“Oh, sure,” said Johnny. “I hid it in the sole of my shoe. Only my shoes were in my luggage, and that was confiscated when we were arrested. Lucky for us the cops didn’t find the rock in my shoe.”
“I hate when that happens,” said Tex absentmindedly. He’d closed his eyes and looked as if he was napping. “A rock in my shoe,” he explained. “Very annoying.”
“So it took until last week before we got our stuff back,” said Jerry, “and frankly we were surprised that the rock was still there.”
“Couldn’t believe our luck,” Johnny said.
“So we tried to get in touch with our Columbian friend again, only he’d recently been found hanging from a bridge in Mexico.”
“Occupational hazard,” Johnny explained with a shrug.
“So we needed to find a new guy. And we’d just been asking around when doofus here went and lost the precious gem, didn’t you?”
“We went for a walk on the beach yesterday, and I decided to wear my lucky shoes. Only the sole must have come loose in that hot sand, and by the time I discovered I lost my sole—”
Tex laughed at this.“He lost his soul,” he said. “Literally, and figuratively!”
“Okay, so a little girl found the diamond, and then what?” asked Chase.
“We’ve been trying to get it back ever since,” said Johnny sadly.
“So how did you know it was in our safe?” asked Marge.
“Oh, Scarlett told me,” said Johnny, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Scarlett told you!” Gran cried.
“Sure. After the flat earth show was over—which honestly was a big disappointment, as I’d been led to believe it was a meeting of the brothers and sisters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses—I asked her out for a drink, and we got to talking—she’s a very nice lady, by the way, and very pretty.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Gran irritably. “Get to the part where she told you about the safe.”
“Well, like I said, we got to talking, and I told her how I lost that diamond, and how I didn’t know how to get it back, so she said I should talk to Marge, because she had it safely locked away in her safe, hidden behind the picture of an ugly gnome.” He directed a nervous look at the gnome.“I hadn’t expected it to be this ugly, though.”
“I’ll have you know that my gnome is a work of art, mister,” said Tex. “Precious art!”
“I’m going to have to have a long talk with Scarlett in the morning,” said Gran. “About secrets and how we don’t spill them to the first pretty face that comes along.”
“Why, thank you, Mrs. Muffin,” said Johnny, preening a little.
“I’d never call Johnny pretty, would you?” asked Harriet as she studied the big guy’s face.
“Well, he has a certain animal magnetism, I guess,” I said. “Which some women find attractive.”
“I certainly don’t think he’s pretty,” said Brutus. “But he is butch, and like Max says, a lot of ladies like butch. Isn’t that so, mama bear?”
“Absolutely, papa bear,” Harriet simpered.
“Oh, dear God,” I said under my breath.
“So what’s going to happen now?” asked Jerry, as he darted a nervous look at the cop in the room.
“By all rights I should arrest you,” said Chase, but then directed a questioning glance at his wife. “What do you think?”
“I’m not sure,” said Odelia, then looked to her mom for advice.
Marge, still sitting upright in bed, like a strict disciplinarian—though the impact of her iron front was slightly diminished by her unflattering flannel nightgown—seemed to waver. “Like Chase says, we probably should have you both arrested. Then again, you did try to retrieve a diamond you thought was yours.”
“A diamond they stole, Marge,” Gran pointed out.
“Obviously,” said Marge, as she thought for a moment. “Here’s what we’ll do. You’re not going to get the diamond, of course, because that diamond isn’t yours. But I’m not going to press charges or ask Chase to arrest you, on one condition, and one condition only.”
“Which is?” said Jerry, nervously licking his lips.
“The history of the Pink Lady is a little fuzzy, and for reasons that are entirely my own, it intrigues me and I want to find out more. And since you are uniquely placed with contacts in the criminal world, I want you to find out what exactly happened to the diamond between the time it went missing thirty years ago, and the moment it popped up in a safe-deposit box at the Capital First Bank in Hampton Cove of all places. Do you think you can do that for me?”
“Not just for you, Mom,” said Odelia. “I’m sure that the people the diamond belongs to are dying to find out how it ended up here as well.”
“You want us to play detective, is that it?” asked Jerry, rubbing his chin dubiously.
“Absolutely.”
“Of course we will, Marge,” said Johnny, earning himself a look of criticism from his friend.
“How much?” asked Jerry.
“What do you mean?” asked Marge with a frown.
“How much are you paying us to play detective?”
“Jerry Vale!” said Marge. “Isn’t it bad enough that we caught you burgling our house?”
“All right, fair enough. So how about a finder’s fee? At least we should get a finder’s fee, right?”
“No finder’s fee,” said Chase. And when Jerry started to protest, he continued, “You’re lucky Marge and Tex aren’t pressing charges.”
At the mention of his name, Tex opened his eyes again.“You know, Fido just may have a point. The Cookie Monster could be ruling the world.”
“Go back to sleep, Tex,” said Gran with a disgusted gesture of her hand. “You’re drunk.”
At the mention of the D-word, Marge and Odelia frowned, and directed a curious look at the good doctor. But Tex had closed his eyes again, and was now snoring like a practiced lumberjack.
“I guess we’ll be going then,” said Jerry, and headed to the window.
“You can take the stairs,” Marge said, her expression having softened now that she knew she’d added Jerry and Johnny to the family payroll as her own private detectives.
“Gee, thanks, Marge,” said Johnny.
Jerry directed a final, longing look at the portrait of the gnome, probably the only time anyone who wasn’t Tex had ever looked at that ugly munchkin that way, but then his shoulders slumped and he followed his friend out of the room, and soon both crooks were stomping down the stairs.
“What a night,” said Gran, voicing everyone’s opinion on what had definitely been an eventful evening.
“Next time you really have to let me arrest them, Mom,” said Chase, who had the air of frustration any cop would feel when he comes this close to collaring two criminals and then is told that he can’t.
“I know, Chase, and I’m sorry,” said Marge. “But I really want to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Pink Lady, don’t you?”
She’d directed her question at her daughter and son-in-law, and they both nodded.
“I have a feeling there’s probably a great story there,” said Odelia.
“Absolutely,” said Marge, and glanced over to the nightstand, where a very large book was lying. And when I hopped up on the bed to satisfy my own curiosity, I saw that it was titled, ‘The Sheikh’s Passion,’ written by Loretta Gray.
Next to Marge, Tex was still snoring away. The man might be Marge’s own sheikh, but he certainly wasn’t very passionate.
Which reminded me that his was another case we urgently needed to take in hand.
Humans. Even when they reach adulthood they never stop causing trouble, do they?
17
The next morning, Dooley and I decided to take a walk into town. I wanted to see how Fido’s performance had affected his standing in the community, and if perhaps it had had a positive effect on his business. It wasn’t entirely inconceivable, after all, that people would now flock to his hair salon, to find out all there was to know about a Cookie Monster named Roger, who seemed tohold the world’s fate in his hairy paws—when he wasn’t snacking on cookies, that is.