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He grinned lasciviously.“Nice to meet you, Odelia Poole. Lovely name for a sexy dame.”

“I’m working with the police to find the man who tried to shoot you this morning.”

“I’m liking you better and better. Why don’t you get in so you can tell me all about it?”

“She’s a cop, boss,” the driver called out. “You may want to rethink this.”

Charlie gulped.“A cop? She doesn’t look like a cop. Are cops usually this hot?”

“She’s a civilian consultant,” said the driver, who seemed to be well-informed.

“We met at the house this afternoon,” Odelia reminded him, a touch of pique in her voice. How could this idiot not recognize her? They met twice! “And again this evening? I was the one who discovered it was one of your bodyguards who put that knife on your pillow?”

“So you did!” he said, his face clearing. “Hey, you’re cleverand hot!”

She pressed her lips together.“Please be on your way, Charlie.” She would have said ‘Please get lost,’ but she was still working the man’s case, and didn’t want to be rude.

“Ouch.” He touched his bare chest. “You just broke the Dieber’s heart, babe.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” she muttered, slammed the limo door shut and stalked off.

He rolled down his window.“Some other time, huh, babe? Can I have your number?”

Without turning back, she held up a hand. She would have raised her middle finger but the same principle still applied: never disrespect the subject of an ongoing investigation.

She couldn’t help wondering, though, if the world wouldn’t be a better place if Charlie Dieber had taken that bullet that morning instead of Ray Cooper. She reprimanded herself. Charlie might be a douchebag, but even douchebags didn’t deserve to die. Right?

Chapter 18

After a long trek, we finally made it back to Hampton Cove. We passed through the small marina, the streets pretty much deserted, as one would expect in the middle of the night, and that’s just the way we liked it. And we were about to head on home and sample some of that delicious kibble our humans like to put out when Brutus froze midstep, and stared straight ahead, like a pointer dog—which is odd, since Brutus doesn’t even like dogs.

“What’s wrong, Brutus?” asked Dooley, ever considerate.

“This is the end,” he breathed in a stertorous voice. “I’m throwing my hat in the ring.”

“But you don’t have a hat,” Dooley pointed out in an admirable display of logic.

“Look, fellas,” Brutus heaved. “Look over there.”

We looked over there, and that’s when we saw what had suddenly made him pant like a pointer. It was Diego and Harriet, seated on the roof of The Hungry Pipe, the popular restaurant that’s one of the marina’s draws. I could just make out their silhouettes as they were sitting, heads together, backlit by that same moon thathad fascinated Clarice so much.

“It’s our spot,” Brutus said, still sounding as if he’d swallowed a mosquito. “The spot I declared my everlasting love and devotion. The very spot I vowed to love and protect, to honor and cherish, to be all that I could be…” He heaved a soft sob, and for perhaps the first time since I’d made his acquaintance, I could see actual tears glisten in the tough cat’s eye.

“That’s not very nice,” said Dooley, in a massive understatement.

“He’s doing it on purpose,” Brutus said. “He knows how much this place means to me and he’s just rubbing my nose in it.”

It seemed a little far-fetched to think that Diego would know when Brutus would pass by The Hungry Pipe and see him and Harriet on the roof. The cat might be evil, but he was not clairvoyant. What had probably happened was that Harriet must have pointed the spot out as one she favored, and Diego decided to humor her and see what the big deal was.

The big deal is that Colin Carret, the Pipe’s proud owner and a perennial optimist, always overestimates the appeal of his place, and prepares more food than his clientele can ever tuck away. And since his kitchen happens to be on the top floor of the building, a lot of that food makes its way into his garbage bins, which are located on the roof before being transferred to the alley below via the kitchen elevator in the morning. Every cat in Hampton Cove knows that the Pipe is the place to be to get your paws on some high-quality grub.

I decided not to introduce this sordid materialistic theme into the conversation. Brutus was hit hard enough as it was. And as we watched, Diego and Harriet’s profiles retreated, and moments later we could see them descend the fire escape, reach street level, and stalk off in the direction of home and hearth, where presumably Diego would eat my food, drink my water, poop in my litter box and take my place at Odelia’s feet.

“I can’t go home,” Brutus announced brokenly, and staggered towards that same fire escape, and was soon mounting the steps, in the throes of a debilitating emotional crisis.

“We can’t leave him like this,” I told Dooley.

“Yeah, he doesn’t look very happy,” Dooley announced.

“You wouldn’t be happy if you were forced to watch the cat you loved canoodle with some other cat.”