Purrfect Advice. Purrfect Passion. A Purrfect Gnomeful

22. PURRFECT ADVICE

Chapter 1

I found Harriet and Brutus on the couch, looking intently at something on Odelia’s tablet computer. At first I simply figured they were watching cat videos again. Only last week Harriet had come up with the bright idea to start her own YouTube channel and post cat videos on a weekly basis. Brutus hadn’t been convinced, and neither had I or Dooley, but that has never stopped Harriet before.

“What are you watching?” I asked as I jumped up on the couch to join them.

“Shush,” said Harriet. “This is it,” she said. “The woman is a marvel. Just what I needed to know.”

“Who is a marvel?” asked Dooley.

“Gabi, of course,” said Harriet, as if Dooley and I were mind readers. “I asked her a question that’s been bothering me for weeks, and she just nailed it. Nailed it!”

I directed a questioning look at Brutus, who merely shrugged, either indicating he had no idea who this mysterious Gabi was either, or he didn’t share his girlfriend’s excitement about the woman’s marvelous and obviously varied qualities.

“Who’s Gabi?” asked Dooley.

“Only the most amazing human being that ever lived,” Harriet gushed as she tapped the tablet with her paw, an adoring expression on her furry face.

“Oh, you mean Odelia,” said Dooley. “I didn’t know she’d changed her name.”

“Not Odelia, dummy,” said Harriet with a laugh. “Though she’s pretty amazing, too.”

I was mystified, and so, I could tell, was Dooley, but before my friend could ask another question, Harriet finally decided to tell all.

“Gabi is theGazette’s new advice columnist,” she explained. “People ask questions and she answers them,” she added when Dooley opened his mouth to ask ‘What is an advice columnist?’ “For instance, this one was posted just this morning.” She read from the screen. “Dear Gabi. My husband seems to have lost interest in me lately. We’ve been married twenty-eight years and he hasn’t touched me in months. What should I do? Signed, Desperate Debbie. Debbie isn’t her real name,” Harriet added for good measure.

“And what did Gabi advise this Desperate Debbie?” I asked, intrigued.

“Dear Desperate Debbie. After twenty-eight years it’s not unusual to lose that romantic spark. To find it again you need to spice up your love life. Make things exciting again in the bedroom. When was the last time you bought yourself some new lingerie? Or tried a different position? Be bold and let me know what happened!”

“What different position?” asked Dooley. “What does Gabi mean, Max?”

“Um…” I said.

“She’s probably talking about the position of the, um, bed,” said Brutus.

“Oh, you mean rearrange the furniture?” said Dooley. “Yes, I can see how that would be exciting. Though it doesn’t explain the lingerie,” he added with a frown.

I decided to level with my friend. After all, Dooley was old enough to understand certain things now about the world of man.“The thing is, Dooley,” I said, “that when a man and a woman love each other, they express that affection by engaging in certain… activities. It’s called lovemaking, you see?”

“Does this involve kissing?” asked Dooley.

“Yes, it does involve kissing,” I said, much relieved. Once upon a time the task of explaining about the birds and the bees had been assigned to me, and I’m afraid I hadn’t done a very good job. “Lots and lots of kissing. In fact people kiss so much that sometimes this results in babies being born.”

“Oh, I know all about that,” said Dooley lightly. “I watch the Discovery Channel every night and there’s lots of talk about babies. Did you know, for instance, that the common housefly can have up to nine hundred babies in its lifetime?”

“That’s a lot of babies,” I said.

“Though flies don’t usually need lingerie,” he said, his frown returning. “Unless I missed something. Gran switches channels when there’s too many commercial breaks.”

“Well, humans do like lingerie,” I said. “You see, the human male and the human female, when they make love… um…” I cast about for an explanation that wouldn’t require me to get too graphic, and luckily Brutus decided to come to my assistance.

“Static electricity,” he blurted out.

Dooley directed a questioning look at the cat, who blinked.

“Oh, Brutus, sweetie,” said Harriet with a laugh.

“No, I’m serious,” Brutus persevered. “During all of this… lovemaking, static electricity is created by… rubbing… certain body parts against… other body parts. And it’s this static electricity that results in babies. And since lingerie is often made of satin, it increases static electricity and therefore, um, the baby-making, um, requirements.”

I stared at him, and shook my head. Of all the lame explanations, this one took the cake. But Dooley happily gobbled it up.“That is so interesting, Brutus. No one ever told me that babies are created like that. It makes perfect sense. Absolutely.”

“Of course it does,” said Harriet, trying to stifle another guffaw.

“Anyway, that explains the, um, lingerie Gabi mentioned,” said Brutus.

“Sound advice,” I said, nodding as I kept a straight face. “From Gabi, I mean.”

“Oh, Gabi’s advice is always sound,” said Harriet. “Her answer to me was nothing short of brilliant.”

“You asked her for advice?”

“Of course I did,” she said primly, and hopped down from the couch.

“So what was it?” I asked, my curiosity thoroughly piqued.

“None of your business, Max,” she said a little haughtily. “Suffice it to say her answer gave me plenty of food for thought.” And with these words, she walked off.

After Dooley and I had followed her departure, our gazes swiveled to Brutus, who was shaking his head.“I’m sorry, you guys,” he said. “I really can’t. She told me not to tell anyone, and that includes you.”

“Oh, come on, Brutus,” I said. “You cannotnot tell us after that buildup. Spill.”

But he pressed his lips together and went on shaking his head, as if afraid he might inadvertently blurt out Harriet’s big secret if he opened his mouth.

“Does it have something to do with lingerie?” asked Dooley.

“No, it does not,” said Brutus. “No lingerie involved whatsoever. And please don’t ask me because I won’t tell you.” He made to jump down from the couch, but I stopped him with a gesture from my paw.

“Tell us, Brutus. We’re all friends here, and friends don’t keep secrets from each other.”

“In this case, yes, they do,” he intimated.

“Oh, I know,” said Dooley. “Harriet is actually Desperate Debbie, and the husband she was complaining about is you, isn’t it, Brutus?”

“No, it’s not!” said Brutus, sounding a little incensed. “I’ll have you know that Harriet has never had anything to complain about where our love life is concerned. Not once.”

“Oh,” said Dooley. He shrugged. “Well, then I have no idea what she means.”

I had no idea either, and I won’t conceal the fact that it irked me. I mean to say, I never have any secrets to hide from my housemates, so I didn’t see why they would keep secrets from me. It wasn’t fair. But then I figured there was a simple solution: clearly Harriet’s question had been answered to her satisfaction by this Gabi, so all I had to do was sift through the different questions until I’d found the one Harriet had posted.

“Sorry,” said Brutus, looking distinctly uncomfortable, and jumped down from the couch. The moment he’d gone, I checked Odelia’s tablet for answers. I quickly scrolled through the many letters people had sent in and the answers Gabi had posted. None of them struck me as Harriet’s, though,and when I finally gave up I still wasn’t any the wiser.

I found Dooley staring at me with a bemused expression on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“Cats don’t need lingerie,” he said, as if he’d just had an epiphany. “If we rub our furs together the crackle should be enough to create plenty of babies.” His eyes went wide. “Oh, no!” He gulped. “Every time I rub myself against Odelia’s new fleece sweater there’s a definitecrackle. I hope I didn’t get myself pregnant!”

Chapter 2

Vesta Muffin stood staring at the wrought-iron gate in front of her, then down at the little piece of paper Dan Goory had given her. Yep, it looked like she was at the right place, all right. So she took a deep breath and pressed her finger on the buzzer.

“Oh, great,” a voice spoke behind her. Even without turning she already knew who the voice belonged to. Scarlett Canyon, not exactly her favorite person in the world.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, more a growl than a politely phrased question.

“I could ask you the same thing,” said Scarlett.

Vesta turned to face her longtime nemesis. Scarlett was dressed in her usual attire: form-hugging top, ditto tiger-print leggings, and of course stiletto heels. Her formidable bust was on clear display, and her usual russet curls were a platinum blond this time.

“Are you following me?” Vesta asked, eyes narrowing with suspicion.

Scarlett barked an incredulous laugh.“Following you! Don’t flatter yourself, Vesta. Why would I be following you?”

“Because you know I’ve just been invited by a celebrity and you can’t stand the thought of me besting you for once.”

“I’ll have you know that I’ve been invited by that very same celebrity.”

Vesta stared at the woman.“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Scarlett tilted up her chin an inch or two.“You’re looking at the one and only Dear Gabi,Hampton Cove Gazette’s very own advice columnist.”

“That’s impossible.I’m Dear Gabi!” said Vesta.

“Yes?” suddenly a voice crackled from the intercom.

“Vesta Muffin. I have an appointment with Miss Gray,” said Vesta.

“Please tell Miss Gray Scarlett Canyon has arrived,” Scarlett said, leaning into the intercom.

The gate clicked open, then, and both women moved forward as one woman. Scarlett was first to reach the widening gap in the gate and squeezed through before Vesta could, then was teetering along the drive in the direction of the main house, followed by Vesta, who easily overtook her, since she wore sensible white sneakers, her usual footwear.

“You can’t be Gabi,” she said, picking up their argument where they’d left off. “I’m Gabi. Which is exactly why Miss Gray invited me up here.”

“I’ve turned Gabi into a household name since I picked up my pen. So there.”

“But… we can’t both be Gabi, can we?” said Vesta, a sneaking suspicion creeping up on her.

Scarlett let rip a melodious laugh, the same laugh that Vesta had learned to loathe in their decade-long association.“Both of us being Gabi. As if! Dan wouldn’t dare.”

They shared a quick look, then Vesta groaned.“I thought he wrote those other answers. The ones that I didn’t write? At least that’s what he told me.”

“It’s what he told me,” Scarlett confirmed with a rare frown. She knew it messed up her Botoxed brow. “Do you mean to tell me he’s had us both write as Gabi and didn’t think to mention the fact?”

“Yeah, I guess he did,” Vesta confirmed.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Scarlett looked as taken aback now as Vesta. “The bastard!”

“You can say that again,” Vesta confirmed.

“He told me I was Hampton Cove’s Gabi. Me and no one else!”

“He told me the exact same thing.”

“But why would he do a thing like that!”

The reason was obvious. Gabi’s column had become so popular in the last couple of months letters had been pouring in, much more than one person could handle. So instead of hiring one Gabi to deal with the onslaught of advice seekers, he’d hired two, and since both women weren’t exactly the best of friends, decided to keep it a secret.

For a moment, neither woman spoke, as they hiked the short distance along the gravel driveway up to the house. Then Scarlett said begrudgingly,“I have to admit I liked some of the advice you’ve been dispensing.”

“And I have to admit I’ve liked some of yours,” said Vesta, just as grudgingly.

“Was it you that told Charlene Butterwick she should settle down and start a family with a deserving male?” asked Scarlett.

“That was me. But how did you know it was Butterwick that asked the question?”

Scarlett made a scoffing sound.“Wasn’t it obvious? ‘I’m a successful local politician but feel as if there’s something missing in my life and I don’t know what it is?’”

“Yeah, I guess that was pretty obvious,” Vesta admitted. “Was it you that told my daughter she should go on that European vacation before she’s too old to travel?”

“Yup. Marge deserves that vacation. She’s been wanting to go for a long time.”

“That was some great advice.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ve been telling Marge for years she should take that trip. Maybe now she’ll do it.”

They’d arrived at the house and the door swung open to reveal a heavyset woman dressed in a gray suit. She looked a distinguished fifty, though she could have been a well-preserved sixty. She greeted them with a thin-lipped smile. “Welcome, dear hearts.”

“Thanks, Miss Gray,” said Vesta.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Gray,” said Scarlett with a touch of reverence.

“Not as pleased as I am to finally meet the rising stars on the agony aunt firmament,” said Miss Gray, and stepped aside to let them in. “When Dan told me to expect two Gabis I didn’t conceal my surprise. Though when he explained it to me it made perfect sense.”

“Oh, he explained it to you, did he?” said Vesta, still peeved about theGazette editor’s deceit. “He didn’t do us that courtesy.”

“You mean you didn’t know there were two of you?” asked Miss Gray as she closed the door.

“No, ma’am, we did not,” said Scarlett, glancing around the hallway, which was clean and fancy, with a white marble floor and a nice skylight that added an airy touch.

Miss Gray surprised them by bursting out laughing.“Oh, that Dan. The old rascal is up to his old tricks again, is he?”

“You mean he’s done this before?” asked Vesta.

“Oh, sure. When I was theGazette’s resident Gabi, about twenty years ago, he neglected to tell me there was a second and even a third Gabi until I was three months into the job. All that time I assumed he did double duty as editor and advice columnist, when all the while he’d been paying two of my best friends to pick up the slack since I couldn’t possibly answer all the letters myself.”

“He did the same with us,” Vesta grumbled, though she decided not to mention the fact that Scarlett wasn’t exactly her best friend. Quite the opposite.

“Please come in,” said Miss Gray with a gesture of the hand, and walked them into a spacious living room, dominated by the same white theme: white marble floors, white leather couches, white carpets, white furniture—there was even a white baby grand piano, sheet music placed for whoever likedto tickle the ivory in Miss Gray’s house.

“Do you play?” asked Scarlett, never one to refrain from sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.

“No, but my niece does,” said Miss Gray, then gestured to the couch and both women took a seat while their hostess walked over to the piano and lightly touched the keys. “Do you know why I invited you here?”

“No, I don’t,” said Vesta.

“I assumed it had something to do with the column,” said Scarlett as she rubbed her ankle.

“Why do you insist on wearing those heels?” said Vesta, giving her fellow Gabi a critical look. “You’ll break your ankles one of these days.”

“Oh, shut up,” snapped Scarlett. “Coming from someone who insists on looking like a nurse that’s rich.”

“I don’t look like a nurse,” said Vesta.

“Yes, you do, with your nurse’s shoes and that white tracksuit you always wear.”

“What white tracksuit? I don’t wear a white tracksuit.”

“Ladies, ladies,” said Miss Gray, taking a seat across from them. “I didn’t invite you here to squabble.”

“I’m sorry,” said Vesta. “It’s just that Scarlett and I aren’t exactly best friends.”

“No, Dan told me,” said the woman.

“He did?” asked Scarlett, sounding as surprised as Vesta was feeling.

“Looks like Dan told you a lot of things.”

“Dan and I go way back,” said Miss Gray with a smile. “In fact I was his first advice columnist. But that’s not why I invited you. The reason you’re both here is because—”

Suddenly a piercing scream sounded from upstairs, and quick as a flash Miss Gray was on her feet, hurrying to the door with an alacrity and speed belying her age.

Vesta and Scarlett hurried after her, curious what could have caused such a horrific scream.

They arrived in the doorway just in time to see a young woman staggering down the stairs. She was crying, looking distraught, and her hands were covered in blood.

“I killed him!” she wailed. “I killed Kirk, Auntie Allison. He’s dead!”

Chapter 3

“Listen to this,” said Odelia. “’Of course you shouldn’t worry that each time you go out on a date with your boyfriend something comes up. Maybe next time simply surprise him, Anxious Heart’” She looked up with a frown. “What do you think? Is Gabi right?”

“Of course she’s right,” said Odelia’s mother, who was intently gazing at a spot on the wall. It could have been tomato juice or a dead fly but whatever it was, it had no right to be there.

“You do? You don’t think the fact that we haven’t had a normal dinner date is weird?”

“Dear Gabi seems like a very sensible person. In fact she gave me some very good advice the other day.”

“Wait, you sent a letter to Gabi, too?”

They were in her mother’s kitchen, since Odelia had wanted to ask Marge’s advice about Gabi’s answer to her heart’s cry.

“I sent her a message through theGazette website’s contact form. Completely anonymous, of course. Technology is wonderful. You can send messages and no one will know you posted them.”

Odelia decided not to mention that if Dan wanted to know he could very easily find out who’d sent him the message, by tracing the IP address. “So what did you ask?”

“Oh, just something I’ve been wondering about for a long time.”

“Like what, exactly?” It wasn’t her mother’s habit to beat about the bush like this, so she had a feeling it might be something big. “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant again.”

Marge arched an eyebrow as she rubbed at the suspicious spot with a damp dishrag.“I might be,” she said mysteriously. “Wouldn’t you like to have a little brother or sister?”

Odelia stared at her mother.“No way!”

Marge laughed.“No way sounds about right. No way am I going to get busy with diapers and midnight nursing again.”

Odelia heaved a sigh of relief, which had her mother dart a disapproving glance in her direction.“No disrespect, Mom, but you and Dad are probably past the baby stage by now.”

“Mh,” said her mother, clearly not in absolute agreement.

“So what did you ask Dan’s new oracle?”

“Well, you know how your father and I have been saving up for that trip to Europe?”

“Uh-huh.” Mom and Dad had been saving for years. The idea had been to go traveling as soon as Mom retired, which was still a couple of years off.

“Well, I’ve been thinking of taking that trip now, instead of waiting until we’re too old.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” she said. “So what did Gabi say?”

“She said I should totally go for it,” said Marge, nodding. “Remind me to tell your dad to repaint the kitchen. I never noticed before how dirty these walls have become.”

“Do you have enough money saved?”

“Oh, sure. It’s not just the money for the trip, but we could also take the money we were saving to remodel the kitchen. It should pay for three weeks in Europe. London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Venice…” She smiled as she spoke the words.

Mom and Dad had spent a summer backpacking through Europe when they’d just graduated from college. They’d been planning to take the trip with friends, but both Mom’s best friend and Dad’s best friend had bailed on them at the last minute, and so they’d decided to go together instead. It was during this trip that they’d felt the spark, and by the time they returned stateside they’d been engaged to be married. Nine months later Odelia had been born and they’d been talking about going back to Europe ever since, only this time to stay in some nice hotels instead of youth hostels, and dine in some of the fancier restaurants instead of picnicking by the side of the road.

“I’d say go for it, Mom,” said Odelia. “In fact I don’t know what took you so long.”

“Well, it’s not like your dad can take time off at the drop of a hat,” said Mom. “And I have the library to consider.”

“Marcie can take care of the library, and I’m sure Dad will find a replacement.”

Mom nodded and took a seat at the table.“So are you going to ask Gabi what’s really on your mind? Are you going to ask her advice about finally picking a wedding date?”

“I might,” said Odelia carefully. She and her boyfriend Chase had gotten engaged months before, but had never really talked about a timetable for the wedding, figuring they had plenty of time to figure things out.

“What’s holding you back, exactly?” asked Mom with a look of concern. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“No, of course not. I love Chase, and I want to get married. It’s just that…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know. The topic hasn’t come up since he first asked me.”

“He did ask you in a strange way, if I remember correctly.”

“He did.” She smiled at the recollection. They’d been in England at the time, at the invitation of Prince Dante and his wife Tessa, who was being targeted by an unknown assailant. There had been a tense moment at some point where Tessa had been under attack. Shots were fired and Chase and Odelia ducked for cover. It was at this moment that Chase had proposed, and Odelia said yes, fearing their final hour had struck.

“I guess we figured we had plenty of time to get married, and why rush into things?”

“No, of course,” said Mom. “I just wondered, that’s all.”

Odelia didn’t want to admit it, but she had wondered, too. Wondered why Chase had never mentioned marriage again after their return from England. Had he regretted proposing to her and was that the reason he’d never concretized his plans?

Mom patted her hand.“You know? I think you and Chase should have a long talk about this.”

“Yeah, about that… I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. What if he doesn’t want to get married? Where will that leave me?”

“But don’t you want to know about his plans?”

She nodded. She did want to know.

“Oh, you think he’s having second thoughts, and if you ask him and he tells you the wedding is off you’ll regret asking the question, is that it? Because now you’re still engaged, and as long as you don’t talk about it, it stays that way?”

She nodded sheepishly.“Sounds pretty lame when you put it like that.”

“Oh, honey. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. I know for a fact that Chase is still crazy about you. I can tell from the way he looks at you. But don’t you agree it’s better to discuss this with him than go on wondering how he feels about the proposal?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said reluctantly.

“Or do you want me to have a chat with him?”

