by Nic Saint
“Thanks for nothing by the way, Gran,” said Odelia. “I never asked you to steal evidence for me. And now Uncle Alec thinks I’m trying to sabotage his investigation and won’t let me come anywhere near the case.”
“Look, I’m sure Joshua Curtis will have a perfectly good explanation for why those empty jerrycans were in his garage.”
“Actually he doesn’t,” said Chase. “I interviewed him again last night, and he claims he’s never seen those jerrycans before, nor did he put them in his garage. He claims someone must have planted them.”
“And did they?” asked Odelia, interested in anything Joshua had to say.
“Of course not. He’s just trying to wriggle himself out of this thing.”
“That does seem rather like a silly thing to do though, don’t you think?” said Dad.
“What does, Dad?” asked Chase as he took a seat next to his father-in-law.
“Well, if this Joshua Curtis really did torch the place, and killed those people, wouldn’t he have made sure not to leave the jerrycans lying around his garage? Murderers usually try to conceal the evidence of their crimes, don’t they? I mean, I’m not a murderer myself, so I can’t speak from experience, but that seems to be one of the first rules of murder: get rid of the evidence.”
“See?” said Gran. “I knew he didn’t do it!”
“He did do it,” said Chase. “No question about his guilt at this point. As to why he didn’t get rid of the evidence.” He shrugged. “When you’ve been a cop for as long as I have, Dad, you understand that there are clever criminals, and not-so-clever ones. And clearly Joshua belongs in the last category.”
“He gave me the impression of being very clever,” Odelia countered.
“Yeah, well, as I see it the man let his emotions get the better of him. He was so in love with Melanie Myers that the idea that another man was putting his hands on her made him so angry he just had to kill him. And so he didn’t think things through.”
“I think you’re wrong, Chase,” said Gran. “I think you and Alec got this whole thing backward, and because you’re so focused on Joshua, you’re letting the real killer walk.”
“Ma, please promise me never to get arrested again,” said Odelia’s mom. “It’s not a good look. We all have to live in this town, and you know how people like to talk.”
“Oh, let them talk. I know I was doing the right thing.”
“You were caught stealing!”
“Caught planting stolen evidence,” Chase quietly corrected her.
“I was trying to help your daughter!”
“Please don’t help me anymore, Gran,” Odelia pleaded. “Your help is not helping me.”
“So this is the kind of thanks I get! After all that I’ve done for you?! Anyway, I can’t stand around here arguing. I’ve got things to do and people to see. So I wish you all a good day, and don’t call me—I’ll call you.” And with these words, she was off, leaving a lot of bemused glances to rake her retreating back.
Chapter 26
“Max?”
“Mh.”
“Max!”
I opened one eye and saw that Harriet desired speech with me.
“Yes?” I said, and yawned prodigiously, stretching myself in the process. I’d been quietly dozing in a corner of Odelia’s office, while my human worked away at a couple of articles: one about two elderly ladies being arrested for trespassing—no mention was made of the jerrycans, at the request of the police department—and one about the arrest of a suspect in the case of arson that had claimed the lives of three tragic victims. Suffice it to say she had her work cut out for her.
“You have to do something!” Harriet said.
“What,” I said, “do I have to do?”
“You have to convince the other members of the commission to let that vote swing my way!”
“What vote?” And then I remembered. “Oh, that vote. Look, Harriet, I can’t let the vote swing your way. We’re a neutral commission and we’re going to find a solution that is beneficial to everyone.”
“But Max—you’re my friend! My best friend!”
“I know I’m your friend, Harriet, but Shanille is also my friend, and I’m going to be fair and square about this thing.”
“Look, if you do me this one little favor I’m going to make it worth your while.”
“How are you going to make it worth my while?” I said, wondering what she’d come up with.
“Well, I’ll…” She paused, thinking hard. “I’ll, um…”
“Yes?”
“I could give you some of my food,” she suggested. “Some of my Cat Snax. In fact why don’t I give you all of my Cat Snax for the next three months—six months,” she quickly interposed when she saw the dubious expression on my face. “A year!”
“Look, I don’t need your Cat Snax, Harriet. I have plenty of Cat Snax of my own. And what’s more, I still have to live in this town, and if I’m going to be corrupted by your offer I won’t be able to show my face around here again. And neither, I have to warn you, will you.”
“But I have to win this thing! I threw down the gauntlet and if I don’t win now cats will laugh at me—I’ll be the laughingstock of the whole town!”
“You probably should have thought of that before you started quarreling.”
“Oh, Max, you have to help me. You simply have to make the vote swing my way. I need to get rid of Shanille.”
“I’m sorry, Harriet.”
Her expression turned hostile. “And here I thought you were my friend!”
“I am your friend. And I’m trying to do the right thing. And you know what would help a lot? If you’d go up to Shanille and apologized.”
“What?! Me apologize to that harridan! Never!”
I watched her stalk off and wondered, frankly, how we were ever going to get out of this mess, when suddenly the door swung open and a woman entered. I didn’t recognize her, which is saying something, as I know a lot of people in this town.
“Miss Poole?” the woman said. “Miss Odelia Poole?”
