The Cat's Paw

by Kat Shepherd

  Zach stood still for a moment, paralyzed with indecision. When the door closed behind them, he gave in and rushed after them. “Why do they always do this to me?” he mumbled, yanking on the heavy door.

  The caves were shadowy, lit only by the occasional bare bulb hanging at intervals overhead. Zach let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Technically the caves weren’t real caves; they were caverns that had been carved deep into the cliffside by the silica miners who had bought the land back in the 1840s. The arched ceilings and dark doorways reminded Zach of the ancient underground aqueducts his family had visited on a trip to Rome. Or catacombs. He shivered.

  He found the others lurking behind a rickety stack of wooden racks. “Any clue on where everybody went?” he whispered.

  “Not yet,” Evie whispered back. “Let’s keep going.” They passed through the larger, more well-lit caverns and into a section where the passages were smaller and darker. Evie pointed to a scorch mark on the cave’s rough floor, with a matching mark overhead. “I remember this spot. Our tour guide told us that the squatters who were living in the back caves came out and lit a fire here, and that’s why the stone is all black.”

  “Smugglers used to use the caves a lot, too,” Vishal added. “There must be all kinds of secret entrances and exits so they could come and go without anyone seeing.”

  “That’s right,” Zach said softly. “The guide told us there even used to be a hidden nightclub around here called a speakeasy. Lots of gangsters used to hang out there. She didn’t show us how to get inside, though.”

  “It must be around here somewhere,” Vishal said, leading the way. He passed a pile of shallow wooden crates that sat outside a narrow passageway. “What are these doing here?”

  “They used to grow mushrooms in the caves,” Zach answered. “The crates were probably for shipping them.”

  Vishal pointed. “No, I meant inside the crates.” Scattered in the top crate were paper fans with wooden handles. Each had a large red number printed on a white background. “I think they’re fans, but why would they need fans back here? It always stays cold in caves.”

  Sophia leaned forward and peered inside. “I’ve seen those before, and I’m pretty sure they’re not fans. We must be close, so everyone keep your voice down.” She led the others down the passage where a wooden door stood slightly ajar. They peered through the crack in the door, and Sophia pressed her lips together for a moment. “Yup. It’s exactly what I thought.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  “They’re auctioning off that brown spider monkey,” Sophia breathed. “The kidnappers smuggle and sell endangered animals.”

  “Marvin must be one of them,” Zach whispered. “But where is he?”

  “He’s got to be somewhere nearby,” Vishal said. From inside the room there was the sound of polite applause, and a woman dripping with diamonds smiled triumphantly. One of the dark-suited men that stood near the front of the room picked up the monkey’s cage and carried it off the stage and through a side door.

  “You can collect your item at the end of the auction after you’ve paid the cashier,” the auctioneer said. “And for our next item, we have this Tibetan mastiff puppy, a direct descendant of the prizewinning Big Splash. We will start the bidding at three-hundred thousand.”

  “Three-hundred thousand?” Evie hissed. “You could buy a house for that!” Two of the black-suited men carried in a crate with a puppy inside. The puppy was big and fluffy, but it was shivering in the corner, curling its body against the wire mesh walls. The men set the crate down on the stage.

  “Didn’t one of those dogs go missing recently?” Vishal asked. “We saw a flyer for it at the police station.”

  “It’s got to be the same dog,” Zach answered.

  “Wow. Endangered animals and stolen pets; these guys are real winners,” Evie whispered sarcastically. The puppy started crying, and Evie’s hands tightened into fists. “So how do we stop them? We can’t just burst in there. There’s way more of them than us, and they might be armed.”

  “I don’t know,” Sophia said. “Our plan was based around Gideon meeting the kidnappers alone so we could follow them to find Marvin. We weren’t planning for an auction.”

  “I knew we should have called Detective Bermudez,” Zach said.

  Just then, three of the bidders stood up and threw down their paddles. “Everybody freeze! This is a raid! You are all under arrest for the sale and trafficking of endangered species and stolen property!” The undercover agents pulled out their badges, and uniformed officers burst through another side door. People screamed as everyone in the room scrambled in different directions. A few panicked bidders came tearing toward the door, and the kids ducked out of the way as it slammed open.

