The Case of the Disappearing Dogs

by David Lewman

  “He seems like a very nice man,” Mrs. Miller said, as if to emphasize her earlier point.

  “Yeah. Seems,” Hannah said, thinking.

  Hannah’s mom sighed. “You were never this suspicious when you were concentrating on ballet.”

  Molly finished eating her dinner. She trotted over to Hannah and leaned against her leg. Hannah scratched her back at the base of her tail. Molly quickly moved her back leg, drumming the floor with her paw. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

  Upstairs in her bedroom, Hannah called Ben. Molly was on Hannah’s bed. She wasn’t really supposed to get up on the furniture, but this seemed like a special occasion.

  “Molly’s back?” he said after Hannah told him. “That’s fantastic!”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m so happy.”

  “Maybe we should conference Corey in on this call,” Ben said. “I mean, her disappearance did become a Club CSI case.”

  Hannah idly tossed one of Molly’s chew toys onto the bed. Molly pounced on it, chewing away happily.

  “You know how to make a conference call?” Hannah said.

  “Sure, it’s easy,” he said. “But since you called me, you’ll have to be the one to call Corey and then conference us all together. Unless you want to hang up and I’ll call you back.”

  “No, that’s fine,” Hannah said. “I’ll do it. I’d like to know how, anyway.”

  After Ben explained how to make a conference call, Hannah called Corey and told him the good news.

  “She’s back?” he yelled into the phone. “All right!”

  “I’m going to bring Ben back into this conference call now,” Hannah said.

  “You know how to make a conference call?” Corey asked, impressed.

  “Sure,” Hannah said, acting like it was no big deal. “It’s easy.”

  She pressed a button on her phone, and the three friends could talk to one another.

  “I just wanted to ask about the circumstances of Molly’s return,” Ben said.

  Hannah told Ben and Corey about Mr. Webster bringing a very muddy Molly back and saying he found her by Jackson’s Pond.

  “He acted kind of weird,” Hannah said. “Like he wasn’t telling the truth about finding Molly.”

  “Do you think he could have taken Molly and returned her for the reward money?” Ben asked.

  “Oh, man, I’d forgotten about the five hundred bucks,” Corey said.

  “He didn’t take it,” Hannah replied.

  “WHAT?!” Corey’s voice blasted into the phone. “Is he crazy?”

  “He said he knew how upset his daughter would be if her pet were missing, so it was enough for him just to get me my dog back,” Hannah explained.

  “Well, that’s really nice,” Corey said.

  “But you were saying you thought he was acting suspicious?” Ben asked.

  “Yes,” Hannah confirmed. “Especially when I asked about where he’d found Molly. I just got the feeling he wasn’t telling me the truth.”

  Ben and Corey thought about this for a moment. Then Ben spoke up.

  “Did you get a good look at his feet?”

  “His feet?” Hannah asked, surprised.

  “To see if his shoes looked like a size ten D,” Ben said.

  “Oh,” Hannah said, getting it. “No, I didn’t think about that. I was too excited to see Molly. That would have been a good idea.”

  “That’s okay,” Corey said. “Only Ben would expect you to check out someone’s feet at the moment you were reunited with your dog.”

  “I just thought maybe you might have noticed. That’s all,” Ben protested. “But I have another idea. Did you say Molly came in with muddy paws?”

  “Yeah,” Hannah said. “She tracked mud all over the carpet, but Mom and Dad were so happy she was home, they didn’t even get mad.”

  “Maybe you should collect a sample,” Ben suggested.

  “Of the mud?” Hannah asked, puzzled.

  “Yes,” Ben said. “It might give us some useful information.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said. “I’ll get some. Maybe we’d better hang up. My parents might clean up the mud before I have a chance to collect any.”

  “Don’t forget, you can probably collect a sample from her paws,” Ben added.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea too,” Corey said. “Maybe you should collect a stool sample from Molly, so we can figure out what she ate while she was gone.”

  “A stool sample?” Hannah exclaimed. “Gross!”

