Jack took his right hand off the steering wheel to dig in his pocket for his cell phone. He tossed it to Dennis. “Go ahead, make the call, and if it goes to voice mail, tell him we just left Happy Village, where we spoke to Mrs. Love, and it’s imperative we meet and speak with him, on Mrs. Cricket’s orders.”

Dennis did as instructed. The cell phone on the other end rang four times before it went to voice mail. He held out the phone so Jack could hear the cryptic message and what the caller should do if they wanted to leave a message. Dennis left a precise, detailed message stressing the importance of a return call at Mr. Meadows’s earliest convenience. He ended the call and handed the phone back to Jack. “I don’t think we should hold our breath waiting for a return call. I’ll take that one step further and go out on a limb and say I think the guy is avoiding us. The question is, why?”

“Quoting Mrs. Love, I think that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Why indeed?”

The rest of the ride back to Babylon was made in silence as both Jack and Dennis contemplated their next move.

Twenty minutes later, Jack, Dennis, and Cyrus stepped out of the private elevator that let them off in the foyer of Annie’s penthouse apartment. A babble of voices greeted them, and a buffet lunch was set out on the dining-room table. Everyone stopped talking and eating to stare at the trio. Cyrus barked, then barked once again as he beelined for the table, his way of letting everyone know that he was hungry. Fergus immediately fixed a plate for him while the others demanded answers to the questions they kept throwing at the two men.

“First things first. Good idea to serve lunch here so we can talk openly and not worry about someone listening to our conversation in a public place. Since you’re all here, that has to mean Cosmo is, at the very least, holding his own, right?” Jack asked. “Am I right?”

“He’s still in the ICU. Dr. Wylie is at his bedside, and Lizzie is with him. They both insisted we all leave. They promised to call with any news even if it’s bad news. We had no other choice but to come back. We’re just biding our time,” Charles explained.

“You two probably know more than we do. We’re still in the dark as to what really happened, not to mention why it happened.”

“I will say this,” said Charles, “Dr. Wylie said he is cautiously optimistic as to Cosmo’s complete recovery, so I think we should all take that as a plus. Now, if you two don’t mind, we’d like to hear what you found out at Happy Village.”

Jack took the floor and, as he walked around the table filling his plate, gave a detailed account of their meeting and everything that was said. He ended his tale with, “And right before we got here, I had Dennis call Mr. Meadows for the fourth time, and the call went to voice mail like the other three calls. He has not gotten back to me. I find that strange and more than a little disturbing. We need to do a full check on that guy.