“No, it’s fine, Mom. Next time we go out to dinner I was thinking I could slip it in.”

“Between the main course and dessert, you mean?” said Mom with a twinkle in her eye.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Mom laughed.“Oh, honey. I’m sure he’ll be happy to talk about getting married to you. Just you wait and see.”

She nodded as she traced a pattern in a little pile of spilled salt on the kitchen table. What if the reason Chase hadn’t talked about the wedding was that he regretted having proposed to her in the first place and didn’t know how to break the bad news?

Chapter 4

Vesta, Scarlett and their hostess hurried up the stairs, followed by Miss Gray’s dazed-looking niece who kept muttering, as she stared at her bloodied hands, “I killed him. I actually killed Kirk.”

Allison Gray led the way into a room off to the side and there, lying on the floor looking pretty dead, was a man whose appearance looked vaguely familiar to Vesta. He had a big old knife sticking out of his chest, and an expression on his face that told a story of being startled by the sudden fate that had befallen him.

“He looks dead,” Scarlett aptly concluded. “In fact he looks deader than dead.”

Vesta would have argued no one could possibly be deader than dead, since being dead was sufficiently fatal already, but their hostess had suddenly started screaming so this didn’t seem like a good time to teach Scarlett about the facts of life and death.

“Why, Mia!” Allison cried. “Why did you do it?!”

Her words were directed at her niece, who’d come tottering down the stairs and who now came staggering into the room.

“I… I don’t know,” Mia said. “I don’t actually remember stabbing him, but I must have.”

“What do you mean, you don’t remember?” asked Vesta.

“I was asleep in the next room,” said the girl. “And when I woke up I was sitting next to Kirk, my hands covered with his blood. Only…” She frowned, as if trying to recollect.

“Only what?” Vesta prompted.

But Mia, who was svelte and fair-haired and looked like a nymph, shook her head.“Nothing. It’s all a big blur.”

“Who is he?” asked Scarlett, gesturing to the dead man. “He looks familiar.”

“Kirk Weaver,” said Allison Gray. “The cat whisperer.”

“Of course!” said Vesta. “I thought I recognized him. He’s got that show.”

“Cat Whisperer with Kirk Weaver,” Allison supplied helpfully. She was pressing a tissue to her eyes and still looked shell-shocked. “He did private sessions, too. My Jasmine has been acting out lately, so I thought I’d invite Kirk to take a look.”

“Jasmine?” asked Scarlett.

“My sweetheart,” explained Allison, a little unhelpfully. And as if summoned, just at that moment a gorgeous white Persian came traipsing into the room, took one disdainful look at the dead man, and traipsed back out again, Kirk clearly not worthy of her attention.

“Jasmine never really took to Kirk, and he said her behavioral difficulties were too numerous to treat in a single session, so I ended up inviting him to stay with us for a while. He’s been here for the past three weeks, working intensively with Jasmine. And I think he’d just managed a real breakthrough when…” Allison sniffed and directed a sad look at her young niece. “Why?” she cried. “Why, Mia?”

“I don’t know,” said the young lady. “I don’t remember a thing.”

“You never liked him.”

“I didn’t dislike him.”

“You told me to get rid of him.”

“I told you he was after your money.”

“That doesn’t mean you had to kill him!”

“Um, who are you, exactly?” asked Scarlett, interrupting this dialogue.

“Mia. I’m Auntie Allison’s niece.”

“My brother Freddie’s daughter,” Allison explained. “Freddie and Jackie are in Japan right now, and asked me to keep an eye on their little girl.”

Mia looked about twenty-five, so not exactly a little girl, Vesta thought. Obviously big enough to handle a knife and stab the celebrated cat whisperer to death with it. She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. Allison Gray was right. This was one fine mess her niece had landed her into. A big scandal would ensue, especially since Kirk was famous.

Suddenly Allison directed a pleading look at Vesta and Scarlett.“Please don’t tell anyone,” she said, quite surprisingly.

“What do you mean, don’t tell anyone?” asked Scarlett, also taken aback by this strange request.

“I actually asked you over to announce that you’ve both been selected to join the AAA, of which I’m the chairwoman. It’s a great honor,” she added, nodding seriously.

“Triple-A? I don’t even own a car,” said Vesta.

“And I don’t drive,” said Scarlett.

Allison pursed her lips.“Not Triple-A. The Agony Aunt Association. Founded in England in 1922, we launched the American AAA in 1932. Only the best advice columnists in the country are eligible for membership, which is by invitation only. We have a monthly newsletter full of tips and tricks, and once a year we hand out the Agony Aunt of the Year Award. It’s called the Aggie, and is considered a great honor.”

“I’ve heard of the Aggie,” said Scarlett, turning to Vesta. “I’d love to get one.”

“Well, I don’t care about the AAA or the Aggie,” said Vesta. “All I know is that a murder took place here and we need to call the cops.” She wasn’t entirely truthful, though. She had also heard of the Aggie, and in her heart of hearts had dreamed of winning it ever since she took the Dear Gabi job. Still, she couldn’t overlook the fact that there was a dead man at her feet, a decidedly bewildered look in his eyes.

“Please,” said Allison. “This will destroy Mia. And me, of course. My reputation…”

“Are you seriously asking us to let your niece get away with murder?” asked Vesta, flabbergasted.

“Not get away with murder, per se, but maybe we can make it look like an accident?”

“Yeah, maybe he fell on the knife and then rolled over on his back,” said Scarlett. When Vesta gave her a scathing look, she shrugged and said, “It’s possible. Unlikely, but possible.”

“I don’t believe this,” said Vesta, shaking her head.

“The Aggie is yours if you do this!” Allison blurted out.

“And what about me?” said Scarlett. “I’m a Gabi, too, you know.”

“We’ll hand out two Aggie awards this year! Or maybe you can share one!” The woman was wringing her hands now, clearly at the end of her tether.

“It’s going to diminish the title’s prestige,” said Scarlett, and Vesta groaned.

She then spotted tiny little red footprints leading from the dead man to the door, and decided to follow them. No way was she going to allow herself to get roped into a cover-up, but the Aggie award was still exacting its powerful appeal, and it didn’t hurt to talk to a witness about what exactly had happened here today.

She entered the next room which was, indeed, a bedroom, and saw that Jasmine had jumped up onto the window seat and was leisurely licking herself. The cat looked up when she entered and gave her a foul look.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“Just checking something,” Vesta returned, and watched with satisfaction as Jasmine’s jaw dropped.

“You can understand me?” the prissy cat asked, visibly astonished.

“Sure I can understand you. Now tell me something—did you happen to see the murder of that poor Mr. Weaver?”

“I missed it,” said the cat tersely, still staring at Vesta as if she’d seen a ghost. “So it is true. There are actually people out there who can talk to cats.”

“Yes, it’s true. So did you hear something, or see something?”

Jasmine slowly shook her head.“Kirk acted as if he could talk to me, but he was just a big phony. He couldn’t understand a word I said.”

“Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush. This girl Mia is in big trouble.”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“She just confessed to killing Kirk, that’s why. And if the police get here she’s going to prison for murder.”

“Oh, that is so ridiculous,” said Jasmine.

“And why is that?”

“Because she didn’t do it, that’s why. When Kirk was in the process of getting himself killed Mia was in here with me, asleep on her bed. It’s only when she heard Kirk cry out that she went over there to take a look.”

Now it was Vesta’s turn to look stunned. “Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure! Would I make up a story like that?”

“You could, to protect your human.”

“Mia isn’t even my human. Allison is. And besides, are you calling me a liar?” Her eyes were blazing, and she suddenly reminded Vesta a lot of Harriet.

“No, but… Mia says she doesn’t remember a thing. She only remembers waking up and sitting next to Kirk’s body, his blood on her hands.”

“That’s because Mia took a sleeping pill last night and only woke up just now. She must not have been fully awake when she went into the next room and found Kirk.”

“And the blood on her hands?”

“You’d have to ask her, but my best guess is that she touched the man. There’s a lot of blood, if you hadn’t noticed. I myself happened to step into it.” She made a face.

“Well, this sure changes everything,” said Vesta as she darted a curious glance at the door. “So who do you think killed Kirk?”

“No idea. Like I said, I was in here with Mia when it happened.”

Suddenly Scarlett popped her head in.“Who are you talking to?” she asked.

“No one,” said Vesta. “But I think maybe you were right. We shouldn’t be too hasty to call the cops.”

“Of course I’m right!” said Scarlett. “Haven’t you noticed I’m always right?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we need to call Odelia.”

“Your granddaughter? Why?”

“She’s going to have to help me figure out what happened here, exactly.”

“But we already know what happened here, exactly. Mia killed Kirk and she’s sorry.”

“I have reason to believe that Mia is actually innocent, and I intend to prove it.”

Scarlett darted a quick look at Jasmine, who’d returned to her grooming ritual. “Uh-huh,” she said finally. “You know what? You don’t need Odelia to figure this out. You’ve got me.”

Vesta emitted a scathing laugh.“You’re not a detective, Scarlett.”

“No, but I just heard you talking to a cat. And if you don’t want me to spread that little tidbit of embarrassing information all over town, you’re going to have to deputize me.”

Vesta stared at the woman.“You wouldn’t.”

Scarlett arched a perfectly penciled eyebrow.“Watch me.”

Both women squared off for a moment, then Vesta decided it wasn’t worth it and gave up. “Fine, you win. But I still want Odelia. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Isn’t she, like, about to get married to a cop?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“She’ll blab.”

“No, she won’t.”

“I’m telling you, she’s a blabber.”

“No, she’s not. Now do you want to investigate this murder with me or not? Cause if you do, I’m the one who’ll be calling the shots. And I say we bring in my granddaughter.”

Scarlett eyed her opponent for a moment, then finally smiled.“Let’s do this, pardner,” and held up her hand for a high five.

“God give me strength,” said Vesta.

Chapter 5

I was still pondering the nature of Harriet’s question to theGazette’s advice columnist when Odelia swept into the room and announced, shockingly,“Gran is in trouble. She found a dead body.”

“What?!” I cried, instantly up and ready for action. Well, maybe not instantly. There are laws of nature governing large bodies and preventing them from responding with the kind of alacrity other, smaller cats can muster at the proverbial drop of a hat.

Though Dooley, too, was a little slow getting out of the gate, mostly because he’d been developing his theory about life originating from static electricity.

“Let’s go,” said Odelia.

“Where, who, how?” I asked as I jumped down from the couch and made to follow my human.

“I’ll tell you all about it in the car.”

Moments later Dooley and I were both ensconced on the backseat of Odelia’s aged pickup truck, as it trundled out of Harrington Street and quickly rounded the corner.

“Oh, shoot,” she said, thunking the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. “I should have brought Harriet and Brutus along.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Harriet is busy working on some kind of master plan and has roped in Brutus to help her.

“What master plan?” asked Dooley.

“I have no idea. She wouldn’t tell us, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right. She asked Gabi a question and she wouldn’t tell us what it was.”

“That’s a coincidence,” said Odelia as she navigated the streets of Hampton Cove. “The murder took place at Allison Gray’s house, who used to be Dan’s original Gabi. She writes forCosmo now.”

“Who’s Cosmo?” asked Dooley dutifully.

“She’s also the head of the American AAA,” Odelia continued, “The Agony Aunt Association. But what Gran was doing there I don’t know. And she mentioned that Scarlett was with her and they’re working the investigation together if you please.”

Now that was a surprise. Gran and Scarlett have never liked each other. The fact that Scarlett once had relations with Gran’s husband probably had something to do with that.

“So who died?” I asked.

“Kirk Weaver,” said Odelia.

“No way. The cat whisperer?”

“Who’s Kirk Weaver?” asked Dooley. “Is he Cosmo’s husband?”

“Kirk is the host of a famous television show,” Odelia explained. “He visits people at home and helps them with their cats’ behavioral problems.”

“You mean he can talk to cats?”

“I doubt it,” said Odelia. “But he does have a good reputation as a cat whisperer.”

“He whispers to cats? Why? Does he have problems with his voice?”

“It’s just a way of describing a person who’s really good with animals,” I said. “Like a horse whisperer is great with horses, a dog whisperer is good with dogs, etcetera.”

“Is there also a mouse whisperer?” asked Dooley. “Because I think we might have mice again.”

Odelia groaned.“Not again.”

I confirmed Dooley’s suspicions. “I heard them last night. And I think it might be the same family as last time.”

“I thought they had all moved on to Marcie and Ted’s?” Odelia asked.

“Maybe they like a change of scene from time to time?”

“Well, looks like you guys have got your work cut out for you,” said Odelia blithely.

Now it was my turn to groan. For some reason humans always assume all cats are natural mousers. Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy the prospect of catching a lovable little furry creature and then eating it alive, like some cats are rumored to do. In fact I’d rather coexist in peace and harmony than resort to such acts of barbarism.

“Maybe we can ask Gabi,” Dooley suggested. “She seems to have all the answers.”

This made Odelia laugh, which was a good thing, for investigating murder is a tough job, and Odelia could use all the levity she could get before things got serious.

We’d arrived at the front gate of one of those big mansions the Hamptons are littered with, and I saw Gran’s car parked right outside the gate. Well, technically the little red Peugeot is Marge’s car, but more often than not it’s Gran who drives it. Badly, I might add.

We got out and Odelia pressed her finger to the buzzer. After she’d announced her arrival, the gate clicked open and she drove us down a short driveway leading to the house.

“Why did Gran park her car on the street?” asked Dooley. A very sensible question.

“She probably didn’t know she could park up at the house,” said Odelia. Gran isn’t as used to navigating the homes of the rich and famous as Odelia, who’s conducted her fair share of murder inquiries, often involving those same glitterati.

The house, squat and red-brick, was a modest one, compared to some of the ones I’d seen in my time.

We got out of the car and Gran appeared in the doorway to greet us. And as she walked up to us with a sense of urgency in her step, she lowered her voice and said,“I talked to Allison’s cat and she assures me there’s no way Allison’s niece could have done it.”

“So instead of calling Uncle Alec you called me,” Odelia deduced immediately.

“Of course! If I call Alec he’ll arrest the poor girl on the spot. And no judge will accept the testimony of a cat.”

“Or an old lady claiming she can talk to cats,” said Odelia, nodding.

“Hey. Who are you calling an old lady?”

“Sorry, Gran. So what were you doing here?”

Gran straightened a little.“Well, if you must know, Allison’s been looking for a cat sitter and so I figured I might apply for the job.”

“You want to be a cat sitter?”

Gran bridled.“Why? You don’t think I can do it?”

“No, of course you can, Gran. In fact you’re perfect for the job. But what about Dad?”

“Oh, I’ll keep on doing that, of course. Now are you coming in or what? Standing around here flapping your gums isn’t going to solve poor Kirk Weaver’s murder!”

Chapter 6

“I don’t understand what we’re doing here, snow pea,” said Brutus.

“You’ll understand soon enough, snuggle pooh,” said Harriet, feeling more chipper and bright than she’d felt in ages. She was walking with purpose, a cat on a mission.

“Shouldn’t we have told Max and Dooley what we’re up to? They’re our best friends.”

“Sometimes it’s best for best friends to not be in the know,” she said. “And you know Max. He’ll only start to criticize the scheme.”

“I don’t think so,” said Brutus. “He could even help us. Max knows a lot of stuff.”

“Max is a male, Brutus, and males don’t know half the stuff females do. Besides, who’s going to listen to the advice of a male? No one, that’s who. So let’s keep this between us.”

“All right,” said Brutus, though he didn’t exactly sound convinced.

They’d arrived in town and Harriet plastered a pleasant smile onto her face. This was her moment. Her chance to shine. The only disadvantage was that she’d have to shine anonymously, which is always a tough proposition. But she was going to make it work.

“Let’s talk to Kingman first,” she suggested. “If Kingman knows, the whole town knows.”

“Fine,” said Brutus without much enthusiasm.

So they strode up to Kingman, the big cat lounging in the sun on the pavement in front of his human’s store.

“Hi, Harriet,” he said. “Hey, Brutus. What’s cooking?”

“I’ve just heard the most exciting news,” Harriet began. “Isn’t that right, Brutus?”

“The most exciting news,” Brutus muttered.

“You know theHampton Cove Gazette advice column?” said Harriet.

“Uh-huh,” said Kingman. “What about it?”

“Well, they’re about to add a second Gabi, only this Gabi isn’t called Gabi but Chloe.” She let that sink in for a moment.

“Chloe, huh?” said Kingman with a yawn. “Great. More dumb answers to dumb questions posted by dumb humans.”

“No, but you see, Chloe isn’t like Gabi. Chloe will be answering questions from pets! Isn’t that exciting?”

“Pets?” asked Kingman with a frown. “Pets can’t write. How are they going to send in their questions?”

“I’ve got that all worked out—I mean Dan Goory, theGazette’s editor, has got it all worked out—or will, once he gets on board with the exciting new scheme. Pets will talk to correspondents, for instance you, who will relay the questions to me or Brutus, who’ll work with Chloe to figure out the replies and get them ready for publication. It’s going to revolutionize the entire advice column concept!”

“Sure,” said Kingman, not looking convinced. “So pets will talk to me or whoever, we talk to you, and then what? How will you feed those same questions to Chloe?”

“Just leave that to me. I have established a personal connection with Chloe, and I’ll personally introduce the questions to her. Personally.”

“So you know this Chloe, huh?”

“I do,” said Harriet proudly, with a wink to Brutus, which he didn’t return. “And she’s very nice and knowledgeable and she’ll answer your questions with wisdom and tact.”

“She’s wise, this Chloe, is she?”

“She is very wise. Very, very wise. Very, very, very wise. And clever, too.”

“So who is she?” asked Kingman.

“I’m sorry but I can’t tell you that.”

“Is she from around here?”

“Y-yes, she is.”

“And she’s a cat, like us?”

“Mh-mh.”

A slow smile spread across Kingman’s face. “Then I think I know who it is. Typical.”

Harriet gave Kingman a wary look.“You figured it out already?”

“Of course! There’s only one cat in all of Hampton Cove who’s wise and tactful and clever enough to think up such a plan.”

Harriet blinked, warmth spreading through her chest.“I know, right?”

“And there she is now!” said Kingman.

Harriet looked up, and to her utter dismay saw that Shanille had joined them. Shanille, Father Reilly’s cat and cat choir’s resident conductor, didn’t always see eye to eye with Harriet, their disputes mostly centering around Harriet’s desire to be cat choir’s one and only soprano soloist.

“Harriet just told me about the new job,” said Kingman. “Congratulations, Shanille! I’ll spread the word, shall I? Make sure you have plenty of work.”

Shanille gave him a look of confusion.“What job? What work?”

Kingman winked and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.“Chloe! Need I say more?”

“Yes, you do. Who’s Chloe?”

“Don’t worry. My lips are sealed!” said Kingman.

“I don’t get it,” said Shanille.

Kingman lost some of his bluster.“Oh, don’t you play coy with me, Shanille. Harriet here told me all about it. And as your oldest friend I think you should have told me first.”

“Told you what?!”

“The advice column job!”

Now it was Shanille’s turn to drop her voice to a whisper. “Have you been drinking again, Kingman? You know how I feel about cats and alcohol. Besides, it’s not good for you.”

“I haven’t touched a drop of the stuff, I swear!”

“Well, see that you don’t. A wise cat once told me that when you need alcohol to see you through the day it’s time to turn your face to your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s all the stimulant you need.” She frowned. “Now why are you grinning at me like that?”

“I knew it! You can’t help giving advice even when I didn’t ask for it. You’re a natural, Shanille, and I’m gonna tell this whole town to start sending in their questions.”

“Crazy,” said Shanille as she walked away. “The cat is completely cuckoo.”

Kingman tapped his nose.“Don’t worry, Harriet. Shanille’s secret is safe with me.”

Harriet, following the conversation with rising perturbation, merely groaned. And as she walked off, she wondered why, oh, why she’d ever deemed the pets of Hampton Cove worth saving. Now she’d be doing all the work, with Shanille taking all the credit.

