“Yuck.”

  And while the lovebirds renewed their lovebirdiness, Dooley and I watched the Pooles come together and prepare to be poisoned by Tex’s nonexistent barbecue skills.

  “So did you get a confession, Uncle Alec?” Odelia was asking as she held up her glass of rosé.

  “I most certainly did,” the Chief said. “And I didn’t even have to beat him up.” When his comment attracted worried glances from his family members, he quickly added, “That was a joke. I would never beat up my prisoners. Not even the nasty ones.”

  “Nugent confessed to the whole thing,” Chase chimed in. “Said he thought that if Ray and Toby were out of the picture Regan would come crying to him, and eventually develop feelings deeper than mere friendship. When that didn’t happen, he decided she had to die.”

  “Yeah, a real Romeo, that one,” said Alec.

  “I think it’s sad,” intimated Marge, who was officiating the carving of a big slice of roast that she’d prepared on the grill just in case her husband’s barbecue prowess failed them.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty sad,” Odelia agreed. “But at least Regan is fine. And Jason Nugent will be punished for his crimes.”

  “I still don’t get how you got it,” Chase said, returning to one of his favorite themes. “I mean, those hunches of yours are quickly becoming the stuff of legend, Poole.”

  Odelia shrugged and took a sip of her wine, her eyes sparkling as much as the wine did. She wasn’t going to reveal her big secret to Chase, who would never understand.

  I cast a look at Vesta, who’d been remarkably quiet throughout the evening.

  “What’s the matter with Grandma?” asked Dooley, following my gaze. “She hasn’t spoken a word all day. It’s not like her to be in silence. And when she put out my bowl she gave me an extra cuddle and said, ‘You’re the only in this house who truly loves me, Dooley. My one true friend. The only one who would never betray me.’ What was that all about?”

  We watched as Grandma Muffin sat cloaked in resolute silence, her lips pressed together in a thin line and her wrinkly face a thundercloud. She was even refusing to take nourishment, causing Marge to dart occasional exasperated glances in her direction.

  “The thing is, Dooley, your human has been very naughty again.”

  Dooley uttered a groan. “What did she do this time?”

  “Apparently when Tex and Marge gifted her an iPhone and a remarkably affordable cell phone plan so she could call her friends, she quickly discovered a fun game in the App Store.”

  “What kind of game?”

  “Well, it’s called ‘Game of Phones.’ The trick is to select as many world leaders as you can, and then call them for as long as possible. The person with the most world leaders on the leaderboard and the most phone time racked up wins a cruise to the Bahamas.”

  “So that’s why she was calling Angela Merkel in the middle of the night!”

  “I think she’s hardly slept all week. She’s been chatting non-stop with these non-existent world leaders all this time.”

  “Non-existent? You mean…”

  I leveled a grim look at him. “Do you really think the German Chancellor would give a little old lady from Hampton Cove, USA, the time of day? Or listen to her rambling advice?”

  “But Angela Merkel talked back to her. And so did this Ban Ki-moon and the others.”

  “Artificial intelligence automated response system,” I said, repeating what Odelia had told me before dinner. “Grandma was talking to a bot, Dooley. Just a stupid computer bot.”

  “So what’s so naughty about that? It must be fun to pretend-talk to the President.”

  “The thing is, Game of Phones is a scam. You pay an exorbitant amount of money for every minute you chat with their bots, and since Gran gave them Tex’s credit card details…”

  Dooley slapped a paw to his brow. “Oh, dear. Not again.”

  “Yes, again. So when Tex got his credit card bill this morning…”

  “He wasn’t happy.”

  “He was very unhappy. And then he confiscated Vesta’s iPhone.”

  “And now she’s unhappy.”

  “Come on, Mom,” said Uncle Alec to his mother now. “You have to eat something. You’ll starve to death!”

  “So be it,” croaked Grandma, her arms crossed defiantly over her chest. “This family hates me, so I hate them back.” She wagged a bony finger. “If I die, it’s on all of you!”

  “You’ll get your phone back once I figure out how to have it kid-proofed,” said Tex.

