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Odelia had told us to help her figure out who had killed Chickie, but this was taking our zeal for the case a little too far: we were actually escorting her body to the coroner!

“Odelia will come and get us!” I shouted to Dooley over the noise of the wind.

“I hope so!” he shouted back. “It’s much nicer inside a car than outside, Max!”

“I know!”

“I don’t know why dogs like this so much!”

“Me neither!”

It was true what he said. Dogs love to stick their heads out of windows of driving cars. Why, I don’t know. To feel the wind tugging at you is not a pleasant sensation at all.

It felt like hours before the ambulance finally slowed down and entered the parking lot of a squat white building that looked like a space ship.

“I think we’ve arrived,” I said.

“I hope they have food,” said Dooley. “I’m hungry from the trip.”

“I doubt they’ll have food for us here, Dooley.”

The ambulance drove into a garage bay and then came to a stop. The paramedics hopped out and opened the doors. This time they carried Chickie off to God knows where, and soon we were left in that garage, not a soul in sight.

“Look, Max,” said Dooley, gesturing to a car that stood parked right next to the ambulance. It was only a short jump from the roof of the ambulance to the roof of the other car, and only a short jump to the hood of the car and then to the garage floor.

“I feel very strongly we should stay put,” I said. “Otherwise Odelia will never be able to find us.”

“Or we could go home on paw.”

“It’s a long walk back to Hampton Cove.”

For a moment, we stayed on top of that roof, but then one of the coroner’s people came walking up to the ambulance, got in, and started up the engine.

“Now or never, Dooley!” I cried, and we made the jump. Just in time, for the ambulance peeled out of the bay, probably to pick up more dead people.

And that’s how we found ourselves on the concrete floor of the garage of the medical examiner’s office, with no plan of where to go or how to get out of our predicament.

“I suggest we hang around here,” I said. “Odelia will come and find us sooner or later.”

So we hunkered down and decided to wait for our savior to show up.

“It’s not very nice in here,” said Dooley after a while.

“No, it’s not.”

It was a garage, and looked like any garage: all concrete and very smelly.

“Let’s go and find us something to eat,” I finally said, making a decision.

“But I thought you said we needed to stay put?”

“Yeah, but it will take Odelia a while to find us, and in the meantime we might as well eat. This place is full of humans. And wherever humans are, there’s food to be found.”

“Especially considering how big Abe is,” said Dooley. “He must need a lot of food.”

Abe Cornwall is the county coroner and looks as if at some point he swallowed another county coroner. The man is large. And since large people like to stay large, they need a constant supply of fatty and starchy foods. And since we just lived through a very harrowing adventure I felt I urgently needed to get my paws on some of Abe’s stash.

We soon found ourselves in a series of long and sterile-looking corridors, all white walls and concrete floors. Just like a hospital—or a veterinarian’s office. Yuck.

“I don’t like this place, Max,” Dooley intimated. “It’s not very cozy.”

We wandered here and there, and finally became aware of the sound of voices. They came from a large room that reminded me even more of a hospital, complete with an operating table at its center. And on that operating table lay… Chickie Hay!

“Max, what are they doing to her!” Dooley cried.

“Don’t look, Dooley! Cover your eyes!”

“They’re operating on her, Max, even though she’s dead!”

The sight was so upsetting we decided to flee the scene, and soon found ourselves in yet another room, this time a very cold one. The door behind us slammed shut and as I glanced around I had the impression that all those white sheets on all of those metal tables were covering something that could only be…

“Dead people!” Dooley cried as he caught sight of one person without a sheet.

And as the truth came home to me that we were surrounded by dead people from all sides, my appetite suddenly went right out the window. I was hungry no more!

“This place is full of dead people, Max!” cried Dooley.

“I know, Dooley!”

“I don’t like it!”

“I don’t like it, either!”

Unfortunately the door was shut, and so we were pretty much stuck in there. I might mention that it was also very cold in there—freezing cold, in fact.

“Scream, Dooley,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”

And so scream we did. We meowed, we yowled, we mewed, and we screamed up a storm. Before long, a human person, a live one, yanked open the door and when he saw us scratched his head and muttered,“Well, I’ll be damned.” Then he shouted, “Abe! There’s two cats in the freezer!”

Abe came waddling up and when he saw us frowned deeply.

“Those are Odelia Poole’s cats,” he said. “How did they get in there?”

“Max!” Dooley cried. “He’s got blood… on his hands!”