K-9 Blues (Paws & Claws Book 3)

by Ralph Vaughan

  “Well, I never!” And the dog started to dive for the flap door.

  “Wait,” Sunny called, using a tone Levi had taught her to stop any dog in his tracks. Then she continued in a softer voice: “We seem to have gotten off on the wrong paw. We’re detectives.”

  The dog turned from the door and regarded Sunny and Yoda with subdued interest. “Detectives? Are you from the K-9 Unit across the street?”

  “No, we’re private detectives,” Sunny explained. “Yoda and I, along with our friend Levi, are the Three Dog Detective Agency.”

  “Private detectives?” the red-and white dog said. “Really?”

  “That’s what she said, Champion Highland Sul…hey, don’t you have a regular name we can call you?” Yoda asked.

  “My call-name is Biggles,” the Welsh Springer Spaniel said. “I guess you could call me that, if you want.”

  “Biggles!” Yoda barely contained a chortle.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Biggles demanded. “It is a perfectly good English name associated with a British folk hero.”

  “Yeah, right,” Yoda drawled dubiously.

  “Besides,” Biggles continued. “Anybody named Yoda has very little room to talk.”

  “Well, let me tell you…” Yoda started to say.

  “Play nice, Yoda,” Sunny cautioned. “Stick to business.”

  “Okay,” Yoda grumbled.

  “Did you hear or see anything out of the ordinary in the trash area below your condo?” Sunny asked.

  “There was some very odd activities going on real early this morning before the sun was up,” Biggles admitted. “I saw it all from above.”

  “What exactly did you see…Biggles?” Yoda asked.

  “I saw a thin pale dog eating out of the garbage, well not in the dumpster itself, but next to it,” Biggles replied. “He was pretty noisy about it and that’s what woke me at first. I lay on the back of the couch and looked down from the window. There was moonlight so I could see pretty well.”

  “Could it have been a Whippet?” Sunny asked.

  “I think it was.” Biggles sighed. “I see all sorts of things from my window, but I never get involved. I feel sorry for the poor lost souls, and I always think ‘There but for the grace of Anubis go I,’ but there isn’t anything I can do. I had almost fallen back asleep when two much bigger dogs attacked the little Whippet. I was so startled I nearly fell off the couch, but I kept quiet.”

  “How brave,” Yoda commented.

  Biggles glared.

  “Please go on, Biggles,” Sunny intervened. “You are being very helpful. Do you know what breed they were? Had you ever seen them before?”

  “Oh, I knew them all right, that is why I kept quiet and out of sight,” Biggles explained. “They are the Dobermans who protect the dog in the mask.”

  “There really is a masked dog?” Yoda exclaimed.

  Biggles stared at Yoda as if the Pomeranian had two heads. “I don’t know where he comes from or where he goes, but the only times I see him are before dawn or after dusk. The Dobermans, I see them more often by themselves, but I don’t know where they live.”

  “Can you describe the masked dog?” Sunny asked.

  Biggles suddenly trembled. “You won’t tell anyone I told you about this, will you? I mean, I don’t want to get involved, and I do not want to get those Dobermans after me. They’re pretty rough boys. I wouldn’t want anything to happen that would keep me from winning dog shows – it does not take much to make a pure-bred deviate from the breed standard.”

  “Don’t worry, pretty boy, nobody will know you told us anything,” Yoda assured him.

  Biggles looked to Sunny for real assurance.

  “You have our word, dear,” Sunny said. “The only other one who will know what you tell us will be Levi, our alpha.”

  “All right then,” Biggles finally said. “He is somewhat taller than the Dobermans, and is quite massive. Very muscular. His head is very long, almost freakishly so, and more than half of it seems to be taken up by his muzzle. His skull at its base is very wide, and the dome of his head is very high. His coloring is very odd, sort of spots and stripes, though it’s really hard to say because I never see him very clearly…I did mention that he only comes out before dawn or after dusk, right? The oddest thing about him, I think, is that it looks like he walks flat on his feet. What kind of dog does that? Certainly no dog I’ve ever seen at a show. If I did not know it was a dog, I might think it something else altogether.”

  “How do you know it’s a dog then?” Yoda asked. “It wears a mask, right?”

  Biggles nodded. “But not a mask that just covers the eyes; this is more like a cowl, sort of what like Ace wears, but more wrapped around his head.”

  “Ace?” Sunny said.

  “Ace the Bat-Hound!” Yoda and Biggles exclaimed at the same moment.

  Pomeranian and Welsh Springer Spaniel stared at each other in surprise.

