by Doris Hay
“True,” Butterball says. “We never will.”
And he goes right back to reading his book!
Zorro has mercy on me. “Go on, Ginger. Tell us what you heard.”
I glance at Butterball. He’s not looking at me. I talk louder so he’ll be forced to listen. “Well, get this: her house was burgled!”
Butterball’s ears twitch. He doesn’t look at me, but I know I’ve hooked him.
“Burgled?” Zorro asks. “You mean someone broke in and stole something?”
“That’s just it: there wasn’t any breaking involved. Gemma seems to think it was an inside job. She thinks her son Tommy is to blame.”
“Tommy,” Zorro ruminates. “He’s the dude with the bleached hair and tan? Looks like a surfer?”
“Grubby good-for-nothing,” Butterball grumbles. “Lives off his parents, won’t get a job…”
“He’s the boy who usually walks Oopsie,” I say, because that’s really all I know about Tommy. “His own mother is convinced he stole from them. But she refuses to call the police because she doesn’t want him to get in trouble.”
“What’s the young man said to have stolen?” Butterball asks.
I feel gratified that he’s taking an interest in the case.
“Cash,” I say. “From a safe. Apparently Gemma and Ed—that’s her husband right? Ed is her husband?”
“That’s right,” Zorro says.
“Well, apparently they have three different safes in their bedroom: one for jewels, one for business stuff—paperwork, I guess—and the third just for cash. So whoever broke in got past their security system, and then knew exactly which of the three safes to break into, and how to break into it. That’s why she thinks it’s an inside job. Oh, and also Gemma and Ed were out of the country when this happened, but when they came back Tommy announced he was taking his girlfriend on a splashy beach vacation.”
Zorro and Butterball are both looking at me now, like they expect me to say more. I don’t know what more I can say. I’ve told them everything. Haven’t I?
“The mystery you’ve described is no more a mystery than the case of Who Stole the Shrimp Treats?”
“That was me,” I admit.
“Precisely,” Butterball replies.
“I didn’t steal the money from the safe!”
Butterball hangs his head, shaking it the way he always does when he wants to show me I’m giving him a headache. “I only mean to say that the most obvious suspect is clearly the culprit, in the case you’ve described. Young Tommy needed cash to take his lady friend on holiday. He’s far too indolent to earn his money through a hard day’s labour, and so he steals from his parents.”
“But you’ve got to admit,” Zorro says to Butterball. “It’s good gossip!”
“It’s more than just gossip,” I tell the boys. “It’s a mystery! I just know it is!”
“It’s a mystery that’s clearly been solved by those affected,” Butterball says. “A safe was broken into, cash was stolen, Tommy is the culprit, end of story.”
“But what if he’s not?” I ask.
Zorro gives me sort of a sad look when he says, “What makes you think someone else might be guilty, Ginge?”
“I just… I… I don’t know.” I wish I had an answer, but I don’t. “Gemma won’t call the police. That means nobody’s investigating. Even if Tommy did steal the money, don’t you think somebody should figure it out?”
Butterball’s got his face back to his book. Zorro’s obviously trying not to meet my gaze.
So I say, “This is a real-life crime. I bet we can solve it if we try.”
“Ginger,” Zorro says softly. “It’s already solved.”
“In any case,” Butterball grumbles, “You’re no Miss Marple.”
“We’ll just see about that!”
Zorro clearly wants to be supportive, because he asks me, “How are you going to start your investigation?”
What would they do in a mystery novel? Look for clues. But that would mean breaking into the house next door. I’m not sure I’m up for committing criminal acts so early in my life as an amateur sleuth.
“I could start by questioning suspects,” I say.
“How on earth do you plan on doing that?” Butterball asks with a cruel little laugh. “Humans won’t understand a word you say. Are all your suspects of the feline variety?”
I try hard not to pout. Instead, I say, “Fine, then, I’ll begin by questioning potential witnesses—starting with the two of you! Did you see anything unusual in the days leading up to this burglary?”
