“Yeah, Max,” Brutus said, as he placed a paw under my elbow and hoisted me up with some effort. “Let’s get you to dry land.”
And together they managed to drag me from the now empty pool.
“I can… walk, you guys,” I muttered, much weakened. “You… don’t have to… help… me…”
I must have passed out, then, for when I came to, I thought I was in heaven, as I only saw disembodied heads floating over me: Harriet was there, and Brutus, but also Dooley, and Fifi, and even Rufus, the big sheepdog belonging to the Trappers.
“Max!” Dooley cried. “You’re not dead!”
“No, I guess not,” I said as I tried to sit up.
“Oh, Max,” he said, jumping on top of me and pressing me down again. “I thought you were dead for sure!”
“No, not dead,” I said, and spat out some water.
“Give him some space, Dooley,” said Brutus.
“Yeah, gimme some space… Dooley,” I murmured, and shook my head. I felt a little weak, but otherwise fine.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again, Max,” said Dooley, a tightness to his voice that betrayed his anxiety. “Don’t you ever die on me again.”
“I didn’t… die,” I said. “I just… took a little catnap.”
They all laughed at that, and seemed glad that I was fine.
“I think you established one thing, Max,” said Rufus. “Cats and bodies of water, large or small, don’t mix.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I said, and spat out some more water. I had a feeling my belly was full of the stuff. I then glanced up at Harriet and Brutus’s beaming faces. “Thanks for saving my life, you guys.”
“That’s all right, Max,” said Brutus. “That’s what friends are for.”
“If you ever pull a stunt like that again, though,” said Harriet, “I’ll kill you, all right?”
“Fair enough,” I said with a weak smile.
And as we all sat there, rejoicing in the happy end, suddenly a loud scream rent the air. We all looked up in alarm, and saw that the scream had emanated from Chase, who must have arrived home. He was looking down at his inflatable pool, one side having been reduced to a mere bundle of ripped-up strips of plastic.
“My pool!” he cried. “M-my poor pool!”
Oops…
“Odeliaaaa!” he bellowed. “Your grandma took revenge—she destroyed my pool!”
Chapter 35
I was relaxing on the couch, recovering from my harrowing adventure in the inflatable pool, when the mail slot clattered, a sure sign a letter had been delivered. And since it was late at night at that point, and I’d recently learned from Odelia that the postal services rarely if ever deliver letters at such an ungodly hour, I immediately pricked up my ears.
I’m not one of those pets that lay in wait for the mailman or mailwoman to arrive, hoping to bite their ankles or generally cause grievous bodily harm—that’s dogs, not cats. But after the previous message about a ‘real sleuth’ possessing a ‘sweet tooth’ I’d secretly been hoping this mystery letter deliverer would keep up the good work and deliver another sample of his or her rhyming prowess.
So I ambled into the hallway and lo and behold: another pristinely white letter lay on the doormat, right across the words, ‘Welcome Home!’
Odelia and Chase had already gone to bed, and Dooley was sleeping soundly, so it was just me and the letter, and for a few moments we faced off. Then I could no longer curb my curiosity and pounced on the thing: I neatly sliced it open with a single nail and expertly extracted the missive that was concealed inside.
And as I placed it on the floor, I frowned when I scanned its contents.
‘Follow the herder,’ the epistle read.
“Follow the herder,” I murmured. “Shouldn’t it be ‘Follow the herd?’”
But then I suddenly remembered how this whole adventure had begun: with that little figurine of the goatherder. Could it be that our unknown letter writer was referring to that little gem that Harriet had so expertly destroyed with a single flick of her tail?
I sat back on my haunches and gave myself up to thought for a few moments. As far as I could tell Marge had all but forgotten about the figurine, and the pieces had probably been swept into the dustbin by now. Or had they? I remembered she’d carefully tried to glue it back together, with Tex sabotaging her efforts by accidentally demolishing the thing. So maybe it was time to pay some closer attention to that infamous goatherd once more? At least according to our anonymous and highly mysterious letter writer, it just might hold the solution to the mystery of the disappearance of Vicky Gardner…
I briefly considered picking up the letter between my teeth and taking it upstairs to bring to Odelia’s attention, but then decided against it.
First of all, I’m not a dog, so unless I have to, I prefer not to pick up assorted items (for instance newspapers and slippers) and deliver them to my master, and secondly: once Odelia is fast asleep not even a cannon-shot has the power to wake her up.
So I simply decided to leave the letter where it lay, and where Odelia would no doubt find it in the morning, to do with as she saw fit.
I wandered back into the living room, and saw that my friend was awake and yawning widely.
“Dooley, I suddenly feel a certain need.”
“A need for speed?” he suggested.
“Not exactly,” I said. “But I do feel the need to go out and join cat choir.”
“But I thought you said you weren’t going to show your face there again until all of your fur had grown back?”
“I know what I said, but it has grown back a little bit already, and besides, I miss our friends and I’m sure they won’t laugh at me, right?”
Dooley wasn’t as relaxed about my prospects of being laughed at as me, but he, too, said he missed socializing with our friends, so moments later saw two cats flit through the pet flap—well, flit perhaps isn’t the right word for a cat weighing in at twenty pounds moving through an opening designed for a much slimmer cat, but please bear with me.
So Dooley flitted through the pet flap, I wormed my way through, and then we were zipping along the sidewalk, and soon swept into the park to join our friends for cat choir.
Harriet and Brutus were already there, of course, and so was Kingman, holding court near the jungle gym as usual. Shanille, Father Reilly’s cat and also cat choir’s conductor, was frowning before herself, probably deciding what musical pieces she was going to teach us this time, and plenty of other friends were milling about shooting the breeze.
As you may have guessed by now cat choir is basically just an excuse for us cats to get together of an evening and socialize.
“Max! What happened to you!” Buster cried when he caught sight of me.
“I had a close shave with danger,” I quipped, having decided to make light of my predicament.
“More like a close shave with a razor blade,” said Buster, who is intimately familiar with all things sharp. He inspected my midsection more closely. “Pretty rough work,” he said. “At a glance I’d say they used a blunt blade. Definitely not Fido’s work. I’d recognize his signature style anywhere. So where did you go?”
“Max didn’t go the hairdresser’s,” said Dooley. “He got stuck in a window and was shoved through by an angry homeowner who doesn’t like cats.”
“Oh,” said Buster, taken aback by this, then made a face. “Brrr. You were lucky to make it out of there alive, Max. Those cat haters can be brutal when allowed to go unchecked.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“So who was this cat butcher?”
“Quintin Gardner,” I said. “We were trying to figure out what happened to his wife Vicky, who disappeared twenty years ago.”
“Oh, I remember hearing the story,” said Buster, nodding. “Didn’t she go out for a pack of cigarettes one night and never came back?”
“You’re probably thinking of someone else,” I said.