Owen, Jerome and Emma were so busy test driving new cars, being fitted for new clothes and selecting the ideal location for a swimming pool they hardly noticed when the chief of detectives showed up.

Essie, Bozier, Antwan and even old Mr. Pinkney detailed the trio’s greedy and suspicious behavior. They showed the detective the will, the weighted tennis ball and the autopsy report. Then they took them down to the basement workshop for a tour and a first-hand look at their greed in action. When they laid out all of the evidence I emerged from the service hall and explained how Lady Glady’s children had set it all up - Owen the tennis pro had crushed the cat’s skull with the weighted tennis ball while it sat sunning itself in the courtyard. Even the watchful eyes of Lady Gladys and Luscious Pinkney didn’t see it coming. When the suspicious matriarch called for a detective, they took advantage of the ridiculous situation. They knew I would try to get as much out of Lady Gladys as I could and they made sure I looked like I was taking advantage of her money and desperation. Then Emma tricked me into taking the gun and Jerome lifted it from me he bumped me in the corridor.

WIth the cat dead, all they needed was to get rid of their mother so they could get their hands on her money. I was the perfect fool to frame.

Their obvious motive and disdain for their mother made it easy for the detectives to build their case against Lady Gladys’ children. Not only did the investigators find two more weighted tennis balls in the bushes, they found that new tennis racket Owen had been searching for. It was tossed in a woodpile in the basement. The strings were busted and the frame was cracked from striking the weighted balls. Owen, Emma and Jerome tearfully protested their innocence as they were taken away in handcuffs, but no one believed them.

Essie, Bozier, Antwan and Pinkney stood solemnly in the driveway was the paddy wagon pulled off. Essie, in her fur coat, Bozier holding his gleaming white chef hat to his heart, Antwan with his well-manicured hands at his sides and Pinkney leaning on his shovel. One by one they went into the house. But time they entered through the front door and not the kitchen They motioned for me to follow.

As soon as the door closed. Antwan put on a Joe “King” Oliver Creole Jazz Band record. Bozier stood on the table and tossed ham sandwiches into the air while Essie and Pinkney danced.

“We did it Rubie darlin’,” Essie shouted. “I knew we could count on you my boy.”

It hadn’t dawned on me until now; Lady Gladys had named her servants as executor of her will to care for her cat. With the cat and the kids out of the picture, all of those millions, the businesses and even the mansion all belonged to them. This truly was the case of a lifetime and I most certainly had won one for the underdog.

“It’s unbelievable,” I said, “As Essie took me on a twirl across the foyer. “When you brought me over here to look into the old lady’s dead cat I never would have guessed that a couple weeks later everyone would be dead or in jail and you’d be executors of a multi million dollar estate.”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Bozier said gleefully.

“You did a beautiful thing Flatfoot. Beautiful! Just Beautiful,” Pinkney said.

Pinkney looked up at a huge portrait of Lady Gladys. In it she was draped in jewels and furs and she was holding her beloved Mr. Gilbert Fanciworth.

“I spent a lifetime bowing to that old bag and cleaning up behind the flea bag,” Pinkney said. “Not once did I get a kind word or even a smile.”

Then he bowed to the portrait.

“Whose smiling now,” he said.

Despite my complete disgust for Lady Glady’s children, I was starting to get a sinking feeling about my old pals.

“I figure Lady Gladys would never have hired me if Essie hadn’t recommended me. And no one would have known about that will if Antwan hadn’t just happened across it in that cat toy dawer. And I figure I would never have discovered those weighted tennis balls if Bozier hadn’t stood me in the window just as that ball knocked Pinkney in the back of the head.”

Antwan pulled the needle off the record and everyone stopped and stared at me.

“You sure are doing a lot of figuring for a case you already solved, Mr. Detective man,” Antwan snapped.

Madam Essie lit up a French cigarette on the end of the long holder. She grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me directly in the eye.

“Listen here, Rubie darlin’,” she said. “You are looking at Savannah Georgia’s newest caretakers of a multi-million dollar enterprise. Lady Gladys, God rest her soul, trusted us to keep watch over her cat, her home, her rotten children and all her millions. And we’re going to honor her memory by setting you up in your own detective agency right back there in the carriage house built for her by her late first or second husband. You earned it Rubie darlin’ because you just sent three people to jail for murdering her and her cat. If you think you got the wrong crooks then that’s another case for another day.”

Essie gave Antwan a nod. He turned the record back on and she took me for another spin across the foyer.

I could tell my new venture business was about to get very interesting.