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“For you? Fifty bucks—a real bargain!”

Scarlett eyed her friend narrowly, but Vesta pointedly ignored her.

“Listen, Vesta,” said Father Reilly as he took out his wallet, “I want back in.”

“Back in what?” asked Vesta as she accepted a crispy fifty-dollar note.

“The watch! I’m hearing so many good things about you—and Scarlett, of course,” he added with a nod in the latter’s direction. “I want to do my part to keep our community safe, the way you and Scarlett have so valiantly been doing. So what do you say?”

“Let me think about it,” said Vesta as she handed the priest his collar.

Father Reilly’s face lit up with a smile. “Great. You won’t regret this, Vesta. I’m highly motivated to go out and fight crime again. Oh, and while you’re at it, consider taking Wilbur back, too, will you? I know he’s raring to go.”

Vesta nodded, and they watched Father Reilly get back on his bike and ride off.

Scarlett turned to her friend.“Fifty bucks! Are you serious?”

“Safety comes at a price, Scarlett.”

“You just sold one to Fido Siniawski for twenty bucks!”

“It’s called inflation.”

“You bought those collars for a buck apiece!”

“So? I want to buy us a new car for the watch and cars don’t come cheap, you know. Collars! Get your collars! Keep your pets safe from the Hampton Cove catnapper!”

Scarlett shook her head.“You’re something else.”

Vesta grinned.“Thanks for the compliment. Now don’t just stand there—sell some collars before word gets out that the catnapper’s already been caught!”

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

That night, Odelia sat down for dinner with not only her own family, but also Hampton Cove’s resident Kitchen King and his wife, the lovely Mrs. Grace Kramer, formerly known as Grace Bunyon, though Odelia decided to keep that information to herself, as she didn’t think Mrs. Kramer would enjoy being reminded of the time she went through life as the wife of Karl Bunyon.

Mom and Gran had done their utmost to put an impressive dinner on the table, and their guests were suitably impressed with the French onion pork chops, green beans with almonds and caramelized onions and the homemade creamed potatoes. And for dessert there was peach cobbler and chocolate gooey butter cookies. Fred Kramer was as suave and garrulous as he was in the TV spots that had made him and his company famous, and he and his elegant wife Grace made the perfect dinner guests.

Fred was extremely grateful that Gran and Scarlett, who was also present, had saved his business from ruin, as he now called it. He’d talked things over with his IT department people, and it turned out that Scarlett’s nephew had indeed been able to thwart the attack by being in the right place at the right time and doing the right thing.

“I’m sorry for doubting you, my dear Mrs. Muffin,” said Fred now as he put down his utensils after having eaten his fill. “When my IT guy told me that Tex Poole was behind the attack, and then you told me that whole story, I wasn’t sure who to believe! But it’s pretty obvious to me now that you saved me a heck of a lot of grief.”

“And a lot of money!” said Gran proudly.

“A million dollars,” said Grace Kramer, shaking her red curls in astonishment. “Were you really going to have to pay that amount of money, darling?”

“Yeah, looks like,” said Fred ruefully. “Turns out these ransomware attacks are becoming more and more frequent and more and more sophisticated, and the people behind it are really good. So it’s almost inevitable that either you lose access to your entire computer system, and start from scratch, or that you pay through the nose.”

“And if you do pay, what guarantee do you have that they’ll give you back access to the computers?” asked Marge.

“Apparently these people are crooks but they’re also savvy business people. They know that if they don’t do as they promise, people will stop paying. So they actually are true to their word, as strange as it may sound.”

“Do all companies pay?” asked Marge as she poured Mr. Kramer some more wine.

“From what I can tell, many of them actually do, Mrs. Poole.”

“Yeah, it’s true,” said Chase. “Plenty of small business owners are attacked and many don’t even report it to the police anymore. I think the numbers are staggering, in fact.”

“But who’s behind all these attacks?” asked Odelia, intrigued by this story, and vowing to write an article about it in a future edition of the Gazette.

“Well, mostly these cybercriminals operate from abroad,” said Uncle Alec, who was, of course, also present—he never missed an opportunity to put his feet under the table at his sister and brother-in-law’s place. “Eastern Germany and Russia mostly. In other words, tough to get our hands onthem.”

“This is just terrible,” said Marge, shaking her head.

“Yeah, it is pretty scary,” said Fred. “You suddenly stand to lose your entire business overnight. And we at Kramer Kitchen Kreation may run a successful business, but a million dollars is a lot of money, and would put a serious dent in our profits for the year.”