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I had seen that bedroom. In fact I’d slept in that bedroom only last night, as I had for all the other nights of my entire existence.

“What’s wrong with Odelia’s bedroom?” I asked.

“It’s old! And smelly!”

“It’s not smelly,” I said.

“That’s because you live there,” she pointed out. “If you’ve lived somewhere for as long as you have, you don’t smell the bad smells anymore. And that’s because you’ve gotten used to them. But to a set of fresh noses like mine and Brutus, it smells old and musty. Isn’t that right,sweetums? Doesn’t Odelia’s bedroom smell old and musty?”

“Oh, sure,” said Brutus, though he didn’t look entirely convinced.

“I think we should ask Gran to rehire that Polish builder who destroyed Marge and Tex’s house, and apply the same technique to Odelia and Chase’s place,” Harriet declared. “That way she, too, can have an entirely new house built, and then we both have bright new places to grace with our presence,” she concluded with a smile.

“I think that Polish builder is in prison right now,” I pointed out.

“So we get another one. I’m sure there are plenty of cowboy builders out there.”

“But I don’t want Odelia’s house torn down,” said Dooley. “I like the house just the way it is!”

“That’s because you’re stuck in a rut, Dooley,” Harriet said sternly. “You and Max both. And if you ask me, it’s time you got unstuck.”

“But…”

“No buts. At the very least Gran should ask this Jason to take a look at your house, too. I’m sure he’ll tell you the same thing: tear the place down and start from scratch. Out with the old and in with the new!”

“But I like the old!” I said.

She gave me a wink.“That’s becauseyou are old, Max.”

I was saved the trouble of having to think up a comeback to that, when Uncle Alec’s phone caroled out a Garth Brooks tune, and he picked up with a grunt. “Dolores?”

Immediately his expression morphed from a brother admiring his sister’s new house to that of a police chief getting down to business. “I’ll be there in five,” he said. He glanced over to Chase, his second-in-command, and growled, “There’s been a murder.”

2

We were on our way to the scene of the crime, as the vernacular goes, when we happened to come across a traffic accident. Two cars had collided, one a nice shiny Jaguar, the other a not-so-shiny old Toyota. Both drivers had apparently decided that a head-on collision was a good way to start the day, and since steam was still rising from the wrangled wreckage of the Jaguar, the accident hadn’t taken place all that long ago.

“Shouldn’t we…” Odelia began.

But Chase immediately demurred.“The others will deal with this, babe,” he said, gesturing to a bored-looking officer listening to the drivers now going head-to-head.

There is a sort of division of labor at play in police stations, you see. You have cops who handle traffic accidents, and then there are cops who handle murder investigations. And Chase Kingsley, my human’s husband, just happens to belong to that last category, aided and abetted by Odelia, local reporter for the Hampton Cove Gazette but also officiating as police consultant.

So what is my role, you ask? Well, I guess I’m the consultant’s consultant. So Chase consults with Odelia, who consults with me. I know it’s not your typical law enforcement setup, but then Hampton Cove is a small town, and small towns oftentimes have their own way of doing things, and so do we.

“So if you’re the consultant’s consultant,” said Dooley, to whom I’d been explaining all this, “what does that make me?”

“You’re the consultant’s consultant’s consultant,” said Harriet.

This had Dooley stumped for a moment, and frankly it took me a while to untangle this particular knot, too. Look, I may be a consultant’s consultant, but that doesn’t mean I’m some kind of brainiac. I’m just an ordinary cat. So what if I happen to notice stuff that my humans don’t always pay attention to? That’s just par for the course with being a feline and having a feline’s superior ears, sense of smell and twenty-twenty vision.

“So if I’m a consultant’s consultant’s consultant,” said Dooley finally, “what does that make you and Brutus, Harriet?”

Harriet smiled a fine smile.“It makes me a consultant’s consultant’s consultant’s consultant, and Brutus a consultant’s consultant’s consultant’s consultant’s consultant.”

“Oh, God,” said Brutus, shaking his head. “I think this consultant is going to be sick.”

We’d arrived at the house under investigation, and Chase parked his squad car out in front, where several more cars had already found a parking space, from the looks of things all belonging to members of Uncle Alec’s police force.