you know how it is. You build up this big thing in your head, and start arguing back and forth, putting words in the mouth of the party of the second part and then thinking up the best ways to cancel them out, and when it all comes down to it, the whole thing turns out to be one big nothingburger and you wasted all that mental energy for nothing.

“Look, maybe I exaggerated a little when I told you that you weren’t welcome anymore,” said Shanille as she walked up to me. “But you have to admit you played a pretty dirty game, Max.”

“But we didn’t play any game at all!” I cried, all those arguments in my head coming to the fore all at once. “Odelia felt that the wedding was too much for her, and so she decided she was better off canceling the whole thing. We were never consulted, Shanille, believe me.”

And even if we had been consulted, we would have heartily agreed with our human, as we personally had decided to skip the wedding, even though at a later stage Gran had arranged a safe spot for us, where we wouldn’t be trampled underfoot by the masses.

“I wanted to come to the wedding,” said Harriet. “Vesta had arranged with Father Reilly that we could sit out in front, right next to the altar. And I was really looking forward to having the place of honor, you know. To have a front-row seat to the thing.”

To be perfectly honest Harriet hadn’t been all that excited. Even seated out in front she’d been afraid someone was going to step on her precious tail and reduce it to mush, and frankly so had I.

Shanille stared at Harriet, her jaw having dropped a few inches.“Father Reilly did what?”

“He said we could sit out in front,” Harriet repeated, unaware of Shanille’s consternation, or maybe extremely aware and eager to rub it in. “Next to the altar?”

“But that’smy spot!” said Shanille. “I always sit out in front during Mass. Everybody knows that that spot is reserved for Father Reilly’s cat, andI’m Father Reilly’s cat. Notyou,” she added, pressing a paw into Harriet’s chest. “Me!”

“Please take your paws off me,” said Harriet, who’s very particular when it comes to her precious fur being soiled by the paws of other cats—or human hands for that matter. Well, she has a point, of course. Who knows where those paws or hands have been, right?

“You’re lying,” said Shanille.

“No, I’m not. Vesta said we could sit right next to the altar.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Yes, she did!”

“No, she. Did. Not,” said Shanille, accentuating every word with another jab in Harriet’s chest.

Harriet pressed her lips together, and I could see that something was bubbling underneath the surface. Like a volcano, this particular cat was about to explode. I would have warned Shanille, but something told me she was beyond being reasoned with.

“If you touch me one more time…” Harriet began.

“Then what?”

“I will scratch you,” said Harriet simply.

Shanille laughed a throaty laugh.“You’ll do no such thing. I’m the leader of cat choir. If you scratch me, you’re out for good.”

“I swear to God, Shanille, you do not want to see me angry,” said Harriet, in the tone she likes to adopt when she’s about to skin a person alive and boil their remains.