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Odelia, who was visibly overwrought at the thought of her mother being involved in some dreadful murder business, heaved a deep sigh and rolled her shoulders in a bid to relax them. She’d been sitting hunched over the steering wheel, which I could have told her was the kind of posture that could lead to some serious neck trouble. “I want you to talk to any animal you can find within a mile radius of the library. If anyone out there saw something I want to know about it. If someone out there heard something I want to know about it. And if someone out there so much as smelled something, I want—”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You want to know about it.”

She didn’t smile. “This is my mother we’re talking about, Max.”

“I understand,” I said. “And we’ll do everything in our power to—”

“So did Marge kill someone?” asked Dooley.

It wasn’t the right question to ask, so when Odelia’s head snapped around, for a moment I thought she was going to bite Dooley’s head straight off. Instead, she merely snapped, “Of course she didn’t kill someone. My mother is the sweetest, kindest woman I know. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone the bestselling thriller writer on the planet.”

“I saw her swat a fly once,” said Dooley conversationally. “It was a big fly. One of those blue ones. Made a big mess, too.”

When I gave him a prod in the ribs he blinked and turned to me, looking slightly offended.“Shut up,” I loud-whispered.

“What did I say?”

Raising my voice, I said,“If anyone saw, heard, smelled or tasted something, we’ll find them and let you know, Odelia.”

Odelia grunted something I understood to be approval, and continued staring straight ahead through the windshield, while her foot ground the accelerator into the floorboard and the car flew across the road at a rate of speed which was frankly disconcerting, not to mention frowned upon by traffic police everywhere.

“So whois the bestselling thriller on the planet?” asked Harriet.

When Odelia didn’t respond, Brutus decided to do the honors. “Agatha Christie, of course,” he said. “In fact she’s the bestselling author of all time. Sold billions of books.”

“Agatha Christie died years ago,” I said.

“So?”

“So she can’t have been murdered tonight if she’s been dead for years.”

This stumped him for a moment. He quickly rallied, though.“Maybe she didn’t die. Maybe she only pretended to die but she’s been alive all this time only to be murdered at Marge’s library tonight.”

“Agatha Christie was almost ninety years old when she died,” I said.

“So?”

“This was years ago! She would have been a hundred-whatever!”

“So? Humans get very old. Hundreds of years, probably. Maybe even thousands.”

For a long time I’d been laboring under the same misapprehension. I’d always figured Odelia was probably a couple of hundred years old. But she’d recently cured me of this mistaken belief in the longevity of the human species. Odelia, as it turned out, wasn’t even thirty years old yet. And most humans nevermade it past the age of a hundred. Weird, huh?

“Trust me, Brutus. Whoever was killed tonight, it wasn’t Agatha Christie.”

“Chris Ackerman,” said Odelia suddenly.

“Who?” asked Dooley.

“Chris Ackerman. The thriller writer?”

Neither me nor Brutus, Harriet or Dooley showed any signs of recognition. Then again, cats are not your great readers. We love television—mostly cat food commercials—but we lack the patience and the attention span to read page after page like humans do.

“So who was this Chris Ackerman?” I asked.

“Like I said. A thriller writer.”

“Any good?” asked Harriet.

“I liked him,” said Odelia. “He was the master of the cliffhanger.”

“Why would a writer make cliffhangers?” asked Dooley. “Isn’t that what IKEA does?”

“Not clothes hangers, Dooley,” I said. “Cliffhangers.”

“What’s a cliffhanger?”

“It’s like the rose ceremony,” said Harriet. “FromThe Bachelor? Our handsome bachelor is about to hand out his final rose of the night and suddenly they cut to commercial and you can’t wait to see what happens next.” She nodded seriously. “That’s a cliffhanger.”

Dooley stared at her, obviously not seeing the connection between cliffhangers, roses andThe Bachelor. But when he opened his mouth to ask a follow-up question, Odelia said,“We’re almost there, you guys. So you know what to do, right?”

“We know,” I said. “We’re going to talk to any animal we can find.”

“Any animal?” asked Harriet in an undertone. “Not just cats?”

“Any animal,” I confirmed.

“I’m not talking to dogs,” Harriet said determinedly. “No, I mean it. I draw the line at dogs. Dogs are filthy, especially street dogs. Just looking at them makes my skin crawl.”

“But what if that particular dog has some very important information to share?” I asked. “Odelia wants us to be her eyes and ears out there.” Not to mention her nose and taste buds, apparently. “So put your petty anti-dog sentiments aside for a moment and think about the greater good here, Harriet.”

“Yes, think about the greater good, Harriet,” Dooley echoed.