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She folded her hands in her lap.“You must understand: even though Franklin had gone down a dark road, he was still my son, and I still loved him and wanted him to turn things around and get on his feet again. So that night I decided to pay him a visit. I’d heard he’d been kicked out of the apartment where he lived and had shacked up with a couple of his notorious friends in some squat place, so I wanted to talk to him and plead with him to change his ways. And to reconcile with his father before it was too late.”

“Did you go in through the back?” asked Odelia.

“I did,” said Ruth after a pause. “I thought if only I could talk to Franklin… But when I got there it was obvious there was nothing I could do. The building was on fire, so I turned back and called the police, then drove off, hoping they’d be able to save my son.”

“You didn’t go in?”

“N-no I didn’t. There was a lot of smoke and flames. There was simply no way…”

“You didn’t think to stick around until the fire department got there?”

“No. Like I said, I didn’t want to be associated with this mess. I have Marvin to think about, and my husband, and of course the business, which relies very much on keeping its reputation intact. I can only imagine what the press would have made of it when they snapped a shot of me at such a notorious drug place, my dead son the addict inside.”

“So you ran.”

“Miss Poole, you can’t understand what it’s been like for us these last couple of years. And also, my husband decided to shut Franklin out of our lives for good. If he’d known I was still in touch with him, he’d have been devastated.” She wrung her hands. “Though it doesn’t matter now, of course.”

Suddenly a young woman stuck her head in the door and announced,“The ambulance is here, Mrs. Harrison.”

“Tell them I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Something wrong?” asked Odelia.

“My husband,” said Ruth. “He died.”

“Died?”

Mrs. Harrison nodded, her face suddenly a mask of grief.“Shortly after you left. I went to check on him, and found him unresponsive. He’d been ill for a long time. In fact the doctor had warned us it could be any day now.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Odelia, and Chase murmured a few words of sympathy.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to bury my husband and my son.” Her composure suddenly crumpled, and a lone tear slid down her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said as she touched it with the tip of her index finger. “It’s been a terrible week. Probably the worst week of my life.”

Chapter 31

Like before, Dooley and I had been left to our own devices outside. Frankly I preferred it that way. Being out and about is what it’s all about, wouldn’t you agree? And besides, I had some thinking to do: not just about the case, but also about the Harriet versus Shanille war that had broken out and threatened to split cat choir neatly down the middle if I didn’t come up with something to stop that from happening.

We wandered over to where Jane still stood, and her face lit up when she saw us. Dooley, of course, kept an eye out for Chester’s pitchfork, but so far so good.

“Hey, fellas,” she said. “Twice in one day, huh? What did I do to deserve this?”

“Nothing special,” I said. “Just that one of your humans seems to have gotten herself into some kind of trouble, that’s all.”

“Which human would that be?” she asked, interested.

“Ruth,” I said. “She drove her car into town the night her son died, and forgot to mention it to the police.”

“Ruth is getting old,” Jane said. “It must have slipped her mind.”

“I doubt it,” I said dryly. “But no worries. Odelia and Chase are on the case. They’ll get to the bottom of this thing. So what’s happening with you?”

“Nothing much,” said Jane. “Only that they’re having some builders coming in soon, or so I’ve been told by a little birdie.”

I knew we could take that literally, and said,“They’re building some kind of extension? Putting in a pool, Jacuzzi?”

“Nothing of the kind,” said Jane. “They’re building a pagoda.”

“Oh, right. We saw that.”

“What they should be building is a nice new shed for me and for my companion, of course.”

“Are you getting a companion?” asked Dooley excitedly.

“Not yet, but I keep hoping they will. Oh, and in other news, Mr. Harrison died.”

“Yeah, we knew that already,” I said. “In the fire, remember?”

“Not that Mr. Harrison. The old Mr. Harrison. Herbert. He died in his sleep just now, shortly after you left, in fact. Though I doubt whether that’s got anything to do with it.”

“He was old, though, wasn’t he?” I asked.

“Eighty-seven or eighty-eight? Something like that? And he was pretty sick, too. I don’t think he ever got over the fact that his son and heir turned down the wrong path and ruined his own life and that of his parents, too.”

“Son and heir. So was Franklin supposed to take over the business?”

“Yeah, I think that was the general idea. But Franklin had other thoughts about that, obviously. And so Marvin stepped up to the plate and has done beautifully, I have to say.”

“He’s not married, is he, this Marvin?”