Odelia looked up from her laptop. “Yes?”
“My name is Francine Ritter. I used to be married to Franklin Harrison—the man who was killed the other night in a fire?”
“Oh, of course. Please take a seat, Mrs. Ritter,” said Odelia. “What can I do for you?”
Mrs. Ritter was a fair-haired woman in her late thirties, dressed in a purple tunic and black leggings. Her hair was frizzy and she looked a little unkempt.
“The thing is, my ex-husband hadn’t paid child support in months, and I’d been hounding him to come through.”
“You and Franklin had kids?”
“Yeah, two little girls. And ever since we got divorced it’s been really tough, and Franklin didn’t make it any easier, with his refusal to pay for the girls.”
“Any reason he refused to pay?”
“Plain meanness, I guess,” said the woman with an embarrassed smile. “Frankly I didn’t know what kind of man I married until a couple of months into the marriage. When we were dating he was the sweetest guy on the planet, always buying me gifts and showering me with affection. But after the girls were born, he seemed to lose interest in the life of a married man and father. He started going out more and staying away longer, and didn’t take up his share of the work in raising the girls. And when I discovered he was having affairs with other women, I finally decided that enough was enough.”
“As I understand it Franklin died destitute,” said Odelia. “His dad cut him off, and he was living in a squat house after he was evicted from his apartment for not making rent.”
“I know. I heard about that. But he was still the father of my girls, and he didn’t keep his end of the bargain, so now I’m trying to talk to his brother. Set up a meeting. They need to take their responsibility and step up. But so far they’ve been ignoring me. They won’t take my calls, they won’t answer my letters.”
“Can’t you hire an attorney? Go to co
urt?”
Mrs. Ritter blushed. “I’m afraid I don’t have the money, Miss Poole. The Harrisons are very wealthy people, and I feel—I feel I don’t stand much of a chance. The arrangement was between Franklin and myself. They’ll simply argue they have no obligations to me.”
“I understand,” said Odelia. “So what do you suggest?”
“Couldn’t you perhaps talk to them? Maybe they’ll listen to you. Or you could threaten to write an article.”
Odelia nodded thoughtfully.
“You could write how one of the richest families in town refuses to take care of their own. I may be divorced, but my girls are still Herbert and Ruth’s granddaughters. It’s disgraceful the way they simply cut them out of their lives like that.”
“Your girls haven’t seen their grandparents?”
“Not since the divorce.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” said Odelia.
“Just call it what it is: cruel.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Odelia. “But I can’t promise you anything.”
“If you could just talk to them. I know they’ll listen to you. They have a business to run. They may be heartless and cruel, but they are also afraid of negative publicity, so…”
When the woman left the office, I decided to follow her out. I hadn’t seen Dooley in a while, and I had the feeling he might be outside, keeping an eye out for that elusive and hard-working stork who’d been lugging Odelia’s babies around ever since she got married.
Dooley was indeed sitting outside on the sidewalk, his eyes peeled as he kept a close watch on the skies above Hampton Cove.
“Any sign of the stork?” I asked him.
“He isn’t showing his face,” he lamented. “Do you think something scared him off?”
“Yeah, that must be it,” I said as I took a seat next to my friend.
Francine Ritter had crossed the street, and was walking along the sidewalk when suddenly she halted in her tracks, and seemed to stiffen.
A man came from the other direction, and he, too, halted, then quickly made an about-face and started walking back the way he’d come.
“Marvin!” she yelled. “Marvin, wait!”
The man stopped and turned, and for a moment they engaged in tense conversation. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from their body language it was obvious these people weren’t friends. There was a lot of angry yelling from Mrs. Ritter’s side, and stony-faced looks from this Marvin person’s side. And as I watched, suddenly I recognized the man as Marvin Harrison, who Mrs. Ritter had been trying to get hold of about that missing child support.
Clearly Marvin wasn’t happy to bump into his former sister-in-law, and I didn’t think she’d be able to extract a lot of money from him.
The meeting finally came to an abrupt end, and Marvin crossed the street, then came walking in our direction. A nice black Tesla stood parked at the curb, and I had the feeling it could just be Mr. Harrison’s ride.
Just as he reached our side of the street, he turned and glanced back in the direction of Mrs. Ritter. And as he watched her stalk off, an angry spring in her step, I thought I saw a distinct look of fear in the man’s eye. Clearly he wasn’t happy about this surprise meeting. Mrs. Ritter was correct in assuming the Harrisons abhorred negative publicity.
Chapter 27
“Why is Dooley looking at the sky the whole time, Max?” asked Odelia as she glanced back at her cats through the rearview mirror.
“He’s still looking for your stork,” Max explained. “He feels that bird has worked so hard, and come so far carrying that baby—”
“Or babies,” Dooley corrected him.
“—or babies, that it would be very unkind to send him all the way back to… Where did you say he came from, Dooley?”
“Baby-land, of course. Everybody knows that, Max.”
“It’s the land where they make the babies,” Max said.
“Oh-kay,” said Odelia, a smile on her face. Dooley was so sweet. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that storks didn’t make home deliveries, and that babies didn’t come from baby-land.
