“So you think your ex-boyfriend is behind this?” asked Odelia.

  “I do, yes. He took our break-up really hard, so that wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Have you confronted him?”

  “I sent him a message. He says it’s not him. But that doesn’t mean anything. He’s jealous, he’s hurting, and he’s not thinking straight.”

  “Okay, so you really think he might send this to the Griffiths?”

  “Absolutely. Anything to stop the wedding.” She took another deep breath. “Which is why I wanted to ask you to talk to Oliver. I called him, but he denies everything, even though he must have sent this.”

  “I see,” said Odelia. “You want me to convince Oliver to stop sending you these messages and—”

  “To delete any remaining pictures, yes.”

  “I’m not sure if…”

  Emily scooted forward in her chair. “I’d try to do it myself, but I’m leaving for the South of France tomorrow. Saint-Tropez, to be exact. Harry’s parents own a yacht out there and they’ve invited me to stay with them for the next two weeks. So you see, it’s very important that Oliver stop his campaign.”

  Odelia reached for her digital notepad. “He lives in Hampton Cove, this Oliver…”

  “Rose. I’ll give you the address. He still lives with his parents. Which was one of the reasons I broke up with him. He’s not a very mature person, and refuses to grow up. He’s a very talented graphic artist, but all he does all day is fool around with his friends and have fun, even though he’s almost thirty now.”

  “I know the type,” said Odelia as she jotted down the name.

  “So you’ll do it?” asked Emily, hope surging in her bosom.

  “I’ll have a chat with him, if that’s what you want,” said Odelia. “But I can’t guarantee that I’ll be more successful than you. I can’t make him delete those pictures. For that you’d need to go to the police.”

  “Oh, no. No police,” said Emily, alarmed. “I want this to be handled with absolute discretion. If I bring the police into this the Griffiths might find out what’s going on, and then the wedding is definitely off.”

  “Harry would break up with you if these pictures got out?”

  “I… I don’t know,” said Emily. “But I don’t want to take that chance. I don’t want him to have to choose between me and his family.”

  “Or lose that substantial family fortune,” said Odelia dryly.

  Emily smiled weakly. “I like to think that Harry loves me enough not to let something like the Griffiths Clause stand between us, but I really don’t want to be the one to drive a wedge between him and his parents, which is what would happen if these pictures got out.”

  “It’s a very nice picture,” said Odelia. “Very artistic.”

  “I know. But I’m afraid it’s still too much for the Griffiths.”

  Odelia thought for a moment. “Okay, so I’ll talk to Oliver, but I would also advise you to talk to Harry. Show him this message.”

  Emily shook her head adamantly. “Out of the question. I don’t want him to know anything about this.”

  “But if he loves you…”

  Emily chewed her bottom lip. “I don’t know…”

  “Think about it,” said Odelia. “But if Oliver decides to go ahead and send your pictures to Harry’s parents, it’s important that you and he present a united front. And maybe convince the Griffiths to get rid of this whole clause business, which just seems outdated to me.”

  “I’ll give it some thought,” Emily promised. She seemed extremely relieved that Odelia had decided to take the case. “Please let me know how things go with Oliver, will you?”

  “When is your flight?” asked Odelia, getting up.

  And as the two cousins chatted about Emily’s upcoming trip to France, Dooley and I shared a look of concern. This was the second time that this concept of vacationing in the South of France had reared its ugly head, and coming so soon on the heels of Gran’s announcement, it just seemed ominous to me.

  “I don’t like this, Max,” said Dooley.

  “I don’t like it either,” Brutus grumbled.

  “What did I tell you?” said Harriet. “Before you know it, the whole family will relocate to France, and we’ll be left behind, you guys!”

  “We won’t let that happen,” I said. But I have to admit I had a bad feeling.

  This French connection was sneaking up on us!

