“Yeah. No, of course I won’t do this again. Absolutely.”

  “Then I’ll consider this matter resolved,” said Chase with a touch of finality.

  Though as they left the house, and judging from the look on Mrs. Bunyon’s face, it was clear the last word about Karl’s anti-cat initiative hadn’t been spoken yet.

  15

  The next morning we were up early, and traveling along our usual haunts to collect those nice little tidbits of information and gossip our human likes to gather preparatory to writing her articles for the Gazette: usually we do the rounds of the whole town, starting with a visit to Kingman, then on to the barbershop, where another one of our contacts usually is able to supply us with some juicy bits hot from the lips of Fido’s clients, and then of course there’s the police station, where we like to spy on Uncle Alec, also known as Chief Alec, our town’s chief of police. Now I know that Uncle Alec likes to keep Odelia in the loop, but there’s always stuff that falls through the cracks, and it is for this reason that Dooley and myself found ourselves out on Uncle Alec’s windowsill, ready to do our bit for the furtherance of the information mill churning out fresh grist.

  As luck would have it, Uncle Alec and Chase were engaged in a meeting, discussing recent events, and more in particular the discovery of the dead body in the woods.

  “So I hear you caught your catnapper last night?” the Chief grumbled.

  “Yeah, but his wife isn’t going to press charges,” said Chase as he sat across from his superior officer, his long legs stretched out before him, his strong arms crossed in front of his muscular chest. “And since we’re not pressing charges either, it looks as if Karl Bunyon is off the hook.”

  “And he’s sure he didn’t see anyone out in those woods?”

  “Nope. Didn’t see anyone.”

  “And you’re absolutely convinced he’s not the killer we’re after?”

  “Pretty sure. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d go around murdering innocent vagrants, Chief. In fact you should have seen the guy. You would feel sorry for him, too. First dumped by his first wife, and now having to live with the cat of his second wife even though he hates cats.”

  “I thought you said he’s allergic to them?”

  “Pretty sure he simply hates cats.”

  “Okay, all right,” said the Chief as he dragged his sausage-sized fingers through the few remaining strands of hair on his large dome. “So we got the coroner’s report and it takes us exactly nowhere.” He frowned darkly at his computer, as if it had personally offended him, and said, “Body of an unidentified male between fifty-five and sixty years of age, fingerprints not in the system. All we know is that he was shot through the head with a .38 caliber bullet, and that he’s been living rough for the past couple of years.”

  “So basically a bum.”

  “I don’t think that’s the politically correct term, but yeah, basically a bum. And so far we’ve got nothing.” Uncle Alec then happened to glance in my direction and rolled his eyes. “And if you’ve got any sense, Max!” he said, raising his voice, “You should be out there gathering clues for me, not spying on whatever I have to say in here, all right!”

  I gave the chief a one-nailed salute, and said, “Come on, Dooley. Nothing to see here, I’m afraid.”

  And we were just about to jump down from that windowsill when suddenly the door to Uncle Alec’s office burst open and a red-faced man stormed in and yelled, “I want to press charges, Chief. I want to press charges against your brother-in-law!”

  Dooley gave me a curious glance. “I take it we’re going to stick around a little longer?”

  “Oh, you bet we are,” I said, and we both hunkered down again.

  “What are you talking about?” asked the Chief indignantly.

  “Tex Poole is your brother-in-law, is he not?”

  “Yeah, he is. So what?”

  “So he hacked my company’s computer system last night, and installed what is commonly termed ransomware on the entire system, and now he’s asking for one million dollars in bitcoin or else he’ll keep my company hostage!”

  Uncle Alec and Chase shared a look of concern, then the Chief turned back to the red-faced man. He had one of those square heads you don’t see very often, and his neck wouldn’t have looked out of place on an old turtle, but otherwise he wasn’t as old as all that. I would have pegged him in his early fifties or late forties. He also had a large belly, one that stuck out from the vest of his dark blue suit.

  “Who are you?” asked Chase.

