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“But my gnome, Marge,” said Tex plaintively. “They took my gnome.”

“There will be other gnomes, honey,” said his wife soothingly.

“But it cost twenty-five thousand dollars.”

She winced.“Please don’t remind me.”

After they’d gone, Chase said, “Twenty-five thousand dollars for a painting?”

“Yeah, Dad thought it was a good investment,” Odelia explained. “It’s painted by a famous artist named Jerome Metzgall.”

“Metzgall is a flake,” Kurt grunted. “Worst investment of Tex’s life.”

“Was your Jackson Pollock insured with Johnson and Johnson, Kurt?” asked Odelia.

“It was. And until now they haven’t paid me a dime. It’s still early days, of course.”

“And I’ll bet Ida Baumgartner’s Picasso was insured with Johnson and Johnson, too, and so were Mort Hodge’s cartoons.”

“What a setup,” said Ted. “First you insure the stuff, then you steal it and sell it, and refuse to pay out.”

“We’re not insured with them, are we?” asked Marcie.

“No, we’re not,” said Ted. “Then again,” he added with a shrug, “we don’t have anything valuable to insure anyway, so there’s that.”

“Thank God for small favors,” said Marcie.

Soon the small gathering of neighbors dispersed, and Dooley and I decided to head into town. Cat choir sometimes runs late, and we’d had enough nap time for a while. And as we walked along the deserted streets of our town, Dooley said, “Is twenty-five thousand dollars for a painting of a gnome a lot of money, Max?”

“That depends, Dooley.”

“On what?”

“Well, I happen to think twenty-five dollars is a lot of money to spend on a painting of a gnome, but possibly there are people out there that are willing to spend two million dollars on the same painting, and in that case twenty-five thousand is a bargain.”

“I think I’ve heard about that,” he said. “Supply and demand, right?”

“Exactly. As long as you can find a fool who’s an even bigger fool than you and willing to spend more on the same thing you spent all of your money on, you’re golden. And if not, you better look in the mirror, for the biggest fool is you.”

Chapter 42

It came as something of a shock to us when Odelia announced that she’d asked Blanche to clean out the attic. It was going to take her two weeks and all that time she was presumably going to lock the pet flap.

So it was with a heart bowed down with the weight of woe that Dooley and I were lying under the big cherry tree in Marge and Tex’s backyard, along with Harriet and Brutus.

All of us were the victims of a pair of evil cat-hating cleaners, and there didn’t seem to be anything we could do about it.

We heard the telltale sounds of a cleaner working hard: vacuum cleaner being switched on and off, and then on again. Water slushing in buckets, the smell of lavender-scented bleach being poured into those same buckets.

“She does work hard, I’ll give her that,” said Harriet as we lay there, awaiting the end of our sentence.

“The house is much cleaner since Blanche started coming around,” I admitted.

“No more dust bunnies,” said Dooley.

“She’s washed my favorite pillow with Ariel,” said Brutus. “I love the smell of Ariel. It’s like sleeping on a cloud, in Ariel heaven.”

“And she has finally chucked out those old dried plants on the kitchen windowsill,” I said. “They’ve been collecting mold for years, and little flies have been buzzing around those plants and preventing me from sleep.”

So maybe having a pair of professional cleaners in the house wasn’t such a bad thing after all. If only they wouldn’t hate cats so much.

The doorbell rang and the vacuum cleaner was turned off. We heard Bella answering the door, then yell something about having no need for the word of Jesus, and slamming the door shut.

We all looked up at that, and curiosity compelled us to get up from our pleasant perch underneath the cherry tree and hurry to the front of the house, where we just caught a glimpse of Johnny Carew and Jerry Vale, Bibles clutched in their hands, looking like Mormon missionaries, neat in their costumes, hair cut to precision, and walking up to the next house, no doubt ready to spread the word of Jesus to anyone who’d listen.

“Looks like they’ve finally been sprung from jail,” I said.

“Which probably means the Johnsons are in jail instead,” said Brutus, whom I’d told the story of last night’s events.

“Who are these Johnsons and why are they in prison?” asked Harriet.

So I told her the story of what happened in Tex’s garden shed, and how Iris and Mira Johnson were apparently a pair of common crooks and burglars.

“Let’s hope Tex gets his painting back,” said Dooley. “It cost twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Harriet stared at my friend.“Twenty-five thousand dollars for a painting of a gnome? Has he lost his mind?”

“Marge seems to think so, but she still loves him,” said Dooley. “Which makes me think that love must be blind.”

So much wisdom coming from one not well-known for dispensing wisdom had us all look at Dooley in surprise.

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” he said.