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“Yeah, we found him like that,” said Lorie Mitford, who was the brown-haired mousy type, and certainly did not look like a vicious wannabe celebrity heister to Odelia. In fact none of them looked like hardened criminals. More like the foursome from Scoobie Doo.

“Why did you do this?” she asked. “Why burgle these people’s homes and steal their stuff?”

“It started as a dare,” said Dawn, who seemed to be the unspoken yet outspoken spokesperson for the group. “We’ve always been addicted to social media, and we’ve been obsessing about celebrities for ages, so one day we decided we wanted access.”

“Access?”

“Yeah, we wanted to see where they lived. We wanted to lie in their beds. We wanted to step in their shoes and poke through their wardrobes. And we wanted to get our hands on something that belonged to them. And at first it was a lot of fun. We broke into the homes of the people we’ve been following online for years, and suddenly we were right there: right where they lived. It was so cool, and exciting, and since we were there anyway, we decided to grab a few souvenirs.”

“You took more than just souvenirs,” Chase said.

“I know. I guess we got carried away.”

Chase now addressed a dark-haired boy with attractive features.“Miles Cotts?”

The kid nodded nervously.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Miles?”

“Well, it’s not as if they were ever going to miss that stuff,” said Miles as he swept a dark lock from his brow. “These people are so rich I don’t think they’d miss a couple of rings or watches or a small pile of cash. All they need to do is post an update on their Insta and they’ve earned it back already. So no, I don’t feel like we did a bad thing.”

“So what happened the other night, when you broke into Carl Strauss’s place?” asked Chase. He pointed to the second boy, who wore glasses and looked a little nerdier than his colleagues. “You, Hank… Choice?”

“Hank Joyce,” the kid corrected him, then pushed his glasses up his nose. “It was really strange. For one thing, there was no alarm we needed to cut. The doors were open, and the alarm was turned off. And then after we’d already gone through the place, we suddenly found Carl—Mr. Strauss—on the floor, and just as we were debating what to do, whether to call an ambulance, suddenly you showed up, and we had to make a run for it. And then you caught Emma.” Four sets of eyes stared at Odelia with a touch of hostility.

“So now what?” asked Chase. “You expect us to believe you? For all we know Carl caught you breaking into his house and you knocked him out cold, either in a panic or in an attempt to get rid of him before he called the cops.”

“Look, I’m telling you, we didn’t do it,” said Dawn emphatically. “And if you don’t believe us, ask Carl. He’s not dead, is he?”

“No, but he’s still in a coma.”

The foursome exchanged startled glances.“But… we thought he was okay,” said Lorie.

“Who told you that?”

“It was on his Facebook. It said he’d come to and he was saying that Emma did this to him. That she’d taken a swing at him and put him in the hospital.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you read on Facebook,” said Odelia.

“Besides, Carl Strauss doesn’t have a social media presence,” Chase added. “We asked his manager, and he decided a long time ago that he didn’t want that kind of exposure.”

“But… he has a Facebook page. It even has the blue tick.”

“What blue tick?”

“The blue tick that says that the page is representative of the real person.”

“I don’t know about any ticks, whether blue or otherwise, but Carl is still in the hospital, and he hasn’t come to. But you are right that Emma is still our main suspect, so you made the right decision when you decided to turn yourselves in.”

“What’s going to happen now?” asked Dawn in a small voice.

“Now you’re all going to be charged with multiple cases of burglary and in the morning you’ll appear in juvenile court to be arraigned.” He paused. “So if I were you, I’d get in touch with a good lawyer.”

“Oh, before I forget,” said Odelia, “when you were in Carl’s house, you didn’t happen to see anyone else there, did you?”

“Apart from you, you mean?” asked Hank. “No, no one.”

“Carl was supposed to meet a girl that night,” Chase explained. “A girl named Zoe?”

“We didn’t see anyone else there. Though like I said, the alarm was switched off, and the front door was open, so it definitely looked as if someone had been in there before we arrived. And that someone is probably the person who attacked Carl.”

29

We were back at the house, where Odelia had set up a big meeting: the meeting of the neighborhood watches!

On her left sat Wilbur Vickery and Father Francis Reilly, on her right sat Gran and Scarlett, and under the table sat Dooley and myself, eager to discover what solution Odelia had in mind to end the war of the watches once and for all.