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“Ten thou— and you spent it?” He didn’t need to ask what Victor spent the money on. That was quite obvious. “You know what we’ll do? I’ll have a talk with Alice, and I’m going to explain to her what happened, and I’m going to advise her against the use of her rolling pin for any purpose other than the preparation of her fine bread and pastry. How does that sound to you? And perhaps I can have a word with the Mayor, too. Tell him about your predicament, and ask if you can’t pay him back the money in installments.”

“Oh, would you, father? Would you really?”

“It’s the least I can do for a member of my flock,” said the priest warmly.

Victor was clearly much relieved. In fact he was over the moon.“Thank you, Father Reilly. Thank you so much. That would be a big help. Alice would never hit a priest.”

“Why don’t I drop by the house later and you and Alice and I sit down for that chat?”

It was perhaps too much to say that Victor walked out of the church with a spring in his step, as a man who’s been drinking as much as he had for as long as he had has a hard time walking straight, even when sober, but a weight had clearly been lifted from his shoulders. And as Father Reilly watched him leave, he found his mind wandering back to the man’s words. Why did the Mayor want to buy up a bunch of old farmhouses and surrounding land? What was he planning to do with them?

And then, vowing to get to the bottom of this thing, he took out his phone and called the woman he’d come to consider an ally.

“Vesta? Do you have a minute?”

Chapter 35

So far everything had gone according to plan. Odelia had rung the front doorbell, while the rest of us snuck in through the kitchen door.

Once we were inside, we split up in two teams, and used our noses to discover whether Grace and Fabio’s bodies might have been buried somewhere on the premises. Once we’d gone over the house, we’d meet back in the kitchen, and cover the grounds.

It was a gruesome task, of course, and frankly I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. I’ve never been much of a cadaver dog, or even a cadaver cat, but Odelia said it needed to be done, so do it we did.

“Let’s start in the basement,” I suggested.

“Why is it that people always hide dead bodies in the basement, Max?” asked Dooley. “Why can’t they hide them in the bathroom or the bedroom instead?”

“Because people don’t like to take a shower next to a dead body,” I said, “or sleep next to one. Out of sight, out of mind, and what better place to get rid of a dead body than to bury it under a nice slab of concrete in the basement where no one will ever find it?”

“I guess so,” he said, still not fully convinced. Which just goes to show Dooley would make a lousy murderer.

We carefully made our way down a set of stone steps into the Farnsworth basement, and found a nice collection of wines and spirits all neatly organized on wooden racks.

“Looks like Jock is an alcoholic,” said Dooley.

“It’s not because people enjoy a glass of wine now and then that they’re necessarily alcoholics, Dooley,” I said. “Odelia and Chase like the occasional glass of wine with their dinner, and so do Marge and Tex. That doesn’t make them raging alcoholics.”

“It doesn’t?”

“There’s a difference between enjoying a sip of wine and drinking it by the gallon,” I intimated as I let my eyes drift past the rows and rows of wine, all displayed labels out, and then resumed my task of sniffing around for traces of dead bodies. But as far as I could tell the only dead bodies located there were cockroaches, beetles, rats and mice.

And as we headed deeper into the basement, it soon became clear that wherever Jock had stashed his wife and her lover, it wasn’t down there.

“Too bad,” Dooley said. “I think Odelia is really looking forward to finding Grace.”

“She’s looking forward to finding her alive,” I corrected him. “And hopefully she is.”

We climbed those stairs again, and when we reached the kitchen Harriet and Brutus had just returned from their search of the rest of the house.

“And? Find anything?” asked Harriet hopefully.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Lots of wine,” said Dooley.

We could hear Odelia’s voice. She was talking to Jock, keeping him distracted while her cats inspected his property.

“Let’s check those grounds,” I said.

This was a much tougher proposition, as they were really stretched out, and Grace and Fabio could be buried anywhere.

Still, I trusted that our keen senses of smell would carry us through and save the day.

So we headed outside, and as Harriet and Brutus turned left, Dooley and I turned right. We’d circle around and meet back by Odelia’s car.

Dooley and I kept our noses close to the ground, as we sniffed around. We’re not as well-versed in sniffing out bodies as dogs, perhaps, but we’re no amateurs either. And soon I thought I’d picked up what smelled like Grace. Odelia had handed us a dress that had belonged to her, so we could pick up her scent, and I now thought I was onto something. Dooley had smelled it, too, for he said, “I think I’ve got something, Max.”