Chapter Two: The Alibis 

I’ll admit, a cat murder sounds pretty lame. But it’s still a mystery. 

And a mystery is a mystery, right?

...Right? 

JIM 

“A cat.”

Jim looked at Michael with a single eyebrow raised, and Michael looked right back at him with his arms crossed. A gust of chilly wind blew through the parking lot.

“That’s what I said.”

“They shut down this entire place because of a cat?”

“Apparently it was a rather grisly murder,” Michael said. “Hank is being stingy on the details, but he said whoever did this is – and I quote – one sick fuck.”

Jim looked up at the building, going over this in his mind. Something didn’t add up. The place had been shut down completely for at least a couple of hours, and there appeared to be only one officer guarding the entrance. He assumed there must be more inside, but… all for a cat?

“This is absurd,” he said, heading over to talk to the officer himself. Michael and Pam followed. “Excuse me, sir…” he said, and the man looked up.

“Officer Dwight Schrute,” he replied in a clipped voice, pointing to his name tag. 

“When can we go back upstairs? I have some work papers I need to get.”

Officer Schrute’s eyes darkened. “This is a very serious matter, sir. And we’ll let you back in as soon as we’ve secured the crime scene.”

“I heard something about a cat, is that… the serious matter?”

“You heard correctly,” the officer replied.

Jim eyed Pam, wondering if she too found all of this extremely odd.

“Can you tell us what happened, officer?” asked Pam politely, trying a different tack. 

“A murder has occurred,” he said bluntly. “That’s all you need to know.”

“You mean, like… besides the cat?” Pam urged. “Like a real murder?”

Officer Schrute narrowed his eyes, his distaste for Pam now apparent. “This was a real murder.”

“Who called this in?” Jim asked.

The cop huffed with displeasure. “If you must know, the victim belonged to my girlfriend. She was staying at the cat café on level three.”

Jim, if possible, was now even more confused. “What’s a cat café?” He glanced at Michael, who shrugged.

“It’s a place where you go to pet cats and drink tea,” Pam explained quickly, rolling her eyes. She turned back to Officer Schrute while Jim processed this. “The owner, your girlfriend. Is she okay?”

Officer Schrute’s expression turned wistful, and he looked over Pam’s shoulder. “Angela will be fine. One day.”

“So, like… there weren’t any actual murders?” Jim pressed.

Schrute whipped towards Jim and glared. “Are you associated with the deceased?”

Jim was slightly taken aback. “The deceased? You mean… the cat?”

“Identify yourself!” the officer snapped. 

“Uh… I’m Jim? I work in the building?”

“Well, Jim,” Officer Schrute said, getting up in his face. “Maybe this isn’t a big deal for you, but for some people, it might be. Maybe for some people, their entire world just got turned upside down. Maybe—”

“Okay, okay,” Pam said, stepping between the two men. “He is very sorry for not taking this more seriously.” She eyed Jim meaningfully, then glanced back over his shoulder. Jim turned around to see what she was looking at and saw the woman from the elevator – Angela, apparently – very clearly distressed, crying. A younger woman with reddish hair was wrapping a blanket around her shoulders and comforting her.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to attend to this upstairs.” The officer shot one last lethal glare at Jim, then turned on his heel and crossed the crime scene tape, entering the lobby.

“I had no idea there was like… some kind of cat hotel in this building,” Michael said, looking at Jim. “Did you?”

Jim shook his head, then looked to Pam. “Did you?”

“I’ve been up there a few times,” she explained. “They hired me to paint a mural on my off time.”

Michael turned to the others excitedly. “We should go investigate the crime scene!” he exclaimed. “Maybe we can even check out the victim if we hurry!”

Jim just stared at him. “Crime scene? Victim? Do you hear yourself?”

“I think what Jim is trying to say,” Pam told Michael as gently as possible, “is that it’s possible this isn’t so much a murder as a simple instance of someone overreacting to the untimely death of their pet.” She looked at Jim. “Right, Jim?”

