Chase nodded.“Great idea, babe.”
“Hey, that’s why my uncle pays me the big bucks.”
Chase grinned.“Yeah, right.”
We all piled into the car: the humans taking up their positions in the front of the vehicle and Dooley and I hopping up onto the backseat, our regular place. Now cats may not like to ride in cars as much as dogs do, but I have to say I’d gotten used to it by now. I still didn’t enjoy the sound of that engine, or the strange sensation of traveling at a considerable rate of speed to our destination, but I had to admit there are certain benefits to riding in cars with humans: you get where you want to be very fast indeed, and you don’t even need to wear out your paw leather in doing so. Also: you can take a refreshing nap while you’re being chauffeured around. What I don’t like is the engine, though, which makes a terrible racket. If they could build a car without an engine, that would be perfect.
“So Heiko Palace,” said Odelia, reading from her notes, “and Flint Kutysiak are the main artists working for Dave. Looks like they do most of the work connected with the comic.”
“Except for the conception of the comic, which Dave still did himself,” said Chase.
“Maybe Harriet can apply for a job,” Dooley suggested. “She’s good at creating jokes.”
“I doubt whether Harriet will be able to come up with jokes as good as the ones Dave made,” said Odelia with a smile.
“What are they saying?” asked Chase.
“Dooley suggested Harriet could fill Dave’s shoes and become Tollie the Turtle’s new writer.”
“Oh, she’d love that,” said the cop with a grin.
“It’s not as easy as it looks, Dooley,” said Odelia, half turning to have this little chat with us. “And let’s not forget Dave had been doing this for half a century. Whoever will replace him as Tollie’s writer has some very big shoes to fill.”
“I’m sure he made arrangements,” said Chase. “Maybe he got a stock of comics built up for just such a contingency, and they’ll be using those now, until they find a new writer.”
“Yeah, but who’s going to run the studio now that Dave is gone?”
“I’m sure we’ll find out,” said Chase. “Though that’s not really our concern, is it, babe? All we need to do is find Dave’s killer.”
“I know,” said Odelia, putting her feet up on the dash, a very dangerous habit indeed, and one I didn’t like to see. “But it just saddens me to know that Dave still had so many plans, and now he won’t be able to carry them through.”
“Like training Jayme as his successor, you mean?”
Odelia nodded.“I wonder why he chose her. After all, he’d never even met her.”
“But he had been following her work very closely. Has to be that he saw something in her that gave him the confidence that she could take over Tollie the Turtle one day.”
“I still find it odd. Why leave his entire fortune to a girl he’s never met before?”
“Could be because of Hester,” Chase suggested.
“Because he felt guilty for leaving her? But that was fifty years ago, Chase.”
“Never underestimate the sentimentality of a man well into his seventh decade, babe. I think Dave was starting to ruminate on his life and thinking about the things he’d done and the things he hadn’t. Stuff he wished he’d done differently. And it seems as if Hester featured in his thoughts a lot. And let’s not forget that he didn’t get along with his wife and her son, and was seriously considering getting a divorce.”
“What do you think about this story that he was having an affair with the girl?”
“Nonsense,” said Chase. “Utter and complete nonsense.”
“Yeah, I’m inclined to think so, too. But we still have to investigate the connection.”
We’d arrived at a low squat building, and Chase parked in one of several parking spots, neatly lined by boxwood hedges. In front of the studio a small bronze statue had been erected of Tollie the Turtle, and next to the entrance a sign announced we were about to enter the realm of Dave James Productions.
The moment we walked in, we found ourselves in a spacious and neatly appointed vestibule which boasted plenty of large glass display cabinets, filled top to bottom with merchandise featuring Tollie the Turtle. There were mugs, pens, pencil cases, stickers, lunch boxes—you name it and it was there, all bearing the likeness of the famous turtle. A bespectacled young woman came hurrying up from the back, pressed her glasses further up her nose and said, a little breathlessly, “Yes? How can I help you?”
In response, Chase showed her his badge, and so did Odelia, and the woman blinked rapidly.
“Oh, it’s been pandemonium here. We’re all terribly shook up about what happened with Dave, and I’ve been fielding calls all morning.” Her glasses had slipped down the bridge of her nose again, and she pushed them into place once more.
“Could we perhaps speak to the person in charge of the studio?” asked Chase.
“That would be Flint,” she said. She picked up the phone and meanwhile we looked around, and I saw several people hard at work.
“Even though Dave is gone, the work goes on,” said Dooley.
“Yes, it certainly seems so,” I said, though now I noticed how several of those people looked suspiciously bleary-eyed, and boxes of tissues had been freely distributed throughout the studio, indicating that not all was well with these hard workers.
The receptionist hung up the phone and now said,“Please take a seat. Flint will be with you soon.”
Odelia, who’d been glancing into the main room, said, “I thought you’d have taken the day off.”
“Flint suggested it, but we all thought Dave would have wanted us to keep going.” The girl’s eyes were also red-rimmed, I now saw, and on her desk a big box of tissues stood. “We can’t let him down. He’d have wanted Tollie the Turtle to go on. It’s his life’s work, you see, and the best way for us to honor his memory and his legacy is to make sure that tomorrow another Tollie the Turtle will be in all the newspapers.” She stifled a sob. “Though tomorrow’s Tollie will be a special one. Flint will make sure of that. A Tollie that will say farewell to his…” She gulped. “To his wonderful…” Her voice now faltered, and she burst into sobs, grabbed her box of tissues, and ran off in the direction of the bathroom.
“Poor thing,” said Odelia. “She looks pretty devastated.”
“Understandably so,” Chase grunted. “It’s a sad day for Tollie fans.” And to show us he considered himself a part of the Tollie tribe, he adopted an appropriately mournful look.
Odelia and Chase had just taken a seat next to that glass cabinet full of Tollie paraphernalia when a tall individual dressed in ripped jeans, a pink shirt and lime-green sneakers came walking up to us. His hair was gelled to perfection and even though he was dressed like a teenager, judging from the wrinkles around his eyes I estimated him to be in his late forties.
“Detectives?” he said. “Hi, I’m Flint Kutysiak, head of the studio. I’m sorry, but is it all right if I fob you off onto one of my artists? I’m up to my neck right now—I have a Tollie comic to finish and I absolutely cannot miss this particular deadline.”
“No, that’s fine,” said Chase as we all got up to follow the artist.
He led us into a conference room.“Heiko will be with you in just a moment,” he said.
“So when can we speak with you?” asked Chase.
“Um… why don’t you drop by the house tonight? I should be home around seven—or better make that eight. I still have a long day ahead of me. Ask Maya. She’ll give you my details.” And then he was gone, a man on a mission: to keep the world of Tollie turning as it had been turning for thepast five decades.
Odelia and Chase took their seats at the big conference table, and we all admired the artwork that adorned the walls: all drawings of Tollie and Finkus and the many other characters that populated the world of the wise old turtle. A world Dave had singlehandedly created out of thin air, and was now beloved the world over.