  “Should we try to stop them?” Evie cried as a well-dressed couple ran past her.

  “No time! We have to stay focused,” Vishal answered. Inside the room the agents were wrestling their way through a throng of escaping bidders and men in dark suits, collaring whomever they could catch. Vishal pointed to the far corner of the room, where the auctioneer was slipping out through a small opening in the wall. “He looks like the guy in charge. Let’s follow him!” Before anyone could respond, Vishal ran across the room and darted through the doorway. Evie and the others squirmed through the melee and raced to catch up.

  They trailed the man, who disappeared around the corner of a long, twisting passageway. “Down there!” Zach cried. They streaked around the corner and followed the tunnel as it twisted and turned deeper underground.

  Finally, they rounded the last bend and stopped in their tracks, stunned. The passage was a dead end. “Where did he go?” Zach asked. A small mountain of junk was piled against the wall, but there was nowhere to hide. “Did we miss a turnoff?”

  “No,” Vishal said. “I checked as we ran. There were no breaks in the walls anywhere!”

  “Well, he has to be somewhere,” Sophia said. “He can’t have just disappeared.”

  “Yeah, but where?” Zach kicked at the pile of clutter. “There’s no place to hide in this junk.”

  Evie grabbed his arm. “Or is there?”

  CHAPTER

  24

  Evie pointed to the door that was hidden in the wall behind the junk.

  “Are you kidding me?” Vishal asked. “Seriously, how many secret lairs are there in this city?”

  Zach pointed to the bar of blackness at the bottom of the door. “There’s no light showing. He could be waiting in the dark to ambush us.”

  “Us?” Sophia scoffed. “I doubt it. He’s on the run from the cops. I hardly think he’s going to bother lying in wait for a few kids that he doesn’t even know are chasing him.”

  “Still, he might’ve heard us running down the passageway,” Zach said, lowering his voice. “We need to make him drop his guard so he won’t think we were following him.” He pulled a mini flashlight out of his pocket, winked at the others, and raised his voice almost to a shout. “Hey, guys! I think this is the spot where I lost my retainer on our school trip earlier.” He clicked on the flashlight. “Will you help me look for it?”

  “Oh, get real,” Evie said. “Nobody is going to think you lost your retainer behind a secret door.” She activated the flashlight on her phone. “What made you decide to come up with that? You don’t even wear a retainer.”

  “Shhh!” Zach pointed to the door. “He doesn’t know that,” he whispered. He raised his voice to a shout again. “Hey, look! Maybe it’s behind this door!” Evie rolled her eyes, and Zach put his hand on the doorknob. “You guys ready?” he whispered. The others nodded and tensed.

  Zach threw the door open. “Wow, it sure is dark in here,” he hollered. “Good thing we brought flashlights. My retainer must be around here somewhere.” The kids crept forward, but no one sprang out at them.

  There was a rustling noise from the far side of the room. “What was that?” Vishal cried. He swung his flashlight beam toward the sound, but all that
reflected back was a pair of glowing green eyes. Vishal shrieked. “There’s something over there!” Suddenly the room was flooded with light, and three of the detectives jumped, their eyes darting every which way.

  “Oh, relax,” Sophia said. “All I did was turn on the lights.” She walked into the center of the empty room and looked around. “Whoever was here is gone now.”

  “Then whose eyes did I see?” Vishal challenged.

  “Theirs,” Sophia said, her voice suddenly quiet. She pointed at the cages lined up along a wall of shelves. The animals inside them blinked at the bright light, and a spotted Bengal cat meowed and pawed at the mesh of her crate. Next to her, two lemurs were crammed into a cage that was much too small for them. They clung to each other.

  “This is awful,” Evie said. “Those poor animals!” She walked over and began searching the shelves. “Where’s Marvin?” Her foot accidentally kicked a bag of kibble on the floor, and a mouse scurried out of a hole near the top. She jumped back and looked at the label on the bag. “Does that label say leaf eater biscuit?”