He nodded at her. “Yeah.”

Michael shrugged. “Suit yourselves, but I’m gonna go see what’s going on.” He turned, slowly walking towards the tall hedges that ran along the perimeter of the parking lot, then disappeared behind one. Pam leaned in close to Jim, placing her hand on his forearm. His entire body went rigid.

“I actually think he’s onto something, though,” she whispered. “There’s got to be more to this.” 

“You think?” 

“Yeah,” she affirmed, with a skeptical eyebrow raised. “You really believe we’re getting the whole story?”

Jim shrugged and eyed Officer Schrute, who was just inside the lobby and appeared to be dusting the elevator buttons for fingerprints. “I don’t know, he seems like the kind of guy who would shut down an entire business park for a cat murder.”

“Well, I’m curious. Aren’t you?”

He wasn’t curious about the cat murder, not really, but if it meant getting to spend more time with Pam leaning in close and whispering into his ear, he’d entertain just about anything. “A little, I guess.”

“Then let’s go check it out,” she suggested. She turned, and with a quick glance at Hank, who was looking the other direction, sneaked towards the east side of the building. 

They walked quietly around the corner, hugging the edge of the wall unnoticed. Pam reached the door leading to the warehouse first, ducking underneath the yellow crime scene tape that stretched across it and pushed the door open. She slipped inside, but Jim hesitated.

“You coming?” she said, poking her head outside. 

“Um. In there?” he asked. “It’s pretty dark.”

“Coward,” she grinned. “I know where we can find some flashlights. Come on.”

Jim was actually more concerned about getting caught interfering in some kind of police investigation – as ridiculous as it was – than coming face to face with the alleged cat murderer, but he didn’t want Pam thinking he was a coward. So he followed her into the dark.

“This way,” he heard from right next to him. Suddenly her hand was around his wrist, and she was leading him blindly through what he could only assume were shelves full of god knows what.

“Why is it so dark in here?” Jim muttered curiously. 

“That is strange,” she said. “I bet when the fire alarm went off, the guys just shut the lights off and went home. The third shift ends around three anyway, so they probably all just cut and run for the day.”

He wondered why she knew so much about the inner workings of the warehouse, but didn’t press. His eyes were adjusting slowly as he continued to follow her and after a few more seconds, she stopped. They were now in some kind of office area, and he could see her faint silhouette as she reached into a desk drawer, pulling out two flashlights. She clicked the first one on and held it beneath her chin, illuminating her face. It reminded him of his old Boy Scout campmates sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories, only he’d never been attracted to any of them.

“Scared, Jim?” she asked, then giggled.

“Gimme that,” he said, taking the flashlight. She clicked the other one on. In the dim light he could make out the initials R.A. on the handle of the one she was holding written in Sharpie on a piece of masking tape. His own had the initials D.P. He hoped whoever R.A. and D.P. were, they wouldn’t miss their flashlights any time soon.

Pam led the way rather expertly through the warehouse until she found a set of stairs leading up, which deposited them into the hallway of the second floor, avoiding the lobby. They reached the elevator and Jim pressed the up button. They waited for it in silence, their twin flashlight beams pointed at the doors in the shape of an X. Jim vaguely remembered the second floor was some kind of accounting firm, but he was relatively new here and rarely interacted with the others, so he wasn’t entirely sure. All of the hallways looked pretty much the same in their office building. It was, however, admittedly eerie at night with the lights off.

The doors opened and they stepped inside. Jim reached for the button for three, but Pam stopped him.

“Wait,” she said. “There could be more cops on three, maybe even posted at the elevator. We should take the stairs instead.”

He grinned and pulled his hand back, gesturing after you. She was good.

