4c392a139708e5efb30cc267dbb0c768

“Talk some sense into him,” Trey clarified. He turned to face them. “My father was under a spell. He didn’t know what he was doing. This Kulcheski woman had hypnotized him.”

“She had?” asked Gran.

“Not literally, Gran,” Odelia murmured.

“Oh.”

“She had him eating out of her hand—doing her bidding at every turn. We knew that the only way to break the spell was to lay it all out for him. Expose the woman as the wily little gold digger she was.”

“And? How did he respond?” asked Odelia.

“Not well. He kicked us out. Said he never wanted to see us again.”

“After all I’d done for him,” said Mrs. Ackerman bitterly. “I stood by his side when he was a struggling author. I worked my butt off to keep our family afloat in the early years, when every submission ended in a flutter of rejection letters. If not for me he’d never have become a success. He’d have given up long ago. But I believed in him. I believed in his talent as a storyteller. It took him ten years to sell his first novel. And another ten to become a household name. And this is how he repaid me. By chasing the first skirt that came along.”

“She wasn’t the first skirt, Mom,” said her son. “There were others.”

“I could deal with that. We had an understanding. They were butterflies. I was his wife. The woman he came home to. Until he decided he no longer needed me.”

Gran cleared her throat.“Do you have any idea who might have killed your husband, Mrs. Ackerman?”

Mrs. Ackerman raised her eyes to Gran.“You think I did it, don’t you? And you’re right.”

Both Odelia and Gran held their breath. Was a confession coming?

Instead, Mrs. Ackerman said,“Icould have killed him. I know I was hopping mad when I left that library. But I’m not a killer. Instead I was going to take my husband to court and clean him out. I was prepared to make sure that he was left with nothing. That would have been my revenge.”

“Very iffy proposition,” said Gran. “Better to kill him and collect the inheritance.”

Trey Ackerman’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Are you accusing my mother of murder?”

“Just throwing it out there,” said Gran. “If long experience as a homicide detective has taught me one thing it’s that it’s almost always the spouse that did it. So convince me otherwise. Prove your innocence, Mrs. Ackerman.”

A quick smile flitted across the woman’s face. “I don’t have to prove my innocence. There’s a man who can prove it for me. When Trey and I left Chris was still alive. Just ask Malcolm Buckerfield. He walked in as we walked out. And he had every reason to murder Chris. Without Chris, Buckerfield had nothing. Chris Ackermanwas Buckerfield Publishing.”

Chapter 22

Odelia had signed us up to interrogate the suspects’ and witnesses’ pets and so that’s what Dooley and I set out to do. Only as far as we could ascertain there were no pets in evidence. I did pick up a strange odor, though. It didn’t belong to a cat or dog or any other animal I’d ever encountered. In fact it smelled oddly… floral.

We stealthily moved from the living room into the bedroom in search of our prey, but it was Dooley who finally discovered the anomaly. I call it an anomaly because it was the one animal I would never have advised any human to keep as a pet.

“Oink oink,” said the anomaly.

We both stared at it. It was small, it was pink, it was cuddly, and it was looking at us through beady little eyes. Perched on the foot of the bed, it even had its own little basket.

“Oink oink,” it repeated.

“What is it, Max?” asked Dooley.

“I think it’s a… pig,” I said.

“Oink oink.”

“A pig? Are you sure?”

I wasn’t. For that I needed to take a closer look. So I jumped on the bed and stared at the thing. It was a pig, all right. Round and pink and small. Not a pig. A piglet.

The piglet snuffled for a moment, seemingly interested in our sudden appearance.

“Hey, there,” I said finally, when I’d gotten over my initial surprise.

“Hullo,” said the pig, in a surprisingly deep voice for such a tiny creature.

“My name is Max,” I said, “and this is Dooley.”

“Is it safe to come up, Max?” asked Dooley from the floor.

I’d heard stories about pigs biting people, but this little dude didn’t look like a biter. “Sure,” I said therefore. “He looks like a nice piglet—are you a nice piglet, piglet?”

“Of course I’m a nice piglet, cat,” growled the piglet. “We’re all civilized here.”

“You look awfully young,” I said. “How old are you?”

“Three.”

“Years?”

“Months.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. I still have to get my growth spurt. Which I trust will kick in any day now.”

“So are you—”

“A potbellied pig, yeah,” he nodded. “Humans love us for our lovable yet surprisingly mature personalities and our positive outlook on life. How about you guys?”

“I’m four,” said Dooley. “Years, not months.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“Humans love us for the cuddles,” said Dooley. “Though they come back for the conversation.”

The pig gave Dooley a dubious look, then said,“I’m Kevin Bacon, by the way, and this is Miss Piggy.”

We looked up to see a second piglet, even pinker than the first one, waddle across the bed in our direction.