04b1ef9c60873c444a27c4afd3197be1

In the distance, she heard sirens, and she knew that soon the entire police force of Hampton Cove would descend on the Buschmann house. The Duffers’ secret was out…

“Do you think this is a new concept?” asked Max. “Or have they been adding human and cat meat to their famous sausages all this time?”

“I don’t know, Max,” said Odelia, who couldn’t imagine anyone would do such a thing. And to think Gran had feasted from these Duffers, and so had her mom and dad. And then she remembered she’d taken a bite herself, and was suddenly sick to the stomach.

“Oh, look,” said Dooley. “The ingredient list for the Proprietary Duffer Mix.”

He was pointing to the bottom of the document she’d dropped to the floor.

She nodded absently, still fighting to keep down the contents of her stomach.

“What is MDMA, Max?” asked Dooley, reading from the list.

“What?!” cried Odelia, picking up the document again. And there it was, at the bottom of a long list of harmless ingredients like onion, garlic, wine, vinegar, pepper and salt: MDMA. Also known as XTC.

“So that’s why everyone loves those Duffers so much,” she muttered.

Against the back wall of the control room a glass-door display fridge had been placed, and when she saw the box of Duffers inside she got up and opened the door with shaking hands, taking one out of the box. She turned it over in her hands. No mention of human or cat meat, of course, or MDMA. How had the Duffers gotten away with this for so long?

She needed fresh air. So she staggered down the few steps from the control room, then into the loading dock and up the ramp. She took out her phone and called Chase.

He picked up at the first ring.

“You’ll never know what I just discovered,” she said.

“Yes, I caught those guys, thanks for asking,” said Chase, sounding energized. Nothing like a good car chase to put the pep in a police officer.

“Do you want to know the secret ingredient of the Duffer?”

“The Duffer? You mean the sausage?”

“Colin and Chris Duffer had a meat processing plant constructed right underneath the Buschmann house, probably figuring no one would ever look there. And do you know why they kidnapped all those cats?”

There was silence at the other end while Chase processed this, then said, in a low voice.“No way…”

“Five percent cat meat and one percent human meat.”

“Human meat!”

“And a few scoops of MDMA.”

“XTC? For real?”

“You better get over here. Oh, and Chris Duffer just made a run for it in a gray Mercedes, so you’ll have to track him down, too.”

“I’ll get on it right away,” he promised. “And I’ll tell the coroner to get out there, too. If they used human meat, we need to find out who those victims were, and where their remains are buried.” He paused. “If there are any remains left, of course.”

“This is worse than I imagined, Chase.”

“Hang in there, babe. I’m on my way.”

Max and Dooley had joined her as they walked up along the ramp.

“I think Alka-Seltzer sales will go through the roof the next couple of days,” said Max.

“And a lot of Duffers will be dumped into the garbage disposal,” said Dooley.

“Oh, God. You’re right, Dooley!” said Odelia, and took out her phone again. This time she called Dan. After she’d told him the story, and given him time to digest it, she said, “Can you put an alert on the website for people to bring all of their Duffers to the police station? I think they’ll want to examine them.”

“Will do,” said Dan. “This is a real horror story you just told me, Odelia,” he added, sounding entirely too happy, then promptly hung up to start working on the story.

They’d arrived above ground, where the ramp led straight to a short exit road.

“Clever,” she said. The ramp, and as a consequence the exit and entrance to the factory, was well-hidden from the neighboring houses, and if the Duffers were smart about it, they could have limited transportation to the wee hours of the morning, and kept the production facility concealed from nosy neighbors, or the authorities.

“Devious,” Max corrected her.

“I think we better get back to the house. This is going to be a long day, you guys.”

“And a long night.”

She crouched down and held up her hand. Two paws immediately followed suit, and the three of them high-fived.“Well done,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for you…”

“We didn’t do much this time,” said Dooley. “We got caught, escaped, then got caught again, and escaped again. The real hero is Clarice. She busted everyone out of that place.”

“I’m going to buy her a big slice of…” She grimaced. “Have you ever considered becoming vegetarians?”

Two pairs of cat’s eyes stared back at her with abject horror.

“I guess not. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m never eating meat again.”

Epilogue

“Yuck,” said Harriet. “I’m never eating meat again. Ever! Never, never, never!”

“Yeah, you say that now,” said Brutus soothingly.

“Cats have to eat meat,” said Dooley. “It was on the Discovery Channel. We’re carmovores.”

“Carnivores,” I corrected him.

“That’s what I said. Carmovores. Which means we have to eat meat or we get sick and die.”