They stepped off and headed down the hallway instead, towards the stairwell. As they made their way upstairs, they were greeted by an unsettling chorus of cats meowing in the distance, a muffled symphony of high-pitched whining. Jim had never been on the third floor before, and hadn’t even realized there was such a thing as a “cat café” in the building, but now that he knew, it made a strange sort of sense why he sometimes thought he heard weird singing while in the bathroom at work.

“How long have all these cats been here?” he asked Pam, since she seemed to know more about the place than he did.

“It just opened a few weeks ago,” she said. Then, “shh!” She pulled him back by his wrist until they were hidden around a corner, the entrance to the cat café in sight. Officer Schrute was walking into view about twenty feet down the hallway, carrying a small bundle wrapped in a sheet. 

As silly as this all felt, Jim wasn’t made of stone. He felt a tiny pang for Angela. It wasn’t easy losing a pet. 

“Shoot,” Pam said quietly. “Now we definitely won't be able to see any of the evidence.”

“Oh well.” Jim didn’t really care what they did as long as he got to spend time with her. He was about to take the opportunity to ask her to go back to Poor Richard’s for another drink when Pam squeezed his arm again.

“Look!” She pointed down the hallway, where another door was opening, presumably a back entrance to the café. Unfortunately, they were standing in a place where no matter what they did, they would be seen. Jim grimaced, but to his surprise and great relief, as the figure closed the door quietly and made his way over to them, he recognized the bounce in his step. 

It was Michael. 

MICHAEL

It hadn’t been easy getting into that cat café undetected. 

Michael had seen it done before in all sorts of movies and television crime shows, but actually sneaking up to the roof and down the fire escape was trickier than advertised. He even ripped his pants on the ladder when coming down, and they were his favorites, the ones he found in the bargain bin at Ross’s Dress For Less sale. Ugh.

In any event, when he finally made it down to the stairwell between two and three, he heard people talking in the hallway. When he peered around the corner and looked at the lobby of the cat café, he saw Officer Schrute, followed by another police officer who seemed to be reprimanding him.

“...waste of time and taxpayer money,” the other cop was saying, angry. “Now get this mess cleaned up and these people back into their offices before I have your badge!”

“Yes, Sergeant Wallace,” Officer Schrute said, his previous authoritative demeanor completely gone. “My apologies.”

“You’re a good guy, Dwight,” Wallace then said with a heavy sigh. “I know you meant well. Just… take care of it, okay?”

The sergeant disappeared, and Schrute went back into the cat café. After a few moments he walked out again, carrying what appeared to be the dead cat. Michael couldn’t see much from this angle, as it was wrapped in a sheet, but did see a fluffy white tail sticking out. 

After he was sure the officer was out of sight, Michael tiptoed into the lobby, looking around for anything that could be considered evidence. All he found was a single tiny handkerchief on the floor. He picked it up, inspecting it. It was small, smaller than a normal handkerchief, and tie-dyed in pastel greens and pinks and yellows. Two tiny holes were cut into it, which Michael deduced were meant to go over cat ears. 

He slipped the handkerchief into his pocket and wandered back into the cafe, looking around. He’d never been in one of these places before and immediately decided he wanted to come back as a patron. 

There were tables and chairs, a couple of couches, and dozens of cat toys. And obviously, there were cats. Lots and lots of cats. He counted nine, but it was tough with them moving all around the way they were. One white cat wandered up to him, yowling, and he petted it on its head. 

“Hey, little guy,” he said, and the cat meowed in response. Michael enjoyed that. Maybe he could get onboard with this pet thing. People didn’t always listen, but animals had a way of making you feel noticed.

Reluctant to leave (but not wanting to press his luck) he decided to get out of there. He waved goodbye to the cat and turned, finding a door near the back, which he slipped out of. As he walked down the hallway back towards the lobby, he saw Jim and Pam watching him. 

“Guys!” he hissed, holding up the kerchief. “I found evidence!”

“...Of what?” Jim asked.

Pam looked intrigued. “What is it?” 

