“No, like I said I was down at the church for wedding prep,” said Harriet, a little shamefaced now.

  Gran smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ll find Brutus. He can’t have gotten far, and at some point someone must have seen him, right?”

  Harriet nodded.

  “Okay, let’s go,” said Gran now, and opened the car door for Harriet to hop in.

  “Go where?” asked Harriet as she did as instructed. Probably to go look for Brutus.

  “To the vet, of course,” said Gran. “I haven’t forgotten about your eyes, honey, and Vena is expecting us.”

  “Gran—noooo!” said Harriet, but too late. The door was already closed. And locked!

  35

  Tex had been brooding all day about the stuff Randy had told him that morning, and as he got ready to leave his office, he thought he’d finally hit upon the way to proceed.

  Marge was feeling there was a distinct lack of spark in their marriage—a lack of romance. So he’d simply reinstate a tradition they’d dropped years before: the tradition of their weekly date night. They used to go out on a date once a week when Odelia was little. Sometimes they’d have dinner, other times they’d go for a walk along the beach.

  But the tradition, as so many things, had slowly been forgotten when life became more hectic, and now was probably a good time to get back on track.

  So he’d called the Hampton Cove Star and booked a table for two, and on his way home had dropped by the flower shop to pick up a bouquet of long-stemmed white roses, and as he prepared a speech in his head, he was starting to perk up a little.

  Randy’s words had come as a shock to him. It’s not much fun to hear that your wife is harboring second doubts about her marriage—especially when she’s decided to confide in another man, even though that other man wasn’t interested in Marge at all—or so he’d assured Tex.

  But when the doctor arrived home, and didn’t find Marge at the house, or in the backyard, he took a firmer grip on his bouquet and figured she was probably next door.

  So he set foot for his daughter’s place. And when he arrived there, he was more than a little bit surprised when he found not only his wife, dressed to the nines in a gorgeous low-necked dress, her hair done up and her face made up to perfection, but also Randy—and they were clearly having a very cozy early dinner—just the two of them!

  “What’s going on?” he asked, though it was pretty obvious what was going on!

  “Oh, Marge invited me to dinner,” said Randy with a smile as he unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap. “I hope you don’t mind?”

  He realized he was gawking, and made a conscious effort of reeling in his lower jaw, then cut a hurt look at his wife.

  “I just figured Randy has been through so much these last couple of days, he could use a nice dinner,” said Marge, looking a little uncomfortable under her husband’s gaze. She took in the flowers. “Are those… for me?”

  He glanced at the flowers, then back at the scene, and realized Randy had been playing him for a fool: he’d assured him he had no designs on Marge when all the while he was preparing to wine and dine her to within an inch of her life, and make her his!

  And worst of all, they were doing it in Odelia’s house, and of his daughter and her boyfriend there was no sign, which meant they were both in on it, too!

  And suddenly the mild-mannered doctor, who never raised his voice even when his most obnoxious patients made his life hell, suddenly felt his blood going on the boil.

  But since words failed to adequately express how he was feeling just then, he merely threw down the flowers, then jumped up and down on top of them a couple of times, then stalked off, even as Marge yelled, “Tex, wait!”

  But he wasn’t waiting for no one. His family had decided to indulge—no, encourage this romance behind his back, and as far as betrayals go, that was probably the worst kind of betrayal a family man like Tex could have imagined in his worst nightmare.

  And then he was grabbing his car keys and stalking out of the house. He didn’t know where he was going, but it was most probably going to be very, very far away from here!

  “Oh, dear,” said Marge as she saw her husband stomp off like Bruce Banner after having morphed into his alter ego The Incredible Hulk for the first time that episode. “He doesn’t seem happy about this, Randy.”

  “Just leave him be. He’ll get over it,” said Randy as he sipped from his glass of wine.

  Marge looked down at the trampled roses—long-stemmed white ones, her favorite—and felt bad about not telling her husband about this impromptu date with Randy. She probably should have warned him, but had completely forgotten about it once Randy had told her he’d be delighted to sit down for dinner.

  She still wasn’t over her schoolgirl crush on the man, even though she was starting to realize that maybe, just maybe Odelia was right, and the man wasn’t into women at all.

  The sequined shirts and shorts should have given her a clue.

  “So has your daughter gotten any closer to solving this mystery of my poisoning?” asked Randy now.

  “No, not really. She talked to your associates, your staff, and your family, but they all basically told her the same thing: you lost your millions years ago, and there is simply nothing to gain from blackmailing you.”

  “Oops,” said Randy with a grimace. “Looks like my big secret is out then, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess it is,” said Marge with a warm smile at the man. “Is it also true that you have spent a fortune on pool boys, gardeners, masseurs and other assorted eye candy?”

  “Guilty as charged,” said Randy as he looked down with a touch of shame.

  “And another fortune on nose candy?”

  “Yeah, I’m not without my vices, Marge,” said Randy. “But then you probably already knew that about me, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess I did,” she said with a sigh. “Though I decided to turn a blind eye, you being my hero and all.”

