“Oh,” said Dooley, nodding, and gave Brutus a slightly offended look, which the latter totally ignored.
“That was great, you guys,” said Harriet. “But now I’m afraid Brutus and I have to get going. We need to tell Chase what we discovered, so he can find Uncle Alec.”
And so she and Brutus walked over to the front door, only to discover that it missed one very important addition: a pet flap.
So they moved over to the back door, which was a sliding glass door, just like the one Odelia has, but of course there was no pet flap there either. And when they both started whining, and then started scratching the glass to be let out, Charlene merely said, “Oh, how cute!” and went about her business without bothering to open the door.
She probably thought this was normal behavior for cats.
And so we were all locked in there with a slightly loopy Mayor—possibly for eternity!
Chapter 17
“So what do you hear?” asked Scarlett.
Vesta, who was frowning and listening intently, said, “Shush!” then listened some more. “I hear exactly nothing! Nothing!” she said finally, and took off her earphones. “Are you sure this stuff works?”
“The guy at the store said it works just fine. You plant the bugs, then you download the app, and you listen! How hard can it be?”
“Huh,” said Vesta, and picked up the brochure Scarlett had gotten when she bought the surveillance equipment. She leafed through it. “So… you put the batteries in, right?”
“Oh, sure. The guy at the store put in all the batteries.”
“So did you turn them on?” When Scarlett didn’t respond, Vesta glanced over to her friend. “You did turn on the bugs, right?”
“Um…” said Scarlett, studying a long fingernail.
“Oh, Scarlett!”
“I forgot, okay!”
“I turned on mine, and we know they work, because we got a clear signal from them before, which means we can only hear Charlene when she’s downstairs in the living room.” She gave her friend a hard look. “So no feed from the bedroom, the bathroom, or Charlene’s home office—that’s just great!”
“Look, I’m not a professional bug person, okay? If you wanted a professional bug person you should have asked your granddaughter to tag along.”
“Odelia probably doesn’t know the first thing about bugs either,” Vesta grunted.
“Who does?!”
“Okay, so this is not a problem. We simply go back in there tomorrow and turn on all of the bugs you planted.” She hadn’t mentioned this to Scarlett, but unfortunately she herself had completely forgotten to turn on the bugs she planted on the cats, too! Aargh!
“And what are you going to tell Charlene? We forgot to turn on our listening devices so just give us a minute and we’ll go and do that now?”
“No, you just lure her into the backyard with some excuse while I check on the bugs. And at least now we know we need to double-check the bugs we plant at Town Hall.”
“Fine. So when do you want to do this?”
“We better do it now. I’m getting tired of sitting in this damn car.”
They’d returned from Town Hall to sit in front of Charlene’s house for a while, hoping to get the goods on the Mayor, but the bug fiasco had thrown a spanner in the works. First they’d heard the woman loud and clear, but probably she’d retired to bed, and since Scarlett hadn’t turned on the bugs upstairs—end of broadcast! The two elderly wannabe spies had already ordered pizza, delivered to the car by a pizza delivery kid who gave them funny looks, and they’d also ordered a big meal from a Chinese food delivery guy, who’d given them even funnier looks. Their sanitary needs had been taken care of by using a local park, where they’d ducked behind some bushes to do their business.
All in all this whole spy business was a lot less glamorous than it was on TV!
And since there was nothing more to be gleaned from staking out Charlene’s house, Vesta drove them across town and parked in front of Town Hall once more. This time all was dark inside, and so the time for some action-packed shenanigans had finally arrived!
“Okay, let’s do this!” said Scarlett, and when Vesta didn’t move, she frowned. “What is it? Having second thoughts?”
“No, I’m just wondering why my son still hasn’t returned any of my calls.”
They’d even walked over to the police station before to catch him in his office but he hadn’t been behind his desk, and when they’d asked Dolores where the Chief was, the dispatcher-slash-receptionist had said she had no clue, which was pretty weird.
Almost as if Alec had simply… disappeared.
“You don’t think Charlene killed him, do you?” asked Scarlett now.
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s like one of those Praying Mantises: the ones that kill their mate once they’ve squeezed all the juice out of them.”
“Ugh. Please don’t talk about your son’s juice, Vesta. It’s gross.”
“It’s just a metaphor!”
“Even so, it’s gross.” They both sat there for a moment, then Scarlett said, “When we pay another visit to Charlene tomorrow we need to search that place top to bottom. If she did kill your son, we need to find him so we have proof.”
“I know,” said Vesta, the thought of her son having been murdered by this Praying Mantis Mayor weighing heavy on her.
“Because if we don’t have proof, she’ll simply pretend nothing happened, and we’ll never be able to pin his murder on her.”
“I know.”
“She’s a politician, and she’ll get away with it.”
“I know, okay?”
“I don’t think you do, Vesta,” said Scarlett, turning to her friend. “If she killed your son, and we find out, she’ll come for us, too!”
Vesta gulped a little. “I knew she was bad news the minute I laid eyes on her.”
“I thought you said she was the best thing that ever could have happened to Alec?”
“I never said that!”
“Fine. So let’s go already, shall we? And let’s search her office, too. She may have killed him in there and stashed his body underneath the floorboards.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Vesta, and they both got out of the car and quickly made their way over to Town hall, which was cloaked in darkness, only the front lit up by halogen lights.
They circled around to the back, and took a concrete staircase down into a recessed area that led to a metal door which gave access to a basement few people knew existed.
The metal door was locked tight, of course, but they’d anticipated this, and as Scarlett put on her protective mask, and so did Vesta, the latter took out the blowtorch Scarlett had bought earlier that day and started burning a big hole in that metal door.
So when five minutes later the night guard did his second tour of the night, and found two old ladies using a blowtorch to break into Town Hall, he immediately called for backup, then proceeded to point a very large gun at the two ladies before yelling, “Put your weapons down now! And put your hands where I can see them!”
And so it was that Scarlett Canyon and Vesta Muffin were being arrested for breaking and entering… again.
Chapter 18
I was starting to get a little worried that we might never be able to escape Charlene’s abode, but luckily I suddenly remembered that I needn’t have worried: we were, after all, in contact with Gran at all times, through the bugs hidden in our collars!
So I simply said, “Gran, if you can hear me, I think now might be a good time to come and get us. Charlene is acting a little weird, and now Harriet and Brutus are also here with us, and they’ve found a great clue as to Uncle Alec’s whereabouts.”
Look, I know I said I wasn’t going to tell Gran what had happened to her son, but necessity knows no law, and we couldn’t simply keep this vital clue to ourselves when Uncle Alec’s life was in danger and the clue could lead us to his kidnappers, could we?