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“It’ll be fine,” I assured him. “We’re not going to crash. These pilots have brought us this far, and I’m sure they’ll land this bird nice and easy.”

He nodded, looking strained.“But what if we lose a wheel, Max? It happens. Or an engine? These wheels and engines have a habit of falling off for no good reason at all.”

“Nothing is going to fall off. No wheels and no engines. Just stay calm and this will all be over with before you know it.”

For some reason Brutus was grinning at me.“What?” I said. “What’s so funny?”

“You,” he said. “You look like a sausage in that harness. All strapped in like that.”

I gave him my best supercilious look. Brutus is a dear friend, but he has a tendency to be crass.“I’ll have you know that I am not a sausage,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be so touchy, Max,” said Harriet. “It’s a big advantage, you know.”

“What is?”

“Being fat! All those layers of blubber will protect you if the plane goes down.”

“Max?” said Dooley. “I don’t like all this talk about planes going down.”

“First of all, I’m not fat—I’m big-boned. And secondly, this plane isn’t going down. We’re perfectly safe.”

“I wish I had those layers of lard,” said Brutus with a touch of wistfulness. “To protect me when this plane turns into a big fireball and falls from the sky like a burning rock.”

“Max?” said Dooley, a note of panic in his voice.

I gave him what I hoped was a look of reassurance, though to be quite frank I was starting to feel a little worried, too. The word picture Brutus was painting about fireballs and burning rocks greatly perturbed me.

“Promise me one thing, Max,” Brutus said with a sigh.

“What?”

“Never change. Never stop being a fatty.”

I drew myself up to my full height, which was a little hard, as I was indeed strapped in like a sausage.“I’ll have you know that I am not a—”

Just then, the plane listed, and the humans all yelped in distress.

“—Mayday!” a voice over the intercom suddenly crackled.

“Max!” Dooley cried. “This is it! We’re going down!”

Chapter 4

“This is Captain Mayday,” the voice over the intercom repeated. “And I’m happy to announce that we’re about to land at Van Nuys Airport. The weather is a balmy eighty degrees and the sun is still out in full force. I hope you enjoyed your flight, and on behalf of myself and my crew I’d like to wish you a great time out west.”

“I think the cats panicked there for a moment,” said Chase, glancing back to what he’d called the kids’ corner before.

Odelia had switched seats, since there was only so much of her grandmother’s incessant nagging and needling she could stand. Clearly the old lady was in a lousy mood.

“Yeah, I don’t think they’ll ever be relaxed flyers,” she said as she darted a worried look in the direction of her feline menagerie. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought them.”

“Oh, they’ll be fine. Not as fine as dogs, of course, but as cats go, yours are remarkably able to adjust themselves to new environments. Most cats hate to travel, and they hate going any place new and unknown.”

“My cats hate to travel, too,” she said, “and they hate new places as much as the next cat, but they accept and adapt somehow.” When she saw that her cats had settled in again, after their initial fright, she turned to face forward.

“Did Opal tell you what she needed you for?” asked Chase.

“No, actually she didn’t.” She patted the armrests. “She didn’t want to tell me over the phone. She just said it was a matter of life and death, and that I couldn’t tell anyone.”

“Which is why you promptly told your entire family,” he said with a grin.

She slapped his shoulder.“Opal said it was fine! The more the merrier, she said.”

“Pity I can’t help you with the case.”

“Yeah, pity,” she agreed.

Next to Chase, Uncle Alec suddenly woke up with a loud snort, and looked around confusedly.“Are we there yet?” he asked.

“Almost,” said Odelia. “You better put on your seatbelt, Uncle Alec.”

“Uh-huh.” He yawned cavernously, then stretched. “This is the first time I’ve slept on a plane. From now on it’s just private jets for me. No more commercial flights ever.”

“Yeah, me, too,” said Chase. “This is a damn sight better than whatever the mayor’s secretary had booked us on.”

Chase and Uncle Alec had been scheduled to attend a conference in Los Angeles on‘Policing Communities in the Twenty-First Century.’ They hadn’t been particularly eager to go, but it had been the mayor’s idea that his most senior officers should attend more trainings, seminars and conferences from now on. Uncle Alec thought it was a waste of time and money, but the mayor was the boss, so off they went.

“Maybe you could stay at Opal’s guesthouse along with the rest of us?” Odelia said.

“No can do,” Alec grunted. “The airplane tickets were refundable, but the hotel isn’t, and the mayor would blow a gasket if I told him we were going to stay at Opal Harvey’s place instead of at the hotel.”

“Besides, the conference is at the same hotel,” said Chase. “And Opal lives on the other side of town.”