“She was a tough cookie,” her husband agreed.

  “What did she threaten you about?” asked Gran.

  “Oh, this and that,” said Shannon vaguely.

  “She was upset that I refused to sell her back the rights to her music,” said Laron. “But why should I? She was the one leaving me, and signing with another company. So why should I hand her back her music with a nice bow on top? That’s not how it works.”

  “You were going to hand the rights back to her, though, isn’t that right, Laron?” asked Charlie.

  “Yeah, for the right price. Not the peanuts she was prepared to pay for it.”

  “We were in the middle of negotiations, and at this point the lawyers had taken over,” said Shannon.

  “Too bad,” said Charlie. “She was one talented lady.”

  Jamie had been conspicuously silent, but now burst out, “She wasn’t that talented, Charlie. All of her greatest hits were written by other people, and the few songs she wrote herself didn’t do well.”

  “Yeah, but at least she wrote some of her own stuff,” said Charlie, clearly taken aback by this sudden outburst. “Most singers don’t write anything. They all buy songs from professional songwriters.”

  “Oh, so now you’re having a go at me, are you?”

  “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “Okay, so I don’t write my own music. That doesn’t make me a lesser singer, does it?”

  “No, of course not. I just wanted to—”

  “Oh, forget about it,” said Jamie, and promptly got up and stormed off, her face a thundercloud.

  Uh-oh, thought Vesta. The cats were probably still upstairs, snooping around.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Have to powder my nose.” And she quickly got up and went in pursuit of Charlie’s girlfriend.

  She saw her entering the elevator and cursed under her breath. Then her eye fell on the staircase. Taking a deep breath, she waltzed into the stairwell, and started mounting the stairs as quickly as she could. In spite of her age she was in excellent fettle, the advantage of working as a doctor’s receptionist—and when she exited the stairwell on the fourth floor saw Jamie as she placed her keycard against the door and opened it.

  “Jamie, hold up!” Vesta yelled, and hurried over.

  “What is it?” asked Jamie, none too friendly.

  “I’m sorry. You’ll probably think me some gossipy old lady, but it pains me to see a beautiful young couple like you and Charlie going through a bad patch. I can tell how much Charlie loves you, and you’re clearly very fond of him, so…”

  Jamie’s pout intensified. “He had no business telling me singers who write their own material are superior to singers that don’t. Lots of artists buy their songs, and does anyone call them out for it? No, they don’t. Charlie himself doesn’t write his own stuff.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that,” said Vesta, raising her voice so her cats, if they were still inside, could get the hell out of there.

  “No need to shout,” said Jamie, still pouting.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m a little hard of hearing, and you know how it is, you start to talk louder because you think everybody is hard of hearing. Look, if you want my advice, I don’t think Charlie meant anything by what he said. He’s obviously crazy about you.”

  “I guess so,” said the girl, who was, Vesta now realized, very young indeed. Maybe not even twenty yet.

  “Lighten up a little, honey,” said Vesta, adopting a motherly tone. “Life is too short to make a mountain out of every molehill, and your relationship will only suffer.”

  “I know. It’s just that… he drives me crazy sometimes. He’s so annoying, you know?”

  “That’s because you’ve been cooped up together in here for too long. Maybe you should go for a walk. Get some fresh air.”

  She nodded. “Maybe I will. It’s true that Charlie and I have spent an awful lot of time together. And maybe I need to clear my head. Thank you, Mrs. Muffin. You’re very kind.”

  “You’re welcome, Jamie. And it’s Vesta.”

  And as Jamie passed into her room, Vesta glanced beyond her, and could just see Dooley’s tail as it disappeared into the next room.

  Phew. Saved by the bell.

  Vesta made her way down again—this time taking the elevator—and hoped her cats had found something useful. When she joined the others she was gratified to see that her tray hadn’t been cleaned away. So she sat down, and dedicated herself to the consumption of the best breakfast she’d had in a long time, from time to time directing a question at her messmates, and Laron in particular, who she felt had the most to gain from Chickie’s death. But no matter what question she lobbed at the guy, he always had his answer ready.