“That depends,” Zorro says. “When did it take place?”
I think back, but I can’t remember Gemma mentioning an exact date. I can’t remember Doris asking her. “All I know is that Gemma and Ed were out of the country when it happened, and Tommy and his girlfriend are out of the country now.”
“A lot of good that does you,” Butterball scoffs.
“It’s a start,” Zorro replies encouragingly. “If you can figure out when the neighbours were out of the country, then you narrow it down from there.”
“True.”
But how am I supposed to find out when they were gone? Butterball’s right. I can’t interview humans. Where do I even start?
Like a bolt from the blue, a yapping sound cuts through the silence to annoy our brains.
Butterball growls. “That Yorkie is simply maddening. Someone ought to cut out his tongue.”
“Butterball!” I exclaim, and then I’m hit with a great idea. “Of course! I’ll ask Oopsie when Tommy’s parents were away. He’s sure to know what’s going on in his own household. Maybe he even saw the whole heist go down.”
“Heist,” Zorro chuckles. When I shoot him a look, he muffles his laughter and says, “Sorry. Kittens say the cutest things.”
“If Oopsie’s in the yard, he’s ripe for questioning,” I tell the boys. “I’ll get to the bottom of this case. Just you wait and see.”
As I make my way up the stairs, I hear Butterball saying, “I would take everything Oopsie has to say with a grain of salt. Remember that one canine year is equal to seven of the human variety.”
And how many cat years, I wonder?
But that’s a mystery for another day. Right now, I’ve got to figure out who stole the cash from the next door neighbour’s safe.
Chapter 3
I follow the sound of yapping up the stairs and out the cat door.
Oopsie’s in the yard next door, racing around like a maniac. When I make my way up the lattice and hop onto the high wooden fence, he must catch my scent. He stops running in circles, looks right up at me, and races toward the fence.
Normally, I’d run right back into the house. No sense taking chances. But I remind myself that a little pipsqueak like Oopsie can’t hope to hop this tall fence. Though, I tell you, he sure tries! And yapping all the while!
“Quiet down, will you?”
He doesn’t.
I glance around the neighbouring yard, but no humans are out with him. Maybe Gemma and Ed got tired of the little dog barking in the yard, and figured they’d subject the whole neighbourhood to his noise.
“Stop barking!” I say. “I’ve got a few questions to ask you.”
“I’ve got a few questions to ask you,” he replies. “Why are your eyes blue?”
“I don’t know. They just are.”
“Why are you little?”
“Why are you little?” I shoot back.
“Why are your paws dark brown and your ears dark brown and your nose dark brown but the rest of you is light brown?”
“That’s just the way I am! I’m Siamese!”
I’m exasperated! That’s what I am.
He tilts his head and asks, “What’s Siamese?”
“It’s my breed,” I tell him. “You’re a Yorkshire terrier, I’m Siamese. Get it?”
Obviously, he does not. He tilts his head even farther to one side and says, “You’re a cat.”
“Listen, I want you to concentrate hard. I’ve got a few questions for you about the safe robbery that happened in your house.”
Oopsie turned to look at the house. “That house?”
“Yes, that house.”
“That’s not my house. That’s Tommy’s house. Tommy and Gemma and Ed, that’s their house. My house is Amber’s house. It’s an apartment. It’s small. I like this house better. It’s big. It’s got this whole yard. I like it here.”
Interesting. “I thought you lived here permanently, you and Amber. You always seem to be around.”
“We stay here a lot. Tommy takes care of me while Amber’s at work. He doesn’t have a job. He’s a layabout.”
I can’t help being amused by that one. “Who says he’s a layabout?”
“Ed says. Not when Tommy’s in the room. Not when Amber’s in the room. He only says it on the phone. Not to Gemma. If he says it to Gemma, she yells.”
Very interesting. What was it Gemma said about daddies always being devoted to daughters and mothers to sons? Sounds like fathers want sons to get a job.
I say to Oopsie, “Let’s talk about the burglary.”
“When the money got stolen from the safe? That burglary?”