Michael held out the handkerchief. “It must have belonged to the victim,” he said very seriously. “I’m pretty sure Angela’s cat was wearing it in the elevator today.”

“Oh, man, that’s the cat that died? Brigitte Purrdot?” Jim asked, then closed his eyes. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“I think so,” Michael nodded.

Pam took the handkerchief and turned it over in her hands. “Brigitte Purrdot wasn’t wearing this color,” she said. “I’m pretty sure of it. Her hankie was solid pink.”

“Well, I got a glimpse of the cat’s tail when that cop was taking it out, and it was definitely white.”

“It could be another cat,” Jim said. 

“I was just in there,” Michael said as he gestured with his thumb. “I saw only one white cat and it wasn’t Brigitte.”

“You went in there? With the cats?” Pam asked. 

“Yeah, I had to cross through from the lobby after I came down from the roof. Speaking of which, someone’s growing a whole bunch of weed up there,” he added, pointing at the ceiling. “It smells like an Alicia Keys concert.”

Jim blinked at this revelation, but blew right past it. “It could still be another cat,” he said. “You can’t be absolutely sure, maybe it was hiding or something?”

“Okay, but what are the odds?” Michael said. “We know it’s Angela’s cat, the cat is white, bada-bing! Huh?” He shot double finger guns and looked from Jim to Pam, rather impressed he was able to unleash his Italian mobster impression so soon. They stared at him blankly. Not polished, not ready, he supposed.

“We won’t know for sure which cat was killed unless we ask Angela,” Pam said.

“You’re right!” Michael said, excitement bubbling up inside him. “We should ask her! In fact, we should do our own podcast!” 

Jim raised an eyebrow. “A podcast?”

“Yeah! I mean… how many true crime podcasters are lucky enough to be on the case right from the start? Actually, I should be recording this right now.” Michael pulled his phone out of his pocket, found his sound recording app, and pressed record. His voice took on an affected melodramatic tone. “The room was dark, and smelled of cat urine and terror. It was the perfect place to commit an atrocity.” He stopped the recording and looked up at Jim excitedly. “What do you think?”

“Where do you get this stuff?” Jim said, shaking his head.

“That sounds kind of fun, actually,” Pam said with a smile. “But I really don’t think we have much to go on, here.”

“Come on! Don’t you want to know who is killing cats in our building?” Michael pleaded. “Or at least, you know, who’s growing that weed garden.”

“Oh my god, one ridiculous petty crime at a time, please!” Jim said in exasperation, throwing his hands up. Pam and Michael both shushed him, but not before another flashlight beam was suddenly pointed directly into their eyes. 

“What are you doing up here?” barked the now familiar voice of Officer Schrute. 

Michael, Pam and Jim all shielded their eyes from the vibrant light in their faces.

“Oh! Um… We thought we could come back to work,” Pam said innocently. “Was that… not right?”

“I put up crime scene tape!” Schrute said, indignant.

Michael leaned in. “You know, you can just walk right under that stuff.”

Officer Schrute narrowed his eyes. “Were you involved in this crime?”

Michael put his hands up. “No way. We evacuated during the fire drill and were all at Poor Richard’s until you saw us come back to the parking lot.”

“Truly, sir,” Pam said. “We wouldn’t do something like this. I swear.”

“Can someone vouch for these alibis?” Schrute asked. “Anyone who can verify you were at the bar?”

Michael nodded. “Sure, that waitress could. She was really hot, too. Maybe we could all just walk back over there, and—”

“Are we really under suspicion?” Jim asked the officer. Schrute looked thoughtful, as if he were processing the information he’d been given.

“If your alibis check out, then no,” he affirmed. “The time of death has been established after everyone left the building.”

“So was there a fire? Or was it a false alarm?” Michael asked curiously, holding up his phone as covertly as possible to catch anything interesting the officer might say. Schrute looked at the phone, then back at Michael just as curiously.

