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“Vultures!” Scarlett darted a quick look at her friend. “Though she could do with a bit of Botox wouldn’t you agree? You’re never too young to try Botox is what I always say.”

“She’s got this nasty groove between her brows,” said Vesta, nodding.

“Botox will clear that right up. Just like that.” Scarlett snapped her fingers to show Alec what she meant.

“Dear Lord,” muttered Alec, and stepped away from the terrible twosome for a moment. And as he did, he saw that his niece and Chase had arrived, and so had a second car, containing Charlene, who’d probably come to see what was taking her boyfriend so long.

They soon joined Alec, giving him looks of commiseration that were a balm to his tortured soul.

“They tried to cut through the fence,” he announced the moment the trio was within earshot. “Armed with a nail file and a pair of clippers. They didn’t get far.”

“But why?” asked Odelia.

“They seem to think that the factory contains some kind of secret that will reveal what happened to Vicky Gardner. Don’t ask.”

Charlene, whose blond curls were glowing in the glare from those halogen lights often used to light up parking lots, gave him a commiserating smile.“Your mother is getting older, honey. Her mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be. That’s just the way it is.”

“My mother isn’t senile,” he grunted. “If anything her mind is sharper than mine.”

“Oh,” said Charlene, frowning. “So how do you explain this, then?”

He saw that Scarlett was right: Charlene did have a groove between her brows.

“I think I might be able to shed some light on Gran’s strange behavior,” said Odelia, and produced an envelope and handed it to her uncle. “Someone delivered this to the house just now.”

Alec opened the envelope and extracted a sheet of paper. On it, there was a single sentence.“A good sleuth has a sweet tooth,” he read, then glanced up at his niece. “I don’t get it,” he admitted.

“I think someone wants to direct us to this factory,” said Chase. “Garibo somehow figures into this mystery surrounding Vicky Gardner’s disappearance, and the death of that young woman.”

“So have you figured out who she is yet?” asked Charlene.

“Nope. But I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty: it’s not Vicky Gardner. That would be physically impossible.”

“Why?” asked Charlene. “If she took great care of herself she could have preserved her youthful good looks.”

He shook his head decidedly.“Vicky Gardner, if she were still alive today, would be Marge’s age.”

“And my age,” said Charlene.

“No one, and I mean no one, looks that good at forty-eight,” said Alec, and immediately saw that he’d probably said the wrong thing, for Charlene’s face fell.

“You mean I don’t look good at forty-eight? I’m too old, is that it?”

“No, that’s not what I meant, darling,” he said immediately, but the damage was done, for Charlene got a cold look in her eyes that he didn’t like to see there. It spelled doom.

“Some people say I haven’t changed a bit,” she argued. “And some even say I look better now than I did twenty years ago.”

“You look great, Charlene,” said Alec. “But not…” He saw the warning look his niece shot him but ignored it. “Not like a twenty-eight-year-old. And that’s only to be expected.”

“Oh,” said Charlene curtly, then closed her mouth with a click, opened it again to say something else, but changed her mind and abruptly turned on her heel and strode off.

“Charlene?” he said. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” she snapped, then added, “My home.”

“But… weren’t you going to stay over at mine tonight?”

She held up a hand.“Not tonight. Or any other night,” she added for good measure.

He watched as she got into her car, and drove off without acknowledging his presence. That groove had deepened, he saw, and that was probably not a good sign.

“What–what just happened?” he finally asked.

“I think you just told your girlfriend that she’s ugly,” said Odelia.

“But I never said that!”

“No, but that’s what she heard.”

He buried his face in his hands.“Can this daybe any worse?”

And then, out of the blue, suddenly a large pigeon materialized in the sky and dropped a goodish dollop of doo-doo on his head. And as it flew off, it laughed hysterically.

Yep. He just had to ask, hadn’t he?

Chapter 22

I watched as Moses homed in on me, dropped his load, and then flew off. I could have told Uncle Alec that I’d been the bird’s intended victim, not him, but what difference would that have made? He’d still have been covered in bird poo, and might even have been upset with me.

So I decided to keep quiet, while the Chief wiped his practically bald pate with a napkin helpfully provided by his niece.

“So they make candy in there, Max?” asked Dooley as we stared at the large building located on the other side of the parking lot.

“Yeah, some of the best candy in the country, or so I’ve heard.”

“I don’t understand why humans like candy so much,” he now revealed. “It’s basically sugar and pigskin, isn’t it?”

I smiled at that.“Pigskin?”