“Three guys, heavily built, all wearing masks when they came out of the house. But then one took off his mask, and he had a shaven head, cause it reflected the light from that lamplight over there. He looked like a real tough guy, with a crooked nose and a jutting chin. He also had cauliflower ears.”
“Excellent powers of observation, Buddy,” said Brutus appreciatively.
“Thanks. The nights get pretty lonely out here, so I like to spend them people watching.”
“Anything else?” asked Harriet.
“Well, they came out with a fourth guy, who didn’t seem to like what was going on, for he kept struggling. He had a hood over his head, and his hands were tied behind his back.”
“That was Chief Alec,” said Brutus.
“They put him in a panel van and drove off, and that’s all I know.”
“Did you catch the license plate?” asked Harriet.
“Lady, I’m not a cop, all right? I don’t care about license plates, unless my owner gives me one I can chew on. All I know is that the van was the same type of van my owner’s got. An old Ford van. Looks like a big box on wheels?”
“Color?”
“Dark green. And did I say it was an old model? You should have heard the racket that thing was making, and the fumes spewing from that exhaust!” He shook his head. “They should probably have that looked at.”
“I’ll tell them when I see them,” said Harriet laconically. “Well, Buddy,” she said, holding out a paw. “Thank you so much for the information.”
Buddy tapped her paw, then tapped Brutus’s paw, and said, “For a pair of cats you guys ain’t half bad.”
“And for a dog you ain’t so bad either,” Harriet said with a smile.
Buddy laughed. “Wait till I tell the boys that I saved their lives by helping out a couple of cats! They’ll never believe me!”
And as they turned away from Buddy, they almost bumped into… Max and Dooley, tied to leashes, and being walked by… Charlene Butterwick!
Chapter 16
I was more than a little surprised when we returned from our walk and saw none other than Harriet and Brutus suddenly showing up.
“What are you doing here?” asked Harriet.
“What are you doing here?” I countered.
“Hey, aren’t you the rest of Odelia’s cats?” asked Charlene, who’d also spotted the new arrivals.
“Gran gave us to Charlene as a present,” said Dooley sadly. “We belong to Charlene now, me and Max.”
“Are those… leashes?” asked Brutus, staring at the strange contraptions.
“And… collars?” asked Harriet.
I could have sunk through the pavement from sheer embarrassment. It’s never a pleasant experience for a cat to be seen wearing a collar, or, God forbid, a dog leash, and so I reluctantly acknowledged the fact. “Charlene isn’t familiar with cats,” I said. “She thinks we have to be walked two or three times a day, like dogs, hence the leashes.”
“And Gran has given us these collars,” Dooley explained. “She put bugs in them, though they don’t bite.”
“Bugs as in electronic listening devices,” I clarified. “She wants to listen in on Charlene, still thinking she somehow tricked Uncle Alec into marriage.”
“She put the house full of bugs, too,” said Dooley, “but she assured us they’re not the kind of bugs that will multiply like crazy and make us sick.”
“Wow,” said Harriet. “And here we thought Gran had chosen you for some cushy job. And all the while you’re more to be pitied than envied, I must say.”
“Yeah, but at least we got fed turkey,” I said a little defensively. “So there’s that.”
“And there’s plenty more where that came from,” added Dooley.
Harriet and Brutus shared a look. “I like turkey,” said Harriet.
“I love turkey,” said Brutus.
And both directed a very obvious but very effective pleading look at Charlene, who now smiled and said, “I think I’ll take you guys inside with me. You missed your friends, didn’t you? Of course you did.”
I could have told her that cats are solitary creatures who only very rarely miss their friends, but I had to admit she had a point. I had thought about what life would be like without Harriet and Brutus from now on, and it had seemed a little bleak, to be honest.
So the four of us followed the Mayor into her home, and before long we were all snacking on that delicious turkey meat, that must have cost her an arm and a leg.
“I think I know what happened to Uncle Alec,” said Harriet between two bites of the delicacy. “Buddy from across the street saw the men that took him. He says one of them had a shaven head and cauliflower ears, and they were driving an old dark green Ford van with a busted exhaust pipe. He didn’t catch the license plate but now I’m thinking: how many dark green Ford vans can there possibly be driving on these streets, right?”
“We have to tell Chase,” I said.
Only problem was: how were we ever going to talk to Chase now that we were pretty much locked up inside Charlene’s home?
“Oh, and Charlene thinks she saw Uncle Alec,” said Dooley. “Only it wasn’t Uncle Alec but someone who looked just like him but with more hair. His real name is Wolf and he was riding on a trailer next to his wife, a woman named Madame Solange.”
“Marge and Tex visited someone called Madame Solange a couple of days ago,” said Harriet. “They were pretty excited when they got home. Couldn’t stop talking about it.”
“This Solange promised they’d win the lottery,” said Brutus.
“And a Caribbean cruise,” said Harriet.
“So she’s a fortune teller,” I said with a shrug.
“What’s a fortune teller, Max?” asked Dooley.
“It’s a woman who can tell you about your future,” I said. “Though I’m not sure it’s not just a trick.”
“This Madame Solange can tell us about our future?” he asked, looking up from his close inspection of the substance on his porcelain plate.
“That’s what she claims, anyway.”
“Maybe we should go and talk to her. I would like to know about my future.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Brutus. “What if she predicts something bad? I don’t want to know something bad is going to happen to me.”
“I think I’d want to know if something bad will happen,” Harriet mused. “That way I can make sure it doesn’t happen.”
“Oh, it will happen,” said Brutus, “and not much you can do about it.”
“No, but what if she predicts, like, that I’ll be run over by a truck on April the 14th at three o’clock in the afternoon? All I have to do is stay home that day, and I’ll be fine.”
“It’ll happen some other day,” Brutus said. “You can’t cheat death, Harriet. It’ll find a way to make that prediction come true. So it’s better not to know, so you don’t worry.”
“I still say we pay a visit to this Madame Solange,” said Harriet stubbornly.
“So I’ve made the bed in the guest room for you guys,” said Charlene. “I hope that suits you. I’m sorry, but I have no idea how to take care of four cats,” she added, and then abruptly disappeared again.
“She seems a little frazzled,” said Harriet.
“Completely out of it,” said Brutus, shaking his head.
“That’s only to be expected after what she went through,” I said. “I think she should probably go and see a shrink.”
“What does a shrink do, Max?” asked Dooley.
“They shrink people’s heads,” said Brutus with a grin. “So their heads don’t bother them so much anymore.”
Dooley stared at him. “Shrink their heads! But how?”
“Well, shrinks have special machines that turn people’s heads the size of a peanut.”
“Oh, no!”
“Don’t listen to him, Dooley,” I said. “A shrink is a person who digs deep into a person’s psyche and tries to help them come to terms with certain traumatic experiences, like their boyfriends being snatched right from under their noses.”