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He pressed his napkin to his lips. Their menu had consisted of shrimp scampi and lobster stuffed flounder with a side of pasta and marinara sauce and brickle for dessert: toasted almonds, ice cream and whipped cream. A real feast. And the evening wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

“I like the Hitchcocks best,” Chase said.“North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, Charade…”

“Charade isn’t a Hitchcock,” she told him. “It’s Stanley Donen’s Hitchcock homage.”

Chase grinned.“Of course you would know that, Miss Movie Buff.”

“I likeArsenic and Old Lace. Oh, andMr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, of course.”

“Huh. I thought you’d have gone for the more romantic ones.”

“I guess I’m a funny girl at heart,” she quipped.

“Yes, you are,” he said, and gave her one of those looks that made her melt like the toffee-flavored ice cream on her tongue. “Not only funny but smart, beautiful, compassionate…”

Her cheeks flushed, and not just from the fireplace they were sitting close to.“Keep this up and I just might let you get frisky through the second act ofBringing Up Baby.”

“Oh, I’m counting on it.”

She dug her spoon into the caramel-colored ice cream.“Is it just me or is it hot in here?”

Chase cleared his throat.“I heard your grandmother moved back in with your parents?”

And there it was: the reason he’d asked her out on a date in the first place. Or at least that’s what she hoped. They’d been going out for months now, and it was time to put their budding relationship on a more permanent footing. Since Chase bunked with Odelia’s uncle, having not had much luck renting a place of his own in town, moving in with her was the logical thing to do. And oh boy was she ready. And she’d just opened her mouth to confirm that her grandmother had, indeed, moved back in with her folks when both of their phones started to sing in unison.

“Huh,” said Chase with a frown. “It’s your uncle.”

“My mom,” said Odelia with a smile, and tapped the green Accept icon. “Hey, Mom. What’s up?” When the garbled words of her mother flowed into her ear, though, her smile quickly vanished. “Wow, slow down. What are you talking about?”

“He’s dead!” Mom practically shouted into the phone. “Chris Ackerman is dead and now they think he may have been murdered and that I had something to do with it!”

As her mother explained what happened, Odelia fixed her gaze on Chase, whose jaw was clenching while he listened to what Uncle Alec, the town’s chief of police, had to say.

Looked like Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn would have to take a rain check.

Chapter 2

I won’t conceal I was having a tough time at it. To be honest I don’t think I’m cut out to be a teacher, and teaching a bunch of unruly cats was definitely not my idea of an evening well spent.

“We’ll watch it again until you discover when Aurora picked up the all-important and vital clue,” I said, and tapped the rewind button on the TV’s remote. When my audience groaned loudly, I added, “And no buts. If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right.”

“But, Max!” Brutus cried. “We’ve seen this movie three times already!”

“And we’ll see it three times more if that’s what it takes,” I said stubbornly.

“The Bachelor is on,” said Harriet. “I loveThe Bachelor. Can’t we watch that instead?”

I gave her a stern-faced look.“No, we can’t.The Bachelor won’t teach us the things we need to know as cat sleuths. Aurora Teagarden will.”

Unfortunately Odelia had only taped one Aurora Teagarden movie, even though I’d asked her to tape all of them if she had the chance. Instead, she’d taped a movie calledI’ll Be Home for Christmas. Which featured a dog, and as everyone knows, no cat wants to be seen dead watching dogs on TV—or in real life, for that matter—so that was a definite no-no. Besides, there was no mystery, only a silly romance plot and a lot of tinsel.

I watched the screen intently, then paused the movie just when Aurora opened her mouth to say something, her face a mask of concentration.“See? This is the moment she realizes who the killer is. See the way her forehead crinkles? How her eyebrows draw up?”

“She looks constipated,” said Harriet, tapping her paw against Odelia’s leather couch.

“Do I look like that when I get an idea, Max?” asked Dooley.

“You would if you ever got an idea,” said Brutus with a grin.

“I get ideas,” said Dooley. “I get ideas all the time. Just now I got the idea that Odelia’s been gone a long time, and that I hope she’ll be home soon.”

“That’s great, Dooley,” I said. “But that’s not the kind of idea we’re talking about.”

“So tell us exactly what we are talking about, Max,” said Brutus as he suppressed a yawn. Even though he, unlike Harriet, wasn’t a big fan ofThe Bachelor, it was obvious he wasn’t remotely interested in my lecture on modern sleuthing techniques either.