Chapter 7

Shaggy and Scooby spent the week-end at the restaurant. Velma had hoped to spend the two days splitting her time between working through clues at the dining table in the apartment or exercising. Her mother had different ideas which led to Velma being dragged out to a bridal shop to try on wedding dresses. Ugh. With all that was going on in Daphne's life, Velma was shocked to find her waiting at the bridal boutique when they arrived. Apparently, trying on wedding dresses was a thing. A team of hostesses and fitters met them at the door and herded them back to a fancy sitting area where they found four glasses, a carafe of orange juice, and a bottle of champagne… at 10:00 in the morning. They also found a woman in her forties that Velma didn't know.

The woman stepped forward with a huge smile, "Hello Velma! It's great to finally meet you! I'm Madelyn Merriwether, your wedding planner."

Velma looked down and realized that her hand was being shook, "Wedding planner?" She turned to her mother, "I thought you were my wedding planner."

Her mother put on her tut-tut facial expression, "Of course not, sweetie. I'm the mother of the bride."

Velma turned to Daphne, "Then I thought you were my wedding planner."

Daphne laughed, "Me? No. I'm the Matron of Honor. I'm in charge of the bachelorette party. Which is going to be epic by the way."

She turned back to the wedding planner, "Sorry Madelyn but I was wondering… how much do your services cost?"

Angie Dinkley cut off any response, "You don't worry about that, dear. Your father and I are taking care of it."

"Who decided that?"

Velma's mother looked at the others in the room, "May my daughter and I have a moment?"

Daphne and Madelyn left the room.

When they had left, Angie whirled, "Velma! That was embarrassing and uncalled for."

Velma put her hands on her hips, "How complicated and expensive is this thing going to be that we need a paid professional?"

"It's your wedding, dear. And they're not cheap."

"And you're not rich. And neither am I. You spent far too much money keeping me afloat during the last few years. I will not let you go into debt for something as silly as a wedding."

If there was anyone's face that Velma could actually read, it was her mother's. And that face began to scrunch up in the expression that said tears were imminent. The water began to trickle down her cheeks, "Your wedding is not silly. Your father and my wedding day was the third most special day of my life - behind only the births pof you and your sister. And I didn't need an epidural to get through my wedding… although a couple of strategically-timed Valiums did help me through the week leading up to it. Maybe you don't see it now, but this day is going to be worth all of it. And really… your father and I are in so much debt already, what's a little more?"

"I don't think that's a healthy financial attitude."

"Well, how's this? I love my daughters more than anything else in the world. Your father and I provided a beautiful wedding for your sister…"

"Which lasted four hours."

"And we want to provide a beautiful wedding for you. Yours is a bonus because I never really thought it was going to happen. I thought you were going to be a spinster growing old in house full of cats."

"I like to think that I wouldn't have been a stereotype."

"They're stereotypes for a reason, sweetie. And maybe you're right and this wedding won't ever mean much to you. But I would rather go too big and spend a little extra money than to go too frugal and have you thinking that you had missed out on your special day."

"There's no way that I can stop you from doing this, is there?"

"None."

"Okay. I'll go along with it but no more springing things on me. Let's discuss things like this."

"Do you know how much harder this argument would have been if it wasn't already done?"

Velma couldn't fault her mother's logic. And losing this argument turned out to be the day's high point. The next three hours consisted of the bridal shop bringing out tray after tray of the cheap, weak champagne which they quit diluting with orange juice after the second round. While her mother and Daphne plowed through the champagne, Velma was forced to keep changing from dress to dress which required store staff to be in the dressing room with her and putting tape on the oversized gowns so that they would look like they fit, at least from the front. To her, each was more overly ornate and gawdy than the last.

That was not annoying enough but the ritual required her to step out of the dressing room and present herself in each hideous garment to be judged her Velma's mother, Daphne, and this complete stranger who seemed to have a strong infatuation with the word 'frumpy'. After the fourth repetition of that word, Velma looked at the wedding planner, "You are about to get a frumpy size six Converse shoe stuck up your butt if I hear that word one more time."

This was several glasses of champagne into the event, so Daphne leaned over and stage-whispered to Madelyn, "Ixnay on the umpyfray."

Madelyn, who was doing her job rather than having a fun day out, had sipped the champagne and was sober enough to be confused by the disparity between Velma's harsh words and the emotionless facial expression and voice with which they were delivered.

Daphne confirmed with her voice slightly slurred, "She's small but I'm pretty sure that she could break you like a twig."

