efe24af1849d5822a0fb0e585c983840

So when Odelia dropped by moments later, Gran was already on the phone with the builders who’d been so gracious—or so gullible—to lend her the stand, and when she asked what was going on, and Scarlett explained to her about the collars and the trackers, she smiled and said, “You know what? Why don’t I go and have a chat with these people? Tell them to leave their cats to enjoy cat choir? Most of them probably didn’t even know that their cats liked to attend cat choir at night, and so when they saw them roaming all over the place on their tracking gizmos, they probably freaked out.”

“We can all go and talk to them,” Scarlett suggested. “Give them an education on cats’ perfectly normal roaming behavior.”

Most people probably think that their cats stick around all night, and never leave the confines of their backyards or their balconies. But cats like to travel much farther than most people anticipate, and often in fixed patterns, too, roaming to their heart’s content.

Gran had gotten off the phone, and soon arranged with her granddaughter and Scarlett to visit the cat owners whose collars she’d sold them then vandalized, to return them and educate them about cat behavior and the existence and necessity of cat choir.

“And please don’t send them the bill for the removal of their collars, Gran,” Odelia added with a grin. “I think they just might get very upset with you if you do.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Gran said reluctantly. She sighed. “I should have known it was too good to be true.”

And as Odelia assisted in the taking down of the temporary stand, I glanced in the direction of the street, and just caught how a bike messenger was hit by a speeding car.

The bike messenger flew across the hood of the car, then tumbled to the ground, his bike tossed into the air and landing on the sidewalk. The car pulled to a stop a couple of meters further, and immediately the driver got out and hurried over to lend assistance.

Gran, Scarlett and Odelia, alerted by the sound of the impact, all raced to the scene, but by some miracle the bike messenger simply got up, looking slightly dazed, took stock of his possible injuries, and then declared, surprise clear in his voice,“I think I’m fine.”

What wasn’t fine was his bike, though, which was pretty much banged up, and wouldn’t work anymore. Across the hood of the car that had hit him, a big dent had appeared, along with a nice set of scratches where the handlebars had impacted.

And as driver and messenger arranged things amongst themselves, exchanging phone numbers and personal information, and soon a police officer emerged from the precinct to see what was going on, I took a good long look at that bike, and then it hit me.

Now I know that it’s one of those clich?s in mystery stories to say that the lead detective suddenly ‘sees all’ in a flash but I can promise you that at that moment I really did ‘see all.’ I saw who’d killed Pete the homeless person, and I also saw who killed Darryl Farmer. Or I should probably say I had a hunch I just might know who had.

So I turned to Odelia and said,“Have you talked to those ravers yet?”

“Not yet,” she admitted.

“I’d like you to check something for me first,” I told her. “Something important.”

She gave me a look of significance.“What did you have in mind?”

Chapter 30

Except for the intermittent hooting of an owl, all was quiet in the woods that night. Dooley and myself were there, of course, and so were Odelia and Chase, but apart from the four of us, no creature stirred or made itself heard. Except, that is, for the person who was busily trying to remove an object from a hollowed-out tree nearby.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Chase muttered.

“Shh!” Odelia whispered back.

The man, for it was a man, had stuck his arm into the tree all the way up to his armpit, and was rooting around, his face illuminated by the flashlight he was carrying. It was a familiar face, and even Dooley seemed surprised when he recognized it.

“Let’s move in,” said Chase now.

“No, we have to wait,” said Odelia. “Are you filming this?”

“Absolutely,” said her partner.

And then the moment was finally upon us: the man had found what he was looking for, as his face lit up with a smile, and he retracted his hand, removing a gun from the recesses of that tree trunk.“Gotcha!” he said as he studied the lethal little gizmo.

“You called it,” said Chase, stepping to the fore and holding up his own gun and pointing it at the man. “Gotcha. Drop the gun, Mr. Kramer. Now!”

And so Fred Kramer, for it was he, immediately dropped the gun, and simultaneously his jaw dropped a few inches, too.

“How–how did you know?” he blurted out.

“Don’t mind about that. Turn around, hands behind your back. Fred Kramer, you’re under arrest for the murder of Pete Jessup and Darryl Farmer.”

“No, but seriously,” said Mr. Kramer. “How did you know?”