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“Um… the thing is, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” said Odelia.

“How do you mean? Tied tubes can be untied,” said Harriet. “It’s a minor procedure, or so Milo told us. Just like untying shoelaces.”

“You do know that Milo is a serial liar and a fantasist, right?”

“Of course I know,” said Harriet. “But he wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. We’re talking about the sanctity of feline life here. He wouldn’t mess with that.”

“Of course he would,” I said. “It’s Milo. Nothing is sacred or off-limits.”

“But how about the tubes and stuff?” asked Harriet.

“I still don’t get the whole tube thing,” said Dooley in an aside to me.

“We’ll discuss it later,” I said.

“And the birds and the bees and the storks, too?”

“Promise,” I whispered, mentally adding the tube thing to the list.

“The thing is…” said Odelia, but then the door swung open and Uncle Alec walked in, followed by Chase and Gran, in that order.

Ugh. Looked like Odelia had been saved by the bell.

“Nasty business,” Uncle Alec said as he took a seat on a nice overstuffed chair. It creaked dangerously in protest. “Bad way to go for that poor girl.”

“Yeah, if I were to take my own life, I wouldn’t take cyanide, that’s for sure,” said Gran.

“So did you talk to everybody?” asked Odelia.

“We did. From what I can gather Kimberlee wasn’t well-liked, especially amongst the women. The men, though, gave me a completely different story. They were all nuts about her, except Verna Rectrix’s husband, who hated her.”

“I think I know why,” said Odelia. “Kimberlee had an affair with Verna.”

“Yeah, I can see how a husband wouldn’t like that,” said Uncle Alec. “But he also told me Kimberlee did drugs, and tried to involve Verna.”

Odelia blinked.“That’s a new one. Kimberlee was a drug addict?”

“According to him she liked to snort a line of coke from time to time, and wasn’t averse to a bit of smack. And since she and Verna were having an affair, it was the husband’s fear she was introducing Verna to the same lifestyle.”

“And was she?”

“Verna claims she refused to partake in that aspect of her girlfriend’s life. But she admitted she was smitten with her, and had been thinking about getting a divorce and getting together with Kimberlee for real.”

“And did Kimberlee feel the same way?”

“According to the boyfriend she did not. He claims she just liked playing the field. Being young and happy in Hollywood meant she liked to indulge in all the vices she hadn’t had access to in her home state of Colorado. He also felt she would have settled down eventually and left this self-destructive path behind once she was a little further along in her career.”

“So who do you think did it?” asked Gran as she studied a portrait of Emerald that decorated the wall. It depicted the Queen of Hollywood in a long, bedazzled white gown, holding aloft one of her many Oscars.

“Did what?”

“Killed her.”

“No one killed her, Ma,” said Alec. “She killed herself, remember?”

“I’m not stupid, Alec. Obviously a woman on the cusp of a great career is not going to kill herself. And definitely not with cyanide, which made her beautiful face look really ugly and ruined her shot at an open casket, unless the mortician is a magician who can work a miracle, which I honestlydoubt.”

“Look, the room was locked from the inside, and there’s no sign anyone tampered with that can of Coke. No, this is suicide, plain and simple.”

“But why? Why would she do it?”

“Who cares? She did it—end of story.” He got up. “Now please don’t get carried away and start thinking this is some kind of murder mystery, okay? I’m filing my report and I’m calling it suicide.”

“So where did she get the cyanide?” asked Gran, who wasn’t one to let something like this go just because her son said so.

“Chase is checking into that. Chase?”

“Kimberlee was in a lot of different productions the last couple of years,” said Chase. “Also overseas. It’s not inconceivable she got her hands on a small stash of cyanide while filming in Europe, or even Russia, where she played Anastasia in a miniseries last year.”

“The same goes for all of these ladies,” said Gran. “Emerald, Abbey, Alina and Verna. They all filmed overseas, and they all could have come into the possession of cyanide.”

“But why would they kill her?” asked Alec.

“Why not? They’re all rivals. I mean, didn’t you watchBigLittle Secrets? Those women may have looked like friends, but anyone with the slightest knowledge of human nature could tell they were really rivals deep down.”

“There was a lot of hatred directed at Kimberlee,” Odelia admitted. “Alina hated her for having an affair with her husband. Emerald, same story. Verna had been dumped and wasn’t taking it well. And Abbey used to be best friends with her until they had a falling-out and Abbey was ghosted. There was no love lost between these women. Quite the contrary, in fact.”

“So basically you’re saying one of them entered the room, made Kimberlee drink a cyanide-laced can of Coke, then walked out again, making sure the room was locked from the inside?”