The wedding planner smiled, "Let's not find out." And the word 'frumpy' disappeared from the day's festivities.

More frustrating yet, after the very first dress, a vote had been taken, Angie voted 'yes', as did Daphne, and Madelyn. Velma had seen her chance and voted 'yes' as well, making it unanimous. That should have been it but that just started the process of confirming that there wasn't an option back there somewhere that might be even better. They voted after each dress and through the process of trying on and parading around in twelve different gowns, they decided that the first one was, indeed, the best.

Velma was frequently convinced that women were just a little crazy.

Just when she thought it was finally over, a team of three seamstresses came storming out to poke, prod, measure, and record. Velma took it silently. When the measuring was over, the lead seamstress looked down at her notes, stepped back, looked Velma up and down and said, "God, I would kill to have your body."

Okay, not every part of the day was terrible. There was just something special about being complimented by another woman. However, Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette did not have a chapter on how to reply to such a statement, so Velma maintained her silence.

The ordeal finally over, Velma and Madelyn found themselves being the only sober ones, so Madelyn took Angie home and Velma drove Daphne. Angie and Velma were on their own for how they got their cars later.

The drive back to Blake Mansion started off quietly enough until Daphne sat upright and slurred, "I need to tell you something, so you don't freak out."

"I'm not really prone to freaking out but what is it?"

"Fred's starting to work at Blake Industries on Monday."

"Say what now?!" Not really a freak-out but she would admit to being startled.

Daphne placed her hand briefly on Velma's knee, "Not really. Fred seems to have found that we have an embezzler on the payroll, and he is going undercover." Daphne whispered the word 'undercover' which she seemed to find funny and began to giggle. Day-drinking champagne was a wonderful thing.

Velma processed the information for five seconds, "So, he is going in as a senior management-level nepotistic family hire who can stumble around and ask as many questions as he likes, and everyone has to answer them and be polite because he's part of the Blake family. That also gets him out of having to do any real work since none will be expected."

Daphne frowned, "Should I be offended?"

"You? No. Some of your sisters? Yes."

"I can't really argue with that. The undercover thing was Fred's idea."

"And it's a good one. It makes perfect sense."

"He also did a really good job figuring out that money is being siphoned out of the company. He's really smart."

"I'm aware of that."

Daphne's voice was quieting, and Velma feared that she would be passed out before they got her to her to the mansion, but Daphne kept talking, "People always underestimate him. They try and take advantage of him. They think that just because he's, like, super-hot, he can't be smart, too."

"I know. We've used that to get the drop on villains more than once."

"But that's not it. It's not villains… it's me… I do that to him. I think he's stupid or something and can't think for himself. I treat him like he can't make decisions for himself, and I make them for him. I think he hates me, and I think that he should." The good mood of the morning drained away into Daphne's drunken revery and she stared ahead at the road without focus.

Velma was again caught in the best-friend-trap of having to come up with words, "It's not really like that, Daphne. Yes, maybe you treat him like that sometimes, but he does the same to you. You two are amazingly alike. He has always been handsome, athletic, and charming and you have always been beautiful, rich, and charming. You are two people nearly guaranteed to always be able to smile and talk their way out of a traffic ticket. That's why it's so hard for either of you when flashing a winning smile doesn't work and the cop writes the ticket. You're just not used to that."

Velma internally grimaced at the metaphor. She hated metaphors. But that was behind her now and there was no way to go but forward, "That's why your disagreements are so hard fought. You both fully expect the other to be charmed and give in. Neither of you believes that there is any other possible outcome. It seems to me that…"

Velma stopped. She was about to get into the dangerous part of interjecting her own thoughts about someone else's business. Before venturing down that frightening path, she checked for an out.

"Daphne?... Daphne?" She listened for a moment to the steady breathing from the passenger seat. She was off the hook. Daphne was asleep.

When the car pulled up in front of Blake Mansion, Daphne woke up just enough so that Velma didn't have to get any help to get her to her bedroom where she left her friend fully clothed and on top of the covers of her bed. She made her escape without having to speak with anyone else.

The rest of Velma's weekend was more to her liking and was spent performing deep dives on the finances and the backgrounds of the ten people which she had identified as most likely to be a mole at the lab. She worked on Saturday night until Shaggy and Scooby got home from the restaurant after midnight. Being tired from the long day, she didn't even put up a fight when Shaggy wanted to watch an amazingly boring television show about a bunch of British people baking cakes in a tent. It wasn't like she would be awake five minutes after it started. Due to the soft voices on the show and the low-key nature of the presentation, she was down in two.

