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After fretting for a while, he decided to call her secretary and ask her if Madam Mayor was busy. Normally he would never do that, but he was getting anxious and more than a little antsy. If she was breaking up with him, better he find out sooner rather than later.

“Um, hi, Imelda,” he said when Charlene’s secretary picked up. “Do you have any idea if Madam Mayor is busy at the moment. It’s just that… I’ve been trying to reach her about, um, something important—police business, you know—and she’s not picking up.”

“Well, she did have two visitors just now,” said Imelda. “But they left ten minutes ago, so she should be free. Do you want me to go check?”

“Yeah, could you?” He felt increasingly silly now, like a schoolboy with a crush, asking a girl’s parent to see why she wasn’t answering his calls.

For a moment, there was only Tony Bennett crooning about a cold, cold heart, which was exactly how Alec’s own heart was feeling, then Imelda was back. This time she didn’t sound quite so sanguine. “Get over here, Chief. Get over here quick. Charlene—she was robbed! Robbed at gunpoint!”

Alec’s heart skipped several beats as the blood drained from his face. Within seconds he was out of his chair, out of his office, and running as if his life depended on it.

Chapter 18

There are moments in a cat’s life that stay with him for the rest of his days. I’m sure it’s the same for humans. Everyone knows where they were when JR was shot—at least if you were alive and old enough to be glued to the screen in the eighties. And of course everyone remembers when John Travolta finally ditched his toupee. And it was just such a moment when Odelia received that call.

I remember she picked up and her jaw actually dropped. Now I know fiction writers mention dropping jaws all the time, but how many times have you actually seen a jaw drop in real life? It’s a tough proposition, and would probably require a trip to the ER.

Well, I can now say that I’m the rare witness of an actual jaw-dropping event.

“Wait, what?” she cried.

We were in the car, on our way to Odelia’s office where she was going to start compiling her notes on the crime wave that was sweeping Hampton Cove, and more in particular Ida Baumgartner’s stolen Picasso, bought for her by her husband, inventor of the world’s first laser-beam vacuum cleaner.

“I’m on my way,” Odelia said, once she’d reeled in her jaw sufficiently to allow for speech. And to show us she meant what she said, she put down her phone, started up her car and was racing off at a respectable rate of speed, causing Dooley and me to tumble back against the backseat.

“What’s going on?” I asked, once I’d ascertained whether all of my limbs were still attached to their parent body.

“Charlene has just been robbed at gunpoint,” said Odelia. “And the town’s gold coin collection has been stolen.”

“I didn’t even know the town had a gold coin collection,” I said, much surprised.

“Well, it did—only now it doesn’t,” said Odelia, and I could see her point.

She was focusing on the road and applying her foot to the accelerator in a way that would probably be frowned upon by the local authorities if the local authorities hadn’t been busy with this spectacular denouement.

“Is she all right?” I asked. “Charlene, I mean. She wasn’t hurt by these attackers, was she?”

“She’s shaken but otherwise fine,” said Odelia in clipped tones, indicating the events that had unfolded at Town Hall had not only shaken Charlene but Odelia, too.

“Why does a town need a collection of coins, Max?” asked Dooley.

“Gold is usually considered a sound investment,” I ventured. “Probably the folks that run this town have chosen to invest their money wisely.” In other words: I had no idea why Hampton Cove’s founding fathers would have chosen to acquire a set of gold coins.

“The coins were a gift from a duke,” Odelia explained. “Once upon a time, in the nineteen-thirties if I’m not mistaken, a local fisherman saved this duke’s life when his boat had hit some rough weather off the coast of Hampton Cove. To show his gratitude he donated a set of gold coins with his likeness to the town the fisherman hailed from.”

“They must be worth a lot,” I said, imagining large gleaming plaques of gold, now in the hands of a couple of dastardly thieves.

“Yeah, I guess they are,” said Odelia. We’d arrived at destination’s end and got out, Odelia hurrying to the entrance, where already several police vehicles stood trundling.

“I thought half the police force were on holiday?” I said as I watched a couple of cops milling about.

“This must be the other half,” Dooley suggested astutely.

Once inside, we hurried after Odelia, who was setting a brisk pace, causing us to have to switch into higher gear. So by the time we arrived at the mayor’s office, I was already panting, my short legs not exactly fit for short sprints—or long ones, for that matter.