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“What do you mean?”

“What if he’s lying? He wouldn’t be the first cat to turn out a liar.”

“You mean he’s lying about the meat?”

“Why not? There’s no way for us to check.”

“He’s just messing with us!” cried Dooley. “And deceiving poor Harriet.”

“Don’t feel sorry for Harriet. If she chooses that brute it’s her funeral.”

“Funeral!” he cried, his voice skipping an octave. “Do you really believe that horrible creep would hurt her?”

“It’s just an expression, Dooley,” I said irritably. The longer I was up, the more cranky I was becoming as well. I needed a nap and some food and I needed it an hour ago. First things first, though. “Let’s have a chat, shall we?” I suggested, and started tripping over to the dumpsters.

“A chat?” he asked, falling into step beside me. “With who?”

“With whom,” I corrected him. We might be cats, but that was no excuse for a lapse in grammar. “Who do you think?”

“Is this a trick question?” he whined. “Don’t do this to me, Max. Not when I’m tired. Just tell me already. Whommmm are we going to chat with?”

“Clarice, of course.”

He gulped.“Clarice? Are you nuts? She’ll just tell us she saw nuthin.”

“Well, maybe she will, or maybe she won’t. But it’s definitely worth a try.”

Of all the cats I knew in Hampton Cove, Clarice was the one who’d traveled the most and traveled the farthest. She had to, to find food and shelter, as she didn’t have a human to take care of her. Once upon a time, the rumor went, she’d had a human, but he’d abandoned her. Some tourist who came to Hampton Cove for the holidays, and then tied her to a tree out in the woods and took off. The same rumor held that she’d gnawed off her own paw to escape, like James Franco, though from what I’d seen her limbs were still present and accounted for, so that story might just have been a fabrication.

“Clarice,” I called out as we approached the dumpster she was currently holed up in. “Clarice, we’d like to talk to you.” The small collection of dumpsters was where the stores the mall was comprised of dumped their garbage, and was always a place where all manner of critters gathered.

When Clarice’s head popped up out of the dumpster, looking shifty-eyed and ready to flee, Dooley chimed in, “Hey, Clarice. So we meet again, huh? What are the odds?” He looked a little afraid, and with good reason. Clarice had been known to lash out when she was approached without invitation.

“We were just wondering—” I began.

“I know nuthin,” she muttered, repeating her usual mantra.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, a little gruffly. I wasn’t in the mood for games. I was tired and hungry and my paws hurt. “Look, all we need to know is whether you know a cat who knows a cat who might have seen a cat who…”

“I know nuthin,” Clarice repeated.

“See? I told you this was a waste of time,” said Dooley. He’d planted himself on his rear end and was sniffing the air, probably looking for meat.

“Look, we just want to know—”

“I know nuthin!” she repeated, and jumped out of the dumpster, giving us both the dirtiest of looks and starting to walk away.

“Now hold it right there!” I cried. “All we want is information. Is that too much to ask? If you tell us what we need to know we’ll even share our kibble with you next time you’re in the neighborhood. Isn’t that right, Dooley?”

Dooley stared at me. He obviously didn’t agree. If anyone was going to share his kibble, it was going to be me. Well, that was fine by me. From experience I knew that fresh kibble was only a trip to the store away.

I panted a little, because Clarice was giving me her best stare. Locked in a stare-down with the most feral cat in Hampton Cove. If she lashed out now and scratched my nose, that would set the seal on this day. To my surprise, she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Oh, all right, Max, you annoying little weasel. What do you wanna know?”

Relieved, I told her about the murder of Paulo Frey. It turned out that the Writer’s Lodge was like a second home to her. Which, now that I thought about it, wasn’t surprising. Writers are an easy mark for a cat’s affections, as a lot of them genuinely like us. Most of them got cats at home, and when they come out to the woods to write they miss their little furballs. So when they see Clarice lurking in the woods, they try to lure her by offering her the best treats. I now saw what her MO was, and with it came a newfound respect.

“Well, I don’t know anything about that Chase Kingsley affair,” she finally said, “and I don’t care one hoot either. What humans do is none of my business. What I can tell you is I saw someone drag the body of that writer out of the lodge a year ago, so I’m guessing that might have beenyour killer.”

Dooley and I exchanged excited glances.“You saw the killer?” I asked.

“Sure, sure,” she said, studying her nails, which were razor-sharp. “They dragged the body of that Frey guy out of the lodge and dumped it where they like to do their business. Made a nice big splash, too. Then they came out again and dumped a bunch of other stuff in there.”