“I know, but I thought it couldn’t do any harm if she simply talked to a couple of people in town, you know, like shopkeepers that maybe served Robert at some point over the course of the last week. Pick up gossip about what people thought of him and such. But instead, she’s actually talking to potential witnesses and inserting herself into the investigation big-time.”

  Chase actually grinned at this. “She reminds me of a certain person who also used to insert herself into my investigations all the time.”

  “Oh?” she said innocently. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

  “A certain someone who, in spite of the fact that I told her off in no uncertain terms on many occasions, still persisted. And as a consequence, ended up solving more than a few murders.”

  “Well, Gran isn’t me, Chase. She has a way to go about things that puts people’s backs up.”

  “You put my back up when I first arrived in Hampton Cove,” he reminded her.

  “That was different. You came from a different background, where you didn’t think members of the general public could be helpful in your investigations.”

  “And yet you proved time and again that you were. So helpful that I’ve often wondered if we shouldn’t send you to the police academy to make an honest cop out of you.”

  “I’m a reporter first and foremost, Chase,” she reminded him. “If I wanted to be a cop, I would have said yes to my uncle’s suggestion years ago.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Alec suggested you become a cop?”

  “Of course. Many times. But I love being a reporter. In fact, I love the way things are now: as a police consultant, I get to participate—”

  “Meddle.”

  “Participate in any investigation where I’m needed—”

  “And even those where you’re not.”

  She gave him a grin. “You love it.”

  “I do,” he admitted. “I think you have a knack. Though without the assistance of your cats, I’m not sure your success rate would be quite as high as it is now.”

  They glanced down to where Max and Dooley were intently listening to their conversation. They were still in the mess, and as far as Odelia could tell, had spoken to all the crew members, with her cats listening in and providing an occasional comment. Unfortunately, nobody had presented them with a clue that would ‘break this case wide open,’ as Gran had termed it.

  Chase’s officers had also searched all the cabins—in fact, they had searched the entire vessel—but so far hadn’t found anything of note. No little vial with cyanide hidden underneath someone’s mattress. No threatening letters. No diary revealing a long history of harassment on Mr. Ross’s part, causing the killer to see no alternative but to get rid of the man once and for all.

  “So what do you think, Max?” she asked now. “Any leads?”

  “Nothing,” said Max disappointingly. “As far as I can tell, Robert Ross was not very well-liked by his crew members. He acted cold and aloof and treated them like serfs and underlings, demanding they didn’t look him in the eye and pretend to be invisible, except when he needed them to wait on him hand and foot as if he was some kind of lord and master. And he kept harassing Suzanne Palmer to the point she might have to quit her job. Not a nice man.”

  “No, I think we can all agree that he was a real piece of work.”

  “And the litter mystery has also been solved,” Dooley pointed out. “It was Suzanne who tracked that litter all over the cabin and also the ship when she changed Flame’s litter box.”

  She turned to her husband. “We should look into this Sebastian Poe business, babe. A dead man who shows up the day before his best friend is murdered? I wonder what that was all about.”

  “Already on it,” said Chase as he texted a message on his phone, presumably instructing one of his officers to dig a little deeper into Sebastian Poe’s relationship with Robert Ross. When Max had brought the man to their attention, they had asked the crew members about it, but none of them had clapped eyes on this childhood friend. So Odelia was inclined to think that either Flame was mistaken or that Robert had invited Poe on board during one of those moments he’d demanded to be left alone, which had happened more and more often. As if there were people he wanted to meet that he didn’t want the members of the ship’s crew to know about.

  A man like Robert Ross was, of course, very attached to his privacy, and all the crew members had signed a non-disclosure agreement before they were hired. But even so, it was probably hard to determine who had leaked certain information to the media. Or even tipped off a paparazzo to snap a couple of pictures of this or that person boarding the vessel to meet with Robert. After having been a major international movie star, the man had become a little paranoid, and possibly with good reason.