She better ask Gabi what to do. Gabi was smart. Gabi knew.

Chapter 7

“Oh, dear heart, I’m so glad you could make it,” said the woman. Of course Odelia didn’t recognize her, as most of the people who worked for these advice columns did so anonymously, and their pictures were rarely shown, but she assumed this was Allison.

“I came here as fast as I could,” she said, darting a quick glance upstairs, where her grandmother had told her the body of the dead man still lay. “Look, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep the police out of this, Allison.”

“But your grandmother gave me her word you wouldn’t call the police,” said Allison, looking dismayed. “My niece’s life is on the line. If the police arrest her, it’s all over. No future, unless as a criminal, incarcerated with the worst offenders in some maximum-security hellhole. I can’t do that to her. Whatever she did, I’m sure she had her reasons.”

“She didn’t do it,” said Gran. “I’m sure of it now.”

Allison’s eyes went wide as she clutched both hands to her chest. “Oh, dear heart, your faith in my niece is touching, but surely you saw yourself what happened. She stabbed him with the knife and ran down the stairs, her hands covered in his blood.”

“I know that,” said Gran. “But I also know that I need to follow my hunches, and my hunch tells me she didn’t do it.”

“But then how do you explain about the blood?”

“I think what happened is that your niece woke up, still woozy, and walked into the next room. She saw Kirk’s body and knelt down to try and bring the man back to life somehow. That’s when she came to her senses and came staggering down the stairs.”

Allison glanced over her shoulder, then said, in a low voice,“I’m very appreciative to you for defending my niece like that, dear heart, but I’m not sure it’s helpful. You see, Mia and Kirk were having an affair, and I have a hunch things may have ended badly between them and Mia must have experienced one of those fits of despair and killed her loverin a moment of temporary insanity, which is probably why she doesn’t remember a thing.”

“Mia and Kirk were having an affair?” asked Scarlett. “That’s interesting information, isn’t it, Odelia?”

Odelia stared at Scarlett for a moment. She’d heard her grandmother’s words about Scarlett inserting herself into the investigation but hadn’t really believed them until this very moment. “Yes, very interesting,” she finally conceded.

“That sounds like motive to me,” Scarlett continued. “So we have means, motive and opportunity. Enough for any jury of her peers to convict her and send her to the gallows.”

A cry of anguish escaped Allison’s throat, and Odelia quickly said, “They don’t send people to the gallows anymore, Scarlett.”

“Yeah, you’re thinking of olden times, Scarlett,” Gran added. “When you were young.”

“Haha, very funny, Vesta,” said Scarlett with a grimace.

“Oh, please, whatever you do, don’t call the police,” Allison pleaded, even going so far as to hold up her hands in a prayerful gesture.

“Look,” said Odelia. “My uncle is chief of police, as you probably know, and my boyfriend is a detective. And if I tell them that your niece didn’t do it, they’ll listen.”

Allison’s lips pressed together in an expression of disapproval. “You disappoint me, dear heart. And so do you, Vesta. I expected more from a fellow future Aggie winner.”

“Look, I can promise you this—we’re going to prove that your niece didn’t do it,” said Odelia. “You have my word on that. But what I can’t do is conduct an investigation with a dead man lying upstairs and the police soon wondering what happened to him when missing person reports startcoming in. I mean, what were you planning to do with the body? Bury it in your backyard? Stick it in your basement? Turn it into a nice stew?”

“There’s no need for sarcasm, dear heart,” said Allison. “I have a big freezer. I thought about stuffing him in there for the time being. Perhaps indefinitely. Everything to protect my niece from the consequences of her actions. I gave my brother and my dear sister-in-law my solemn word I’d look after their daughter and I intend to live up to my promise.”

“Her parents died?”

“No, they’re in Japan.”

“Look, trust me and this will all be over soon,” said Odelia.

Allison studied her for a moment, then finally gave a curt nod.“But if anything happens to my niece—if anyone so much as hints at sending her to those gallows Miss Canyon referred to, I’m holding you personally responsible, Miss Poole. And you, Mrs. Muffin. And that means no more Aggies for you. Or you, dear heart,” she told Scarlett.

Both Gran and Scarlett looked a little sheepish, as Odelia frowned at them.“What’s all this about Aggies?” she asked. “What is she talking about?” she added when Allison walked up the stairs to give her niece the bad news that the police were coming.

“Allison’s favorite snack,” said Gran. “It’s made from eggs, hence the word Eggies.”

“Yeah, Allison loves her Eggies,” Scarlett was quick to add. “So,” she said blithely, “you girls can talk to cats. I always thought there was some truth to this rumor that’s been going around for years. So how does it work, exactly? And can you talk to dogs, too? And, more importantly, can you teach others? Me, for instance?”

Odelia stared at her grandmother in horror.“You told her!”

“She overheard me talking to Jasmine, all right?”

“Yes, I did. So can you teach me?” asked Scarlett.

“No, we can’t,” said Odelia. This was bad news. Even worse than the dead man upstairs. “It’s a gift, not something that can be taught.”

“Oh,” said Scarlett. “Too bad. I’ve always wondered what my Booboo was trying to tell me. I guess I’ll never know.” Then she perked up. “Unless you want to tell me?”

“We only talk to cats,” said Gran, not looking very happy. “Not dogs or whatever.”

“Too bad,” said Scarlett.

“But our cats can talk to dogs, and they can tell us what they said,” Odelia pointed out. “So if you promise not to tell another living soul about this—ever—I’ll drop by with Max one day and you can talk to your Booboo to your heart’s content.”

Scarlett smiled at this, then quickly adopted her usual blank expression again. Smiling led to wrinkles, and she didn’t want that. “It’s a deal,” she said. “Besides, I wouldn’t tell anyone anyway. Your grandmother and I may not always see eye to eye, but I would never dream of getting her into trouble.”

“That’s just great,” Gran grumbled.

“Hey, you can be a little nicer to a fellow sleuth,” said Scarlett. “Especially since she just discovered your biggest secret and promised to keep it a secret.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Gran. “Now how are we going to prove that what Jasmine said is true, and that Mia is innocent?”

“There’s only one way we can prove that,” said Odelia. “By finding the real killer.” And so she crouched down next to Max and Dooley, who’d followed the conversation with rapt attention. “You guys, this is very important. We need to find out what really happened. So could you go upstairs and talk to Jasmine?”

“She already told me everything she knows,” Gran pointed out.

“Well, you know what cats are like,” said Odelia, glancing up at her grandmother. “Especially Persians. She may not have told you everything.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Gran admitted.

“So, Max and Dooley, please talk to Jasmine, and find out what else she knows, all right?”

“Of course, Odelia,” said Max, and both cats trotted off up the stairs.

“Amazing,” said Scarlett, shaking her head. “I didn’t understand a word you just said.”

Chapter 8

“We should have brought Harriet,” said Dooley. “She and Jasmine could have had a chat. Persian to Persian, I mean. She would probably have been able to drag the truth out of her a lot better than we ever could.”

I had to admit my friend made a valid point. Persians are notoriously difficult, and have a tendency toward feeling superior to any other species of cat, or pet for that matter. And I wasn’t sure if she would listen to us, or even deem us worthy of a response when we asked her a question. But we owed it to Odelia to try our best.

So it was with a sense of slight trepidation that I entered Jasmine’s lair, which apparently was the room belonging to the girl called Mia, and scanned it for the presence of the white-haired feline.

She saw us before we saw her, though, and asked, a little haughtily, I thought,“And what are you two doing here? This is my room, my house, and trespassers are advised to keep out or face grievous bodily harm.”

“Um, we’re here with Odelia Poole,” I said, as I glanced around, trying to locate the source of Jasmin’s voice. “She’s been called in to investigate the murder of Kirk Weaver, and to clear the reputation of your human. My name is Max, by the way, and this is Dooley.”

“You don’t look like detectives,” the voice shot back, and I glanced over to the window and finally saw the curtain move. I smiled.

“And what is a detective supposed to look like?” I asked as I approached the window.

“Not one step closer!” suddenly the cat’s voice cut through the room, and immediately I froze. “When I think of a detective I picture them as distinguished, debonair, and devilishly clever. You two look like a comedy duo. Like Laurel and Hardy.”

I rolled my eyes. I could already imagine which one of the comedy pair I was.“Look, I don’t care what you think detectives are supposed to look like. I’ll have you know that we’ve solved our fair share of crimes in this town, and if you let us we’ll solve this one, too, and make sure your human isn’t sent to prison. She didn’t kill Kirk Weaver, did she?”

“That’s what I told the old lady and I stand by my words,” said Jasmine. She emerged from behind the curtains, and next to me Dooley emitted an involuntary gasp.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his voice suddenly husky.

Jasmine didn’t even crack a smile. “I know,” she said simply. “Now if there’s nothing else, I’d like you to leave this room. I don’t like other cats to shed in my personal space, and I can already see that you two are shedding like crazy. Especially you, Hardy, spreading a thick carpet of red furall over my perfectly polished hardwood floor.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I always shed when I’m nervous.”

“Well, don’t,” she advised, and took a tentative sniff in our direction, then frowned. “Are you by any chance cohabiting with a Persian?”

“Yes, we are,” said Dooley. “Her name is Harriet and she looks a lot like you. Gorgeous and with beautiful white fur, I mean.”

“Mh,” said Jasmine. “Harriet. Strange name for a Persian. Then again, we can’t all be Jasmine. Well, what are you two still doing here? Didn’t I tell you to leave immediately?”

“There’s just a couple of questions I’d like to ask,” I said.

“That’s what detectives do,” Dooley pointed out with a lame chuckle.

“Oh, all right,” said Jasmine. “Go on. Ask your silly questions.”

“So you and Mia were in here when Kirk was killed, right?”

“If you’re going to make me repeat everything twice—”

“Just confirming,” I said quickly. “Now you say you heard a scream? How sure are you that it was Kirk screaming?”

“One hundred percent,” said Jasmine tersely. “I have perfect hearing, something which you two don’t seem to possess, in my opinion a serious failing for a pair of so-called detectives, though not unheard of in a comedy duo.”

“Why does she keep calling us a comedy duo, Max?” asked Dooley, but I decided to ignore him for now. Time was of the essence, before Jasmine got bored and kicked us out.

“Did you hear anything else? Voices or anything that might lead us to identify the real killer?” I asked.

Jasmine glanced up at the ceiling as she expelled a sigh.“No. Anything else?”

“So you have no idea who could have done this to Kirk?”

She was silent for a beat, then said,“My best guess would be Allison.”

“Mia’s aunt? But why?”

Jasmine leveled a long look at me, then said,“First off, I know there’s such a thing as a bond that pets share with their humans, and I personally have the greatest respect for this sacred covenant, all right?”

“Okay,” I said, wondering where this was going.

“Second, I’m not a liar. I pride myself in always telling the truth, no matter how inconvenient.”

“An admirable trait, I’m sure.”

“Oh, don’t patronize me, Hardy,” she said with a frown. “The thing is, if someone goes down for this murder, I’d prefer if it isn’t Mia, as I like her. Even though Allison is my human, I actually like Mia a lot more. She’s always been kind to me, whereas Allison only took me in because she needed another ornament to beautify her personal space. To her I’m like a piece of furniture, or a fancy dress that she can showcase to her friends. So at the risk of betraying the treasured bond that connects all cats and their humans…” She heaved a deep sigh. “Look, Mia was having anaffair with this Kirk Weaver fellow. But she wasn’t the only one. At the same time he was also having an affair with Allison.”

“What?” I said, a little shocked.

“Yeah, color me surprised when I walked in on the two of them doing it in the kitchen one night when Mia was out with her friends.”

“What were they doing?” asked Dooley, interested.

Jasmine gave him a critical look.“What do you think they were doing, Laurel?”

“Um… cooking dinner?” Dooley suggested.

“You’ll have to excuse my friend,” I said quickly. “He’s very young and not always familiar with the strange and wonderful habits of humans in love.”

“In love? In lust, you mean. The way they were going at it—”

“Yes, I can see what you mean,” I said, before she painted a vivid and colorful word picture of the kinds of actions Allison and the late Mr. Weaver had been up to that night.

“Well, anyway, it’s not entirely inconceivable that Allison was jealous of Mia and decided she wanted Kirk for herself. And when Kirk didn’t comply, is it so hard to believe that a woman scorned resorted to violence?”

“You mean… acrime passionnel?” I said delicately.

“Bingo, Hardy. And then she made sure that Mia took the blame.”

“But… she did everything she could to make sure the police didn’t get involved.”

“Of course. She doesn’t want the cops to come snooping around and discover she’s the real killer.”

I thought about this.“Mia said she was feeling woozy, and doesn’t remember kneeling next to the body,” I said. “What kinds of pills was she taking that she was so out of it?”

Jasmine smiled.“Now you’re talking, Puss Detective. The kind of pills a person would give her niece to make sure she wouldn’t overhear her aunt murdering her boyfriend, but not powerful enough to prevent her from waking up and stumbling, half asleep, into the next room and come upon the murder scene and implicate herself in the crime.”

“Has your fur always been this white, Jasmine?” asked Dooley now.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, get Laurel away from me,” she said, and I decided to comply before she called me Hardy again.

Besides, I had a feeling she’d told us everything she knew, and a remarkable theory it was, too. I couldn’t wait to tell Odelia.

Before I left the room, though, I turned and said,“Um, maybe one more thing, Jasmine. Was this Kirk guy really a cat whisperer?”

Jasmine laughed scathingly.“Like I told the old lady, no way. The man was a fraud. Pretending to be able to talk to cats while he didn’t understand us one bit. He used to hit me, you know, with a clothes brush? When he thought no one was looking? He landed one hit, then I scratched him across the face. So if anyone wonders where that big red scratch on his nose comes from, you can tell them I did that. And I’m proud of it, too.”

Chapter 9

Alec Lip, Hampton Cove’s chief of police, was sitting at his desk and reading the online version of theHampton Cove Gazette, more specifically the Gabi column. Only last week he’d sent in an anonymous letter and had eagerly awaited Gabi’s response. But now that the response had finally been posted, he wasn’t sure he agreed with it.

His question had been very short and to the point:‘Dear Gabi, I’m a fifty-four-year-old widower and have been living alone since my wife died fifteen years ago. Lately I’ve been wondering if I should get out there again. Look for love. There’s someone I like but we work together in a professional capacity, so it’s tricky. What should I do? Lonely Heart.’

The response, now that it had finally been posted, was this:‘Dear Lonely Heart, if you ask me it’s not your love life that needs a shot in the butt but your professional life. Why don’t you show some ambition? There’s other jobs out there that would suit your talents a lot better than your current one. Mayor, for instance. Something to think about!’

Alec leaned back and patted his thinning mane. It almost seemed to him that Gabi, whoever she was, had guessed who he was and was telling him to drop being chief of police and set his sights on becoming mayor instead. Huh. So weird.

There was a knock at the door and he yelled,“Yeah!”

Chase Kingsley walked in. A handsome cop with one of those square faces and a cleft in his chin that made women’s hearts beat faster, Chase was the precinct’s detective, and smiled when he saw Alec behind his desk, hands on his head and looking annoyed.

“You should really try a hair transplant, Chief. You’ll feel like a new man.”

“Look at this,” Alec grumbled, and turned the screen so Chase could read along.

Chase took a seat at the edge of the desk and scanned the screen, then grinned.“Dating, huh? And who’s the lucky lady?”

Alec’s ruddy face flushed even more. “No lucky lady. Just a general question.”

“Oh, come on, Chief. Are you going to tell me you didn’t have a particular woman…” He leaned in and read from the screen. “… ‘in a professional capacity’ in mind?”

Alec shrugged and said stubbornly,“No particular woman.”

“How about Tracy Sting?”

Tracy was a woman he’d met working a case, but they had lost touch. “Tracy flies all over the world for her job. Very hard to make things work when one of the partners is never in one place for more than a couple of days,” he grumbled.

Suddenly, his phone chimed and he cleared his throat, then picked up.“Yes, Madam Mayor,” he said.

“Chief, help me out here,” Charlene Butterwick’s melodious voice sounded over the airwaves. “There’s a couple of punks peeing in my gardenias. Do you think you could dissuade them from using my lovely flower beds as a urinal?”

He smiled.“Of course, Madam Mayor,” he said.

“What do I have to do to convince you that it’s Charlene, and not Madam Mayor?”

“As soon as you start calling me Alec, I’ll start calling you Charlene, Madam Mayor,” he said, his smile widening. Then he saw Chase’s grin and his smile vanished.

“Just get these kids out of my flowers, will you? I’d hate for visitors to see them. They’ll think we’re running a slum instead of the fine upstanding town that we are.”

“Will do, Madam Mayor,” he growled.

“Thanks, Chief.”

He replaced the receiver and glowered at his second-in-command.“What are you grinning at?”

“I think I know what lady you were referring to in your letter, Chief.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t you have work to do?”

“Yes, Chief,” said Chase, and made to leave his office.

His phone chimed again and he picked it up, quick as a flash.“I’m on it, Madam Mayor,” he said, then heard Odelia’s voice and relaxed. “Hey, honey. What can I do for you?”

“There’s been a murder, Uncle Alec. At Allison Gray’s place. It’s Kirk Weaver.”

“The cat whisperer?”

“One and the same. So you better get over here. Oh, and it looks like the niece did it? Mia Gray? But I know for a fact that she didn’t. Only, the witness in her defense is a cat, so that’s not going to make a big impression on the judge. So you better think of something.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” he promised her, then disconnected.

Chase, who’d been waiting by the door, asked, “What’s going on?”

“That was Odelia,” said the Chief, getting up from behind his desk. “There’s been a murder, and the most likely suspect has an alibi. Only problem is: her alibi is her cat.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

He took his jacket from the coat rack and then they were off, but not before he alerted Abe Cornwall, the county coroner, to join them ASAP. And as they walked out of the precinct, he cast a quick glance in the direction of town hall, which was located across town square. Three young punks were indeed watering Mayor Butterwick’s flower beds with their own bodily fluids. His face set, he started marching over. He recognized two of them as having desecrated his own garage not all that long ago.

But a hand descended on his shoulder, and Chase said,“Better let me handle this one, Chief.”

“But…”

“I’ve got this, buddy,” Chase insisted, and stalked over to the three punks. Alec watched on as Chase told them in no uncertain terms what was what. Reluctantly the three kids jumped on their bikes and rode off.

And as Chase joined him again, the Chief asked,“What did you tell them?”

“That if they didn’t cut it out I was going to send the CCTV footage of their teensy tiny little weenies to their mothers. They didn’t like that.”

Alec smiled.“I would probably have grabbed them by the collar and smacked their bottoms.”

“You can’t do that in this day and age, Chief,” said Chase as they walked over to the Chief’s squad car. “Smacking bottoms is not done. Not politically correct.”

“And sending video of their pee-pees is?”

Chase grinned widely.“Who says I was going to send anything?”

The Chief shook his head. He had to admit that Chase’s solution had probably been more effective than his own. From a window on the second floor of town hall he could see Charlene Butterwick gazing out at them. And when he raised his hand in greeting, she waved back. And as an involuntarily smile crept up his face, he sensed that Chase was lookingat him and grinning again like a damn ape.

“She’s my boss!” he said as he buckled up. “I have to say hi.”

“Oh, I know.”

“I’m supposed to be nice to her.”

“Of course you are.”

“Stop grinning, will you?” he grunted, and then started up the car.

Chapter 10

The moment Odelia’s uncle arrived with Chase things became even livelier than they had been. Before long, the coroner also arrived and people in white coveralls were all over the place, examining the crime scene and the body.

Meanwhile Chase, Alec, Gran, Odelia and Scarlett had taken seats in the living room with Allison and Mia, the latter still looking groggy from whatever pills she’d taken.

“So tell us, Miss Gray,” said Uncle Alec, taking charge of the investigation. “Who could possibly have held such a grudge against Mr. Weaver to want the man killed?”

“Oh, I can think of several people,” said Allison, looking a little startled by all the attention she was suddenly subjected to. “There’s the man’s wife, of course. Or I should probably say ex-wife, even though they aren’t officially divorced yet.”

