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“I mean, people come here all the time, right?” the burly cop said, indicating what looked like the remnants of a fire. Plenty of cigarette butts lay in its vicinity, and a couple of crumpled beer cans and even an empty bottle of Scotch.

“Could be that they didn’t notice?”

“That they were having a party next to a dead person? I doubt that very much, babe. They might be high on whatever substance they like to imbue, but they’re not that high. No,” he said as he rubbed his impressive chin. “I think this person was recently dumped here. Which makes me wonder: why now? And why here?”

4

Since there wasn’t anything more for us to do out there, we decided to return to the house and have a bite to eat. The smell of breakfast had reminded me I hadn’t had anything to eat in at least one or two hours, and if I wanted to keep up my strength it was imperative I stock up on the necessary nutrients andvitamins ASAP. And so we left the humans to poke around that field for possible clues as to how that body could have gotten there, and were soon enjoying a nice and healthy snack. Fifi had returned home as well, since Kurt was already hollering her name. Kurt gets worried when Fifi wanders off, andis never happier than when he can keep an eye on her. Dog owners are like that: if their precious pet wanders off, they freak out. Cat owners are exactly the opposite: if their precious pet doesn’t wander off, that’s when they freak and think something is wrong.

“It’s probably a mummy,” said Dooley now, after having eaten his fill and assuming the position to start grooming himself.

“A mummy?” I asked, still busy gobbling up those precious nuggets. In my defense I’m probably twice Dooley’s size, and so I need to take in more nourishment than my gray Ragamuffin friend.

“Yeah, you know, like the Egyptian mummies? I think they probably have one at the local museum, and some vandals could have decided to steal it and put it here as a joke.”

“I very much doubt whether they have actual Egyptian mummies in our very modest local museum, Dooley. Most likely they simply keep some old stones and local fossils down there, but no mummies.”

“But where else could it have come from, Max? It must be a mummy. They simply removed the bandages and put it in that field.” But then his eyes widened to their fullest extent. “Or maybe it’s a zombie! It woke up one night and decided to take a walk in the neighborhood, only it got tired and decided to take a nap, and that’s when Fifi found it!”

“Aren’t zombies usually more… juicy?”

“Usually, but why can’t a zombie be a skeleton?”

“First off, zombies don’t exist, Dooley,” I said. “They’re simply an urban legend. And secondly, if that was a zombie, don’t you think it would have woken up by now? Even zombies don’t like it when a group of people stand around jabbering away, after all.”

“No, I see your point,” he said, his excitement slightly dampened by my use of logic. “So what is it, Max? And where did it come from?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Dooley,” I said. And frankly I wasn’t all that interested either. Judging from the state of those bones, that human had died quite a long time ago—possibly dozens or even hundreds of years. And frankly the whole thing didn’t interest me. Who cares if some old skeleton turns up in a field? Not me, I can assure you. When you’ve lived to be my age, you learn how to conserve your energy, you see, and it was with that idea in mind that I decided to take a nice long nap, while the humans ran around in circles, falling over themselves to take a look at a pile of boring old bones.

And I’d just closed my eyes when suddenly the sound of the pet flap alerted me that we were no longer alone. And when I opened a lazy eye to see what was up, I saw to my surprise that none other than Shanille had decided to grace us with her presence.

Shanille is cat choir’s director, and only very rarely makes house calls.

“Shanille?” I said. “What brings you out here?”

“Oh, Max,” she said, and if cats were in the habit of writhing their paws, she looked as if she would have much liked to engage in that kind of behavior right now. In other words, she looked extremely distraught.

“What’s going on?” Dooley asked.

“One of my humans has gone missing,” Shanille announced, a tremulous note in her voice.

“One of your humans?” I asked. “I thought you only had the one human: Father Reilly.”

“No, well, officially Father Reilly is my human, but the person who takes care of me on a daily basis, and of Father Reilly, too, is Marigold. She’s the housekeeper at the rectory.”

“And something happened to her?” I asked, understanding dawning.

“Not to her, but to her daughter Angel. She went out last night with some friends, and never came home.”

“So… has her mother tried calling these friends? What do they say?”