“Oh, honey, no!” said Odelia, part horrified, part amused.
“Max seems to think you’ll move to England,” said Brutus, “but for my money it’s more likely you’ll move to New York. Chase has family there, after all, so that would be the logical thing to do.”
“And it would suit your ambitions to become an ace reporter for an ace newspaper, and not the local rag you bust your gut at now,” Harriet added.
“And Chase could join the NYPD again,” said Brutus.
“Oh, my sweet, sweet babies,” said Odelia, genuinely touched by this outpouring of concern. “No! Of course I’m not moving away.”
“You’re not?” asked Brutus, suspicious.
“No! We’re staying put, wedding or no wedding. Besides, it’s not that we’re anxious to tie the knot any time soon. It could be months or years before we finally get hitched.”
“But Chase proposed. In London,” Harriet pointed out.” So that has to mean something. Humans don’t just propose and then break it off again.”
“He proposed while under attack. I guess you could say it was one of those moments where you see your life flashing by, and you realize there are so many things you haven’t done yet.”
“Like getting married?”
“Like getting married,” she said with a smile.
“So Chase proposing was just a joke?” asked Brutus hopefully. “A fun little joke?”
“It wasn’t a joke. He meant it at the time, and I meant it when I said yes, but that doesn’t mean we have to rush into things. I’m sure that eventually we will get married, but we’re not in any hurry here. And we’re not planning to move away from Hampton Cove, or this house. I love it here, and I love living next door to my mom and dad.”
“And Gran,” Brutus supplied.
“And Gran,” she said after a pause. “So even after we’re married we’ll stay right here. This is your home, you guys, and we’re not about to take that away from you. And if I paid less attention to you than usual, I’m sorry. It’s just that, when you’ve gone through a terrible experience like the one we had in England, you realize how precious life is, so we decided to go on all the dates we always wanted to go on. But I think we’re done with that for a while.”
“So you’ll become homebodies again?” said Harriet. “I liked it when you were a homebody, Odelia.”
“Yeah, I kinda liked it, too,” said Odelia with a smile. “And lucky for me Chase feels the same way.”
“Chase feels the same way about what?” asked a voice behind her. Chase crouched down next to her and placed a hand on her back. “This is cozy.”
“Hi, Chase,” said Harriet coyly. She was a big fan of Chase, as were all of Odelia’s cats, which was a good thing.
“They feel we’ve been neglecting them lately.”
“Have we?”
“Yeah. We’ve been going out a lot, and they’ve missed spending time with us, huddling on the couch and watching silly shows and silly movies.”
Chase gave Harriet a sheepish look. “Well, I guess you’re right, Harriet. Odelia and I have spent a lot of time on the town. But that’s all over now, isn’t it, babe? We’re ready to kick off our shoes and become Netflix nerds again.”
“I like Netflix nerds,” said Harriet.
“Me, too,” said Brutus.
“And Max,” said Odelia. “He loves being a couch potato even more than the rest of us. So where is he?”
Harriet and Brutus shared a look of concern. “I don’t know,” said Harriet. “I haven’t seen him since we left him and Dooley at Chateau Leonidas.”
“You mean they’re still there?” said Odelia, concern lacing her voice.
“Who’s still where?” asked Chase.
“Max and Dooley are still at the Flake place.”
“What are they doing—oh, right. Interviewing pet witnesses, huh?”
“I hope so,” said Odelia. Though it wasn’t like Max not to come home after a day well spent hunting down clues and talking to pet witnesses. “Maybe we should go and look for them.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” said Chase, who had a lot of confidence in her cats’ ability to take care of themselves.
“I’m not so sure,” said Brutus. “He was pretty adamant about our strike.”
“The strike? Oh, right, the strike.”
“Yeah, he really ran with it. Said he would never help you investigate a crime ever again.”
“Oh, dear,” said Odelia.
Chapter 15
Unbeknownst to Odelia and Chase, or Harriet and Brutus, for that matter, their conversation hadn’t remained as private as they would have liked it to be. Behind the backyard was a patch of fallow land where no house had been built yet. It was generally used by neighborhood kids to play on, or sometimes by a local farmer to put his sheep, and save the owner the trouble of taking out his lawnmower. It had been a while since the sheep had grazed there, though, and so the grass was high—so high that two people could easily hide in there, and aim a camera and a microphone at the backyard of the unsuspecting Odelia Poole and her future husband and their cats. And by the time Odelia and Chase returned indoors, Lauren Klepfisch patted Zak Kowalski on the back and said, “Did you get all that?”
“Yeah, sure, but I’m not sure what it is I got.”
“Proof that Odelia Poole talks to her pets,” said Lauren triumphantly.
“So? Plenty of people talk to their pets. My mom talks to her Chihuahua.”
“Yeah, lots of people talk to their pets, but few people have their pets talk back to them, and are able to understand what they say.”
“And you think that’s what happened here?”
“Pretty sure it did. I’m not sure how it all works, but it was clear to me they were holding an entire conversation, and now we have everything on tape.”
“So? What does it prove? That Odelia Poole is a little nutty?”
“That’s for our viewers to decide. And I’m sure we’ll get great coverage.”
Zak got up and stretched his sore limbs. “I’m starting to understand what being a war correspondent feels like. Tough to have to lie in bushes.”
“This is not war reporting, you idiot,” Lauren snapped as she plucked a beetle from her shoulder. “For one thing, there are no snipers trying to kill us.”
“Except for my colleague,” he muttered darkly.
“So what did you think of Gabriel Crier? Do you think he did it?”
“How should I know? I’m not a cop,” the cameraman grumbled as he swiped at the knees of his jeans where two nice patches of green had appeared.
“I think he did it,” she said. “And a great story it is, too: Gay Lover Murders King Of Couture. It’s the Gianni Versace thing all over again. Right here in the heart of the Hamptons. Oh, this is going to be a smash. My big break. And then the Odelia Poole pet whisperer thing on top of that, it’s going to be the one-two punch that’s going to blow all my competition out of the water!”
Christopher Cross, the pet detective, was at that moment applying a slender finger to the buzzer of Chateau Leonidas and patiently waiting for the gates to swing open, which after a brief delay they did. He got back into the van and directed his vehicle along the long drive, his trusty feline sidekick next to him in the passenger seat.
“I wonder what she wants from us this time,” grumbled Tank.<>
“Probably to hand us our paycheck,” said Chris. “We cracked the case, didn’t we? So time to pay up.”
“We didn’t crack the case, Chris,” said the Siamese cat tersely. “The case cracked itself. Or should I say, Gabe cracked under the pressure and killed his lover.”
“The operative word being cracked. The killer was caught so we need to get paid. It’s as simple as that.”
“Yeah, though I’m not so sure.”
“Not so sure about what?”
“That they got the right guy!”