Purrfect Bully (Max 92) Preview

Clarice to the Rescue!

Once upon a time there was a girl who was being bullied. Luckily for her she had a little brother who happened to find out and decided to engage the services of Odelia Kingsley and her clowder of cats to ‘fix’ the bully. When I told our good friend Clarice about the situation, she was sincerely moved by the girl’s plight, and appointed herself the victim’s personal bodyguard. She felt very strongly that this most delicate matter required her personal brand of subtle diplomacy. In other words: she decided to go to town on the bully—with unforseen consequences for all of us.

Meanwhile Gran was answering the urgent cry for help from one of Hampton Cove’s residents who had been noticing suspicious activities on his block and wanted the neighborhood watch to put a stop to it. And since Chase decided that he had an interest in said suspicious activities, he invited himself to ride with the watch. Suffice it to say it was the watch patrol to end all watch patrols and things didn’t exactly go according to plan. But then when do they ever do?

And finally a man jumped from the balcony of his room at the Star Hotel—or was he pushed? He landed right in front of Gran and Scarlett, enjoying their usual beverage, and when the man whispered his final words into Gran’s ear, it set in motion a series of events that led to our discovery of a new hype: the Plurtle. These were plastic turtles modeled after actual turtles being held in captivity. And while we were busy saving the poor creatures from imprisonment, the Plurtle craze exploded and brought things to a head, with members of our own household in the grip of the hype.

Chapter One

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

Brian looked up. He’d been busy carving a nice wooden sculpture of a turtle, and this interruption in his thought processes, such as they were, irked him to some degree.

“Huh?” he said, in that eloquent way he had of expressing himself.

“I said…” His mom seemed to think better of repeating herself, and instead yanked the knife from his hands and placed it on the table. “Have you finished your homework?”

“Well…” He thought for a moment, but then had to admit that he hadn’t.

“And why not, if I may ask?”

“Because… I have to finish my turtle?” he suggested.

The turtle was a present for his uncle Dave, and since Uncle Dave’s birthday was next week, he felt it was probably a lot more urgent to finish the turtle than to spend his precious time on such an inconsequential thing as making sure that his homework was done. After all, homework could wait, but Uncle Dave couldn’t.

“Go and finish your homework,” said Mom, who, like all moms, seemed to operate on an entirely different logic. She was pointing to the door and it was clear that she wasn’t in the mood for any discussion. And so he sighed and did as he was told.

“Uncle Dave won’t be happy,” he said as he placed his foot on the first step.

“Uncle Dave knows that his nephew’s future is a lot more important than any turtles,” said Mom, proving to Brian that hers was not the kind of flexible mind his teacher Mrs. Gibson had talked about at length when discussing the great geniuses of past and present.

How could Mom not see that his future wasn’t going to be determined by the homework that he made today but by the promises he kept? Ever since Uncle Dave had become aware of his talent for wood carving, he had been pestering him to create a turtle just like the many turtles he had made before for other members of his family, all of his friends, and even for his sister, even though she had taken one look at the thing and had dropped it to the floor and unceremoniously kicked it under her bed, never to be seen again.

Clearly, she wasn’t as appreciative of his talent as Uncle Dave was.

And as he entered his room and took a seat at his desk, suddenly he got a bright idea. The kind of idea that Mrs. Gibson would surely have seen as a sign of genius. Not that he was any kind of genius, but still. It showed that he had a knack for thinking outside of the box, another aspect of geniuses Mrs. Gibson said was very important. She never did mention what box this was, but then maybe she was keeping that revelation for the next lesson.

He got up and tiptoed into his sister’s room. Crouching down and looking under Jodie’s bed was but the work of a moment. Much to his disappointment, he didn’t see any sign of the turtle that languished there, and now he wondered what she could have possibly done with the thing. As he started looking around, he became aware that his sister’s room was a lot cleaner than his. In fact, it wasn’t too much to say that Jodie was probably what Mrs. Gibson would call a neat freak—a topic she had discussed at length in a different lesson not that long ago. According to her, neat freaks took a good thing and gave it a bad reputation. It was obvious that keeping your room clean was a good thing, but taken to the extreme, it suddenly turned into a bad thing. How this was possible, Brian didn’t know, and he’d been afraid to ask, as Mrs. Gibson didn’t appreciate it when her students asked a bunch of questions. He also wondered where she drew the line between a regular neat person and an obsessive neat freak. But a hunch told him that Jodie had definitely crossed that line.

