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“You know, Max, you’re a lot wiser than most humans I know, and that includes the three I just left in there.”

“Dooley, watch out!” said Max suddenly.

Dooley, who’d been walking with his head up, staring at the sky, almost bumped into a lamppost.

“Dooley, you have to look where you step,” said Odelia as she picked up the small gray cat, who was still inspecting the sky, even though he’d almost bumped his snoot into an unyielding object.

“I have to watch for the stork, Odelia,” he said. “If I don’t watch for the stork, how will he know where to find us? And then he won’t be able to deliver your babies.”

“Oh, so now it’s more than one baby already, is it?” she said with a grin at Max.

“I’m not sure,” Dooley admitted. “How many did you order?”

“Well, to be completely honest with you, I didn’t order any babies, Dooley.”

“No babies! But you have to put in your order, Odelia, otherwise how is the stork going to know what you want?”

She laughed heartily and hugged the small cat close. He was such a sweetheart.

But then they’d arrived at the police station, and it was time for more serious business: she’d decided that she wanted to visit Joshua and have another chat with him. If he really was innocent, he had to stop lying and start telling the truth.

So she dropped Dooley to the ground and walked in.

Chapter 12

Dooley and I both felt sorry for Odelia. It isn’t every day that your human is cornered by the parish priest and two of his most fervent parishioners and pretty much bullied into organizing a wedding for the entire town.

“I hope Odelia doesn’t go through with it,” I said therefore.

“But she has to have the babies, Max,” said Dooley. “She just has to.”

“I wasn’t talking about babies, Dooley,” I said. “I was referring to the wedding Father Reilly is so desperate to organize. Besides, why are you so anxious for our human to have babies anyway? She’s still young. She has plenty of time to start a family.”

“But if she doesn’t have babies now she will kick us out!”

“How so? I don’t get it.”

“Okay, so Shanille told me that women should get pregnant on their wedding night. That means that they’re blessed. If they don’t get pregnant on their wedding night, it means that something is wrong with the marriage, as the man cannot… perform?”

I had to suppress a smile at this.“I don’t think you should listen to Shanille, Dooley. Her world views aren’t always, um, an accurate depiction of reality, let’s put it like that.”

“But if Odelia doesn’t have babies immediately, she’ll be upset with Chase, and she’ll get divorced. That’s what Shanille said. If the husband can’t perform, the woman has every right to ask for a divorce, because the only purpose of marriage is to have babies, and plenty of them.”

“Okay, so let’s get this straight. According to Shanille, if Odelia doesn’t have babies immediately, she should file for divorce, as it’s a sign that Chase isn’t the right guy for her?”

“That’s what Shanille said. And she told me to look out for that stork. If I miss it, and those babies get delivered to the wrong address, Odelia will kick Chase out and get a divorce! And then she’ll be sad, and she might kick us out, too! Because we like Chase so much,” he added quietly.

“Look, Dooley, this is all just a lot of baloney. Please don’t listen to Shanille. If she tells you a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense, you ask me first before you go start believing her, okay?”

“So… was she lying, Max? Was Shanille lying when she told me that Chase needs to perform or else? And what does she mean by that?”

“Um…”

“I asked her if she meant that Chase had to sing for Odelia. You know, perform a song? Or maybe a dance? And she looked at me and shook her head and walked off. So now I still don’t know what she meant.”

“Well, you called it, Dooley,” I said. “When a couple gets married the husband has to perform a song and a dance. And if they do it right, they’ll make their brides very happy.”

Dooley smiled.“I’m sure that Chase did a great job. I’ve heard him sing and he’s aces.”

Chase is a wonderful human being, a great cop, and an amazing partner to our human, but what he is not is a singer. In fact Chase can’t sing if his life depended on it. And I’ve never seen him dance, but somehow I don’t think he’s aces in that department either. But if Dooley was happy to think that he was, good for him. I wasn’t going to rob him of that particular illusion.

“You keep watching out for that stork, Dooley,” I said therefore. “But if it doesn’t arrive soon, I don’t want you to worry, all right? Stork or no stork, Odelia loves Chase, and I’m sure that he loves her, too. So there is no danger of divorce in their near future.”

“That’s good to know, Max,” my friend said earnestly, “cause Shanille really had me worried there for a minute.”

And since Odelia was such a wonderful human, we decided to give her a helping paw by spying on Uncle Alec, who, for some reason I couldn’t quite fathom, didn’t seem as eager as usual to share information with his favorite niece.