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“You wouldn’t take a blind person’s guide dog away from them, would you?” said Gran. “We need these cats. Without them we won’t be able to function.”

“Oh-kay,” said the girl, then took her phone and walked away for a few moments, busily talking into her phone, and presumably asking advice from one of her higher-ups. When she returned, she had a big smile on her face. “It’s all right, Mrs. Muffin. You can bring your emotional support animals into the building now.” She then gave me a pointed look. “They are… potty trained, aren’t they?”

“Of course,” said Gran. “Max and Dooley are highly-trained professionals.”

“What have we been trained at, Max?” asked Dooley as we proceeded to the bank of elevators.

“Didn’t you hear? Going to the potty,” I said, as we hurried to keep up with Gran and Scarlett.

“I just hope they have a potty to go to,” he said, panting a little.

It was a big building, all concrete and glass, with many floors and plenty of people occupying those floors, all busy working on their respective computers. Soon enough, though, we found our desks—or at least Gran and Scarlett found their desks, with Dooley and myself being relegated to a corner of said desks.

Then again, if you’re going to be an emotional support animal, which we now apparently were, you have to learn to take these little setbacks in stride.

“So what is our mission?” I asked once Gran had placed a minor potted plant on top of her desk—her way of staking her claim, I guess.

“Our mission is twofold,” said Gran as she started wrestling with her office chair, putting it higher, then lower, then adjusting the tilt of the backrest, then cursing loudly while she pulled levers and yanked and turned and kicked at the plethora of knobs the thing contained. “Do you see that woman over there?”

I scanned the horizon, and located the woman she referred to.“The pretty blond one?” I asked.

“Bingo. Her name is Natalie Ferrara and she’s pregnant.”

“Good for her,” I said, nodding. “Who’s the baby daddy?”

“That’s the problem,” she said. “Her boss is the baby daddy, but the moment she told him about the baby, he said he didn’t want to be the daddy. In other words, he dumped her, and now he wants her to get an abortion.”

“Ouch.”

“And so Natalie is very upset and wrote to Gabi asking her for advice. Which is why we’re here. To assess the situation and figure out how to proceed. The second part of our mission is that guy over there. His name is Tom Mitchell and he’s in love with a colleague who doesn’t give him the time of day. So we need to figure out who this colleague is, and if we can bring them together somehow.”

“Tough mission,” I said. These Cupid missions are always difficult to pull off.

“And there’s a third person,” said Gran, pushing her glasses further up her nose as she searched around. “But I don’t see her right now. Maybe she quit. Her boss gifted her a copy of theElements of Style, which she took to mean he doesn’t think she can spell. Her name is Doris Booth and this is what she looks like.”

She showed us a picture on her phone, then flicked through to pictures of Natalie Ferrara and Tom Mitchell, which she had obviously found on the internet.

“So I want you guys to hang around, discreetly listen in on conversations, and then report back to me with any office gossip relevant to our three targets. Is that understood?”

“Absolutely,” I said. Now that I had a deeper understanding of our mission, I was feeling more relaxed. It seemed like something we might be able to pull off.

“Now if I can only get this stupid chair to behave,” she grumbled annoyedly.

CHAPTER 9

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It was an interesting experience for me to be part of a large office like this. I had been in office settings before, of course, but Odelia’s office is a small one, only occupied by herself and her boss Dan Goory. And then there’s Chase, who has several colleagues. But Advantage Publishing was clearly one step up from the police station, scale-wise, I mean. Gran had cleared a portion of her desk, and now Dooley and I had a nice overview of the office from our new vantage point.

“This place is big, Max,” Dooley marveled. “I’ve never seen so many people working together before. What do they all do all day? And why are they so busy?”

“Publishing several magazines is a lot of work, Dooley,” I said. “All those pages have to be filled with copy and pictures, and then those pictures and articles have to be put in the right place so you’re going to need editors and layout people.”

“Odelia could work here,” said my friend. “It would be like a promotion.”

“I think Odelia likes the freedom she has working for theGazette. In a corporate environment like this you always have some boss to answer to.”