“Can you tell us what happened, please?” Pam interjected. “We just want to know how that poor cat died.”

The officer closed his eyes, then bowed his head, removing his hat. “From the condition of the corpse, my analysis is as follows: it appears to have been shot. Badly, actually, because it was hit in the leg. But it didn’t die. It was then shot again, this time in the shoulder. The perpetrator obviously had terrible aim, so rather than shoot again, they must have snapped its neck to finish the job.”

Michael, Pam and Jim all grimaced.

“Jeez,” Jim said quietly. “That seems… excessive.”

Michael shook his head stoically. “Some people are cat people, and some people are dog people, I suppose,” he said. Everyone looked at him oddly.

“Angela was very distraught,” Schrute continued. He was beginning to look upset, as if recounting her trauma was physically painful for him. “She called me and told me what happened, and something didn’t seem right. So I did everything I could for her. But it wasn’t enough. And now they’ve closed the investigation. I could lose my badge.”

“The investigation is closed?” Pam asked. 

“Did you hear what I said? I could lose my badge, miss.”

“But you haven’t interviewed any other witnesses, secured alibis from everyone in the building,” Michael sputtered. “Someone should talk to Angela. You haven’t even run anyone’s DNA!” 

Officer Schrute stared at him, then looked at Pam, then Jim. “I see what’s going on here. You don’t care about the victim. You’re just a trio of armchair detectives trying to get in my way.” 

“Of course we care,” Michael said. “We care about justice!”

Schrute got up in Michael’s face. “Stay out of this,” he said. “Let Angela grieve in peace.”

His expression was bordering on menacing, and for a brief moment Michael thought perhaps he killed the cat. But maybe he was just getting desperate because his dreams of podcasting fame were flying out the window.

The officer walked away, leaving them standing there alone. Michael put his phone back into his pocket.

“So that’s it? We’re done? No podcast?” He was genuinely sad.

“Back to Serial, I guess,” Pam sighed.

They all filed back to the elevator and took it down. Tenants from the building were making their way back up, and slowly but surely everything was returning to business as usual.

Michael parted ways with Jim and Pam in the darkened parking lot, but as he drove home, he practiced his podcaster voice anyway.

PAM

Pam didn’t think too much about the dead cat for the rest of the evening, and not really much the next morning, either. But she did find herself thinking about Jim. 

She liked him, she knew that much. How much, she wasn’t exactly sure yet. But as silly as the whole cat-murder aspect of their budding friendship was, it felt inextricably linked. And she couldn’t help it; as she sat answering phones at reception, she found herself manufacturing all kinds of excuses to take the elevator up one floor just to see him again.

None of those excuses seemed good enough, so she hadn’t yet summoned up the courage. But that afternoon, while she was touching up her makeup in the empty bathroom of Bratton Graphics, the answer presented itself.

There were noises coming from the vent in the floor below the sink. Voices, actually. And they sounded angry.

“…not going to use building resources for that, it’s ridiculous,” came the first voice. A woman’s voice. The kind of voice that sounded sweet but had a bit of a bite to it.

“So my pain is ridiculous to you?” answered a second voice, also female.

“That’s not what I said, Angela.”

Pam instantly went from mild curiosity to riveted. Angela? As in the cat lady? She knelt down to get closer to the vent.

Angela scoffed. “You didn’t care so much about resources back when we were on the PPC,” she countered. “You didn’t blink an eye when Michael wanted a funeral for that stupid bird.”

PPC? Pam wondered, confused. But more interestingly, Michael? Could she mean Michael, the same guy from yesterday?

“He was our boss,” the other woman said. “Did I really have a choice?”

“And now you do have a choice, and you’re choosing to completely disrespect Sprinkles.”

The other woman sighed. “If you want to have an event at the cat café, that’s fine. I’ll talk to Bob and see if he can allocate any funds. But that’s the best I can do.”

