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“What about humans?” asked Harriet. “Are they karmaboars, too?”

“Carnivores,” I muttered as I let my gaze drift across the backyard.

“I guess. I’m not sure, though,” said Dooley.

“Oh, they didn’t showthat on your Discovery Channel, did they?” Harriet said, getting a little worked up. “They didn’t say that humans eat cats! And little boys and fat police chiefs!”

“Would you call Uncle Alec fat?” I said.

We all fastened our eyes on Odelia’s uncle.

“He is a little pudgy around the middle,” said Brutus. “Which is probably why those crooks chose him to be turned into a sausage.”

“Come, come, Brutus,” I said. “They were never going to turn Uncle Alec into a sausage, or any of those other prisoners, for that matter.”

“I know that’s what those Duffers told the police, but I don’t believe one word they’re saying,” said Harriet stubbornly.

“Well, I do,” I said. “And lab tests bear out their version of the story as well.”

“Lab tests can be manipulated.”

“Of course they can,” I said, not wanting to get into an argument with Harriet when she was like this.

“They should never have moved production of the Duffer from Romania to the US,” said Brutus. “If they hadn’t, none of this would have happened.”

“They would have kept on putting dead Romanians in our sausages!” Harriet said.

Abe Cornwall, the county coroner, had conducted several tests and the Duffers that were sold through the Duffer Store did indeed contain human flesh, but the Duffers had explained they used to buy up bodies from local Romanian morgues and hospitals and used those in their sausages. They also bought up cat cadavers from local vets. In fact they’d established such solid relations with their suppliers over the years they’d even had a town called after them in Grandpa Duffer’s birth country. But since Romania had joined the EU, laws had become a lot stricter, and food safety had become an issue, as had the crackdown on rampant corruption. So much so that they’d run out of cadavers at some point—the real reason for the sudden lack of Duffers—and had to find a solution.

So they’d decided to move production to the US and had made a deal with the Cosa Nostra to take over their dead. Instead of burying their enemies in concrete or dumping them in the East River, the mobsters were to put them on ice and sell them to the Duffers by the pound. And as far as cats was concerned, with seventy-five million cats, the US is the country with the largest cat population in the world, so supply wasn’t an issue.

“Is it true they added dog meat to the Chinese Duffer?” asked Brutus.

“It would appear so,” I said. “The Chinese were apparently crazy about the Duffer.”

“I can’t believe the chances they took,” said Brutus. “They should have known that people would go to the police when their cats started to go missing.”

“Yeah, well, they were under tremendous pressure. They needed fresh Duffers and they needed them quick. Demand was increasing by leaps and bounds but production in Romania had ground to a halt, and if they couldn’t deliver soon, their customers might go to the competition and they would have missed a golden opportunity.”

“I thought they said every Duffer was handmade? Here in the US?” said Brutus.

“That’s the story they told their customers. In actual fact the Duffers have always been made in a factory in Romania, ever since the first Duffer was put inside its casing.”

“I still can’t believe how anyone could do such a thing,” said Harriet.

In the backyard, the party was in full swing, though it wasn’t much of a party. After the events of the past week, the entire Poole family had decided to go vegetarian. So no more sausages, or steaks, or ribs. From now on only tofu was on the menu, and lentils. And as Uncle Alec stared morosely into his dish of lentils, he didn’t look happy.

The FDA had swept down on Hampton Cove, and the attention the whole case had garnered had really put the spotlight on our small community. The Duffer was national news, and camera crews roamed the streets, eager to interview Duffer fans.

The scandal had forced Mayor Turner to step down, as well as the secretary of agriculture, and the head of the FDA. In fact the Duffer had caused a lot of heads to roll.

Anti-meat activists and representatives from animal rights organizations had also swept down on Hampton Cove, and our town had become the center of attention. Chief Alec probably would have been forced to step down, too, if he hadn’t been one of the victims, and instead had become a popular guest on late-night talk shows. He was even rumored to be the next mayor, though I had my doubts about that.

Uncle Alec loves being chief of police, and once the hubbub died down, as no doubt it would, he’d still be chief, and some whippersnapper would become the new mayor.

Uncle Alec kept pushing his lentils around his plate.

“Delicious, right?” said Marge.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, forcing a smile.

“Well, eat up. It’s good for you.”

“Uh-huh,” said Alec, and managed to swallow a whole spoon without wincing. A definite improvement.