“I hardly think Kirk’s wife would want him dead, Auntie Allison,” said Mia, who was nursing a cup of strong coffee. The smell drifted toward Odelia and she relished in its delicious aroma.

Allison must have caught a whiff, too, for she suddenly said,“Oh, dear goodness me. I’m a terrible hostess. What can I get you, Miss Poole? And you, Chief Alec?”

When the orders were all taken care of, and Allison had relegated them to a member of her household staff, the interview continued.

“So tell me about this ex-wife,” said Chase. “Does she live around here?”

“I think she’s staying in town somewhere, in a hotel,” said Allison. “She should be at home in LA, but when she heard Kirk was here and intending to stay for a couple of weeks, she suddenly flew in and took a room in town, then started bombarding him with messages, and even showed up at thehouse once or twice, demanding to speak to him.”

“I know women like that,” said Scarlett. “Can’t let go.”

“Oh, it wasn’t like that,” said Allison. “She could let go well enough, but not of Kirk’s fortune. She vehemently contested the terms of the proposed divorce settlement and kept badgering Kirk for a bigger chunk of his fortune, and even his house in LA.”

“We’ll need to talk to the woman,” said Chief Alec as Chase made a note.

“So who else?” asked Odelia. “You said you could think of several people who’d mean Kirk harm?”

“Well…” Allison hesitated, and darted a look at her niece. “There is Kirk’s business partner. You met him once, didn’t you, honey?”

Mia looked up. She’d been gazing into the middle distance and blinked. “You mean that creepy little weasel? Yeah, Kirk and I met him in town last week. I didn’t like him.”

“Well, neither did Kirk, apparently,” said Allison with a nervous little laugh. “He called him a fraud and was trying to terminate their business relationship, which apparently was fraught with a long history of bad business decisions and disagreement.”

“So this business partner, do you have a name?” asked Uncle Alec.

“Yeah, um… Burt. Burt Scofield. Isn’t that right, Mia?”

“Yes,” said Mia, blinking again, as if awakening from a daydream. “Um, he’s staying at the Hampton Cove Star, I think.”

Chase nodded as he jotted all this down.

“So… I don’t get it,” said Mia now. “I told you that I killed Kirk, so why are you looking at other suspects?”

“Honey,” said Allison urgently, then smiled apologetically at the Chief. “Don’t listen to my niece. She’s still under the influence of those sleeping pills she took.”

“Yes, I wanted to ask you about that, Miss Gray,” said Uncle Alec. “Why did you take those pills? And how many did you take, exactly?”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately.”

“I gave her those pills,” said Allison. “They’re mine, and I probably should have told her to take half a pill. I forgot to take into account that Mia is a lot slighter than I am.”

“When I woke up this morning, at first I thought I was dreaming. I was sitting next to Kirk’s body and…” She choked and tears appeared in her eyes. “I haven’t told you this yet, but Kirk and I were dating. I liked him. His death…”

“It’s come as a big shock,” said Uncle Alec kindly.

“Yes, but what I don’t understand is why you’re not arresting me for murder?”

“Did you have reason to kill him, Miss Gray?”

“No, of course not. I liked Kirk. We were having a lot of fun together.”

“We know you didn’t do it, honey,” said Gran, adopting a grandmotherly tone. “A witness has come forward who told us there’s no way you could have done it.”

“A witness?” asked Allison, looking up in surprise. “What witness?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you,” said Gran. “All I can tell you at this point is that Mia didn’t kill Kirk, and that’s why my son isn’t looking at her as a suspect but a witness.”

“But I was right there, next to him,” said Mia. She held up her hands. “There was all this blood. I had to wash them…” Her hands were shaking, her lips quivering.

“There, there,” said her aunt, and put an arm around Mia’s shoulders. She then directed a questioning look at Gran, whose face didn’t betray a thing.

It was like walking a tightrope, and this mystery witness would never be represented in any official police report. Still, it was better for Mia to know exactly where she stood, and that she couldn’t possibly have killed her boyfriend.

Odelia watched as Max and Dooley entered the room, and when Max gestured that he wanted a word, she nodded. He came trudging over while Allison concerned herself with consoling her niece, and when Max spoke his next words, Odelia was more than a little surprised.

“Jasmine thinks Allison did it. She was having an affair with Kirk, and didn’t like the competition. So she killed Kirk in acrime passionnel and set her niece up as the killer.”

Both Odelia and Gran, who’d also heard Max’s words loud and clear, looked up at Allison. The mother of all Gabis must have felt the tension, for she glanced over, and said, innocently, “What?”

Chapter 11

We were outside, taking a walk through the gardens. Odelia had decided she better confront Allison with her accusations without an entire contingent of real and imagined detectives present, and had asked if she could talk to the woman in private.

Scarlett had protested, but Gran had quickly shut her up. And now we were walking along a garden path, birds chirping merrily in nearby trees, the pleasant sound of water burbling in a cozy little brook that meandered through the nicely landscaped garden.

“So what did you want to talk to me about?” asked Allison as she darted a curious look at Dooley and myself from time to time. She probably wondered why two cats would faithfully tag along in their human’s trail. We were, after all, not dogs, who are used to that sort of thing.

“I think you haven’t been completely honest with us, have you, Allison?” said Odelia, opening her remarks with a shot across the bow.

Allison immediately bridled.“Of course I’ve been honest! What are you talking about?”

“I think you liked Kirk a lot more than you let on. In fact I think you and Kirk were having an affair behind your niece’s back.”

Allison pressed her lips together and froze.“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said primly.

“Oh, I think you do. The same witness who told my grandmother that Mia couldn’t possibly have killed Kirk told us she once walked in on you and Kirk in the kitchen, and you weren’t exactly making pancakes on the kitchen counter.”

Allison stared at Odelia.“Someone walked in on me and Kirk? But… that’s impossible!”

“Our witness is adamant. She says you and Kirk did things on that kitchen counter that would make Lady Chatterley’s lover blush.”

“Who’s Lady Chatterley, Max?” asked Dooley, not missing a beat.

“Um… I think it’s one of those great heroes of romance,” I said, though to be honest I’d never personally made this particular lady’s acquaintance or seen her movie on theHallmark Channel.

Instead of Lady Chatterley or her lover, it was Allison who was blushing at Odelia’s words. “Well,” she said finally. “Well, really.”

“Is it true, though?” asked Odelia.

Allison hesitated for a moment, then finally sighed.“Yes, it’s true. But please,” she immediately implored, “don’t say anything to Mia. It will break her heart. I think she was in love with Kirk, probably hoping he’d propose, the silly girl.”

“Why silly?”

But Allison gave her a pointed look, and Odelia immediately said,“Silly of me. Of course he wasn’t going to propose, if he was engaged in a torrid affair with you.”

We’d reached a little iron bench and both women sank down onto it, with Dooley and me deciding to lie down on the grass, which was soft and cool. It tickled my belly a little, but that’s what I like about grass. Plus, it smells nice.

“Look, it wasn’t as if I planned any of this,” said Allison. “It simply happened. In fact I had no idea he was carrying on with Mia until last week, when she happily revealed they were in a relationship. It came as quite a shock to me, I must confess, to know I was having an affair with thesame man my niece was hoping to marry. And then of course the man was still married to his wife, too. And it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t still have… relations with her at the same time he was carrying on with me and Mia.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I once saw him walk out of his ex-wife’s hotel.”

“Why didn’t you break it off?”

“I was going to. I was going to tell him this couldn’t possibly go on like this. He’d have to choose: me, his wife or Mia, and not keep us all in the air like so many juggling balls.”

“He must have had quite the libido,” Odelia commented.

“Yes, he had stamina, I have to give him that.”

“Did you love him?”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Let’s just say we supplied each other a certain… service. He was a fiery lover, and it had been years since anyone had made love to me quite so vigorously. But I had no feelings for the man, just like he had no feelings for me.”

“Did he love Mia, you think?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“But she had feelings for him.”

“Yes, it was obvious to me that she loved him with all the fervor of youth. It pained me to see her pining for the man, and I knew that sooner or later he was going to break her heart, the poor dear. But what could I do?”

“You could have told him to leave.”

“Mia would have hated me for it.”

“She would have hated you whatever you did.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said the woman, then laughed. “The irony doesn’t escape me, Miss Poole. Me, the first Gabi, chairwoman of the AAA, making a mess of things like that.”

Odelia looked the woman straight in the eye.“Did you kill Kirk, Allison? Because he wouldn’t stop sleeping with your niece?”

Allison nodded, and I held my breath. I had a feeling she was going to confess. But then she said,“I can see how you would think that. But no, I didn’t kill Kirk.”

“You didn’t have a big fight and accidentally—”

“Oh, acrime passionnel?” She laughed. “You think too much of me, Odelia. I didn’t love the man enough to commit murder. Was I upset with him? Of course I was, not for my sake but for Mia’s. And did I fight with him when I found out? Yes, I did. But that was last week, when I gave him an ultimatum: either stop fooling around with Mia and get serious, or break it off with her. He did neither, and I’d planned to have another strongly worded talk with him tonight. But someone killed him before I could.”

“And that killer wasn’t you.”

“That killer wasn’t me. Besides, you can ask your grandmother. When Kirk was killed I was downstairs talking to her and Scarlett.”

“I think the coroner’s report will show that Kirk was killed before my grandmother arrived,” Odelia argued.

“Well, arrest me if you must, but I swear to you that I had nothing to do with the man’s death.”

“I believe her,” said Dooley, and unfortunately I had to admit she sounded very convincing to me, too. And Odelia must have come to the same conclusion, for she smiled and placed a hand on the woman’s arm.

“I think you should tell Mia, before she hears it from someone else, or reads about it online.”

Allison nodded.“I know. It’s a conversation I’ve been dreading for days.”

“Make it soon,” Odelia advised her.

“I just hope she won’t hate me forever.”

“She won’t. Not when she realizes what kind of man Kirk Weaver really was.”

“What kind of man was Kirk?” asked Dooley.

“I think the word for a person like him is womanizer,” I said as Odelia and Allison got up and resumed their perambulation.

“A womanizer?”

“A man who carries on with several women at the same time, or one after the other, and can’t seem to settle down with a single one of them.”

“So do you think there were more women in his life, Max?”

“Could be, Dooley,” I said.

“So maybe one of them killed him?”

I glanced at my friend.“You know, Dooley. I think you’re on to something there. We better tell Odelia.”

We followed the two women from a distance as we enjoyed our stroll. It was better than being cooped up inside the house with a dead man upstairs. The only thing marring what could have been a perfect walk was the fact that my tummy was rumbling. I was hungry, but had been afraid to tell Odelia. She would have told Allison, who would have offered us some of Jasmine’s food. And the last thing I wanted was to snack on Jasmine’s kibble and watch the Persian walk in on us in the kitchen. I was pretty sure she would have scratched us across our faces where we sat, same way she’d scratched Kirk.

“So weird, though, right?” I said. “I mean, a cat whisperer who doesn’t like cats, and uses a hairbrush to hit them when they don’t do as he says. A family man who’s secretly conducting affairs with his client and his client’s niece at the same time. It makes you wonder what other things this Kirk Weaver had to hide.”

“I don’t think he was a nice man,” said Dooley, and that pretty much summed it up.

Chapter 12

That night, Chase sat reading on his phone while Odelia brushed her teeth in the bathroom. He was frowning at the screen. Like apparently all of Hampton Cove, he’d sent in a question for theGazette’s advice column and the answer had just been posted online. His question had been straightforward enough:‘Dear Gabi, I’ve been engaged to be married for quite some time now, but for some reason I can’t seem to bring myself to lock down a date for the wedding. Something always seems to crop up and the time is never right. What do you think I should do? Burning Heart.’

The answer had surprised him:‘Dear Burning Heart, instead of whining about your engagement you should urge your future uncle-in-law to show some more ambition in life and further his political career. Being stuck in a dead-end job as he is, it’s time to supercharge his ambitions and take the reins of this town firmly in both hands.’

Somehow he had the impression that whoever this Gabi person was, she’d somehow guessed who he was, and wanted him to push Alec to… do what, exactly? Run for mayor?

Then he dismissed the thought. Still, he wasn’t any the wiser, which irked him.

Odelia walked in from the bathroom and got into bed. She was also frowning.

“What’s wrong, babe?” he asked. “Still thinking about the case?”

“Yeah, I was wondering if Allison told me the truth or not. How can you tell, Chase, if a person is speaking the truth? Or lying to your face?”

“Very tough call,” he agreed. “There have been moments perps lied to my face and I thought they were absolutely truthful. And there have been times when I was sure the person on the other side of the table was lying while he was actually telling the truth.”

“You would think that I’d had developed an instinct for this kind of thing by now, but I’m still clueless.”

“By the way, what were your grandmother and Scarlett doing at Allison Gray’s place?”

“Gran said she applied for a job. Cat sitter. Though Scarlett told me a different story. She said Allison invited them. She’s been thinking about moving here permanently and wants to get involved in Hampton Cove’s social scene. She’d heard from her housekeeper that both Gran and Scarlett are plugged into all kinds of committees and local organizations and wanted to get to know them.”

“I didn’t know your gran was a member of any committees.”

“She isn’t. Too ornery to be tolerated for more than a single meeting. And Scarlett rubs people the wrong way with her provocative behavior and manhunting ways.”

“I would have liked to have seen your grandmother’s face when she and Scarlett showed up at the same time.”

“They seem to be getting on better. Maybe they’ve finally decided to make peace.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” said Chase. “Hell will freeze over before those two bury the hatchet. I think they secretly enjoy their feud.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Did I tell you that Scarlett knows we can talk to cats now? She heard Gran talk to Jasmine and told her that if she doesn’t allow her to tag along on this investigation she’ll tell the whole town.”

“That’s not very nice of her.”

“No, it isn’t. Though I don’t think she’ll actually do it. She knows Gran would simply deny everything and people will think she’s simply spreading gossip to make Gran look bad.”

Odelia had picked up her phone and was reading something.

“Whatcha reading?” asked Chase, trying to catch a glimpse. But Odelia held the phone away from him and smiled.

“Just an article Dan wrote about a reading at the library. Where are my cats?”

“I saw them take off earlier.”

“Cat choir, probably.”

“Yeah, probably.” He cleared his throat. “Um… you know how we said we’d go out to dinner?”

“Yeah, for some reason something always seems to come up when we do. Maybe next time we simply don’t make any plans but decide last minute?”

“I’d like that. There’s… something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh? Pray tell, Mr. Kingsley.”

He laughed.“Not now.”

Odelia nodded.“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What?”

“Like the man said, ‘Not now.’”

“Fair enough.”

And as Chase turned off the light and Odelia snuggled up to him, he wondered if he should send another message to Gabi, asking her advice. How do you ask a woman to marry you when you’ve already asked her to marry you?

Tough proposition.

Half an hour later, Odelia was listening to Chase’s even breathing, and took her phone again. She’d posted another question for Gabi, and an answer had popped up on the site.

Her question had read:‘Dear Gabi. My boyfriend proposed to me a couple of months ago, and since then, nothing. Do you think I should maybe ask him to get a move on or is that not something you’d recommend? Or maybe he got cold feet and doesn’t want to go through with it after all? Please advise. Thanks. Anxious Heart.’

‘Dear Anxious Heart,’ Gabi’s response read. ‘Don’t you worry about that big lug. Instead tell that uncle of yours to get his lazy ass out of his chair and show some initiative. The political kind. He should have been mayor of this town a long time ago!’

And as Odelia put her phone down, she vowed to have a talk with Dan the next day. This new Gabi was giving some really strange advice, she felt. Almost… too personal.

Chapter 13

Hampton Cove was finally asleep, which meant that its feline population had the streets to itself, and more particularly its park. Hampton Cove Park, which is located not all that far from the ocean, may be a hive of human activity during the day, at night it’s our domain, and so it was now, with all of the town’s feline inhabitants flocking to.

Easily the most popular social gathering in town, cat choir is just an excuse for us cats to gather around and shoot the breeze.

Of course we also like to roam the streets of an evening, with some cats enjoying the darkly lit back alleys and the sizable dumpsters this town boasts, and where usually some nugget of food or leftover dinners can be found. But when all that strenuous activity is over, there’s only one place to be and it was where we were now.

Harriet and Brutus, who’d been conspicuously silent about where they’d spent their day, were there, and so was Kingman, and of course Shanille, cat choir’s conductor.

Kingman, in particular, was in excellent spirits. He kept telling anyone who’d listen that theHampton Cove Gazette had instituted its first-ever feline advice columnist, and for all cats to share their questions with him, and he’d deliver them to the right place.

I decided to sidle up to Kingman to find out more about this momentous occasion, and also, maybe, glean some information about the womanizing and now very dead Kirk Weaver.

“So who is this new columnist?” I asked.

Kingman smiled.“That’s for me to know and for you to find out, Maxie.”

“Which is why I’m asking you, Kingman. It must be someone who’s both wise and extremely smart, right?”

“Right,” he said, continuing mysterious.

“So is this pet Gabi a he or a she?”

“First of all, why would you automatically assume her name is Gabi, and secondly, you should go to the source, Max. And the source is right… there.” He was pointing to Harriet, for some reason, and I frowned. “Harriet is the new Gabi?”

“Like I said, her name isn’t Gabi. It’s Chloe, and even though Harriet isn’t her, she knows who she is, so you better ask her.”

And to show me that the conversation was over, he turned away to talk to three very pretty female felines.

And I hadn’t even managed to broach the topic of Kirk Weaver. Darn it.

So I walked over to Harriet, who stood shooting the breeze with Shanille.

“So I hear you’re the go-to person to find out all there is to know about Chloe?” I said.

Shanille made a face.“Can you believe that Kingman is telling the entire town that I’m Chloe? While I haven’t even heard the first thing about this new position.”

“If you’re not Chloe,” I said. “Then who is?”

Shanille shrugged.“Beats me. But it must be someone very smart. Dan wouldn’t give this high-profile job to just any old cat unless he knows she’s up to the task.”

“So who do you think it is?” I asked Harriet, but Harriet didn’t seem to have a clue, either, which only left Odelia, who was sure to know who this mystery cat was. I vowed to ask her in the morning, and for now focus on finding out more about Kirk Weaver. Before I could ask Shanille, though,she’d traipsed off, presumably to prepare tonight’s songbook. And so it was that I found myself chatting with Harriet.

“So who do you think Chloe is, Max?” she asked.

“No idea,” I intimated. I glanced around, wondering who I could talk to about Kirk.

“But we’ve already established it must be someone very smart and wise, right?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, the topic no longer gripping me.

“And are you absolutely sure you don’t know a cat like that?” she asked.

“No, actually I don’t,” I said. “Listen, can we change the subject? I have a murder to solve.”

She seemed a little annoyed at that, so I quickly decided to rope her into the investigation. But when I gave her the skinny on Kirk Weaver and the events as they’d transpired at Allison’s place, she gave me scant attention. In the end she returned to her initial topic of conversation. “There must be someone in your circle of friends and acquaintances who fits the bill, though, Max.”

“Fits the bill for what?” I asked.

“For Chloe, of course. Who is she, Max? Think hard.”

I thought hard, but couldn’t come up with a single name. “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I don’t know anyone who’s that smart, intelligent and wise. No one comes to mind.”

“Oh, Max,” she suddenly snapped, her eyes a little fierier than usual. “Sometimes you can be such a jerk, you know?”

And with these words, she stalked off.

Odd, I felt, but not unusual. Harriet is prone to these outbursts from time to time. So I decided to ignore her and go in search of my wingman Dooley. There was a theory I wanted to discuss with him. I bumped into Kingman instead, who gave me a curious look.“I heard you’re out looking for Kirk Weaver’s killer?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Anything you can tell me about him?”

“Well… the weird thing is that I thought he was already dead.”

“No, he died this morning. Killed with a knife to the chest.”

“Odd,” said Kingman, frowning as he thought back. “I heard a rumor not that long ago that Kirk Weaver was about to die, or had died. But now I can’t remember who told me.”