  Sophia nodded. “We have it at the zoo. A lot of the monkeys eat it.”

  “Zoo food,” Vishal said thoughtfully. “So that could mean that Dr. Chang is behind this. I mean, just that Tibetan mastiff alone would probably cover the zoo’s shortage of funds, plus give him a little extra for himself.”

  “No way,” Sophia said. “These animals are in terrible condition. Dr. Chang would never allow that, not even if it was to save the zoo. I know him. He loves animals. There’s no way he’s behind this.”

  “Are you sure?” Vishal asked. “You’ve been wrong before.”

  Sophia shook her head firmly. “Not about this.” Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. “No one who loves animals could see this and not be absolutely horrified.” She blinked the tears away. “Let’s keep moving. We have to find Marvin.”

  “But how can we? We don’t even know if he was ever here,” Zach said.

  Sophia pointed to a large plastic tub on the floor. “Oh, he was here all right.” She pulled a stalk of bamboo from the plastic tub. “Ninety-five percent of a red panda’s diet is bamboo. And it looks like that auctioneer took a bunch with him when he came through here. He must have grabbed Marvin, too.”

  Evie ran to the other side of the room and swung open the door. “We’ve got to hurry, then. Come on!”

  “What about the other animals?” Zach asked.

  “Leave the doors open and the lights on; the cops will find them,” Evie called back. “We can’t lose Marvin!” The others followed her down another dimly lit passageway, and a few moments later they found themselves outside again, standing at the tree-covered mouth of a cave that looked down onto the open water of the nearby river.

  Below them was a bustling riverfront. Trucks and cars were parked tightly together in the gravel lot, and boats of all sizes were moored to the jetty. It was evening, but the dock was busy with returning fishermen, pleasure cruisers, and local shippers loading up deliveries. The detectives saw crates, carriers, coolers, and picnic baskets everywhere they looked. “Oh, no!” Sophia moaned. “We’re never going to find him. He could be anywhere!”

  A few moments later, Evie let out a triumphant cry. “I found him!”

  CHAPTER

  25

  “There!” Evie pointed. “On the deck of the Purloined Letter!” The four detectives ran down the hill and paused behind a white van.

  “Now what?” Zach asked.

  “There’s no one on the boat’s deck, so I say we hop on, grab Marvin’s carrier, and take off.” Vishal looked at the others. “What do you think?”

  Zach thought a moment. “It’s doable, but we’ll have to be quick. And we can’t act suspicious.”

  “Works for me, as long as you don’t try to act like you lost your retainer again,” Evie said. “That’s got to be the worst cover story you’ve ever come up with!”

  “I was under pressure,” Zach said defensively. “It was all I could think of!”

  “Look,” Vishal said, “the kidnappers haven’t seen us yet, so we just need to act like normal kids. There are tons of families with boats. Let’s just act like we’re one of them.”

  “Fine, whatever, now hurry up! They could have sailed to China by now while you all sat around and debated. Let’s go!” Sophia grabbed Evie’s wrist and pulled her through the parking lot. The boys followed.

  Zach tried for a relaxed smile, but he could feel his lips stretching wide like the mouth of a jack-o’-lantern. “Act casual, act casual, act casual,” he whispered to himself, trying to relax. He rolled his shoulders.

  “Dude, why are you talking to yourself?” Vishal asked.

  “I’m not!” Zach said quickly.

  “Yeah, no, you definitely were,” Vishal replied. “And why are you making that weird face? You look like the grimace emoji.”

  “Sorry!” Zach answered. “I’m just nervous.”

  “Don’t be!” Vishal patted his friend’s shoulder. “We got this, okay? It’s a piece of cake. We just hop on and hop off, no big deal. And besides, there’s like a million people around. We’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” Zach said, trying to relax his muscles and match his friend’s easy gait. “Piece of cake,” he whispered to himself. “It’s a piece of cake. Hop on, hop off. Pieeeece of cake.”

  “Dude, you’re whispering to yourself again!”

  “No, I’m not! I was just . . . I’m just singing a little song, you know, like people do when they’re relaxed and everything’s normal.” Zach hummed tunelessly, watching for Vishal’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.