  CHAPTER 6

  As Emily had indicated, Oliver Rose still lived with his parents. More specifically he lived in their basement, which he had turned into a sort of bachelor pad for geeks. As we descended into Emily’s former boyfriend’s man cave, the smell was something awful, a ripe blend of smelly armpits, moldering underwear, weed and cold pizza. I detected several computers humming away on a desk, something that looked like an iron throne in a corner, posters announcing the end of the world and victory for Team Stark, and a very large television in front of which young Master Oliver was playing a computer game.

  He was lying on his couch, unshaven and unwashed, and looked like a transplant from the seventies, with his dirty long hair and ratty beard. He looked up in alarm as we entered his personal space.

  “Who are you?” he demanded as he put down his game controller.

  “Oh, hi, Mr. Rose,” said Odelia as she ducked a low-hanging beam from which a shrunken head dangled—a fake, I hoped. “My name is Odelia Kingsley. Emily King asked me to pay you a visit.”

  Judging from the way the man’s ears pricked up, she had succeeded in capturing his attention. “What about Emily?” He then darted a curious look at myself and Dooley. “And what’s with the cats?”

  “Don’t mind them,” said Odelia as she joined the young man. “So Emily tells me you’ve been sending her messages?”

  “What messages? What are you talking about?”

  “Threatening messages, Mr. Rose. Which is not very nice of you.”

  He frowned for a moment. “Oh, the picture. I didn’t send that. Which is also what I told Emily.” He got into a sitting position and wrapped his bathrobe more tightly around his skinny frame. “Is that why she sent you? She still thinks I’m the one who sent her that picture?”

  “Who else could have sent it?” asked Odelia, removing three empty cans of Red Bull from the couch and carefully seating herself. “You’re the one who took the picture, and you’re the only one who has it—and others.”

  “Look, I don’t know what Emily told you, but I would never do anything to hurt her. I love her, and if Harry hadn’t stolen her away from me, we would still be together.”

  “Isn’t that the reason you sent her that message? To try and win her back?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Oliver. “Like I said, I would never do such a thing.”

  “So how do you explain this?” asked Odelia, and showed the guy a screenshot of the message Emily had received.

  He studied the image for a moment, a frown creasing his brow, then shook his head. “I don’t get it. How did they get ahold of this picture? I mean, I never shared it with anyone—I swear.”

  “Emily told me she deleted those pictures,” said Odelia.

  “I know she did. But I kept copies,” said Oliver, and when Odelia gave him a look of disapproval he shrugged a pair of bony shoulders. “Hey, she’s the one who dumped me, not the other way around. I wanted to keep a souvenir of our time together, which was epic, by the way. The stuff of romantic lore. Romeo and Juliet level shit. And besides, like I said I never showed them to anyone.”

  “Okay, so if you didn’t send this message, and you never shared Emily’s pictures with anyone, how did it end up on her phone?”

  His frown deepened. “I’m sorry but I don’t get it, Mrs…”

  “Kingsley,” Odelia repeated. “I’m Emily’s cousin, by the way.”

  “Didn’t even know she had a cousin,” he mumbled as he scratched his dirty long tresses. He reached out and grabbed a laptop, opened it and started tapping the keys furiously. After a moment he turned the screen to Odelia. “These are all the pictures I have, but I never sent them to anyone, least of all Emily. I’m not crazy. I want to get her back, sure, but even I know that this is not the way.”

  Odelia studied the pictures for a moment. They were all part of the same set, all of them very modest in my personal opinion, with Emily’s delicate bits discreetly obscured by a towel that sported a big cannabis symbol. She looked ravishing, her hair sporting that out-of-bed look that’s so popular.

  “The only thing I can think of is that my phone must have been hacked,” said Oliver. “And that whoever did the hacking is now sending these messages, making it look like it’s me—but it’s not!”

  “Okay, so these pictures were on your phone, yes?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Emily deleted them, I kept a backup in the cloud, and I restored them from that backup.”

  “And so now you’re saying someone got into your phone.”