As he lifted a pillow, he found himself staring at a diary, and as he picked it up, he immediately recognized his sister’s flowery handwriting. Even though he wasn’t all that interested in what his sister entrusted to her diary—girls always made such a fuss over these things whereas boys knew it was just a load of nonsense—he still opened it and started to read. It wasn’t long before he became aware that not all was well in the World of Jodie Brocket. In fact, things were pretty rotten if these scribblings were to be believed.

But before he could get deeper into the matter, he heard the front door open and close and immediately tucked the diary back where he had found it and tiptoed out of the room.

His sister might not be the worst sister in the world—for one thing, she never ever called him bad names or even hit him over the head like some sisters of his friends at school reportedly did—but she probably wouldn’t like it if she found her brother leafing through her diary and reading her personal notes.

Returning to his room, he discovered that he had all but forgotten about Uncle Dave’s turtle. Gone was the urgency he had felt in connection to delivering to that man the turtle he had expressed a wish to accept. In its stead, thoughts of his sister’s predicament now loomed large and ominous. And since he was still Jodie’s brother, a new task emerged on the horizon: rescuing her from a fate that to him seemed worse than death.

And since he wasn’t an actual sleuth or even a caped crusader, like many of the superheroes he admired so much, all he could think was that he needed to enlist the assistance of someone who did have the necessary qualifications to deal with this type of life-and-death stuff. In other words, the one person he knew who could help him out.

Chapter Two

I had been soaking up a few rays when my attention was drawn by a loud lament seemingly coming from one of my friends nearby. When I looked up from my pleasant position on the lawn, I saw that it was, in fact, a small turtle uttering the lament. I was surprised to see the turtle, as I had never seen it before, and turtles are not a fixture in our home.

“Hey, little buddy,” I said, eager to establish that I didn’t pose a threat to the creature. I may not have met this particular turtle before, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to welcome it with open paws into our backyard, so to speak.

As I saw it, Odelia must have decided to gift her daughter the turtle as a present. A pet to call her own, in other words. Kids are always being taught about the different members of the animal kingdom at school, and Grace must have learned about the turtle from her teacher and decided that she wanted one for herself.

“This is an outrage,” the turtle muttered.

“What is?” I asked, curious as to why the turtle would be muttering these strange words.

“Why, the fact that they’re forcing me to do all this slave labor, of course,” said the turtle, and seemed to gesture to the house as it spoke these words.

I glanced up at the house, but since I didn’t see anyone who could possibly be responsible for imposing slave labor on a turtle, I was at a loss as to how to respond.

“They’re making you work hard, are they?” I asked.

“They sure are,” said the turtle. “Which is exactly why I decided to make a break for it.” He directed a sort of pleading look at me. “Can you help me find refuge, cat?”

“Max,” I said, deciding that maybe now was a good time to start on those introductions that are so essential in establishing good relations with a new acquaintance. “And what’s your name?” I asked when the turtle didn’t seem to be on the verge of being forthcoming with a name.

“Max,” said the turtle.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “My name is Max, and I live here. And what’s your name?”

“Max,” the turtle repeated.

I frowned. I don’t mind pets being obtuse, but it does pose a sort of barrier to furthering that essential sense of bonhomie I like to see in my associations with a new friend. “Yes, I think we’ve established that my name is Max,” I said. “But what I would like to know is your name, if you see what I mean.”

“Max,” the turtle said, like a record that was stuck. “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it? That we should both share the same name?”

I brightened. I finally saw it all. “Your name is Max also?” I asked, therefore.

“Yeah, though in actual fact it’s Maxwell the Third. My dad was Maxwell the Second and his dad—”

“Maxwell the First?” I ventured.

He gave me an odd look. “How did you know?”

“Just a wild guess.”

“My friends all call me Max, though. Maxwell is such a mouthful, don’t you find?”

“I do,” I confirmed. “If I may ask: these people who make you work like a slave, who are they, exactly?”