  “I’m not much of a hero, sweetie,” said Randy now, patting her hand. “You know who’s the real hero? Your husband Tex. As a doctor he’s done so much for people.”

  “You’ve done a lot for people, too,” she argued. “You’ve been instrumental in helping people stay fit and healthy, and that’s nothing to be scoffed at, Randy.”

  “No, I guess I have done my share for the common good,” he admitted. “Look, I’m not a saint, Marge. I have pretty much wasted my entire fortune, and there isn’t much left in the once overflowing Hancock coffers. To the extent I can’t possibly pay the ten million these people are demanding from me. In fact I should probably look upon this demand as a compliment. They seem to think I’m good for that kind of money, but I’m not.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m still hoping your daughter will come through for me.”

  “Chase told me the blood work revealed nothing. No poison was found in your blood, which means it must be a very sophisticated toxin, if even the NYPD lab wasn’t able to find any trace of it. Which also means they can’t come up with an antidote, I’m afraid.”

  “This was supposed to be a nice dinner to cheer me up, Marge,” the fitness star said with a rueful smile. “But so far all you’ve managed is to dampen my mood even more than it already was.”

  “I’m sorry. But there’s no sense beating about the bush, is there? My daughter has come up empty-handed, and so has Chase.”

  “Has his NYPD contact discovered nothing about the people who sent me that video?”

  “That’s the weirdest thing,” said Marge. “They did, but the IP address simply reveals that it was sent from your home computer. Which led them to suggest that either a member of your staff is behind this, or that these are some highly skilled criminals, who’ve managed to hack your network and mask their own IP address by rerouting all of their communications through yours.” She shrugged. “I’m just repeating what Odelia and Chase told me. I’m not a computer expert, and it all sounds pretty out there for me.”

  “No, I understand what you’re saying. Perfectly. It just tells me these are some very clever crooks, and it’s going to prove extremely hard to nail them.” He held up his glass. “But I have faith in your daughter’s detecting skills, Marge. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked her to look into this for me—effectively placing my life in her hands.”

  “I hope she won’t disappoint you,” said Marge, though she was starting to feel that time was running out for the poor fitness star. She raised her glass and clinked it against his, then both took a sip.

  “So tell me,” he said, “how did you and Tex meet?”

  And just like that, he’d turned the tables on her, and was steering the conversation back to her private life, and away from his.

  36

  Jerry Vale surveyed his domain and saw that everything was as it should be. Thousands of little turtles were swimming in very large tanks containing enough water to fill a semi-large pond. Never in his life had he thought he’d become the custodian of a turtle farm, but there he was, at the heart of just such an endeavor.

  Johnny Carew, his slightly bone-headed associate, came stomping down the basement stairs. The thickset no-neck crook announced, “I closed the shop, Jer. The last customer was a little girl looking to buy a goldfish for her brother. I said goldfishes shouldn’t be kept in tanks but swim in the ocean, and she agreed and I sold her a gerbil instead.”

  “You shouldn’t argue with the customers,” Jerry grunted. With his ferrety features and his slim build he looked exactly the opposite of his partner in crime, but then he had always been the brains of the partnership, whereas Johnny was the dumb brawn. “If a customer wants a goldfish you sell them a goldfish. The customer is always right.”

  “Someone asked me if we sell crocodiles yesterday,” said Johnny as he stood there, the tips of his fingers practically grazing the concrete floor. “Should I have sold him a crocodile, Jerry? Because last time I checked we don’t sell no crocodiles.”

  “You can only sell them what we’ve got,” said Jerry. “So if some idiot wants to buy a crocodile you tell them to take a hike.”

  “Oh, okay, Jer,” said Johnny, nodding as he took this in. “Take a hike. I can do that.” He glanced around at the five large tanks filled with turtles. “So how are our little babies?”

  “They’re not our babies, idiot. Don’t get attached to them. They’ll be out of here soon, and I don’t want you blubbering all over me, crying about how they took our babies.”

  “But I like them, Jer. They’re so sweet, don’t you think? With their little feet and their little heads and their little eyes.” He smiled a goofy smile as he spoke these words.

  This was exactly what Jerry was afraid would happen. That the big lug would get all emotional about this new business of theirs. The same thing had happened when they worked for Chazz Falcone, that well-known New York real estate tycoon. When Chazz told them to put the squeeze on some of the tenants of a building he wanted razed to the ground, Johnny, instead of using his bulk to put the fear of God into them, had wept big tears when they told them their sob stories of woe and misfortune. The guy might look like a grizzly, but unfortunately had a heart of gold and a brain the size of a peanut.

  “Look, these aren’t our turtles, Johnny,” he said. “Just get that through that thick skull of yours, will you? We’re just the help, hired to do a job. As soon as the job’s done, we’re out of here.”

  “But what will happen to the turtles, Jer? They’re not going to hurt them, are they?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I do, Jer. Will you just look at them. So cute.” He’d picked up one of the turtles who’d apparently escaped its tank and tickled it behind its head as it crawled around on his ham-sized hand.

  “Will you put that thing back,” growled Jerry.

