31906844db5c02010017a90f3f2ca805

I winced at the mental image.“Yeah, exactly like that.”

“I don’t think so,” said August, “though that’s exactly what Abbey accused him of just now. They had a huge fight when she discovered him staring at those pictures. She said he was having an affair, whatever that’s supposed to mean, and that’s why he was so sad she was dead. And then he said she was full of crap and he cried some more. Humans, right? They’re so weird.”

“So did he? Have an affair with Kimberlee?”

“If Abbey said it, it must be true. She’s a sharp cookie, my mistress.”

“But you never saw him with Kimberlee, right?”

“Hey, man. I’m not my master’s keeper. I don’t know what he gets up to when I’m not around.”

“One final question. This is very important, August. Do you think someone may have murdered Kimberlee? Your master, maybe? Or your mistress?”

The Chihuahua stared at me with his big brown eyes. I could tell this was a tough one.“Murdered her? But I thought she murdered herself?”

“It’s possible she was murdered by someone else.”

“Which is why it’s called murder,” Dooley explained.

“I know what murder is, cat,” he said.

“So? Could Abbey or her husband have killed Kimberlee?”

“Oh, sure,” said August. “Only they didn’t, did they? Cause she killed herself.”

Abbey gave the leash a yank.“Come along, August,” she snapped. Then she saw us and frowned. “Weird,” she muttered. “Now I’m seeing cats.”

Then she walked off, her little doggie tripping behind her.

“See ya later, cats!” August cried, and then he was gone.

“That was a big flop,” I said.

“At least we have one suspect,” said Dooley. “Abbey? If her husband was having an affair with Kimberlee, she had a motive to get rid of the woman.”

“Right you are, Dooley,” I said. Dang it. Soon Dooley was going to become lead feline investigator, with me as his funny and slightly ridiculous sidekick!

Chapter 25

We returned to the house, after ascertaining there were no more canine witnesses to be interviewed, and for a moment just sat there, trying to figure out our next move. Or at least I thought about our next move, while Dooley merely stared at a giant pile of Coke cans. They were called Coke Emerald, for some reason, and appeared to be some kind of special edition.

“I wonder if the Coca-Cola Company will ever make a Coke for cats,” said Dooley.

“Personally I don’t care for the taste,” I said. “Too fizzy.”

“Yeah, they should probably invent a fizzy-less Coke if they want to appeal to the feline demographic.”

“Or you could open a can and leave it out for a couple of hours. That takes care of the fizziness.”

We shared a glance.“Yuck,” we said simultaneously.

I’d tried Coke once, when Uncle Alec, in exuberant mood, had first let me have a sip of beer—double yuck—and then a sip of Coke. Ugh. No way.

“They say Coke can turn a rusty nail into a regular nail,” said Dooley. “So if a human has a rusty nail in his stomach, and drinks a lot of Coke, it will eventually turn into a regular nail.”

“Why would a human swallow a rusty nail?”

“Beats me,” said Dooley, “but that’s what I heard Tex tell Marge once.”

Humans. They’re so weird.

We moved through the house, and up the stairs. My immediate goal was to talk to Kimberlee’s dog Stevie, the one who’d been in the room with her when it happened. If anyone would know what went down, it was him.

Thinking logically, Stevie would be in the custody of Kimberlee’s boyfriend, who presumably would have been given a different room. We stood at the top of the stairs and stared down the long hallway. There were a lot of rooms, and of course they all had their doors closed.

“We’ll have to play this by ear,” I said.

“Whose ear?” asked Dooley.

“Any ear. We need to improvise.”

“Don’t we always?”

We did. It’s nice to be able to tell people you have some kind of plan when you’re working a case, but the fact of the matter is that your true sleuth mostly relies on his gut. And since I had the largest gut, I usually got to decide.

So I put my ear against door after door, then sniffed the floor hard. You may not know this, but cats have amazing sense of smell, and hearing—a lot more powerful than any human. And that’s what I was putting to work for me now: we needed to find this pooch and by golly we were going to find him.

“I think he’s in here, Max,” said Dooley. “I smell pooch.”

“I smell pooch, too,” I said. “Let the games begin.”

And we both started meowing at the top of our lungs. Anyone familiar with our capacity for yowling knows it can be both piercing and extremely annoying. It didn’t take long, therefore, for the door to be yanked open and a wiry-looking human with a tan face to appear. He first looked left and then right, before finally looking down. Classic mistake. By the time he looked down, we’d already slipped between his legs and into the room.

Dooley and I spread out, in search of the mutt Stevie.

“Got him!” said Dooley from the other room.