“Who is this guy?” asked Chase.

  Eric Ross supplied him with the name of the actor and his details, and the detective dutifully jotted it all down. It felt like a long shot, but in cases like these, it’s important to be thorough, and that was certainly Chase’s intention.

  As the conversation continued, Odelia gave us a sign that I interpreted as our cue to go in search of Flame, to conduct our own interview. And even though I had no idea how we would go about finding her or getting access to her if she was locked up in the lawyer’s room, we still did as we were told. We hadn’t even crossed the lobby to the bank of elevators when Odelia hurried up to join us.

  “I told him I had to go to the bathroom,” she whispered, then pressed her finger on the elevator button, and moments later we stepped inside.

  “How are you going to get us inside the man’s room?” I asked.

  Which is when Odelia held up a key card with a triumphant look. “Don’t ask me how I did it,” she said, “but this should get us in without a problem!”

  “How did you do it?” asked Dooley without missing a beat.

  “I asked Kevin, Scarlett’s great-nephew. He temps here.”

  “In other words,” said Dooley, “it’s an inside job.”

  CHAPTER 23

  It wasn’t just the fact that Odelia wanted Max and Dooley to have another little chat with Robert’s dog, but also that she wanted to take a closer look at Eric Ross’s room. Somehow she felt that the man was just a little bit too glib and too much ‘sunshine and roses’ when it came to describing his relationship with his famous sibling, so she felt it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go through his personal belongings, hoping to find something that could be of interest.

  She might be a civilian consultant, but first and foremost she was a reporter, and since reporters can’t rely on court orders and search warrants to take a closer look at the targets of their investigations, she had decided to search the man’s room the old-fashioned way: by breaking and entering quite illegally!

  If Chase knew, he probably wouldn’t have approved, which is why she had decided not to clue him in. The term ‘plausible deniability’ sprang to mind, though she was fairly sure that she wouldn’t be caught. In and out, as quick as she could, that was the ticket.

  So she looked left and right, checked if no one saw her go in, inserted the keycard Kevin had printed into the lock, and stole into the room. For a lawyer, the man wasn’t all that neat, she saw. Shirts had been thrown on the bed, towels on the floor, and the TV still stood blaring in a corner of the room, depicting a number of talking heads screaming at each other about some matter of little importance.

  “Dooley!” she said. “You watch the door! Max! You talk to Flame!”

  And so Dooley positioned himself in front of the door, watching it intently. She had to physically pick him up and put him out in the corridor and tell him that when she said ‘Watch the door,’ she didn’t actually mean that he had to watch the door, but more that he had to watch out for the arrival of Eric Ross and warn them.

  Max, meanwhile, had located Flame, who was reposing on the floor in a shaft of sunlight slanting in through the window, and looked up when the trio arrived but didn’t bark, which proved once and for all that Papillons are lovely companions but perhaps not all that great watchdogs.

  Donning plastic gloves for the occasion, she quickly moved over to the man’s laptop, which was on a small table near the television, and as luck would have it, Eric hadn’t closed it or hit the screen lock. Sloppy, she thought as she quickly started searching through the man’s emails. At first sight, she found nothing out of the ordinary, but when she had scrolled down a couple of days, she suddenly saw a subject line that looked promising. ‘How to deal with the fallout from the Sebastian Poe affair,’ it read, and when she opened it, her eyes quickly scanning its contents, a smile curved up her face. Now this was something she could work with.

  Apparently, Robert had told his brother about what happened to Sebastian Poe and the man’s unfortunate demise at his hands and had asked the lawyer to handle the possible fallout of Poe’s disappearance. Eric had advised his brother to keep his cool and that when the police came looking for Poe, to deny that he had ever laid eyes on the man.

  ‘Denial is your strongest defense,’ he had written to his brother. ‘So deny, deny, deny.’

  To which Robert had replied, ‘You’re a real lifesaver, little brother. Thanks a million!’

  Apparently, Robert had been concerned about what he’d done to Poe and had decided to prime his legal team in case Poe’s body was found floating not far from where the Aurora had been the night of the man’s disappearance.

  So Eric had known all about what happened to Poe and had decided to ride out the storm and use consistent denial as their strategy.

  She scrolled through the emails some more, but nothing else struck her as important or relevant. And as she straightened again, wondering what else she should be looking for, suddenly there was a tap at the window, and she jumped about a foot in the air. As she placed a hand on her beating heart, she saw to her surprise that her grandmother’s face had suddenly materialized in the balcony window!

  She opened the balcony door and hissed, “Gran, what are you doing here?”

  “I climbed over from the next balcony,” Gran explained, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And Odelia could see that Scarlett was just about to do the same thing.

  “You shouldn’t be here!” she said.

  “Nor should you,” said Gran matter-of-factly and stepped into the room, intently looking left and right for a sign of whatever she had come there to do.

  Scarlett had now joined them, and also Harriet and Brutus, so the neighborhood watch was complete. “Vesta figured that Robert’s brother might make a good suspect,” she explained. “So we’re going to expose the man and bring him to justice for what he’s done.”

  “But why? Why would Eric kill his own brother?” Odelia asked.

