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“She was in here talking about the murder last night. Her and her husband. They weren’t broken-hearted over it, as you can imagine. But they didn’t celebrate either. Brenda is a very kind woman, and she would never gloat over the death of another human being.”

“What do you eat?” asked Dooley suddenly from his position under the desk.

“Pardon me?” said Humphrey.

“What kind of food do they give you?” asked Dooley. “Usually when Odelia sends us into these places there’s food waiting there for us. But I don’t see anything around here.”

“Dooley—it’s not polite to demand food from your host,” said Harriet.

“Technically Brenda is not our host,” I said. “We snuck in, remember?”

“If you must know, I’m quite partial to worms,” said Humphrey.

“Worms?” asked Dooley, wriggling from under the desk. “What kind of worms?”

“Oh, waxworms, silkworms, butterworms, red worms, earthworms, mealworms, superworms…”

“I didn’t even know there were so many different worms!” Dooley cried, looking horrified. He was clutching his tummy and I just knew he was thinking of Milo’s words again.

“I like crickets, too,” said Humphrey conversationally. “And the occasional leafy greens, of course. I’m not choosy. Oh, and pinky mice. I am a sucker for a juicy pinky mice.”

Now he had Harriet’s attention. “What’s a pinky mouse?” she asked.

“Frozen baby mice. A real delicacy.”

We were waiting for him to offer us some, but that was apparently asking too much. If we wanted mice—pink or otherwise—we’d have to catch them ourselves.

“So… about Dick Dickerson,” I said, returning to the topic under discussion.

“Oh, right. How am I so certain Brenda didn’t do it. Well, she was here, for one thing, working at her desk in this very room, under my watchful eye.”

“You watch your human work?” asked Harriet.

“Why, yes. She seems to enjoy my company. Often she has remarked that I have a soothing effect on her, and why not? I am, after all, very easy on the eyes and pleasant to be around.” For some reason he’d lifted his paw in greeting, so I lifted mine in response.

“So… who do you think might have done Dickerson in?” I asked.

He was lifting his other paw now, so I followed suit. Weird.

“Mr. Dickerson seemed to have a lot of enemies,” said the reptile. “Brenda often fumed about some of the stuff he wrote about her. He did the same to others, as well. One of his frequent targets was a man who liked to portray the President to humorous effect on television. Brenda also expressed the opinion that the man might have killed himself.”

“Suicide?” said Harriet. “That doesn’t seem likely, considering the way he died.”

“Yes, he drowned in his own feces, did he not?”

“Not his own feces,” said Harriet. “Duck poop.”

“Another species’ feces. How extraordinary.” The lizard frowned, or at least I thought he did. Tough to read facial expressions on a lizard. “I thought he died in his own excrement.”

“Why would he kill himself?” I asked.

Dooley had approached the glass terrarium, probably looking to get in on the pinky mice action. The lizard eyed him with suspicion.“Brenda said Dickerson was under investigation. Apparently he’d aided the President in his election by engaging in some form of illegal activities and prosecutors were going through his business with a fine-tooth comb. He was looking at dismissal from his own company and possibly prison, hence the suicide theory. Though as you say, the duck poop thing seems to preclude such a possibility.”

“Unless he staged the whole thing to make it look like murder,” said Harriet, who was thinking hard. “All so he could cast the blame on one of his opponents.”

“But who?” I asked. I turned to Humphrey. “Does the picture of a rose mean anything to you? It was left at the scene of the crime.”

Humphrey regarded me sternly.“I don’t like roses. They give me stomach cramps. I will eat fruits and vegetables, provided they’re nicely chopped up, but no flowers thank you very much.” He’d climbed a tree branch that had been placed inside the tank.

I had a feeling we’d gleaned as much information from Humphrey as we could, so I held up my paw in greeting and he did the same, though I had the impression he was merely trying to protect his stash of frozen baby mice from Dooley.

“Dooley, let’s go,” I said. “Thanks, Humphrey. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Glad I could help, cat,” he said.

“Max,” I said, realizing my social faux-pas. “And this is Dooley and that’s Harriet.”

“Lovely,” said Humphrey graciously. “Fare-thee-well—cats.”

And we’d just stepped out of the room when we bumped into an angry-looking female. Judging from the cap she was wearing, and her blue apron, she was part of the cleaning crew. “Cats!” she screamed the moment she saw us. “We’ve got cats!”

And then she was coming at us with a very large broom!

Chapter 32

Brenda Berish—Secretary Berish to her friends—was a motherly woman in her late sixties. She had a round face and a bouffant blond-gray hairdo. As in all the pictures I’d seen of her she dressed in a brightly colored pantsuit, this one a dazzling heliotrope.