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“Actually she didn’t,” said Marcia. “Turns out Quintin had found a fertility clinic where they’d managed to snatch a few of his supposedly sedate swimmers and managed to put the little suckers to work.” She made a face. “Sordid business, if you ask me. But it worked, and Vicky ended up pregnant.”

“So your carefully crafted plans of succession suddenly fell through.”

Marcia nodded.“So you see, there was only one thing to do. One course of action to guarantee the future of Garibo Enterprises.”

“You kidnapped Vicky.”

“I invited her over for tea. She never even knew what happened. When she woke up in here, shackled to the wall, she asked me what was going on, the naive little bimbo.”

“So… you killed her?” asked Scarlett, gulping a little.

“I didn’t have to. I discovered she was willing to do whatever it took to regain her freedom, so I removed the shackles and fixed up the basement to make it more homey.”

Vesta looked around. The place didn’t look very homey to her.

A sudden noise had them all look up, and Vesta picked that moment to take a good grip on the figurine, then aim it straight at the woman’s head. It hit its mark beautifully, causing the other woman to utter a sharp cry of surprise, then drop to the floor.

Quick as a flash, both Vesta and Scarlett were on her, one wresting the gun from her hand, the other taking a seat on top of the woman.

The door to the basement suddenly burst open, and Alec came charging down, followed by Chase, and what looked like the entire Hampton Cove police department.

“Finally,” said Vesta, panting a little from the exertion. “What took you so long?”

Epilogue

“So the cats saved the day,” said Marge as she put a big bowl of potato salad on the table.

“No, the watch saved the day,” said her mother.

“But the cats found the solution.”

“No, thewatch found the solution. Thewatch caught the killer.”

“More like the killer caught you,” said Uncle Alec with a twinkle in his eye.

“Oh, when are you going to admit that the watch beat you fair and square? We won, Alec, and the police lost!”

“I seem to remember it was us who came barging in to save your ass,” growled the Chief.

“My ass didn’t need saving! I’d already saved my own ass, thank you very much!”

“Are they going to argue like that all day, Max?” asked Dooley.

“All week, I imagine,” I said.

We were in the backyard of Tex and Marge’s house, where Tex was manning the grill, whipping up some prime beef, sausages, steaks and ribs for anyone with an appetite, which apparently was everyone present: Odelia and Chase, of course, Marge, Gran and Scarlett, Tex the grillmeister himself, and Uncle Alec and Charlene.

We cats, meanwhile, patiently waited for those tasty slivers of meat that Odelia usually likes to dole out on these occasions.

The only one who wasn’t present and accounted for was Vicky Gardner, but I had a feeling that very soon now we’d be making her acquaintance. Though these days she wasn’t called Vicky Gardner but Erna Potch, having married a man named Walter Potch.

“I still can’t believe Vicky is alive,” said Brutus. “I thought for sure she’d be dead by now.”

“I thought so, too,” said Harriet.

Marcia Gardner might be an abductor of women, but apparently she was no murderer. One day, while trying to escape, Vicky had tumbled down the stairs and hit her noggin against that cement floor. It had not only created a dilemma for Marcia, who couldn’t just call an ambulance, it had also caused Vicky to develop a serious case of amnesia. It had given Marcia a great idea, though, and she’d decided to get rid of her brother’s wife once and for all, by shipping her to a friend in Belize, where Vicky was still living to this day, being underthe impression that her name was Erna, and that she was born and raised in Illinois and happily married to a local expat, who hadn’t even been aware that she’d been abducted—Marcia had said Vicky had fled an abusive husband, something Walter Potch had happily accepted as the truth. When Vickyhad recovered from her fall, love had blossomed, and Vicky, unbeknownst to herself, had soon become a bigamist. She’d had her baby over there, and the couple had lived a happy life.

“So what about this fitness instructor?” asked Brutus. “How does she fit into the story?”

“Well, Marcia had hoped that the loss of his wife would make her brother hand over the company to Bobby, who was fresh out of college twenty years ago. But Quintin refused to accept that Vicky was dead, and kept looking for her all these years. So when Marcia met Joanne Whittler, and saw the striking resemblance to her sister-in-law, she figured she might use her to drive her brother over the edge.”

“By killing her and making her brother think it was Vicky?” asked Harriet.