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“Listen,” said the Chief, tapping Chase on the chest with a disconcerted finger. “I never touched the woman, all right? I was getting some fresh air when I bumped into her. She claimed she saw a zombie, but try as I might I was unable to locate said zombie, but I could tell she’d had a big scare, so I walked her and her dog Boomer home, and that’s as far as it went. I never set foot inside her house, no matter what anyone says.”

“They also claim she jumped you, buck naked, and dragged you into the bushes for some sweet nookie.”

“Oh, God!” the Chief said. “Sometimes I hate this town, Chase. I really do.”

“So zombies, huh?”

“That’s what she said. A man with a face full of sores, white as a sheet, eyes wide and scary, dressed in dirty clothes. As she described him he’d just crawled out of the grave and was now walking the streets, looking for fresh victims to feed on. He chased her around the park until she bumped into me. At which point he mysteriously vanished.”

“She hadn’t been drinking by any chance?”

“No, as far as I could tell she was stone-cold sober. Besides, I know Pamela. She doesn’t drink.” He scratched his few remaining hairs. “It’s baffling, Chase. Baffling.”

“Well, I’m sure it was just a bum who scared the bejesus out of your Pamela.”

“She’s not my Pamela!” the Chief insisted, gritting his teeth.

“Whatever you say, Chief,” said Chase, clapping the other man on the back.

“Please tell Dolores not to keep spreading these tall tales. I know she listens to you.”

“I’ll tell her. Not sure what good it’ll do, but I’ll tell her,” he assured the older man.

And as the Chief returned to his office, shaking his head and muttering strange oaths under his breath, Chase took a sip from his coffee and promptly spat it out again.

Chapter 4

The moment Odelia and Chase had left for work, we decided to go on our morning rounds and collect some stories for our human. And if I say we, I mean Dooley and myself, as Harriet and Brutus had decided to go on a different mission today, namely convincing Marge to ask as many people as possible to phone the network and put our names up for that Peppard Pet Food Miracle Cure testing program.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that Odelia is a reporter, and a lot of the stories she writes are sourced by her faithful cats. You see, we like to roam around town and listen in on conversations of unsuspecting humans, then relay those stories to Odelia.

And as is our habit, we tracked our usual route: to the police station, where there’s always stories to be found, then to the barbershop, which is also a particularly rich source, and of course past the General Store, where our friend Kingman keeps watch.

First things first, though: the police station. The thing is, even though Chief Alec is Odelia’s uncle, and therefore genetically obliged to tell her everything that goes on in his town, he tends to keep stuff to himself, even though he probably should know better.

So when we jumped up onto the windowsill outside the Chief’s office and put our ears to the window, I fully expected to discover some juicy little nuggets and tidbits.

I’d never expected the story to be quite as juicy as this, though.

“No, Madam Mayor, I’m telling you, it never happened!”

Seated in front of the Chief was Hampton Cove’s new mayor Charlene Butterwick. She was blond and pretty, looking very professional with her snazzy glasses, and I would have put her around Marge’s age. She certainly seemed more capable than the last mayor, who’d recently been arrested for a long list of crimes.

“And I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter, Chief,” said Mayor Butterwick. “It’s all about perception. If people think you did something, in their minds you did it.”

“But I never jumped the woman’s bones, and she didn’t jump mine!”

“The story I heard was that she was dancing naked under the light of the full moon, and that you couldn’t control yourself and dragged her into the bushes where you had your way with her.”

“It never happened!”

“And I’m telling you it doesn’t matter if it did or didn’t happen. This story is doing the rounds of Hampton Cove right now, whether you like it or not.”

“Oh, dear God,” said the Chief, rubbing his face. “I so don’t need this.”

“Do you think I need it? If we don’t get this situation under control we face a big problem, Chief.”

“Alec, please, Madam Mayor.”

She smiled.“Only if you call me Charlene.”

“So what do you suggest? A public statement? I could ask Pamela to come in and draw up some kind of formal—”

But Charlene was already shaking her head.“Won’t work. People will simply say she was coerced into signing a bogus statement. No, we need to find this zombie and then we might have something to go on.”

“Find what zombie?” asked the Chief miserably. “You know as well as I do that zombies don’t exist.”

“I know that, and you know that, but Pamela seems to believe otherwise, and so, I’m sure, will John Q. Public. If we can produce the zombie, and publish his statement, there’s a chance this can be contained. Otherwise…”