  “I don’t know, Corey,” Ben said, agreeing with Hannah.

  “Yeah, now that I think about it, doing the analysis wouldn’t be much fun,” he replied. “I hereby withdraw my suggestion.”

  Chapter 13

  Early the next morning, Hannah took Molly for walk. The Australian cattle dog seemed very happy to be walking with Hannah again. About half of the walk was a run.

  After she dropped off Molly back at the house and grabbed her backpack, Hannah headed out the front door.

  “You’re leaving for school awfully early this morning,” her dad commented.

  “I’m going to do a little investigating before school,” Hannah said.

  “Investigating?” he asked. “But I thought the case was closed. Molly’s back. All’s well that ends well.”

  “There are still a couple of things we’re curious about,” she explained. “See you later.”

  Hannah closed the door and headed for Jackson’s Pond.

  The pond was surrounded by a large public park. There was a path around the pond, and several people were out having their morning runs.

  Hannah found a patch of dirt near the pond. She took a small jar out of her backpack, knelt down, and scooped dirt into the jar. Then she screwed the lid back on, put the jar into her pack, and hurried off to school.

  Miss Hodges held up the two containers to the light. “So you’d like to know if these two soil samples came from the same place?”

  “Right,” Hannah said. “We’re trying to figure out whether Molly really was down by Jackson’s Pond, the way Mr. Webster said she was.”

  She, Corey, and Ben had come to their faculty advisor for help with the soil Hannah had collected from the carpet and from Jackson’s Pond.

  “Well, I’ll bet Corey can tell us what to compare first,” Miss Hodges said with a smile.

  “I can?” Corey said. He thought a minute. Then he grinned. “Oh! I know—color!”

  “That’s right,” their teacher said. “First, we compare the color, starting with the naked—I mean, the unaided—eye.”

  She set a white piece of paper on the table. She drew a circle and labeled it “Known.” Then she drew another circle and labeled it “Unknown.”

  “In this case, ‘Known’ means we know where the soil came from—Jackson’s Pond,” she explained. She picked up the container of soil from Jackson’s Pond and poured a small amount inside the circle.

  “But we know where the other soil came from too,” Corey said. “Molly’s paws.”

  “I think it’s ‘Unknown’ soil, because we don’t know where it originally came from,” Ben said, “where Molly picked it up.”

  “That’s right,” Miss Hodges confirmed as she poured a small amount of the soil from the carpet into the Unknown circle.

  All four of them peered at the two soil samples on the white piece of paper. They almost bumped heads.

  “I don’t know,” Hannah said. “They’re pretty close, but it doesn’t seem like an exact match. The soil from Jackson’s Pond seems a little lighter colored.”

  The others agreed. “It almost looks as though the Jackson’s Pond soil has more sand in it,” Ben observed.

  “But I don’t know if we could say they’re definitely from different places based just on the color,” Corey said.

  “I agree,” Miss Hodges said. “We need to do another test.”

  She went over to a small refrigerator and took out a rack of test tubes. The tubes had clear liquid in the
m. She carried the rack over to the table and set it down.

  “I’ve prepared these tubes for tomorrow’s class,” she said. “But I made some extras, so we can use a couple of them.”

  “What are they?” Hannah asked.

  “They’re called density gradient tubes,” she answered. “I’ve put liquid chemicals that have different densities in these tubes.”

  “I’m feeling a little dense right now myself,” Corey said. “Remind me of what density is.”

  “Density is mass per volume,” Ben said.

  “Um, Ben? Remember what I said about using words so people can understand you?” Corey reminded him.

  “If two things are the same size, but one weighs more, it has a greater density,” Ben explained.

  Miss Hodges pointed to the tubes in the rack. “The chemicals in the tubes have mixed in such a way that the liquid is the most dense at the bottoms of the tubes and the least dense at the tops of the tubes.”