  “Or my cloud account, or my computer.” He grimaced. “I know you don’t believe me, Mrs. Kingsley, but I swear on the heads of Bran and Sansa Stark that I didn’t do this.”

  Odelia studied Emily’s ex-boyfriend for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, so if you didn’t do it, then who did?”

  “Must be one of those Griffiths,” said Oliver. “You know what those fat cats are like.” For some reason he looked at me when he spoke these words.

  “Hey!” I said. “I’m not fat, mister!”

  Oliver grinned. “Your cats seem agitated.”

  “Like I said, don’t mind them,” said Odelia. “What do you mean by that? Why would the Griffiths hack your phone and send threatening messages to Harry’s fiancée?”

  Oliver’s eyes went wide. “Wow, so they’re engaged now? That was quick.”

  “Just answer the question, Oliver.”

  He grabbed his beard and gave it a gentle tug. The gesture seemed to assist him in thinking this thing through. “So the Griffiths are this high-powered, uber-rich family, right? And families like that don’t like it when their sons or daughters marry people like Emily.”

  Odelia narrowed her eyes. “People like Emily?”

  “Poor people, all right? You do know that Emily is a Zumba teacher? Not exactly part of the happy few. So when Harry decided to join her class, and swept her off her feet, his family might consider that a case of slumming, okay? Great for a roll in the hay, but not exactly marriage material, no way. So they probably tried to convince Harry to get rid of her the moment he introduced her. And when that didn’t work, they told one of the goon squad to take a closer look at the undesirable Miss King and dig up some dirt.”

  “The goon squad?”

  “You know. People like the Griffiths have folks working for them that handle delicate matters like getting rid of unwanted girlfriends and boyfriends. Paying them off, or encouraging them to take a hike.”

  “So you think Harry’s parents are behind these messages.”

  “Absolutely. Who else could it be? Unless Harry has some girlfriend he broke up with so he could be with Emily, of course.” He pointed a finger in Odelia’s direction. “Now that’s something you might want to look into, instead of harassing little old me.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Max?”

  “Mh?”

  “Do you think Oliver was lying when he said he didn’t send those messages?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He certainly looked truthful to me. But then again it’s hard to gauge whether a person is lying or not. I do think he still carries a torch for Emily.”

  My friend stared at me. “Why would Oliver carry a torch for Emily? Can’t she carry her own torch?”

  “It’s just an expression, Dooley. It means he’s still in love with her. And so it’s very much possible that he’d do something stupid like trying to break up her engagement by sending her those messages.”

  We were in Odelia’s pickup, on our way back to the office. Odelia seemed to feel that she’d done her bit to remove the threat hanging over her distant cousin’s head, and was ready to dive back into the curious incident of the beaver on Long Island.

  “He might have a point when he said that we should probably look into Harry’s family,” our human said now, not taking her eyes off the road as she spoke. “If they don’t want Harry to marry Emily, it’s possible that they’ll try anything to break off the engagement, including blackmail.”

  “So what are you going to do now?” I asked.

  “Now I’m going to report to Emily, and let her decide what she wants to do next. Chances are that whoever sent those messages doesn’t have the intention to follow up on their threat, and that soon Emily and Harry will be married and live happily ever after.” She directed a glance at us in her rearview mirror. “We might even be invited to the wedding. We are family, after all.”

  “Distant, very distant family,” I said. I’m not big on weddings, you see, and the last thing I wanted was to join some extravagant big do.

  “If you ask me, this whole thing will blow over once those two are married,” said Odelia. “Whoever is behind these threats will soon realize that whatever they try, they won’t be able to stop the wedding. And that a happy ending is inevitable.” She shifted in her seat. “On another note, have you guys ever met a beaver?”

  “Odelia…” I began.

  “Just hear me out. How about an exclusive interview with the first beaver to be seen on these shores in a decade? Wouldn’t that be something?”

  “It would be something, all right,” I said. “But not something I want to be involved with.”