“That’s the one. Do you remember when it happened?”
“Third Tuesday of the month,” Oopsie replies. “We got home. Safe was open. Money was gone!”
If there’s one thing I wasn’t expecting, it was for Oopsie to know exactly when the crime was committed. We’re just coming up on the third Tuesday of this month, so this must have been last month. It fits. Recent, but a good couple of weeks have gone by.
“Third Tuesday of the month?” I ask. “How do you remember so specifically?”
“That’s my day for the groomers,” he tells me. “Every month. Third Tuesday. Get my nails done. Teeth brushed. Hot shower. Shampoo and set.”
All that stuff sounds like torture to me, but dogs are different. They like that sort of treatment. “Amber really treats you well, doesn’t she?”
Oopsie nods, but says, “Tommy takes me. Every third Tuesday. Amber’s at work. Tommy takes me.”
“That’s awfully kind of him. And I see him walking you all the time. And I see the two of you out here playing catch. It sounds like he’s not too much of a layabout, if he’s willing to hang around at the groomers once a month.”
“He doesn’t hang around,” Oopsie says. “Drops me off. Comes back later.”
“Doesn’t hang around?” I ask.
But it’s too late. Oopsie spots a butterfly and takes off after it, calling out, “I’m bored of talking!”
He chases that butterfly through a flower patch and across the yard. I can’t put a halt to this interrogation, not after Oopsie just revealed that Tommy left him alone at the groomers. That puts a hole in Tommy’s alibi. If he wasn’t with Oopsie at the groomers, where was he?
I need more information.
But getting more information means getting close to the dog next door.
This isn’t how I’d planned to spend my day, but what choice do I have? I leap from the fence, and it’s only halfway down that I realize how high up I was. I’m soaring through the air, hurtling toward the ground, landing… in a puddle of mud!
My paws are soaked. My belly is coated. My sides are smeared. There’s mud in my ears.
I don’t even know where to begin. It’s very distressing, to be this dirty.
Oopsie runs at me, and suddenly I’ve got bigger fish to fry. He runs, jumps, knocks me flat on my back. I’ve always thought of him as a small dog, but now that he’s on top of me I feel positively tiny. He can fit my whole face in his mouth, and he does!
I screech, but he doesn’t let go. My nails come out and he wails when I dig into him.
Mud is seeping through my fur. My whole back feels wet. I yank my head from Oopsie’s mouth and latch on to his floppy ear. He flips me or I flip him, I’m not really sure which. We flip each other, again and again. We’re rolling across the grass. Hopefully the tumbling act will get rid of some of this mud, though I doubt it.
I can’t take much more.
Somehow, I manage to hop on Oopsie’s head and leap into the air. I don’t even know what I’m leaping for until I’m on it. It’s a table, a clear glass one near the house. How did we get all the way over here? Did we tumble that far?
Oopsie tries to jump up, but the table is too high for him. He tries for one of the chairs, but it doesn’t have a seat cushion on, and he can’t navigate the slats. They’re too far apart. So he yaps at me and, to my surprise, says, “That was fun! Let’s do it again!”
“Fun?” I ask. “You had my head in your mouth and you call that fun?”
“Sure was! That’s my favourite game. Tommy won’t let the other dogs in the neighbourhood play it with me. Will you be my friend now? So we can play the head-in-mouth game?”
“No!” I cry, but that’s a little harsh. It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with Oopsie, I just don’t want my head in his mouth. I try to soften the blow by saying, “That’s enough roughhousing for one day. Now I’d like to talk some more. Maybe you could tell me where Tommy went on the day of the burglary, after he dropped you off at the groomers?”
“That’s enough talking for one day,” Oopsie says, not even seeming to realize that he’s throwing my own words back in my face. “I need a drink!”
He takes off toward the house and scratches at the sliding glass door, yapping until a handsome older man opens it to let him inside. That must be Ed. I must have seen him before if he’s our next door neighbour, but you know how sometimes you can see someone and not really notice them until they have some relevance to your life?
