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“Not that. Another bodyguard died. Shot to death in his room. The bodyguard Shanille thought killed Ray Cooper. Looks like suicide but…” She grimaced. “I’m not sure.”

“Oh,” I said, my exuberance waning. Rejoicing in the face of tragedy just wasn’t right. “You’re right. That is pretty bad. So you think he didn’t do it?”

“Like I said, I’m not sure. He told us he didn’t kill Ray, and I actually believed him, so…” She frowned. “The thing is, he was involved with Regan. They both were, Ray and Toby. Like a love triangle thing? Chase believes in the suicide theory, though. He’s closed the case.”

She was talking more to herself than to us, I saw. Humans often do that. They talk to themselves on the street, in the shower, in the car, thinking nobody can hear them. It’s a peculiar habit. Then again, I think we can all agree humans are a peculiar breed.

“You want us to talk to Shanille again?” I asked. “Dig a little deeper?”

She looked up.“Mh? Oh, no. That’s not necessary. Before I dropped her off at Father Reilly’s I asked her to repeat to me what she told you. She said she couldn’t be sure Toby actually shot Ray. All she saw was this strange exchange between them—which is understandable in the context of a quarrel between two love rivals. Which reminds me…”

She took a small pill bottle from her pocket and popped the top. I gave it a suspicious look. I don’t like pills. They usually taste horrible and tend to give me a nasty rash.

“What is that, Odelia?” asked Dooley.

“Vitamins,” she said as shook two sizable pills into the palm of her hand. “Now are you going to swallow them like big boys or do you want me to mix them into your food?”

“Vitamins?” asked Dooley. “What’s a vitamins?”

“They’re good for you,” she said. “They will give you more energy.”

“I’ve got plenty of energy,” I told her. “I don’t need vitamins.”

“I think I’ll take one,” said Dooley. “I like energy. Energy is good.”

She smiled and placed a pill on his raspy pink tongue. He squeezed his eyes shut and dry-swallowed it, then gave her a look of triumph. She patted his head.“Well done, Dooley. You’re a real champ.” Then she turned to me and held up the second pill. “Your turn, Max.”

I made a face, and Dooley said,“Max likes to roam wild and free on the Serengeti. He probably doesn’t need a vitamins.”

“Vitamin,” she corrected him. “Plural: vitamins. So you’re a tiger now, huh, Max?”

“And he likes bacon,” Dooley added.

She grinned.“A real tiger wouldn’t mind swallowing down a little pill.”

“Oh, all right,” I muttered, and opened my mouth wide. The things I do for my human…

Chapter 23

After Odelia had watched her father and her uncle Alec work on her kitchen door for a while, she felt compelled to remove herself from the scene. By then it was clear to her that her door was not going to survive the efforts of two men who gave the handymen of this world a bad name. They’d begun by shaving off a small sliver of door, in a bid to make the pet door fit Max’s outsized frame. Happy with the result, they’d decided to remove another bit of door, and had soon become addicted to the process. Now, at last count, it would appear they were moving steadily through the door like a pair of beavers chewing down a tree. At the rate they were going, soon there would be nothing left but a pile of sawdust.

She couldn’t watch anymore, and retreated to the house next door, entering the kitchen to find her mother baking a cake. Marge looked up when her daughter entered the house. Her button of a nose was covered in flour, and her hair was covered with a wrap.

“Oh, hey, honey. Did they finish your door already?”

“Oh, yes, they finished my door,” she said with a hollow laugh. “Finished it off. I just hope they won’t start hacking away at the rest of the house as well. Cause if they do, I might be forced to move in with you.” She sat musingly for a spell. “You know? I never realized the kind of damage termites could wreak on a fragile structure. Now I know. It’s not pretty.”

Her mother made a sympathetic noise.“Oh, honey. I should have told you that your father and my brother are the worst handymen in the world. Remember how they were going to build a treehouse? When the dust finally settled there was no tree house, and no tree, either. You should have hired a professional for that door. They would have installed that thing in a matter of minutes.”

“You’re telling me now? I’m bound to be homeless by the time they’re through.”

Marge brought a hand to her face to hide her mirth.“Oh, honey,” she said.

“It would be funny,” she agreed, “if it wasn’t so sad.”

“It’s just a door. I’ll tell Tex to buy you a new one, this time with a pet door pre-installed.”

Odelia glanced at the cake batter. She could go for a piece. Pity it wouldn’t be ready for another few hours. “And then there’s that Dieber business,” she continued her lament.

“Oh, that’s right. What’s going on with that?”