Ruff vs. Fluff

by Spencer Quinn

  “Maybe for a few minutes. Don’t tell me he switched the maps.”

  Harmony nodded.

  “But why, if he made a copy?” said Mrs. Hale. Her eyes narrowed. “On second thought, I didn’t actually watch him make it—can’t see the copier from the main desk.” She made an angry sort of grunt. “This means he stole from the library.”

  “He didn’t want anyone to ever see that map again,” Harmony said.

  Mrs. Hale cocked her head to one side, seemed to be studying Harmony. “I do believe you’re right,” she said. “And what a nasty thing to do—even if the poor soul is dead. I wonder if the sheriff found it among Mr. LeMaire’s effects.”

  “What are effects?” Harmony said.

  “The possessions he left behind.”

  “Oh,” said Harmony.

  “I’m going to call him this very minute,” Mrs. Hale said.

  “Um,” said Harmony. “Can’t hurt.”

  Mrs. Hale gave her a funny look, perhaps on the verge of saying something sharp like, “And what do you mean by that, young lady?” Then she glanced down at me and changed her mind. Yes, a cat person for sure.

  A BIG PROBLEM WITH DROGAN WAS that whenever we got fed, which didn’t seem to happen very often, he gobbled up all the kibble. Not even leaving the smallest taste behind in the bowl for me. Once I tried to push my way in—I was so hungry!—and the next moment, before I knew what was happening, he had me by the throat. That was terrible because when someone has you by the throat, how can you fight back? I tried batting him away with my front paws. He sank his teeth in me until I went still.

  Another problem was that Drogan didn’t seem to need any sleep. I should get a trophy for sleeping, as Bro once told me. And that would be great. I’d love a trophy one day. Bro tells me things I never hear him telling anyone else. Oh, Bro! Please come and get me out of here! I promise to be a good good boy. I won’t ever grab the puck again. Was that why this was happening to me? I’ll be better! Please, Bro.

  Those were the kind of thoughts I was having as I lay in my corner, as far away as I could get from Drogan’s corner, waiting for him to close his eyes so I could close mine. If I fell asleep and he didn’t, I’d end up awakening with him standing over me, teeth bared, drooling, and eyes wild like a cornered creature. Why? The cornered one was me! Now, finally, his eyes closed. I kept my own eyes open until I no longer could, maybe not a very long time. The next thing I knew I was feeling Drogan’s breath on my face.

  I snapped my eyes open real fast, my heart waking up, too, if that makes any sense, pounding away like crazy. I wriggled backward, bumping up against the wall right away. All the other times this had happened—these horrible wake-up calls—Drogan just stood there for a while and then slunk off to his corner, like he’d played a fun game and then tired of it. But this time was different. Without warning and with shocking speed, he flipped me over and got me by the neck again. I squirmed and batted, but it did no good. Drogan’s teeth pressed harder—slowly, like he was taking his time. But it still hurt.

  Then came sounds out in the corridor, human steps and human voices. Drogan’s sharply pointed ears went straight up. He let me go and backed away. Drogan was lying in his corner when two men appeared at the bars.

  I knew both of these men, Mr. Mahovlich and Sheriff Hunzinger. Mr. Mahovlich held a bouquet of flowers. He and the sheriff gazed down at me.

  “One ugly mutt,” the sheriff said.

  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” said Mr. Mahovlich.

  “Never understood that expression.”

  I was with the sheriff on that, but not on the ugly mutt part. Harmony always said I was the cutest dog on the planet. I trusted Harmony big-time, and the sheriff not at all.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Mr. Mahovlich was saying. “What matters is getting this smoothed out.”

  “Getting what smoothed out?” said the sheriff. “We got a biter here, case closed.”

  Mahovlich turned to him. “What kind of town do we want here, Hunzinger?”

  “Not one full of wild beasts,” said the sheriff, looking in my direction.

  Was he checking to see if I agreed with him? I did, and completely. A town full of wild beasts was the scariest thing I’d ever heard.

  “Something the matter, Hunzinger?” Mahovlich said. “Pressure getting to you?”

  “What pressure?”

