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“Which is why we need to do some digging,” said Vesta, following her train of thought to its logical conclusion. “Which means…” And then she got one of those brainwaves you always read so much about, but which so rarely happen to ordinary folk like her. “I’ve got it!” she shouted, causing Tex almost to hit the ceiling, and Scarlett to give her frowny looks.

“Will you please keep your eyes on the road?” said her friend. “If you keep this up we’ll end up in a ditch.”

“All we have to do is find something incriminating. Doesn’t matter what. Anything that this Dexter fellow doesn’t want the world to know.”

“I think we already established that we don’t know him well enough to have that kind of dirt on him.”

“No, but we know where to find it, don’t we?”

“We do?”

“Of course! Where do people keep the stuff they don’t want anyone to know about?”

“Um… buried in the backyard?”

“Oh, please cooperate, Scarlett,” said Vesta, “and use that brain of yours.”

“I am using my brain. Only it’s very hard to focus when your feet are killing you.”

“In his safe, that’s where. So we break into his house, burgle his safe, find something incriminating, and then we pay him a visit, promising not to tell anyone about what we found, on the condition that he never darken our doorstep again.” She beamed at her friend, who immediately grabbed the wheel and yanked it to the right.

“Phew,” said Scarlett. “Almost one less cyclist in the world. And what was all that about burgling a safe?”

“You and I are going to break into Edward Dexter’s house tonight. We find what we need and get out again. Easy peasy!”

“Easy peasy, my ass. I’ve never burgled a safe in my life, and I’ll bet this guy has a world-class alarm system.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, not having foreseen this snag. Alarm systems were a nuisance. Unless… She glanced in the rearview mirror at her son-in-law, who once again had disappeared in his own mind, such as it was.

“Tex!”

Tex jumped.“Eh?”

“I have a very important assignment for you.”

“You have?”

“Yes, so listen very carefully. I want you and Marge to pay a visit to Edward Dexter tonight.”

“Dexter? Who’s Dexter?”

“Your daughter’s secret lover, and possibly your future son-in-law if we don’t put a stop to this nonsense right speedily!”

Tex grimaced.“I’d totally forgotten about Dexter.”

“So you and Marge pay a visit to Dexter tonight. You tell him that you want to meet your daughter’s new boyfriend.”

“I can’t tell him that!” said Tex.

“Okay, so then invent some other story. The important thing is that you leave the front door open, so Scarlett and I can easily walk in. And while you keep the guy occupied in the living room, or one of his rooms at any rate, we’ll go and look for his safe, and burgle it!”

“You still haven’t told me how we’re going to get into the guy’s safe,” said Scarlett, as she had transferred her attention from her painful feet to the fingernail that had gone AWOL.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll figure it out as we go along. I mean, how hard can it be, right?” When Scarlett gave her a look of utter incredulity, she said, “We’ll google it! YouTube is probably full of videos on how to burgle a safe.”

“Oh, sure. We’ll watch a YouTube video while we break into the safe of one of the richest men on the planet. Easy peasy.”

“Sarcasm,” said Vesta. “Not a good look, Scarlett.”

“I don’t care how it looks. I don’t want to end up in jail again.”

“We’re the neighborhood watch. If Dexter catches us we’ll simply tell him that we’re doing a stress test of his alarm system.”

“A stress test. Really?”

“Trust me, he’ll be thrilled. Billionaires love that kind of stuff. He’ll probably pay us handsomely for the privilege, especially when we actually manage to break into his safe, and prove to him how fallible his security is.”

“If you say so,” said Scarlett dubiously.

“So what do you say, Tex?” asked Vesta, directing a questioning look at her son-in-law. “Tex!”

Once more, Tex jumped to attention.“Eh? What?”

“You and Marge. Tonight. Edward Dexter. Got it?” When the good doctor hesitated a little too long in her view, she added, “Or do you want Grace to grow up without a father?”

“Okay, fine,” said Tex. “I’ll do it. But when you get caught, I’m denying all knowledge.”

“We won’t get caught.”

“In fact I’ll deny knowing you.”

“Oh, Tex, you break my heart,” said Scarlett with a slight grin in Vesta’s direction.

“We won’t get caught,” Vesta repeated, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter, and almost mowing a pedestrian off the sidewalk. She was a woman on a mission. A mission to save her granddaughter’s life. And she was not going to fail. No, sir!

CHAPTER 33

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I had actually been hoping for a quiet night in, after the eventful day we’d had, but I probably should have known this wasn’t going to be in the cards. Being a member of the Poole family and quiet nights at home don’t go together, I’m afraid.