“I’m not sure,” said the turtle. “The guy is named Ted, and he claims to be my owner, though it’s still not clear to me how that works, exactly. From a legal standpoint, I mean. As far as I can tell, it’s not legal to possess a person and call him your personal property. I mean, there must be laws about that sort of thing, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh, absolutely,” I said. “Though it’s also true that pets don’t exactly feature in these laws. The laws about not being allowed to own a person don’t apply to pets but to humans, as they’re the ones who make these laws.”

The turtle stared at me. “What are you saying, Max? That this Ted fellow is legally allowed to treat me as his personal property?”

“In a nutshell? Yes.”

The turtle shook his head. “I don’t think that’s fair, do you?”

“Fair or not fair, it’s the way things are, I’m afraid, Max.” I still found it a little strange to call another pet by my own name, but then I guess names are not exclusively assigned to one particular pet. Just as different humans can be called the same name, the same goes for us.

Dooley shot out through the pet flap and plopped down next to me. He was still licking his lips, which told me that he’d gone in for some refreshments and had found them. “Hey there, little buddy,” he said as he spotted the turtle. “You’re a turtle, aren’t you?”

“Excellent powers of observation, cat,” said the turtle with a touch of sarcasm. It was obvious that he wasn’t in the best of moods.

“Dooley,” said Dooley. “And what’s your name?”

“Max,” said the turtle.

Dooley stared at him, then at me. “Yes?”

“That’s my name,” said the turtle.

Dooley gawked for a moment, but then got the picture—and a whole lot quicker than I had, I have to say. “Your name is Max?”

“That’s right. Just like your large orange friend over there.”

“Blorange,” I muttered in an effort to rectify a common misconception.

“But…” Dooley looked from me to the turtle and back again. “But how is that possible?”

“Names aren’t the exclusive property of one single person, Dooley,” I explained.

“But you’re so different,” he said.

The turtle smiled. “You can say that again. In fact, we couldn’t be more different.” Then his smile vanished again. “So how about it, Max? Can you suggest a place for me to stay? It would have to be where I can lay low for a while and won’t be found by that horrible Ted.”

“You don’t like Ted?” asked Dooley.

But the turtle decided to ignore him. “Maybe you could put me up?” he said, giving me a pleading look. “Just until I can arrange things. The thing is that I kinda lost track of my brothers and sisters, so I don’t know where they are. That’s the trouble with these pet shops. They take you in wholesale and then sell off the different members of your family one by one. The upshot is that you all get separated and might not be able to find them.”

“So… where are your brothers and sisters, you think?” asked Dooley, who seemed fascinated by this rare glimpse into the life of a species that we weren’t familiar with.

The turtle shrugged. “I have no idea where they are. They might be in Canada for all I know, or Mexico, having been taken across the border by the people they’ve been sold to.”

“Where is this pet shop that sold you located?” I asked.

“Why, here in Hampton Cove,” said Max. Then, anticipating my next question, “But that doesn’t mean anything. This place is visited by tourists all the time, and so one of them could have taken my sister Shirley, another my brother Lance, and another one still could have adopted my older brother Rhett and my two other sisters Ginger and Irene. Effectively splitting us up.” He sighed deeply. “They should institute a rule that if people want to adopt a turtle, they have to take us as a family—all or nothing.”

“Yeah, I can see how that must be frustrating,” I said.

“Frustrating! It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is.” Dooley suddenly emitted a giggle, and the turtle gave him a dirty look. “You think this is funny, do you, Dooley?”

“Oh, no!” said Dooley quickly, trying to suppress his mirth. “It’s just that—what are the odds that you would have the same name as Max?”

The turtle rolled his eyes. “Still harping on the same topic, I see.”

“You have to admit it is a big coincidence,” said my friend.

“I’m not admitting to any such thing,” said the turtle. He seemed out of sorts, which wasn’t surprising considering the fact that he might never see his brothers and sisters again.

“Okay, if you like, I will ask my human to put you up for the time being,” I said.

“And hide me from Terrible Ted?” he added hopefully.

“And hide you from Ted,” I agreed.

“Has Ted been very terrible to you?” asked Dooley.

“He has,” the turtle said curtly.

Dooley shook his head sadly. “Ted is an accountant. He’s used to working with numbers, not pets. He used to be awful to Rufus also. But I think he has learned his lesson after Rufus ran away from home once, and now he doesn’t treat him as badly anymore.”