  But if he hadn’t killed Chickie Hay, then who had?

  29

  Jamie closed the door and immediately walked over to the bedroom. How could she have been so stupid to leave that letter lying around? With the police searching high and low. Laron had told them the police wouldn’t touch them—that he’d used his influence with the Mayor to call off the dogs—but she knew that was only a momentary reprieve. Sooner or later they would be interrogated, and if they found that letter in her room…

  She dove under the bed and her heart stopped when she discovered the letter gone.

  Oh, no!

  Had Charlie found it? But if he had, he would have told her about it. He’d found religion, and honesty was part of his new deal. At first his religious fervor had been fun and refreshing. Now it irked her that every time something was on his mind he’d start yapping about it. A good relationship could only survive if you kept a couple of secrets from your partner, but that wasn’t how Charlie thought about it at all. Or his pastor.

  She searched her memory. Where could that letter be? She’d been reading it last night, but then Charlie had suddenly come into the room and she’d had to drop it to the floor, where it had remained. She’d intended to pick it up and hide it but hadn’t had the chance. And now with that nosy old lady going on and on about the investigation, clearly a spy for her chief of police son, she’d felt the sudden urge to go back for that letter and destroy it. No good could ever come of anyone reading its content. No good at all.

  She looked around, then pensively walked into the living area of their suite. And then she saw that the connecting door was ajar. Could it be… She quickly opened it and glanced around Laron and Shannon’s room. And that’s when she saw it: a cat’s tail, disappearing into the bedroom. Could Cleo have stolen her letter? Were cats that smart?

  She stepped into the bedroom and found five pairs of eyes staring back at her. She recognized that horrible hairless cat of Shannon’s… and the four cats from last night. Vesta’s cats. And one of those cats had her letter clasped between its teeth.

  “Give me that, you stupid beast,” she said, and lunged for the dumb animal.

  The cat was quicker, of course, and leaped out of the way.

  And thus began a chase around the suite: Jamie bigger and more determined, but the cat more agile and a lot faster. Sooner or later she’d corner the stupid mongrel though.

  “Give me my letter!” she screamed when she had the animal cornered under the bed. But the moment she reached out a hand to grab it, it scooted out the other side.

  She practically howled with frustration. “Get back here, you horrible beast!”

  And then she had it: the mongrel had run into the bathroom. “Ha!” she yelled. “Not very smart, cat!”

  She grabbed a bathrobe from a hook and proceeded slowly into the bathroom.

  The animal sat behind the toilet, eyeing her with fear in its eyes. “Good. You should be afraid!” she shouted. “Cause when I get you, I’m going to skin you alive!”

  But just then, something jumped onto her back, and moments later she howled in pain as she felt claws digging in!

  She reached back to get the thing off her but it hissed and dug its claws in deeper!

  “Get off me!” she screeched. “Get off, get off, get off!”

  She swung around and the cat went flying and hit the wall, then dropped into the bathtub with a clunking sound. It was big and fat and red—a monstrous beast.

  The gray cat, meanwhile, had escaped from behind the toilet and now raced back into the other room. Jamie descended upon the cat that had clawed her, and picked it up by the scruff of the neck. God, it was heavy. It was also hissing and twisting, to no avail.

  Oh, how she hated cats—and after today she’d hate the foul breed even more.

  “I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget,” she said, and grabbed one of Shannon’s hairbrushes from the sink. “I’ll teach you to mutilate my back with those filthy claws.”

  She’d moved back into the living space and raised the brush to give the cat a good thrashing. Just then, the door to the room burst open and Laron and Shannon stood before her, Vesta and Charlie right behind them.

  “What the hell are you doing with that cat?!” Shannon cried, outrage written all over her features.