“When you remember, tell me. It’s important,” I said, clapping him on the back.

“I will,” he said, clearly perturbed that his memory was failing him to such an extent. Then his face cleared. “Say, listen, Max. Don’t you have a question for Chloe?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“Oh, come on. You must have a question. Big feline detective like you? Tell me.”

I groaned inwardly. All this Chloe and Gabi stuff wasn’t really my thing. Still, to humor my friend I thought for a moment. “Oh, there’s one thing I always wanted to know,” I finally said as a brainwave suddenly hit me.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“The thing is… I’ve been a confirmed bachelor for a long time, right?”

“Uh-huh. And good for you, Max. At least one cat should set an example that life consists of more than flirting with every single female in town,” he said as he winked at a pretty feline walking by. She giggled excitedly.

“Well… sometimes I wonder if being a bachelor is the right approach. They say there’s a lid for every pot. Is that actually a thing, or just one of those things people say? I’m just asking for a friend, you see.”

“Deep, Max,” said Kingman, nodding. “Very deep. I’ll be sure to pass it on to Chloe.”

“You do that, and let me know when she responds.”

I felt lighter on my feet when I went in search of Dooley. It wasn’t one of those questions I really needed answered right away, but it was something I’d wondered.

I finally found Dooley, seated on the jungle gym and waiting for the show to begin.

“Oh, there you are, buddy,” I said. “I was looking for you.”

“I just talked to Brutus,” he said. “He wanted to know if I had a question for Chloe.”

“And? Do you have a question for Chloe?” I asked as I took a seat next to him.

“Well, there’s one thing that keeps bugging me, Max,” he said. “One of those questions that cats have probably asked themselves since time immemorial, you know?”

“Mh-mh?” I said, figuring it probably had something to do with the meaning of life.

“I really hope Chloe knows the answer, Max, because it’s been keeping me up at night, you know?”

“Sure,” I said. “So what’s the question?”

“Well, you know how we discussed static electricity? And how it leads to babies?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, while I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’

“And how the more hair a cat has, the more static electricity is created?”

“Okay.”

“Well, if that is true, and I think it is, why is it that Harriet doesn’t have a dozen kittens by now? She’s very hairy, Max, and sometimes when I get close to her I can feel the static electricity just coming off her in waves.”

“We talked about this, Dooley. Harriet is spayed, which means she can’t have babies.”

He stared at me.“But… babies come from electricity, Max, we established that this morning. So what does being spayed have to do with anything?”

I swallowed uncomfortably.“Did you… did you ask the question to Chloe?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, then,” I said, relaxing. “Let’s see what she has to say. I’m sure that if anyone knows the answer to that frankly fascinating question it’s her.”

“I’m glad I asked the question, Max,” he said earnestly.

“Me, too, buddy. Me, too. In fact from now on, whenever you have an important question like that, ask Chloe. I’m sure she’ll be able to answer every single one of them.”

A new era had arrived. An era in which I wouldn’t have to answer Dooley’s tough questions anymore. And as I silently thanked Chloe for her service, soon I was singing my heart out along with the rest of cat choir. The only thing that diminished my enjoyment to some degree were the dirty looks Harriet kept darting in my direction.

I had no idea why she was angry with me. Maybe I should ask Chloe?

Chapter 14

The next morning, Odelia walked to her editor’s office and knocked on the door before entering. Dan looked up from his computer. “You’re early,” he said, sounding surprised.

“I could say the same about you,” she said with a smile. It was still gratifying to her after all these years working for Dan that they were more like friends than employer and employee. Dan had never been a difficult boss, but now he was more like an honorary dad to her than an employer, and that’s the way she liked it. She wouldn’t have been able to work in an office where she was treated like a nameless underling.

“So what’s this I hear about a murder taking place at Allison Gray’s place?”

“Yeah, none other than Mr. Cat Whisperer himself was found dead by Allison’s niece yesterday. Pretty gruesome stuff.”

“Any idea who’s behind it?” asked the white-bearded editor as he put his hands behind his head.

“Nothing yet, but we’re working on it. You’ve heard nothing yourself? Any rumors about the guy flying around?”

“Only that he was going through a rough divorce and his wife followed him down here. She’s staying at the Hampton Cove Star.”

“I thought as much. Chase and I are going down there later to talk to her. Listen, what I wanted to ask you. Are you still refusing to tell me who the new advice columnist is?”

The older man’s face creased into a big smile. “Why? Don’t you like her advice? Or like it a little too well?”

“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just that it’s… weird.”

“Weird, how?”

“Well, I asked about my engagement with Chase, right? But she said something about my uncle running for mayor instead. The answer doesn’t seem to fit the question. And besides, how did Gabi even know that I have an uncle? It’s almost as if she knew who I was. Which means it must be someone from around here, right? And you always told me you hired the new Gabi online and she works from home in the Midwest somewhere.”

Dan had dropped his chin on his chest and was frowning.“I’ll have to talk to her about that. That is indeed a weird answer.” He looked up. “I could give you her name but it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway, so…”

“All right, fine,” she said. “Have your little secret.” She dragged out a chair and took a seat. “There’s something else I wanted to run by you.”

“Oh? By all means, shoot. You know how much I value your ideas, Odelia.”

“Well, I was thinking about launching a second advice column, but this one devoted to pets. You know how people love their pets, right?”

“Oh, and how they love them. What did you have in mind?”

“Well, we could start a column with pets writing in and asking questions, and then another pet, like a cat, maybe, responding. It would be like a playful column and I think all pet owners would love it. We could have some fun with it.”

“I like it already,” he said. “Pets answering pets. Love it. And you’d write both the questions and the answers, I presume?”

“Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s not as if pets can actually send in their questions. Haha.”

“Haha,” he said. “No, of course not.” He gave her an intent look that made her slightly uncomfortable and momentarily wonder if Dan knew about her ability to talk to cats.

“Yeah, no, let’s do it,” he said. “And what would you call this particular agony aunt?”

“I was thinking about Chloe?”

“Great. Go for it. You have my wholehearted support.”

She got up, happy he’d agreed. When Harriet had brought the idea to her last night, she’d loved it immediately, too. It was something fresh she didn’t think had been done before. And they could even address some serious topics, things that every pet owner ought to know or watch out for, like diseases or what kind of food to give their fur babies. And if there were any medical questions she could consult with their local vet.

“Oh, by the way, my grandmother and Scarlett are also investigating the Kirk Weaver case,” she said. “For some reason they just happened to be at Allison’s last night. Something to do with Allison wanting to expand her social footprint in town?”

“What a coincidence,” said Dan, and for some reason didn’t meet her eye.

Odd, she thought, but forgot about it the moment she left his office. She had the Chloe thing to plan out, and an article to write about Kirk’s murder, and she’d agreed to meet with Chase for the interview with the man’s wife. Lots and lots to do. And as she sat down, she saw that Harriet had joined her in her office, and had jumped up on her desk.

She smiled.“Hello, Dear Chloe. Ready to launch your column?”

“Oh, you betcha,” said Harriet. “And I have the perfect opening questions. They’re from Max and Dooley, and you’re going to love them.”

Chapter 15

“Some of these answers are really bad, Vesta,” said Scarlett as she threw down a copy of theGazette.“For instance this one. ‘Dear Gabi. My boyfriend doesn’t like cats. What does that say about him? Furry Heart.’ And your response? ‘Any boyfriend who doesn’t like cats isn’t worth looking at twice. In fact I’d say he’s probably a serial killer. Only serial killers don’t like cats. So better break it off now, before you find yourself lying six feet under, with multiple parts of your mutilated body missing.’” She looked up.

“So? A perfectly reasonable answer to the girl’s question,” said Vesta.

They were seated in the window of a nice little coffee shop right across the street from the Hampton Cove Star hotel, keeping a look out for Kirk Weaver’s ex-wife.

“Reasonable! Not all people love cats, Vesta. And not all people who don’t love cats are serial killers.”

“In all likelihood they are, so I think I did Furry Heart a favor. Probably saved her life.”

“Look, you can’t give bullshit answers like that. It reflects badly on me, too, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Vesta as she took a sip from her cup of hot cocoa and nibbled from her cream puff. Delicious. She could get used to this detective stuff, if all it took was sitting in coffee shops all day watching people. The only drawback was that she had to do it with Scarlett, who simply would not shut up.

“Or this one,” said Scarlett, tapping the paper. “I met a guy last week who’s just perfect. Good-looking, courteous, funny. I met him through Tinder and one of his requirements was ‘Must love dogs.’ So I said I love dogs, though really I don’t. Should I come clean? I don’t want to lose him. He’s just so great. Confused Heart.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that one,” said Vesta.

“Your response: ‘Dump his ass. Anyone who demands that you must love dogs is probably a serial killer. Get out now before it’s too late, Confused Heart, and get a cat.’”

Vesta smiled.“Yeah. That was a good one.”

“You’re crazy! I’m your fellow Gabi and you’re sullying my good name!”

“You don’t have a good name to sully, Scarlett, so get off my back.”

“I think you’re so obsessed with cats that you can’t think straight. What’s wrong with dogs, anyway? I have a perfectly wonderful little doggie, and I love him to death.”

“Of course you do,” said Vesta acerbically.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“One of these days you’re going to find yourself missing a throat, drowning in your own blood. Dogs are vicious creatures with a brain the size of a pea. Everybody knows that.”

“Oh, do they now?”

“Yes, they do. At least if they have any sense.”

“Well, I happen to be a dog person.”

Vesta scoffed,“Figures.”

“I’m going to ignore that crack. Look, I’m Gabi just as much as you are, and if I didn’t know any better I’d think you were looking for a way to get us both fired from this job.”

“I am not. I like this job.”

“Well, so do I, so please next time when people ask you for advice, give it to them.”

“You should talk,” said Vesta, and took out her phone. “Concerned Heart asked this question last week. ‘Dear Gabi, my mother is seventy years old and still insists on walking around looking like a teenager, in short shorts short enough to show her underwear and in T-shirts that show all of her boobs. What should I do?’ And your answer? ‘Stop trying to ruin your mother’s life, Concerned Heart. If she wants to dress like a real woman and has the body to pull it off, let her. And maybe instead of criticizing your mom you should focus on that no-good husband of yours. He looks like a slob.’”

Scarlett shrugged.“Okay, so maybe I went a little overboard with that one. It’s just that Vicky Kemper is always going on about her mom, and she really shouldn’t.”

“You know what I think?”

“Not really.”

“I think Vicky’s question hit a little too close to home. You’re seventy years old, Scarlett, and you walk around dressed like a fifteen-year-old. It’s not age-appropriate.”

“And who decides what’s age-appropriate and what’s not? Whose business is it anyway? Tell me that! Like I told Vicky Kemper, if you have the body to pull it off, why the hell shouldn’t you?” And to underscore her argument, she pushed out her sizable chest.

Vesta rolled her eyes and took another sip from her cocoa.“Oh, wait. I think that’s her!” She’d looked Kirk’s wife up on the internet and now glanced from the picture on her phone to the woman who’d just walked out of the Star, looking left and right before crossing the street.

“Let’s go get her!” said Scarlett.

They threw down the money for their drinks and hurried out, Scarlett having a little trouble on her stiletto heels, which Vesta had explicitly told her the day before not to wear, and they got out just as Kirk’s ex-wife passed them by.

“Let’s see what she’s up to,” said Vesta as she switched into high pursuit mode.

“This is so exciting!” Scarlett tittered. “I’ve never done surveillance before!”

“Neither have I,” Vesta confessed.

“But you’ve helped out your granddaughter so many times, right?”

“Yeah, but never surveillance.”

“So how do we do this? We just follow her wherever she goes?”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the idea. We want to know what she’s up to before we talk to her. That way we can trap her into some lie or whatever.”

Oh, who was she kidding? She was making this up as she went along. She wasn’t a detective, and neither was Scarlett. Still, she was determined to get her man, or woman, if it killed her, and clearly so was Scarlett.

Kirk’s ex-wife, whose name was Sandy according to the interwebs, was setting a brisk pace as she traversed Main Street on her way to God knows where.

“What if she gets into a car?” asked Scarlett.

“Then we get into a car, too.”

“What if she sees us?”

“She won’t. Nobody expects two old ladies to turn out to be private dicks.”

“Hey, speak for yourself. I’m no old lady.”

It was true that Scarlett certainly didn’t look like an old lady. More like a weathered Kim Kardashian.

“I shouldn’t have worn heels,” Scarlett grumbled now.

“See? I told you. Sneakers are a detective’s uniform.”

“I’m learning so much from you, Vesta. Who would have thought, huh?”

“Who would have thought what?”

“That you and I would work together catching killers one day!”

She halted abruptly.“Let’s make one thing clear, all right? We’re not working together. You’re trying to catch this killer, I’m trying to catch this killer. Separately.”

“But then why are we going in the same direction?”

“Coincidence,” said Vesta, as she started walking again before they lost Sandy Weaver.

“Whatever you say, partner,” said Scarlett.

Vesta groaned. This was probably what hell looked like.

Sandy kept moving fast, and suddenly walked into a building.

“Now what?” said Scarlett, annoyed that their quarry would so easily escape them.

“Relax. She’s not going anywhere.” She gestured to a sign next to the door that announced this was the home of Lewis, Lewis, Lewis& Clark, attorneys at law.

“Probably wants to know about her inheritance,” Scarlett ventured.

“Yeah, probably.”

“I wish I could hear what she’s discussing with Lewis, Lewis, Lewis or Clark,” said Scarlett wistfully.

“Maybe there is a way,” said Vesta as she got an idea. She glanced at Scarlett and then at the nameplate. “Okay, so we’re sisters.”

Scarlett quirked a critical eyebrow.“Oh, sure.”

“Okay, so we’re mother and daughter,” she said grudgingly.

“Better.”

“And we’re here to discuss my will. You just keep the lawyer busy, while I sneak off, pretending to look for the bathroom. And maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to eavesdrop on Sandy and one of the Lewises.”

“Or Clark.” Scarlett smiled. “You’re on fire, Vesta!”

Chapter 16

Once inside, Vesta wasn’t surprised to find a small but immaculately neat lobby, where a gray-haired receptionist bade them welcome. She decided to let Scarlett do the talking, which the latter did with fervor.

“My dear mother is on the verge of death,” she explained to the woman, who’d first directed a critical eye at Scarlett’s trademark cleavage, but now lent her a sympathetic ear. “She’s eighty going on a hundred and probably won’t be with us for much longer.”

When the secretary darted a concerned look at Vesta, Scarlett assured her that her mother was practically deaf.

“I’m not dead yet!” Vesta yelled, a little annoyed.

“Deaf!” Scarlett yelled back. “I said you’re deaf! See what I have to deal with?” she added with a sigh. “The worst thing is that she doesn’t want to wear her hearing aid. She keeps flushing them down the toilet so I simply stopped bothering.”

“But those things cost a fortune!” said the woman, horrified.

Scarlett paused. Obviously she hadn’t been aware of that. “Which is exactly why I stopped bothering!” she said.

“You should,” said the woman. “Flushing them down the toilet, if you please.”

“Anyway, I want a lawyer to help me draw up Mama’s will, in case she dies on me, which could be any moment now.”

“Are you sure it’s worth it?” asked the woman, looking Vesta up and down. It was clear she didn’t think Vesta looked prosperous enough to be in need of a will.

“Yeah, she has her own place and wants me to have it, but my estranged brother, who’s a mafia boss in Kazakhstan, will probably try to take it away from me the moment Mama passes, and so we need a lawyer to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“The mafia is just the worst,” said the woman, as if she was an expert on all things mafia. “Let me see what I can do for you.”

“Where’s the bathroom?!” Vesta yelled, as this was taking entirely too long for her taste.

“I hope you’re not thinking about flushing your hearing aid down the toilet again!” the woman bellowed, with a commiserative look at Scarlett. “It’s over there!”

Vesta hurried off in the direction indicated, and could just hear Scarlett say,“She’s a dear, even though her mind went a long time ago.”

Vesta ground her teeth as she went in search of the lawyers’ offices and Sandy Weaver. Since she was officially non compos now, she could simply say when they caught her eavesdropping that she was looking for her marbles.

She found herself in a long corridor and tread silently on her white sneakers along the carpeted floor until she thought she heard voices. She put her ear against the panel and bingo! A woman was talking. She tried to hear what she said but the damn door was too thick. She wondered for a moment how to proceed, then got another idea. She knocked on the door of the next office and when no response came, snuck inside. As luck would have it, it was empty. So she darted behind the large mahogany desk and put her ear against the wall. Nope. Only faint murmurs.

She glanced around, until she saw that there was a vent placed in the wall. So she dragged the heavy desk over with a lot of effort, climbed on top of it, and put her ear against the vent. Immediately the sound improved, and this time she could hear what was being said. Eagerly licking her lips, she focused on the voices.

“He died, Franklin. So I think I have a right to know how much I’m getting.”

“But Mrs. Weaver, this is not the way to proceed.”

“And I’m telling you it is. If the divorce had been finalized, I’d have received half of everything, you know that as well as I do.”

“Actually I don’t. Mr. Weaver fought you vigorously and was vehement you not get a dime.”

“Well, he’s dead now, so are you really going to sit there and tell me I still don’t get a dime?”

The lawyer cleared his throat uncomfortably.“I’m not sure if I’m at liberty—”

“Oh, cut the crap, Franklin. How much?”

“I’m sure I can’t—”

“How much!”

A lawyerly cough sounded, and finally the man spoke.“Brace yourself for some bad news, Mrs. Weaver. I’m afraid Mr. Weaver was on the verge of bankruptcy.”

There was a stunned silence for a moment, then,“You have got to be shitting me.”

“I can assure you that I am not ‘shitting’ you, Mrs. Weaver. Your husband made some extremely ill-advised investments, and by the time he moved to Hampton Cove and engaged the services of this office he was in the hole for a large sum of money.”

“How much?” asked Sandy quietly.

“I’d have to check the numbers.”

“But what about the house? Don’t tell me he sold the house?”

“Mr. Weaver was mortgaged to the hilt. The house will go to the creditors, I’m afraid, as will everything else he owned. And even then it won’t be enough to pay off his debts.”

Behind Vesta, a door opened, and before she could get down from the desk, one of the Lewises, or maybe it was Clark, cried,“My dear lady, what on earth are you doing?”

“I was looking for the bathroom!” she yelled.

“Surely you didn’t expect to find it up there!”

“What?! I’m deaf! Flushed my last hearing aid down the toilet!”

“Please get down from there at once!” the man demanded, so she did as she was told.

But before he could kick her out, Scarlett appeared in the door, looking pleased as punch.“Mama! What were you thinking!” And to the lawyer, “Please excuse my mother, sir. She’s not completely there anymore.”

The lawyer, when he caught sight of Scarlett’s dazzling d?colletage, swayed for a moment, clearly in the grip of an acute attack of vertigo. By the time he’d gotten a grip, Scarlett was already leading her ‘mother’ away, loudly yelling, “You can’t go into these nice people’s offices like this, Mama! What are they going to think?!”

They passed the reception desk just as Sandy was being led out, and by the time they were out on the street, and once again following the widow of the dearly departed Mr. Weaver, Scarlett whooped,“That wassooooo amazing! What did you find out?”

“That Kirk was completely broke, and left nothing but debts to his widow, even though she thought he was leaving her a fortune.”

“Kirk Weaver was broke?”

“Bad investments.”

“Wow. Poor woman.”

“Okay, let’s do this,” said Vesta, and sped up until she was walking next to Sandy.

“Mrs. Weaver? My name is Vesta Muffin and this is my associate Scarlett Canyon. We’re private dicks investigating the death of your husband. Can we ask you a couple of questions?”

At first it looked as if Sandy was about to say no, but then she relented.

“Oh, all right,” she said, and followed Vesta and Scarlett into the same coffee shop they’d used to stake out the hotel before.

Chapter 17

The day was a little strange, I must admit. Usually when Odelia is in the throes of a murder investigation she likes to take us along wherever she goes, hoping we can talk to a pet witness or somehow snoop out some hidden clue that will help her catch the killer.

