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“But what role will you assume?” asked an exasperated chairman.

The lady puffed out her chest.“I’m the new CEO. And together with my president I will make this company great again!”

“This is an outrage!” someone yelled.

“Well, you don’t have to feel that way anymore,” said the woman, after taking a puff from her oxygen mask. “You’re fired, effective immediately.”

A collective gasp of shock reverberated through the room.

“Anyone else want to lodge a formal complaint about the new management structure?” asked Mrs. Flake.

“I don’t want to sound critical…” the well-coiffed lady began.

“I have a feeling you will.”

“But aren’t you a little… old for the role, Mrs. Flake?”

“You’re only as old as you feel,” said Leo’s mother. “And I feel a sprightly fifty, so I have a lot of good years still left in the tank.” She patted the oxygen tank for good measure. “Anyone else? Comments, criticisms? No? Then court is adjourned and I’ll see you lot in Paris for our annual board meeting where we will formalize the new company structure and I hope to be able to convey to you some of the new plans I’m sure Pussy will be excited to come up with.”

“Oh, boy,” I said. “Pussy isn’t going to like this.”

“Why not?” said Dooley. “She’s president of the company now.”

“I’m not sure that’s what she wants, though.”

Pussy, who had an impeccable sense of timing, chose that moment to join us again.“Is the meeting over?”

“Yeah, it’s over,” I said, gesturing to the screen, where people were now shouting and screaming and all hell seemed to have broken loose.

“What’s going on?” asked Pussy with a frown. “Are they fighting?”

“Pretty much.”

“You’re in charge now, Pussy,” said Dooley, clapping his paws with glee. “From now on you are the president of the Leonidas Flake Company!”

“Come again?” said Pussy after a pause. “I’m what now?”

“You’re in charge,” I said. “Leo’s mother took over the meeting and announced that you’re the new president. It’s official.”

“But… I can’t run a company,” said Pussy, looking seriously distraught.

“I’m sure Mrs. Flake will help you with the finer points of running the business. She’ll be your CEO so she’ll be in charge of the day-to-day stuff.”

“But I don’t know the first thing about fashion!”

“You could have fooled me,” I said, indicating the crown and the pendant she was still rocking.

“Oh, that,” she said modestly. “Just something I threw on this morning. No, but seriously, what did they say?”

“Exactly that. They’ve appointed a pet whisperer, some guy named Christopher Cross, to be your official translator, along with his cat Tank.”

“Not a very nice cat,” said Dooley.

“Not a very nice cat,” I agreed. “But maybe he’ll grow on you as you take the reins.”

“So some guy is going to sit in my office and translate my decisions to the CEO, who will be Leo’s mother?”

“That seems to be the gist.”

“But… Leo didn’t even like his mother. In fact it’s safe to say he hated her.”

“He did? Odd.”

“Not so odd. The woman is crazy. Power hungry and mad. Leonora always felt Leo should have given her a bigger stake in the company, and when Leo refused, she went bananas. She tried to get him removed from his own company by bribing several board members to get him kicked out for mental health reasons, and when that didn’t work she joined forces with LMVH, a large luxury goods conglomerate, to organize a hostile takeover of the company, forcing Leo out. That didn’t work either, but it caused Leo a big headache for a while.”

“That must have been tough,” I said sympathetically.

“It was especially tough on Gabe. They never used to fight like they fought these last couple of months.”

“So is that what they fought about?”

“Gabe felt Leo worked too hard, and wanted him to slow down, and even thought that this takeover was a good thing. These LMVH people know their stuff, so the future of the Leonidas Flake brand was safe, and the takeover would make Leo a very rich man. But Leo felt that Gabe didn’t understand. He couldn’t lose control over his company. It was, after all, his life’s work. And so they fought a lot.”

“And then last night Gabe snapped and killed him.”

“Is that the official story?”

“Yeah, that seems to be the way it went down.”

“I’m sorry to say I wasn’t there,” she said softly. “When Leo was murdered I was holed up in my room. I never liked it when they fought, so I got out of there the moment the shouting began. If only I’d been there…”

“You can’t think like that,” said Dooley immediately.

She nodded.“It’s hard to imagine Gabe would do such a horrible thing. Those two loved each other so, so much. You should have seen them together. They were crazy about each other. Even now, after all these years.”

“Well, what happened, happened,” I said. “And now you’re the boss, and you can do whatever you want.”

“But I don’t want to be the boss,” said Pussy stubbornly. “I want Leo back, and Gabe, and the three of us on the couch watchingProject Runway orRuPaul’s Drag Race.”

“We used to watch a lot of TV with Odelia, too,” I said wistfully. “Only now she’s too busy to bother.”