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“But she’ll want to keep on looking beautiful. Men don’t like women with wrinkles, everybody knows that. And if she gets all wrinkled and looking like an old lady, Chase will want a divorce, and then she’ll end up all alone, like Gran.”

“It’s true that for some men their affection is only skin-deep, Dooley. But lucky for us Chase isn’t one of those men. The affection he feels for Odelia is the real deal, I’m sure.”

“Are you sure?” asked my friend. “Because in General Hospital men are always cheating on their wives and their mistresses are always a lot younger than they are.”

“General Hospital isn’t a reflection of real life, Dooley,” I told him. “It’s fiction.”

“Still,” he said, musing.

In a sense he was right, of course. There is a certain group of men out there who will only date women of a certain age, and even though their own age keeps edging north, the age of their dates seems to go south. It’s a sad phenomenon, but I firmly believed that Chase wasn’t part of that small and frankly pitiful segment of the population.

“You guys,” said Odelia suddenly as she waved the little note. “What do you make of this? ‘Look no further than RP for the murder of NH.’”

“RP?” I said. “That has to be Raban Pacoccha, right? And NH is Neda Hoeppner.”

Odelia glanced in the direction of the door. That thought wrinkle was deepening, and Dooley whispered,“She’s doing it again, Max.”

“It’s a natural human response when something baffling occurs,” I said. “They frown.”

“But why? What’s the point?”

“What’s the point of any human expression? To signal an emotion to other humans.”

“But we don’t do that,” said Dooley. “We never smile, or frown, or at least not so that it messes up our fair complexion.”

“We don’t have a fair complexion, Dooley.”

“Yes, we do—only you can’t see it because of all the hair. But it’s there, Max. And in fact I think your complexion is probably even fairer than mine.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re a ginger. Everybody knows that gingers have fair skin. With freckles. Here, I’ll show you.”

And before I could stop him, he was grabbing me and trying to part my fur like the Red Sea, to show me the color of the skin beneath.

“Stop that,” I said.

“I’m just trying to prove my point!” he said.

“You’re simply pawing my face!” I cried as I tried to slap his paws away.

“But it’s there, Max. Underneath that blorange fur, you’re a pink freckled beauty!”

“I don’t care,” I said, and was now engaged in a slapping match with my best friend. Which is why we hadn’t noticed how Odelia had left the office and now returned.

“Dan says he didn’t write this note. It came in an envelope addressed to me.”

“Sent by post?” I asked immediately.

“No, slipped into the mailbox outside.”

“An anonymous letter,” I said musingly. “From someone eager to help you catch Neda’s killer.”

Dooley was now repeating the same procedure he’d applied unsuccessful to my face to my belly. “See!” he cried. “Odelia, Max is pink with tiny freckles! Like a piglet!”

“I don’t care!” I repeated.

Odelia smiled as she watched Dooley’s attempts to show me my true colors. “When you’re finished playing around,” she said finally, “could you maybe visit your friend Buster and ask him if he happened to see who delivered this message? I need to know.”

I immediately got up to do as she asked, but Dooley had stepped on my tail and was now trying to find out its color.“Pink!” he finally cried. “Pink with tiny brown freckles!”

“Lemme see,” said Odelia, now also joining the fray. And since I know when I’m beat, for the next few dreadful moments, I reluctantly subjected myself to the twin scrutiny of one human and one feline, as they tried to determine what I’d look like if I’d suddenly lost all of my fur overnight.

“You’re right, Dooley,” said Odelia finally. “Max is pink with teeny tiny freckles.” She patted my head. “Very cute, Max.”

“Thanks, I guess,” I grumbled. I hate to be manhandled, or even woman-handled.

“You really have to stop frowning, Odelia,” Dooley now said.

“Oh?” asked Odelia, frowning.

“See? You’re doing it again. It’s not good for you.”

“And why is that?”

“He thinks Chase will leave you when your face gets all wrinkled from the excessive use of your facial muscles,” I explained.

Odelia, much to her credit, burst into loud and amused laughter. She has one of those tinkling laughs, which are so nice and musical to listen to. And in spite of himself, Dooley had to laugh, too.

“You silly willy,” said Odelia, as she gave my friend a tickle under his chin. “Now off you go. I want to know who slipped me this note, and I want to know now!”

23

Dooley and I quickly crossed the street and went in search of Buster. The hair salon where his human Fido Siniawski plies his trade of divesting the population of Hampton Cove of its excess hair, is where Buster plies his own trade: which is to spy on our human counterparts and spread those rumors through our small town’s sizable cat population.

It’s one of the reasons we like Buster so much: he always has fresh gossip to share.