“Work first, food later,” said Max, and Odelia couldn’t have expressed it better.
“Why don’t you use my office?” said Uncle Alec. “No one will disturb you here,” he added with a knowing look at his niece.
Chase got the hint, for he filed out of the room, followed by the Chief, who closed the door behind him.
“So how do you want to do this?” asked Odelia.
“Just take a seat and I’ll be over here doing my thing,” said Lara with a bright smile. She seemed like a sweet young woman. She took a seat, one leg tucked underneath her bum, and positioned a large sketch pad on her knee, a pencil in her hand, and sat poised.
Odelia and Gran sat across from the sketch artist while Big Mac and Max sat at their feet.
“So you saw several people enter the library last night, right?” said Odelia.
“That’s right,” said Big Mac.
“Uh-huh,” said Gran.
“How many people would you say you saw?”
Big Mac thought hard.“Um, seven. Eight if you count the pizza guy.”
“Eight,” Gran announced.
“Let’s go through the list,” said Odelia.
And so they did. Big Mac shared his recollections with them, Gran passed them on as her own, and Lara quietly worked away. It took quite a while to produce composites of all the people who’d visited the library that night. The morning passed quickly, and by the time Uncle Alec waltzed in, carrying three pizza boxes and placing them on the desk, seven sketches were the end result of the long session. The pizza guy was the only one Big Mac hadn’t been able to describe, as he’d been wearing a ball cap and the cat had been watching the pizza more than the deliverer. They would check all the pizza parlors and get the name of the delivery guy. Or, better yet, check Ackerman’s phone to see what parlor he’d called.
“So?” asked Uncle Alec, planting his hands on the desk. “How did it go?”
Lara handed him the sketches and he frowned as he went through them.“Huh. Now all we gotta do is figure out who these people are.”
“Can I take a look?” asked Odelia.
Alec handed her the pictures while he placed one of the pizza boxes on the floor and watched as Big Mac dug in with relish and a fervor that elicited chuckles from everyone present. He was a great little eater. Well, maybe little wasn’t the right word to describe him.
Odelia flipped through the sketches.“Nice work,” she said. “These are amazing.”
“Thanks,” said Lara with a smile. “You gave me so much detail to work with it wasn’t hard. You’re very perceptive, Mrs. Muffin. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone with as good an eye for detail as you.”
“Yeah, well,” said Gran. “It’s a gift.”
“Under the circumstances your eyesight is simply amazing. Your son told me that there’s only one lamp at the back of the library, and it doesn’t even give a lot of light.”
Gran adjusted her glasses.“I’ve always had great eyesight. Some people say I have the eyes of a cat.”
Lara laughed at this.“If you had cat’s eyes that would explain how you pulled this off.” She rose to her feet and held out her hand. “It’s been a pleasure working with you. And you, Miss Poole. Usually people don’t remember half of what you remembered. I had fun.”
“It was so nice meeting you,” Odelia said gratefully.
Lara walked out and Gran puffed out her chest.“I like that girl. She knows her stuff. The things she said about my eyesight and my powers of observation confirmed I’ve got what it takes to be an ace detective.”
“You do realize she was unknowingly complimenting Big Mac, don’t you?” said Odelia.
“Let’s not split hairs,” said Gran.
Odelia, who’d picked up the sketches again, tapped one depicting a man with sunken eyes and a square chin. “Isn’t this Rockwell Burke? The horror writer?”
Gran squinted at the sketch.“Dang it. I forgot my reading glasses.”
So much for her amazing catlike eyesight.
“We better show these to Mom,” said Odelia. “She’s always been Chris Ackerman’s biggest fan. If these people are associated with Ackerman, she might recognize them.”
And so she did. Fifteen minutes later Marge Poole joined them, and another ten minutes later she’d identified four out of seven.
“That’s Ackerman’s wife. I think her name is Angelique. That’s Ackerman’s son Trey. That’s Rockwell Burke—weird. I thought he hadn’t shown up. Um, and that’s Malcolm Buckerfield. Like I told you before, he is—or was—Ackerman’s publisher.” She stared at the final three sketches but shook her head. “I’ve never seen these. Maybe they’re more of Ackerman’s relatives?”
“That’s Sasha Drood,” said Uncle Alec. “He’s the one who stole Ackerman’s valuables. He might be the one who killed him.”
Mom pressed her lips together in disapproval.“What a nasty, nasty man. Even if he didn’t actually kill Chris Ackerman he did something that’s almost just as bad. You don’t steal from a dead man.”
“Or a dying man,” said Odelia softly. The thought hadn’t occurred to her before, but if what Drood said was true, and he hadn’t actually killed Ackerman, he might have watched him die, and hadn’t lifted a finger to help him. She frowned and turned to her uncle. “If Drood is telling the truth, then he must have arrived just after Ackerman was killed. In which case he might have seen the killer.”
“I asked him that same question. He says he didn’t see anyone.”
“He could be lying to protect the killer.”
Uncle Alec agreed that that was a distinct possibility.
“Hey, this pizza is amazing!” Big Mac cried from his position on the floor. When Odelia looked, she saw that the pizza was gone.
“Max? Did you get to eat something?” she asked.
Max shook his head.“I figured Big Mac deserved the whole thing.”
And so he did. Two more pizzas were sitting on the desk. She picked up a slice and placed it down in front of Max.“This is for you,” she said warmly. “You brought us Big Mac. You deserve a treat just as much as he does.”
“Yes, you did great, Max,” said Marge, and Gran confirmed that Max was a real trooper. Uncle Alec merely grinned. Even though he’d heard his mother, his sister and his niece talk feline all his life, it never failed to elicit a smile from the big guy.
Chapter 20
Once Odelia had dropped Big Mac off at Mickey D’s and picked up Dooley from the house, it was time for us to conduct our first interview on the Baffling Case of the Murdered BestSelling Author of the World. As all self-respecting sleuths know, interviews are a detective’s bread and butter. It’s what we live for. Read any Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple novel and it’s wall-to-wall interviews. Some people think it gets a little boring after a while, but not me. Oh, no. I love chatting with suspects. Getting under their skin. Making them talk!
Only problem is, most suspects don’t speak cat. But I don’t mind. I talk to their pets instead, and boy, oh, boy do pets have the most fascinating stories to share. Often they know more about humans and their weird and quirky ways than the humans themselves!
And so it was that Odelia steered her decrepit old Ford in the direction of downtown Hampton Cove, me and Dooley in the back and Grandma Muffin riding shotgun. Usually it’s Chase who’s Odelia’s preferential sleuthpartner, but I guess family comes first. And since Chase wasn’t family yet, Gran had effectively managed to usurp the cop’s position.
“So before we go in there we need to establish a few ground rules,” said Odelia as the car hurtled through town, belching out fumes and rattling as if something was going to bust loose any minute now. A hubcap, maybe, or a vital piece of engine. “One. We behave professionally, which means we don’t pretend to be cops, and we always stay polite.”
“Too bad. I figured we’d do good cop, bad cop and I’d get to be the bad cop,” said Gran.
“Second, better let me ask the questions. I’ve done this before and I know how to handle myself.”