“Rufus?” asked Max. “Who is Rufus?”

“Why, Ted’s dog, of course,” said Dooley. “He’s a good friend of ours,” he added. “Even though he is a dog, we all like him very much.”

The turtle frowned. “That’s the trouble with being kept in a shed, you see,” he said. “You aren’t allowed outside, and so I haven’t met any other members of Ted’s household. In fact, I didn’t even know that the guy had a dog.”

“What did Ted make you do?” I asked.

“Sit for him,” said the turtle.

“Sit for him? What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. I had to sit for him while he tried to capture my likeness in clay. I don’t know why, but he seems to have developed this obsession with trying to replicate the way I look in dead material. All I can say is it was a lot of hard work. Turtles hate to sit still for hours at a time, see. We like to move around, dynamic creatures that we are. Always up for some action—that’s the turtle way. But every time I moved, Ted expressed his displeasure and threatened to take away my food if I didn’t do as he said.”

“Oh, but that is terrible,” said Dooley, who hates it when his bowl is empty. “He can’t do that to you!”

“Like I said, it was pure torture. Which is why I escaped the first chance I got. And now I’m here, talking to you guys.” He darted a glance over his shoulder. “I just hope he won’t come looking for me. I’m pretty sure he won’t like it when he discovers me gone. He said I was an integral part of his plan.”

“What plan?” asked Dooley.

“Beats me. He didn’t think I was important enough to confide in. All I know is that I’m glad I got away, and I’ll never have to go back to spend time with that horrible man.”

Poor Ted, I thought. He’d probably hate it if he knew that his turtle was saying these awful things about him. But then I guess when you threaten to deprive a turtle of food if he doesn’t do as he’s told, you can expect some kind of backlash. So Ted only had himself to blame that Max would have escaped the shed where Ted kept him.

I could only imagine that this was the garden shed and that Ted had decided to use it for some experiment, the likes of which didn’t bear thinking about.

“Let’s get you into the house,” I suggested, “before Ted comes looking. We don’t want him to find you and drag you back to his shed to carry out these heinous experiments.”

The turtle looked extremely grateful as he followed us into the house through the pet flap. I felt a warm glow spread through my chest at the thought that I had saved this tiny creature from being worked to the bone by a Ted Trapper who had obviously gone berserk.

Chapter Three

Marc Oldoland took the mail out of the mailbox when he saw it—a dark van with tinted windows slowly cruising along the street. A deep frown puckered his brow. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen that van. As he tried to get a look at the driver, the reflection from the sun made it quite impossible to identify the person. He got the impression it was a man, and he was wearing a baseball cap, though it could just as well have been a woman.

“Not with me, you don’t,” he said, and hurried back into the house, where it didn’t take him long to retrieve his phone and step outside again. He was just in time to see the van turn the corner. He held up his phone and managed to snap a shot, and when he checked it, saw that he had managed to catch the license plate on the van.

Satisfied, he held the phone up to his ear. Moments later, he was in communication with Dolores Peltz, who manned the front desk at the police station.

“What is it this time, Marc?” asked the woman, not sounding all that happy to hear his voice.

“That van was back just now,” he said. “Cruising down the street, all suspicious-like, just like the last couple of times. And this time,” he said with a note of triumph in his voice, “I managed to snap a picture… of the license plate!”

There was a silence on the other line, which wasn’t Dolores’s habit, and then her snappy response came. “Why don’t I connect you to one of our officers?” Without waiting for his response, she put him on hold, subjecting him to some of that horrible muzak the station used for this purpose. Impatiently, he tapped the phone against his chin, and when he heard a tired voice ask him to state his name and his business, he immediately launched into his spiel again. When he finished explaining to the person on the other end that he had quite possibly managed to catch a picture of a van driven by a couple of crooks intent on who knows what, the officer, whose name was Wilson, didn’t seem overly impressed.

“So you saw a van drive down the street, and you think they’re up to… what exactly?”

“How should I know?” he said. “You’re the police. You figure it out.”

“Sir, as far as I know, it’s still not illegal to drive along the street in a van.”

“But it’s got tinted windows! I only managed to catch a glimpse of the driver through the front windshield. Now if that ain’t suspicious, I don’t know what is!”