  “Having an unsolved murder in your jurisdiction.”

  “Nothing unsolved about it. Matty Comeau’s the perp. Now all we gotta do is bring him in.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Carstairs has a search party up on the mountain. He thinks they’ve picked up his tracks. We’ve also looped in the state police and the FBI.”

  “So we can look forward to a happy ending?”

  “And soon.”

  “Good to hear,” Mr. Mahovlich said. “And in that spirit, I know you’ll want to deliver this mutt back to Mrs. Reddy, together with these.”

  He held out the flowers. The sheriff regarded them with a frown, like he didn’t know what they were. There are probably things I don’t know, but flowers isn’t one of them. They’re flowers, Sheriff. What’s the matter with you?

  “Why would I want to do that?” the sheriff said.

  “To demonstrate your forgiving nature.”

  “Huh? I don’t have a forgiving nature.”

  “I know that, Hunzinger. You’ll have to pretend.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll be doing me a favor,” said Mr. Mahovlich. “And when folks do me a favor, they get favors back. As I thought you would have known by now.”

  The sheriff gazed at Mr. Mahovlich, then looked away. He took the flowers. A few moments after that, Mr. Mahovlich was gone. A car started up outside and drove away.

  “Immler?” the sheriff yelled. “Get in here.”

  A door opened nearby and Immler came hurrying down the corridor.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  Hunzinger thrust the flowers into Immler’s hands. “Take these over to Mrs. Reddy at the Blackberry Hill Inn. Stat. Along with her dog.”

  Immler blinked. “Her dog?”

  “Nothing wrong with your ears,” the sheriff said.

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Immler’s ears were on the small side, even for a human, probably not capable of hearing much.

  “I don’t get it,” he was saying.

  “Am I asking you to get it?” said the sheriff.

  “I like to know the whys and wherefores.”

  “Do you also like your job, Immler?”

  “Oh, sure, I like it fine.”

  “And who got you this job?”

  “Mainly you, although I’m highly qual—”

  The sheriff raised his hand in the stop sign. “There’s your whys and wherefores,” he said. “Text me when it’s done.”

  The sheriff went away. Immler opened the barred door. “Move, you—” He called me a bad name. I stepped outside and right away had a crazy urge to bite his ankle! Can you believe it? Of course I knew that would have been a mistake. I followed him down the corridor, well within ankle-biting range but doing nothing about it. No sense in spoiling this, a pretty good moment in my life, except for the feeling of Drogan’s eyes on my back the whole way, and even out in the parking lot.

  WE LEFT THE LIBRARY, HARMONY on her feet, of course, and me in the backpack—worn on Harmony’s front, as I’ve mentioned, because I’d rather see where I’m going than where I’ve been. On the way out, we met a man going in. He didn’t notice us at all. His mind was on something else. There’s a special sort of blank face humans have for that. You see it all the time, meaning that wasn’t the interesting part of this encounter. The interesting part was that I’d seen this man before, although at some distance. But that red beard of his was hard to miss and hard to forget. This was the man who’d waited in the car at the top of our circular drive, while Ms. Mary A. Jones of 419B Zither Street, Brooklyn, New York—not her re
al name and not a real place, if I’d been keeping up with the facts—had collected the stuff Mr. LeMaire had left behind, including the postcard. Meaning now we couldn’t sell it to Mr. Mahovlich, a shame since our financial situation was not good. And there were other meanings from Ms. Mary A. Jones’s visit as well, meanings I might get to at some future time if I felt like it. Right now I just wanted to enjoy the great outdoors. The first thing I always do in the great outdoors is check for birds. And I was just getting started on that when Harmony said, “Oops,” pivoted around, and back inside the library we went.

  Mrs. Hale sat behind her desk, at her keyboard and typing faster than I’d ever seen anyone type, her red-tipped fingers looking like separate living things, dancers, say, doing a speedy dance. There was no sign of the red-bearded man. Mrs. Hale looked up at us in surprise.

  “You’re back.”

  “I just thought of something,” Harmony said. “Maybe there’s a book about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Whisky.”

  “You’re interested in whisky?”

  “Old whisky.”

