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And while cat choir whipped itself up into a frenzy over this amazing opportunity, Dooley and I took a seat underneath the jungle gym and decided to take a load off. It had been a busy day, with not much opportunity for our usual nap. From the moment Neda’s body had been discovered by her faithful secretary, it had been one interview after another, and even though we may be experienced sleuths by now, we’re also cats, and cats need their nap time—preferably the whole eighteen hours of it!

“What do you think about this concert, Dooley?” I now asked as I placed my head on my front paws and let my eyes droop closed.

“I think it’s going to be great,” said my friend. “Though I’m not sure if Hampton Cove is ready for a cat choir concert.”

He eyed the shoe that had recently been thrown in our direction. It was a Nike shoe, though it had seen better days. No one ever throws new Nikes at us, only the old ones they don’t need anymore.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Well, we may think we’re good, but humans judge things by different standards, don’t they?”

“They most certainly do.”

“And frankly I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”

Harriet, who was over the moon with joy, now decided this was a good moment to sing one of her signature arias. It mainly consisted of a long caterwaul, which began quite modestly enough, in the lower register, then rose in ever-modulated intensity to the mid-range of her powerful voice, to end on a high note, one of those screeches that have the capacity to break glass, which luckily wasn’t available there in the park.

Promptly a large shoe came flying in her direction and hit her squarely in the snoot. It was one of Kanye West’s shoes, I saw. One of those weirdly-shaped Yeezys.

“Expensive shoe,” I commented as Harriet shook her head and scrabbled into an upright position again. “Two hundred bucks at least.”

“See what I mean, Max?” said my friend as Harriet resumed her practice, undaunted like a real diva should. Mariah Carey probably has been the target of many a Yeezy early in her career, and so has C?line, or even Whitney. And did it stop them? No, it didn’t.

“Yeah, I see what you mean, Dooley. Hampton Cove isn’t ready for cat choir taking the big stage, I’m afraid. But who’s going to listen to us?”

“Nobody.”

“So we’ll just relax and see what happens.” Which you might say is my motto in life.

“I was still thinking about Bonnie and Clyde, Max,” Dooley said now.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’m starting to think that maybe Yoko is innocent after all.”

“And why do you think that?”

“Because Odelia found another witness who confirmed that Yoko was at the restaurant all morning. One of the customers.”

“Pity,” I said. “She sounded like a good suspect.”

“It’s hard, isn’t it, Max?”

“What is?”

“Well, here we are, trying to find out what happened to poor Neda, and these suspects, they just keep slipping through our paws like so much sand on the beach.”

I grinned.“I didn’t know you were a poet, Dooley.”

“No, but it’s true, isn’t it? It’s frustrating, Max, that’s what it is.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” I said as my eyes now drifted closed again. “You just have to keep going, and going, and going, and sooner or later you’ll get where you need to be.”

“If you say so,” said my friend, sounding a little dejected.

I opened my eyes again and regarded him sternly.“Don’t you go losing heart now, you hear? There’s still plenty of suspects, and we’re not giving up until we’ve nailed that one suspect that we can actually connect to this crime in a satisfactory manner.”

“Okay, Max,” he said, and regarded me quizzically. “You never get discouraged, do you? How do you do it?”

“I don’t know,” I said with a slight shrug. “I guess I’m like a pit bull that way.”

“A pit bull?”

“Yeah, they don’t give up either, do they? Once they’ve sunk their teeth into the seat of someone’s pants, they don’t let go.”

Dooley swallowed.“I don’t think I like that comparison, Max.”

He was right, of course. Comparing myself to a dog? Not done for a fine upstanding member of Hampton Cove’s feline community. Then again, maybe I do have a touch of the canine in me. That pit bull quality your good detective needs. But then I dozed off. Okay, so I’m a pit bull who likes to nap. Where else do you think I get my strength from?

18

We arrived home after a wild night out—at least Harriet and Brutus had enjoyed an exhilarating night—when we discovered much to our surprise that a light was playing in the empty house that belongs to Marge and Tex. A light indicating that a presence was at the house where no presence was supposed to be!

So immediately we snuck around to the window and hopped up onto the windowsill, which is now much closer to the ground, on account of the fact that when the house needed to be rebuilt, the Pooles decided to go for less brick and a lot more glass. I guess they’ve listened to that old song ‘Let the Sunshine In’ and decided to heed its message.

We glanced inside, and suddenly Brutus said,“Hey, isn’t that Gran’s fruitcake?”

“You mean her interior decorator,” I corrected him.