“I honestly don’t even remember you wrote me,” said Odelia. “And besides, I’m not that kind of reporter, Ellie. I don’t write stories about Carl Strauss’s alleged offspring.”
“Well, you should have, then maybe Carl wouldn’t be in the hospital right now. He’s still in the hospital, isn’t he? This whole charade—your little show…” She gestured to Chase and to the contingent of cops. “This was clearly just a ruse to get me here—to trap me.”
“Carl is dead,” said Chase. “He died this morning.”
Ellie gulped.“He died? My dad died?”
“Yes, he did. And so you’re now being arrested for murder, Ellie.”
A smile suddenly creased her face.“So I get what I want after all. My mom is going to inherit.” She took a piece of paper out of her pocket. “When I was with Carl that night, I yanked a hair from his rotten head, and had it sent to a lab to check my DNA against his. Guess what? It came back positive. So it’s official. I’mCarl Strauss’s daughter. Yay me.”
“Oh, honey, why did you do it?” said Odelia. “You’re so talented. You could have done anything.”
“Don’t give me your crocodile tears,” said Ellie harshly. “If only you’d written to me, none of this would have happened.” She pointed an accusing finger at the reporter. “You did this. You killed Carl. Not me. I was just the hand that held the murder weapon. But you took a swing at the guy when you decided I wasn’t good enough to talk to.”
“It wasn’t like that. I get hundreds of emails. I can’t possibly reply to all of them.”
“So it was you who broke into Odelia’s office, was it?” asked Chase.
“Yep, that was me. I decided I better get rid of that email before you remembered—fat chance, I know, as you had no idea who I was when we met at my school. And then when I was in there I deleted an article on the Hampton Heisters to cover my tracks. I knew you’d think the Heisters were behind that breakin, and you wouldn’t look further.”
“I’m sorry,” said Odelia. “I’m sorry for not answering your email. But killing your dad isn’t the way, Ellie.”
Ellie shrugged.“It felt good. Taking a good big whack at that bastard’s head? It felt really good. Especially after I’d just told him I wasn’t Zoe, his hot date for the night, but his own flesh and blood. Do you know he actually wanted to give me money? He was reaching for his wallet to give me fifty bucks for my trouble when I hit him, the idiot.”
“Ellie Pack,” said Chase, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Carl—”
“Ellie Strauss,” Ellie interrupted him. She raised her chin. “My name is Ellie Strauss.”
Epilogue
The scene was familiar by now: the weekly Saturday Poole family barbecue. Only the setting was a little different: Odelia and Chase’s backyard instead of Marge and Tex’s, since their own backyard was still a minor construction site. Tex was at the grill, though, whipping us all up some delicious goodies. But what made it really special was that the guests of honor were… Brutus and Harriet.
It had taken some convincing to get them both there, but now that they were, suddenly Odelia got down on one knee, as if proposing marriage, and said,“Brutus, I owe you an apology. In fact I think we all owe you an apology, sweetie.”
“You do?” said the big cat, looking a little startled by this sudden attention.
“Yes, we do. We’ve dragged you from one adventure to another, and we never even asked you if you wanted to be part of it. You were subjected to all kinds of less-than-pleasant circumstances and were forced to submit yourself to plenty of dangerous activities that would have made any cat raise the alarm a long time before you did.”
“It has been a very eventful time for me,” said the butch black cat, glancing around.
“And so we would like to offer you a formal apology, and we hope you will accept it in the spirit offered: heartfelt. And we’d also like to ask you to please come home.”
“Yes, dear Brutus,” Marge chimed in. “Please come home again.”
“It’s not been the same without you,” Gran added.
“You’re… serious?” asked Brutus, gawking a little.
“Absolutely,” said Odelia. “And if you do decide to come home, I can promise you that from now on you don’t have to take part in any activity you don’t like. You can sit out every single investigation I ever get involved with in the future.”
“Or my neighborhood watch activities,” Gran added.
“You can simply stay here and have the kind of peaceful and wonderful life that you deserve, my sweet Brutus.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, a little goggle-eyed.
“So what do you say, Brutus?” asked Gran. “Will you give this family another chance?”
“Yeah, please give us another chance, sweetheart,” said Marge.
“And don’t become a dog,” Dooley added. “Dogs aren’t as much fun as cats.”
Brutus grinned at this.“I was never going to be a dog, you guys. I was just kidding about that. I mean, seriously? Me? A dog?”
“You had me fooled, Brutus,” I said. “You really did.”
“Hey, thanks, Max. Coming from you, that’s quite a compliment.”
“So what do you say?” asked Odelia.
“Who wants a sausage!” Tex yelled. “Nice and juicy sausage anyone?”
Uncle Alec held up his hand in a tentative gesture, and promptly a sausage was coming his way. It landed on his head with a dull splat, and sizzled for a moment on his bald pate before landing on his empty plate.
“Oops,” said his brother-in-law. “I really thought I nailed it this time.”
“You did,” the Chief said acerbically as he gently touched the sore spot.
“Okay, I’ll come back,” said Brutus. “How about you, tootsie roll? Do you want to come home with me?”
Harriet rolled her eyes.“I thought you’d never ask! I like Rufus, I really do, but have you noticed that dogs… smell? No, really, they do. And then there’s the fleas, of course.”
“What fleas?” asked Marge. “Rufus doesn’t have fleas.”
Harriet cast a suspicious look in my direction.“He doesn’t?”
“Of course not. Marcie and Ted take pride in the fact that Rufus is the best-groomed dog on the block.”
“Is that so?” said Harriet, and narrowed her eyes at me.
I pretended not to notice, and instead gratefully accepted the piece of sausage Odelia placed in front of me.
“So tell us, Max,” said Odelia. “How did you figure out that Ellie was the culprit?”
“Well, I suddenly remembered that a girl wrote to you last year, announcing she was Carl Strauss’s illegitimate daughter, and suggesting an interview. You even told me the Gazette wasn’t Hampton Cove’s National Enquirer and how you decided not to respond.”
“You remembered that, huh?” she said, looking a little shamefaced.
“I did—only I’d forgotten the correspondent’s name, of course, but then when you mentioned that all of your emails from last year had been deleted, the story suddenly popped into my head again. And so I just wondered: what are the chances?”
“Lucky for me I keep a duplicate mailbox on my laptop,” said Odelia. “And lo and behold: Ellie’s email was right there, in the contingent she’d tried to delete.”
“And so when you told us that Carl had died, I asked you to hold off on announcing his death. At least long enough until we could set a trap for Ellie—which she neatly walked into when you sent an invitation to ‘Zoe’ knowing only the killer would react.”
“Such a shame,” said Dooley. “She seemed like such a nice girl.”
“I think the fire she set at her school should have told us something about what kind of person she is. She has a vengeful streak that in this particular case turned homicidal.”
“I still can’t believe she tried to frame me,” said Odelia.
“So Charlene,” said Gran, dragging up a chair and moving closer to our Mayor. “About that building permit.”