Today, though, she’d left that morning without a word, and hadn’t returned since.

So we just sat there, at home, wondering if perhaps she’d already caught the killer and didn’t need us anymore.

On the other hand, it wasn’t as if there wasn’t anything else to do. For one thing, I was keeping an eye on Odelia’s tablet to see if the illustrious Chloe had already started her stint as Hampton Cove’s pet advisor at theGazette. Dooley had asked a question, I had asked a question, and it was reasonable to assume answers were forthcoming. So I kept refreshing the front page of theGazette and hoping to see something appear there.

And then of course there was the mouse problem we were faced with. Last time the mice had selected Marge’s basement for their own, before absconding to the neighbors, but now it appeared as if they were back, and this time had picked Odelia’s basement.

“Why do mice like basements so much, Max?” asked Dooley, who’d been pondering the same question.

“I think it’s because they think they can more easily hide there from the likes of us,” I said. “Everyone knows that cats’ original role when they joined humans all those thousands of years ago was to catch the mice that ate humans’ grain supply. In exchange for shelter and food, they did humans that little favor and now, so many millennia later, they still expect us to offer them the same courtesy. Only cats have evolved, haven’t they? They’ve become civilized, and aren’t as keen to act as their humans’ killing machines.”

“I wouldn’t like to kill a mouse, Max,” Dooley intimated. “I don’t think I’d like it. Live and let live is my motto, and even mice have a right to live and breed, don’t you agree?”

“I do agree, Dooley, in principle. But when they start breeding like crazy and have hundreds of the little critters running amok, I think maybe it’s time for a strong-worded talk to the feisty little fellas.”

Suddenly the pet flap flapped and Harriet and Brutus walked in.

“So what are we going to do about the mice, you guys?” I asked, deciding that maybe Harriet had picked up a few tricks last time she went into battle with the murine colony.

“Who cares?” said Harriet. “Besides, maybe you should ask a smart cat. A wise cat. An intelligent cat. I’m neither smart nor wise nor intelligent, so why ask me?” And with these words she trudged off in the direction of the kitchen and tucked into her bowl.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked Brutus.

“No idea,” said Brutus, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“I think she doesn’t want to catch those mice either,” said Dooley. “Harriet is a peaceable cat, like us, and she hates the idea of causing those poor little creatures harm.”

“Any ideas, Brutus?” I asked. “To get rid of the mice?”

“None,” he said, darting a nervous look in the direction of the kitchen.

“So did you ask a question?” I asked, deciding to change the topic, since the original one obviously failed to grip.

“Ask what question?” asked Brutus.

“To the new pet oracle. Chloe?” I specified when he gave me a blank look.

“Oh, yeah, right. No, actually I haven’t. I don’t really have any questions at the moment.”

“I asked a very important question,” said Dooley. “And I really hope to get an answer.”

Harriet had returned and just then, to my surprise, a new column suddenly popped up on theGazette’s site.‘Chloe’s Pet to Pet,’ it read. And I hunkered down for a read.

“It’s my question!” I cried, and read aloud. “Dear Chloe. Is it safe to say that there’s a lid for every pot, or is this just a myth? Asking for a friend. Answer: Dear Brave Heart, I wish I could say there is a lid for every pot, but unfortunately for your particular pot there is none. And that’s probably because you’re ignorant, obnoxious and annoying. But don’t give up hope. Maybe one day you’ll meet a cat who’s just as ignorant, obnoxious and annoying as you are and become obnoxiously happy. Until then, don’t count on it.”

I stared at the text and frowned.“I don’t get it,” I said. “Did Chloe just call me ignorant and obnoxious and annoying for asking a question about Mia Gray?” I’d wanted to know if there was any hope for Mia, after the girl’s disastrous affair with the late Kirk.

“Did she answer my question?” asked Dooley excitedly. “Let me see.” He hovered over the tablet and yipped when he saw his question had been addressed, too.

“Dear Chloe,” he read. “A friend of mine is very hairy on account of the fact that she’s a Persian. And since so much hair causes a lot of static electricity and we all know static electricity is what makes babies, it’s strange she hasn’t been blessed with lots and lots of kittens. Why do you think that is? Answer: Dear Hopeful Heart. I’m sure it’s not your fault that you’re as dumb as a brick, but even you can’t be dumb enough to think I’d be dumb enough to answer a dumb question like that. Yours, Chloe.” Dooley looked up with consternation written all over his features. “Did Chloe just call me a dumb brick, Max?”

“Looks like she did,” said Harriet pleasantly, “and looks like she called Max obnoxious, too. Imagine that. So if you guys have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to tell me. I’ll be more than happy to deliver them to that dear, dear Chloe.”

I stared at her.“But… I don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get, Max?” she asked sweetly as she cocked her head.

“All I wanted to know is if there’s a chance for Mia Gray to ever find love again, after her fiasco with Kirk Weaver. Surely that’s not an obnoxious question?”

Harriet’s smile faltered. “Well…”

“And all I wanted to know is why you haven’t been blessed with lots and lots of babies, Harriet, because with that gorgeous fur of yours, by all rights you should. That’s not a dumb question, is it?”

“Um…” said Harriet, and swallowed. “Look, you guys, I’d love to stay and chat, but I gotta run.”

“But, Harriet!” I cried.

But Harriet was already flitting through the pet flap, en route to who knows where.

Brutus gave me a sad look.“For what it’s worth—and I know I’m not Chloe—but I think there is a lid for every pot, even your pot, Max, and most definitely for this Mia person that I don’t know. And as far as your question is concerned, Dooley, static electricity can only do so much, and so can a gorgeous coat of fur. So I’m afraid the matter of a large litter for me and Harriet can best be put to bed. It’s not gonna happen.”

And with these sad words, he, too, was off.

Dooley looked at me, I looked at Dooley, and then we both heaved deep sighs and hunkered down on the couch.

What a strange day! And I was refreshing the screen again, hoping Chloe had printed a retraction of her‘obnoxious’ and ‘dumb’ statements when a squeaky little voice sounded nearby.

“Hey, fellas!” the voice said. “Yeah, you fat cats on the couch!”

And when I looked in the direction of the voice, I saw a small furry face, attached to a small gray furry body. It was a mouse. And it was grinning widely.“I brought you guys a little present!” the tiny critter cried, and then dropped a little something on the top step of the stairs to the basement, and scurried away again.

“Was that… a mouse?” asked Dooley.

“Yeah, I guess it was,” I said.

“He left a present,” said Dooley, and we both jumped down from the couch to have a closer look, then stared down at the item the mouse had dropped.

“It’s droppings,” I finally determined.

“What, Max?” asked Dooley, as he reached out a tentative paw.

“Don’t touch that!” I warned him.

“Why? It looks like a piece of chocolate or a cookie. It’s brown and shiny and… Oh, my god it’s poop!” he said as he finally got a good whiff of the thing.

“Yeah, Dooley. That’s exactly what it is. Mouse poop.”

Our new neighbors had thrown down the gauntlet and pooped in our house.

This meant war.

Chapter 18

Gran and Scarlett sat down at the same table they’d deserted earlier, only this time they’d brought a friend in the form of Kirk’s widow. The woman didn’t look happy, which was only to be expected after the devastating news she’d just received: not her husband’s demise, presumably, but the fact that he’d died destitute.

“So we were at Allison Gray’s place yesterday when Kirk was killed,” Gran said, deciding to forge ahead without preamble, as was her habit. “And at first it looked like Mia Gray was the culprit, as she was covered in the man’s blood. Looking closer, though, it looked as if Allison herselfmight have done it, but once again we were wrong. And when my niece, who’s also working the investigation, questioned Allison, she actually thought you might have done it. So what do you have to say to that, Mrs. Weaver?”

“Yeah, what do you have to say to that?” said Scarlett, who’d clearly never heard of the concept of good cop, bad cop, and was bad copping right along with Vesta.

“I don’t know what to say, except that those charges are ludicrous. Ludicrous!” said Sandy Weaver, who seemed to have something of the drama queen in her. She was a handsome woman in her late thirties or early forties, with large almond-shaped eyes and skin the color of mocha. Her lips were unnaturally plumped, and her face suspiciously wrinkle-free, which led Vesta to surmise she needed Kirk’s money to keep her Botox treatments going, and those lip fillers didn’t pay for themselves either.

“So tell me, why were you and Kirk having a divorce?” asked Vesta.

“Yeah, why were you divorcing the guy?” Scarlett chimed in as she directed a critical look at the woman’s exposed cleavage, which was almost as stunning as her own.

“First tell me something—who are you people? And why are you investigating Kirk’s murder? Don’t you have cops in this town? Or are you two the cops?”

“Sure, you can think of us as cops,” said Vesta. “It’s much easier that way. In fact the chief of police in this town is my son, and I often help him out on his investigations.”

“Me, too,” said Scarlett. “I’m a natural-born sleuth, just like Vesta here.”

“And since the lead detective on the case is dating my granddaughter, you can see how this is pretty much a family affair.”

“Uh-huh,” said Sandy, clearly not fully convinced. “So if your son is chief of police, why isn’t he asking me these questions? Why leave it to his mother?”

It was a good question, and one for which Vesta didn’t have a ready answer.

“Alec is too busy with other stuff to bother with Kirk’s murder right now,” said Scarlett. “So he asked us to do some of the legwork. Happens all the time in small towns.”

Sandy shook her head.“It’s all a little weird to me, but I guess you’re right. I don’t know how the police operate in small towns like Hampton Cove. But you were asking me about why I decided to divorce Kirk. Well, mainly because he couldn’t keep his pecker in his pants, I guess. I kept walking in on him withhis secretaries, the kitchen maid, the housekeeper, the cook, the woman who does the cleaning and one time even with the gardener, though I think he made a mistake there and hadn’t noticed in the darkness of the garden shed that our gardener was actually a buff Mexican male named Pedro.”

“So you’re telling us that your husband was—”

“A horndog, yes. Of the very worst kind. He was addicted to sex and had to have sex at least six times a day, preferably with a different woman every time. When it first happened, on our honeymoon in Bali, and I walked in on him with the barmaid, he told me it would never happen again and I believed him, but when it kept happening, he promised me he’d go into therapy for his sex addiction and asked me to stand by his side and help him through what was obviously a very difficult time in his life. So I did, but when I discovered he’d been having sex with his therapist, his therapist’s secretary, and his therapist’s mother, I figured enough was enough and I filed for divorce. Which he refused to grant me.”

“He refused to divorce you?” asked Vesta, who’d been listening with rapt attention. She’d heard about people like Kirk Weaver but had never actually met one in the flesh.

“He claimed he still loved me and all those flings, as he called them, were meaningless in the grand scheme of our marriage, which he considered a holy bond that couldn’t be broken by man—or me. But now I understand how all this talk of great bonds only meant to hide the ugly truth.”

“Which was?” Scarlett prompted.

“That the man was flat broke! And the moment the divorce went through I’d have discovered his financial situation and so would the rest of the world.”

“And he didn’t want that to happen.”

“My husband was a well-known media personality. He didn’t want his failure as a businessman to be widely known.”

“So he denied you your divorce and yesterday morning you decided to end this marriage once and for all by stabbing him through the heart with a big knife,” said Scarlett, nodding. “Makes sense. I can see why you did it. But murder is not the way.”

“You really think I’d kill Kirk?” asked Sandy, incredulous.

“I do, and it’s fine. I can sympathize,” said Scarlett, placing a long-nailed hand on the woman’s arm. “And I’m sure that a jury will be extremely sympathetic to your plight.”

“Look, I don’t know where you got this crazy idea but I didn’t kill my husband, all right? I didn’t like the guy, and I thought he was human scum, but I didn’t kill him.”

“But you thought about it.”

Sandy hesitated. A waiter had come up and placed their orders on the table: more hot cocoa for Vesta, a cappuccino for Scarlett and chamomile tea for Sandy, presumably to calm her nerves, frayed to the utmost from her recent visit to the lawyer’s office.

The moment the waiter had withdrawn, Sandy said,“Yes, I did think about killing Kirk. Many times. In fact each time I caught him with another woman I imagined stabbing him like the filthy pig that he was. But did I act upon those revenge fantasies? No, of course I didn’t. The way I wanted to get even with the bastard was by divorcing him andtaking all of his money. Only now it turns out there wasn’t any money to be had. The man was broke! Completely broke. He even left a chest full of debts behind.”

“So where were you yesterday morning around eleven?” asked Vesta.

“Good question,” said Scarlett admiringly. “Where were you? Tell us that, if you can.”

“I was brunching at the hotel across the street. And you can ask any waiter and they’ll confirm my story. And after brunch I went shopping for new clothes. I still figured the settlement would make me a rich woman.” She scoffed. “Huh! What a fool I was!”

Chapter 19

When Sandy had left to return to her hotel, Vesta and Scarlett discussed the interview.“You did great, Vesta,” said Scarlett. “You asked all the right questions and really made her sweat.”

“Thanks,” said Vesta, touched by this unexpected compliment from one who probably hadn’t paid her a compliment since the days when Ronald Reagan was president. “I picked up a few tips and tricks from my granddaughter. Odelia is great at this kind of stuff. And of course it doesn’t hurt that my son is a cop.”

“So what do you think? Was she lying when she told us she never came near her husband?”

“Well, you heard her. She has a solid alibi. The brunch thing and the shopping. Very easy for us to check.”

“But maybe she figures we won’t. Maybe she snuck out at some point, made her way across town, snuck into Allison Gray’s house and killed Kirk and then got back.”

“It’s possible,” Vesta allowed, “but unlikely. The first thing you develop in this business is intuition. You talk to a potential suspect and you get a feel for them.”

“A feel for them,” Scarlett repeated, nodding seriously.

“And my gut tells me she didn’t do it.”

“My gut tells me the same thing. The woman hated her husband, but that doesn’t make her a killer.”

They both sat staring out the window at the hotel across the street for a moment, then heaved a simultaneous sigh.

“This stuff isn’t as easy as I thought it would be,” Scarlett intimated. “I always thought sleuthing was a cinch. You talk to a couple of people, and before you know it, bam! You’ve got your guy. But we’ve talked to several people already and so far I don’t have a clue what happened. You?”

“No, I don’t,” Vesta admitted. “But we still have a couple of suspects left, and so we just need to keep going, Scarlett. Talk to them one by one until we hit the jackpot.”

“Isn’t this kind of work… dangerous?” asked Scarlett now.

“Oh, yeah. Course it is. These people will stop at nothing, and if you get too close they might lash out and strike.”

Scarlett shivered visibly.“I don’t know how you do it, Vesta. Case after case after case. You must have nerves of steel.”

“Well, you get used to it to some extent,” said Vesta, expanding a little under this onslaught of compliments and admiration.

“I want to be you when I grow up,” said Scarlett, eyeing her partner-in-sleuthing with a sparkle in her eye.

“Oh, please.”

“No, really. The way you handled yourself just now, and yesterday with Allison and Mia. You were born to do this.”

“Baby steps, Scarlett,” said Vesta, feeling like a seasoned pro teaching her junior partner the tricks of the trade.

“Do you think I’ll get there eventually?”

“If you keep following my lead, I don’t see why not.”

“Thank you for this opportunity,” said Scarlett humbly.

“You’re welcome, honey.”

And as Scarlett basked in the glow of the warmth of the coffee shop, and Vesta basked in the glow of Scarlett’s praise, neither of them noticed how across the street Odelia and Chase had arrived at the hotel, and now walked in.

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Odelia hadn’t slept well. It wasn’t just the investigation, but also the notion that her grandmother was now saddled with her archnemesis and the worry that the two ladies would come to blows at some point. It had happened before, and broken nails and pulled hair and damaged egos had been the upshot.

“I hope he’s in,” she said as she and Chase walked up to the reception desk.

“If he isn’t we’ll wait for him,” said Chase as he drummed his fingers on the desk. “So have you asked Dan to reveal the identity of the mysterious Gabi yet?”

“Yeah, I have, but he doesn’t want to tell me. He keeps claiming it’s someone I don’t know—some unknown from the Midwest, but I think it has to be someone local.”

“Could it be Dan himself? He knows everything there is to know about Hampton Cove.”

“Could be,” Odelia admitted. “Though I doubt it. Dan has enough on his plate without having to write a daily advice column on top of everything else.”

“There must be a way to find out,” said Chase as he directed a cheeky look at her.

She laughed.“You’re not suggesting I dig through Dan’s computer, are you?”

“Just an idea,” he said lightly. “It would solve the mystery once and for all.”

She’d actually considered this. She was probably even nosy enough to go ahead and do just that, but she had too much respect for her editor to go through with the plan. Besides, if Dan felt he needed to keep the identity of his mysterious advice columnist a secret, he probably had his reasons, and she simply had to accept them.

The receptionist came walking up from the small room behind the desk and smiled politely.“Yes?”

“We’re looking for Burt Scofield,” said Chase, holding up his badge.

The receptionist’s eyes went a little wider, and he nodded. “Room 216. Shall I call him and ask to meet you in the lobby?”

“No, I think we’ll surprise him,” said Chase with a grin.

They took the elevator and Odelia glanced up at her boyfriend’s profile. He looked as handsome as ever, and she wondered why he would hold off on the wedding. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. He’d given ample proof that he cared deeply for her over the past couple of months. Maybe he was one of those men with an aversion to the institution of marriage? She knew people like that existed. They’d seen their parents’ marriages fall apart and had stopped believing in the conjugal bond.

“We have to reschedule dinner again,” she said now. “I’m up to my ears in work.”

Chase smiled.“Why is it that every time we make dinner plans something comes up?”

“Like we said last night, maybe we simply need to stop making plans and just decide on the spur of the moment. Maybe then it’ll finally happen.”

“Without making reservations?”

“Sure. There’s plenty of places where you can just walk in.”

“Okay, let’s do that,” he said. “How about tomorrow?” He slapped his brow lightly. “And here I’m planning again.”

The elevator had arrived on the second floor and they got out, then walked over to room 216. Chase knocked and then stood back. The door opened and a man appeared. He was unshaven, unkempt and was dressed in his pajamas.

“Yeah? What do you want?” he asked gruffly.

“Burt Scofield?” asked Chase.

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Detective Kingsley with the Hampton Cove Police Department,” said Chase, holding up his badge once again. “And this is Odelia Poole, civilian consultant. We’re investigating the murder of your business partner Kirk Weaver. May we have a word?”

The man stared at Chase’s badge for a moment, then at Odelia, and finally nodded and stepped aside. “Sure. Come on in.”

They stepped into the room and Odelia wasn’t surprised to find the room in as messy a state as its occupant: clothes were strewn all around, room service trays littered the coffee table, couch and chairs, and wet towels had been dropped to the floor, some of them doused in weirdly colored substances she didn’t want to know the origin of.

“Take a seat,” he said, as he shoved aside some of the trays and made room for them on the couch. “Sorry about the mess. I’ve been so busy working, and now with Kirk dying on me…”

He dragged a hand through his unruly mop of dark hair, then rubbed his face.“How did he die? The reports weren’t very specific.”

“Stabbed,” said Chase curtly.

“Stabbed where, exactly? I’m just…” he added when Chase gave him a curious look. “I just can’t believe what happened. He was my business partner for ten years, and my friend for twenty. We went to school together. High school, then college. I’ve known Kirk all my life and I just can’t believe he’s gone all of a sudden. It’s like a nightmare.”

“He was stabbed in the chest,” said Odelia. “He died instantly, or at least that’s what the coroner said.”

“He didn’t suffer?” asked Burt anxiously.

“No, it doesn’t look like he suffered. It all happened very quickly. So quickly he didn’t even know what was going on.”

“Thank God for that,” murmured Burt as he dragged up a chair and took a seat. “So what do you want to know, detectives?”

“You were Kirk’s business partner in what sense?” asked Chase. “Were you involved with the TV show?”