  Vishal grinned and shook his head. “Whatever, dude. Just try not to have a heart attack or something, okay?”

  Heart attack. Great. Something new to worry about. Zach hummed louder.

  When they reached the Purloined Letter, the deck was still empty. Most of the people on that section of the dock were gone, and the ones that remained were rough-faced watermen who looked like they kept to themselves. They tied their boats off quickly and expertly, keeping their eyes on their work.

  Vishal took one final glance around before hopping casually on board. Even in his dress shoes, he made almost no sound when he landed. How does he do that? Zach wondered. Evie hopped in after him, and Sophia followed, stumbling a bit in her kitten heels. Zach was last, and the leather soles of his dress shoes skidded a bit on the slick surface of the deck when he landed. He flapped his arms wildly and let out a piercing “Gaaah!” like a bird that had been suddenly yanked downward by its legs. His sailor hat slipped over one eye, and he barely managed to right himself in time to keep from tumbling off the boat.

  “Very smooth,” his sister noted. “You really stuck the landing.”

  Zach chose to ignore her. “Let’s grab Marvin and get out of here.” The red panda was huddled up in his carrier, his ringed tail twined around his feet. He sniffed at them suspiciously through the wire mesh door. “It looks like he’s scared, but okay,” Zach said. His hand curled around the carrier’s handle, but before he could pick it up, Sophia stopped him.

  “Wait. We have to search the boat. If we take Marvin and leave, the kidnappers will get away, and we’ll never know their identities. Then what’s to stop them from doing this again?”

  Zach gripped the carrier more tightly. “That’s not what we talked about. We need to get off this boat. Now.”

  Sophia’s eyes were pleading. “Zach, there could be other animals here. Animals that will end up who knows where if we don’t find them. I wasn’t kidding when I said that the illegal wildlife market is deadly. These guys in Indonesia tried to sneak cockatoos through customs by cramming them into empty water bottles. Almost half of them died.”

  “Yeah, but we could die, too, if somebody catches us on this boat!” Zach’s voice was urgent. “Sophia, we have to go!”

  “Fine. Then go without me.” Sophia turned away and began methodically searching through the crates on deck.


  “Sophia, come on. We’re not going to leave you here alone,” Evie said. “It will take you forever to finish searching. They’re gonna come back and find you way before that.”

  Sophia pointed to the ladder that led to the hold below. “Well then, make yourselves useful and help me.”

  Vishal started climbing down the ladder. Zach grabbed his arm. “What are you doing? Let’s go!”

  “Dude, you know Sophia. She’s not gonna leave this boat, and there’s no way we’re leaving her here alone.” His head disappeared below the hatch as he hopped down into the galley. His voice floated up to the deck above. “The faster we search, the sooner we get out of here.”

  Evie pushed past Zach to join Vishal. “Have you found anything yet?” she called down.

  “Not yet,” Vishal answered, and Evie scrambled down the ladder to join him. Zach stood there helplessly as he watched her go. He took another glance down the empty dock and started searching the deck.

  A short time later, Zach heard an excited squeal from the hold. “Guys! We found something!” Evie cried.

  “Then grab it and let’s go,” Zach called back. Vishal and Evie tumbled out of the hatch, triumphant smiles on their faces. They held a piece of paper in their hands.

  “We picked up a captain’s license for someone named Sergei Barkovich,” Vishal said.

  Evie scanned the deck. “Have you guys found any other animals on board?”

  Sophia picked up Marvin’s carrier. “No. I think Marvin’s the only one here. We’ve got what we need, so let’s get out of here.”

  Zach let out a huge sigh of relief. “Finally!” He grinned. “I was really starting to worry we might never make it off this boat!” But Zach’s grin quickly faded when he looked down the dock. “Oh, no! Guys, they’re coming!” The others stared in horror as they spotted the auctioneer walking briskly down the wooden dock, talking intensely into his cell phone as two burly men in dark suits trailed at his heels. Just behind them was a man with a dark beard and an eyepatch. His heavily tattooed forearms bulged beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his denim work shirt.