On Sunday morning, Velma awoke to the sound of her phone alarm which sounded strangely distant. Realizing that she was lying on the couch, the fog rolled back, and she remembered that she had fallen asleep watching television with Shaggy. He must have put a blanket over her when he headed off to bed. She had remembered to set her alarm before sitting on the couch but had forgotten to bring her phone with her, so it was all the way over on the kitchen counter – ten feet of cold floor away. That meant that the Sunday morning tradition of hitting the snooze button a few times before getting up was off the table. Bummer.

The floor was as cold as she feared but, at least, she still had her socks on which gave some protection to her temperature-sensitive tootsies. Coffee was at the forefront of her mind followed by putting together her plan for taking advantage of the quiet time before Shaggy and Scooby woke up. She was startled by Scooby's door opening but the Great Dane just shambled across the hallway from his room to his bathroom grumbling under his breath. She heard the toilet flush and then he made his way back across the hall and the bedroom door closed behind him. She should have a couple of hours before either of them emerged again.

Normally, reviewing financials would be Fred's thing, but he seemed to have enough on his plate, so she was on her own. The first mystery that she wanted to solve was regarding Leo Petway's envelope full of money. Why would he have such a thing taped under a drawer in his office desk?

The first clue came within ten minutes when she found a petition for divorce filed against him by his wife. It had been served eighteen months previously and then withdrawn. Pulling at that thread turned up some preliminary court documents which stated that he had squandered large amounts of their joint savings gambling. This led to Velma going through his files on his work computer. That turned up nothing. But she did find where he had linked his government computer to his personal computer, and she was able to find the saved history of the keystrokes which gave her his IP address, username, password, and PIN number. It just took a moment to see that his personal computer was on-line.

She watched her screen and waited. Although being on-line, Leo's computer was in rest mode meaning that no one had clicked anything or typed anything on it for at least ten minutes. He probably had left it on overnight. That made her job easy. She entered his computer remotely and looked through his history. She found evidence that certain entries had been individually deleted which might be enough to pass his wife's scrutiny but was child's play for Velma.

She was not surprised when she found that three of the deleted entrees were gambling websites and two more were pornography. She didn't care about the porn. The gambling was the issue here. Leo was kind enough to have a file saved on his computer which listed all of his usernames and passwords. This was too easy. She accessed his accounts in each of the websites and found the normal breakdown of 10 percent small wins, 70 percent small losses, and 20 percent large losses.

She checked the dates. There had been a brief cessation when the divorce papers had been served which ran to about two months after they had been withdrawn which had been followed by a couple of months of minor activity. But within nine months, his activity was back as high as it had ever been. The classic pattern of an addict.

A gambling addiction would not only ruin his marriage but could also cost him his security clearance which would cost him his career. The addict frequently uses the in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound reasoning to justify selling secrets since his addiction being made known to his employers would ruin his life anyway. Leo had just climbed to suspect number 1.

Velma began researching his technical background. It was amazingly easy to pull up someone's high school and college transcripts and she reviewed them looking for shop classes, circuits classes, or anything that might indicate that he might have the ability to rewire the security system. He found nothing in high school. In college, he majored in psychology and minored in literature. No indication of any technical classes or acumen. Master's degree. PhD. Nothing.

She hit social media. Leo and his wife had one child, a little girl. The pictures of Leo's wife – who was named Joan – would have given the wedding planner a field day. The woman was the poster child for 'frumpy'. There were no posts or tweets declaring any history of DIY projects around the house or any prowess in wiring or electronics.

This left two options: one was that he probably didn't have the technical expertise to do the rewiring and was unlikely to be the mole – at least working alone. The second was that he was not a turncoat selling secrets but was actually a trained spy. In that case, he would be carefully hiding his abilities. She dismissed that almost immediately since a trained spy would also avoid using his own name on gambling sites. The two realistic options were that he was either not the mole or he was not working alone.

Velma's second mystery was about Tilly Weatherby and her extremely expensive taste in real estate compared against the income of a senior-level Government manager. Her efforts to buy a large estate-sized home in Danforth and other high-end parts of the Riley area were documented going back five years.

Most of the records showed failed efforts to get approved for home loans. Various mortgage companies offered her loans for up to almost a million dollars, but they had all balked at the $1.5 to $2.5 million homes in which she apparently wanted to live. That is, at least, until about two weeks prior when she had submitted an offer for a two-million-dollar mortgage in Danforth with her paperwork saying that she was going to be putting over 50% (one million dollars) down.

