“No, she likes me best!”
Odelia rubbed the side of her face. “Oh, boy,” she said, and that summed things up quite nicely, I thought.
CHAPTER 30
As it turned out, Johnny and Jerry had entered the modern era and had been hired over Telegram to carry out their nefarious designs on Rogelio. Since they had lost the man last night and would only get paid once they had effectively carried out their assignment, they decided that the General Store was as good a place as any to gather information about the possible whereabouts of the estate lawyer. When asked by Chase why the lawyer had to die, they had absolutely no idea. Even though all of the communication was available on Jerry’s phone, there wasn’t a lot that could be gleaned as the person doing the hiring had most likely used a false name and their credentials were impossible to determine. In other words: another dead end.
When asked if they were also involved in the murder of Prince Abdullah, they declined all knowledge of that murder and claimed they hadn’t even been anywhere near the hotel when it happened. In other words: baffling—very baffling!
Odelia and Chase decided to take their troubles to Cup o’ Mika, a nearby coffee shop, and discuss the case, with Dooley and me seated underneath their table. Harriet and Brutus were still at Vena’s, where the vet wanted to keep Harriet under observation and make sure she was all right. She had extracted some blood from our unfortunate friend and, depending on the results, would decide how to proceed. It was, in other words, a troubling time for all of us.
“I hope Harriet will be all right,” said Odelia as she thanked the waitress for the slice of blueberry pie and the cup of coffee and took a sip from the invigorating brew.
“She’ll be fine,” said Chase. “Though you may want to keep an eye on your grandmother. If she’s poisoning the cats now, there’s no telling what she will do next. She might poison us.”
“I don’t think she would go that far,” said Odelia, though she clearly wasn’t fully convinced herself that this was the case.
“As long as Harriet can keep singing, I think she will be fine,” said Dooley.
“The singing is all right,” I said. “But it’s the nausea that worries me. Clearly, she has been poisoned with the horrible stuff that came out of that can.”
“Bug spray,” said Dooley, “probably shouldn’t be used on cats.”
“Tell that to Gran,” I said. I shivered. It’s one thing for crooks like Johnny and Jerry to lock us up and threaten our lives, but another for our own human to make us sick with poisoning symptoms. Gran clearly had crossed a line that should never have been crossed.
“Okay, so to recap,” said Chase. “We’ve got Vale and Carew confessing that they tried to kill Rogelio, but they don’t know why and they don’t know who hired them, except that his name is Vladimir, which is obviously a fake name, so that’s effectively another dead end. And then there’s the murder of Prince Abdullah, which they claim they weren’t involved in.”
“Do you believe them?” asked Odelia.
“As a matter of fact, I do. Vale and Carew may be a lot of things, but they’re pretty straightforward when it comes to their criminal activities. They even seem to take a certain pride in what they do. So if they say they weren’t involved, I believe them. Also, it’s not their style. They’re pretty crude, not to mention clumsy operators. The murder of Prince Abdullah was planned and executed with precision, the murder weapon planted on those bug spray salespeople.”
“So now you believe that they are innocent as well, do you?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I really don’t see the motive, do you? Also, they don’t have any priors and they don’t exactly strike me as guns for hire.”
“No, I guess not,” said Odelia as she bit into the blueberry pie and closed her eyes with relish. “Yum. This stuff is pretty good. You should try some.”
Dooley and I watched with a sad eye. Sugar is strictly off-limits for us, and to watch our human enjoy it so much made my stomach rumble a little in anticipation of something hearty and filling. “Too bad these tea rooms never seem to have anything edible for the likes of us,” I complained.
“Maybe if you ask them?” Dooley suggested. “Or we could always return to the General Store and have some more of Kingman’s kibble?”
“No thank you very much,” I said. “That stuff is pretty much inedible.”
“It was tasteless. And also odorless and didn’t have a lot of texture either.”
“I didn’t like it,” I said. “Neither of the two samples.”
“I wonder who would sell the same kibble twice, and put it in different packaging and sell it at different prices?” Dooley asked.
It was another mystery we needed to get to the bottom of, but it didn’t seem all that urgent compared to the mystery of the dead prince and the attempted murder of Rogelio Hartshorn.
A familiar person came trotting up and joined us at our table. It was Gran, and she looked extremely subdued and even contrite. “How is Harriet?” she asked.
“Not well,” said Odelia firmly. “She was poisoned.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Gran, wringing her hands. “If only I had known.”
“A sane person would never spray their cats with bug spray,” Odelia pointed out. “But then of course that is too much to expect from you, isn’t it, Gran?”
Gran bowed her head. “I’m so, so, so very sorry. How can I make it up to you?”
“It’s not me you should be apologizing to but Harriet. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that I had a winner on my hands,” said Gran. “When I saw that the bug spray caused the bugs to increase in number instead of croak, I figured I had something that was going to make us all rich beyond belief. But instead, I got this dreadful poison.”
“I wonder what kind of person sells bug spray that doesn’t kill bugs but poisons pets instead,” said Chase. “I mean, has this stuff even been approved by the FDA?”
“It certainly raises all kinds of questions about the ethics of Carlos Perks and Mindy Horsefield,” said Odelia. She shared a look with her husband. “Though I don’t see what connection there could possibly be with the murder of Prince Abdullah.”
“No, I don’t see it either,” Chase confessed.
Gran got up. “I’ll go and pay a visit to Vena and see how Harriet is doing.” Before she left, she dug into her purse and handed both me and Dooley a piece of sausage. She smiled. “To make amends,” she explained. And then she shuffled off, looking extremely unhappy. Even though she was fully to blame for what had happened, at least she understood that she had made a terrible mistake and was repentant. The same couldn’t be said about Johnny and Jerry, who seemed to consider the attempted murder of Rogelio a simple business transaction and regretted not having been able to get their guy, since that meant they wouldn’t get paid.
I sniffed at the piece of sausage. It smelled fine. I dug my teeth into it. It was delish.
“Do you think whoever hired Vale and Carew will go a different route and try to hire a different hitman?” asked Odelia.
