“I have no idea, Dooley,” I admitted. Gran and Scarlett had apparently set up some kind of stand in Town Square, and judging from the long line of cats, she seemed to be selling them something or other.

  “Let’s go and take a closer look,” I suggested.

  We arrived just in time to see Shanille join Gran and Scarlett, and hop onto a table placed there for some unknown purpose.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Oh, your gran is such a lifesaver!” Shanille exclaimed. “After Father Reilly practically kidnapped me last night I realized I needed to do something, so when I heard about this new initiative, I was among the first ones to sign up.” She then directed a hopeful look at Gran, and said, an emotional tremor in her voice, “Free me from this bond, Mrs. Muffin.”

  “I will, Shanille,” said Gran warmly, and proceeded to cut the collar that had been placed around our friend’s neck, and with a flourish exclaim, “Free again, sweetie!”

  “Oh, thank you, Vesta. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!”

  “I’ll send the bill to Father Reilly,” Gran said as she dumped the discarded collar in a plastic container where at least a dozen others already resided.

  “Please do,” said Shanille happily as she pranced off. “Never again!” she told me as she walked out. “Say no to trackers and yes to freedom!”

  “Gran, are you sure this is such a good idea?” I said.

  “Of course it’s a good idea! Didn’t you see how happy Shanille is? We’re doing your friends a favor, you guys. And they couldn’t be happier.”

  “And how much are you charging for this favor?”

  “A hundred bucks. Peanuts when compared to the joy we’re bringing into these precious creatures’ lives.”

  “A hundred bucks!”

  “I wanted to ask two hundred, but Scarlett shut me down.”

  “Of course I did. I think even a hundred is too much, but what do I know,” Scarlett grumbled.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “First you sold the entire cat community of Hampton Cove collars with tracking devices, and now you’re getting rid of them?”

  “It’s called business, Max, now shut up and get lost. Can’t you see you’re holding up the line? Next!” she bellowed.

  Just then, Uncle Alec suddenly came waddling up, pulling up his pants as he did. He frowned when he saw the collective of cats lining up, and his mom and her friend in their stand. “What’s going on here?” he asked, as if it wasn’t perfectly obvious.

  “We’re providing an essential service to the cats of Hampton Cove,” said Gran.

  “Yeah, we’re giving them back their freedom,” Scarlett chimed in.

  “I’ve received a number of complaints about thieves or vandals,” said Uncle Alec. “Someone is stealing cat collars. I should have known you had something to do with it.”

  “We’re not stealing the collars,” said Gran indignantly. “We’re simply removing them.”

  “You can’t go around removing these collars,” said Uncle Alec. “Those are private property, and if you keep this up I will have no choice but to arrest you for theft.”

  “Theft! We’re helping these poor creatures!”

  “Well, you can stop helping them, or I’ll be helping you to a one-way trip to the lockup. Is that understood?” He gestured to the stand. “Where did you get this thing?”

  “Oh, the builders helped us set it up. They have it at their construction sites. They use it for catering and whatever. But when I told them I needed it for an urgent matter, they were only happy to oblige.”

  “Get rid of it. You need permission to set up a stand in a public area. So I could probably arrest you for that, too.”

  “Oh, you really are impossible, Alec!” Gran cried.

  “We better do as he says, Vesta,” said Scarlett, who didn’t seem eager to get herself arrested.

  “But what about these poor creatures?” asked Gran. “They can’t even go to cat choir. They can’t go anywhere! When Shanille came to me this morning, and explained to me about her predicament, and the predicament of the entire contingent of cats of Hampton Cove, I knew I had to do something.”

  “Look, I don’t care about cat choir, all right?” said Uncle Alec. “Just get rid of this stuff. And make it snappy.”

  The look Gran gave her son wasn’t that of a loving mother, I have to say, but the Chief didn’t let it bother him too much. Instead, he started back to the precinct, leaving Gran and Scarlett to clean up their pop-up store posthaste.