  She darted a look at him that no mother should ever direct at her son-in-law. “For your information, I’m not a child, Tex!”

  “As long as you act like one, you’ll be treated as one,” Tex said cheerfully. “Sausage, anyone?” He presented a plate with six blackened sausages. Uncle Alec, Odelia and Chase took one look at the incinerated carcasses and demurred, preferring Marge’s roast instead.

  “I want my phone,” said Grandma mutinously. “You can’t do this to me. This is a human rights violation and I’m gonna call Ban Ki-moon the minute I get my phone back.”

  “That wasn’t the real Ban Ki-moon, Mom,” said Marge gently. “That was just a computer bot in the Philippines pretending to be Ban Ki-moon so it could scam you.”

  “I don’t care. He told me I could be the next Secretary-General of the United Nations. Said I had the gumption and the wherewithal to save the planet and restore world peace to a troubled humanity! Do you really think a fake Ban Ki-moon would say those things to me?”

  “Look, Ban Ki-moon isn’t even the Secretary-General anymore,” Odelia pointed out, holding up her phone and displaying a Wikipedia page. “It’s a guy called António Guterres.”

  “Don’t you believe that stuff,” said Gran stubbornly. “Everybody knows Wikipedia is fake news. I talked to Ban Ki-moon, and Angela Merkel, and Putin, and the President, and they all had nice things to say about me. Said I might get the Nobel Peace Prize for the work I do. And now that I finally get some recognition from some very important people, my own family turns against me!” She got up. “You know what? I don’t need this crap. I’m leaving!”

  They watched, jaws dropped, as she stalked off.

  “Ma! Where are you going?” asked Uncle Alec.

  “To Washington! Where I’m appreciated! I’m gonna talk to the President in person. Last time we spoke he said he’d make me Secretary of State. I’m gonna remind him.”

  “Ma! Come back here!” Alec said, throwing down his napkin and chasing after her.

  “Never! I’m destined for greatness! You can’t hold me back!”

  She disappeared around the corner of the house, still going strong, with Uncle Alec in hot pursuit. Their voices died away, and Dooley muttered, “Who’s going to feed me now?”

  “She’ll be back,” I told him. “She might be nuts, but she’s not that nuts.”

  “How long before she’ll come crawling back?” asked Odelia.

  “I give her two hours,” said Tex.

  “One hour,” said Marge. “She hasn’t eaten, remember?”

  “You’ve got one crazy family, Poole,” said Chase with a grin. “And I like it!” he hastened to add when she quirked an eyebrow in his direction.

  Yep. That’s us. One crazy family. And as I watched Brutus and Harriet canoodling nearby, and Uncle Alec chase his mother around and around the house, and Chase press a kiss on Odelia’s lips—and Tex doing the same with Marge—I thought about Dooley’s words. When was I finally going to find love? I thought about Clarice, roaming her beloved woods again, and Charlie’s Dieber Babes, one collection of fine but ultimately vapid cats, and then glanced at my buddy Dooley—my best friend and wingman—and sighed happily.

  I had friends and family, I had food and my health. Why spoil it with romance?

  A chicken wing rolled into my bowl, accompanied by a peck on the top of my head from Odelia, and I watched as she and Chase disappeared through the hedge, holding hands.

  “What are they up to, you think?” asked Dooley.

  “Nookie,” I told him.

  “What’s a nookie, Max?” he asked.

  “Um…”

  “Is it like a cookie?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  He smiled. “I love cookies.”

  In short order, Tex and Marge disappeared into the house, Brutus and Harriet disappeared into the bushes, and the backyard was suddenly empty.

  “Are they all going for cookies?” asked Dooley.

  “Yup. Everybody loves a cookie.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, watching as Uncle Alec and Grandma Muffin came around the corner of the house once more. Grandma appeared out of breath, for she plunked down in her chair, glanced around and, noticing the rest of the family had split, sliced off a piece of roast, dug her spoon into the bowl of potatoes, and started tucking in.

  Uncle Alec, also dropping into a chair, watched her with a contented smile.