  Scarlett shrugged. “Beats me. You’d have to ask Vesta. She’s the brains in this outfit of ours.”

  Odelia turned her eyes heavenward. “If Gran is the brains of the watch, God help us all.”

  “Hey, I heard that!” Gran called out. “And I’ll have you know that I’ve got good reason to believe that the brother did it.”

  “What reason would that be?” asked Odelia, folding her arms across her chest and tapping her foot impatiently. If Eric suddenly decided to go up to his room to pick up his laptop, they were all done for and liable to be arrested for trespassing.

  “Look, it’s simple,” said Gran. “When someone is murdered, it’s always the spouse that did it, right?”

  “Or the butler,” Scarlett pointed out helpfully.

  “Or the butler,” Gran allowed. “But in this case, Robert didn’t have a wife, so we now move to the next closest relative, which is his siblings, and since he only had the one brother, he must have killed him.”

  “But why? Why would Eric kill his own brother?” Odelia asked again.

  “Sibling rivalry,” said Gran. “He was jealous of Robert’s success and finally couldn’t stand it anymore, so he whacked him.” She shook her head. “It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for. Now, where is that cyanide?”

  She was rifling through the man’s suitcase in search of this elusive vial of cyanide.

  “You won’t find it,” Odelia told her grandmother. “No killer worth his salt would keep such incriminating evidence lying around.”

  “Got it!” Gran suddenly yelled and held up a small bottle with a clear liquid inside. “See? I told you the guy was guilty. And now we’ve got the evidence to prove it!”

  “Let me see that,” said Odelia and took the bottle from her gran, who had been handling it without gloves, of course, adding her own fingerprints to whatever prints were already on the vial. When she studied it a little closer, she saw it was insulin.

  “And look here!” said Gran, holding up a syringe. “This is the murder weapon right here! Busted, buddy, and all hail to the watch!”

  “All hail to the watch,” Scarlett murmured.

  “This is insulin!” said Odelia, who couldn’t believe her quiet and discreet operation had been turned into some kind of vaudeville all of a sudden. “Eric is probably a diabetic. And that’s the syringe he uses to inject himself with.”

  “Insulin?” asked Gran. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Now I suggest you both leave the same way you came, but first we put everything back the way we found it, before Eric finds out we’ve been searching his room without a search warrant.”

  “I could have sworn...” Gran murmured as she checked the vial again. She frowned. “Are you sure he killed him with cyanide? You can kill a person with an overdose of insulin, you know.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she said. “Now please get out, Gran, before we’re all caught!”

  “We won’t get caught,” said Scarlett. “I asked Kevin to keep a lookout downstairs. The moment Eric heads to the elevator, he’ll send me a message.” She held up her phone. “The watch is always prepared!”

  “Okay, so maybe you’re right,” said Gran finally, “and this isn’t cyanide. So that means we need to dig deeper.” And to show them she wasn’t kidding, she began digging through the man’s personal belongings with even more vigor than before! Odelia watched it with a rising sense of panic. If Eric found his room ransacked, he’d call the police—in other words, Chase. And he would have to investigate, possibly discovering that his own wife had been there, as well as Gran and Scarlett!

  “Will you please leave that alone!” she said. “And get out of here!”

  “We’re not leaving until we’ve hit on conclusive evidence that this man killed his own brother,” Gran said adamantly. “Now what else is there?” She had swiveled around and now spotted the laptop. “A-hah!” she cried and made a beeline for the device. Quickly scanning its contents, she said, “The guy is clearly a pervert. He’s got funny pictures on here!”

  “What funny pictures?” asked Odelia, against her better judgment joining her grandmother. There were pictures of two young girls playing on a beach, dressed in bathing suits. “Probably his daughters,” she said.

  “A likely story! As I see it, Robert found out that his brother was into funny business, and so he threatened to go to the cops, which is when Eric decided to get rid of his brother.”

  “They’re his daughters!”

  “I’m confiscating this here laptop as evidence,” Gran said. “Bag it, Scarlett.”

  “Huh?” said Scarlett.

  “Bag and tag, honey!”

  “What?”

  Just then, the door of the room opened, and Eric burst in. When he saw Odelia and her grandmother standing over his laptop, he yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  But Gran had her response ready. Stepping to the fore, she said, “Eric Ross, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the possession of lewd images of a, um, well, of a lewd nature.”

  Lucky for them, Chase now walked in, so Odelia decided to show him the emails Eric had exchanged with his brother about the Poe affair. And since Eric was on the verge of assailing Gran, he decided to ask the man to join him at the police station for further questioning.

  “You shouldn’t have been in my room,” the lawyer protested. “This is a sting operation, and my lawyers will have a field day with you bunch of clowns. By the time we’re through with you, you’ll all be out of a job—that is a promise!”

  Chase led the man away, but Odelia knew that maybe the lawyer had a point. Anything seized during an illegal search of his room was most likely inaccessible in court.

  “Well done, honey,” said Gran, blithely ignorant of the havoc she had caused and the potential legal nightmare they were facing when Eric Ross unleashed his team of barracuda lawyers on them. “We’ve arrested a predator and a murderer, so we should celebrate!”

