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“Probably thinks Carson Daly is staying at the hotel,” chuckled Trey.

‘You suck!’ someone shouted, and Trey thought those were his sentiments exactly. This dude, whoever he was, would never get a four-chair turn. Not even a one-chair turn.

“Let’s go!” his mother bellowed again.

“All right, all right, all right!” he said, tearing himself away from the scene down below. “What about Kevin Bacon and Miss Piggy? We can’t leave without them.”

“You should have thought of that before you locked Miss Amateur Sleuth and her granny in there. Now are we leaving or what?”

He hated to leave his pigs. He loved the little cuties. And as he moved to the door to the other room, suddenly the door to this one exploded and before he knew what hit him a bunch of cops stormed in and the atmosphere erupted into a free-for-all of shouts and screams and pounding boots and angry faces hollering at him to ‘GET DOWN NOW! ’

So he did. And briefly wondered who was going to take care of his piglets.

Chapter 44

Odelia was still a little dazed as she was escorted out of the hotel and onto the sidewalk. Cop cars blocked traffic and she watched in confusion as the handcuffed Angelique and Trey were escorted into a squad car and driven off at a high rate of speed, sirens blaring.

“How—what—when—” she stuttered.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Gran. “Before I left the house I instructed Marge to wake up Chase and send in the cavalry. I figured he might do what he could to save his sweetheart.”

Chase came hurrying up to them, and she jumped into his arms, happy to be alive.

“For a moment there I thought I lost you,” Chase intimated.

“For a moment there I thought so, too,” said Odelia.

“Oh, don’t be a bunch of saps,” said Gran, which was rich for a woman who loved her soap operas more than anything else. “We’re all fine and the bad guys will be punished so all is well that ends well. Now what’s going to happen to those little guys?”

She was pointing to a cop who was holding two piglets in his arms. He had a mustache and his name tag indicated that his name was Jackson. Odelia recognized him as the cop who wouldn’t let her into the library the night of Chris Ackerman’s murder. He didn’t look happy to have been awarded the particular task of taking care of Trey’s piglets. Especially since his colleagues were busy snapping selfies with him. He was going to become the latest Hampton Cove PD social media sensation, that much was obvious.

“Don’t worry about the pigs,” said Chase. “We’ll find someone to adopt them.”

Uncle Alec walked up, looking distinctly unhappy. “Odelia Poole,” he said gruffly. “What part of ‘I’ll handle things’ don’t you understand? You could have gotten yourself killed, young lady, and your grandmother in the process.”

“I just figured Angelique was innocent and wanted to warn her.”

“Next time do as you’re told,” he said sternly. “When Marge called me with the news that you were in trouble I almost had a heart attack.” He wagged a stubby finger in her face. “Never again, all right? Have mercy on your uncle’s poor ticker.”

“I won’t do it again,” she promised, seeing now how foolish her actions had been.

“Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist, Alec,” said Gran. “I was there. We were fine.”

“They had a gun!”

“I’m pretty sure they weren’t going to use it.”

“You don’t know that, Ma. They could have shot you both.”

“Well, they didn’t, so now are you going to stop crying in your milk and congratulate Odelia instead? She cracked this case.”

Marge and Tex also joined them on the sidewalk, while rubberneckers all around stood taking in the scene. “Honey, I’m so glad you’re all right,” said Marge, enveloping Odelia in a hug. “When your grandmother told me to wake up Chase, I feared the worst.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” said Chase, a little indignant. “In fact I’d been up for hours.”

“He’s right,” said Marge. “He was in the shower when I arrived. Gave me a shock.”

Chase grimaced at the recollection and Odelia suppressed a grin. She would have loved to have seen the look on Chase’s face when Mom walked in on him in the shower.

“The important thing is that the bad guys will get what’s coming to them,” said Gran.

“How did you find out?” asked Chase. “I mean—how did you know where to find that pizza guy’s outfit?”

A momentary silence descended over the small company. Chase was the only one who didn’t know about the cats. “Just one of those hunches, I guess,” said Odelia. “I suddenly wondered about the pizza guy. See, the weird thing about the pizza boxes that we found at the library was that they were clean. Pizza boxes usually have leftover pizza or ketchup smears or chunks of cheese stuck to them. These boxes were brand new. Never used. So that got me thinking. What if the pizza guy wasn’t a pizza guy? What if he was the killer and he’d only dressed up as a pizza guy to throw us off the scent?”

“And then we took things from there,” said Uncle Alec. “In all fairness, though, Odelia found the outfit.”

“And a good thing I did. Today is collection day in that part of town. A couple of hours later and the outfit would have been gone forever.”

“And along with it the blood stains and DNA that will show beyond a reasonable doubt that Trey Ackerman killed his father,” Uncle Alec finished the story.

“Hard to believe that a son would kill his father,” said Chase, shaking his head.

“I don’t think he devised the plan,” said Odelia. “Angelique did. Trey just went along with it and did the actual deed—wanting to spare his mother the more gruesome aspects of the scheme she’d hatched. In fact she probably decided to kill her husband months ago, when she discovered he was planning to leave her for Stacey Kulcheski.”

“There’s only one part about this whole sordid business I regret,” said Gran.

“What’s that?” asked Marge.

Gran threw up her arms. “That I didn’t get to film the grand finale! Those bastards took away my phone!”

“I’m sure plenty of people caught the whole thing on video,” said Uncle Alec. He clapped Chase on the shoulder. “For one thing, they sure as heck caught our rising musical star Chase on tape. Ed Sheeran, watch out!”

“Thanks,” said Chase. “I kinda enjoyed being the decoy.”

“It sure delayed the Ackermans until our team was in place to break down the door.”

“Too bad I didn’t catch the big performance,” said Odelia.

“You saw the private performance,” said Chase, smiling. “Which was the better one of the two.”

Only now did Odelia realize she was missing something. She looked around. “Where are my cats?”

“Right there,” said Chase, stepping aside.

And there they were indeed: Max, Dooley, Brutus, Harriet and… Big Mac. Sitting on the sidewalk and smiling up at her. They were a sight for sore eyes.

“Oh, my babies,” she said, crouching down. They all jumped into her arms. “You caught the bad guys—you saved my life—what would I do without you?”

Chase laughed. “It’s the weirdest thing. Almost as if they can understand what she says.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gran snapped. “Cats don’t talk. Everybody knows that.”

“No, of course not,” he said, his smile vanishing. “You’re right.”

“Dumbass,” Gran grunted.

“Ma,” said Uncle Alec warningly.

“Just welcoming the kid into the family,” said Gran, and pinched Chase’s cheeks.

Epilogue

“So what did you tell Chase when you went to warn him?” asked Odelia.