  “Okay, so where are we?” asked Chase, stretching for a moment, his back crackling as he did.

  “We know that Robert probably died around ten o’clock, possibly from cyanide poisoning, after sending the crew off the ship, possibly because he was meeting someone, though we can’t be sure that he was.”

  “A lot of possibly’s and probably’s,” Chase grunted.

  It was true that, even though they had talked to all the crew members, they still didn’t have a lot of information about what happened that morning. Even Robert’s dog, Flame, apparently hadn’t seen this mystery guest Robert was supposedly meeting since she was being walked at the time. So not only had Robert sent all the crew members ashore, but even his own dog. How odd was that? Or maybe it was simply a coincidence.

  CHAPTER 11

  We left the Aurora feeling a little puzzled. Odelia and Chase were puzzled by the mystery of the death of the famous actor. Dooley was puzzled by the mystery of the litter monster, whose identity he thought he had finally solved but had to admit had eluded him once more. And I was puzzled by the fact that I hadn’t had a nap in hours and still felt more or less functional. Then again, they always say you probably need a lot less sleep than you think you do, so maybe that was the answer to that particular riddle.

  Chase decided to head to the police station to work on his report of the different interviews they had conducted. Odelia set foot for the Gazette offices to work on an article about the murder, always keeping in mind that she should not disclose information crucial to the investigation. And Dooley and I? Well, we were in a quandary for a moment.

  My first inclination was to follow Odelia and take a long and much-deserved nap in her office, as we often do, and allow inspiration to come to us, which it invariably does. Then again, I had this feeling we probably wouldn’t be getting any sleep at all, for Odelia would be on the phone talking to people and interrupting our pleasant slumber. So instead, we decided to head home where we could nap in absolute peace and quiet. And since the road home led past the General Store, we popped in to say hi to Kingman and ask if he’d heard anything worth reporting about this murder business.

  Kingman was chatting with Buster, the tabby belonging to Fido Siniawski, the hair stylist who coifs pretty much everyone in town, including but not limited to all of our own family members.

  “I just heard,” said Buster in a sort of breathless way. “James Fox! Murdered! How is that even possible! I thought James Fox couldn’t die!”

  “James Fox did die,” said Kingman, and when Buster gazed at him in horror, he shrugged. “I’m sorry if this is a spoiler, but in his last movie James Fox did actually die. Though I’m sure he’ll still be back. Not sure how, but then Hollywood is great at reviving people, so they’ll probably find a way.”

  “Well, Robert Ross also died,” I said, “and that’s because he’s a human person, or was, and James Fox is not. He’s just a character created by a writer.”

  “Well, I know that, of course,” said Buster with a laugh. “But still...” He was quiet for a moment, as we all were. It isn’t every day that James Fox, or at least the actor playing James Fox, dies. And not even in a firefight with the evil Dr. Maybe or because he sets off some huge bomb or something, but simply because he is poisoned, then thrown into his own pool.

  “So did you hear anything about this?” I asked Kingman.

  “Well...” The big cat hesitated.

  “Yes?” I asked encouragingly.

  “Rumor has it that Robert had a sweetheart in town, though nobody knows who she is.”

  “A sweetheart? You mean like a girlfriend?”

  “Like sailors have girlfriends in every port,” said Kingman, “Ross had a girlfriend in every country. And in this country, his girlfriend happened to live in Hampton Cove, though, to be honest, I very much doubt that to be the case. But for what it’s worth, I still registered the information, knowing sooner or later you’d show up and ask me all about it.” He took a deep breath and launched into his tale. “Okay, so from what I’ve heard, Robert Ross, long before he became the Robert Ross, was dating his high school sweetheart. Only something happened, and they broke up. At which point Robert decided to take his broken heart and leave town. Only to come back many years later as a rich and famous movie star.”

  “So who’s the girl?” I asked.

  But Kingman shook his head. “I didn’t get any names. Only that they went to school together, and they were high school sweethearts, and everyone thought they were going to get married, but then they didn’t.”

