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“Duty calls, Dooley,” I said a little solemnly. “You simply can’t wait around for the next clue to arrive on its own. A genuine detective goes out there, into the great unknown, and hunts the clues where he can find them.”

Dooley yawned.“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep either. All this stuff about Brutus and that gruesome poo-poo murder got me wondering about my mortality.”

I stared at the cat. I never would have guessed that Dooley even knew the word‘mortality’ let alone pondered about his own perishability. In fact I’d never known him to worry about anything, except when Marge, Odelia’s mom, dished out the wrong kind of kibble. Dooley likes chicken, but Marge tends to forget, and buys him one of those twenty-pound bags of fish kibble which then he has to eat, because she hates to throw away perfectly good kibble. What can I say? We all have our predilections and peculiarities.

“Do you really think Brutus is going to move in with us and lay down the law?” he now asked.

“I think the odds are not in our favor,” I confirmed. “Chase Kingsley is a very handsome male, and Odelia an attractive female. What’s more, they’re both young and single, and live in a town with a limited supply of eligible bachelors. And if I know something about human nature, it’s that eligible bachelors are prone to mate, and when they do, they tend to make babies and get married and move in together, at which point they bring their cats along.”

Dooley shook his head sadly. It was obvious he wasn’t liking this. “I didn’t want to say this in front of Harriet, because she seems to like this Brutus character, but I honestly fear for our lives when Brutus moves in.”

I looked up in surprise.“Fear for our lives? What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. This Brutus strikes me as the kind of cat who doesn’t like competition in the home. I’m pretty sure that once he moves in he’s going to want to make us disappear. If you know what I mean.”

“You’re saying he’s gonna want to kill us?”

“You, me, and maybe even Harriet when she doesn’t do what he says. Cats like that want to rule supreme, Max. They’re like the evil stepchild who tries to kill their stepsiblings once they’ve taken up position in the home.”

“You mean like Damien inThe Omen?” I asked, remembering the horror movie marathon Odelia had us sit through the other night. Harriet, Dooley and I had been scared stiff the entire time, but Odelia had loved the story of Satan’s spawn. She loved a good horror movie, while the three of us preferred to watchGarfield. OrFinding Nemo. I never get tired of watching those fishes in that fish tank.Finding Dory was even better. Much bigger tank.

“Well, more likeThe Good Son,” said Dooley after a moment’s deliberation. After a lifetime spent with Odelia, he knew his horror classics better than me.

“I don’t think Brutus is going to kill us,” I said thoughtfully.

“And I’m sure he is. He’s going to strike when we’re all sleeping safely in our beds.”

I shivered. Maybe Dooley was right. Brutus was capable of anything. Now, more than ever, I was convinced we needed to figure out a way to make Odelia see what kind of a man Chase Kingsley really was. If we could convince her he was a genuine menace, we could avert the Brutus disaster.

And it was as we were crossing the street, wondering where to go next, that I saw Chase Kingsley enter the doctor’s office. I nudged Dooley. “Speak of the devil. It’s him!”

“Great!” said Dooley, his dejected air quickly giving way to excitement. “Do you think we’ll find some more damaging stuff about the guy?”

“One can only hope,” I said, and we quickly made our way down the narrow alleyway that divides the doctor’s office from Jeremiah Downer’s hardware store. We hopped over a pile of plastic garbage bags, and then onto a couple of trash cans, a dumpster and straight onto the windowsill of Tex Poole’s consultation room. I felt pumped. Now we were going to find out what really made Chase Kingsley tick. In all my years in Hampton Cove I’d never been able to glean more about the local populace than by eavesdropping on the good Dr. Poole while he was examining his patients.

You’d be surprised what people tell their doctor, knowing he’s not allowed to talk about their secrets with another soul, due to something called the doctor-patient privilege. Good thing those silly rules don’t apply to cats.

Dooley and I both peered into the window, and saw that Chase had already been led into the examination room and had taken a seat across from Odelia’s father. He was lucky to arrive when there were no other patients.

“My dear young man,” Tex said cheerfully as he took a seat and smiled widely at his new patient. “Tell me, what can I do for you?”

“Well, you probably don’t know me, Doc,” Chase said.

“Nonsense,” said Tex. “You’re that new cop, aren’t you? The one my brother-in-law speaks so highly of. Detective Chase Kingsley?”

Chase seemed surprised, though he shouldn’t have been. Nothing remained a secret very long in Hampton Cove. And definitely not the arrival in town of a new cop.