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“So who’s going to pay the bills from now on?” asked Dooley.

“I’ll pay the bills,” said Odelia. “I’ll find another job.” She sighed. “Though frankly I’m not sure what job that would be. The Gazette is the only paper in town, and I don’t feel like moving away from Hampton Cove.”

“You can always become a cop,” Dooley suggested. “Chase is a cop, and your uncle is a cop, so I’m sure they’ll give you a job if you ask nicely.”

“It’s not that simple, Dooley. To be a cop you have to pass through police academy, and even then it’s not guaranteed I’d be able to get a job in town. As far as I know they’ve got a full roster here and aren’t looking for new recruits.”

“You could be a private detective,” he suggested next. “You’re very good at that, and I’m sure plenty of people would love to hire you. And maybe they’ll even pay you.”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“Look, I’ve got something important to tell you,” I said, deciding that the topic of Odelia’s recent unemployment was perhaps best put on the back burner for now. There were more important and especially more urgent matters to take into consideration right now. “I think I may have figuredout who killed Dino Wimmer,” I said. “It came to me in a flash last night. And I think I just might be right about this.”

Odelia stared at me in surprise.“You know who killed Dino Wimmer?”

“Well, I have a theory. It probably needs testing, though.”

“Tell me all about it,” she said, and so I did.

When I’d finished laying it all out to her, she was nodding thoughtfully. “I see what you mean about testing your theory, Max. And I think I know just how to go about that. The only problem is that it would require the assistance of a man I’ve just antagonized.”

I gave her a questioning look, but before she could tell me more, a sudden scream rent the air, and when we both looked in the direction of the scream, I saw that it had originated from a little girl, who now stood crying as she pointed an accusing finger at… Dooley!

Odelia and I hurried over, and soon we were joined by the girl’s mom. She picked up a plastic ball from the ground and examined it. Then she said, with a dark look at Odelia, “Is this cat yours?”

“Yes, he is,” said Odelia. “What did he do?”

The woman held out the ball, which was a nice shiny pink.“He punctured my daughter’s ball. See? It’s full of holes!”

“Oh, Dooley,” I said. “What did you do now?”

“I just wanted to help, Max!” said my friend. “That little girl’s ball had rolled underneath that bench over there so I decided to get it for her.” He gave me a shamefaced look. “I must have dug in my nails a little too deep when I grabbed it.”

“What are you going to do about this?” asked the woman, still brandishing the ball.

“I’ll pay for it, of course,” said Odelia dutifully. “Unless it can be fixed?”

“I don’t think so,” said the woman, still irate while her daughter was crying her heart out and screaming, “My ball! That pussycat broke my ball!”

“Oh, Dooley, Dooley,” I said as we let Odelia deal with the case of the punctured ball and retreated back to the relative safety of our bench.

“I just wanted to do my good deed of the day, Max,” he said. “I haven’t done my good deed yet and I saw an opportunity and I took it.”

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to do any more good deeds without asking me first?”

“I know, but you were so busy talking to Odelia and here was this great opportunity to put my good for the day in so…” He looked really crushed, and I took heart.

“It’s all right, Dooley. It’s just a ball. It’s not the end of the world.”

“But look at that little girl, Max. She’s so sad. I wanted to make her happy and I made her unhappy. Instead of doing a good deed I did a bad deed. Now I’ll have to do two good deeds today. One to make up for this bad deed, and my regular good deed of the day.” He paused. “Or maybe I needto do more than one good deed to make up for this bad deed.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Dooley,” I said, slightly alarmed.

“Maybe I need to do ten good deeds to make up for one bad deed,” he said with spurious logic. “Oh, I really did it now, didn’t I, Max?”

“Please don’t do ten good deeds, Dooley,” I implored.

“Eleven,” he said. “Ten to make up for what I did to that ball and my regular good deed of the day.”

“You know what? Maybe you don’t have to be a cub scout. Maybe you can join some other club,” I suggested, seeing a future stretching before me littered with disaster after disaster. Because if all of Dooley’s good deeds kept backfiring like this soon he’d have to do hundreds of good deedsto compensate for the dozens he bungled. And there simply weren’t enough hours in the day.

“What other club were you thinking of, Max?” he asked, curious.

“Well, Odelia’s detective club, for one thing. If she’s out of a job, and takes your advice to start a detective agency, she’s going to need assistants who help her become the best detective Hampton Cove has ever seen. And that means you and I are going to be very busy indeed.”