“Max!” suddenly a voice called out from the door.
I glanced over. It was Dooley, my best friend and wingman. Whereas I am of big-boned stock, with blorange fur, Dooley is a gray ragamuffin and considerably slighter. At the moment he was looking troubled. Now the thing you need to know about Dooley is that he always looks troubled. He is what you would call a worrier. But right now he was looking even more worried and troubled than usual.
“I know,” I said. “I don’t like it either.”
“It’s terrible!” he cried. “How long has this been going on?”
“Weeks. Months. I don’t know. One day everything is fine, and then suddenly. Boom. Your life is turned upside down. It’s not fair is what it is. Not fair to spring this on us.”
“You’ve had it for months?” he asked, joining me on the bed. For some strange reason the box spring only kicks back when I try to land on it. Dooley, on the other hand, landed gracefully on all fours and gave me a look of concern. “You should have told me.”
“I did tell you. I’ve been telling you all the time. I’ve done nothing but tell you.”
“Where is it?” he asked, glancing down at the itch I was currently trying to remedy.
I gestured with my tail to the bathroom. “In there.”
He glanced over, a puzzled look on his furry face. “Huh?”
“He’s in there! God’s gift to women is taking a shower, acting as if he owns the place, can you believe it? I swear to Sheba, Dooley, that man is moving in.”
Dooley blinked. “You were talking about Chase?”
“Weren’t you?”
In response, he raised his hind paw and started scratching furiously behind his right ear. “No. I. Was. Not,” he said between grunts and scratches. The itch finally abated and he added, panting slightly, “I was talking about these terrible itches. These horrible, annoying itches. They started up last night and I can’t seem to get rid of them.”
“Itches? You have itches?”
“I have—and so do you. And so, for that matter, do Brutus and Harriet.”
“That’s not good.”
“It’s bad, Max,” he said, his whiskers puckering up into an expression of extreme concern. “Do you think we caught some kind of disease? Do you think…” He swallowed visibly and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do you think… we’re going to… die?”
I groaned. “We’re not going to die, Dooley. It’s just an itch. It will pass.”
He flapped his paws a bit. “But we all have them, Max!” His eyes widened to the size of saucers. “It’s a virus! A virus that will wipe out the entire feline population!”
We’d watched a movie called Contagion the other night with Odelia and Chase. It was about Gwyneth Paltrow who shakes hands with a chef in Hong Kong and dies and pretty soon everyone else also dies except for her husband Matt Damon who doesn’t die. It was horrible. I kept my paws in front of my eyes the entire time. Can you imagine even Kate Winslet died? After surviving that whole Titanic thing she goes and dies from some silly little virus. And now every time someone coughs Dooley thinks they are going to die, too.
“But Brutus and Harriet have it, too, and I’ll bet soon every cat in Hampton Cove will have it, and then it will spread to New York and the country and the world!” He gave a hiccup and grabbed my paw, which hurt, as he neglected to retract his claws. “We’re all gonna die!”
Just in that moment Chase walked in from the bathroom and we both looked up. He had a towel strapped around his private parts and was toweling his long hair. He reminded me of that movie Tarzan we’d seen with that vampire from True Blood. I know, we watch a lot of television in this house. And you thought cats didn’t watch TV. Huh. Think again.
“Oh, hey, Dooley,” said Chase, spotting my friend sitting next to me. Then he grinned and shook his head. “I’m doing it again. Talking to a bunch of cats. I must be going loco.”
Like a pair of synchronized swimmers, both Dooley and I raised our hind paws and started scratching ourselves behind the left ears, then the right ears, then under the chin.
Chase stopped rubbing his scalp with the towel and gave us a look of concern.
“Well, what do we have here?” he muttered.
He sat down on the bed, and for some reason began inspecting me, checking my fur here and there, carefully parting my blorange hair to look at that nice pink skin underneath. Then he subjected Dooley to the same procedure. Finally, he sat back, and glanced at a smattering of red spots on his ankle and nodded knowingly. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Suddenly something jumped from my neck onto the bed. Something small and black.
Quick as lightning, Chase caught it between his fingernails, and studied it for a moment, before mashing it to bits, his face taking on a serious expression. He then gave me and Dooley a long look of concern, not unlike a father about to give his daughter The Talk.
Oh, yes. I’ve seen movies where fathers give their daughters The Talk. But Chase wasn’t my father, and I’m not his daughter, so why would he give me The Talk?
I braced myself for the worst, and judging from Dooley’s claws digging into my skin, so did he.
“I hate to be the one to tell you this.” Chase spoke earnestly and with surprising tenderness lacing his rumbling baritone. “But you guys got fleas.”
Dooley and I shared a look of confusion. “Fleas?” I asked. “What are fleas?”
Dooley was quaking where he sat. “It’s the virus! It’s what killed Rose from Titanic!”
“Now, this is nothing to be concerned about,” Chase continued gently, almost as if he could actually understand what Dooley was saying. “I’ll tell Odelia and she’ll take care of this straightaway.” He patted my head again—another one of those awkward prods—and smiled. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And fleas have never killed anyone. I think.”
Dooley, who was on the verge of a full-scale panic attack, wailed, “We won’t die?”
“Didn’t you listen to the man?” I asked. “Fleas are going to make us stronger.”
Another itch suddenly plagued me, and I reached with my hind paw to remedy it. But Chase beat me to the punch. He dove right in, and soon was extracting another one of those jumpy little bugs from my skin, mashing it to pieces between his fingernails.
Both Dooley and I stared at the guy like a pair of hobbits staring at Gandalf the Wizard. “He saved you, Max,” said Dooley reverently. “He killed the killer bug.”
“It’s not a killer bug, Dooley,” I said.
“He killed the killer bug with his bare hands.”
“I’m telling you it’s not a killer bug.”
“He saved you. Chase saved you from the killer bug. He’s a hero.”
“It’s not a killer bug and Chase is not a hero!”
But I had to admit that maybe—just maybe—I’d misjudged Odelia’s boyfriend.
The man was a genuine hero. The fiercest fleaslayer the world had ever known.
Chapter 3
Back at the hotel Odelia was prepared for the worst when she followed her uncle up to the second floor of the Hampton Cove Star. Downstairs, the secondary crime scene had been sealed off from prying eyes by a screen, and techies from the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s office were busily scratching their heads as they stared down at Burt’s head.
Upstairs, the hotel manager, an obsequious little man with a clean-shaven face and shifty eyes, led the way to the room where the tragedy had taken place. Odelia’s uncle Alec Lip, Hampton Cove’s chief of police, hiked up his gun belt, while Odelia and a few more boys and girls in blue followed in the big man’s wake.