“Okay, Dan, so this is the first one,” said Odelia as she placed her phone on the desk of her editor, “and this is the second one. What do you think?”
Dan Goory, who looks like Methuselah, but probably isn’t nearly as old as that Biblical figure, rubbed his long white beard and made dubious noises. “It’s not bad,” he said, “but it’ll depend on the artist. Who’s making the drawings?”
“There won’t be any drawings,” said Odelia. “This is it. This is the cartoon. My grandmother has decided to turn it into a photo comic instead of a regular comic.”
“Your grandmother!” said Dan, waggling his bushy white brows. “I didn’t know your grandmother was an artist.”
“She’s getting there,” said Odelia.
“Mh,” said Dan, sounding skeptical. He studied the work of Gran and Scarlett once more. Then finally he shook his head. “I don’t think so, honey. There’s no market for it.”
“You’d be the first to publish it,” said Odelia. “So effectively you’d create the market.”
“It doesn’t work like that. I’d be the first to publish it, but I’d also be the only one.”
“But people love cats, Dan, and this stuff is pretty funny, isn’t it?”
“It’s not that funny.”
“Okay, but it’s only the beginning. I’m sure if they keep going they’ll get better at it.”
“I doubt it. Look, if people want to see cats, they just have to go online. YouTube is full of cat videos, and so is Facebook and TikTok. So why pay good money to have a cat cartoon in my paper, huh?”
Odelia shrugged.“I promised my grandma I’d give it a shot, and I did.”
“Yes, honey, you did, and it’s very noble of you to try and boost your grandma’s plans like this, but we both know the old lady is slightly non-compos, and gets the weirdest ideas all the time. Now what’s the story with Dave James and Jayme Ziccardi?”
And as Odelia discussed the case she was working on, and the article she planned to write, Dooley and I decided to retreat to her office and catch up on our sleep. Waldo McLoughlin and Heiko Palace could wait until she was done with her meeting, but our precious naptime couldn’t. Frankly I was bone-tired after having been on the receiving end of Brutus’s acting chops all night, and in this case chops could be taken literally!
Chapter 19
And I’d just fallen into a very nice sleep when the window of Odelia’s office opened and a voice hissed, “Max! Psst, Max!”
And when I opened my eyes, at first I thought I was having a nightmare, for there they were: Gran and Scarlett, with Harriet and Brutus seated on the windowsill, beckoning me over!
“Not again,” I muttered, and closed my eyes, hoping this nightmare would go away!
But the hissing continued, and when I opened my eyes once more, I realized it wasn’t a nightmare but cold, stark reality: Gran was there, and for some reason she wanted to have speech with me!
Next thing I knew she was crawling in through the window, and tiptoeing in my direction.“Do you know Odelia’s password?” she asked.
I stared at her, not comprehending.“Password for what?”
“For her computer, dummy! I want to post one of our comic strips on the Gazette website, and I just know that fool Dan won’t allow it.”
“But you can’t do that!” I protested.
“Oh, just give me the password. I know you have it.”
“I don’t know if…” I began, directing an anxious glance to the door.
“Do it for the family, Max,” said Gran. “Or don’t you want us to be rich?”
“Yeah, Max, don’t you want us to succeed?” asked Harriet.
“What are we doing here, exactly?” asked Scarlett.
“We’re hacking Odelia’s computer and posting Harriet the Cat on the website,” said Gran.
“But isn’t that illegal?” asked Scarlett with a frown.
“It’s a newspaper, Scarlett,” said Gran. “How can it be illegal to post something of common interest on a newspaper? If anything we’re providing a public service.”
It was a very iffy argument, and one I didn’t think would cut wood with Dan, or even with Odelia. But since Gran was staring at me intently, and so were Harriet and Brutus, I finally buckled under the pressure. “It’s her birthday,” I said resignedly.
Gran had to think for a moment, which I thought was ludicrous, then seemed to remember her granddaughter’s birthday, tiptoed over to the computer and typed in the password. “I’m in!” she caroled.
And then she did the kind of thing you usually only see hackers do in the movies: she attached a USB stick to Odelia’s laptop, but presumably instead of extracting a lot of vital information about the nation’s critical infrastructure, proceeded to upload one of her comic strips.
“And… posted!” she said with a look of satisfaction. “Mission accomplished!”
And then she was tiptoeing back to the window, and not a minute too soon, for I already heard Odelia coming down the corridor!
“Max, are you coming?” asked Harriet.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We’re going over to Dave James’s studio,” Brutus explained. “We’re going to present Harriet the Cat and ask them to work with us and put it in the same newspapers Tollie the Turtle is in. All two thousand five hundred of them.”
“And we need you there, Max, as a member of the Harriet the Cat lineup.”
“Oh, so now I’m a member of the lineup, am I?”
“Yes, you are, Maxie, baby,” said Brutus with a grin. “I mean, who else am I going to squash? You, too, Dooley.”
And so it was with a certain measure of reluctance that we agreed to tag along. And as we hopped down from the windowsill, Odelia entered her office, and I remembered we hadn’t told her about Waldo and Heiko’s meeting yet. But then Gran urged us to get a move on, and so a move on we grudgingly got. That’s what friendship is all about, you see: sometimes you have to make sacrifices to keep your friends happy, even if all they want to do is kick you and squash you and exploit your humiliation to become rich and famous. Then again, I had my doubts about Harriet’s chances of success, so why not humor her?
When we arrived at the Dave James studio, this time we weren’t greeted as respectfully as the day before. But then we’d been there as part of an official police delegation, of course, whereas now we were there to try and sell them something.
We were ushered into the same conference room, and moments later Flint Kutysiak joined us, looking slightly harried and very busy.
“So what’s this about?” he asked. “You have a comic strip you want us to develop?”
“Well, actually we’ve done all the work already,” said Gran. “All you need to do is help us negotiate a deal with the syndicate and get them to publish us in the same papers Tollie the Turtle is in.”
“All two thousand five hundred of them,” Scarlett clarified, lest there be confusion.
Flint stared at the two older ladies for a moment, then a smile spread across his face.“This is a joke, right?”
“No joke,” said Gran. She nodded to Scarlett, who placed a tablet in the center of the table, and showed Flint a couple of the photo comic strips they’d made.
“What’s this?” asked Tollie the Turtle’s lead artist. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s a photo comic,” said Gran. “It’s called Harriet the Cat, and it’s going to be a surefire hit with your audience.”
“But it’s pictures. Pictures of a cat kicking another cat.” Scarlett scrolled to the next comic and Flint leaned in with a frown on his face. “Is that… Chief Lip?”
“Yeah, he’s my son,” said Gran. “So we got him to play a part.”
“But… you’ve got a cat kicking him.” He pointed to the tablet. “A cat is kicking the Chief of Police.”
“Yeah, pretty funny, huh?”
“Just like the Keystone Cops,” said Scarlett.
“Scarlett is the one who writes all the scripts,” said Gran proudly.
“I’m the one who writes all the scripts,” said Scarlett proudly.