  Silence reigned, only interrupted by Grandma’s smacking noises.

  “You know what, Max?” asked Dooley finally.

  “What?”

  “Chase is probably right. The Pooles are a little crazy, aren’t they?”

  “That, they definitely are.”

  “But I still love them.”

  “So do I, Dooley. So do I.”

  And then we followed Grandma’s example and tucked in, too.

  Life with the Pooles might not be perfect, but it was never boring.

  THE END

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  Excerpt from Witchy Wishes (Neighborhood Witch Committee 3)

  Prologue

  Skip Brown was whipping through the Haymill neighborhood in South Brooklyn on his messenger bike, delivering fine bread and pastry to some of the less mobile regulars of the family bakery where he earned his keep. Brown’s Better Bread Bakery had been in business for as long as Browns had lived in Brooklyn, which, as far as Skip knew, was pretty much forever.

  As a junior member of the Brown baking empire, Skip’s job was to hawk the family wares and, as in this case, make sure bread aficionados up and down Haymill and greater Brooklyn got their bread fix at their earliest possible convenience, preferably in the early morning.

  Skip, a liberally pimpled young man, obviously didn’t follow the old marketing shtick that to sell a product, you have to be a product of your product: he looked more like a stick insect than the nicely globular shapes his father and uncles and all the other Browns aspired to. If the Browns were bowling balls, Skip was the only bowling pin, a fact which often irked him.

  What also set him apart from the other Browns was the fact that he possessed no baking talent whatsoever, which was one of the reasons his family kept him as far away from the actual baking operation as possible. A non-baking Brown could only jinx things and screw it up for the rest of the dynasty.

  And Skip was steering his trusty steel steed along the busy streets of Brooklyn, not far from where the Browns plied their trade, when he happened upon a disturbing scene.

  He’d just delivered a small white to Beatrix Yeast, and was on his way to Safflower House to provide Cassandra Beadsmore with her usual order of a dozen assorted buns, muffins, cinnamon rolls and croissants, when he passed a dead-end alley, where some form of altercation was in progress.

  Usually Skip liked to keep himself to himself, something he’d learned on these mean streets of Brooklyn. But ever since his good friends the Flummox triplets had started a neighborhood watch, he’d been itching to get in on the action and help make Haymill a safer, more pleasant environment. And part of that was not to pass by a confrontation in a creepy back alley between a black-clad stranger and a large man who was crying out for help.

  Skip placed his bike against the graffitied wall and hurried over to lend aid and support.

  If the fat man was being mugged by the black-clad figure, he was here to make sure justice was done and the miscreant faced the Brown wrath.

  Just to make sure he was up to the task, he’d taken a firm grip on his bicycle pump in his left, and a baguette in his right hand. They were the only weapons at his immediate disposal, and he swung them both in a menacing fashion, calling out, “Hey! Leave that man alone!”

  The black-clad figure slowly turned to face him. Well, perhaps not exactly face him, as the assailant’s visage was obscured by some form of black mask.

  “What’s going on here?” Skip asked, his heart now beating a mile a minute.

  He suddenly found himself wishing he’d taken that self-defense course at the community center his mom had told him about. He could have taken out this person with a leg sweep or a cool move and that would have been that.

  Now, seeing that the stranger was holding a very large, very shiny, very scary-looking knife, he lost some of the exuberance that had led him into battle.

  “Um, you better drop that thing, buddy,” he called out, starting to feel particularly ill-equipped to take on this hoodlum. Wasn’t there some sort of saying or folk wisdom about bringing a bicycle pump and a French baguette to a knife fight? The general consensus seemed to be that it was probably not a good idea. Unless you were Jackie Chan, of course.

  “You better stay out of this, Skip Brown,” said the stranger in a strangely hissing voice. He almost sounded like a snake—if snakes could talk—which, apart from Disney and Harry Potter movies, they obviously couldn’t.

  “Back off, buddy,” Skip said, swinging the pump and baguette combo like he meant it.

  “You’re going to have to choose,” hissed the man, who was of slight build he now saw. “Do you want to be part of the problem or the solution? If the latter, you better skedaddle.”

