“Yeah, that was pretty amazing,” Gran admitted. She’d had her misgivings, but clearly they’d been misguided.
“I know what you were thinking,” Opal said now.
“You do?” said Gran. “What are you, psychic?”
Opal laughed. “Oh, my dear Vesta, it was pretty obvious from the expression on your face. You thought I was inviting Miriam’s mother just to boost my ratings. That I was going to go all Jerry Springer on her and provoke a fight with the mother. But that’s not how I roll. And that’s not the kind of show I host. On the contrary. I want to bring people together, not push them apart. I don’t want family feuds, I want to mend broken bonds, heal hurting hearts, reconcile fractured families. The only reason I wanted Miriam’s mother on the show was because I’d heard they’d had a falling-out, and I had a feeling I could get them to look each other in the eye and maybe put them on the road to reconciliation. You’d be surprised how much healing can be done if only people would simply sit down and talk. And that’s exactly what happened today. No miracles. No magic. Just giving two people the opportunity to talk and see things from a different perspective.”
“You should have been a shrink, not a talk show host,” Gran grunted.
“It’s a line of work I could have pursued, and something that greatly interests me, that’s true, and my own therapist has given me a lot of inspiration and ideas for the show, something for which I should probably give her full credit.”
They’d finally arrived at Opal’s home, and as the car gently rolled to a stop, she heaved a sigh of relief.
“Finally. You won’t believe how happy I am that we got here safe and sound.” The door was opened, not by the driver this time, but by a man Odelia hadn’t seen before. He was distinguished-looking, with his silver hair and his deeply tanned face. He was dressed in a polo shirt and corduroy pants and as he took Opal’s hand to help her out of the car, she folded herself into his embrace and suddenly the formidable queen of daytime TV was crying like a baby, her shoulders shaking as she heaved big sobs. “Oh, Harlan,” she said. “They tried to kill me again!”
Harlan directed a quizzical look at Odelia over his partner’s head.
Odelia shrugged and returned Harlan’s look with a helpless grimace.
Chapter 15
We’d all been very quiet in the car, but the moment we arrived and the car door opened, we were out like a flash, and, as if by silent command, convened behind the house underneath the rhododendrons, where we knew we wouldn’t be overheard.
That’s the one disadvantage of being able to communicate with your humans: anything you say can and will be used against you if they happen to overhear your conversation, and this was one conversation we didn’t want Odelia to overhear, or Gran.
“We have to thresh this thing out once and for all,” Harriet said, opening the meeting. “All those in favor of digging a little deeper into this cloning thing, raise your paws.”
Four paws went up, even Dooley’s, even though he still hadn’t fully grasped the implications of Harriet’s theory. He asked the same question he’d asked back at Opal’s studio. “But if we’re clones of our original selves, wouldn’t we be able to remember?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Though I’d be inclined to think that we wouldn’t.”
“We need to talk to Prunella again,” said Harriet. “She’ll be able to tell us what she remembers from her previous incarnation as her original self.”
Brutus gave a snort and Harriet looked up with the sort of censorious expression on her pretty face that she manages to pull off so well. “If there’s something you wish to say please speak up now, Brutus,” she said haughtily, “or forever keep your big trap shut.”
“Have you seen Prunella? She can’t even remember who we are, much less who she used to be.”
“True,” I said. “Prunella does seem to have some serious issues with her long-term memory—or her short-term memory—or both.”
“We don’t have those kinds of issues, do we?” said Dooley.
“No, I guess we don’t,” I said.
“So… maybe that means we weren’t cloned?”
“But you heard what happened to Prunella, right?” said Harriet. “She wasn’t cloned just once, she was cloned no less than sixteen times. This Prunella is actually the sixteenth iteration of the original Prunella, so maybe that’s why she’s acting so weird all the time. She’s a clone of a clone of a clone of a clone—to the sixteenth degree.”
“Or maybe she’s just the sixteenth clone of the original Prunella,” said Brutus. “Only the lab people who did the actual cloning will know for sure.”
“That’s why it’s important we find this lab and find out if we, too, were cloned,” said Harriet, returning to her original point, the one she’d made at the studio, when we were all still stunned by her startling revelation. If we were to know for sure if we were cloned or not, we needed to go back to the source: the cloning lab.
“Why don’t we ask Odelia?” said Dooley, not for the first time. “Or Gran. Or Marge? They’ll tell us if we were cloned or not.”
“No, they won’t,” said Harriet, also not for the first time. “Do you really think they’ll tell us the truth? Of course not! If we were cloned the last thing they want is for us to find out about it. The same way a father who buys his kid a new goldfish when the old one is found floating in its aquarium one morning isn’t going to tell them about it.”
“Odelia would never lie to us,” Dooley said.
“Oh, Dooley,” said Harriet, shaking her head. “You are so naive. Of course she’s going to lie to us, and with the best intentions, too.”
“Well, you probably weren’t cloned,” Dooley told Brutus.
“And why not? Why don’t I get to be a clone, too?” He seemed worried that he’d be left out of this cloning business all of a sudden.
“But… you weren’t adopted by Odelia,” said Dooley. “You were adopted by Chase’s mother.”
“So? She could have had me cloned.”
“Let’s not get distracted by these side issues,” said Harriet. “Let’s simply assume that we’re all clones, and our original selves are in a lab someplace, kept on ice, just in case we need to be cloned again.”
Her words plunged us all into a brief moment of shocked silence. It was hard to imagine my original self stuck in a lab somewhere, on ice, dead as a dodo, while I was hopping around out here, perhaps the umpteenth iteration of my own true self. I swallowed with marked unease, and when Dooley spoke the next words, I think he spoke for all of us—voicing the welter of emotions we were all experiencing.
“I don’t like being dead in a lab somewhere, you guys. I don’t like it at all.”
“None of us like being dead in a lab, Dooley,” said Harriet, “but if this is the case we need to accept it and move on. But before we can do that, we have to know for sure.”
“And the only way to do that,” Brutus continued his mate’s train of thought, “is by talking to Prunella and finding out where this famous cloning lab is situated.”
“And then going over there to take a look for ourselves,” Harriet finished.
And as if she’d sensed our urgent need for her company, Prunella rounded the corner of the house and joined us underneath the rhododendrons—third bush from the left.
“Hey, guys,” she said by way of greeting. “What are you doing?” Then she frowned. “And who are you, exactly, and what are you doing trespassing on private property?”
“We’ve told you this many, many times before,” said Harriet. “We’re your human’s guests. Harriet, Brutus, Max and Dooley. And we’re not trespassing. We’re here with Odelia, the detective trying to find out who’s trying to kill your human.”