  Mrs. Hale gave Harmony a look. “How old?”

  “We don’t know. We have this old bottle and wondered if it’s worth anything. Like to collectors.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Me and my brother.” Mrs. Hale gave her some more of that look. “And my mom, too,” Harmony added.

  “Glad to hear that. What’s the name on the bottle?”

  “Maple Leaf Gold Canadian rye whisky,” Harmony said. Ah, that would be the bottle Mr. LeMaire left behind, if I’d been following things right. Which I always do, by the way, except when I don’t bother to follow them at all.

  “Come with me.” Mrs. Hale rose. We followed her into the main room, filled with rows and rows of books. Without a pause or even looking, she plucked one off a shelf, carried it to a table at the back of the room, and turned the pages. “How about this one?”

  Harmony looked at a picture on an open page of the book and leaned closer. “That’s it.”

  “Here’s what it says,” said Mrs. Hale. “ ‘Maple Leaf Gold rye whisky was actually made from corn, not rye. It was manufactured in a warehouse outside Montreal, Canada, beginning with the onset of Prohibition in the United States in 1920.’ ”

  “What’s Prohibition?” Harmony said.

  “When no alcohol was allowed anywhere in the country,” said Mrs. Hale. She went back to reading. “ ‘The company, thought to have been controlled by gangsters, went out of business in 1933 when Prohibition came to an end. Maple Leaf Gold was not sold on the Canadian market. The entire output was intended for American consumption, smuggled into the US, primarily through New Hampshire and Vermont. Very few bottles have appeared on the collectibles market. One bottle turned up on Antiques Roadshow in 2004 and was valued at two hundred and fifty dollars.’ ” Mrs. Hale looked up. “Not nothing,” she said, closing the book.

  “But not a fortune,” said Harmony.

  “People don’t stumble on fortunes very often,” Mrs. Hale said. “I’ve never seen it happen myself.”

  Mrs. Hale led us back down the rows. I happened to look sideways, over the top of a bunch of books on a shelf. On the other side stood the red-bearded man, his eyes—green eyes, not a color you see a lot in human eyes—right on Harmony. This was a bit of a shock, and quite unpleasant. I even wanted to do something about it, but what? We were outside and on the way home before something occurred to me. I could have hissed! Why hadn’t I? My hiss is very scary, and that would have been the perfect moment. I came close to thinking that I hadn’t done my best. A crazy thought, of course, but the bad mood I’d been in before the walk hovered in my mind again, like a cloud.

  When we got home, Mom and Bro were in the front hall, taking off their jackets.

  “Not on the floor,” Mom said. “On the hook.”

  Bro picked up his jacket with his foot and flicked it up and onto a wall hook—a very cool move, but no one except me was watching. “How come I had to go?”

  “To see a lawyer in action,” Mom said.

  “Action?” said Bro. “She said she couldn’t do squat.”

  “The lawyer can’t help us with Arthur?” Harmony said, letting me out of the backpack. I glided up to my command post on the grandfather clock.

  “The sheriff is within his rights, according to the lawyer,” Mom said. “But I wanted Bro to meet her because I think he’s got the makings of a future lawyer.”

  “Bro?” said Harmony.

  “Me?” said Bro.

  “Yes, you.”

  “Does it mean going to school?”

  “Law school,” Mom told him. “It takes three years. That’s after college, of course.”

  “Forget it,” Bro said.

  “No need to decide now,” Mom said. Hadn’t we just had a conversation something like this with Mrs. Hale? Sometimes the meaning of the human world seemed just out of reach, quite possibly more to them than to me.

  Mom turned to Harmony. “You took Queenie for a walk?”

  “Yeah,” said Harmony. “We went to the library. Strange things are going on, Mom.”

  “Like what?” Mom said.

  The front door opened before Harmony could explain. In the doorway stood that horrible Mr. Immler, holding a bouquet of flowers. Beside him, straining on a leash and his tongue practically hanging down to the floor, was Arthur.

  Eyebrows rose: Harmony’s, Bro’s, Mom’s. The three of them looked almost like the same person for a moment.

  Immler cleared his throat, then cleared it again.