The officer sighed deeply. “The windshield wasn’t tinted and nor were the front side windows?”

“Well… no. Or maybe a little. I still couldn’t get a good look at the driver, though.”

“Then they didn’t do anything wrong. The windshield and front side windows of a vehicle operated in the State of New York cannot block more than thirty percent of the light. Seventy percent of the light must pass through. In your estimation, was that the case, sir?”

“Why… yeah—I guess. But it’s the way he drove, see? All slow like, as if they were looking for something. Probably casing a house or houses. Probably they’re part of a gang of burglars and they’re going to break in one of these nights.”

“And you know this how, exactly?” asked the cop, who was not the brightest bulb in the shed as far as Marc was concerned.

“Why, common sense!” he cried. “Look, I’ve got the license plate right here. I managed to snap a shot of it just as it disappeared around the corner. Can I read it to you? You can look it up in that database of yours. I’ll bet it’s connected to all kinds of illegal activities.”

“I’m afraid we don’t give out that kind of information to the public, Mr. Oldoland,” said the cop.

“I didn’t mean you have to give me his name and address,” he said. “But you can look it up and then arrest the people involved, can’t you? Be proactive for a change?”

“I’m afraid…”

At this, Marc got so worked up that he promptly tapped the big red button on the screen and ended the conversation. “No use,” he muttered under his breath as he scrolled through his list of phone numbers. “No use whatsoever.” It didn’t take him long to find the number he was looking for, and so he pressed it. When the familiar voice answered, he perked up a great deal. It was obvious to him now that he should have called Vesta Muffin in the first place instead of wasting his breath on that useless and incompetent police force they had in this town—all paid for with his precious tax dollars, no less.

“Yeah, Vesta,” he said. “Marc Oldoland. I just got off the phone with the police, and they’re refusing to take me seriously. I hope you’ve got more sense.”

Vesta listened patiently for him to finish his story, then said, “Can you send me that picture? I’ll take a look if you want.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re going to hit my block one of these nights. They’ve been casing it for days now. And the cops aren’t doing anything. On the contrary, they’re feeding me all this stuff about privacy laws and it not being illegal to drive a van. But it’s the way these people are driving their van, Vesta. You can see that, can’t you?” he added hopefully.

“Absolutely,” said Vesta, much to his relief. “It’s exactly this kind of thing we should be seeing more of, Marc. Community spirit, you know. People like you reporting suspicious activities are what crime prevention is all about. And if the police can’t see that, it means we’ll just have to do it ourselves, like the responsible and concerned citizens that we are.”

“Oh, thank God there are people like you active in our community,” he said, and meant every word. “Otherwise we’d all be sunk!”

“Just send me that picture and I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

“Can you have it checked by the cops?”

“Absolutely,” she said, and that didn’t surprise him one bit. After all, her son was chief of police, her granddaughter was married to a cop, and Vesta was in charge of the watch.

“I want in on this,” he said.

“What did you just say?”

“I said I want in on this. This is my block, Vesta. I’ve lived here all my life. And if these thugs are going to target me or my neighbors, I want to do my bit to help protect us from these crooks. So if you’re going on patrol tonight, I want to ride with you guys. At least,” he added cautiously, “if you think that’s a good idea.”

He didn’t know how Vesta ran her neighborhood watch, but he’d heard stories, and those stories said that she ruled the watch with an iron fist. But that didn’t bother him. He had been robbed in the past, and he was prepared to follow Vesta’s lead if it prevented that kind of thing from ever happening again, either to him or one of his neighbors.

“Sure you can ride with us,” she said, much to his surprise. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, but he was glad she had said yes. “I’ll pick you up at ten,” she told him.

“Can… can Rafi also come?” he asked.

“Who’s Rafi?”

“My Chihuahua,” he said. “I don’t like to leave him alone in the house. He gets scared when I’m not there.”

“Oh, all right. The more the merrier. I just hope Rafi doesn’t have a thing against cats.”

And with these mysterious words, she hung up. Then he remembered that Vesta often patrolled with her cats in the car. She seemed to think they were a great help in fighting crime. Or maybe she just liked the company. Patrolling probably got tedious after a while.