  “My name is Fred Kramer, and I run Kramer Kitchen Kreation,” said the man.

  “Fred Kramer as in the Kitchen King?”

  “One and the same. And as I just explained to you, I want to press charges against Tex Poole. I want you to make him release my system. I can’t do anything right now. Payroll, inventory, my list of customers, orders, invoicing, everything is blocked. I can’t do a damn thing! And if he really thinks I’m going to pay him a million bucks he’s nuts!”

  “Okay, all right,” said Chase, holding up his hands. “And how do you know that Tex Poole is the one behind all this?”

  “Because I’ve had my IT guy working on this since five o’clock this morning when we discovered the break-in, and he says the IP address connected with the attack is Tex Poole’s. And since I just happen to know a couple of people in this town, and I asked around, they all said he’s your brother-in-law!”

  Uncle Alec nodded. “Look, Tex Poole is a doctor, all right? And he knows just about as much about computers as I do, which is to say zilch. So it’s impossible that he would be involved in something like this… ransomware attack you’ve got going on.”

  “I’m just telling you what my IT guy told me: the IP address connected with the attack is registered to Tex Poole. And that’s all I need to know to file charges against the man, and to demand that you arrest him and force him to release my computer systems. And if you don’t want to take him down because he’s family, I’m going to the Mayor and I’m going to demand that she takes action. And if the Mayor won’t do anything, because she’s your girlfriend—oh, yes, I know about that, too—I’m going to the FBI!”

  “Okay, let’s just calm down for a moment,” said Uncle Alec, “and think this thing through. Look, I know for a fact that Tex has got nothing to do with this, because, as I just said, the man is a computer illiterate.”

  “Says you!” Mr. Kramer shook his head. “The gall of the man. And to think he was in my shop yesterday, picking out a new kitchen, along with his wife and his mother.”

  “His mother?” asked the Chief, looking up.

  Mr. Kramer nodded. “Yeah, some white-haired little old lady in a blue tracksuit. She was the one calling the shots.” Just then, his phone chimed, and he picked it out of his pocket. “Steve, yeah, shoot!” He listened for a moment, then frowned and said, “You did? But that’s great! Yeah, I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He disconnected, still frowning, and said, “Looks like my IT guy has managed to break through the malware or whatever they planted on my computers. And now he’s saying the attack did not come from Tex Poole.”

  “Look, Tex Poole doesn’t know diddly about computers, all right?” said Uncle Alec, not for the first time, “So I can tell you with absolute certainty that whatever happened, the man wasn’t involved.”

  The Kitchen King thumped the desk with his fist. “I’m still pressing charges!”

  “I thought your IT guy said that Tex didn’t do it?” said Chase.

  Fred Kramer frowned again. “Yeah, I don’t get that.” And as swiftly as he’d entered the office, he walked out again, then turned and said, “I’m still pressing charges!” and after that parting shot, he was gone.

  Dooley and I jumped down from the windowsill to see what happened next, and where this irate furniture king was going, and as we followed his progress from the building, we saw that he got into a nice black Tesla and took off at a dizzying speed. And just as he drove out of the parking lot outside the precinct, a little red Peugeot came zooming in, also driving very fast, and occupying a much larger swath of road than was necessarily awarded it, based on the road markings.

  The upshot, of course, was that the little red Peugeot, coincidentally chauffeured by Grandma Muffin, sliced a nice long strip of black paint off Fred Kramer’s Tesla.

  16

  “You scratched my car!” said the guy. He looked like a turtle, Vesta thought, with his square bald head and his weird neck. He also looked angry. “You’re going to pay for this!”

  “Hey, aren’t you that Kitchen King?” asked Scarlett. “Fred Kramer? I love your commercials, Mr. Kramer.” She started to sing, “I’m on a mission—to give everyone a swell new kitchen—you won’t miss a thing—when you buy a kitchen from the king.”

  “I was in your shop yesterday,” said Vesta, who’d also recognized the guy now.