  “Maybe that’s the reason Robert finally decided to pick up his award,” I told Dooley. For Kingman and Buster’s sake, I reiterated what Gran had told Odelia over the phone about the Chamber of Commerce thing. That Ross had refused the award for fifteen years in a row before finally accepting it this year.

  “Maybe he figured he wasn’t famous enough yet,” Kingman ventured. “Figured he needed to be really famous before returning to the town where his heart was broken.”

  “Or maybe he simply didn’t want to face his high school sweetheart,” said Buster. “And finally, his manager told him that he couldn’t keep putting it off, so he said yes.”

  “Do you think they ended up meeting again?” asked Dooley. Then his eyes went wide. “Max! Maybe she was the mystery guest! The one he told his crew to go ashore for so he could meet her in private. And then she killed him!”

  “It’s possible,” I allowed. It was imperative we got a name, though. Which probably wouldn’t be all that hard for Chase and Odelia, since Ross and the girl had been in school together, so other kids in their year must have known all about this ill-fated romance.

  “I think it’s all very romantic,” said Buster fervently. “Local boy done good returns to his long-lost love. Maybe they fell in love all over again before some mysterious hand struck him down.”

  “I’m with Dooley on this one,” said Kingman. “I’ll bet it was her hand that struck him down. Probably because he knew too much about her.”

  “What could he possibly know about her that caused her to murder him fifteen or more years after the fact?” I asked.

  “How old was Ross?” asked Kingman.

  “Um... forty-three,” I said.

  “If he left town at eighteen, that means they broke up twenty-five years ago, Max, not fifteen.”

  “So you’re looking for Robert Ross’s forty-three-year-old ex-girlfriend,” said Buster. “Shouldn’t be hard, especially for your policeman human, Max.”

  “No, I can’t imagine Chase would find it hard to determine the identity of this woman,” I agreed.

  “I just hope she has cats or a dog,” said Dooley. “Though preferably cats, of course, since cats never lie, and dogs do. They’re treacherous that way.”

  “Dogs lie? What makes you say that?” asked Buster.

  “Well, we talked to Robert’s dog,” Dooley explained. “And she claimed to know nothing about either the murder or the visit of this person this morning. Which is very unlikely, as dogs always know.” He gave us a knowing look. “They have an instinct about their humans, so they know. But they’re also fiercely loyal, so they will never talk. And so they will lie when asked to spill the beans, just like Flame did.”

  “Flame, is that the dog’s name?” Kingman wanted to know.

  Dooley nodded. “And I still think she was lying about that litter. I’m pretty sure she knows all about the litter monster, but she simply chose to protect her for some reason that I haven’t figured out yet. But I’m going to,” he promised.

  Oh, dear.

  CHAPTER 12

  Harriet had been prancing along next to her boyfriend Brutus and Gran when, all of a sudden, she had an idea. One of those bright ideas she got all the time. Though it probably wasn’t too much to say it was a brilliant one. And so she told Brutus, “I think I know who killed Robert Ross, honey bunny.”

  “Yeah, who?” asked Brutus in that customary slightly gruff way of his that she liked so much. He was, after all, a real cat’s cat—a hero of many battles. One could even say that he was the Humphrey Bogart of cats and wouldn’t have been out of place in one of that man’s movies, donning the actor’s trademark hat and looking very butch. Okay, so maybe not.

  “Suzanne Palmer!” said Harriet. “So we know that the guy had been harassing her non-stop from the moment she joined the crew, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So what if he actually took things one step further one night and actually assaulted her? And then Suzanne, instead of going to the cops, since she knew that Robert was a powerful and famous man and they might not believe her, talked to the captain instead. And the captain told the rest of the crew, and they all banded together to conspire to kill their colleague’s tormentor.”

  She gave her partner a triumphant look, fully expecting him to applaud her brilliant deduction. But instead, he grimaced. “Doubtful,” he told her.

