“Do you really want to take Harriet out on the town?”
“Of course I do! She’s so…” He sighed forlornly. “… wonderful.”
“Oh, Dooley,” I muttered, and closed my eyes. I only woke up when something was poking me in the side. I tried to slap it away but the poking only intensified.
“Max! Max, wake up!”
“I’m a cat, Dooley. I’m always awake,” I reminded him. Though as a matter of fact I’d actually been sleeping soundly, dreaming of that nice piece of steak Dooley had stolen from me. “What is it?” I finally asked, reluctantly abandoning my dream. If I couldn’t eat steak, at least I could dream about it. As far as I know, dreams aren’t fattening. Or are they?
“I think I found something,” Dooley announced.
“If it’s not meat I don’t want to know,” I muttered, and closed my eyes again.
“It’s about Hillary.”
“I don’t care about politics, Dooley.”
When he didn’t respond, I opened my eyes again and found him staring at me. “What do you mean you don’t care about politics?”
“Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump. I just don’t care.”
“Who are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump?”
“My sentiments exactly. Now leave me be. I have to conserve my strength. I’m on a diet.”
“Poor Hillary Davies lost her daughter a couple of years ago.”
“She did, huh? That’s terrible,” I muttered, trying to go back to sleep.
“I was surfing the web, typing in the names of all the suspects in the Donna Bruce murder case and that’s what came up.”
“Terrible tragedy,” I murmured.
“Oh, and they’re doing a remake ofStar Cars, only without Zelda Yoke this time.”
“Too bad.”
“And Dexter Vald?s is writing his autobiography. It’s calledLife with a Tiny Wiener.”
“Very tempting.”
“And Ransom Montll? is setting up a new version ofA Star is Born, only this time it’s an indie production, made with local talent and featuring Ransom himself and his dog Flea in the lead.”
“That’s just great. Now if you could just let me—”
“Hey, you guys!” Odelia cried, walking in. “I’m home.”
I groaned in agony. Why was it suddenly so hard to get some sleep around here?
“Hey, Odelia,” Dooley said with a smile. “I’ve just discovered a whole new bunch of clues.”
Odelia was immediately interested, which just told me how desperate she was. Obviously her investigation was going nowhere, same way ours was. Odelia listened patiently as Dooley rattled off his list of‘clues’ while I tried to drown out the droning sound of his voice. Then, suddenly, he must have said something interesting, for Odelia uttered a startled cry and jumped up from the couch like a rocketing pheasant, grabbed her purse and was out the door in a flash. She briefly returned to shout,“You guys just solved this case!” and then she was gone again.
I stared at Dooley, who seemed ecstatic.
“We just solved the case, Max! We solved the case!”
“We did?”
“Didn’t you hear Odelia? We found Donna’s murderer!”
“So who is it?”
Dooley’s exuberance waned. “Um… I don’t know.”
I shrugged, and went right back to sleep. Humans. They’re all nuts.
Chapter 30
Odelia pressed her lips together in a grim expression. She had a pretty good idea what had happened and who was responsible for the murder of Donna Bruce, and as usual her cats had provided her with the telling clue. And as she drove over to Donna’s house, the old pickup hurtling along the road and kicking up spray, she pushed the engine to the max. It whined and rattled in protest but she didn’t care. She had to reach the house before it was too late and the bird had flown.
A snippet of conversation had drifted back into her memory. Donna’s house was going to be put up for sale, her uncle had told her. Tad had no use for it as he was moving back west with the boys after the funeral. The house was going to be emptied out, the most valuable stuff shipped to LA and the rest sold locally or simply thrown away. When she and Chase had found Zelda Yoke asleep in Donna’s bed she’d already noticed a lot of stuff was missing, which meant cleanup was well underway. And she knew exactly who was in charge.
When she arrived at the house she saw that the gate was wide open so she didn’t hesitate and drove her pickup up the driveway and parked next to the red Fiat that stood with its rear end backed up to the front door, its trunk open.
She walked up to the house, the thought of calling Chase briefly flitting through her mind. But she wasn’t entirely sure her hunch was right, and if it wasn’t she didn’t want to inconvenience Chase.
She moved into the foyer and called out,“Hello? Anybody here?”
The sound of her voice echoed hollowly in the empty space. They hadn’t lost any time, as she saw most of the furniture had already been moved out. She must have just missed the moving crew.
She headed deeper into the house, past the living room and kitchen and into the fitness area. An indoor pool displayed a perfectly tranquil surface, and she could only imagine how many laps Donna must have swum in the chlorinated water. She wouldn’t mind owning her own private pool someday, actually. Must be fun to take a swim before breakfast every day.
She took a peek inside the gym, where the equipment had been dismantled and moved out. Only a few loose weights lay around on the floor, and instruction posters for the best posture still decorated the walls. There were even a few posters of Donna in her prime, back when she’d starred inCar Rigs. The former actress posed in full star warrior costume, defiantly staring into the camera, a collection of freakishly weird space creatures collected at her feet.
And that’s when she heard a noise. It wasn’t loud. Just a footfall. She looked up in alarm.
“Hello? I just want a quick word.”
She moved toward the back of the private gym and found herself in the sauna space, the wood cabin where Donna had met her end to the right, a few wooden benches placed beneath wooden pegs to her left, several terry bathrobes still dangling from them. She noticed that the door to the sauna was ajar, and wondered if anyone was in there. She took a quick peek but saw that the space was empty. Drawing back, she suddenly heard movement behind her and when she spun around, found herself gazing into the cool blue eyes of Hillary Davies, Donna’s trusty CEO.
“Oh, hi, Hillary,” she said, quickly recovering from the shock. “I was looking for you.”
Hillary smiled. Her head was covered with a scarf and she was wearing coveralls and gloves.“I was just finishing up in here.”
“Tad asked you to handle the move?”
“Yes, he did. He didn’t want a bunch of strangers rooting through Donna’s personal stuff, so he asked me to coordinate the whole shebang. The realtor was in here just now.”
“So Tad is selling the place, huh?”
“Yeah, this place and the other one. He never was much of an East Coast guy anyway. I think he’s secretly glad he can move back to LA with the boys.”
She cleared her throat.“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Hillary.”
The woman raised her eyebrows.“Oh?” She wiped her gloved hand across her nose, leaving a dark smudge.
“You… lost a girl a couple of years ago, isn’t that right?”
Hillary nodded.“Suzy. Yeah, we lost her. And then I lost Henry, too.”
“Henry?”
“My husband. He couldn’t process Suzy’s death so he… took his own life shortly after.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.” She sniffled, wiping her nose again. “That was a tough time for me. A real tough time.”
“She… died after you tried apitherapy to alleviate the consequences of her rheumatic arthritis, right?”
She nodded, blinking now.“She was only ten, but suffering so much. I never even knew kids could get arthritis. Doctors said there wasn’t much they could do, and she was in so much pain…”