9ddba8405c712dc705f6095a3ea49417

“When we die, are you going to have us cloned, too?”

“Why? Do you want to be cloned, Dooley?”

He paused for a moment, then said,“Can I think about it?”

“Of course you can.”

“I’ll let you know what I decide.”

“No way in hell am I getting cloned,” said Brutus. “End up like that fruitcake? No way.”

“We don’t refer to other cats as fruitcakes, Brutus,” said Odelia sternly. “That’s not nice.”

“Yeah, how would you feel if someone talked about you like that behind your back?” said Harriet.

“I wouldn’t mind because I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“Smart-ass.”

“Try to be nice to Prunella,” said Odelia. “She is your hostess.”

“Oh, all right,” Brutus grumbled, and put his head on his front paws. “But I still think she’s weird.”

“Yes, we’ve established that by now,” said Odelia, and turned to switch off her bedside lamp. She felt a little weird herself, she had to admit. It was her first night in a long time sleeping alone again, without Chase by her side, and she was already missing him.

The light clicked off and the room was plunged into darkness. Then Max suddenly said,“It’s really strange without Chase, Odelia. I miss him.”

“Yeah, I miss him, too,” said Dooley.

Harriet and Brutus agreed that they, too, keenly felt the absence of the burly cop.

“I miss him, too,” said Odelia softly, gratified that her cats liked Chase as much as she did. But then she closed her eyes and soon sleep rolled over her like a warm blanket.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Uncle Alec and Chase were also missing something—the comfort of sleeping in their own beds, for one thing.

“This is just weird,” Alec grumbled.

Next to him, Chase was feeling cramped. He was no small man himself, and lying next to the voluminous form of his superior officer in a bed that obviously wasn’t made for two grown men of outsized proportions, he found he had very little wiggle room indeed.

“I’d sleep on the couch if we had one,” he said.

“I’ll bet the mayor did it on purpose,” said Alec. “I’ll bet he told his secretary to book us the smallest room in the hotel with the smallest bed. Just to get back at us.”

“The mayor would never do such a thing. Would he?”

“Of course he would! Everybody knows the mayor hates my guts ever since I told him I didn’t want Dolores replaced by a younger, prettier specimen.”

“The mayor can’t replace Dolores. She’s the heart and soul of the precinct.”

“Exactly what I told him. You know what he said? That we need to bring the Hampton Cove police department into the twenty-first century, and the only way to do that is by getting rid of old fossils like Dolores. He said that each time he walks into the precinct he almost gets a heart attack when he sees her grouchy mug staring back at him. A pretty young face would do wonders for our image. And he even had the perfect candidate.”

“Don’t tell me. That young niece of his?”

“Exactly! He wants her to get started at reception and rise through the ranks…”

“… until she’s ready to replace you as chief.”

“You guessed it, buddy.”

“Well, it would make for a nice change to have a woman chief, Chief,” Chase said with a grin.

“Over my dead body, son.”

“Pardon my French, but you sound like an old fossil yourself, Chief. A dinosaur.”

“I don’t care! I’m going to stay in that Chief’s chair until long after this lousy mayor is gone and been replaced with a decent one. A mayor who appreciates that a police officer doesn’t have to look like a hot young model to get the job done.”

“Did you just call the mayor’s niece a hot young model?”

“Well, I guess she is nice to look at,” the Chief admitted.

“I heard she’s into older men, Chief, so if I were you I’d try my luck. Who knows, you might be calling the mayor your uncle soon.”

Instead of responding, the chief merely grunted something that wasn’t fit for print, and Chase laughed. In spite of the fact that he probably wasn’t going to get a lot of sleep due to their peculiar sleeping arrangements, and the fact that he missed Odelia, he was still feeling pretty cheerful. But then the weight of running a police force wasn’t on his shoulders. In fact there was no weight on his shoulders at all, since he had no cases to run, no suspects to pursue, and for the next five days there was nothing on his schedule except associating and fraternizing with fellow police officers from all across the country, swapping war stories and learningfrom the best of the best of the best. And even better: his sweetheart was in town, and any time he wanted to see her, he could.

And as his eyes drifted closed, he was still grinning.

Chapter 9