  “What!”

  “Honey muffin, in this day and age, movie actors aren’t as powerful as they used to be, and they sure as heck can’t get away with something like that, especially when the rest of the crew is prepared to testify on Suzanne’s behalf. So as attractive as your theory sounds, I don’t think that’s what happened.”

  “Well, I do,” she said stubbornly. “In fact, I’m prepared to bet on it.”

  He grinned. “What do you want to bet?”

  “I’ll bet that it’s actually one of our humans who has done away with our litter.”

  “You think so? But why?”

  “To save money, of course. Do you know how expensive cat litter is? They probably didn’t want to admit that they’ve decided to economize, so they simply emptied our litter boxes, forcing us to do our business out in Blake’s Field.”

  “But if that’s true, that means that we’ll have to continue using Blake’s Field from now on. Always!”

  She nodded slowly. It was a terrifying prospect since she, especially, had to tinkle all the time. And if she had to traipse all the way over to Blake’s Field every time she had to answer nature’s call, it was going to seriously cut into her nap time.

  “So maybe we should look for an alternative,” she now said.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, if they’re so determined to make us do our business outside, why don’t we use their precious rose bushes from now on? I’ll bet that if we consistently do this, the four of us, our litter will make a sudden and unexplained comeback, and we won’t have to go to Blake’s Field anymore.”

  He eyed her with admiration written all over his features. Now this was the kind of look she liked to see on her boyfriend’s face. The look that said she was the smartest cat on the block. Okay, so maybe not the smartest, for that was Max, paws down, but at least the most resourceful one. She was willing to bet that even Max couldn’t have hit on such a brilliant solution to a problem that had been vexing them since that morning when they first discovered their litter boxes devoid of one of its most important ingredients, not to mention its raison d’être, namely litter.

  “That’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard, honey plum,” he said. “I’ll bet it won’t take more than a day, two tops, before our litter is back where it belongs: in our boxes, ready to process, with a capacity of forty times its own weight, the products of our bladder and bowel movements.”

  They had arrived at the Star Hotel, where Gran had decided to take a load off her feet and meet up with her friend Scarlett. And as the two ladies took a seat at one of the tables in the outside dining area, Harriet and Brutus hoped they wouldn’t forget about them and at the very least offer them a dish of water.

  “So what’s all this I hear about Robert Ross being murdered?” asked Scarlett as she sipped from her cappuccino.

  “It’s true,” Gran confirmed. “Odelia found him floating in his pool this morning.”

  “The pool on his own private yacht,” said Scarlett appreciatively.

  “And a nice yacht it was,” Gran confirmed. “One of those big fancy ones.”

  “So who did it?” asked Scarlett.

  “That, we don’t know yet,” Gran confessed. “Though it wouldn’t surprise me if the crew decided to band together and off the guy.”

  “The crew? But why? Was he such a horrible boss?”

  “He was,” Gran said. “Harassing poor innocent girls and generally being pretty uncool to the rest of the crew. So they poisoned him.”

  Harriet turned to her boyfriend. “See? I told you I was onto something.”

  “Mere speculation and hearsay,” he said, sounding more like Perry Mason all of a sudden and less like Humphrey Bogart.

  “I still think that’s what happened, and obviously Gran thinks the same thing. We’ll tell Max,” she finally decided. “He’ll know it’s true.”

  “Mh,” said Brutus noncommittally.

  “What? You don’t think Max will know?”

  “Max always knows,” said Brutus with a sigh, as if it was the bane of his existence.

  There had been a time when Brutus decided to compete with Max as a detective, but he had soon admitted that no one could best their large blorange friend in that department. According to Dooley, it had something to do with the size of Max’s head, which just might be true. A head that size must have been designed to accommodate a very large brain. And since Max often ate fish, and fish is known for its brain-enhancing qualities, that was Max’s big secret revealed. Though it had to be said he really was very smart when it came to solving mysteries.