Tilly's government computer was completely clean of anything personal other than some old tax records which showed nothing out of the ordinary. Velma would have loved to have found Tilly's latest tax forms but wasn't about to start messing around with the IRS computers. While the Government was badly behind in cyber-security on their systems, an American citizen did NOT want to get caught trying to hack the IRS. No information was worth the risk.

Instead, Velma began working through Tilly's educational background. The scientist was originally from the Dallas/Forth Worth area and had gone to college at TCU for her bachelor's on a field hockey scholarship before completing her Masters and Doctorate at Rice. At TCU, her declared major during her freshman year had been Communications but she had changed it to Physics at the beginning of her sophomore year. At the same time, she left the field hockey team and got three different women-in-STEM-scholarships in replacement. These scholarships had required her to maintain a 3.0 GPA which had been no problem as she had kept a 3.95 through her undergraduate with her lowest semester being a 3.85. She had been a curve-buster. Velma could appreciate that.

As a physicist, Tilly would have extensively studied electrodynamics, electrostatics, magnetostatics, electromagnetic induction, and AC and DC circuits. Would this alone give her the background she needed to rewire the security system? In a sense, a security system was nothing but a 120V AC system powering some 12V and 24V DC circuits. It would not be too much of a step for her to have some casual conversations with the installers to figure out how the processors read the resistance on the lines and the rest could be deduced. So, the short answer was that 'yes' Tilly had enough background to figure out how to circumvent the system.

Next up was the social media search. Tilly had been prolific on social media up until just before the Anunnaki project had been started. At that time, she had still lived in Texas and had just received tenure at the University of Texas at Dallas. Velma got on the 'Rate My Professor' website and found Tilly's page. She had been rated by 34 of her students and had gotten an overall rating of 1.6 out of 5. Five percent said they would take another class from her. Her level of difficulty averaged at 4.8 out of 5. In her ratings, she received no 'Awesome's, no 'Great's, two 'Good's, seventeen 'OK's, and fifteen 'Awful's. There were 21 written reviews that ranged from bad to scathingly bad. She was clearly not liked by her students.

This was Velma's home turf and she knew that, if Tilly had been a poor teacher but had been offered tenure, then it had to be about grants. She filtered her search for grant awards for physics to the university for the period that Tilly was there and was rewarded with a long list of grants about half of which had Tilly's name on them. All of these were Government, most of them Department of Defense, and several of them were sizable. Some quick mental math showed that over 70% of the departments' grants were from applications written by Tilly. There is no better way to get offered tenure.

But physics grants were extremely competitive and Tilly's win rate was remarkably high. Curiosity peaked, Velma continued her research and it did not take long to find that her uncle was Brigadier General Austin Weatherby, USAF. That answered both the question regarding how Tilly had gotten so many grants and how she had gotten put in charge of one of the most prestigious projects in the DoD. Brains are good. Connections are better. But brains and connections were the best. And apparently, she had both.

This did not start Velma fuming as it once would have. People were born with certain advantages of which some were genetic, such as brainpower. For some years, Velma had not taken advantage her genetic gift and it had made her angry. While the anger was at herself, she took it out on those people who were born with unearned advantages and did take advantage of them. Having grown up middle class to Marxist parents, she had a deep-seated distrust and dislike of the top tier of the upper economic class. Those born into it had no concept of the lives of 99% of the population and yet were thrust into positions where they made decisions that radically influenced those lives. And then those multi-millionaires who were self-made… What moral compromises had been required for them to claw the way to the top of the rancid and corrupt trash heap that was the capitalist system?

She smiled to herself. That last bit was a quote from her dad from his younger and more rebellious days. As she had grown older, Velma – and seemingly her parents – had worked out a compromise with the capitalist system. If it didn't mess with them, then they wouldn't mess with it. In reality, now that she was seeing the system from the point of view of someone with a steady income and a bright future, the capitalist system wasn't looking all that bad. But she would never tell her parents that.

Long story short, Tilly had been born with unearned advantages and she had used them. As had Velma, and Daphne, and Freddy. And Shaggy? He had grown up on a farm and, by any reasonable definition of the phrase, poor. She had heard Shaggy's parents talking one night back when The Gang was having a Vincent Van Ghoul movie marathon night in the Rogers' basement. With no experience in anything but farming, Shaggy's dad was having trouble finding and keeping a job. The snippet of the conversation that she had overheard was that they had moved from their farm in California to Crystal Cove not only to try and get Shaggy away from his druggy friends but also to make sure that Shaggy did not become a farmer. Shaggy's father had referred to it as breaking the family curse.

