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“Phyllis, yes. Her husband? I don’t think so. We moved in a couple of months after you and Tex did, remember? The only people I remember are the Coopers, though we only met once. They’d moved out before we took our first look at the house. We mainly dealt with the realtor at the time.”

“Well, the husband wasn’t in the picture when we moved in. I remember Phyllis very well, though, and her daughter, of course. Rita Baker was Odelia’s babysitter for years.”

“Oh, of course. She moved into an apartment on Grover Street, didn’t she?”

“She did. And was so wonderful to knock ten percent off the price when Odelia bought the house. She had a brother, too, though we never saw much of him.”

Rita’s mother Phyllis had moved into a nursing home twenty-five years ago, but Rita had stayed in the house next door until five years before, when she decided the house was too big for her, and had bought an apartment. Odelia had jumped at the chance to move in next to her parents, and Marge and Texhelped her out with the down payment.

“Funny, though, right?” said Marcie now.

“What is?”

“Well, first the Bakers lived here, with their daughter living next door, and now you and Tex live here, with Odelia where Rita used to live. Almost as if history repeats itself.”

“Yeah, I guess in a way that’s true,” Marge agreed, though she didn’t really want to think of herself as an old lady being forced to move into a nursing home just yet.

“Whatever happened to Phyllis Baker?” asked Marcie now, leaning on the hedge.

“She passed away. About ten years ago, I guess.”

“What about her husband?”

“We never met. As I remember it, Rita once told me he walked out on them. But this must have happened when Rita herself was quite young, her brother still in his teens.”

They shared a look of significance.“We may just have figured out that skeleton’s identity, Marge,” said Marcie.

“Yes, we may have done just that,” said Marge.

Marcie gave her a sympathetic nod.“If you need anything, just give a holler.”

“Thanks, Marcie. That means a lot.”

And as she moved back to her laundry and hung up one of Tex’s checked shirts, her mind kept going back to the mystery of Mr. Baker, and whether he might be the skeleton in her basement. Somehow she doubted it. Phyllis Baker hadn’t been a murderer, and Rita and Tom definitely weren’t. Still, it was all very intriguing.

Chapter 10

Dooley and I had arrived in Morley Street, the place where, according to Kingman at least, and I had no reason to doubt him, as Kingman is usually one of the best-informed cats in town, the oldest animal in Hampton Cove lived.

“So what is a macaw, Max?” asked Dooley.

“I think it’s a kind of parrot,” I said. “One with very colorful plumage, too. It’s also an endangered species, as humans tend to catch them in the wild and sell them as pets.”

“Is that what happened to us? Did someone catch us in the wild and sell us?”

Dooley has a tendency to ask tough questions from time to time, and I guess now was such a time.“I don’t think so, Dooley. I don’t think we ever lived in the wild. Or at least I can’t remember that I did.”

“Me neither,” he admitted.

“I seem to remember Odelia telling us she got us straight from our mothers,” I said. “And that doesn’t sound very wild to me.”

“Straight from our mothers,” Dooley echoed, and already I could see the wheels turning in his head. “So… who was my mother, Max? And my father?”

“No idea, Dooley. You’d have to ask Odelia. Or Gran.”

“I will,” he said.

We’d been wandering up and down the street, wondering where to find this old bird, when suddenly I was struck with an idea. Yes, it happens.

“We’re going about this all wrong, Dooley.”

“We are?”

“Yes, where do birds live?”

“In the trees?”

“Apart from the trees.”

“Um… in cages?”

“Unfortunately, yes, but also in backyards. So why don’t we go from backyard to backyard and try to find this bird that way?” I suggested.

And now that we had a plan of campaign, we decided to put it into action immediately. So we moved between two houses, where a narrow strip of lawn divided both structures, and arrived in the backyard of what looked like a very ordinary house, not unlike our own. Looking here and there, we kept an eye out for our colorful feathered friend, hoping we’d find her soon and she would be able to enlighten us.

“Have you noticed how all these houses look exactly the same, Max?” asked Dooley as we traversed one backyard and then moved into the next.

He was right. It was almost as if we were home, even though we weren’t. There were backyards that had swings and plastic toys for kids, and others that had lawn chairs out where people could snooze, while still others had small pools installed, or even fish ponds where colorful fish swam. It all looked very suburban and very cozy to me.

“I think it’s because humans all like the same thing,” I said.

“What is that?”