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“I don’t mind telling you it’s been one hell of a morning, darling,” said Vena. “It’s almost as if the entire cat population of Hampton Cove has been infested with this pest overnight. I’m almost out of drops and it’s not even noon yet! But drop by with your cats and we’ll get ridof those pests ASAP!”

As she was talking to Vena, Odelia’s eyes drifted across the street and who would she see but the very cats she was discussing! They were gabbing with Kingman, Wilbur Vickery’s chubby piebald, and judging from the expression on Dooley’s face the conversation had just turned deadly serious.

After assuring Vena she would be there within the half hour, she quickly crossed the street and joined her two felines.

“Hey babes,” she said as she crouched down next to Max and Dooley and tickled their necks. “I heard what happened. Are you in a lot of pain?”

Max gave her a hesitant look—not the kind of look he usually directed at her. Almost as if he were… afraid of her. Hard to believe, of course. She was the kind of pet owner who was adored by her pets. Always doing what was best for her little darlings—giving them the best chow on the market—allowing them to sleep at the foot of the bed—giving them cuddles and lavishing all her attention on them at every possible occasion.

“It’s not that it’s painful, Odelia,” said Dooley with a shaky voice, as if he’d just learned a terrible truth. “It’s that it’s so incredibly itchy.”

And to demonstrate the truthfulness of his words, he broke into a complicated set of movements, scratching pretty much every surface of his body that he could reach with his hind paws and applying tongue and teeth to the rest.

“Oh, you poor darlings,” she said, getting up. “Let’s go, shall we? I made an appointment with Vena. She’s waiting.”

Max and Dooley’s eyes turned to Kingman, who gave them an ‘I told you so’ look and then shook his head sadly, returning indoors. She now saw he was wearing a flea collar. So he had caught the affliction, too. If what Vena said was true, every local cat had. She wondered what had started the infestation. Who, in other words, was Hampton Cove’s patient zero? Probably some street cat like Clarice, who liked to roam the streets and snack from garbage dumps all across town.

“Do we have to go to Vena, Odelia?” asked Max.

“Yes, you do. You don’t want to suffer these fleas forever, do you?”

“Maybe they’ll, you know, get tired of me and jump ship?”

“No, they won’t. They’ll lay eggs and more fleas will come and you’ll never get rid of them.”

He slumped and she decided to cut all this back-and-forth short and picked both him and Dooley up. People were already stopping and staring at the crazy lady talking to her cats. She knew the Poole women had a reputation in town for being cat ladies, and she didn’t want to make it worse by becoming a public display of crazy. Although her grandmother probably cornered the market in that particular area.

She carried both cats to her beat-up old pickup, which she’d parked in front of her dad’s office, and deposited them inside.

They looked remarkably glum, which was only natural, of course. Poor darlings.

She got behind the wheel, managed to make the car’s engine cough and purr, and navigated the old thing into traffic. “Are Brutus and Harriet at the house?” she asked.

Max and Dooley both nodded automatically, still looking sandbagged.

“Don’t worry, you guys,” she said in an attempt to cheer them up. “Vena will get rid of these pests in no time. You’ll see. She told me she’s seen half of Hampton Cove’s cat population already and she’s expecting the other half this afternoon. It would seem everyone and his tabby has caught this affliction today.”

“What were you doing at the hotel?” asked Max, showing the first signs of animation since she’d picked him up at Vickery’s store.

“I was going to tell you about that. Do you remember those beer commercials? The Most Fascinating Man in the World ones?”

“The old bearded man with his funny stories and the two pretty ladies?”

“That’s the one. His name is Burt Goldsmith, and I was going to interview him this morning. Only turns out he got blown up.”

Max did a double take.“Blown up?”

“Yeah, his hotel room exploded and he along with it.”

“Maybe he was filming one of his commercials and something went wrong?”

“I don’t think so. Either he killed himself—by accident or on purpose—or…” Her expression turned grim and she clutched the steering wheel a little firmer. “He was killed.”

“Do you want us to snoop around?” asked Max.

“If you could, that would be wonderful,” she said.

Her cats were her secret weapon as a reporter. They gave her the kinds of scoops other journos could only dream of. And since they were plugged into the local feline network, they collected stories that were pure gold once they made it into print.

“Odelia?” asked Dooley, speaking up for the first time since he got into the car.

“Uh-huh?” she said as she turned down the street where she lived.

“Are we going to die?”