As he returned to the house, he wondered if he shouldn’t install one of those alarm systems that scare off intruders. But since his budget didn’t stretch that far, he’d have to do it himself with a kit he picked up at the hardware store. He wasn’t sure it would be sufficient, but since it was all he could afford, it would have to do.

And so he grabbed Rafi from the couch and moments later was on his way into town to pay a visit to Franklin Beaver, the fellow who ran the hardware store, hoping Franklin could instruct him on how to install the deterrent to end all deterrents. If these people thought they could target him a second time in a row, they had another thing coming!

Chapter Four

A fun birthday party sounded like a great idea! Jodie was already struggling to contain her glee when she realized that she wasn’t invited. Lacey had invited all the different members of her squad but had purposely neglected to include her former best friend.

Jodie stared at her friend but saw that the latter was blithely ignoring her, a smirk twitching on her lips.

The girls were in class, waiting for Mrs. Fennelly to return and hand out their assignments for the coming week. It was the moment Lacey had chosen to launch her bombshell idea: the birthday bash to end all bashes. And since the party would be held at Jodie’s house, an invitation was like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket. Jodie’s parents were seriously loaded, and if memory served, they always made sure that their daughter’s guests were treated like kings and queens. There would be chocolate fountains, a popcorn bar, laser tag, an escape room, karaoke, a scavenger hunt, and maybe even a famous pop star who would give a private concert. No expenses spared!

And now she wasn’t even invited!

She sagged in her seat and watched as Mrs. Fennelly entered the room, her arms laden with stacks of paper, and started doling out their assignments one by one. To know that the girls would have the weekend of their lives and she would be slaving over this tedious assignment was the thing that sealed her sense of gloom. As she accepted the piece of paper, she simply tucked it into her backpack without much ado, hoping against hope that it had been a simple oversight on Lacey’s part and that she would soon remember that she hadn’t yet invited her best friend, Jodie, to her party.

Though the term was probably ex-best friend, with the emphasis on ex.

Ever since the two friends fell out about a month ago, Lacey hadn’t so much as offered a word of apology for her appalling behavior, and the two former besties practically hadn’t spoken.

It was a terrible upheaval and possibly the worst thing that had ever happened to Jodie, who was shy and soft-spoken compared with Lacey’s brash and outspoken personality. Other friends often wondered how two girls with such different and opposing characters could be friends, and she had often wondered the same thing. And yet they had been friends since kindergarten and had been close until a month ago.

Now, though, it seemed that Lacey had decided to become her worst enemy. It had started when Jodie found a banana smudged between the pages of her favorite book, and then, of course, that long string of strange messages she had received, each one nastier than the last. She couldn’t help but think that Lacey was behind those, as well as the banana incident. And to top it all off, someone had poured a can of Fanta into her backpack, the sticky stuff covering everything: all of her notebooks and textbooks, and even her phone. Though Mom said the phone could be rescued, and so could the rest of her stuff.

It was still a terrible thing to do, and she wondered when the next blow would come.

Now she knew.

No more birthday parties for her.

And to think that rumor had it Lacey’s millionaire dad had actually invited Taylor Swift, and the famous singer had said yes!

This was without a doubt the absolute worst week of her life!

As Mrs. Fennelly droned on and on about the Himalayas and the people who lived there, she wished she was one of them. Life in the Himalayas was probably a lot better than life in Hampton Cove as a former member of Lacey’s posse. Not only was she no longer friends with Lacey, but all her former friends had been part of the posse and had excluded her from their circle as well. The only friend she had left was the one girl who didn’t give a fig about Lacey and her clique. But since Jodie wasn’t all that excited about being friends with Maddison Jerry either, she didn’t think this was much of a consolation at all.

Lunchtime had arrived, and as all the girls got up and headed for the door, she hung back, not feeling like getting the cold shoulder treatment again. The only other girl who also hung back, more out of habit than because she had a grudge against anyone, was Maddison.

The girl, dressed in black from head to toe and even sporting a few tattoos that no one was supposed to know about—especially not the teachers—gave her a grin. “Looking forward to the birthday party with Taylor Swift?”

“I’m not invited,” Jodie said as she got up and shoved her stuff into her backpack.

“Still being cast out into the desert, huh?”

