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“I think we’ll be able to make that happen,” I said. Then I shared a look with Dooley, and we both returned to the living room, to give Odelia the sign we’d agreed upon.

She caught it, and said,“Now then, Julio, you said that you think Danny may have been involved in Dave’s murder.”

“That’s right,” said Julio, who was sitting primly on the couch, his fingers intertwined with his husband’s.

“Do you have concrete evidence to make such a claim?”

Julio took a quick look at his husband, and even though Flint almost imperceptibly shook his head, he decided to forge ahead.“I’m afraid I haven’t been completely honest with you, detectives.”

“Julio, what are you doing?” Flint whispered.

“It’s all right, sweetie,” said Julio, patting the artist’s hand. “I don’t want Jayme to go to jail while that rotten kid gets off scot-free. We need to step up now, and rally round.”

“But—”

“I’ll tell you how I know that Danny killed his stepfather. The day that Dave was killed, Flint came home, the poor thing, dressed in just his underwear and his socks.”

“What do you mean?” asked Odelia.

“Danny had stolen his clothes! He’d gone swimming in Lake Mario, like he often does, and when he swam back to shore he saw that that rotten kid had taken all his clothes!”

“But how do you know it was Danny?” asked Chase.

Julio rolled his eyes.“Isn’t it obvious? That kid hates us. He wanted Dave to fire Flint because a gay artist is a bad influence, so obviously he followed him and decided to play a nasty little trick on him and so he took his clothes. It just goes to show the kind of kid he is. So is it any wonder that he killed hisstepfather? They probably got into some kind of argument, maybe over Dave’s refusal to fire Flint, and so the kid got mad and then he got even by picking up the first thing he saw and hitting Dave over the head with it.”

“But I thought you said Flint was here with you when it happened?”

“That was just a little white lie I told you,” said Julio, waving his hands expressively. “I signed that summons. Obviously the process server didn’t know which one of us was which, and so when I told him that I was Flint, he simply handed me that document.”

Flint, whose face had taken on a slighter pale complexion, sat stiff as a board now.

“So Flint wasn’t here Monday evening?” asked Odelia.

“No, like I said, he was out swimming, and that rotten kid stole his clothes. Now if you want more proof of the depravity of that young man’s mind, you can talk to others who have been on the receiving end of his evilness, and you’ll have all the proof you need.”

“Flint? What do you have to say to that?” asked Chase.

Flint, who’d given a striking impression of a statue, now suddenly sprang to life, and before anyone could stop him, jumped up from that couch and was bolting for the door!

“Sweetie?” said Julio. “Where are you going? Your bowels giving you trouble again?”

But Chase and Odelia weren’t born yesterday, and so they also got up and flew to the door, to try and stop the man.

Once outside, we saw that Flint had stepped into one of the two matching electric BMWs. And by the time we were in Chase’s squad car, he was already at the end of the driveway and on the street, moving off at a decent clip.

“Punch it, Chase,” said Odelia. “We can’t let him get away.”

“No worries, babe,” said Chase. “Electric cars may be the future, but right now diesel still rules.” And to show us what he meant, he punched down on the accelerator, making the engine roar like a beast. It didn’t take long for his heavy-duty pickup to overtake the lavender BMW, and when we did, the errant artist jumped from the car and was running away in the direction of who knows where—possibly Lake Mario to have another swim.

Chase immediately got out and ran after him, and it didn’t take more than thirty seconds for the burly cop to grab the scrawny artist by the neck and nip his escape attempt in the bud before it ever got going.

“Flint Kutysiak,” he said, taking out his handcuffs, “I’m arresting you for the murder of Dave James.”

“It was an accident!” the artist wailed. “I didn’t mean to kill him!”

“You have the right to remain silent.”

“He said he’d chosen a different successor, and I was dismissed! He said I’d been bragging in several interviews how I was now the lead artist of the studio, and how I drew all of the Tollie the Turtle comics and had been drawing them for the past ten years, and he didn’t like that. He saidI was getting too big for my britches and that there was only one Tollie the Turtle lead artist and that was him. That he wasn’t dead yet, and that if I thought I could muscle him out I had another thing coming. I was just a young upstart and he was done with me. Done! After fifteen years of hardwork he was kicking me out!”

“Anything you say can be used—”