  “Nothing, I swear!” she said as she dropped both cat and hairbrush. “That cat over there stole… stole something from me!”

  To her horror she saw that the small gray cat had jumped into Vesta’s arms and that the old lady was carefully taking the letter from between the cat’s teeth and started reading it.

  “That’s mine!” she yelled. “Give it back! It’s mine!”

  But Vesta looked up at her, a hint of steel in her eyes. “I think it’s time I called my son,” she said. “Laron, Shannon, grab her and make sure she doesn’t escape. I think we just caught Chickie’s killer.”

  30

  Odelia, who was at the office, was surprised to get the call. When she arrived at the hotel she was even more surprised to find her four cats, all looking fairly triumphant.

  “How did you guys get here?” she asked, crouching down.

  “We felt we hadn’t done enough,” said Max.

  “Yeah, we let you down, Odelia,” Harriet added. “So we decided to search those rooms again.”

  “And Dooley found something. Gran says it proves that Jamie is the killer.”

  She straightened and watched as Jamie Borowiak was led out of the hotel by two of her uncle’s officers, cuffed and looking distinctly distraught.

  “I didn’t do it,” the young woman said tearfully. “I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Tell that to the judge,” one of the officers snapped.

  Behind Jamie, Chase now also walked out, followed by Uncle Alec and Gran.

  “What’s going on?” asked Odelia. “Why did you arrest Jamie?”

  “Look at this,” said her uncle, and produced a letter wrapped in a plastic cover.

  She quickly read through its contents. It was a letter written by Chickie Hay, only a week ago, addressed to Jamie. It basically accused Jamie of stealing her boyfriend Charlie Dieber away from her, and warned her that she would take sweet, sweet revenge.

  “There’s nothing new in this letter,” she said. “We already knew they had a fight.”

  But Gran tapped the document. “Jamie tried very hard to hide this letter. She chased Dooley all around the room and practically murdered Max when he tried to protect his friend. Why would she go to all that trouble if she wasn’t the killer?”

  “Because she didn’t want people to know about the rift between her and Chickie?”

  “Chickie was threatening Jamie with ‘sweet, sweet revenge,’” Gran said stubbornly. “So Jamie decided to shut her up once and for all. It’s all in the letter, Odelia.”

  “But it’s not, is it?”

  Gran brought her face close to Odelia’s, noses touching. “Read. Between. The. Lines.”

  “I think it’s pretty conclusive,” said Uncle Alec. “And I’m sure we’ll get a confession.”

  “Dooley found this letter?” asked Odelia, glancing down at Dooley, who looked proud as a peacock.

  “Yeah,” said Gran. “I managed to smuggle the cats into Laron and Shannon’s room, and Dooley found the letter lying under Jamie’s bed. She must have realized she dropped the letter cause she came back to look for it, but by that time Dooley had already snatched it between his teeth. She then chased poor Dooley all across the room, until we happened to arrive and saved him and the incriminating letter in the nick of time.”

  “Good job, Ma,” said Uncle Alec in a rare compliment, and gave his mother a peck on the cheek.

  The old lady looked pleased as punch. “I think this might hamper my chances for that duet with Charlie, though,” she said. “I doubt he’ll want to work with the woman who put his girlfriend in jail.”

  “Yeah, Laron already told me in no uncertain terms what he felt about your latest stunt,” said Uncle Alec.

  “He did, did he? Well, did you tell him his protégée is a killer?”

  “I told him we arrested Jamie and he said he’d get the best damn lawyer in the country and I’d be sorry and you would be, too.”

  “Yikes. I’m quaking in my boots,” said Gran with a grin.

  “Do you guys want a lift home?” Odelia asked her cats.

  “No, I think we’ll stick around for a bit,” said Max.

  “You did great,” she said, and squeezed Dooley’s cheeks. He giggled.

  “I think my career will be over, too,” said Harriet a little ruefully. “Laron will never engage one of the cats that got Jamie sent to prison.”

