“That’s great news, Norm,” said Brutus. “Congratulations.”

“Was it the bug spray that did it, you think?” asked Dooley. “Did Gran zap you with that bug spray and now Norma is pregnant?”

“Bug spray had nothing to do with it, buddy,” said Norm. He pounded his little chest. “It’s all down to me.”

“Congratulations, Norm,” I said, well pleased with this good news. “That’s great to hear. And I know you’ll be a great father to those kids.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?” asked Dooley.

Norm grinned, or at least I thought he did. It’s hard to read a fly as their facial features are a little different from ours. “I guess there will be boys and girls both,” he said.

“Oh, you mean you’re having twins?” asked Dooley.

“A fly lays over a hundred eggs, Dooley,” I said. “So there will be plenty of boys and girls.”

He stared at me. “A hundred kids! But how are you going to feed all of them, Norm?”

“Norma found a great stash of food,” said Norm, and he seemed to have reconciled himself pretty well with his new role as dad. But then it’s different for flies, as their young leave the nest pretty early on and don’t stick around like human children do. They sometimes linger on until they’re well into their twenties or even their thirties and forties, which seems like a terrible nuisance for their poor parents. Then again, I did hope that Grace would stick around for a long time to come, as I quite enjoyed having her around.

Charlene and Uncle Alec’s guest had awakened from his slumber, for he smacked his lips and opened his eyes to look around. When he saw three dogs, four cats, two old ladies, and a fly looking back at him, he blinked and shot up. “I must have fallen asleep,” he said.

“That’s all right,” said Gran, patting him on the arm. “You sleep as much as you like. You’ve been through a big ordeal, so you need to sleep it off. If you want, I could make you a cup of tea?”

“Coffee,” he said immediately. “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Absolutely not,” she said, and swiftly got to her feet. “It’s my son and daughter-in-law’s place, you see,” she said. “So I know my way around here pretty well.” She started opening kitchen cupboards left and right, proving that she didn’t know her way around there any more than we did. It is true that Charlene’s place is not a house that we often frequent, though now that she had taken three miniature poodles under wing, that might change. Even though at first we hadn’t made a great impression on the doggies, we now got along well. Their human was in prison, serving a sentence for stealing chickens and swindling people out of money, and so Huey, Dewey, and Louie had found a momentary home with Charlene, and they seemed to like it a great deal, too. Even Uncle Alec had taken to them in a big way. I’d always suspected him of being a dog person, and now we had proof that he was, in fact, big on dogs.

“What’s going to happen to that poor man, Max?” asked Dewey.

“Yes, are they going to keep shooting at him?” asked Huey.

“He doesn’t deserve it,” said Louie. “He’s very nice.”

“He likes to play with us,” said Dewey. “And we like humans who play with us.”

“We sure do,” said Louie. “So we wouldn’t like him to get shot, Max.”

“I don’t think he would like to get shot,” I said.

“Can you make sure he doesn’t get shot?” asked Huey.

Three pairs of dog eyes stared at me intently and pleadingly, and finally, I sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure he doesn’t get shot at again. But I can’t make any promises, you hear. Basically it’s out of my paws.”

“In whose paws is it, then?” asked Dewey.

“This is a matter that can only be handled at the highest level of diplomacy,” I said.

“The highest level?” asked Louie. “What’s the highest level? The ambassador?”

“Higher,” I said.

“The Secretary of State?”

“Higher.”

They exchanged a look of surprise. “You mean… the President?”

I nodded sagely. “Only the President can exert the kind of pressure that is needed to make sure that Rogelio survives this ordeal.”

“Gosh,” said Huey, and that summed things up pretty well.

CHAPTER 35

It was a strange scene that played out in the Oval Office of the White House that day. The President sat on the couch, listening carefully to the argument as presented by Uncle Alec, Charlene Butterwick, Odelia, and Chase. Along with our humans, we had also been allowed to travel along. But even though our presence had been found acceptable, we had been relegated to the corner of the office, where we were being kept company by Mac and Cheese, the President’s Dobermanns whom we had met on a previous occasion. The fact that our Hampton Cove delegation had been granted an audience with the President was thanks to the fact that we had saved the man’s life not that long ago, and he still remembered.

“So how’s life been treating you, fellas?” asked Mac. Once upon a time, he and his canine friend hadn’t been pleased to make our acquaintance, but their initial hostility had quickly been replaced with gratitude for saving their human, and the old kinship still remained.

“Oh, we can’t complain,” I said.

“I have been poisoned with bug spray,” said Harriet apropos of nothing. “But I survived. And now I’m Santa’s little helper, saving pets from being abused by their pet parents.”

“Is that a fact?” asked Cheese with an indulgent smile. “Well, you don’t have to bother about saving us. We’re being treated very well by the President and his family. In fact, life couldn’t be better for us, isn’t that right, Mac?”

“Yeah, things are going swimmingly,” said his friend. I hadn’t been able to determine whether they were brothers or merely looked similar, and I was afraid to ask. They towered over us, and even though they were predisposed to be friendly to us, there was still an innate sense of danger that lurked underneath the surface and could be unleashed at any time.

The President leaned forward. “Okay, so what you’re saying is that this man, this…”

“Rogelio Hartshorn,” said Uncle Alec helpfully.

“That his life is effectively in danger and that these people will keep on coming until he’s dead?”

“That’s right,” said the chief.

“But why? Why do they want him dead so much?”

“Well, the Abou-Yamens feel that he’s been instrumental in assisting Prince Abdullah make certain claims that they have denied him.”

“You see, Prince Abdullah fell out of favor with his grandfather, the king of Abou-Yamen,” said Odelia, “when he imported a bug spray that didn’t have the effect that it should have had. Instead of killing the bugs that were attacking their crops, the bugs proliferated, and the harvest failed, leading to a very difficult period and even what can only be called a famine. And so Prince Abdullah was deemed responsible and considered persona non grata. He was exiled and disinherited. If he had stayed in the country he would have been imprisoned.”

“Prince Abdullah is the man that was killed in your town, isn’t he?” asked the President.

“He is,” said Odelia. “We believe that he was murdered on behalf of the Abou-Yamen government after he had begun a procedure to have his disinheritance retracted. He had hired Rogelio Hartshorn to plead his case and had also restarted negotiations with the same people who had provided the flawed bug spray and was going to have more of the stuff imported into Abou-Yamen to prove that he was right and his grandfather was wrong. This angered the king so much that he ordered to have his grandson killed and the murder pinned on the people selling the bug spray, Carlos Perks and Mindy Horsefield. He also ordered to have Rogelio Hartshorn killed as well. But in the end, only Prince Abdullah died.”

“And you think they’ll keep coming back to get rid of the lawyer and also the bug spray people?”

“Yes, once the king has issued an order it cannot be revoked. It has to be carried out, so they will keep trying to get rid of these people—all three of them American citizens, Mr. President.”