  “You have something to say, Mr. Immler?” said Mom.

  “I, uh, well, actually the sheriff has decided not to pursue this particular matter. So here’s your animal.” He leaned down and unclipped the leash. Click. And at the sound of that click, Arthur took off, possibly not in the direction he’d meant to go, meaning he charged outside, where he raced around in a circle, his ludicrous ears straight back in the wind, before suddenly zooming back into the house and straight into Mom’s arms. But not for long. He was much too squirmy, and soon he was charging around again, leaping first into Bro’s arms and then into Harmony’s arms, and back again, and forth, et cetera. He even came close to leaping into Immler’s arms, changing his mind at the very last second. Then he skidded to a stop, trotted back to Immler, and raised his leg, right over Immler’s shoe tops. Somehow Mom was there to drag Arthur away in the nick of time, or just about.

  “Will there be anything else, Mr. Immler?” Mom said.

  “There’s these.” He handed her the flowers.

  “They’re from you?”

  “No way. I mean, um, not from me personally.”

  “They’re from the sheriff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “God’s own truth,” said Immler, “although I’d say it took some persuading.”

  “Who from?” Mom said.

  Immler was silent for a bit. “Well, guess there’s no harm in saying. Why hide a good deed, if you see what I mean? It was Mr. Mahovlich.”

  Mr. Immler left. Some humans you see once or twice in your life and never again. I hoped he was one of those. Meanwhile Harmony was telling Mom and Bro all about our visit to the library, Mrs. Hale, Mr. LeMaire, maps, Prohibition, smugglers—a complicated tale that had barely held my attention the first time, and now did not at all. What I needed was some me time. I curled up on top of the grandfather clock and lost myself in my own private thoughts.

  What a delicious sleep I had! That often happens after an outing. As I awoke and stretched on the grandfather clock, I thought of the broken windowpane in the old part of the basement, and promised myself there would be more outings in the future. Then I remembered how Harmony had spotted me out by the bird feeder, and decided that most of these outings to come would be taking place at night.

  Bottom line: I woke up in a very good mood. As I stretched, I looked down on the
front hall, empty now, darkness falling outside. Then the front door opened and a man entered, carrying luggage. How nice! A guest, just what we needed. I was so pleased that I didn’t notice at first that this guest was the red-bearded man.

  The red-bearded man looked around. He spotted me right away; he had an alertness you don’t always see in humans. We exchanged stares. His said: I know you. Mine said: I know you, too, and I don’t like you. He turned to the desk. The leather-bound guest register lay on top. The red-bearded man took another glance around, opened the register, and started flipping through. He stopped, gazed at a page, closed the book. Then he tinkled the little silver bell.

  Mom came in from a side door, a kerchief in her hair and a whisk broom in her hand.

  “Any rooms available?” the red-bearded man said.

  My answer would have been Scram and don’t ever let me see you again. Mom said, “Certainly. And welcome to the Blackberry Hill Inn. I’m Yvette Reddy, the owner.”

  “Vincent Smithers,” said the red-bearded man. They shook hands. “Have you got anything with a balcony? I like views.”

  “The Violet Room has a balcony and very nice views of Mount Misty,” Mom said.

  “Just the ticket,” said Smithers, handing Mom his credit card and driver’s license.

  HOME AT LAST! SAVED BY THE BELL, even if I didn’t recall hearing any bells. And what does saved by the bell even mean? I didn’t know and didn’t care. That’s how happy I was. I ran around. I licked everybody. I peed all over the place. I collapsed, totally exhausted.

  The next day Mom and I went to the kids’ hockey game. We like to sit in the stands halfway up. At one time we didn’t bother with a leash at hockey games, but now for some reason we do, Mom holding her end loosely in her hand. The Tigers—that’s us, and I root for the Tigers even though the name could be better—wear gold. The other team was in green. The kids look kind of alike in their helmets and uniforms, but I can always tell Harmony from her long hair flying in the wind behind her, and Bro from the way he moves, the top half of him kind of still but his legs always churning. Up and down the ice they all went, chasing the puck. How much fun was that? I wondered if it might be possible to quietly—