They were on their way to the vast estate—or at least she assumed it was an estate, and vast—of the Harrison family, to argue the case of Francine Ritter’s missing child support checks. It was the least she could do for the poor woman, she thought. And it would give her an opportunity to meet Franklin Harrison’s family. She felt a little bad now, for taking on Joshua Curtis’s case. Clearly the man was guilty after all, and working to prove his innocence had probably been a misguided effort on her part.
They arrived at the entrance to what indeed was an estate, and she announced her arrival to the intercom located outside the tall gate. The gate swung open, and she directed her aged old car along the drive toward a sizable mansion and parked in the circular drive, her tires crunching the nice yellow gravel that looked like brown sugar.
“You know the drill, you guys,” she said as she opened the door. “You snoop around while I talk to the people in charge of this place.”
“Will do,” said Max, and both cats hopped out, Dooley keeping a close eye on the skies all the while.
The front door opened the moment she set foot on the first step of a granite landing and for a moment she was too startled to proceed: the man who greeted her at the door was… Franklin Harrison. “Hi,” said the apparition. “I’m Marvin Harrison. And you are Odelia Poole, of course. I read your articles all the time, Miss Poole. Please come in.”
He was a little stiff and serious, and his glasses gave him a bookish look, but otherwise he was the spitting image of his now dearly departed brother.
“You and Franklin were twins?” she couldn’t help blurting out.
“Yeah, we were identical twins,” Marvin confirmed as he led the way into a sitting room. “Born just two minutes apart, or at least that’s what my mother claims. Please take a seat. I’ll go and get Mother.”
She did as he suggested, but not before walking around the room and taking in the scene: the floor was marble, with a nice thick rug for warmth, and there were white columns supporting a ceiling that was adorned with intricate moldings. Paintings of horses decorated the walls, and large picture windows offered a terrific view of spreading greenery surrounding the house. Not a bad place to grow up, she thought. Strange, then, that Marvin’s brother had so gone off the rails, and met a terrible death.
She finally took a seat, and moments later Marvin returned with a matronly woman, her hair piled high on her head, dressed in long flowing robes that gave her a slightly oriental look, and wearing a stern look on her broad face. She lowered herself onto an upholstered chair and regarded Odelia like the Queen would regard a royal subject.
Marvin, dressed in a turtleneck and corduroy slacks, remained standing next to his mother’s chair. “You wished to talk to me?” said the woman a little haughtily, not exactly overflowing with joy about Odelia’s visit.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I did. Francine Ritter came to see me this morning.”
Mother and son shared a look of concern.
“Yes?” said Mrs. Harrison a little stiffishly.
“It would appear she hasn’t received child support for the last six months, and she asked me to come and have a word with you, and maybe try to find a way to sort things out.”
“There’s nothing to sort out,” Mrs. Harrison snapped. “We don’t owe that woman anything.”
“But she’s the mother of your grandchildren.”
“That may be so but she’s also the main cause of my son’s ruin.”
“Mother, maybe we should first listen to what Miss Poole has to say,” Marvin suggested. He seemed more forthcoming about his ex-sister-in-law’s predicament than his mother.
“I will not,” said his mother, “listen to any of this nonsense. I blame that woman for Franklin’s death, and so she gets nothing—not a cent!”
“Why do you feel she’s responsible for your son’s death?” asked Ode
lia.
“Because ever since he met Francine, Franklin started down the path that led to his ruin.” Her face softened as she gazed upon a framed picture of her son. “Franklin was always such a sweet boy. We had high hopes for him, Herbert and I. But after he met Francine he changed. Gone was the fun-loving boy I knew and loved. He started drinking and using illegal substances and God knows what else. I didn’t recognize my own son!”
“Mother,” said Marvin warningly.
“No, Marvin, someone has to tell that woman what’s what, and clearly she’s chosen Miss Poole as her emissary.” She turned back to Odelia. “Is she taking us to court?”
“I’m not sure,” said Odelia. “I think she would prefer to deal with this amicably.”
“Amicably! There can be no amicability between us and Francine, Miss Poole.”
“But what about your granddaughters?” said Odelia, taking out her phone. She held it out, showing a picture of the two girls. They looked like two blond-haired little angels.
Mrs. Harrison momentarily seemed to relent, but then her expression hardened and she said, emphatically, “Those girls are not my blood.” And with these words, she majestically rose, and walked out.
Marvin took the seat his mother had vacated and gave Odelia an apologetic look. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but Mother feels very strongly about this. I talked to her before, and she feels that when Francine left Franklin she also forfeited any right she might have had to his money—our money. And now that he’s dead, well…”
“But surely she is entitled to the child support your brother owed her?”
“Franklin didn’t pay because Franklin couldn’t pay,” said Marvin quietly. “My brother had gone down a very dark path, Miss Poole, but I’m sure you’re aware of that. He lost his standing in the community and his position as part of this family. My father….” He glanced up at the ceiling, then continued, “My father decided to cut him off six months ago, because he felt that Franklin had become an embarrassment, and didn’t want anything more to do with him.”
“How is your father?” she asked solicitously. “Even though he was unhappy with your brother he still must have been devastated when he heard about what happened.”