"My boyfriend's older son is the one you should blame! Not me!" I corrected him. "See, this guy is in the F.B.I.,and Mack's coming to my place with a dead racoon set off alarms"

"Yeah...Mack mentioned him. He ran into you and him at Circus of the Damned, right?"

"Yeah, and that set off more alarms" I explained. "His name is Don"

"So..this Don set the cops on him?"

"How did it go?"

"Mack was at his practice,when the cops came. He called me afterwards."

"Doesn't he have some B and Es on his record?" I asked.

"Yeah. Needless to say, it didn't help him any. Too boot, he spent last night alone"

"I'll do the best I can to to get the cops off Mack" I promised. No one deserved to be falsly accused.

"Thanks!" he said "Look, I'd love to chat more, but I've got a practice to run" With that, the man left.

I called Don on his cell phone. Alan had given it to me 'just in case'.

"Eppes" he answered, very business like.

"Hey! I was just wondering if you could get the cops to leave Mack alone? He didn't do it!"

"They just can't discount that possibility, given the circumstances"

"What evidence? All they have are your suspicions. Any witnesses? Don't they need to takeFingerprints?"

"None were found" he said.

"How do you know?

"I've been hanging around your place, talking to the people at the crime scene." he told me.

"I see. Thanks..." I said eventhough Don was overreacting.

9999999999999999999999999999999

As we had dinner, Natalie commented

"I don't thinkMack did it"

"Don's been at this for a while, we need to trust his judgement" I told her and she sighed. "If Mackdidn't do it, that will come out sooner than you think"

"Fine..."

After dinner we played scrabble.

---------------

Days passed, and we didn't hear anything from the cops. Don told us that they had no hard proof of Mack's guilt when he and Charlie joined us for dinner on Friday.

"Are other suspects even being looked at?" I asked him.

"You and your partners have only fired one person right? and that was ten years ago" Don said. I had mentioned it a couple of days back.

"Yeah, for stealing some sedatives and selling them to junkies." I served myself more mashed potatoes. Alan had made them with ribeye.

"The cops have already questioned all of your present employees, and all of them have alibis for that night" Don continued.

"Not to mention my partners!" I complained.

"But they were ruled out!" Don argued.

"Yeah, but why question them in the first place? Did the cops think that my partners were trying to scare me into going to Miami?" It didnt make any sense.

"The important thing was that they were ruled out!" Don insisted.

9999999999999999999999999999999999999

On Friday, Nat and I had dinner with Phillip and his wife, Anne at Spring Garden. They were leaving for Florida the next day to take a cruise.

"Any luck with finding the culprit?" Anne asked.

"No" I shook my head. The fact that no one had been arrested greatly bothered me and Nat.

"Sorry to hear that" Phil remarked, then added "It could have been some youngneighborhood thug"

"None of our immediate neighbors heard or saw anything" I said.

"That's a shame!" Anne commented.

Eventually, the topic changed to cruises in general.

999999999999999999999

"I went on my first cruise when I was a teen. It was just me and my parents. The food was divine!" I shared. As an adult, I had gone with boyfriends, but I didn't think I should talk about that.

"We went on our first cruise,when Brittany was five. She stayed with my mother during the trip." Phil said.

"It was essentially a second honeymoon" Anne remembered with a smile.

Just then, our food came,and we began to eat.

-----------------------------------

On Tuesday, one of my regulars, Peter, who had a siamese, told me.

"There's this jackass on my block exploiting his cat"

"How?" I asked.

"He claims that it's psychic" Petersaid. "I tried to call the humane society, but the special investigatorscouldn't find anything to charge him with because the cat looked fine. Since he asks for 'donations', instead of charging, they couldn't bring in the regular cops. Maybe you could take a look?Being a vet, you might be able to see something they missed."

"Definently." I assured him.

"Great! Here's the address"

After work I went to the man's house. A kindly woman in her eighties answered the door. A donation jar stood near it.

"Welcome! I'll let Mark know that you are here." She said, and with a motion of her hand, invited me to sit down, which I did. Soon, a bald man in his forties came in, followed by a tabby. The cat inspected me, then stepped back. The cat was borderline thin. I could tell it was very well trained and intelligent by how it looked at me. The eyes were focused, and sharp.

"How can I help you?" he asked me.

"My husband left me and my five children. The private investigatorI hired hasn't been able to even get close to finding him. That bastard owes me child support!" I said in my sadest voice. "I heard about your extraordinary cat, and hoped it could help?"

"Finding people is one of Mimi's specialties!" Mark said in that assuring voice used by doctors."How long has your husband been missing?"

"A few days" I said.

"I'll be right back." Mark excused himself and came back with a map of the world, that was two feet long by two feet wide. He spread it out on the floor.

"Where is her husband, girl?" the man asked the feline. Mimi went to the east coast, and stared at the map for a minute or two. If nothing else, Mark knew how to train cats. Why couldn't he trainMimi to do something other than help him exploit people? Soon, the cat moved to the west coast, and eventually put a paw on Oregon.

"Oregon?" I emphasized my doubt, and sure enough the cat moved. It either sense my doubt or got some signal from Mark.

"Looks like your husband maybe passed by Oregon" Mark said. Yeah sure.

The cat went south and put its paw on what would be the bay area.

"That makes more sense!" I said. "He's got a brother up there."

With that, I thanked the man, put some money for show, and went back home.

Alan welcomed me home with a kiss.

"How did it go?" he asked.

"The cat looks fine!" I said. "But it's still being exploited, and folks are being taken advantage of!"

"What did you do?"

"I pretended that I was a woman whose husband left her without leaving a trace. The man spread out a map, and the cat put its paw on the bay area" I explained. "I wasn't charged, but there was a donation jar. However, this cat is still being exploited, and this guy is taking advantage of people!"

"Maybe Don could help?" He offered.

"Could you convince him?" I hoped.

"I'm his father, of course!"

999999999999999999999999999999999999

Dad called me on Wednesday morning with a request.

"Could you look into something for me?"

"Sure Dad!"

"Natalie found out thatthis man wasdefrauding people by claiming that his cat was psychic. Natalie went to see this so-call feline psychic, pretending to be a woman whose husband left her, and the cat pointed to the bay area on a large map.

"Wait...wait...she went undercover?" this annoyed me. I hated it when civilians played slueth.

"As a vet, Nat was able to see how the cat was doing." Dad tried to justify it.

"Does she do this often?"

"Sometimes why?"

"She needs to be careful."

"I see to that!" Dad assured me. "Are you going to look into it?"

"It's a local police matter" I told him. "Unless they call us"

"Don! That man is exploiting people!" Dad got annoyed with me.

"Fine, I'll go and check it out" I reluctantly agreed. It seemed to mean a lot to Dad.

"Good! Let us know how it goes."

Dad gave me the address andwe hung up.

Just before leaving the office, I got a call: the cops had a lead on the vandalism.

TBC