“Yeah, the TV show and the company,” said Burt. “Um, our company is called K-Bear, K for Kirk and B for Burt, and the bear we just added because it sounded cute. We developed the show but also sell products, run courses, consultations, Kirk wrote books, made instructional videos, we have a line of pet products, pet food and toys and such.”

“And was business booming, would you say?”

Burt hesitated, then swallowed with difficulty.“Look, I’m going to tell you the truth here, okay? But I hope you won’t go blabbing to the media.”

“We don’t blab to the media, sir,” said Chase a little stiffly, not mentioning the fact that a member of the media was currently sitting in their presence in the shape of Odelia.

“I actually work for a newspaper,” said Odelia, who didn’t see the need to hide the fact from the man. “But I promise not to mention anything you decide to tell us in confidence.”

Burt nodded.“No, things weren’t going well, to be absolutely honest. Kirk made a couple of bad investments, and he borrowed from the company to pay back some of the loans he took out, and at the moment we’re leveraged to the hilt. To the point where Kirk’s death is likely to deal us the final blow. I don’t think K-Bear will last another month.”

“What bad investments?” asked Odelia.

“He, um, invested in a company that develops automated milking robots for cows? Only there were some technical issues and the company went belly-up. He also invested in a flying cab app? Like Uber but with flying cabs? Only the technology isn’t there yet, and a couple of the cabs crashed and burned—literally. So that didn’t go anywhere either. And I think there was a company that wanted to be like the Tinder for celebrities, only they managed to get hacked and then sued. By the celebrities. There’s more, um…”

Chase held up his hand.“I think we get the picture. Kirk wasn’t a savvy investor, and he lost all of his money and then some.”

“Not just his money. I discovered, a little belatedly, that he’d also taken out loans against the company, and so he’d effectively invested my money, too.”

“How come you didn’t notice this sooner?” asked Odelia.

“Because Kirk was in charge of our finances. I’m more the idea man, you see. I develop new projects and products, and Kirk was the guy who made it all possible. I trusted him. He was my best friend.”

“And he let you down.”

“Yeah, to put it mildly,” said Burt sadly. “He kinda destroyed me.”

“Where were you yesterday morning around eleven, Mr. Scofield?” asked Odelia.

Burt frowned.“Um… I think I was right here. Yeah, I had breakfast downstairs and then I came up to try and salvage what could be salvaged by contacting our investors.”

“Can anyone confirm you were here?”

“Oh, sure. I talked to one of our main investors through Zoom. They’re in China, and very keen to expand K-Bear into the Asian market. Only not so keen after I told them Kirk had just lost all of their initial investment money. Why? You think I killed Kirk?”

“Just asking questions, Mr. Scofield,” said Chase, jotting down a couple of notes.

“So I take it you guys don’t have a suspect yet?”

“I can’t really comment on an ongoing investigation,” Chase said.

“Well, I didn’t do it, if that’s what you think. I loved the guy. I mean, was he a flawed human being? Of course he was. Flawed in more ways than one. But he was my friend, and I was sure we were going to get through this. If only he could stop flushing our future down the toilet.”

“Are you aware that your friend was having woman trouble?” asked Odelia.

“Oh, yeah,” said Burt, nodding vigorously. “It was the story of his life. Kirk was one of those people who kept falling in love. He only had to look at a woman once to know she was the one for him. And then five minutes later he’d see someone else and know for a fact that she was the one for him, too. A serial infatuator, he called himself.”

Odelia had another, less kind, term for the kind of man Kirk had apparently been, but refrained from voicing the thought.

“Have you been in contact with his wife?” asked Chase.

“Sandy. Yeah, she’s staying at the same hotel. We kinda try to ignore each other. Sandy isn’t happy with Kirk right now, and has filed for divorce, which he wouldn’t grant her, on account of the fact that he was still in love with her.”

“He had a funny way of showing it,” said Chase, “considering he was having an affair both with Allison Gray and Allison’s niece Mia.”

Burt closed his eyes.“God, what a mess.”

“He didn’t tell you about that?”

“He did, he did. He said he’d fallen in love again, and then again, and both women were amazing. I told him to watch out. Dating both the aunt and the niece was asking for trouble. And looks like trouble finally found him.”

Chapter 20

“I think we should ask Chloe,” said Dooley as we both stared at the droppings the mouse had left for our perusal.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know what to do, and neither do you, so why don’t we ask someone who knows everything there is to know about everything?”

It was a good idea, I had to admit. I had no experience dealing with mice, and neither did Dooley, and from what I’d seen of Harriet and Brutus handling—or rather, not handling—the previous mice infestation, they had no clue how to handle these rodents either, so that only left Chloe to help us deal with this emergency.

And as luck would have it, Harriet walked in at that moment, accompanied by Brutus, and when she found us gathered around the droppings, frowned and asked,“What are you guys doing over there?”

“We have another question for Chloe,” I announced.

“And this time it’s a matter of life or death,” Dooley added the somber note.

He was right, of course. Life or death of the mouse colony, for Odelia had given us strict instructions to get rid of the mice or else. I could only imagine to what measures she might resort if we didn’t manage to persuade the mice to vacate the premises voluntarily. Images of mouse traps and poison came to mind, all not very humane, in my view.

Harriet, her curiosity piqued, came tripping up to take a closer look at the object that had snagged our attention and necessitated a Chloe intervention.

She took one sniff and wrinkled up her nose in disgust.“Eww!” she said, perfectly expressing my own sentiments exactly.

“What is it, baby cakes?” asked Brutus.

“Max had a little accident,” she said. “Couldn’t you hold it in until you reached your litter box, Max? Or was it you, Dooley?”

“Me!” I cried. “I didn’t do this!”

Harriet turned a reproachful eye on Dooley. The latter wilted under the onslaught, but still managed to squeak out,“It wasn’t me, I swear!”

“If you didn’t do it, then who did?”

“The mouse!” Dooley cried. He doesn’t like it when Harriet is upset with him, and neither, I have to admit, do I, though I’ve gotten used to her volcanic temper over the years.

“Mouse? What mouse?”

“Don’t you remember, bright eyes?” said Brutus. “The mice are back.”

Harriet paled beneath her fur. Hard to spot, I know, but I still spotted it.

“They’re back?” she asked.

“Yes, looks like,” I said. “Though I don’t know if they’re the same mice from before or a fresh batch.”

“I’ll bet it’s the same ones,” said Dooley. “The one we just saw was very rude, and just left these droppings here for us to find. As if challenging us, you know.”

“Oh, it’s the same ones all right,” said Harriet. “Only Molly and Rupert would behave in such a disgraceful way. Those two have absolutely no shame.”

“Molly and Rupert?” I asked. “I didn’t know you were on a first-name basis with them.”

“If you spend enough time down there,” she said, gesturing to the basement door, “you will get to know them soon enough.”

“So you see why it’s so important you ask this question to Chloe,” said Dooley, reiterating the point he’d made earlier. “Chloe is the only one who can help us now. She needs to figure out a way to get rid of these creatures.”

“I’m not sure if Chloe…” Harriet began, then seemed to pull herself together, and continued, “Of course I’ll ask her. I just don’t know if Chloe will answer. She’s been getting a lot of questions lately, especially since last night’s cat choir, and Kingman’s call.”

“But she must answer this question,” said Dooley. “She simply must. We can’t keep on living with these droppings-dropping mice under our noses. Oh, can’t you simply ask Chloe to answer our question first, Harriet?”

“Yeah, seeing as you and Chloe are thick as thieves,” I added with a curious glance in my housemate’s direction. I won’t conceal the fact that I was still reeling from the fact that Chloe had called me obnoxious and Dooley dumb. And it struck me as odd that Chloe would have selected Harrietas her go-between. “Who is this Chloe?” I asked therefore, not for the first time. “It must be someone we know, right? Someone who knows us. Intimately. If she was able to give us such a detailed answer, with a few choice epithets thrown in for good measure, she must know us very well indeed.”

“It’s clearly not someone wholikes us,” said Dooley. “She called me a dumb brick and she called Max obnoxious and ignorant and annoying. But I don’t hold that against her,” he quickly added when Harriet frowned. “I know I’m not the smartest cat in the world.”

“You’re very smart, Dooley,” I said. “And don’t let anyone tell you different, not even Chloe, Hampton Cove’s all-knowing feline oracle.”

Harriet was looking slightly uncomfortable again, and so was Brutus. All this talk of Chloe clearly upset them, for some reason. I could only imagine Chloe was a very close friend of the couple, and they didn’t like it when we talked smack about her.

“Look, shouldn’t we be out there trying to catch a killer?” asked Harriet now with a stilted smile plastered all across her features.

“Odelia didn’t ask us to tag along this time,” I said, a little dejectedly.

“That’s because she has two extra sleuths already,” Dooley pointed out. “She has Gran and Scarlett assisting her, and also Chase and Alec, so she doesn’t need us this time.”

“Pity,” said Brutus. “I like a good murder investigation.”

“Maybe we can help her without telling her?” Harriet suggested.

“Or I have an even better idea!” suddenly Dooley cried. We all looked at him, and so he elucidated, “We simply ask Chloe. She’ll know who Kirk Weaver’s killer is!”

“Now there’s an idea,” I said, nodding. “We could always do that.”

“Nonsense,” Harriet snapped. “Chloe doesn’t deal with murder inquiries. She’s strictly there to answer yourpersonal questions, preferably those concerning your love lives. Which is also why I’m not sure she’ll know how to deal with this mice infestation.”

“Oh,” said Dooley, looking disappointed.

“Look, I’ll ask her, all right? But don’t get your hopes up.”

We all stared at the nugget of mouse poo, and suddenly I thought I heard laughter coming from the basement.

“Catch us if you can!” suddenly a voice rose up from the same direction, and the sound of scurrying feet could be heard. Hundreds of scurrying feet. I could see that Harriet’s skin was crawling, and a horrified expression had appeared in her eyes.

“I have an idea,” she suddenly said, and before we could stop her, she’d streaked off, zoomed through the pet flap, and was gone.

Dooley smiled.“She’s gone to get Chloe. Just you wait and see. She’ll be back in five minutes with Chloe, who’ll deal with these horrible mice the way they should be dealt with.”

Somehow I had a feeling he was setting himself up for a big disappointment.

Chapter 21

When Odelia and Chase returned to the lobby of the hotel, they were surprised to find Gran and Scarlett waiting there for them.

“Hey, you guys,” said Odelia, still a little astonished to see her grandmother and Scarlett together without rolling on the floor fighting. It was a nice change.

“So what did you find out?” asked Gran.

“We talked to the business partner,” Odelia explained as she took a seat on one of the upholstered settee benches that had been placed in the lobby for the guests’ enjoyment.

“And? What did he say?” Scarlett asked.

“Nothing much. Kirk was broke, and their company on the verge of bankruptcy.”

“He has a strong alibi, though,” said Chase. “Or at least he will have once I’ve checked it out.”

“We talked to the widow,” said Gran. “She has a solid alibi, too. Though we haven’t checked it out yet, have we, Scarlett?”

“No, but we can do that right now,” Scarlett suggested.

“She did give us some more information about the kind of man her husband was,” Gran continued. “Apparently there wasn’t a woman he met without attempting to go to bed with her. Over the years she found her husband having sex with everyone from the maid to the cook to the gardener and anything in between. The man was a horndog.”

“A serial infatuator, his business partner called him,” said Chase.

Gran scoffed at this.“Serial infatuator my ass. The man was a womanizer of the worst kind. And somewhere along the way, it got him killed. Only question is, who and why?”

They all sat staring at one another for a moment, then Scarlett said,“If the man slept around so much, there must be other women that we don’t know about. Maybe he also slept with the cook, the maid and the gardener at Allison Gray’s house? And one of them got mad and then got even?”

“It’s a thought,” Odelia agreed. “Only problem is, how are we going to find out about this mystery woman?”

“With good old-fashioned police work, that’s how,” said Gran decidedly. “We simply ask questions and then we ask some more questions and then, when we’re finished, we start all over again.”

“Isn’t she wonderful?” said Scarlett, much to Odelia’s surprise. “She’s such a great little detective, isn’t she? You must be so proud of your grandmother, Odelia, honey.”

“Well… I am,” said Odelia, staring at Scarlett, and Gran’s smile as it blossomed across her face like a rose. What was going on here? These two hadn’t stopped fighting since 1986, and now suddenly this?

“Let’s go and ask some of those questions, shall we?” Scarlett suggested, getting up from her perch on the settee.

“Yeah, let’s,” said Gran. “First I’d like to verify Sandy’s alibi, and then I’d like to go back to Allison’s place and ask some more questions over there.”

“Excellent idea,” said Scarlett as both women walked out of the lobby.

Odelia stared after them.“Are they… arm in arm now?” she asked, stunned.

“Yeah, looks like. It’s a damn sight better than pulling each other’s hair, let me tell you that.”

“I don’t know what’s happening anymore!” Odelia cried, raising her arms heavenward. The world was going mad. But in a good way.

“I’m going back to the office for a bit,” Chase said. “I need to give your uncle an update. And I want to get a hold of that investor guy Burt said he’d been talking to.”

“And I’ll…” Do what, exactly? “Well, I guess I’ll go to the office and… work.”

“Always a good idea,” said Chase with a smile, and kissed her lightly on the lips.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Tex Poole sat in his office, wondering where his receptionist had gone off to this time. Vesta had said something to him the previous day about a murder investigation she was involved in, and he hadn’t really paid all that much attention to her wild theories about the death of this cat whisperer guy. But she hadn’t come in for work that morning and he’d been forced to handle the phones himself again.

Now he was between patients and he sat checking theGazette website for Gabi’s column. He’d asked a question and had been wondering if and when Gabi would grace it with a response. It had been a couple of days but so far nothing. And as he scrolled through the long list of questions and answers, he suddenly saw the one he’d asked.

He sat up with a jerk, a jolt of excitement racing through him. His question had been a simple one, but he still was curious about the response.‘I’m a middle-aged man who’s been professionally active for the past twenty-five years in a job that is of the utmost importance to the community. But I’m also a husband to a wonderful wife, and lately I’ve been wondering if I haven’t neglected my marriage too much. What do you think?’

Gabi’s response, as he read it eagerly, left him a little deflated: ‘Dear Fretful Heart, your marriage is fine so stop worrying. What you should worry about is your brother-in-law and his lack of ambition. Don’t you want a mayor in the family? Chew on that!’

He sat back and thought for a moment, then read the response again. How did Gabi know he had a brother-in-law? Then again, didn’t most married people have brothers-in-law? And she had told him to stop worrying about his marriage, as it was ‘fine.’

Well, that was something at least. If Gabi said his marriage was fine, it probably was.

His phone chimed and he took it from his desk. When he saw that his wife was trying to reach him, he smiled and picked up.“Hello, gorgeous.”

“Hello, Tex,” she said flatly. “When will you be home?”

“Um, it’s been pretty quiet, so I should be home on time.”

“Great. What do you want to eat? Lamb chops or casserole?”

“Lamb chops,” he said, wondering why Marge sounded so… annoyed. “Is everything all right, honey?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?” she said. “Isn’t everything always all right?” And with these mysterious words, she disconnected, leaving him to wonder if Gabi had made a mistake in describing his marriage as ‘fine.’

Marge hadn’t sounded all that fine to him.

Chapter 22

That morning at the breakfast table, Allison wasn’t feeling like herself. She’d watched Mia come down and eat her breakfast, looking listless and sad, and it pained her to see her beloved niece going through such a terrible ordeal.

Luckily the coroner’s people had removed Kirk’s body the day before, and had told her she could have the room back. She’d immediately asked her maid Ellen to give the room a deep cleaning, and Ellen had roped in her two cousins and together they’d made the room look spick and span again. Still, it wasn’t enough to remove the stain of the murder that seemed to hang heavy on the house and its atmosphere, Allison felt.

So she was planning to go into town later that day to connect with an interior designer she knew well and give her carte blanche to completely redo the upstairs. New flooring, wallpaper, ceilings, the works. She wanted a complete remodel that would make the house feel like new again, fresh and ready to stand for another couple of decades.

“How are you feeling, honey?” she asked, a little trepidatiously, since she still felt to blame for what had happened. After all, she was the one who’d brought Kirk into their home, and she was the one who’d had an affair with the man. And even though she hadn’t known he was also conducting an affair with her beloved niece, she should have known better than to fall prey to such a deceitful and lustful man.

“I’m all right, I guess,” said Mia, listlessly picking at a bread roll, plucking out the crumb and rolling it into little balls. She looked up. “Have you heard from those detectives?”

“Yes, one of them just called me and asked if they could interview the staff.”

“But didn’t they interview them yesterday?”

“Yes, they did, but they are following a new line of inquiry, or at least that’s what she said.”

“You mean Odelia?”

“No, her grandmother Vesta. And her friend Scarlett.”

“Oh,” said Mia without enthusiasm. She seemed to have taken a liking to Odelia, possibly because she was closer to her in age than Allison, or the two older ladies.

“Listen, there’s something I need to tell you,” said Allison now. She’d thought long and hard, and had lain awake for a long time pondering the dilemma, and that morning had finally reached a decision. She couldn’t keep the truth from her niece any longer. Sooner or later she’d probablyfind out anyway, and it was better if she heard it from her.

“The thing, is, honey, you weren’t the only one Kirk was having an affair with.”

Mia frowned but didn’t look up. “I know that, Auntie Allison. Kirk had a wife.”

“No, I mean, apart from his wife. He was also having an affair with another person.” She cleared her throat. This was a lot harder than she’d imagined.

“Another woman? Who?”

She glanced at her niece, then looked away again.“Um, well, me,” she said quietly. “Only, I didn’t know he was also involved with you, honey. Otherwise I would never—”

But to her surprise Mia was smiling.“I knew that, auntie. Of course I knew that.”

“You… knew about me and Kirk?”

“Of course! We live in the same house. Kirk probably thought he could keep it a secret but I knew. I saw him sneak into your room one night. And then I discovered that he liked to sleep in my room Mondays and Thursdays, and in yours Tuesdays and Fridays. I don’t know where he spent his Wednesdays and his weekends. Not in my room and not in yours, so I think he must have had someone else whose bed he slept in those other nights.”

Allison stared at her niece.“But… you never told me.”

“Of course not, silly. I didn’t want to embarrass you. Besides, I wasn’t as infatuated with Kirk as you thought. And I knew he wasn’t as into me as he made out to be. Kirk was a man who didn’t want to be tied down by a single woman. I knew that going in.”

“Then you’re a lot wiser than I am,” said Allison ruefully. “I had no idea. Not about you, or these others.”

“Did you love him, auntie?” asked Mia earnestly.

“Not really. I liked him. He was very charming, and a lot of fun to be around. But love? No, I don’t think that ever entered into the equation.”

“Good. Then at least he didn’t get the chance to break any hearts.”

“Unless one of the other women he was involved with felt differently,” Allison pointed out.

Mia shrugged.“I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m just glad I’m not in jail right now. And it’s all thanks to Odelia, and her grandmother.”

“It’s a strange state of affairs,” Allison said. “Usually the police aren’t that eager to ignore evidence.”

“I think secretly Odelia and her grandmother are cat whisperers, too, and they talked to Jasmine, who told them I was nowhere near Kirk when it happened.”

Allison laughed at this. It was just like her niece to dream up a story like that.“I’m going into town later this afternoon. I want to redo the entire upstairs. Wanna come? It could be our joint project.”

“Oh, God, yes, please. If I have to stay in this house for a minute longer I’ll go nuts. And can I please change rooms until the remodeling is done? I couldn’t sleep last night, knowing that right next door Kirk…” She swallowed. “… was murdered.”

The doorbell chimed and Allison said,“That will be them, my latest Gabis.”

“Oh, so they’re the new Gabi?” said Mia, interested.

“Yeah, and they’re pretty good, too. And if they manage to catch Kirk’s killer, I’ll personally see to it that they both receive the Aggie this year.”

Chapter 23

So we were back at the house where only the day before a tragedy had taken place. I was actually happy to be involved in the investigation again, even if it wasn’t with our usual human partner Odelia but with Gran and Scarlett instead.