  She poured a small amount of the Jackson’s Pond soil in one of the tubes. It separated into three bands at different levels in the test tube. “The soil has divided into three bands of material with different densities. The denser material is lower in the tube, and the lighter material is higher in the tube.”

  “Right now I’m feeling like I’d be at the very bottom of the tube,” Corey said.

  “I think I get it,” Hannah said. “We’ll pour a little bit of the soil from Molly’s paws into another tube. If it came from the same place, the three bands of material should float at the same levels as in the first tube. Because they have the same density.”

  Miss Hodges nodded and smiled. “Very good, Hannah,” she said. “Would you like to do the honors?” She handed her the container of soil from Molly’s paws.

  Hannah carefully poured less than a teaspoon of the soil into the tube next to the one with the soil from Jackson’s Pond. The soil slowly sank into the tube, settling at four different levels.

  The levels did not match the levels for the Jackson’s Pond sample.

  “Looks like we’ve got a definite nonmatch!” Corey said.

  The four of them agreed that the soil from Molly’s paws didn’t come from Jackson’s Pond.

  “But that means Molly wasn’t at Jackson’s Pond,” Corey said. “She got muddy somewhere else.”

  “Why would Mr. Webster lie about that?” Ben wondered.

  “I don’t know,” Hannah said. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, he brought Molly home, and he didn’t even accept the reward. But he acted cagey when I asked him about where exactly he found her.”

  “What do you think, Miss Hodges?” Corey asked.

  The teacher thought for a moment. Then she said, “It sounds to me as though Mr. Webster is a very complicated potential suspect. You need more information.”

  The three students nodded. “You’re right,” Ben said.

  “Sounds to me as though we need to pay a visit to his restaurant,” Corey said.

  “Let’s go right after school,” Hannah said.

  “Great idea,” Corey said. “I’m always hungry after school.”

  Chapter 14

  As soon as school let out, the members of Club CSI headed for Mr. Webster’s restaurant downtown. Corey knew where the restaurant was because his family had eaten there lots of times.

  “And one time, when our sixth-grade basketball team won the district championship, we got to go there for our celebration dinner,” he added.

  “What’s it called?” Hannah asked.

  “I think we just called it ‘the celebration dinner,’” Corey replied.

  “No, I mean the restaurant,” Hannah explained.

  “Webster’s,” Corey said.

  “Yes, Webster’s,” Hannah said, thinking Corey was asking her whose restaurant she meant.

  “Right,” Corey said.

  Hannah waited a minute for an answer. When she didn’t get one, she asked again, slightly frustrated, “So, what’s it called?”

  “I told you!” Corey said. “Webster’s!”

  Ben cut in to help make things clearer. “What Corey means is that Mr. Webster’s restaurant is called Webster’s.”

  “Oh,” Hannah said, finally understanding.

  “I think it’s named after his family,” Corey said.

  “I didn’t think it was named after the dictionary,” Hannah retorted.

  “That’s a good theory too,” Corey said.

  It was a pretty long walk. They had plenty of time to plan what they were going to do.

  “We’re going to have to approach Mr. Webster tactfully,” Ben said, shifting his backpack on his shoulders. He wished he’d packed fewer books into it before setting out on this hike downtown.

  “What do you mean?” Corey said.

  “We can’t just barge into his restaurant and accuse him of lying,” Ben explained. “If we do that, he might refuse to tell us anything at all.”

  “But you agree he’s lying about where he found Molly, right?” Hannah said, pausing to take a pebble out of her shoe.

  Ben and Corey waited for Hannah. Corey took an apple out of his backpack and started eating it.

  “That’s what the density gradient tube seemed to indicate,” Ben said.

  “Also, you said he acted suspicious,” Corey added between bites.

  “Right,” Hannah said. She got her shoe back on, and they resumed walking.

  “I’ve been wondering if the reason he didn’t take the five-hundred-dollar reward was that he felt guilty,” Ben said.

  “Please don’t mention that five hundred dollars,” Corey protested. “It just makes me sad.”

  They passed a trash can, and Corey tossed the apple core with a little hook shot.