Velma understood that Shaggy was white and, in American society, that constituted an advantage. But, on the level playing field of other white people, Shaggy had made his way on his own and succeeded. Velma didn't really need more reasons to be proud of who she was marrying, but she couldn't help herself.

She got up, quietly tiptoed down the hall, gently opened the door to the sound of Shaggy's snoring. Making her way to his side of the bed, she bent over and kissed his forehead.

He woke, looked up at her and smiled, "Hey," he whispered.

"Hey," she whispered back.

"What time is it?"

"About nine."

"I guess I'll get up and get breakfast going."

"You do that." She looked down at him with the twinkle in her eye that substituted for a smile and then she returned to the dining table and her computer. Back to Tilly Weatherby.

The next question was, who was Brigadier General Austin Weatherby, USAF? This did not take long. He was the Director of Logistics and Warfighting Integration, and Chief Information Officer for Air Force Space Command. A quick review of the responsibilities of that position confirmed that it included no direct control over funding on physics grants. Nor did he have any direct relationship to the Anunnaki Research. This meant that Tilly's grants and appointment were less direct nepotism and more the General using the good-old-boy network to make sure that her grant applications and resume were at the top of the appropriate piles.

Velma then found posts about Tilly's marriage and subsequent divorce. The marriage had been to a man named Ryan Rustman who sold insurance. There was nothing in his posts that indicated anything but a very average person with average tastes. Most of his posts were about sports – primarily football. He did not take pictures of food or post notes to his wife that should better have been said privately. By what he wrote, Velma found him non-annoying (which was pretty high praise coming from her). Their marriage had lasted just under five years and ended immediately before Tilly took the Anunnaki job. They had lived in Fort Worth and had no children. There were pictures of two dogs.

Her social media presence had completely disappeared when she had taken her present position which was logical for someone with Top Secret security clearance and a Special Access Program.

Next on the agenda was a deeper dive into Maxine Bellows' financials than Shaggy had done previously. Velma was distracted by Shaggy beginning the noisy and smelly ritual of Sunday breakfast which brought Scooby out and doubled the noise. She waited for a few moments to allow her brain to place the background noises into a white-noise category and then refocused. She first confirmed the work he had done on her general background was as complete as an internet search could provide. It was. It was interesting in this day and age for someone to leave as few footprints on the internet as she did, but she was a security specialist. Her financials were another matter, there had to be more to that than what Shaggy had been able to find.

After an hour, Velma had determined that Max had a savings account and a checking account. The savings account held a balance of $41,670.17 which was decent but well within what Max could have saved on her salary. Her checking account had a balance of $5,287.64 which was also reasonable for her age and income. Her monthly payments were rent, internet, electricity, and water which were all paid by automatic draft from her checking account. She had two credit cards: one was a general commercial card which gave her points toward airplane tickets and the other was issued by her bank. She made all of her payments with the airplane one and had not used the bank one in a year.

Her credit card was used primarily for groceries and restaurants. The costs assigned to those all showed that she was dining for one. A review of the days leading up to Valentine's Day indicated no unusual gifts or other purchases. She even had a grocery bill on that day. There were some obvious gift purchases leading up to Christmas but those were few and small - 'Mom-and-dad' purchases rather than boyfriend-type purchases.

She had a Netflix account and seemed to watch romantic comedies and science fiction. She had a gym membership and used it nearly daily. Her use dropped off on the week-ends in the Spring and Summer which probably indicated that she was a runner or a cyclist. A review of her payments showed no bicycle shops, so it was likely running.

Although she had found more data points than Shaggy, her end result was the same. There was nothing here.

The security personnel were enlisted personnel who had joined the military out of high school. None of their high school transcripts or military ratings indicated any training in electronics. A review of their social media indicated no interest or background in DIY projects or electrical wiring. Their financials showed nothing unusual for their age and salary level. Velma prioritized them low.

The electrical engineer's name was Kyle Mortimer. His financials were also pretty bland. He was a GS-14 with a salary of $108,769.00 per year. He had $12,452.78 in his checking account, $22,933.66 in his savings account, $15,240 in an Education Savings Account, and he had $55,200 in a rollover IRA which he had rolled over from his 401K at his previous employer in the private sector. All of this was well within norms. He had several credits cards and mostly paid them on time. His credit rating was 755, which was good but not great. He was living in a home which he had bought for $420,000 and had a monthly payment of $2,200 on which had been late only once. He had 27 years and 2 months left on his 30-year mortgage.

