“So you’ll call your kids Norm?” asked Dooley, interested.

“Absolutely. Well, unless they’re girls, of course. In which case we’ll call them Norma.” Our conversation seemed to have perked him up a great deal. “So if you have no further need for me…”

“No, I think for the moment we’re fine,” I said. “Thanks, buddy.”

“You’re very welcome, Max. Any time I can be of assistance, just holler.”

I had a feeling he was bursting at the seams to procreate, and who was I to stand in the way of nature taking its course?

We watched as he flew off, a song on his lips and a definite breeziness in his wing action, and I think we all thought the same thing: there flew one lucky fly. A fly fly, in other words.

“Okay, so what do we know?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Brutus grumbled. “We know nothing!”

“We know that a cockroach is having trouble with his missus,” said Dooley. “And also that Norm will be a proud father soon of lots of Norms and Normas.”

Brutus gave him a scathing look, and Dooley quickly shut up.

“It’s true, though, isn’t it, Max?” said Harriet. “So far we don’t know a lot about what happened.”

“Norm seems to think Carlos and Mindy are the culprits,” said Brutus. “So maybe he’s right? I mean, they could have done it. Shot the guy and then pretended as if they’d walked in on him lying on the floor? It would explain why the killer has vanished without a trace.”

“But why, Brutus?” I asked. “Why would people who sell bug spray murder a prince?”

That had him stumped for a moment, but he quickly rallied. “I’ll bet he refused to buy their bug spray and so they killed him,” he said.

I shook my head. “That makes no sense at all. If every salesperson who met sales resistance in a potential customer would shoot them dead, the world would be full of dead people.”

“The world is full of dead people,” he grumbled. “And people that should be dead, like the vet that did this to me.” He was pointing to his nether regions, and I had a feeling that he wouldn’t be much help today. And since I felt that our work was done for now, we decided to leave the hotel and go in search of our humans to report. But as we tried to leave the room, we discovered to our dismay that someone had closed the door and had locked us in.

“What’s this?” asked Brutus.

“The door is locked,” Harriet pointed out.

“It’s the killers!” said Brutus. “They know we’re on to them and they’ve decided to make sure we won’t spill the beans.”

Just like his theory that the bug spray salespeople had killed the prince because he didn’t like their product, this didn’t make a lot of sense either. But since I could see that I was setting myself up for an argument I couldn’t possibly win, I decided to leave well enough alone. And since the window that led onto the balcony was closed, it looked as if we were effectively stuck.

“How did Norm get out?” asked Harriet.

“Maybe he flew through the keyhole?” Dooley suggested.

“Or maybe there’s some other way in or out,” said Brutus hopefully. As much as he hates not being able to father kids, he hates being locked up even more. Especially as we had no way of knowing when Odelia or Chase might return. Maybe they had no intention of returning at all, but would only notice us missing tonight when they arrived home after a long day at the office. In which case we’d be locked in there for a very long time—with no food or water.

“I don’t like this,” Brutus grumbled. “I hate being locked up. Being locked up stinks.”

I placed a paw around his shoulder. “I’m sorry that you were neutered, buddy, and I’m sorry that you’ll never have kids. But can you please lighten up a little? We’re stuck in a room with no way out, and it’s important that we keep our wits about us, and our mood up.”

“Okay, fine,” he said without much excitement. “So what do you suggest we do?”

I shrugged. “What can we do? Sit tight and wait until someone opens that door?” Harriet had been humming a little tune, and suddenly I got a bright idea. “You know, maybe you could sing us a song, Harriet,” I suggested. “Just to keep the energy up, you know.”

“Oh, absolutely!” she said. “What do you want to hear, Max? Any special requests?”

“Just pick your favorite song,” I said.

She smiled broadly, happy at the chance of having an audience. Dooley gave me a pained look. “Are you sure, Max?” he whispered. “We are in a confined space, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “But I promise it won’t take long before someone opens that door and lets us out.”

“I hope so,” he said with a sigh. Clearly, he wasn’t a big fan of Harriet’s talent.

Harriet, undeterred, opened those formidable pipes of hers and burst into song. The sound was enough to rattle the window panes and though I thought I could see the wallpaper coming loose on the walls and falling to the ground, that could have simply been my imagination. Before long, the sound was so devastating that I wished I had brought along a pair of earplugs. But then no earplugs can contend with the sheer power of Harriet’s voice. People started pounding the walls of the adjacent rooms, and not even five minutes into her concert suddenly the door swung open and the hotel manager strode in, looking perturbed. When he saw Harriet sitting on top of the bed singing at the top of her lungs, he pressed his hands to his ears, a grimace distorting his features, and approached her the way one approaches a hurricane or twister or some other natural disaster zone. The moment he had reached her, he tentatively removed one hand from his ears, screwed up his face in an expression of sheer agony, and managed to grab Harriet by the neck and pick her up, then drag her bodily from the room.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing!” she yelled.

“This man is saving us, Harriet,” I pointed out. I didn’t specify who he was saving, but it was enough to make her stop singing, which was a big relief for all of us, and also the hotel manager, who trudged off with Harriet still firmly dangling from his hand.

“We better follow her,” said Brutus. “Before we get locked up in here again.”

And so we followed the manager as he traversed the hotel with Harriet suspended from his outstretched arm. It was a curious sight, and plenty of guests watched us stride off. When they saw the manager holding Harriet in a firm grip, they broke out into spontaneous applause.

In other words: we had been saved from imprisonment and would soon be reunited with our humans. But instead, the hotel manager took Harriet into his office, and since we were all following him, like those kids chasing after the pied piper, before we knew what was happening, we were locked up again, only this time in the manager’s office!

In other words: we’d gone from bad to worse.

CHAPTER 10

Andy Pettey glanced out of the window of his hotel room and shook his head. This town was going to the dogs, and fast. They’d been vacationing in Hampton Cove for close on thirty years now, he and his wife Brandy, but it had never been as bad as it was this year. Caterwauling cats in the next room, people being shot in broad daylight, and now even a murder of an actual prince across the corridor. What was going on? He retracted his head.

“Are they still there?” asked Brandy, who had been glued to the television set in a corner of their room.

“Still there,” he confirmed. “Looks like you were right, sweetest. We shouldn’t have come this year.”

“But where else are we gonna go?” she lamented. “This is our home away from home.”

“Well, it’s time we found a new home away from home then,” he said. “They actually shot a man across the corridor, honey. Shot him stone-cold dead!”

The hullabaloo had been so overwhelmingly loud that they’d both stepped out of their room that morning to see what was going on. Normally not all that interested in meddling in other people’s affairs, this time he felt they couldn’t stay away, as the noise was preventing them from mapping out their day. And that’s when they discovered that their neighbor, an actual prince, had been shot. Shot dead with an actual gun! Right there. In their favorite hotel in what was supposed to be a fairy town. And in the middle of their vacation, no less.

Before long, they’d been interrogated by two police officers, who had peppered them with questions that Andy frankly found extremely insulting. Almost as if they thought they were the murderers! Now why would they go about murdering people? He was a retired shoe salesman and Brandy a former nurse. So they were both in the business of saving lives—he through supplying them with the proper footwear, a mission he had always taken very seriously. And she through the loving care she lavished on her patients throughout a long career.

The moment this whole business with the prince was over and done with, they were out of there, Andy thought. And if it was up to him, they’d never come back.

“I don’t get it,” said Brandy as she half-turned to him. “A drive-by shooting? In the heart of Hampton Cove? But why?”