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She stared at it, then frowned as recognition dawned.“I think those are the winning numbers from two days ago,” she said slowly. She locked eyes with her husband, and then they were both frantically grabbing for their phones to look up the numbers.

“You’re right!” said Tex, a little quicker off the mark than her. “You’re absolutely right!”

“How much?” she asked. “How much did we win?”

“Fifty thousand, it says here,” said her husband, slowly looking up at her, then down at the ticket lying in her lap.

“Fifty thousand? But…”

“I don’t get it,” he said, taking a closer look at the envelope the ticket had arrived in. It was just a blank envelope, with nothing written on it. “How can this be?”

“Who cares?” said Marge, a smile slowly lighting up her face. “Madame Solange was right: we won the lottery, Tex! We won!”

“Yoo-hoo! Finally!”

And then they were both getting up and hugging it out before Marge realized being happy and celebrating their lottery success, no matter how strangely it had come about, was inappropriate with her brother still missing.

Suddenly the doorbell rang, and they first looked at each other, then in the direction of the door. This time they both walked the short distance to open it, and they found a thickset cameraman standing before them, and an excited-looking young reporter with purple-framed glasses and a yellow goatee sticking a microphone under their noses.

“WLBC-9—your best source of local news! Tex and Marge Poole?”

Tex and Marge nodded dumbly.

“I apologize for the intrusion,” said the guy, “but I believe you’re both familiar with a person named Madame Solange?”

Once more, Tex and Marge nodded dumbly.

“I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. But first, the most important one: did you or didn’t you recently win the lottery?”

“We did,” said Marge, finally finding her voice.

“We just found out,” added Tex.

“Wonderful! Amazing! Great! You will remember that your visit to Madame Solange a couple of days ago was being taped, right?”

Vaguely Marge remembered that Madame Solange had warned them the consult was being recorded. She hadn’t minded, figuring it was probably some security thing.

“We’ve been following Madame Solange around for the past six months, all part of a series on fortune tellers and paranormal phenomena, and as a follow-up we also like to talk to the people whose fortunes she predicted. People like you, Marge and Tex Poole.”

“Okay,” said Marge, understanding dawning. “So you want to see how accurate Madame Solange’s predications are, is that it?”

“Exactly! So tell us, Marge Poole, how much did Madame Solange predict you’d win?”

“She didn’t give us a specific number, but she did say it would be a hefty sum.”

“And how much did you win?”

“Fifty thousand,” said Tex with a big smile, and showed the camera crew the winning lottery ticket in question.

“And as far as your prediction goes, Tex Poole, what did Madame Solange tell you?”

“She said I’d go on a Caribbean cruise,” said Tex, his smile fading a little.

“And have you made plans in that direction?” asked the reporter.

“Not yet,” said Tex, then glanced down at the lottery ticket, then at his wife, and his smile returned in full force. “But I guess now we can finally take that cruise we’ve been talking about, honey!”

“Oh, my God!” said Marge. “Of course!”

“Oo-wee!” said the reporter. “Looks like Madame Solange was right on the… money!”

Marge would have told the guy that the ticket had magically appeared in their mailbox, but in the face of their big win that seemed like such a minor detail now. And since it would only detract from the bigger picture, which was that they’d won a big bundle of cash, and were finally going on that cruise, she decided not to bother.

Madame Solange had been right. Twice! That was the main takeaway here.

Chapter 15

Harriet and Brutus had been wandering through town, and had finally arrived at their destination: the house where Charlene Butterwick lived.

“So this is the place, huh?” said Brutus, panting a little. It had been a long walk, and his paws were hurting.

“Yep, this is it,” said Harriet. “So let’s start hunting around for clues, snuggle pooh. I’m pretty sure these kidnappers must have left some.”

Brutus would have reminded Harriet that clues weren’t like breadcrumbs: you couldn’t just strew them around here and there, but felt that Harriet was right in another regard: surely these kidnappers had been seen by someone? So what they needed to do now was find these someones and grill them for information until they cracked.

“Let’s go talk to that big guy over there,” Harriet suggested, and pointed to a very large canine who stood barking at them from behind a fence.

Brutus, who disliked dogs as much as the next cat, wasn’t all that keen on making this particular dog’s acquaintance, but then again, a clue was a clue, and they needed to find Uncle Alec, didn’t they?