  “Still,” Ben said, “we have to remember that Mr. Webster is innocent until proven guilty.”

  “I know that,” Hannah said. “It’s not like I’m going to walk in there and put him in handcuffs.”

  “I’ve gotta admit I hope he’s not guilty,” Corey confessed.

  “Why?” Hannah asked.

  “Because the food at his restaurant is really good,” Corey explained. “I’d hate for that place to shut down.”

  “Don’t worry,” Hannah assured Ben. “I’ll be tactful.”

  They walked on for a few more blocks. “We’re almost downtown,” Hannah noticed. “Which way is Webster’s restaurant?”

  Corey pointed down the street. “We go up to that stoplight and turn right. The restaurant’s in the middle of the next block.”

  “That’s good,” Hannah said. “My backpack’s killing me.”

  Ben’s backpack was killing him too, but he didn’t admit it.

  They made their way to the stoplight and turned right. Soon they spotted a sign that read WEBSTER’S. Club CSI headed down the block to the restaurant.

  Inside, there were only a few customers seated at tables and booths. Late afternoon seemed to be a slow time for the restaurant.

  Hannah walked up to a woman who was the hostess . . . and the only waitress. “Excuse me—” she started to say.

  “Would you like a table?” the woman asked, smiling.

  Hannah smiled too. She figured Ben’s warning about being tactful applied to everyone who worked at the restaurant.

  “No, thank you,” she said politely. “We were just wondering if we might be able to talk to Mr. Webster for a minute.”

  The woman looked surprised. “Sure. He’s in the kitchen. Just a second.”

  She checked in with her customers, to see if they needed anything, and then went through a swinging door and into the kitchen.

  “I wonder if we’ll get any free samples,” Corey thought aloud.

  “I doubt it,” Ben said.

  The door had a round window in it, and Hannah saw Mr. Webster look through to see who had asked to see him. When he saw it was Hannah and her friends, he didn’t look happy.

  But when he walked through the door, he was smiling. He gave Hannah a little wave
.

  “Hello!” he said cheerfully. “How’s that beautiful dog of yours?”

  “She’s good,” Hannah said. “Thanks again for bringing her back, Mr. Webster.”

  “No problem.”

  Hannah realized Corey and Ben were just standing there. “Oh, these are my friends, Ben and Corey.”

  Mr. Webster shook their hands. “Nice to meet you, Ben, Corey. Wait a minute. Haven’t I seen you before, Corey?”

  “My family comes in here all the time,” he said.

  Mr. Webster nodded. “Right. I remember now. Your dad always gets the rib-eye steak. Welcome back.”

  “Do you think it might be possible for us to talk to you in your office, Mr. Webster?” Ben asked.

  “Uh, sure,” Mr. Webster said, looking slightly puzzled. “But I can’t talk for very long. We’ve got to get ready for the dinner rush.”

  “It will only take a couple of minutes,” Ben assured him.

  “Okay,” Mr. Webster said. “Follow me.”

  He led the way through the kitchen to a tiny office. The four of them could just barely squeeze into the room.

  “So, what did you want to ask me? Are you looking for jobs in a restaurant?” he asked.

  Hannah smiled, remembering to be tactful. “No, we were just curious about something. You said you found Molly down by Jackson’s Pond, right?”

  Mr. Webster looked very uncomfortable. “Right,” he said.

  “We did this little experiment where we compared some dirt from the park at Jackson’s Pond to the dirt Molly had on her paws when you brought her back,” Corey chimed in.

  “Oh, yes?” Mr. Webster said. He was holding his mouth in a tight line.

  “The weird thing was,” Corey said in his friendliest manner, “the two dirt samples didn’t match. Odd.”

  Mr. Webster ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me about dirt samples.”

  “Well,” Ben said carefully. “It’s just that because the samples didn’t match, we were thinking that maybe you didn’t really find Molly down by Jackson’s Pond. Maybe that was a . . . mistake. Perhaps you found her somewhere else.”