  Mr. Kramer frowned, and for a moment two different sentiments seemed to engage in a tug of war inside his bosom: the desire to please a potential customer on the one hand, and the desire to squash the person who’d scratched his nice car. Then the salesman in him seemed to get the upper hand, and he forced something approaching a smile on his face and said, “I remember you. You were with your son-in-law Tex Poole, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” said Vesta. “In fact we were going to drop by again, but not until we talked to the cops first. Did you know that someone tried to break into your computer last night?”

  Mr. Kramer’s eyes narrowed. “So they told you about that, did they? Tex Poole broke into my computer last night and wants me to pay him a million dollars!”

  Vesta shared a quick look with Scarlett.

  “Actually Tex did no such thing,” said Scarlett. “My nephew is a computer nerd, and he was showing off last night. And he just happened to come upon this break-in into your company’s computer, and he actually managed to prevent it.”

  Mr. Kramer looked from Vesta to Scarlett. “You two broke into my computer?”

  “No. We stopped someone from doing exactly that,” Scarlett explained.

  Alec and Chase had also walked out of the station and now joined the discussion.

  “Bad scratch you’ve got there, Mr. Kramer,” said Alec.

  “She did that,” the Kitchen King growled, pointing a stubby finger in Vesta’s direction.

  Vesta saw that there was another scratch and a dent across the hood of the car, so she said, “You really should learn how to drive more carefully, Mr. Kramer.”

  “Never mind that,” he growled. Then he seemed to remember once more what they’d been discussing before Alec had stuck his big nose in. “So who broke into my computer—Tex Poole or you?”

  “Listen carefully, Mr. Kitchen King,” said Vesta. “Last night we were goofing around, and we just happened to discover that some hacker was trying to break into your company’s computer system, see? And guess what? We stopped the attack!”

  Chase suppressed a grin, as Alec cut a tired glance in his mom’s direction. “You are the hacker?”

  “Me! A hacker! As if! No, Scarlett’s nephew likes to think he’s something of a computer nerd, and last night he just happened to be showing off all the things he can do with a computer—you’d be amazed by the stuff that’s possible these days.”

  “I’ll bet,” Chase muttered.

  “And so we got to talking about these recent ransomware attacks, see?”

  “What recent ransomware attacks?” asked Alec. “I don’t know anything about any recent ransomware attacks.”

  Vesta ignored him. “So he told us to pick a target—any target—and he’d demonstrate how it’s done.”

  “You did what?!”

  “And since we’d been shopping at Mr. Kramer’s very nice emporium yesterday afternoon, I said, just for a lark, why don’t you try to hack into the Kitchen King? And you know what? He did!”

  “And it was then that he discovered that some other hacker was actually busy carrying out just such a ransomware attack!” said Scarlett.

  “Can you imagine?” said Vesta.

  “Oh, but I can,” said Chase, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

  “And so he asked us what he should do, and of course we told him to stop the attack, if he could, and that’s what he did.” Vesta now stood beaming at Fred Kramer. “And so what do you say to that, Fred? We actually saved your company!”

  “Then how come I got a message this morning when I booted up my computer that unless I pay one million dollars in bitcoin my systems would remain on lockdown?” asked a still irate-looking Fred Kramer, his turtle neck now a nasty color purple.

  “My nephew explained all that,” said Scarlett. “He said it might take a while before everything is cleared up. He managed to stop the attack, but certain remnants of the virus will still be on your system. Your IT department should be able to deal with that.”

  “Well, they did,” Fred admitted reluctantly. “I just got a call from my IT guy and he said it looks like things are clearing up.”

  “Well, now you know who to thank for that,” said Vesta, patting the big man on the back.

  “I still don’t get why the name Tex Poole popped up,” said Fred mulishly.

  “Because we were working on Tex’s wi-fi when it happened,” Vesta explained.

  “Yeah, my nephew doesn’t like to use his own wi-fi when he demonstrates that kind of stuff,” Scarlett added.

  “Now I wonder why that is?” Chase said with a grin.