Well, anyway, the man doesn’t notice me caked in mud and crouching on his patio table. Thank goodness! I’d never live it down if a man as good-looking as that spotted me looking like Swamp Thing.
Once Oopsie’s inside and lapping from his water dish by the door, I take off toward the fence and climb it with some difficulty. It really is very high. No wonder Ed and Gemma haven’t been much on my radar. Who could possibly see them over this fence?
When I enter by the cat door, I find the boys deep in conversation over the food bowls. I expect them to make fun of me for getting muddied up, and I’m ready to tell them I’m having a spa day and this is my mud bath.
But the boys don’t make fun of me. They look up apprehensively. Butterball asks, “What happened to you?”
“Spa day,” I tell them, but the joke doesn’t register. They’re wearing expressions I’ve never seen before. It’s very disconcerting.
So I ask, “What is it? What’s going on?”
Zorro looks to Butterball, as if to ask whether it’s okay to tell me. Butterball gives a subtle nod and Zorro says, “We just heard Doris on the phone. An old friend of hers died.”
“That’s too bad,” I say. “Was it a friend we knew? Someone from the neighbourhood?”
“No,” Butterball cuts in. “This was an old friend, a friend from so long ago even I never met her.”
This is sad and all, but if Zorro and Butterball never even met this person, why are they so shaken about her passing?
“There’s more,” Zorro cuts in. Again, he looks to Butterball before saying, “This friend, the one who died… she had a pet.”
“A cat,” Butterball huffs.
I still don’t know where they’re going with all this. Not until Zorro says, “Doris has agreed to adopt her.”
When he tells me this, I don’t know how to feel. My instinct is to be happy. Another cat in our household! And a girl just like me! Should be good and fun. But the expressions on the boys’ faces tell me this is a bad thing, something to be concerned about.
Why concerned?
Unless… is this a last-in-first-out environment? When Doris adopts this new cat, will she have to get rid
of me? Is that’s what’s going to happen? Will I be homeless when the new cat comes?
I’m so concerned I hardly even hear the footsteps behind me. And now, suddenly, Doris is scooping me up, saying, “Ginger! Have you been playing in the mud? You naughty kitty! What am I going to do with you?”
Give me away, maybe? I sure hope not. But if Zorro and Butterball are scared, I should be scared too.
Doris holds me up close to her face and smiles even as she says those four words no cat wants to hear: “Someone needs a bath!”
If I wasn’t scared before, I sure am now!
Chapter 4
As if it wasn’t bad enough to get tossed in the mud by a yappy little dog, now I’m about to be submerged in a sink full of water. Could this day get any worse?
“Stop your squirming,” Doris says with a laugh. She’s got one hand wrapped around me while the other turns off the tap. “It’s only a bit of water, love. Water can’t hurt you.”
“Are you sure about that?” I squeal, not that she understands a word I’m saying.
She dunks her free hand in the bathroom sink, and then says, “Temperature’s just right. In we go!”
I am not ready for this, but I’m also not strong enough to escape her grip. Wriggling doesn’t work. Squirming almost works, but not quite. This is hopeless!
When my feet touch the wetness, I yank them up and wrap them around Doris’s wrist. I guess I’ve extended my nails into her skin, because she screams and jumps back. She wasn’t expecting that.
Neither was I.
I didn’t mean to stab through her flesh. It was a reflex.
That said, I can’t let go now. If I do, I’ll drop into the sink. Or onto the floor. I can’t see what’s beneath me because I’ve got my teeth plunged into the meat of Doris’s palm. When did I do that? I didn’t even realize I was biting her! It just happened.
Doris shows off her impressive vocabulary as she swings me around the bathroom, trying to detach my face from her hand and my nails from her wrist. I’m digging in deep. I don’t want that water to touch any part of me.
But I also feel bad about hurting my cat-mom, so I make the executive decision let go. I tumble to the counter, skittered onto the lid of the toilet, and then slip between the cloth shower curtain and the plastic liner.