  “It’s not a thing, Jer. It’s a living, breathing creature. A miracle of nature.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” said Jerry, and headed for the stairs. “Just put it back before it escapes,” he said. “And clean up in here, will you? It stinks!”

  Johnny watched his associate storm up the stairs and sighed. “He didn’t mean all that,” he told the little turtle on his hand. The turtle was looking up at him with its teeny tiny eyes, listening intently. “Jerry’s not a bad person,” he explained. “But he’s been associating with bad people all his life. And also his wife left him, and it’s made him cranky.” He tickled the little turtle behind the ears and smiled. “Cute,” he said, and placed it back into one of the tanks. “Now go play with your friends, little fella,” he said encouragingly and watched as it swam deftly to the nearest bit of flotsam and jetsam that Johnny recognized as a piece of fish food, and gobbled it up eagerly. “Way to go,” he said fondly, and took a sniff.

  Jerry was right. There was a pervasive smell down there, and it couldn’t possibly be the turtles, as they’d installed state-of-the art filtering systems to keep those tanks clean.

  And as he sniffed the air, walking around and trying to determine the source of the smell, he thought it smelled a little bit like… cat poo.

  Which was impossible, of course. No cats were down there.

  He did remember that the basement window had been open before. He’d closed it, not wanting his precious turtles to catch a cold from the draft. Had a cat managed to sneak in? But that would mean the poor creature was stuck there, without food or water.

  He followed his nose and soon arrived at a pile of old fish tanks the previous owner of the pet store had placed there. The stench was getting stronger the closer he got to the pile of junk. And when he got down on hands and knees to look under the rubble, he suddenly found a pair of cat eyes intently staring back at him.

  “Oh, hey, there, kitty,” he said good-naturedly. “Got stuck down here, did you? Come on out, cutie pie. Johnny will take care of you.”

  The cat didn’t respond, but merely kept staring right back at him, brazen as dammit.

  And that’s when Johnny thought he recognized the cat.

  It looked like one of Marge Poole’s cats, the librarian he and Jerry had once done community service for.

  “Aren’t you one of Marge’s cats?” he asked now. “So what are you doing down here, buddy?”

  And as he reached out to grab the cat, it suddenly hissed then raised a claw at him.

  Oops. Better let the creature be. And maybe give Marge a call. She was probably worried sick about her cat.

  And as he took out his phone, he was careful to keep his voice down. Jerry wouldn’t like it that he called Marge. In fact his associate had given him strict instructions never under any circumstances to allow anyone to set foot down there in that basement.

  Jerry always with his silly rules.

  And then the call connected and he said, “Marge? Marge Poole? It’s Johnny!”

  37

  “Does she spend a lot of time looking at the television?” asked Vena as she shone a bright light into Harriet’s right eye.

  “Not really,” said Vesta as she watched the proceedings closely. “She does spend an awful lot of time on her tablet, though.”

  Vena looked up. “Tablet? Your cats have their own tablet?”

  “Oh, sure. They love it. Spend all their time playing games. You know the kind: where they have to follow a ball across the screen and try and catch it.” She didn’t want to tell Vena that her cats were a lot smarter than that, and actually spent their time surfing the internet, Harriet most of all.

  “I don’t spend that much time on my tablet, Gran,” said Harriet, who was in a bad mood, feeling that she’d been tricked into going to Vena, even though it was for her own good. “Besides, my eyes will be fine once I get used to my carrot diet.”

  “Carrot diet?” said Vesta, and when Vena frowned, added, “Yeah, she’s been eating a lot of carrots lately. My granddaughter thought it was a good idea. For the eyes?”

  “You’ve been feeding your cats carrots? Not very smart, Vesta,” said Vena, who was a forceful woman, built like an oxen and with a hale and hearty manner. “Cats aren’t rabbits, you know. No, I think she’s been spending far too much time on that tablet of yours and you should probably hide it in the closet for a while where she can’t get at it.”

  “No more tablet!” Harriet cried, extremely dismayed. “But I need that tablet, Gran! It’s got all my favorite sites. Like Goop and US Weekly and Cosmo and TMZ!”

  “I’ll make sure she doesn’t spend another minute on that tablet,” said Vesta decidedly.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with her,” said Vena, having concluded her examination. “So let’s hope that does the trick. Even though cats have superior eyesight compared to humans their eyes can deteriorate with age or because of disease. So I’m going to prescribe her some eye drops and please please please put her on her regular diet again. You can give her the odd carrot—but only if she absolutely loves them.”

  “I hate carrots,” Harriet announced morosely. “I hate the taste and I hate the texture. It’s like eating a piece of cardboard.”

  “So why did you eat them then?” asked Vesta, before realizing she wasn’t supposed to talk to her cats. She gave the vet a smile—the smile of a confused old lady who doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time.

  “I ate them because I’d read—on my tablet—that carrots are good for the eyes.”

  Vesta rolled her own eyes, then patted her cat on the back. “She’s a sweetheart, but sometimes when she gets something in her head, it’s very hard to get it out again.”

  “She’s not the only one,” said Vena, who’d taken place behind her desk and was writing out a prescription. “In fact I think Harriet takes after you, Vesta.”