  “Oh, well, you had a good run,” said Brutus, looking very pleased all of a sudden.

  A crowd of onlookers had gathered, and watched as Jamie was placed in the back of a squad car and driven off. Several people stood pointing up at the hotel, holding their smartphones to take pictures. And when Odelia looked up she saw Laron Weskit standing in front of his hotel room window, accompanied by Shannon and Charlie. They didn’t look happy, and moved away from the window, not wanting to be filmed.

  “Dark days,” said Odelia as Chase joined her. “At least for the Weskits.”

  “And Charlie,” said Chase. “He just watched his girlfriend being arrested for murder.”

  “Do you think she did it?”

  “Don’t you?” he deflected.

  “I don’t know. That letter doesn’t prove anything, does it? I mean, so Chickie wrote a letter, promising revenge for stealing her boyfriend. I’m sure that’s just the language of a woman scorned. And I doubt Jamie would kill Chickie just because of that threat.”

  “Yes, but why did she try so hard to make that letter disappear?”

  “But she didn’t, did she? According to Dooley the letter was just lying there, under the bed. It’s only when Gran started asking questions that she decided the letter wasn’t fit for public consumption and should stay private.”

  “Let’s see what she says. I’m sure your uncle will be able to get the truth out of her.”

  “I guess.”

  “And at the very least she deserves to be punished for treating your cats the way she did. She was just about to give Max a beating with a hairbrush.”

  Odelia raised an eyebrow. “She was?”

  “Yeah, that’s what your grandmother says, and Jamie is not denying it.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe she does deserve to be punished.”

  If there was one thing Odelia hated above all else, it was people who tormented animals. As far as she was concerned, the punishment couldn’t be big enough.

  31

  “What’s going on?” asked Kingman when we joined him.

  “Oh, just that Dooley managed to catch a killer,” I said.

  Kingman stared from me to Dooley. “Dooley caught a killer? How did that happen?”

  “I found an inseminating piece of evidence,” said Dooley happily.

  “Not inseminating, incriminating,” Harriet corrected him.

  “Very incriminating,” I said. “A letter Chickie Hay wrote Jamie Borowiak, threatening revenge for stealing her boyfriend Charlie Dieber.”

  “And that letter proves that she killed her?” asked Kingman.

  “It does. Convulsively,” said Dooley, still beaming.

  “Conclusively,” I said.

  “Well, congratulations, Dooley,” said Kingman. “You must feel like a real star now.”

  “A star detective,” said Dooley with a smile.

  “I’m just glad this investigation is over,” said Brutus. “I feel very tired all of a sudden.”

  “It’s these celebrities,” said Harriet. “They’re very tiring.”

  She seemed a little downcast now that her big career was over even before it began.

  “So what’s going to happen now?” asked Kingman.

  “Now Uncle Alec is going to interrogate Jamie and then once she confesses she’s going to appear before the judge and then she’ll go to prison,” said Dooley, the expert.

  “No, I mean what’s going to happen with you? Are you going to have to testify in court? Usually the people who find important evidence, especially of the incriminating kind, have to testify in court, in front of a judge and a jury of their peers.”

  “A jury of our peers would be a jury of cats,” Harriet pointed out. “I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.”

  “No, I don’t think Dooley will have to testify in court,” I agreed. “Cats rarely testify in court.”

  “Rarely? You mean never,” said Harriet. “It’s not fair but there you are. We never get to testify in court, and we never get to go to court against anyone, either.”

  “Who would you like to take to court, Harriet?” asked Kingman, an amused expression on his face.

  “Where do I start? I wouldn’t mind taking Shanille to court, for instance. She told me last week that I can’t sing solos anymore. Which I thought was extremely unfair.”

  “Why can’t you sing solos anymore?” asked Dooley, interested in Harriet’s latest drama.

  “She feels that the whole idea of singing solos is anti-democratic. It breeds jealousy and discord in cat choir and she can’t have that. So from now on no more solos.”