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” said Maddison. She had remarkable golden eyes, and if she would only be more selective about what she wore, she could have been the most gorgeous girl in class. But instead, she was the most slovenly, which often made Jodie wonder if she did it on purpose or if she simply didn’t know how beautiful she really was.

Lacey had often said that Maddison simply didn’t have the money to afford decent clothes, so maybe that was also a factor. Lacey had often felt threatened by Maddison, especially in the first weeks when Maddison had arrived at school, but had soon realized that the girl had no intention of challenging Lacey’s leadership role and decided that she didn’t need to bother with her at all. From that moment on, Lacey had simply ignored Maddison, and oddly enough, that hadn’t bothered the girl in the slightest.

“It’s going to be a great party,” she said. “Half the school will be there.”

“It’s just a party, Jodie,” said Maddison, proving how little she knew.

“It’s only going to be the party of the year,” said Jodie. “The biggest social event.”

“Like I said, it’s just a party,” said Maddison with a shrug. “And besides, I’ve never been invited to any of these things, and I’m fine.”

Jodie glanced at the girl and wondered why that was. How can you be fine when you’re habitually being excluded from the most important and exclusive club in school? When you’re a social pariah? She had only lived under the new regime for a month and already felt as if her life was over.

“Hey, wanna hang out with me instead?” asked Maddison.

“To do what?” asked Jodie, who had absolutely no desire to hang out with the girl.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said her classmate. “Watch some TV, go to the mall, feed my horse.”

She looked up sharply. “You have a horse?”

“Sure. If you want, you can ride her.” She gave her a sideways glance. “You do ride?”

“Um…” Jodie didn’t want to admit it, but the last and only time she had been on the back of a horse, it had kicked her off and she had made quite the tumble. As a consequence, she was afraid of horses—or at least of riding them. “Of course I can ride,” she said quickly, not wanting to admit she was less capable than Maddison. That would be the worst. If there was an official title of lamest girl in school, that honor was definitely reserved for Maddison, and Jodie did not envy her the social stigma that went along with the label.

“Drop by the house,” said Maddison. “I’ll text you the address. We’ll go riding and groom the horses. It’ll be fun.” She gave a shrug. “A lot more fun than Lacey’s stupid party.”

Jodie grimaced in response. “Thanks.”

Oh, God, she thought. Please kill me now!

Chapter Five

“Marc Oldoland is riding with us tonight,” said Vesta.

Her friend Scarlett looked up in surprise. “You’ve recruited a new member for the watch?”

“Not exactly.” Vesta tucked away her phone. “He says he’s been seeing suspicious activity on his street lately and wants to make sure no houses are burgled. So he asked the watch to get involved since the police won’t believe him.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s fine if he rides with us this one time. I mean, we’ve had tourists before.”

“I guess,” said Scarlett, though she didn’t look entirely on board with the idea.

The two friends were enjoying their usual refreshments and assorted pastries at the Star Hotel’s outdoor dining area, practicing their favorite hobby of gossiping and doing some people-watching.

“You don’t think it’s a good idea?” asked Vesta.

“No, it’s just that…” Scarlett hesitated. “Well, you know what happened last time we involved Marc in one of our activities, right?”

Vesta shook her head. “I don’t recall. What happened?”

“He tried to seduce me!”

Vesta laughed. “Oh, honey. If we had to exclude every man who tries to seduce you, we’d have to exclude half the male population of Hampton Cove. Or even all of them!”

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer, even when I told him that he wasn’t my type. Just kept asking me out on a date. Finally, I had to block his number on my phone and cross the street every time I saw him. It took a while, but in the end I think he got the message.”

“I’m sure he won’t try again this time,” said Vesta. “He sounded very worried about this mysterious van he saw, so the last thing on his mind will be to ask you out again.”

“I hope so. I don’t need this kind of drama in my life.” She picked up her flat white with chocolate sprinkles on top and took a dainty sip, while Vesta took a sip from her hot chocolate. Even though it was a warm day, they still stuck to their favorite and trusty beverages. Why change up a good thing just because the temperatures are soaring?

“He wants to bring his dog along, so I told him I hope he likes cats. He didn’t seem to catch my drift.”

Scarlett laughed. “He must be the last person in Hampton Cove who doesn’t know that you’re the ultimate cat lady.”

