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“What’s with the carpet! No, Dooley, no carpets are involved here.”

“Okay, so he doesn’t roll her in a carpet, but…” He gave me helpless look. “I really don’t know how to put myself in the shoes of a killer, Max. And I think it’s probably because I’ve never killed anyone before. Have you?”

“No, I haven’t killed anyone either, Dooley,” I admitted.

“So how can you put yourself in the shoes of a killer?”

“Just use your imagination, Dooley. Just like a writer, see? As far as I know James Patterson has never killed anyone either, and yet his books are full of killers.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, adjusting his tinfoil hat. “Okay, so I’ve just killed my daughter…” He frowned. “I don’t have a daughter, Max. Does that make a difference?”

“No, it doesn’t, Dooley. Just imagine you’re Father Reilly for a moment, will you?”

He closed his eyes.“Okay, so I’m Father Reilly. I have white hair and I’m very, very old.”

“Father Reilly isn’t that old, Dooley. He’s probably younger than Gran.”

“He is? He looks old.”

“That’s because he has white hair. White hair makes people look old.”

“But Harriet has white hair, and she doesn’t look old.”

“Focus for a moment, Dooley. Don’t get sidetracked. You’ve just killed your daughter and then what?”

“Okay… so I want to roll her in a carpet.”

“No carpets, Dooley! Forget about the carpet!”

He was frowning intensely as he thought hard.“Is she heavy?”

“Who?”

“Well, my daughter. Is she very heavy? Cause I’m old and I’m not very strong, and now I have to carry… how much does a human weigh, Max? Just a ballpark figure.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I muttered. “Let’s just skip a couple of steps. Somehow Father Reilly managed to carry his dead daughter to the graveyard, where he proceeds to bury her in an unmarked grave. And it’s that grave we need to find, Dooley, you and me.”

“We do? But how?”

“We simply look around for freshly dug graves, and…”

“And?” he prompted.

“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” I admitted. “But at least it’s a first step in proving that Father Reilly killed Angel.”

“If you say so, Max,” said Dooley, though he didn’t sound convinced.

It took us a little while, but finally we arrived back in town, and headed for the graveyard. I have to confess I’d never set foot in that graveyard before in my life—ever. Since it’s not a very happy place, see? Cats as a rule aren’t crazy about spending time surrounded by thousands of dead folks. Not that I believe in old wives’ tales about zombies or the walking dead or anything like that, but still—it’s not very pleasant to imagine being surrounded by the remnants of all of those people. And if you think I’ll ever set paw inside a pet cemetery, you’re very much mistaken, for the same principle applies.

“Okay, so now we spread out and start looking, Dooley,” I said.

“But I don’t want to spread out, Max,” said my friend. “I’m scared.”

“No need to be scared. It’s just a graveyard. No one here can harm you.”

“They might crawl out of their graves and try to bite me.”

“Oh, Dooley,” I said. “All right, so we’ll go look together.”

“We should have asked Harriet and Brutus to join us,” he said after we’d poked around a nice chunk of graveyard and had discovered exactly nothing. “We could have covered a lot more ground. Or Fifi and Rufus. They have great noses. They could have sniffed out Angel, even if she’s dead andburied.”

I blinked and stared at my friend.“You know what, Dooley? That’s a great idea.”

“You think?” he said proudly.

“It’s brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? They probably still have Angel’s scent in their noses, and so all they would need to do is sniff around and lead us straight to her grave!”

“So can we go now, Max? This place gives me the creeps.”

It was a bit creepy, I had to admit. The moon had risen, and was casting a pale light on the old tombstones that stood scattered around us like broken teeth, and the gravel under our paws was making a crunching sound I didn’t enjoy. All in all not a fun place to hang out of an evening. Then again, your intrepid detective goes where he must, and this is where my intuition had led me, so I was bound to find something important—like Angel Church’s mortal remains!

But Dooley was right—we could spend all night wandering around and accomplish nothing.

So we set paw for the cemetery entrance when suddenly I became aware of voices where no voices should have been.

“It’s them, Max!” Dooley whispered as we both hid behind a tombstone in a reflex action.

“Aliens?” I guessed.

“No, zombies. Or yeah, maybe aliens.”

“Make up your mind, Dooley. Is it aliens or zombies?”

“Maybe it’s alien zombies?”

“It’s kids,” I said after a moment’s pause.

And indeed it was. We approached stealthily, and saw how a couple of kids were standing around what looked like an open grave, and one of them had jumped down into the grave and now said,“Looks like a fresh one, boys. Har har har.”

“Let’s dig her up,” said one of his buddies with marked glee.