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“Look, all I know is that Jay’s trouble started when he hooked up with that Laia person. So whatever is going on, he only has himself to blame.”

“And why is that?”

Loretta gave Odelia a not-so-friendly look.“Who are you? A cop?”

“Not a cop, no. Laia and Jay asked me to investigate, so that’s what I’m doing.”

“You know who Laia Twine is, don’t you?”

Odelia merely waited, which is a great technique for getting people to talk.

Loretta heaved an exaggerated sigh.“Look, the only reason Jay dumped me is because Laia is this little rich girl, and since he’s basically a failure as an artist, he probably hoped she would bankroll his lifestyle. Set him up in a studio of his own, where he can tinker and mess around without actually having to make any money. Only from what I’m hearing, her parents cut her off the moment she tried to foist Jay on them. So now they’re both in big trouble.”

“So you’re saying the only reason Jay dumped you is because Laia is rich?”

“Sure! We had a good thing going, me and Jay. Or at least I thought we had. But then Miss Moneybags came along, and suddenly I wasn’t good enough for the Starving Artist.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have created a profile for Jay on a dating site, would you?”

“No, I would not,” said Loretta decidedly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, people are waiting.”

And so it became clear that our interview was at an end.

Once outside, Dooley said with a sort of puzzled look on his face,“She didn’t look sleazy to me, Max. Her clothes were clean, her face was washed, and she smelled nice.”

“Yeah, I think Bud Zuk wasn’t being very nice when he made that comment,” I agreed. “She looks like a very nice girl.” A little resentful, perhaps, but that was to be expected, if what she said about Jay was true.

We all piled into the pickup again, and Odelia voiced the general sentiment when she said,“So now what?”

“Now we know that Jay’s ex-girlfriend and Laia’s ex-boyfriend both claim they have nothing to do with this stalking business,” I said. “Which either means that one of them is a liar, or that the real culprit is to be found elsewhere.”

“I think it’s the parents,” said Dooley. “They obviously hate Jay for taking their girl away from them, and they’re trying to make her give him up.”

“It’s possible,” Odelia conceded. She checked her clock. “We better leave Mr. and Mrs. Twine for tomorrow, though.”

I eyed that can of cat food with a distinct sense of relish. It was the cheap store brand kind of stuff, but it still looked tasty enough.“Excellent idea,” I murmured.

CHAPTER 8

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Brutus wasn’t in the best mood he could have been. Harriet had him paw-painting, which apparently was a new technique, reminiscent of finger-painting, something young humans excelled at, and it was taking a toll on his peace of mind.

In general he didn’t mind Harriet’s capricious nature, or even the fact that she got these weird brainstorms from time to time and insisted on carrying them out with or without his assistance, but he drew the line at making an absolute and complete fool of himself, as he was sure he was doing now!

“Paw-painting, if you please,” he murmured darkly to himself. Once more he dabbed a paw into one of the many buckets of paint Harriet had asked Gran to put at her disposal and applied it to the large piece of paper Harriet had positioned on the lawn for the purpose of furthering her art.

“Not bad, Brutus!” Harriet yelled from the sidelines. “A little more to the right. Now just draw a straight line all the way… astraight line, Brutus! That’s crooked!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “It’s not so easy to draw a straight line!” he said, a little louder. And definitely when you didn’t have the overview, like Harriet.

She’d taken position on a chair and was having a bird’s eye view, so to speak.

“I don’t think I like what you’re doing, Brutus,” she now yelled as she watched him with a touch of dubiousness. “Those greens and those reds don’t mix!”

Brutus glanced down at his paws, which were a many-colored miasma of smelly paint. It was going to prove a real difficulty to get it off.

“Try the yellow,” Harriet now suggested. “Just a little bit of yellow up there in the corner.” She was pointing in the general direction of the side of the painting he’d hoped he was done with, since he’d already turned it into a veritable smorgasbord of riotous color, and each time he walked in it, it added to the mess.

But yellow it had to be, so yellow it was.

He carefully dipped his left paw into the bucket of paint, and then sort of hobbled in the direction Harriet had indicated and daubed it on the canvas.

“Much, much better!” Harriet said, much to his elation. “You did it, cookie jar. It’s shaping up really well, don’t you think?”

He eyed her stoically.“Absolutely,” he said, even though he had absolutely no idea what he was doing, apart from getting his paws dirty, of course.

“Better come up here,” Harriet suggested. “So you can see what I did.”