  So when Odelia dropped by moments later, Gran was already on the phone with the builders who’d been so gracious—or so gullible—to lend her the stand, and when she asked what was going on, and Scarlett explained to her about the collars and the trackers, she smiled and said, “You know what? Why don’t I go and have a chat with these people? Tell them to leave their cats to enjoy cat choir? Most of them probably didn’t even know that their cats liked to attend cat choir at night, and so when they saw them roaming all over the place on their tracking gizmos, they probably freaked out.”

  “We can all go and talk to them,” Scarlett suggested. “Give them an education on cats’ perfectly normal roaming behavior.”

  Most people probably think that their cats stick around all night, and never leave the confines of their backyards or their balconies. But cats like to travel much farther than most people anticipate, and often in fixed patterns, too, roaming to their heart’s content.

  Gran had gotten off the phone, and soon arranged with her granddaughter and Scarlett to visit the cat owners whose collars she’d sold them then vandalized, to return them and educate them about cat behavior and the existence and necessity of cat choir.

  “And please don’t send them the bill for the removal of their collars, Gran,” Odelia added with a grin. “I think they just might get very upset with you if you do.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Gran said reluctantly. She sighed. “I should have known it was too good to be true.”

  And as Odelia assisted in the taking down of the temporary stand, I glanced in the direction of the street, and just caught how a bike messenger was hit by a speeding car.

  The bike messenger flew across the hood of the car, then tumbled to the ground, his bike tossed into the air and landing on the sidewalk. The car pulled to a stop a couple of meters further, and immediately the driver got out and hurried over to lend assistance.

  Gran, Scarlett and Odelia, alerted by the sound of the impact, all raced to the scene, but by some miracle the bike messenger simply got up, looking slightly dazed, took stock of his possible injuries, and then declared, surprise clear in his voice, “I think I’m fine.”

  What wasn’t fine was his bike, though, which was pretty much banged up, and wouldn’t work anymore. Across the hood of the car that had hit him, a big dent had appeared, along with a nice set of scratches where the handlebars had impacted.

  And as driver and messenger arranged things amongst themselves, exchanging phone numbers and personal information, and soon a police officer emerged from the precinct to see what was going on, I took a good long look at that bike, and then it hit me.

  Now I know that it’s one of those clichés in mystery stories to say that the lead detective suddenly ‘sees all’ in a flash but I can promise you that at that moment I really did ‘see all.’ I saw who’d killed Pete the homeless person, and I also saw who killed Darryl Farmer. Or I should probably say I had a hunch I just might know who had.

  So I turned to Odelia and said, “Have you talked to those ravers yet?”

  “Not yet,” she admitted.

  “I’d like you to check something for me first,” I told her. “Something important.”

  She gave me a look of significance. “What did you have in mind?”

  30

  Except for the intermittent hooting of an owl, all was quiet in the woods that night. Dooley and myself were there, of course, and so were Odelia and Chase, but apart from the four of us, no creature stirred or made itself heard. Except, that is, for the person who was busily trying to remove an object from a hollowed-out tree nearby.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Chase muttered.

  “Shh!” Odelia whispered back.

  The man, for it was a man, had stuck his arm into the tree all the way up to his armpit, and was rooting around, his face illuminated by the flashlight he was carrying. It was a familiar face, and even Dooley seemed surprised when he recognized it.

  “Let’s move in,” said Chase now.

  “No, we have to wait,” said Odelia. “Are you filming this?”

  “Absolutely,” said her partner.

  And then the moment was finally upon us: the man had found what he was looking for, as his face lit up with a smile, and he retracted his hand, removing a gun from the recesses of that tree trunk. “Gotcha!” he said as he studied the lethal little gizmo.

  “You called it,” said Chase, stepping to the fore and holding up his own gun and pointing it at the man. “Gotcha. Drop the gun, Mr. Kramer. Now!”

  And so Fred Kramer, for it was he, immediately dropped the gun, and simultaneously his jaw dropped a few inches, too.

  “How–how did you know?” he blurted out.