There was an extended silence, and for some reason Pam was picturing a sort of stare-off. These women had a history – maybe even with Michael? – and she really wanted to know what it was.

“Fine,” Angela said, sounding not at all fine. Pam heard footsteps exiting the bathroom, leaving the other woman alone, and expected that was the end of it. But then, ever so quietly, she heard the other woman say something under her breath after Angela was gone. 

“I don’t like you,” Pam heard, through very obviously gritted teeth.

And just like that, a new suspect emerged. 

Who was this woman? What was the PPC? 

And what did all of this have to do with Michael?

Pam raced out of the bathroom, set the phones to voicemail, and rushed to the elevator. She had to find out, and she had to talk to Jim and Michael to do so. She finally had a good reason to go upstairs.

When she opened the front door to Dunder Mifflin, it looked awfully familiar. Bratton Graphics used pretty much the exact same layout. It was quiet, just the sounds of the copy machine and a phone ringing, and some desks arranged in clusters. 

She looked around, but didn’t see Jim. She did see someone she recognized, however.

“Hi there,” a young guy said from the reception desk. “What can I do for you?”

It was the same guy she’d seen before down in the parking lot, the one who had made derogatory comments about her right in front of her. 

The one whose tires she’d let the air out of.

“Um, hi,” she said, approaching a bit apprehensively, her hands stuffed in her pockets. “I’m looking for someone who works here.”

“Well, you found someone,” he said in a very flirty tone. He stood up and extended his hand. “I’m Ryan.”

Pam stared at his hand, but kept hers where they were. “Yeah, I’m actually looking for someone specific, named Jim?”

Ryan’s smile faded and he dropped his hand to his side. “Jim sits over there,” he said, pointing to the nearest desk to reception. He sat back in his seat and went back to what Pam could see was a game of Tetris.

She stepped away from Ryan and walked over to the desk he’d been pointing to. It felt a little intrusive, but she was here, and she figured she could wait for a few minutes. 

Jim’s desk was tidy, not very cluttered. There was a picture in a frame with Jim and another guy who looked a bit like him… a brother, maybe? He had a nameplate on his desk that read ‘Jim Halpert.’

Halpert. A last name. She picked it up for some reason and studied it. She had no idea why. She felt like a detective, and this didn’t even have anything to do with the case.

“...Pam?”

She looked up, and Jim was approaching her from what appeared to be the kitchen. She set down his nameplate and smiled. “Hey!”

“Hi,” he said. There was a huge grin on his face as he walked over. “What are you doing here?”

Pam eyed Ryan, then tilted her neck a couple times at Jim, over here, and he followed her out the front doors and into the entryway of Dunder Mifflin.

“So…” she began as the front door swung shut behind her, “I know that Officer Schrute said to drop this case last night, but I also know me, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Me neither, actually,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He reached behind his neck to scratch it. “Too many true crime podcasts, I guess. Anyway, what have you got?”

“Well, I think we need to talk to Michael first,” she said.

There was a flicker – ever so small, but she noticed – of disappointment on his face. Or maybe it was just confusion. “Michael?”

“Yeah, is he here? Can we go to his office?”

“Uh, I guess.” They walked back into the office and turned to the first door on the left. Jim knocked.

“Enter!” Michael’s voice came, loud and in some kind of accent Pam couldn’t place.

Pam and Jim entered Michael’s office, and Jim closed the door. Michael’s face brightened at the sight of them. “Oh my god,” he said, and let out an excited giggle. “Is this about the cat?”

“Maybe,” Pam said. Jim backed against the wall and crossed his arms.

“Did you find something?” Michael asked.

“That depends,” Pam said. She narrowed her eyes at Michael. “Does ‘the PPC’ mean anything to you?”

Michael’s face drained of color. “The PPC? Where did you hear that?”

“Do you know, or don’t you?” she asked again, even though the answer was all over his face.

