“But I thought you said Flint was here with you when it happened?”
“That was just a little white lie I told you,” said Julio, waving his hands expressively. “I signed that summons. Obviously the process server didn’t know which one of us was which, and so when I told him that I was Flint, he simply handed me that document.”
Flint, whose face had taken on a slighter pale complexion, sat stiff as a board now.
“So Flint wasn’t here Monday evening?” asked Odelia.
“No, like I said, he was out swimming, and that rotten kid stole his clothes. Now if you want more proof of the depravity of that young man’s mind, you can talk to others who have been on the receiving end of his evilness, and you’ll have all the proof you need.”
“Flint? What do you have to say to that?” asked Chase.
Flint, who’d given a striking impression of a statue, now suddenly sprang to life, and before anyone could stop him, jumped up from that couch and was bolting for the door!
“Sweetie?” said Julio. “Where are you going? Your bowels giving you trouble again?”
But Chase and Odelia weren’t born yesterday, and so they also got up and flew to the door, to try and stop the man.
Once outside, we saw that Flint had stepped into one of the two matching electric BMWs. And by the time we were in Chase’s squad car, he was already at the end of the driveway and on the street, moving off at a decent clip.
“Punch it, Chase,” said Odelia. “We can’t let him get away.”
“No worries, babe,” said Chase. “Electric cars may be the future, but right now diesel still rules.” And to show us what he meant, he punched down on the accelerator, making the engine roar like a beast. It didn’t take long for his heavy-duty pickup to overtake the lavender BMW, and when we did, the errant artist jumped from the car and was running away in the direction of who knows where—possibly Lake Mario to have another swim.
Chase immediately got out and ran after him, and it didn’t take more than thirty seconds for the burly cop to grab the scrawny artist by the neck and nip his escape attempt in the bud before it ever got going.
“Flint Kutysiak,” he said, taking out his handcuffs, “I’m arresting you for the murder of Dave James.”
“It was an accident!” the artist wailed. “I didn’t mean to kill him!”
“You have the right to remain silent.”
“He said he’d chosen a different successor, and I was dismissed! He said I’d been bragging in several interviews how I was now the lead artist of the studio, and how I drew all of the Tollie the Turtle comics and had been drawing them for the past ten years, and he didn’t like that. He saidI was getting too big for my britches and that there was only one Tollie the Turtle lead artist and that was him. That he wasn’t dead yet, and that if I thought I could muscle him out I had another thing coming. I was just a young upstart and he was done with me. Done! After fifteen years of hardwork he was kicking me out!”
“Anything you say can be used—”
“So I told him he couldn’t do that, and he said, watch me! And suddenly I got so angry. So very, very angry! It was just so unfair what he did! When he invited me to drop by the house I figured he wanted to talk Tollie. But instead he told me he found an amazingly talented girl named Jayme and she was going to be his successor. And then he fired me! So I picked up the first thing I saw, an ax he used for a Tollie gag, and took a swing at him. It hit him right on the head. I immediately regretted it, but what could I do? He was dead!”
Chase escorted him to his car now, and put him in the backseat, then drove off.
“And how are we supposed to get home?” asked Dooley as Julio came running up to us.
“What happened?” he asked. “Where is Flint?”
“I’m afraid your husband has been arrested for the murder of Dave James,” said Odelia, causing Julio to sling a hand to his mouth in utter consternation.
“No way!”
“He has confessed,” Odelia added.
“No. No!”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd when Flint came home on Monday with Tollie the Turtle?”
“He said that when he found out that Dave had been murdered, he decided that someone had to take care of that turtle since Veronica probably would turn him into turtle soup. And I may not be very fond of turtles, but we couldn’t let that happen to him.”
“So what was the plan: to have him stay with you indefinitely?”
Julio nodded.“Also, Flint has long felt that Dave had a sort of mystical connection with that turtle. On some of these islands in the South Pacific turtles are revered, you know. People ascribe special powers to the animals. So when Dave came home with Tollie and then became the world’s most popular comic artist, Flint felt that he must have derived his creative powers from Tollie. He told me that now that Dave was dead, Tollie’s powers were going to be transferred to him, and that he was going to follow in Dave’s footsteps.”
“You mean Flint considered Tollie like a talisman?”
Julio shrugged.“Something like that.” He stared at the blue BMW. “Looks like Flint forgot to plug in his car again. I’ve told him a million times you need to charge that battery every single night.”
“So that’s why we caught up with him so fast,” said Odelia with a smile.
“So what’s going to happen now?”
“Now Flint is going to be charged with Dave’s murder.”
Julio raised his eyes heavenward.“Just my rotten luck to marry an ax murderer!”
Epilogue
“So how did you figure it out, Max?” asked Harriet.
The four of us were seated on the porch swing, which luckily for us wasn’t swinging, since I tend to get seasick when it does. Our humans were all seated at the big table in the backyard while Tex manned the grill, so food was aplenty and conversation even more.
“Well, it first hit me when you kissed me,” I said.
Brutus gave me an angry look at this.“I haven’t forgiven you yet, Max. So don’t think you’re off the hook.”
“You can’t blame Max, sparky star,” said Harriet. “It was the darkness.”
“That’s no excuse,” Brutus grumbled.
“So the kiss did it?” asked Dooley, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“Yes, that Harriet could mistake me for Brutus so easily. It reminded me of last Saturday, when Bambi Wiggins delivered a letter for Chase, but allowed Odelia to sign for it. You have to remember that Flint’s alibi rested on that summons and on that process server. Chase had interviewed that server, and he had confirmed that he’d personally delivered a letter to Flint Kutysiak. Of course Flint and Julio are very similar in appearance, and so when Julio signed in Flint’s name, the server didn’t bother to check. And why would he? He arrives at Flint’s house, and finds a man there who says he’s Flint. So of course he gives him that summons. As it later turned out, a stroke of luck for Flint.”
“So why did Julio lie to the police?” asked Harriet.
“Because Flint had told him to. Flint said he’d gone swimming, and some kids had stolen his clothes, and he felt too embarrassed to admit to the police that that was what had happened, so instead he told Julio to tell the police he was home all evening.”
“And Julio didn’t think it strange that Flint arrived home with a turtle in his car?”
“Flint said he brought Tollie home to save him from being turned into turtle soup by Veronica, who admittedly has never liked the animal, and since Julio didn’t see any reason to doubt his husband, he never thought anything about it.”
“But he could have told us,” said Dooley. “He could have said something about Tollie having found a new home with them. He knew the police were looking for that turtle.”