Social media turned up that he was married with two children – both girls – ages 8 and 10. His wife did free-lance editing from her home which brought in an additional $10,000 per year. Most of their social life appeared to revolve around their church. By every indication, they were an extremely typical family.

He was a native of Tennessee and his degree was from Tennessee Tech. His wife had a degree from Belmont in English Literature. She had taught English at the primary level before they had moved from Tennessee to Riley for this job. It had not been a big pay raise for Kyle. With the replacement of his wife's $46,000 per year teacher's salary with $10,000 in free-lance work, the total family income had dropped by about 19 percent. And the cost of living in Riley was slightly higher than Chattanooga from where they had moved. Velma made a note in her tablet. Why take a cut in pay?

IT guy number one was named Randy Folsom who had an enormous presence on social media which mostly centered around gaming and inappropriate humor. True to form, he still lived with his parents at the age of 29. The lack of rent and utility payments accounted for him having over $80,000 in his savings account and another $7,000 in his checking account on a GS-10 salary of $53,595 per year. He worked the late shift from 3:00 PM to 11:00 PM. He had an associate's degree in computer science from Riley Tech and was born and raised locally. Social media gave no indication of his having a significant other which was no shocker. He had five credit cards with a history of late payments for which he had a credit score of 601.

IT guy number 2, named Artemis Johnson, was the senior of the two as a GS-12 with an annual salary of $75,130. He was in his mid-thirties and had purchased a $300,000 home with his girlfriend as co-signer in a mediocre neighborhood just outside of Southeast Riley. There was a police report from about a week after they moved in where the girlfriend's car had been burgled and the radio removed. About two weeks later, monthly payments from a home security company had started hitting their joint account. They had three separate checking accounts: one for him, one for her, and one joint account. There were automatic drafts against both of their single accounts which paid into the joint account and then automatic drafts from the joint account paying the utilities and the mortgage payments.

The girlfriend, Aleska Jenkins, worked in the restaurant industry and declared an income of just under $30,000 per year. She was officially a part-time tipped employee and her base salary for the previous year had been around $3,500 and her declared tips and other odd income had accounted for the remainder. Most of her after tax income went to health insurance (which was not supplied by her employee since she was part-time) and so Artemis contributed about 80% to the joint account while she handled the remaining 20%. It appeared that he also paid most of the daily expenses. Such as food.

His checking account presently held $2,277.64. Her checking account held $755.56. And the joint account held $3,150. His savings account held $9,884.24 while hers held $774.82. They each had separate credit cards. His were up to date while hers were carrying a balance and she held credit card debt in the amount of $4,344.98. He had a student loan with a remaining balance of $48,225. In other words, they were a normal American young couple. Technically, they had a negative total cash value, but everything was paid on time and no creditors were calling.

Social media indicated that they had no children but did live with a dog and a cat. Contrary to type, the dog appeared to be more hers and the cat appeared to be more his. It's a brave new world.

Velma reviewed her notes and then leaned back in her chair with a sigh.

"Are you about done?" Shaggy's voice came from over her left shoulder.

She turned around in her chair and saw Shaggy standing in the kitchen holding a frying pan, "Are you still cooking breakfast?"

"Check the time, love-of-my-life. I am cooking dinner before Scoob and I head over to the restaurant."

She turned and looked at the lower right-hand corner of her computer screen. It was nearly 5:30 PM and the day was gone. Well, it wasn't the first time that had happened.

"Are you cooking anything fit for human consumption?"

"If you mean bland Velma Chow, then I have a prepared a seasoned grilled chicken on a bed a fresh crisp baby spinach leaves with a rich and thick avocado-based dressing."

"That sounds perfect. I'm starving."

"Do you have an idea of who-done-it?"

"I do not. There are some interesting questions, such as Leo's gambling and Tilly's recent real estate purchase, but nothing that gives me a clear primary suspect. We've reached the Daphne phase. This is where she would talk to all of them and ask them questions and find a psychological clue that brought everything together."

"I don't think that Daphne is available."

"I know. That makes it the Shaggy phase."

"I'm no Daphne."

"Nobody is, but you're pretty darn good. If you talk to them all and we still have nothing, then we'll see if Daphne can help."

"And tomorrow is Monday which gives me the whole day."

Velma nodded, "I'll go ahead and call Max and get her to set everything up."

"Velma, one last thing… your powers of deduction may be overlooking that you have been wearing those same clothes since yesterday and they might be getting just a tad ripe."