“Nice of Gran to bring us along, isn’t it, Max?” asked Dooley.

“Yeah, very nice,” I agreed.

“And maybe we can ask her about the mice,” Dooley added. “Gran must know some old remedy that will get rid of them, right?”

“Maybe,” I said, though I wasn’t too sure.

Gran had told us to seek out Jasmine again and grill her some more. She’d also told us they’d spend the rest of the day interviewing Allison’s staff, and if we could maybe listen in on staff conversations we could hopefully glean a great deal more than she and Scarlett ever could with their interviews.

It was a good plan. In unguarded moments people tend to let slip things they should probably have left unspoken.

First things first, though. It was time to talk to Jasmine again, and to be absolutely honest I wasn’t looking forward to it. Jasmine was a cat who didn’t take prisoners.

Dooley, though, seemed anxious to make the cat’s acquaintance once more. But then Dooley has a thing for femme fatales, I guess. Like Harriet, on whom he’s had a crush for ages.

So we snuck up the stairs and soon found Mia’s bedroom. Of Jasmine, though, there was no trace. So we simply followed our noses and keen senses of hearing, and discovered the prissy Persian in a room at the back of the house, sunning herself on the hardwood floor. Judging from the racks of books against the wall and the cozy comfortable chair near the window, this was the room where Allison liked to read.

“Oh, God, not you two clowns again,” said Jasmine by way of greeting.

If I was discouraged by these words of welcome I decided not to show it.“Hi, Jasmine,” I said. “How are things?”

“How are things? You have to work on your small talk, Hardy. It sucks.”

“I saw a mouse poop this morning,” said Dooley, and caused Jasmine to guffaw, a nice change of pace from her usual snarkiness.

“You did what?”

“There are mice in our basement, and one of them left droppings on the top step.”

“Why do you have mice in the house?” asked Jasmine. “You should have gotten rid of them a long time ago. Don’t you know the first thing about being a cat?”

“Um… being nice to our humans”? Dooley ventured.

“No! Killing vermin. The only reason humans took us in all those long years ago was because we’re such great mousers. You can check this house top to bottom. You will not find a single mouse. Or a rat, for that matter. I take my job very seriously, and my humans appreciate me all the more for it.”

“So… how do you catch these mice?” asked Dooley. “And what do you do with them once you catch them?”

Jasmine stared at him, incredulous.“What do I do with these mice? Are you crazy? I eat them, of course.”

Dooley made a face.“Yuck!”

“Yuck? What did you think I do with them? Coddle them and make friends with them? Cats eat mice. That’s the way it has always been and that’s exactly the way it should be. And if you have any respect for your human you should do the same.”

“But… they’re alive!” said Dooley.

“Not for long, they’re not,” said Jasmine with a cruel grin.

“Eww!” said Dooley. “But that’s so mean!”

“It’s the way it should be. No mice should tread where cats roam. Not now, not ever.”

“Well, they’re treading wide and plentiful where we live,” I said. “I think there must be hundreds down there, possibly thousands.”

“Oh, jeez. You two are so pathetic I can’t believe it.”

“Well… maybe you can drop by and help us out?” I now suggested.

“No can do, Hardy. This is your mess, not mine.”

I could see where she was coming from, but even though intellectually I knew she was right, I simply couldn’t see myself gobbling up mice with hide and hair and chugging them down. I simply couldn’t. Call me spoiled but I drew the line at eating live animals.

“Anyway, we’re not here to talk about mice,” I said. “We’re actually here to talk some more about Kirk.”

“So you still haven’t caught the guy’s killer, huh? I told you yesterday. It was Allison.”

“Allison assured our human she had nothing to do with Kirk’s death, and our human believes her,” I said.

“Then your human is an idiot,” Jasmine shot back immediately. “Everyone can see that Allison is guilty as hell. Do you know she’s already talking about redecorating the house? It’s pretty obvious she wants to get rid of the evidence.”

“What evidence? The murder weapon was right there, lodged in the man’s chest.”

“She wants the whole place remodeled. And not just repapered, either. Floors, ceilings, walls… The works. If that’s not the work of a desperate woman eager to hide her tracks, I don’t know what is.”

“She could simply want to get rid of the image of Kirk in that room,” I said. “Lots of people have the rooms where people have died a violent death redone. Some people even sell their houses for that same reason, as the memory is too much for them.”

“Well, I’m sticking to my theory that Allison killed Kirk.”

“Gran talked to Kirk’s wife,” said Dooley. “And she said Kirk was a corn dog.”

“Why did she call Kirk a corn dog?” asked Jasmine, confused.

“Well, a corn dog is a person who keeps falling in love all the time. And that was Kirk.”

Jasmine grinned at Dooley’s description. “Uh-huh. Go on.”

“So Kirk was a corn dog and his wife told Gran that she caught him with the cleaner, the maid, the gardener, the housekeeper and every other member of staff over the years. And he was having relations with every single one of them, even with the gardener.”

“I see. Sticking his corn dog where it didn’t belong, huh? Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me one bit,” said Jasmine. “Kirk wasn’t just having affairs with Allison and Mia, but also with several members of staff. And I didn’t just catch him in the kitchen, but also in the laundry room, the wine cellar, the garden shed and one time even in Allison’s office with Allison’s own secretary. The man was incorrigible.”

“And you still think Allison did it?” I asked. “Even though all of these women are perfectly valid suspects?”

“All of these women knew exactly what they were getting. Only Allison and Mia thought he was the real deal. The rest were just flings.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, I do. And now could you please get lost? I was enjoying a perfectly nice beauty sleep before you barged in here with your stupid questions and your stupid theories.”

And so we got lost.

“What do you think, Max? Could Jasmine be right about Allison and Odelia wrong?”

“I have no idea, Dooley,” I admitted. “But I have a feeling Jasmine doesn’t like Allison very much, which may be why she keeps harping on the fact that she’s Kirk’s killer.”

Dooley shivered.“Imagine eating a mouse while it’s still alive. The poor creature will be screaming all the way down your gullet, wriggling and writhing. How can Jasmine be so cruel, Max?”

“I don’t know, Dooley. I guess she considers herself a cat’s cat. And cat’s cats eat their mice whole.”

“So what does that say about us, Max?”

“It says that we’re humane cats, Dooley.”

“And is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“I like to think it’s a good thing, though I’m not sure Odelia would agree with me when those mice start raiding her cupboards and start leaving droppings on her pillow.”

Chapter 24

“What are we doing here, my turtle dove?” asked Brutus urgently.

“We’re here to find a friend, my sweet patootie,” Harriet replied.

They were in one of the numerous back alleys Hampton Cove is littered with, and she’d just sniffed at a large dumpster and struck out again. She was experiencing a strange feeling, and had since that morning. It was a feeling she hadn’t recognized at first as she didn’t think she’d ever felt it before. Oh, she’d heard about it, of course, from others, but had never actually experienced it firstpaw, so to speak.

Often referred to as‘guilt’ it was commonly associated with something called a conscience. More specifically it was the feeling that you’ve done something wrong and you regret it and wish you could turn back time and undo the damage that you’ve done.

When Max and Dooley had looked at her that morning with consternation written all over their features, she’d experienced a pang of guilt, and it had only intensified since.

She’d called Max obnoxious for wanting to heal Mia’s sundered heart, and had called Dooley dumb for his earnest wish to address her childless relationship with Brutus.

Only she hadn’t interpreted it that way, and so she’d made a mistake.

“And who is this friend we’re looking for?” asked Brutus.

“You’ll see when we find her,” she said, tapping another dumpster, hoping for a response.

She didn’t want to go so far as to apologize to Max and Dooley, even though she probably should. But then she’d have to reveal her secret identity as theGazette’s Chloe, and she didn’t want that. So instead she had decided to do Max and Dooley a favor so big they’d forget all about Chloe’s response.

And she’d thunked her paw against another dumpster when inside a snarl sounded and she smiled.

“Clarice? Is that you?” she called out.

A furry face came peeping over the dumpster’s edge, and growled, “What’s it to you?”

“It’s me, Clarice—Harriet,” she said, elated that she’d found the other cat.

“Hi, Clarice,” said Brutus, lifting his paw in greeting. He didn’t sound excited, nor could she blame him. Brutus had always been a little bit afraid of the feral cat.

“What do you want?” asked Clarice, gracefully jumping down from the dumpster and starting to lick her paw, razor-sharp claws out.

“I have a problem,” said Harriet.

“And why should that be of any concern to me?” asked Clarice, with her usual frosty manner.

“The thing is, our house is infested with mice. Again, I should probably add. And we have no idea how to get rid of them.”

“And now you want me to go in there, guns blazing, and solve that little problem for you, is that it?”

“Yeah, that’s about what it boils down to,” Harriet confirmed, happy that Clarice was so quick on the uptake.

“No can do, toots,” said Clarice, much to Harriet’s dismay. “I’ve got plenty of food right here.” Suddenly, from underneath the dumpster, the largest rat Harriet had ever seen came scurrying, nose twitching and front teeth exposed as it sniffed at a piece of moldy bread.

Brutus squealed as he saw the rat, and hid behind Harriet.

“See what I mean?” growled Clarice. Then, quick as a flash, her paw shot out, and moments later, before Harriet’s horrified gaze, the rat was in her mouth, face down, and within seconds it disappeared, whole and hairy, down her throat, only the tail still hanging out. One more gulp, and the tail, too, disappeared down the hatch.

“I can’t believe you did that!” Brutus cried, his paws on his head as he stared at Clarice, absolutely horrified.

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Clarice said as she burped. “So if you want a nice juicy rat, help yourselves. No one has ever accused Clarice of being stingy.”

Harriet gulped.“But you ate it alive!”

“Of course I ate it alive. What did you expect, that I would chop it into little pieces and fry it with onions and carrots?”

“That would be nice,” Brutus admitted. “Though it would probably need seasoning.”

“Look, if you’ve got mice, you need to put your paw down. Eat a couple of the big ones, and the rest will get the message and scatter. If you don’t, they’ll reproduce and soon you’ll be overrun with the vile creatures. Though it sounds like you already are.”

“But Clarice, I can’t,” said Harriet.

“You can’t what? Eat them? Then tell your human to buy mousetraps and get rid of them that way. I wouldn’t advocate poison. That stuff has a habit of getting into your food, too, and you’ll get a nasty tummy ache and, worst case, die a pretty painful death.”

“I don’t think Odelia wants to put out mousetraps, though.”

“Why the hell not?”

“She feels they’re not humane.”

Clarice barked a short laugh.“My God. What a joke.” She thought for a moment. “There is such a thing as a humane mousetrap. You catch the suckers and dump ‘em somewhere.”

“But won’t they find their way back?”

“Possibly,” said Clarice, who seemed to be something of an expert. “Which is why it’s best if you simply kill a couple, then the rest will skedaddle.”

Harriet nodded solemnly. She’d wanted to atone for her nasty Chloe letters to Max and Dooley by getting rid of the mice for them, but it was dawning on her that this was not going to happen. She’d have to figure out another way.

“Thanks, Clarice,” she said finally. “Thanks for all your advice. And you know you always have a home with us, and food if you want it, right?”

Clarice softened.“Yeah, I know. But I like it out here. I like the freedom, and I like the hunt, too. Not much fun hunting a bowl of kibble, if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t, but said she did. And then they were off, before Clarice gobbled down another humongous rat and caused Harriet to throw up her breakfast.

And as they walked out of the alley, Brutus said,“Looks like we’re on our own, baby cakes.”

“Yeah, looks like.”

“You feel bad about calling Max obnoxious and Dooley a dummy, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do,” she confessed. “I shouldn’t have written that, and I can’t even take it back without revealing that I’m Chloe.” She sighed. “Oh, Brutus, why does my temper always get the better of me?”

“Actually it’s what I like about you, sugar lump. Your passion.”

She smiled.“Only you could turn a negative into a positive like that, honey bear.”

“You could always issue a retraction,” he suggested.

She frowned.“What do you mean?”

“You could say that you mixed up the questions, and then you could post the real answers to Max and Dooley’s questions this time. I’ll bet they’d be over the moon.”

“Brutus, but that’s genius!”

“Oh, well,” he said modestly. “I get these brainwaves, you know.”

“Let’s go and see Odelia right now. I’ll dictate two new responses and make Max and Dooley happy again.”

“What will you tell them?”

She smiled.“Oh, I know exactly what I’ll tell them.”

Chapter 25

Odelia was hard at work in her office when Harriet came traipsing in, followed by Brutus.

“Hey, you guys,” said Odelia. “So nice to see you.”

“Odelia, I have a confession to make,” said Harriet.

“Oh?” Both cats jumped up onto her desk, and Harriet perched herself on the corner, her tail nicely draped around herself. Odelia, in spite of her long association with cats, still admired their gracefulness and poise and she did so now.

“Max and Dooley asked me a question. Well, actually they asked Chloe a question, and I feel like I let them down with my response.”

“I wondered about that,” Odelia confessed. “If I remember correctly you called Max obnoxious and Dooley dumb, right?”

“I know,” said Harriet ruefully, “and I regret it now. I misinterpreted their questions and wanted to teach them a lesson. Only I was wrong and I want to make things right again. So could you maybe put a new response on the website and add a disclaimer?”

“Something along the lines of ‘There was a mix-up and the wrong answers were posted with the wrong questions,’” said Brutus.

“Please, please, please?” asked Harriet, giving her a pleading look.

“Okay, sure,” said Odelia, and opened a new window on her computer. “So what do you want me to write this time?” And as she listened to Harriet’s response, she smiled. It sounded a lot better than the earlier one, she had to admit. When they were done, she posted the copy online and announced to a happy Harriet that her mission had been a success. “Your column is doing very well,” she added. “It’s getting even more clicks and shares than Gabi’s.”

“Are you ever going to tell us who this Gabi person is, Odelia?” asked Harriet.

“I would if I knew. But Dan is keeping her identity under wraps.”

“Too bad. I think she’s the best.”

“Uh-huh,” said Odelia, who didn’t agree. Gabi’s responses to herself and the rest of her family had all been a little one-sided, all of them revolving around the topic of Uncle Alec’s non-existent ambitions to become Hampton Cove’s next mayor. If she didn’t know any better it was almost as if her grandmother was holding Gabi’s pen, but of course that was impossible, as Dan would never give such an important job to a person as notoriously querulous and belligerent as her grandmother. Plus, Gabi worked really hard. Dozens and dozens of questions came in every day, and she dutifully answered every single one of them, with only the best ones making it to the site, the rest delivered to the person’s inbox. So whoever this Gabi was, she had a full-time job with her advice column, something which she couldn’t see Gran accomplish, on top of her work for Dad and now her sleuthing efforts, too.

Just then, the door to the outer office opened and… Gran walked in, accompanied by Scarlett. They made a beeline for Dan’s office but, when they spotted Odelia watching them, immediately halted in their tracks, then made for her office instead.

“Oops,” said Gran. “Almost walked into the wrong office there.”

“Silly us,” said Scarlett with a grin.

“So what did you find out?” asked Odelia.

Dan’s door opened and he stuck his head out. “Oh, hi, Vesta. Scarlett.” And then promptly he retracted his head and was gone again.

“Well, it was just as Sandy said: the man was a first-class womanizer,” said Gran.

“Incredible stamina,” said Scarlett with a touch of admiration in her voice. “He bedded every single woman in that house. The maids, the cook, the housekeeper, the—”

“Yeah, yeah, you get the picture,” said Vesta. “So we talked to all of them, and nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“You always told me that a true detective gets a tingle when she hits upon a valid clue, right? Well, I didn’t feel a single tingle at any point.”

“I didn’t feel a tingle either,” Scarlett said. “Not one teensy tiny tingle. Though I did have to tinkle at one point, but Vesta assured me that doesn’t count.”

“No, tinkles don’t count,” said Gran. “Only tingles.”

“So the cook, the maids, the housekeeper…”

“They all slept with the guy at some point or another, but none of them held any particular grudge against the man. They all knew what they were getting into, and they even turned it into a game. After he’d slept with one of the maids, she told the rest of the household, and so they wondered how long it would take before he got started on them.”

“It didn’t take long,” Scarlett revealed.

“No, it didn’t take long at all. So they made a list of all of the staff and then put a green checkmark next to the name when Kirk had offered them his services. It was like a game to them, and they all admitted they liked him well enough. He was handsome and charming, but not exactly the kind of guy they’d swoon over or lose their hearts to.”

“So no jealousy or other emotion powerful enough to kill the guy over,” said Odelia.

“Nothing of the kind. He had fun with them, they had fun with him, and that’s it.”

“And what about Allison?”

“What about her?”

“Well, did they think she was lying when she told me she didn’t do it?”

“No, they don’t think she’s capable of murder.”

“They like her,” said Scarlett. “They think she’s a great boss. Very nice and even-tempered and reasonable. She even paid them extra when they had to work overtime on account of the fact that Kirk came to stay.”

“And then of course Kirk paid them in kind,” said Vesta acerbically.

Scarlett laughed at this.” Vesta, you’re so funny.”

“Thanks,” said Gran with a smile. “So what do you want us to do next?”

“I don’t know,” said Odelia, thinking. She felt like the owner of a private detective agency, instructing her operatives in the field. “What did Max and Dooley find out?”

“Nothing special. Jasmine thinks that Allison is the guilty party, but that’s probably because Allison refuses to buy Jasmine gourmet food. She feels that Jasmine doesn’t always behave, and Kirk told her he should give her plain cat food until she does.”

“So that’s the story,” said Odelia with a smile. “I figured it was something like that.”

“This is so fascinating,” said Scarlett. “The way you guys can actually talk to your cats. There’s so much information there.”

“Yeah, lots and lots,” Gran agreed.

“There must be other venues we can pursue,” said Odelia, leaning back as she thought for a moment. She stared at Harriet and Brutus, who’d made themselves comfortable on her desk.

“Don’t look at me,” said Harriet. “I haven’t got a clue what to do.”

“Me neither,” Brutus chimed in.

“Well, I give up,” said Odelia, throwing up her arms. “We talked to the entire staff, Allison and Mia, the ex-wife, the business partner. I mean, who else is there?”

“Maybe we can sleep on it,” Scarlett suggested. “The best ideas usually come to me when I’m sleeping,” she added when both Gran and Odelia gave her curious glances. “And then of course there’s that other thing we still need to do, Vesta.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Gran.

“What other thing?” asked Odelia.

“Oh, nothing,” said Gran. “Just something Scarlett and I are cooking up.”

Odelia cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.“You and Scarlett? I thought you two hated each other.”

“Hate is a strong word,” said Gran.

“Yeah, much too strong,” Scarlett agreed.

And then the two ladies were off, leaving Odelia like a general without troops and without ideas.

“You should talk to Max,” Harriet now suggested. “He usually has a lot of bright ideas.”

“She’s right,” Brutus agreed. “Max is the smart one. Ask him what he thinks.”

Odelia thunked her head against her desk. What a great detective she was, if the only way she ever solved a crime was by asking her cats.

Chapter 26

Charlene Butterwick was sitting in her office working late. Even though Hampton Cove was a small town, its mayor never stinted for work. She was now looking at a proposal from a consortium of investors to turn a plot of farmland into a golf course, and wondered if she shouldn’t turn it into a housing development or park instead. Tough choice.

She got up from behind her desk and walked over to the window. She let her long blond tresses glide through her fingers and swept them away from her brow and over her shoulders, then adjusted her glasses and surveyed her domain. Across from town square, where the statue of one of the town’s previous mayors stood erect and forbidding, she could see the police station, and as usual, she couldn’t help but smile.

She could look straight into the office of Hampton Cove’s chief of police, and suddenly, on a whim, she picked up her phone and called his number. As she stood in front of the window, she saw the Chief pick up his phone from his desk and answer her.

“Chief Lip,” she said by way of greeting.

“Madam Mayor,” was his instant response, and she could almost see the smile sliding up his face.

“I just wanted to ask about the case,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “Um, the Kirk Weaver case? People have been asking about that.”

“Oh, right. Well, Chase is handling that one, along with my niece.”