  “Why didn’t Kevin warn us the guy was coming?” asked Scarlett and took out her phone to call her great-nephew. “He was probably flirting with a guest again. Oh, that boy…”

  “And why didn’t Dooley warn us?” asked Odelia. But when she went in search of her cat, she saw that Dooley was still positioned in front of the door.

  “Mr. Ross arrived, Odelia,” he said happily. “But then he left again.”

  She closed her eyes. Maybe next time her instructions should be even more specific. Or maybe she should put Max in charge of watching the door, and Dooley in charge of interviewing the damn dog!

  CHAPTER 24

  While Odelia and Gran were conducting their investigation, I had a quiet chat with Flame. The dog didn’t seem surprised to see us. “I figured you’d want to have another talk with me, Max,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about what happened the last couple of days before Robert died and have been trying to puzzle together what I think must have gone down.”

  “And what do you think happened?” I asked.

  The doggie had straightened a little and gave me a look of concern. “I’m starting to think that maybe there was some kind of conspiracy to get rid of my human, Max. I mean, why did all the crew members leave the ship at the exact time the killer arrived? And why did they decide to remove me from the scene? The only thing I can think of is that the crew must have conspired with the killer. Or maybe one of them was the actual killer.”

  “It’s certainly possible,” I agreed. “Though why do you think they would have wanted to murder their employer?” I had my own suspicions, but I wanted to hear it from Flame.

  “Well, there’s Suzanne Palmer, of course. I guess by now she must have told you all about what happened between her and Robert?”

  “She did,” I said. “Robert harassed her to such an extent she saw no other recourse than to hit him over the head with his Golden Globe, resulting in ten stitches to his forehead and a nasty scar.”

  “He was actually secretly proud of his scar, you know,” said Flame with a sad smile. “I caught him posing in front of the mirror and studying that scar, then quoting lines from gangster movies. I think he thought he looked pretty tough now with that scar and might go from playing the hero to being the bad guy for a change.”

  “So do you think Suzanne decided to get rid of Robert once and for all?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. There’s something I need to tell you, Max. It had slipped my mind, but a couple of days before Robert died, he got a call from his agent, who told him that the production company and the studio had decided to terminate his contract for the James Fox movies. Apparently, his behavior was cause for concern, and they had decided they were going with a different actor going forward.”

  “So Robert was being fired?”

  “That’s right. According to the agent, Robert had caused them so much embarrassment with his outrageous behavior that they saw grounds for his dismissal. Robert said he was going to fight them on it, but the agent said there wasn’t a lot he could do since it clearly stated in his contract that he had a morality clause to prevent exactly this type of behavior that might cause embarrassment to the studio or the James Fox brand. And his behavior, as ascertained by several anonymous witness accounts, was clearly in violation of this clause.”

  “So one of the crew members had talked to the production company or the studio, and they had decided to sever all ties with Robert based on his or her testimony.”

  Flame nodded. “Robert was very upset about it, as you can imagine, since his entire career revolved around being the actor that played James Fox. And he swore to get back at the production company, the crew member who had blabbed, and even his agent. He said he had collected a lot of dirt on them over the years and he wouldn’t hesitate to give it all to the first reporter who asked.”

  “What dirt would this be?” I asked.

  “I think he was bluffing,” said Flame. “And the agent seemed to feel the same way, for he said Robert should cool his jets and simply ride out the storm. And maybe also clean up his act and apologize to the crew and to the producers. Then maybe he still stood a chance to reverse the decision. He even got him hired for a side project about Napoleon Bonaparte’s relationship with Josephine. But if he started hurling threats around, his career just might be over. But then Robert wasn’t thinking straight. All those pills he had been taking, and the copious amounts of alcohol he consumed, and the rest of it, had affected his mental capacities and also his judgment.” She smiled. “But at least he still cared about me. That never changed.”

  “And you cared about him.”

  “Of course I did. Deep down he was a good man. He had simply lost his way. But with a little bit of encouragement, I’m convinced he would have found it again. If only he had met the right woman. She could have straightened him out. And I think he knew this. Which is probably why he decided to return to Hampton Cove. To somehow rediscover the old Robert. The person he used to be before his success had gone to his head and made him go a little crazy.”

  “Who was the crew member who blabbed about Robert to his producers, you think?”

  “Oh, he knew exactly who it was. Marcus O’Reilly.”

  “Marcus! But I thought he was Robert’s biggest supporter.”

  “He was. Until he discovered that Robert had been stringing him along. He had promised Marcus a part in his next James Fox movie, so Marcus went ahead and contacted Robert’s agent, figuring the thing was in the bag. But when the agent called Robert and asked him about it, he said he’d just said that to keep Marcus happy and that he never intended to give him any part in any movie. So when the agent turned Marcus down, there was a big screaming row between Robert and Marcus, who said Robert had betrayed him. Robert told him to go to hell, and Marcus said he would, and he would take Robert along with him.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Marcus did not tell us that.”

  “I’ll bet he didn’t. Though to be honest, I don’t think the guy has it in him to murder people, Max. And besides, poisoning a person is a woman’s crime, right?”