“I’m not the ultimate cat lady,” said Vesta.

“Oh, honey. You are. Who else do you know that can actually talk to their cats?”

“Well, I can think of at least three other people.”

“That are not members of your family.”

Vesta’s mouth closed with a click of her dentures. “Okay, fine. You win. I don’t know anyone else, though I have a feeling that the men in our family are getting there. Last night, Chase actually seemed to understand something Max said to him. Max told him that Grace is getting really big, and Chase said, ‘I know, right?’” She raised her eyebrow. “Shows you that he’s starting to understand the cats.”

“Could be just a coincidence,” said Scarlett. “Inference, you know. Context providing him with the answer.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Vesta. She glanced around. “Where are the cats, by the way? Mostly they can be found traipsing all over Hampton Cove at this time of the day, collecting snippets of information for Odelia’s articles. And now they’re nowhere to be found.”

“It’s too hot,” said Scarlett, picking up a menu and using it to fan herself.

“Maybe we should go inside,” Vesta suggested. They could sit under the air conditioner, which was on full blast and would cool them off pretty quickly. Unlike Scarlett, though, Vesta wasn’t bothered by the heat at all. Probably because she was so thin. She had read somewhere that thin people suffer less from the heat than the more voluptuous of the species, though she couldn’t be sure if this was factual or just a figment of the article writer’s imagination.

“I hope this is not the start of a crime wave,” she told her friend. “The last thing Hampton Cove needs right now is for a couple of thugs to start wreaking havoc and causing trouble.”

The streets of their small town were filled with tourists milling about, the beaches were full of people, and the local business community was ecstatic at the opportunity to finally make some serious moolah. Not all that long ago, there had been a shark scare that had driven some of the tourists away, and even though the threat had passed, it had struck fear into the hearts of Hampton Covians that people would avoid their lovely town in favor of the more famous ones in the vicinity. So far, that hadn’t happened.

“Did Marc call it in?” asked Scarlett.

“He did, and they basically told him to take a hike.”

Scarlett shook her head. “Typical. Good thing there’s the neighborhood watch to pick up the slack, or this town would go to hell in a handbasket.”

“Exactly the way I feel about it,” said Vesta and held up her hot cocoa, clinking it against her friend’s cup before taking another sip. She had once read that on a hot day, you should drink a hot beverage rather than an ice-cold drink. But since she didn’t like ice-cold drinks, that was a no-brainer for her.

As she glanced in the direction of the street, she thought she saw a familiar face. It was that old friend of Francis Reilly’s. The man had done a stretch in prison and, after being released, had joined Francis’s after-prison rehabilitation program. He’d quickly taken a shine to the priest and had been instrumental in doing odd jobs around the church and the rectory, something that Francis appreciated very much.

“Isn’t that Benny Dowd over there?” asked Scarlett.

Vesta nodded. “He seems to be in a hurry.”

“I hope he hasn’t returned to his old life of crime,” said Scarlett. “Francis did tell us that Benny has a habit of being tempted by the dark side.”

“I’m sure Francis keeps him on the straight and narrow. He has that effect on people.”

Father Francis Reilly had a big heart and ran a number of social programs that benefited people like Benny greatly, and the ex-con appreciated it to such an extent that he hadn’t ‘sinned’ ever since the priest had taken him under his wing.

Just then, there was a loud scream that cut through Vesta like a knife. It came from somewhere over her and Scarlett’s heads, and as they looked up, suddenly a heavy object came tearing through the creme-colored awning that protected the guests of the Star Hotel from the blazing sun. The object landed with a dull thud on top of a table, which collapsed under the impact, the guests seated at the table jumping back in shock.

When Vesta and Scarlett approached to take a closer look, they saw, to their surprise, that the object was a body. As the person, who was lying on his back, looked up at them, he gurgled a few words that were hard to understand.

Vesta immediately got down on her hands and knees and brought her ear closer to the man’s lips.

“Tell them… Figurine did it,” he muttered.

She waited for him to say more, but when she studied his face, she saw that a spasm of some kind made him contort his face into a grimace of pain. He balled his fists for a moment, then relaxed and went completely still.

“Call an ambulance!” she called out.

She felt for a pulse, even though she could tell that it was probably to no avail.

The man was dead.