  “Don’t mind about that. Turn around, hands behind your back. Fred Kramer, you’re under arrest for the murder of Pete Jessup and Darryl Farmer.”

  “No, but seriously,” said Mr. Kramer. “How did you know?”

  But Chase wasn’t deterred: he kept reciting the Kitchen King’s Miranda rights, and soon the man had been placed under arrest and was being led back to the clearing where he’d parked his car, and as Chase removed the branches from the hood of his own car, which he and Odelia had used to conceal the vehicle just in case my hunch was right, he led the fallen king into the squad car and took off with his arrestee, while Odelia and Dooley and I walked the couple of hundred yards to her car, also neatly concealed.

  Everything so we could nab a killer— and it had been worth it, if only for the stupefied expression on the man’s face.

  “Looks like Gran will have to choose a different kitchen supplier,” said Dooley.

  “Yeah, looks like,” Odelia agreed. “And now,” she added, as she put the car in gear, “you’re going to tell me exactly how you figured it out, Max.”

  “Yeah, I think I’d like to know, too,” said Dooley.

  I settled in comfortably on the backseat. “The trouble for our Kitchen King started back when he wasn’t a king yet, but merely a prince. You see, Fred Kramer didn’t start out a kitchen mogul. Fifteen years ago he worked for one, as sales manager for a kitchen supplies company in Colorado. And guess who also worked for the same company?”

  “Our John Doe—or Pete Jessup as his real name turns out to be,” said Odelia as she expertly steered the car back onto the dirt track leading out of the woods. “When you asked me to dig a little deeper into Fred Kramer’s background, and especially his work history, it didn’t take me long to get a positive ID from the CEO of the company he used to work for,” she explained. “He told me that before he’d terminated both their employments, Fred Kramer and Pete Jessup had worked for him, respectively as head of sales and chief accountant, both accused of embezzlement and both asked to leave.”

  “Fred landed on his feet, and left the past behind, but Pete didn’t. He hit rock bottom and lost not only his job and his marriage, but also his self-respect, all of his friends and his house. So he ended up living on the streets—no money, no future, no prospects.”

  “That must have been tough,” said Dooley feelingly.

  “Well, he only had himself to blame,” I said. “If you steal from your boss, you probably shouldn’t expect any favors.”

  “So how do you think Pete happened to end up in Hampton Cove?” asked Odelia.

  “Coincidence,” I said. “I’m sure he had no idea that his former partner in crime had built up a new successful kitchen business out here, and it must have been a big shock for Fred to bump into his former associate.”

  “Who immediately put the squeeze on him,” Odelia said, nodding. “Probably wanting money in exchange for his silence.”

  “So Fred decided that the only option that would give him peace of mind was to get rid of Pete once and for all. So he told him to meet him out here in the woods, and he shot and buried him, knowing no one would come and look for the guy. But then of course Karl Bunyon’s catnapping shenanigans rode roughshod over Fred’s plans.”

  “So… how did Fred Kramer get a hold of Karl’s gun?” asked Dooley.

  “Well, from time to time it was Fred who’d drop the kids off at the Bunyons, not Grace,” Odelia explained. “And he must have gotten wise to his former employee’s gun safe—maybe Karl even showed it to him, and opened it in his presence—and that’s when the idea must have hit him.”

  “To steal Karl’s gun?”

  “Not steal it,” I said. “To switch it with his own gun, the one he picked out of that tree just now. The plan was to switch guns with Karl, kill Pete, then return the gun to Karl’s safe, something he could easily do when he picked up Grace’s kids or dropped them off. So just in case Pete’s body was discovered, which was a remote contingency, but still a contingency he needed to consider, the bullet would lead the cops to Karl, not Fred.”

  Odelia nodded. “And so when you told me to let it be known that the bullet we found in Pete wasn’t a match for Karl’s gun, you secretly hoped…”

  “That Fred would figure he’d made a mistake, and had accidentally put Karl’s gun in that tree, and had placed his own gun in Karl’s gun safe,” I confirmed. “And so just to make sure, he came out here to look for the gun, and—”

  “Walked straight into our trap,” said Odelia.