  “Well, I’m not skedaddling,” said Skip bravely. “You’re the one who should be skedaddling if you know what’s good for you—you-you hoodlum.”

  He now glanced at the fat man, who was lying on his back on top of a pile of garbage, his breathing stertorous and obviously in a great deal of pain.

  “Are you all right, sir?” he asked, and then proceeded to experience the shock of a lifetime. The fat man wasn’t just any fat man. It was his uncle Gus!

  “Call the cops, Skip!” his uncle said in a wheezy and labored voice. “Make sure they catch this bastard!”

  “Too late,” hissed the black-clad figure, and produced what could only be described as a sort of sinister chuckle. Then, as if the laws of the natural world didn’t apply to him, he moved away from Skip at breakneck speed, and was soon swallowed up by the darkness that covered the back part of the alley.

  “Hey! Where did he go?” Skip asked.

  His uncle looked up at him with a pleading expression in his eyes. “Skip, son, I’m not feeling too good. Better call an ambulance.”

  Uncle Gus lifted his hand from his belly for a moment, and to his horror Skip saw there was a great deal of blood covering his uncle’s substantial gut.

  “He cut me, Skip,” lamented his uncle. “The bastard just gutted me like a friggin pig.”

  Skip quickly took out his phone and for the next few seconds busied himself apprising the nice lady from 911 of the facts pertaining to the case.

  A hand stole out and his uncle grabbed him by the pant leg. “If I don’t make it—tell your aunt Adelaide I love her,” he said in a croaky voice.

  “You can tell her yourself, Uncle Gus,” Skip said, kneeling down next to his relative. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  But then his uncle’s round and ruddy face displayed a pained grimace, and he wheezed, “I’m not too sure about that, Skip. I don’t mind telling you I don’t feel fine. In fact I feel downright lousy.”

  And then, before he could respond, the light went out in Uncle Gus’s eyes.

  Chapter One

  Samuel Barkley squeezed out of his Toyota Yaris with some effort and a lot of grumbling on his part. The car—the latest addition to the NYPD motor pool—was a bit on the small side to accommodate Sam’s sturdy frame. Pierre Farrier, his trusty partner and sidekick, had far less trouble emerging from the passenger side of the vehicle.

  Then again, Pierre was built along the lines of a sickly grasshopper, while Sam looked like he’d just swallowed the reigning boxing heavyweight.

  Sam, his brown hair neatly in place, his piercing blue eyes surveying the scene, and his anvil jaw working, shook his head. “Damn shame,” he said.

  “You can say that again,” said Pierre, fingering first his pepper-and-salt mustache and then the small scar on his brow, just beneath his receding hairline. It was the last remnant of the incident that had put him in a coma not that long ago.

  “Stop touching your scar,” said Sam, fighting the urge to slap his partner’s hand away.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” said Pierre. “In times of great stress it starts throbbing.”

  “Throbbing?” he asked. “You mean you can still feel the scar?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Pierre. “It sends me messages.”

  Sam looked up at that. “Messages? What kind of messages?”

  Pierre shrugged. “Well, the message that something is seriously wrong. Like now, with this poor schmuck being struck down in this nasty alley.”

  “Oh, right,” said Sam. “For a moment there I thought you were going to say you received direct communications from Lord Voldemort or his faithful pet snake Nagini.”

  Pierre directed his soulful eyes at him in an expression of hurt. “That’s not funny, Sam. The scar really hurts.”

  Sam held up his hands in a gesture of apology. “I’m sorry, buddy. I believe you. And no one is happier than me that you came through this whole ordeal more or less unscathed.” He clapped the other man on the back. “Now why don’t we solve ourselves a murder, huh?”

  “Yes, let’s,” Pierre said softly.

  It was obvious he was taking this particular crime to heart. As an aficionado of bakery goods in general and Brown’s Bakery in particular, the murder of Gus Brown had hit Pierre very hard. Apparently the man had been something of a latter-day genius with the rolling pin, spatula and piping bag.