“Ask our neighbors’ dogs to find them for us.”

Chase puffed up his cheeks and blew out a breath. “Do you really want to wake up the Trappers in the middle of the night?”

“Yeah, can’t we simply find a police dog who can offer us the same service?” asked her uncle.

“If you can find us a police dog in the middle of the night,” said Odelia, “we won’t have to bother the Trappers.” The good thing about the Trappers was that their sheepdog Rufus was familiar with the cats, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would be able to find them.

“Okay, you win,” said her uncle. “Let’s go and wake up the Trappers. But if they complain, you handle it, deal?”

“Deal,” she said, and turned to her grandmother. “Let’s go.”

Gran stared at her. “Me?” she said.

“Yes, you. You put us into this mess. You get us out of it.”

“But I didn’t shoot nobody!”

“No, but you insisted on bringing the cats along, and now they’ve gone missing. So I personally hold you responsible.”

“No fair,” Gran muttered, but still proceeded in the direction of the cars. Time to go and wake up the neighbors!

CHAPTER 22

It wasn’t the first time that we found ourselves in a position of captivity, but I still didn’t much enjoy it. Especially since I had left the house with a certain reluctance, and only because Harriet had insisted I join them for cat choir. So now there was no cat choir, no nap time in my immediate future—only being locked up in some dank old farmhouse!

Johnny and Jerry had put us in some old barn that must have been where they kept the horses at one time, or the cows, for it was very smelly in there, and not very clean. At least they had put some food out for us in the form of a few pieces of sausage—or a lot of sausage. And even though sausage isn’t exactly my favorite food, I still ate it with a certain relish. When you’re hungry you can eat almost anything, as long as it’s edible.

“I don’t like it here, Max,” said Dooley as he huddled close to me. We had found a spot on an old wooden crate that was more or less comfortable, and so we had settled in for the night.

“No, I don’t like it very much either,” I confessed.

Harriet and Brutus had decided that settling down was not in the cards for them, and had gone looking for an avenue of escape. But after they had done the rounds of the old barn, they had to admit defeat.

“I don’t know,” said Harriet after they joined us again, “but there doesn’t seem to be a chance of escape here, you guys. Everything is locked up tight, and I don’t see a way out.”

“Not even a small hole?” I asked hopefully. “Or a crack in the roof?”

“Nothing,” said Harriet. “We’ll have to wait until we’re saved by our humans—or until Johnny and Jerry grow a conscience and decide to let us out again.”

“Fat chance,” I said. “Those two are career crooks. They won’t have a change of heart—ever.”

“No, I guess not,” said Brutus. “Otherwise they would have left this life of crime behind a long time ago.”

Once upon a time, the two men had decided to walk the straight and narrow, but that hadn’t lasted long. And now they seemed to have embraced their criminal true selves more wholeheartedly than ever.

“They must be paid a great deal of money for this,” Brutus ventured. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it.”

“I guess contract killers are highly sought after,” I agreed. “Hence the high pay package.”

I decided to close my eyes for a moment, eager to get some of that much-vaunted nap time I had been seeking for a while now. And as my friends did the same, I suddenly thought I heard voices. They seemed to be coming from behind us. And when I opened my eyes and glanced up, I saw that there was an opening in the wall behind us. It was a grille that covered some kind of ventilation shaft. “Look, you guys,” I said. “I think that leads to the main farmhouse.”

We all moved a little closer and huddled around the vent, listening carefully.

“I don’t like this, Jerry,” said Johnny.

“What don’t you like?” said his partner in crime.

“Locking up those cats! You know they belong to Marge Poole, and we both like Marge Poole, don’t we?”

“We sure do,” Jerry agreed.

“So let’s agree that we won’t harm a hair on their heads, all right?”

“Agreed,” said Jerry. “Marge doesn’t deserve to have her cats involved in this mess.”

“We should have used dynamite,” Johnny grumbled. “That way we wouldn’t have to keep going back there time after time, trying to get rid of this guy. He’s so hard to kill.”

“You can’t throw sticks of dynamite at a police station, Johnny,” Jerry argued. “It brings the entire structure down, and the police don’t like that. They’re attached to their precinct.”

“I guess you’re right. So what do you suggest we do?”

“It’ll be hard to get at the guy now. So we must find a way to get close to him somehow.”

“Let’s talk to our contact again,” Johnny suggested.

There was a pause, and then Jerry said, “Oh, hi, Maria. This is your Uncle Jerry again.”

Harriet’s eyes went wide. “You don’t think… the dispatcher?”

“Possible,” I admitted. It would explain how the crooks knew where Rogelio was.

The voice of the young woman sounded through the ventilation shaft loud and clear, and I immediately recognized it as belonging to the dispatcher we had spoken to earlier. Harriet was right. “Oh, hi, Uncle Jerry. Have you managed to get hold of Auntie Marlene yet?”

“No, I haven’t been able to reach her.”

“But didn’t the lawyer tell you where she is?”

“I didn’t have a chance to ask! When we arrived, a couple of crazies started shooting the place up.”

“Oh, I know all about that!” said the young woman. “Things are nuts here right now!”

“But you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. I was out in front when it happened, so they were nowhere near me.”

“And the guy we want to talk to? Is he all right?”