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“The wedding?” asked Brutus.

“Yes! The wedding! She’ll get married, and that will be the end of this.” She was gesturing vaguely between us and Odelia.

We all stared dumbly at her paw motions.

“What’s… this?” I asked, mimicking the gesture.

“The bond we share! This rare and unique fellowship of cats and humans. Clearly she’s sick and tired of having to lug us all over the place like so much ballast, and her grandmother, too. Didn’t you catch the dirty looks she gave poor Gran? She can’t wait to be rid of her, and us. Free at last!”

We stared at her, the harbinger of such terrible and upsetting news.

“I think Harriet is right,” said Brutus. “Odelia is getting ready to dump us.”

“But what is she going to do with us?” asked Dooley, sounding panicky.

I should probably point out that it doesn’t take much for Dooley to panic. And being abandoned by our dear, sweet human definitely fit the bill.

“She’ll probably try to dump us on Marge and Tex,” said Harriet. “And then she and Chase are finally free to live their lives unencumbered by the presence of four cats and an annoying old grandmother.”

Her words had a chilling effect on us, and the rest of the drive we were all conspicuously silent. And as I turned Harriet’s words over in my mind, I had to admit they made sense. Odelia had been spending less and less time with us, giving us less and less attention, and this morning she’d even ‘forgotten’ to bring us along, just as she’d ‘forgotten’ about Gran, who loved to go on these little outings with her granddaughter.

Could it be that she and Chase had a secret plan? That they were getting ready to move away from Hampton Cove, maybe even overseas? They’d clearly had a ball in England, and since Odelia was a reporter she could very easily get a job anywhere, and Chase being a cop he could have already landed himself a snazzy position in Europol or Interpol or some other pol. My heart sank as I contemplated this terrible prospect. We’d still be taken care of, of course, and Marge and Tex and Gran were wonderful people. Only problem was: they weren’t my people, per se. I only had one people and that was Odelia, and the prospect of never seeing her again suddenly filled me with dread.

And so it was with a sinking heart that I watched Odelia expertly navigate the car in the direction of a tall iron gate, which swung open the moment we arrived, then swung closed again behind Gran’s little red car.

Suddenly I didn’t feel like cracking this case.

Because it could very well be our last one.

Chapter 6

The sun shone brightly, reflecting off the abundance of glass the late Leonidas Flake had opted for when he’d commissioned an architect to build his chateau. It wasn’t so much a chateau, though, but more of a bunker the designer had built. The entire structure appeared to have been constructed out of slabs of black concrete, interspersed with plate-glass windows. All in all it reminded Odelia of a gigantic Lego house, if those Legos had been used by a child who preferred his or her Legos black and slightly ominous-looking.

“It looks… a little scary,” she now confessed to her partner in crime.

“It looks like a black cube,” Chase said. The cop rarely minced words.

“Yeah. I don’t know. I guess I expected something more along the lines of the castle of Versailles,” she said as she opened the rear door of the car and allowed four cats to pour out gracefully to the gravel drive.

She crouched down, to provide them with her customary pep talk and instructions for the assignment ahead. Her loyal troupe, however, instead of eagerly listening to their master’s voice, as they usually did, simply ignored her and tripped off in the direction of the house.

“Huh,” she said, straightening and ignoring the tiny crick in her knees. “What’s gotten into them?”

But she didn’t have time to contemplate the state of mind her cats were in, for Gran had parked her car right next to Odelia’s and now came clambering out with some effort.

“So what’s the lowdown?” the old lady asked, directing her question at Chase and ignoring her one and only grandchild.

“Victim is Leonidas Flake,” said Chase. “Fashion designer of French origin. Seventy-eight years old.”

“So sad when they’re struck down in their prime,” said Gran, clucking her tongue.

Chase frowned, then continued to give her ‘the lowdown.’ “Plenty of staff on the premises. Housekeeper, cleaners, chauffeur, gardener, chef… and one boyfriend, Gabriel Crier, who was discovered standing over the body, a bloodied knife in his hands.”

“Who saw him?”

“One of the maids. She usually came to open the curtains in the morning, always around the same time, only this morning she found that the master was beyond waking.”

“Clever,” said Gran, giving Chase an encouraging pat on the back. “Keep this up and you’ll go far, Detective Kingsley. Now take me to the body. I need to get a sense of the crime scene.”

And without waiting for a reply, she hoofed it in the direction of the black block of concrete that was the famous designer’s Hamptons home.

Chase stared after her, then scratched his scalp. “Is she now in charge of this investigation or what?”

“It would appear so,” Odelia confirmed.

“And to think that there was once a time I felt very strongly about civilians poking their noses into my investigations,” he said as they set foot for the house in Gran’s wake.

“I remember,” said Odelia with a smile. “When you first arrived in town you used to give me hell, remember?”

“Oh, I do remember,” he said. “It took me a while to get used to the way things are done around here.”

“You never thought you’d be running your investigations alongside a little old lady, a nosy reporter and four cats, did you?” she teased.

He chuckled lightly. “Not in a million years. Back when I was still with the NYPD I was known to be a stickler for protocol.”

“Protocol will only get you so far.”

“I had to learn that the hard way.”

They’d reached the house and watched as Gran pressed her finger on the bell then kept on pressing it, almost drilling the thing into the wall. Inside, a distinct and very annoying buzzing sound could be heard, and the longer Gran kept pressure on the button, the louder and more annoying it became.

Finally, the door was yanked open by a breathless young woman dressed in a maid’s uniform.

“Yes?” she asked, looking flustered.

“Chase Kingsley, ma’am,” said Chase, producing his police badge and holding it up for her inspection. “Hampton Cove PD. And this is Odelia Poole, civilian consultant, and…” He directed a quizzical look at Gran.

“I’m Vesta Muffin,” croaked Gran. “Now take me to the body!”

The woman nodded nervously, then stepped aside to admit the small band of three into the house.

“Chief Alec told me you were coming,” she said. “He also told me the coroner would be here shortly, but we haven’t had the pleasure of his company yet.”

“So who’s been guarding the body?” asked Chase, putting his detective’s cap on.

“Two of your people,” said the girl. “They’ve been standing watch in the room where…” She gulped. “Where he was found,” she finished with a sob. She took a tissue out of her pocket and pressed it to her nose. “This is all so horrible. One moment he was alive and well and the next… I mean, who would have thought he was capable?”

“Mr. Crier, you mean?” asked Chase.

The girl nodded. “Such a nice man.”

“The world is a dangerous place, miss,” said Gran. “You just truck along, happy as pie, and then suddenly, BOOM! Out of the blue disaster strikes. Now take me to the body, will you? I need to get a feel for the scene, and the stiff.”