“Yes, I know. It stands for Party Planning Committee. It’s how we used to plan birthday parties and events for the office, but it was dismantled over a year ago. Where did you hear about it?”

“From Angela,” Pam said. “I heard her arguing with some woman through the vent in the bathroom. They even mentioned you by name.”

Jim raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on, Michael?”

Michael looked nervous. Pam didn’t actually think Michael had anything to do with the cat murder, but there was definitely something he wasn’t telling them.

He sighed. “Angela used to work at Dunder Mifflin,” he said. “Before Jim started working here.”

Jim looked shocked. “Are you saying you knew the victim? And it didn’t cross your mind to tell us that?”

“The victim is a cat,” Michael clarified, “and I guess I just didn’t think it mattered. Besides, it’s not like I really know her or anything. She worked in accounting. All the way over there.” He pointed out his office window to a corner of the room that was no more than thirty feet away.

“Hmm, all the way over there, huh?” Jim mused skeptically. “By Kevin and Oscar?”

Pam glanced at what was presumably still accounting, where two men currently sat.

“Corporate was downsizing, and one of them had to go,” Michael explained. “Luckily Angela had already decided to move downstairs to the H&R Block anyway. Which was great because I didn’t have to fire anyone.”

Pam eyed him skeptically.

“Look, this doesn’t matter,” Michael insisted. “What matters is who Angela was talking to. You say they were arguing below you? About the PPC? It has to be Phyllis Vance, the wife of the building manager.”

“Do they have beef with each other?” Jim asked.

“Yeah, but it’s a long story. Involving strippers and blackmail…” he waved this off. “Look, all you need to know is that they hate each other.”

“Yeah, I got that vibe,” Pam agreed. 

“But why would Phyllis want to kill Brigitte Purrdot?” Jim asked.

“It’s Sprinkles, by the way,” Pam said. “I overheard that too.”

They all looked at each other, stumped. 

“Phyllis is definitely a person of interest,” Michael finally said, “but I have to be honest… she never struck me as a cat killer.”

“I just realized something,” Jim said. “That officer said the cat was killed while everyone was outside, right? What if it was all a diversion? And if someone went through the trouble to pull the fire alarm to get everyone out of the building just so they could kill Angela’s cat… maybe it’s more than that? Maybe it was some kind of threat." For the first time Jim appeared to be taking this seriously. "Angela could be in actual danger, you guys.”

Pam considered this. It seemed possible. “You’re right,” she said. “I think what we need to do is look into Angela, find out more about her. See if anyone else had a motive.” She turned to Michael. “There’s no, like... bad blood between you guys, is there?” 

“No,” Michael said. He looked at her closely. “Wait, you don’t think I had something to do with this, do you?”

She smirked. “I’m just eliminating every possibility.” 

“I was with you guys!” he protested. “Come on, you know it wasn’t me!”

Jim stepped between them. “Of course it wasn’t you,” he said, holding an arm up. “I think what Pam is trying to get at is… just tell us next time, okay? We shouldn’t be keeping secrets from each other that might help us solve the case.”

Michael leaned back into his chair and looked up at them. “We shouldn’t. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“So… we’re doing it, then?” Pam asked, looking right at Jim. “Solving the case?”

Jim shrugged. “Yeah, I mean… I’ll admit, a cat murder sounds pretty lame. But it’s still a mystery. And a mystery is a mystery, right?” He grinned at Pam. "Right?"

“I’m onboard,” she said. They both looked at Michael, who was holding up his phone. He tapped a button.

“That was a great line,” he said. “Badly delivered though, can you do it again?”

Jim tightened his lips, looking unamused.

“Never mind, it was perfect,” Michael amended. “We can use it for the intro on our first episode!”

Michael’s smile was contagious, and Jim and Pam couldn’t help but give one in return.  

Pam looked over at her two unlikely new cohorts. Maybe this could work. Maybe they could actually solve this.

And if nothing else, it could be a lot of fun.