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“You found Clarice—and I do think she likes you, Max. The way she was looking at you just now.”

“She called me a sissy cat!”

“I’m sure she meant it as a compliment.” He sighed wistfully. “My one true love will come to me once I take those pills. I’m sure about that now.”

Good thing Odelia threw those pills in the trash. We’d arrived home and traipsed in through the cat door Odelia had her dad and uncle and Chase install in the kitchen. Yes, it had taken three men to install one little door. Yours truly had gotten stuck in the first iteration, and the next ones, but the current version was one size fits all—even my size.

To our surprise Grandma was seated on the sofa, watching one of her daytime soaps.

“Gran? What are you doing here?” I asked upon seeing the crusty old lady.

“Watching television. What does it look like I’m doing?” she said without looking away from a couple of overly handsome doctors chatting up a couple of overly pretty female patients.

“Shouldn’t you be watching television in your own home?” I asked, having developed a powerful sense of privacy ever since the Brutuses and Chase Kingsleys of this world had started invading my home.

She waved an annoyed hand.“This is my home now. I moved in with my granddaughter.”

Dooley and I shared a look of surprise.

“You’re not going to Colorado?” asked Dooley, hope surging.

“Nah. The Goldsmiths can have their Colorado. They don’t want me—I don’t want them. Good riddance.” She cast a quick glance down at Dooley. “You look awfully pleased.”

Dooley couldn’t speak from the emotion clogging up his throat so I decided to speak for him. “Dooley was afraid you were going to take him to Colorado, away from his friends and family.”

Grandma frowned, as if she hadn’t considered this. “Look, fellas,” she said finally, “maybe this whole Goldsmith business wasn’t such a bright idea after all. I mean, going to live with one’s in-laws can be a terrible nuisance. Just look at me and Tex. What a mess! I swear to God, if that Philippe or any of his ilk had given you or me a hard time, I’d have packed my bags and returned to Hampton Cove just as soon as I had the chance, millions or no millions.” She scratched Dooley, who’d jumped up on the couch, behind the ears. “I’d never let anyone talk down to you, my pet. You know that, right? If those people had given you the cold shoulder I’d have told them to go screw themselves. Besides, I’m needed here.”

This gave me pause. Needed here? Dooley, too, found this statement odd.

“Needed for what, Gran?” he asked.

One eye on her soap opera and one eye on Dooley, she said vaguely,“Odelia, of course. It’s obvious she’s gonna need the sage advice of a wise woman like myself.”

This could only mean one thing, and Dooley came right out and said it:“Babies?”

“Uh-huh,” said Gran absently. A particularly handsome doctor was now nuzzling the neck of a particularly pretty female patient, and so she shushed us when we said more.

Dooley jumped down from the couch and joined me for an impromptu emergency meeting in the kitchen, next to my bowls of filtered water, tasty kibble and prime p?t?.

“Gran has moved in,” Dooley said, summing up the salient point succinctly.

“Yes, she has,” I said, nodding seriously.

“And she just admitted she’s here for the babies—plural.”

“Yes, she did.”

“You know what this means, Max.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Soon there won’t be a place for us here.”

“No, there won’t.”

We shared a look of extreme concern, one thought at the forefront of our minds.

“The pound!” we both bleated.

Chapter 28

“Where can she be?” Odelia asked annoyedly. She and Chase had been looking all over for Tracy Sting, but thus far the woman had eluded their dragnet. The rest of the Hampton Cove Police Department, too, had kept a watchful eye—but no luck there either.

They were back at the hotel, seated in the lobby, knowing that sooner or later the woman had to show up there. Her room was empty, that much they knew, and she hadn’t been in since right after the explosion that had taken her client’s life. So where was she?

“She might have returned home,” Chase suggested.

“Columbus, Ohio? Didn’t you put out an APB on her?”

“I did, but if she rented a car she might have slipped through.”

“Her clothes are in her room. Her luggage. Everything.”

“If she’s the one that did this she might have left regardless.”

Which meant they were wasting precious time in this lobby. It felt as if Odelia had spent days at this hotel already, which actually was partly true. She dug into the bowl with potato-covered peanuts the receptionist had been so kind to put out for them. Probably another bad idea. But they were seriously addictive and she’d always been a nervous eater.

“So did your grandmother get settled in all right?”

She gave Chase an‘are-you-kidding-me’ look. “She took my Hello Kitty sheets.”

“Uh-oh.”

“And then she told me she’s going to stay with me permanently. As in for-e-vah.”

Now it was his turn to give her the look.

She threw up her hands.“I can’t just throw her out, Chase. She’s my grandmother.”