  “Oh, Max, don’t be like that,” she said.

  “Beavers are big, Odelia,” I said. “And heavy. And they have big teeth, strong enough to chew through a log, let alone a cat!”

  “They have orange teeth,” said Dooley. “I saw that on a documentary once,” he explained.

  “See?” said Odelia. “Beavers are orange, you’re orange. Something you guys have in common. A great way to break the ice, Max.”

  “First off, I’m not orange, I’m blorange. And second, it’ll be a great way to break me, not the ice!”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” said Odelia stubbornly. She glanced at Dooley. “How about you? Do you want to interview a beaver?”

  “Um…” said Dooley, giving me nervous glances.

  “Just say no,” I whispered. “She can’t make you!”

  “I heard that!” said Odelia. She shrugged. “Okay, so if you really don’t want to do it, I’ll just have to tell Dan I don’t have a story for tomorrow’s paper. No paper, no salary. No salary, no food. Simple.”

  Dooley and I both chewed on this for a moment. Then I said resignedly, “Okay, so where is this beaver of yours?”

  “It’s not my beaver, Max,” she said. “It’s a beaver.” But she was smiling triumphantly when she said it.

  Emily had received Odelia’s message that her interview with Oliver had yielded no clues. As far as she could tell, her ex-boyfriend was innocent, and the more likely scenario was that someone had hacked his phone. She was rereading the message for the third time when two hands wrapped around her eyes from behind and a voice whispered in her ear, “Who is Odelia Kingsley and why is she sending you messages?”

  “Oh, Harry,” she said, feeling caught. Then, in a split second decision, she figured she’d better come clean. So she handed him the phone and watched as he read Odelia’s message.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “What’s all this about Oliver and a picture?”

  They were in her small apartment, located above a bakery, where they had spent many a wonderful time since the day they met. She had come to trust him, even though her friends had told her no good could possibly come from mingling with a member of the Griffiths family. She had argued that they didn’t know Harry like she did. That he was such a great guy: sensitive, intelligent and compassionate. So maybe now the time had come to put her money where her mouth was and tell him the truth. A marriage based on a lie wasn’t much of a marriage at all, so… “I received a threatening message a couple of days ago, along with an old picture of me. A picture Oliver took when we were still together.”

  She took her phone and scrolled through to the first message, then the second.

  Harry studied the picture for a moment, and a smile curled the corners of his lips. “Pretty,” he said. “And you’re saying Oliver took this?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s got talent. Or maybe he was inspired by his model.”

  “But you understand the threat, don’t you?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” said Harry, as he took a seat next to her at the kitchen table. “They want you to break up with me. And if you don’t, they’ll send this picture, and others like it, to my folks, who’ll invoke the Griffiths Clause and cancel the wedding.”

  “Which is why I asked Odelia Kingsley, who’s a distant cousin of mine, to go and talk to Oliver and tell him to stop this nonsense. Only she doesn’t think it’s him.”

  “Okay, look,” said Harry, and covered her hand with his. The warm sensation seeped into her clammy fingers and lifted her heart. “First off, this whole thing about ‘The Clause’ is probably way overrated. I mean, did my grandfather mean what he said when he added that clause to his will? Sure. But Mom and Dad are modern people. They know that we love each other, and a couple of pictures your ex-boyfriend took aren’t going to make any difference.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, and started to tear up a little as he spoke.

  “Are all the pictures like this one?”

  “Yeah, they are.”

  “So what are you so worried about? They’re beautiful, and so are you.” He stroked her cheek. “It’s probably some jealous person, trying to get under your skin. Don’t let them, would be my advice.”

  “But the clause…”

  “Don’t worry about the clause. You’re not a bank robber, are you? Or a thief? And you’re not a murderer either. I’m sure those are the kind of people my grandfather had in mind when he drew up his will. Not a couple of innocent pictures.” He smiled. “Is that why you’ve been so quiet?”