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“As I understand it Franklin died destitute,” said Odelia. “His dad cut him off, and he was living in a squat house after he was evicted from his apartment for not making rent.”

“I know. I heard about that. But he was still the father of my girls, and he didn’t keep his end of the bargain, so now I’m trying to talk to his brother. Set up a meeting. They need to take their responsibility and step up. But so far they’ve been ignoring me. They won’t take my calls, they won’t answer my letters.”

“Can’t you hire an attorney? Go to court?”

Mrs. Ritter blushed.“I’m afraid I don’t have the money, Miss Poole. The Harrisons are very wealthy people, and I feel—I feel I don’t stand much of a chance. The arrangement was between Franklin and myself. They’ll simply argue they have no obligations to me.”

“I understand,” said Odelia. “So what do you suggest?”

“Couldn’t you perhaps talk to them? Maybe they’ll listen to you. Or you could threaten to write an article.”

Odelia nodded thoughtfully.

“You could write how one of the richest families in town refuses to take care of their own. I may be divorced, but my girls are still Herbert and Ruth’s granddaughters. It’s disgraceful the way they simply cut them out of their lives like that.”

“Your girls haven’t seen their grandparents?”

“Not since the divorce.”

“That’s pretty harsh,” said Odelia.

“Just call it what it is: cruel.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Odelia. “But I can’t promise you anything.”

“If you could just talk to them. I know they’ll listen to you. They have a business to run. They may be heartless and cruel, but they are also afraid of negative publicity, so…”

When the woman left the office, I decided to follow her out. I hadn’t seen Dooley in a while, and I had the feeling he might be outside, keeping an eye out for that elusive and hard-working stork who’d been lugging Odelia’s babies around ever since she got married.

Dooley was indeed sitting outside on the sidewalk, his eyes peeled as he kept a close watch on the skies above Hampton Cove.

“Any sign of the stork?” I asked him.

“He isn’t showing his face,” he lamented. “Do you think something scared him off?”

“Yeah, that must be it,” I said as I took a seat next to my friend.

Francine Ritter had crossed the street, and was walking along the sidewalk when suddenly she halted in her tracks, and seemed to stiffen.

A man came from the other direction, and he, too, halted, then quickly made an about-face and started walking back the way he’d come.

“Marvin!” she yelled. “Marvin, wait!”

The man stopped and turned, and for a moment they engaged in tense conversation. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from their body language it was obvious these people weren’t friends. There was a lot of angry yelling from Mrs. Ritter’s side, and stony-faced looks from this Marvin person’s side. And as I watched, suddenly I recognized the man as Marvin Harrison, who Mrs. Ritter had been trying to get hold of about that missing child support.

Clearly Marvin wasn’t happy to bump into his former sister-in-law, and I didn’t think she’d be able to extract a lot of money from him.

The meeting finally came to an abrupt end, and Marvin crossed the street, then came walking in our direction. A nice black Tesla stood parked at the curb, and I had the feeling it could just be Mr. Harrison’s ride.

Just as he reached our side of the street, he turned and glanced back in the direction of Mrs. Ritter. And as he watched her stalk off, an angry spring in her step, I thought I saw a distinct look of fear in the man’s eye. Clearly he wasn’t happy about this surprise meeting. Mrs. Ritter was correct in assuming the Harrisons abhorred negative publicity.

Chapter 27

“Why is Dooley looking at the sky the whole time, Max?” asked Odelia as she glanced back at her cats through the rearview mirror.

“He’s still looking for your stork,” Max explained. “He feels that bird has worked so hard, and come so far carrying that baby—”

“Or babies,” Dooley corrected him.

“—or babies, that it would be very unkind to send him all the way back to… Where did you say he came from, Dooley?”

“Baby-land, of course. Everybody knows that, Max.”

“It’s the land where they make the babies,” Max said.

“Oh-kay,” said Odelia, a smile on her face. Dooley was so sweet. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that storks didn’t make home deliveries, and that babies didn’t come from baby-land.

They were on their way to the vast estate—or at least she assumed it was an estate, and vast—of the Harrison family, to argue the case of Francine Ritter’s missing child support checks. It was the least she could do for the poor woman, she thought. And it would give her an opportunity to meet Franklin Harrison’s family. She felt alittle bad now, for taking on Joshua Curtis’s case. Clearly the man was guilty after all, and working to prove his innocence had probably been a misguided effort on her part.