  “Look, maybe we can discuss all this over dinner,” said Vesta now. “What do you say, Fred? Dinner at our place tonight? We’ll thresh this whole thing out, and then we can talk turkey.”

  “Turkey?”

  “The kitchen remodel! What better way to celebrate this new and beautiful friendship that has just sprung up between us than to sit down for a nice dinner and talk kitchens!”

  “Mh…” said Mr. Kramer, and glanced at that nasty scratch on his car again.

  “We saved you a million dollars, Fred!” Vesta exclaimed, patting the man on the broad back again. He didn’t seem to enjoy the process, though when she mentioned the million dollars she’d saved him, his initial frostiness seemed to melt away to some extent.

  “Myes,” he finally conceded. “It certainly looks that way.” He frowned before him for a moment, then finally said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to get back to you about that dinner, Mrs…”

  “Muffin. Vesta Muffin. And this is Scarlett Canyon. You can write our names large in the annals of Kramer Kitchen Kreation. If it hadn’t been for us, you might have gone belly-up today, Fred—remember that,” she added with an admonishing wag of the finger.

  Still unconvinced, Fred got into his car, then took off. And as they stood staring after the Kitchen King’s departure, Alec said with an exaggerated sigh, “Ma, what am I going to do with you, huh?”

  “Thank me, for one thing. I just got us all free kitchen remodels, sonny boy.” She pointed from Chase to Alec to Scarlett. “You get a new kitchen, and you get a new kitchen, and you get a new kitchen.” She smiled. “Not bad for one night’s hacking, huh?”

  “Oh, God, help me,” Alec muttered, the ungrateful cad.

  17

  Odelia had missed all the fun: by the time she arrived at the precinct, her grandmother and Scarlett had left, and so had the Kitchen King. But as she sat in her husband’s office, and he related the incident, she couldn’t help but smile at her grandmother’s shenanigans.

  “I think she just wanted to find a way to bring the price down on that kitchen remodel,” said Chase, “and so she tried to break into the company computer to change the quote and discovered someone else was also trying to hack into Kramer’s outfit. So she saw an opportunity and took it.”

  “It all sounds typical Gran,” Odelia had to admit. “But also very illegal, right?”

  “Not unless you get caught,” said Chase, “and clearly she managed to talk her way out of it. Though judging from Fred Kramer’s response, I very much doubt whether a free kitchen will be in the cards.”

  “Gran did save the man a million dollars in bitcoin.”

  “Yeah, she did. Talk about a lucky coincidence. Now what did you want to ask?”

  “If you’ve got any news on that bum in the woods case?”

  “The bum in the woods case. Is that what we’re calling it now?”

  “I guess so,” she said with a smile.

  “Well, I just had a meeting with your uncle, which I’m sure your cats will be able to tell you all about, as they were up to their usual spying tricks, and the conclusion is that we know exactly nothing. The guy is a complete John Doe.”

  “But who killed him? And who buried him out there?”

  “As far as I can tell, the only viable suspect we have so far is your Karl Bunyon.”

  “He’s not my Karl Bunyon, Chase.”

  The burly cop shrugged and dragged his hands through his shaggy mane. “He was right there when it happened, babe. Maybe John Doe saw him release those cats and Karl got scared and decided to get rid of the guy—with this custody battle hanging over him, and the prospect of losing his kids, maybe he simply panicked and shot the man.”

  “It’s a possibility,” she had to admit.

  “He doesn’t strike me as a killer, though, so for now we’re pursuing other avenues.” He picked up an Unidentified Person poster of which he had a whole stack on his desk, and said, “We’re distributing these now, and launching an appeal through local TV stations, hoping someone recognizes our Mr. Doe and gives us an ID. Because it’s hard to catch a killer if you don’t even know the name of the victim.”

  Suddenly Odelia’s phone dinged and she looked down. “Well, what do you know?” she said. “Looks like we’re invited for dinner at my parents’ place tonight. And they’re proud to announce they’ve got a very special guest of honor.”