Ник Сайнт - Purrfectly Hidden. Purrfect Kill. Purrfect Boy Toy

“But you can’t quit,” said Gran, who, in spite of the fact that her affection for Opal had taken a hit, obviously wasn’t prepared to see her show go off the air just yet.

“I can and I will,” said Opal, with the same forcefulness and decisiveness that were a hallmark of her remarkable personality and which had served her well in her meteoric rise to the top of the media landscape. “If this person isn’t caught by next week I’m calling it quits. At least for the time being. I can’t work like this. I can’t sit there interviewing guests knowing any moment something might drop down on my head and that’ll be the end of me.” She paused and frowned. “You know, maybe that’s all this person wants: to make me give up my show.” She cut a glance to Gran. “So you think this could be related to that Jacqueline woman? The one claiming I ruined her business?”

“Could be,” Gran allowed. “Or it could be someone else who feels you didn’t treat them the way they should have been treated. Anyone who appeared on your show and now harbors a grudge.”

“Maybe you could make a list,” Odelia suggested. “A list of people who made threats or filed a complaint with the network against you over the years.”

“Like I told that Jacqueline person, take a number.”

“That many, huh?”

“Honey, you can’t do a show like mine and not make a couple of enemies in the process. There will always be people who don’t like what you have to say about them, and who’ll threaten you with legal action. But you’re probably right. I’ll make you a list.”

“There’s also some members of your staff I would like to interview,” said Odelia. “Like your chauffeur, your cook, your butler—in fact I’d like to talk to all of them.”

“I’ll arrange it,” Opal said, closing her eyes again.

She looked very tired, Odelia thought, and no wonder. As if the pressure of being the most sought-after show host wasn’t enough, this whole thing had come on top of that.

She just wished Chase could assist her. But him being a cop Opal had put her foot down. No police, not even Odelia’s boyfriend or uncle.

“What did you think of the show, by the way?” asked Opal, rubbing her face.

“Oh, it was great,” said Odelia. She had to admit Opal had handled the Miriam interview brilliantly. Miriam’s mother had indeed come on stage, and mother and daughter, after some initial awkwardness—had quickly been on a path to forgiveness by Opal’s gentle nudging, and by the end of the show had even hugged and declared that all was forgiven. And even after the show had ended, they’d sat together for a long time, talking things through and patching up their fraught relationship. It was like a miracle.

“Yeah, that was pretty amazing,” Gran admitted. She’d had her misgivings, but clearly they’d been misguided.

“I know what you were thinking,” Opal said now.

“You do?” said Gran. “What are you, psychic?”

Opal laughed. “Oh, my dear Vesta, it was pretty obvious from the expression on your face. You thought I was inviting Miriam’s mother just to boost my ratings. That I was going to go all Jerry Springer on her and provoke a fight with the mother. But that’s not how I roll. And that’s not the kind of show I host. On the contrary. I want to bring people together, not push them apart. I don’t want family feuds, I want to mend broken bonds, heal hurting hearts, reconcile fractured families. The only reason I wanted Miriam’s mother on the show was because I’d heard they’d had a falling-out, and I had a feeling I could get them to look each other in the eye and maybe put them on the road to reconciliation. You’d be surprised how much healing can be done if only people would simply sit down and talk. And that’s exactly what happened today. No miracles. No magic. Just giving two people the opportunity to talk and see things from a different perspective.”

“You should have been a shrink, not a talk show host,” Gran grunted.

“It’s a line of work I could have pursued, and something that greatly interests me, that’s true, and my own therapist has given me a lot of inspiration and ideas for the show, something for which I should probably give her full credit.”

They’d finally arrived at Opal’s home, and as the car gently rolled to a stop, she heaved a sigh of relief.

“Finally. You won’t believe how happy I am that we got here safe and sound.” The door was opened, not by the driver this time, but by a man Odelia hadn’t seen before. He was distinguished-looking, with his silver hair and his deeply tanned face. He was dressed in a polo shirt and corduroy pants and as he took Opal’s hand to help her out of the car, she folded herself into his embrace and suddenly the formidable queen of daytime TV was crying like a baby, her shoulders shaking as she heaved big sobs. “Oh, Harlan,” she said. “They tried to kill me again!”

Harlan directed a quizzical look at Odelia over his partner’s head.

Odelia shrugged and returned Harlan’s look with a helpless grimace.

Chapter 15

We’d all been very quiet in the car, but the moment we arrived and the car door opened, we were out like a flash, and, as if by silent command, convened behind the house underneath the rhododendrons, where we knew we wouldn’t be overheard.

That’s the one disadvantage of being able to communicate with your humans: anything you say can and will be used against you if they happen to overhear your conversation, and this was one conversation we didn’t want Odelia to overhear, or Gran.

“We have to thresh this thing out once and for all,” Harriet said, opening the meeting. “All those in favor of digging a little deeper into this cloning thing, raise your paws.”

Four paws went up, even Dooley’s, even though he still hadn’t fully grasped the implications of Harriet’s theory. He asked the same question he’d asked back at Opal’s studio. “But if we’re clones of our original selves, wouldn’t we be able to remember?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Though I’d be inclined to think that we wouldn’t.”

“We need to talk to Prunella again,” said Harriet. “She’ll be able to tell us what she remembers from her previous incarnation as her original self.”

Brutus gave a snort and Harriet looked up with the sort of censorious expression on her pretty face that she manages to pull off so well. “If there’s something you wish to say please speak up now, Brutus,” she said haughtily, “or forever keep your big trap shut.”

“Have you seen Prunella? She can’t even remember who we are, much less who she used to be.”

“True,” I said. “Prunella does seem to have some serious issues with her long-term memory—or her short-term memory—or both.”

“We don’t have those kinds of issues, do we?” said Dooley.

“No, I guess we don’t,” I said.

“So… maybe that means we weren’t cloned?”

“But you heard what happened to Prunella, right?” said Harriet. “She wasn’t cloned just once, she was cloned no less than sixteen times. This Prunella is actually the sixteenth iteration of the original Prunella, so maybe that’s why she’s acting so weird all the time. She’s a clone of a clone of a clone of a clone—to the sixteenth degree.”

“Or maybe she’s just the sixteenth clone of the original Prunella,” said Brutus. “Only the lab people who did the actual cloning will know for sure.”

“That’s why it’s important we find this lab and find out if we, too, were cloned,” said Harriet, returning to her original point, the one she’d made at the studio, when we were all still stunned by her startling revelation. If we were to know for sure if we were cloned or not, we needed to go back to the source: the cloning lab.