  “So how about this other man?” asked Dooley. “The DJ? Was that an accident?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said. “It was a case of Darryl Farmer being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d gone to the rave that night, playing his set, and was returning home on his bicycle around the time Fred Kramer was also returning from his grizzly business in the woods. Kramer hit him with his car, knocking Darryl off his bike and into a ditch, and since he didn’t want the police to know, gave him a large amount of cash in hand to buy himself a new bike, and keep his mouth shut about the accident.”

  “Only Darryl got greedy,” Odelia explained. “He must have read about the dead body being found, and thought that Mr. Kramer just might be involved, explaining his reluctance to involve the authorities, so he decided to milk him for some more cash.”

  “Kramer agreed, and told Darryl to meet him at the construction site.”

  “And shoved him down that elevator shaft, getting rid of another drain on his cash flow,” Odelia finished the sordid tale.

  “He’s not a very nice man, is he, this Fred Kramer,” Dooley determined.

  “No, he is not,” I agreed.

  “So how did you figure it all out, Max?”

  “Well, you’ll remember that Kramer’s Tesla had a big dent and some scratches across the hood—we saw it that day Gran hit him with her car. And today, when that bike messenger got hit, I saw the exact same damage done to the car of the man who drove into him: a dent and then some scratchings from the bike’s handlebars.”

  “He could have gotten that dent and those scratches anywhere,” said Odelia. “How did you connect that to Darryl Farmer?”

  “It was the brand-new bike we saw in Darryl’s ex-girlfriend’s place, Lucy Vale. It was a very expensive-looking bike. But then she said something that should have made me think: she said that Darryl was as poor as a church mouse. So if he really was as poor as all that, where did he get such a nice new bike? With the money Fred Kramer gave him.”

  “You did a great job, Max,” said Odelia, well pleased. “You saved an innocent man from going to prison.”

  “And from losing his kids,” I added.

  “Yeah, Karl’s ex-wife has no excuse to yank his visitation rights now.”

  “Except for the business with the cats,” I said. “Which lucky for him nobody knows about.”

  “You know what I don’t understand, Max?” said Dooley.

  “No, what?”

  “Why would Karl allow his ex-boss into his home? Mr. Kramer fired him, and he also stole his wife.”

  “Karl had to allow Fred into his home, Dooley, and his ex-wife, too, if he wanted to see his kids. And also, I think Karl is one of those people who tries to let bygones be bygones.”

  “Also,” said Odelia, “Karl didn’t know that those embezzlement charges were bogus. All he knew was that Fred fired him. Karl believed that someone embezzled that money. He knew it wasn’t him, but he also accepted that Fred couldn’t be sure about that.”

  “He should have blamed him for stealing his wife,” I said.

  “Karl didn’t see it that way. He thought Grace had left him, not that Fred had framed him so he could steal Grace away from him.”

  “Karl is really one of those people who are too good for this world,” I said with a shake of the head.

  “Yeah, he sure is,” Odelia said. “And if we hadn’t intervened, Fred wouldn’t have just framed him for embezzlement, stolen the man’s wife, but also set him up for murder!”

  “Talk about a lousy boss,” said Dooley with a sigh.

  Epilogue

  It was that time of the week again, when the Poole clan all comes together and enjoys a family moment: when they sit down for dinner and the paterfamilias prepares food for the entire clan. In the olden days that paterfamilias probably first killed a bison or two and caught a shoal of fish to serve his famished relatives, but in these modern times Tex had simply gone down to the supermarket to get his offerings wholesale. It was necessary for him to buy his meats wholesale as he wasn’t exactly the best chef in the world, and things often tended to go wrong at the food prep stage of the proceedings.

  Tex was slowly improving, though, and every week his barbecue moment was a little less disastrous than the week before. At this rate I figured it wouldn’t take more than another couple of years before he managed to serve us all an edible and enjoyable meal.