04b1ef9c60873c444a27c4afd3197be1

“You were in there an awfully long time!”

“We were hiding from that nutjob reporter!”

“That nutjob reporter is long gone!”

“Dooley kept saying we should hide out a little longer.”

“A-ha! I knew it!”

“I thought he was still out there!” Dooley explained. “I could hear him. Breathing heavy and uttering threatening curses.”

“That was Brutus you heard, Dooley,” said Max.

“You jumped Harriet’s bones, admit it!” Brutus shouted.

“No, I didn’t!” Dooley shouted back.

“Oh, you’re almost as bad as my boyfriends,” said Gran. “Dumb as rocks.”

“Can you please get us out of this tree, Gran?” asked Max.

“Do you want me to break my neck? Lemme go get some hero to fish you out of that damn tree. And next time use your heads before you pull a stunt like that.”

“Don’t leave us!” Brutus yelled, his plight suddenly more pressing than his petty jealousies.

“Don’t worry!” she yelled. “I’ll be back!”

She hurried back to the cottage, where the same burly guard cocked an eyebrow.“Had a nice walk, Ma’am?”

“My cats are stuck in a tree. Can you get them down?”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am. I can’t leave my post.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said, and headed into the house.

“My cats are stuck in a tree,” she told Dante, who was pacing the living room. “Can you get them out?”

“What are you talking about?” he said, none too friendly, she thought.

Oh, had everyone lost their damn minds?“My cats!” she yelled, figuring all that inbreeding had turned the moron deaf. “They’re stuck! In a tree!”

When he simply stared at her, she threw up her arms. She was starting to see that being queen wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. The woman’s grandson was obviously a brainless boob, her other grandson an even bigger numbskull, and the rest of the family probably wasn’t any better. No wonder she preferred the company of a bunch of dogs over her nearest and dearest.

There was only man who could help her. One man in the whole universe. And it wasn’t Superman, or Batman, or Spiderman or any of those chumps.

“Chase!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Chase Kingsley!”

The man of the hour arrived, looking cool as a cucumber as usual.

“Gran?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Max and Brutus,” she said. “They’re stuck in a tree. Can you…”

He held up a hand.“Say no more.”

Odelia now also came walking in from her bedroom.“What’s going on?”

“The cats need saving,” said Chase.

A resolute look stole over Odelia’s face. “Lead the way,” she said.

And Gran led the way. On the walk over, she explained the predicament, including the horrible role played by that vile reporter. When they arrived in the clearing, Max and Brutus were now clinging to each other, looking scared.

Chase put his hands to his mouth to form a makeshift megaphone and shouted,“Max! Brutus! Hang on! I’m coming to get you!”

“Yes, please, Chase!” Max yelled, a quiver in his voice.

“Oh, please, Chase!” Brutus said, a similar quiver in his voice.

Obviously the black cat had been chastened by his stay in the tree.

And before Gran and Odelia’s eyes, not to mention Harriet and Dooley, Chase climbed that tree as if he’d never done anything else in his life.

“Be careful, honey,” said Odelia, nervously biting her lip.

“Be back in a jiffy,” the hero cop announced.

And he was. He climbed that tree as if it was the boardwalk, transferred the two cats onto his broad shoulders, and then came climbing down again.

“Damn,” said Gran when he placed Brutus in her arms and Max in Odelia’s. “You are something else, Chase, and I don’t say that lightly.”

“Oh, honey, you’re a hero,” said Odelia.

Max and Brutus, who were staring at the man adoringly, were too emotional for speech, but Dooley said it best when he spoke those historic words:“Chase is the greatest thing to hit this family since sliced bread.”

Chapter 33

That night, after everyone retired for the night, Gran was the only one still up. She looked a little sad, I thought, which worried me. She was on the sofa, channel-surfing and sipping from a glass of sherry, the sound of the TV muted so as not to disturb the rest of the house, with only Dooley and I to keep her company. Harriet and Brutus had had a reconciliation, and were somewhere outside, frolicking like a couple of frolicking honeymooners.

“What’s wrong, Gran?” I asked after she’d been watching a man with big ears trying to teach a cat to jump through hoops. “Aren’t you feeling well?”

“If you must know, I’m sad, Max,” she said.

“Sad? But why? Suzy’s been caught. Tessa is safe, and all’s well that ends well.”

“That’s just it. All’s well that ends well but no thanks to me—as usual. It seems to me that other people are always the hero and I’m the wild card.”

“The wild card?”

“The fool. The silly sidekick who gets the funniest lines but plays a minor part. I thought coming to England I could be the hero for once, you know.”

“I thought you wanted to be queen?”

“That was just an idea. I should have known it wasn’t gonna fly. Oh, why do I get these crazy ideas and then create trouble for everyone around me?”