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Once inside, Marge walked up to the front desk—she was in the lead now—and asked what room Loretta Gray was staying in. The pimply receptionist told her no Loretta Gray was staying at the hotel, so then it was Odelia’s turn. She joined her mom at the front desk, and whipped out her snazzy new police badge and immediately the kid’s eyeswent wide, blushing a pretty crimson under his pimples, then hastened to say, “Oh, you mean LorettaGray! She’s in room two-fourteen, detective… officer… sergeant?”

“Police consultant,” said Odelia in that officious voice your true cop likes to assume. It takes years of training at the police academy to master that particular tone of authority, but Odelia, even though she hadn’t spent a day at police academy, had the tone down pat, which just goes to show she’s an absolute natural at this cop thing.

And so moments later we were riding the elevator up to the second floor, and then were dawdling in front of room 214, Marge looking decidedly nervous now, even though it had been her plan in the first place.

“You do it,” she suddenly said, taking a step back from the brink. “I’m too nervous.”

“No, Mom, you’re the big fan—you have to do it.”

“You can be the fan, and I’ll be the one rifling through her things.”

“But I haven’t even read the book!”

“Oh, dear,” said Marge, chewing her bottom lip for a moment. Then she seemed to gather her courage, and raised her hand to knock, only to lower it again. “I’m going to screw this up. I just know it!”

“You’ll be fine. Forget that we’re here to get that diamond and just think of yourself as the fan that you are, meeting her big hero in the flesh for the first time.”

“But it’s not the first time. We met yesterday on the street in front of the library.”

“Even better. That means that first awkward moment is over with, and you can pick up where you left off.”

“We left off with her racing away in her car after I asked her some questions she didn’t like.”

“Oh, Mom,” Odelia groaned, and decided to take matters into her own hands and did the knocking for her mom.

“What did you do?!”

“I knocked on the door!”

“I’m out of here,” said Marge, and made to leave.

But then the door suddenly swung open and Loretta Gray appeared.“Marge?”

Marge quickly covered her nervousness with an engaging smile and said,“Loretta! Fancy meeting you here!”

“Oh, boy,” Brutus muttered next to me.

Dooley, who’d been studying a spot on the carpet, asked me if I thought it was Nutella or jam or blood.

“What are you doing here?” asked Loretta, as her eyes flitted from Marge to Odelia down to the four cats staring up at her—well, three cats, since Dooley was still studying that spot and now gave it a tentative lick.

“I think it’s jam,” he said.

“Don’t lick weird stuff on the carpet, Dooley,” I told him.

“It’s not weird, it’s jam.”

“So I forgot to ask you for your autograph yesterday,” said Marge, finally rallying round. She held up the voluminous tome called The Sheikh’s Passion and practically thrusted it at the writer.

“I’m Marge’s daughter,” said Odelia, smiling in her most disarming way possible. “Mom told me all about your wonderful book, so I started to read it last night and it’s just fantastic. I don’t think I’ve ever read a story that has gripped me so much as The Sheikh’s Passion.”

“I think she’s overdoing it,” said Harriet. “First rule for a good detective: always play it cool.”

“Yeah, she better tone it down,” said Brutus. “Nobody likes to be buttered up to such an extent.”

But the authoress’s frosty demeanor thawed under this onslaught of praise, and she was even affecting a smile when she said, “Why, thank you. Do you want to come in for a moment?”

“We’d love to,” said Marge, and stepped in, followed by Odelia and the cat contingent, with yours truly bringing up the rear.

“I’m sorry,” said Odelia the moment the door was closed, “but could I perhaps use your bathroom?”

“It’s through there,” said the writer, and gestured to a door near the window.

“So I was hoping to find out what inspired you to write such an amazing story,” said Marge, continuing in her gushing tones, which seemed to have such a positive effect on the writer.

“Well, like I told you yesterday, I’m blessed with a lot of imagination.”

“But it’s so true to life.”

“It’s all fiction, Marge,” said Loretta, taking the book from her big fan’s hands. “Sheer fiction, I assure you.”

“But the Pink Lady is real.”

“Well, yes, certain aspects of the book are loosely based in reality. Like the Pink Lady. But the rest is fiction.” She’d dug out a pen and was now writing a dedication on the first page.

And as Marge talked to the author, and got her to open up about the book’s inspiration, Odelia was still in that bathroom, presumably searching it from top to bottom for a certain pink diamond.

“She won’t have hidden it in the bathroom,” said Harriet decidedly. “She only got back twenty minutes ago, so she wouldn’t have had time to look for a proper hiding place.”