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“Now, this is nothing to be concerned about,” Chase continued gently, almost as if he could actually understand what Dooley was saying. “I’ll tell Odelia and she’ll take care of this straightaway.” He patted my head again—another one of those awkward prods—and smiled. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And fleas have never killed anyone. I think.”

Dooley, who was on the verge of a full-scale panic attack, wailed,“We won’t die?”

“Didn’t you listen to the man?” I asked. “Fleas are going to make us stronger.”

Another itch suddenly plagued me, and I reached with my hind paw to remedy it. But Chase beat me to the punch. He dove right in, and soon was extracting another one of those jumpy little bugs from my skin, mashing it to pieces between his fingernails.

Both Dooley and I stared at the guy like a pair of hobbits staring at Gandalf the Wizard.“He saved you, Max,” said Dooley reverently. “He killed the killer bug.”

“It’s not a killer bug, Dooley,” I said.

“He killed the killer bug with his bare hands.”

“I’m telling you it’s not a killer bug.”

“He saved you. Chase saved you from the killer bug. He’s a hero.”

“It’s not a killer bug and Chase is not a hero!”

But I had to admit that maybe—just maybe—I’d misjudged Odelia’s boyfriend.

The manwas a genuine hero. The fiercest fleaslayer the world had ever known.

Chapter 3

Back at the hotel Odelia was prepared for the worst when she followed her uncle up to the second floor of the Hampton Cove Star. Downstairs, the secondary crime scene had been sealed off from prying eyes by a screen, and techies from the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s office were busily scratching their heads as they stared down at Burt’s head.

Upstairs, the hotel manager, an obsequious little man with a clean-shaven face and shifty eyes, led the way to the room where the tragedy had taken place. Odelia’s uncle Alec Lip, Hampton Cove’s chief of police, hiked up his gun belt, while Odelia and a few more boys and girls in blue followed in the big man’s wake.

As the town’s prime crime reporter—or quite frankly the town’s only reporter, prime, crime or otherwise—Odelia had a front-row seat to most investigations her uncle was involved in, as long as she was discreet and didn’t print stuff in her paper that could hamper the investigation. A fine sleuth in her own right, she’d solved more than one crime in her time, a fact for which her uncle was more than appreciative.

“Where is Chase?” she asked now.

Her uncle cocked an eyebrow in her direction.“I should probably askyou that.”

She blushed slightly. Chase had been living with Uncle Alec, but had been staying over at her place more and more frequently these past few weeks. She didn’t know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, but she had to admit she’d grown very fond of the cop.

“I called him,” she said. “He said he’d be here.”

Uncle Alec shrugged.“If he says he’ll be here, he’ll be here.”

She glanced back at the line of cops following in her wake. They all looked away, but judging from their barely concealed smiles and pricked-up ears, they were eagerly listening in on the conversation. The whole station knew about her and Chase, and followed the budding romance with the kind of fervor usually reserved for the big Hollywood love stories.

The manager came to a full stop in front of an unremarkable door and inserted an unremarkable badge into the unremarkable slot. The mechanism gave a beep, then the door unceremoniously dropped out of its hinges and collapsed to the side, offering the stunned viewers a glance at the devastated room behind it. The place looked like a war zone.

“Oh, Lord,” said the little manager, clasping his hands to his face. “Oh, dear. Oh, my.”

“Not much left,” said Uncle Alec gruffly, and ventured inside.

Odelia’s uncle was a big man with a big belly and a big, round ruddy face. At last count he possessed three chins, two man boobs and two russet sideburns. The moment he stepped across the threshold, there was a loud creaking sound and something gave way.

One moment Uncle Alec was there—the next he was gone.

“Uncle!” Odelia cried, and took a step forward, only to be held back by the manager.

“Careful, Miss Poole, please,” the man said in a breathless whisper.

They both glanced down into the chief-of-police-shaped hole at their feet. One floor down, Uncle Alec was staring up at them, looking slightly dazed and covered with chalk and debris. He was lying on a bed, which had broken his fall, an elderly lady lying next to him, clutching a sheet to her chest, and staring at him with a mixture of curiosity and surprise.

“I’m fine!” Alec called out to them, lifting an arm to indicate he was still alive. “The bed broke my fall.”

Suddenly, the woman next to him said,“And my husband.”

“Mh?” Alec asked.

The woman pointed to an object underneath Alec.“My husband broke your fall.”

A muffled sound came from beneath the large man.“Kindly get off me, sir!”