40b1ce81e27faee7f7dcd22da99b93e1

Once they were both inside her little car again, her future husband said, with a sort of stunned look on his face.“So now what?”

“Now we go home and start our life together,” she said simply.

“But… what about your parents?”

She frowned at her childhood home, which all of a sudden had developed an air of foreboding.“I don’t have parents anymore. From now on I’m an orphan.”

They arrived home about twenty minutes later, to find that the postman had dumped another couple of parcels in the hallway.

“More junk we didn’t order,” said Jay, angrily checking the pile of boxes.

“And that we’ll have to pay for with money we don’t have,” she said as she picked up a box with the logo of a familiar gaming company. “Have you filed a complaint with the police?”

“I have, but they didn’t seem to take me seriously.” He shook his head. “Who’s doing this to us?”

“Could be my folks,” she said slowly. It hadn’t occurred to her before that they could be behind this recent deluge of unwanted and unsolicited parcels, but now it was obvious they might hate Jay so much they were trying to teach her a lesson.

Just then, the doorbell rang, and Jay uttered a curse. He yanked open the door. At his feet, a burning paper bag was lying.

“Christ,” he said, and immediately started to stomp on it to put out the flames.

He probably shouldn’t have done that, for the bag contained a pile of a sort of brownish substance that could only be described as excrement.

And as Jay stared at his shoe, now covered in the stuff, as was their doorstep, Laia knew for sure that this was her parents’ doing.

In some kind of twisted joke, they’d put actual excrement all over Jay’s nice shoes—the only pair of nice shoes he had.

Since it was now obvious her parents were completely out of control, something needed to be done, and quickly, too!

But what?

And as Jay tried to remove the smelly substance by scraping his shoe across the sidewalk, her eye suddenly fell on a copy of theHampton Cove Gazette. On the front page, an article was printed about a recent murder case that had taken place at some swanky hotel in Paris. The authoress appeared to have solved the murder, together with her husband, who was a cop. And as she scanned the article, she remembered how Dan Goory had once said Odelia Kingsley was simply the best.

And suddenly she knew exactly what to do.

CHAPTER 2

[Êàðòèíêà: img_2]

It had been a pretty busy time for us, and so when the opportunity arose for me to take a prolonged nap, I didn’t hesitate and took it. One learns from these experiences, you see. When one is adopted by a woman who fashions herself to be a reporter-slash-sleuth and is married to a cop, it’s imperative one learns to take the rough with the smooth, and take one’s naps whenever and wherever one can.

In other words: I was tired so I slept. And I would have slept more, if Harriet hadn’t decided to stir me from my slumber.

“Max,” she said, shaking me when I didn’t immediately react. “Max, hellooo!”

Of course she had me at hello, but I decided to ignore her, hoping she’d soon go away. When that didn’t work, I finally yawned and said, “What?” Hoping to convey the sentiment that I’d rather be left in peace, you know. A sort of gentle hint, if you will. A subtle reminder of the sacredness of nap time. Unfortunately Harriet isn’t one for subtlety, or fortaking hints.

Instead she gave me a beaming smile and said,“Look!”

I looked, and when I didn’t see, I said, more or less unhappily, “What is it I’m supposed to be looking at?”

“My painting, of course!”

“Painting? What painting?”

“I’ve made a new painting!” she said, still with that pretty excitement that has made her so popular with a certain type of male.

This time I decided to look where she was pointing, and lo and behold, she had indeed created a new chapter in her career as a buddingartiste.

Next to me, my friend Dooley also stirred.“What’s going on?” he asked, only now becoming aware of these exciting goings-on in our backyard.

“Harriet has made a new painting,” I said. “And she wants us to take a look.”

“Oh,” said Dooley, without much enthusiasm. You see, Harriet has been trying to get her career going for quite a while now, and the problem is that when an artist sets out to make the world a better place by spreading some sweetness and light by honing their craft, at first they are simply not very good. It takes time to become a better artist, and in some cases a lot of time indeed.

But all the while, the beginning artist insists on imposing on their nearest and dearest with the imperfect products of their newfound hobby. So imperfect, in fact, that it hurts the eyes just having to look at the stuff.

In Harriet’s case it didn’t help that she’d picked paw-painting as her art of choice. It’s like finger-painting, you see, only with paws, since cats don’t have fingers, per se. Basically she dips her paws in paint and applies them to canvas.

It’s fun, it’s easy, and the results aren’t always to write home about.