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“Well, it’s the other side of the world, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think that tunnel leads all the way to China, Gran,” said Odelia.

“Okay, so Mexico, then. It probably leads him straight across the border.”

“We’re thousands of miles from the border!” Scarlett cried.

“Shush!” Chase whispered. “Can you please be quiet—all of you!”

“I think he’s probably going to Australia,” said Dooley. “Not China.”

“You may have a point, buddy,” I said, in a good mood now that my hunch had panned out.

It took about five or ten minutes before Omar finally returned, and Gran was getting anxious as time stretched on.“He’s gone to China, I’m telling you!”

“Australia!” Dooley countered.

“He’s just counting the money, that’s all,” said Chase.

Finally the man resurfaced, and Chase got up out of his crouch.

“Hello, Mr. Wissinski,” he said, walking up to the insurance agent. “Out for a stroll, are we?”

Omar gulped as he stared up at the cop, who stood towering over him.

“I-I-I,” he stuttered as he now hurriedly crawled up and made to close the hatch.

But Chase beat him to it.“Not so fast,” he said, and held the hatch open with one hand while he took hold of Omar’s wrist with the other, applying a viselike grip to the man’s appendage. “Let’s see what we have here.” He turned to Odelia, who had joined him. “Take a look, will you, Mrs. Kingsley?”

“By all means, Mr. Kingsley,” said Odelia, and lightly descended down an aluminum ladder into the depths. Dooley and I had also walked up, followed by Harriet and Brutus, and stared down to see what Odelia would find.

“Got it!” finally our human shouted, and soon returned, a big grin on her face. “It’s all there,” she announced.

“You can’t do this,” Omar protested feebly. “This is my private property!”

“No, this is my private property!” said Gran, also walking onto the scene.

Omar goggled at her.

“Mr. Wissinski, meet my grandmother Vesta Muffin,” said Odelia.

“Your-your grandmother?” asked the insurance man.

“And my best friend,” said Scarlett, the last person to pop out of those bushes. “I hadn’t lied about that.”

“But I had lied about the money,” said Gran. “And I didn’t have a husband named Bruce. I had a husband, but his name was Jack and he was a philanderer, not a drug dealer.”

“The money my grandmother gave you was a loan from the police department,” Odelia explained.

“Yeah, it was drug money, all right,” said Chase, “but it doesn’t belong to Vesta.”

“Unfortunately,” Gran added under her breath.

“So you took the money your clients gave you and stashed it in your private underground safe, did you?”

Omar stared from the cop to Odelia to Scarlett to Gran, then finally said,“Okay, fine.”

“There is no Morro& Wissinski bitcoin fund, is there?” asked Odelia.

Omar shook his head.“No, there isn’t.”

“It’s just a scam to collect money to pay off your gambling debts.”

“Yeah, I guess you got my number.”

“When did Jona find out?” asked Chase.

“Last week. The guy I owed money to called the office, and Jona picked up. It didn’t take him long to put two and two together.”

“So he had to die, didn’t he?”

Omar nodded morosely.“I didn’t want to kill him, but he was threatening to expose everything and kick me out of the company. I would have been ruined. I tried to reason with him, but he said he’d been patient enough with me and I’d had my last chance and blown it.”

“This had happened before?”

“Yeah, I’d gambled and lost before, and Jona and the others had made up for the money I lost. But this time he said enough was enough. No more handouts. I was on my own.”

“He told the others?”

“He did. They all knew what happened, and they all decided that it was time for me to pay the piper. But I couldn’t, could I? I owe over half a mil. I’ll never be able to pay them back. They’ll kill me, just to set an example. Jona and the others were supposed to be my best friends. But instead they handed me a death sentence.”

“So instead you decided that they all had to die, so you could live.”

“That’s exactly how it was. Especially Dunc was pretty damning in his opinion. He was the one who decided to betray the pact by getting hitched to that stupid broad.” He frowned. “Who was he to get all high and mighty all of a sudden?”

“So they all had to go.”

“But how were you going to repay your debt?” asked Gran.

“Easy. I’d been taking money from gullible old ladies like yourself for weeks, behind Jona’s back, of course, and putting the money down here until I had enough. Only Jona found out when Mrs. Stooge dropped by and wanted her money back. Jona was furious.”

“One more reason for him to die.”

“If I got rid of him, his half of the business would revert to me, and if I could get a few more payments, I’d be able to repay my debt and be home free. The rest of the money I was going to use to get out of here.”

“So you were going to fleece your customers and skip out?” asked Chase.

“Sure! Nothing to keep me here.”

“And to make sure no one would come looking for you, you decided to frame the Careens.”