  “Are you a fan?” they demanded of each other simultaneously.

  “Yeah,” they replied, also simultaneously. “Totally!”

  “I watch his cartoons in the afternoon,” Biggles said.

  “I like it when Krypto guest stars on…” Yoda started to say.

  “Biggles, you were going to tell us how you knew it was a dog even though you’ve described him as being very undoglike,” Sunny reminded the Spaniel. “How could you tell from up here?”

  “The scent,” Biggles replied. “I’m no scent hound – I’m in the Sporting Dog category, and the Hound Group is right after – but I caught whiffs of the smell as it wafted upward. It was a dog all right.” He paused. “Well, it was very like a dog. What could smell doglike except a dog, right?”

  “Perhaps something we have not seen for a very long time,” Sunny mused.

  Yoda shivered, but tried not to let the new dog see it.

  “That’s about all I can tell you,” Biggles said. “The Dobermans attacked the Whippet, the masked dog was there, and then they let the Whippet go.”

  “You mean he escaped?” Sunny said, thinking back to what Slim Shady had told them. “He broke free and ran off?”

  “No, the masked dog made some kind of weird whispery sound and the Dobermans let the Whippet go,” Biggles explained. “After that was when all the other dogs came with a dog-cart.”

  “What’s a dog-cart?” Yoda asked.

  “It’s a small cart pulled by a horse that hunting dogs used to be transported in,” Sunny explained. “It wasn’t really pulled by a dog; they just called it that.”

  “Well this one was,” Biggles blurted. “Pulled by a dog, I mean. That was why I called it a dog-cart. It was pulled by a big Labrador, too big to be a show dog, and I should know since they are in the same show group I am. He was probably a…” Biggles paused, then continued a little disdainfully, “…a mix of some kind.”

  “Humph,” Yoda humphed.

  “No offense intended,” Biggles added quickly. “I have nothing against mixes, per se.”

  “I know,” Yoda snapped. “You’re going to tell us some of your best friends are mix-breeds.”

  “No, no I wasn’t,” Biggles said, startled. “All my friends are pure breeds, fellow show dogs.”

  “What about the cart?” Sunny asked. “Why was it there?”

  “The other dogs that came with it – there must have been a half-dozen – started to take stuff from beside that dumpster, right where the Whippet had been, throwing it all into the back of the cart. It was all over in just a few minutes. Then they all ran off into the darkness.”

  “Which way did they go?” Yoda asked.

  “Toward that big street over there,” Biggles said, gesturing with his muzzle.

  “You mean Fourth?”

  “I guess so,” Biggles answered laconically. “I only leave the condo when we go to shows, or I have to…you know…”

  “Do your business?” Yoda suggested. “You really do lead a sheltered life, don’t you?”

&nbs
p; “What about the masked dog and the Dobermans?” Sunny asked. “Did they go off with the others?”

  “Not that I saw,” Biggles replied. “It was pretty dark. They might have gone off the other way…I think there’s a park there?”

  “You don’t know?” Yoda asked incredulously

  “It’s a dangerous world out there,” Biggles said, as if he were imparting the secret of the universe to pups whose eyes had just opened. “Only last year dogs in Chula Vista were being stolen and made to fight in a combat school.”

  “Yeah, we heard something about that,” Sunny confided with a Mona Lisa smile. “Terrible.”

  “I’ll have you know that we…” Yoda started to say.

  “Is that all you saw, Biggles?” Sunny asked. “Did you go back to sleep after that?’

  “I crawled back up on the back of the couch, glad none of them had thought of looking up to where I was,” Biggles said with a little sigh of relief. “Wait! There was one other thing, just before I went back to sleep.”

  “What was that?”

  “I saw a dog come out of the police station across the street.”

  “Someone from the K-9 Unit?”

  “I don’t know,” Biggles admitted, “nor what breed. Too dark.”

  “What did the dog do?” Sunny asked.

  “Just came out, walked over to the dumpster, then walked back after less than a minute,” Biggles said. “I don’t even know that it means anything, or has anything to do with what happened, but it is odd, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Sunny agreed. “That it is.”

  “And that’s everything?” Yoda asked.

  “Everything I recall,” Biggles claimed.

  “Okay, thanks very much,” Sunny said. “We had better go.”

  “And you won’t tell anyone that I told you about those dogs?” Biggles asked, a nervous tremor in his tone.

  “You can trust the Three Dog Detective Agency,” Sunny told the timorous Spaniel.

  “That’s right!” Yoda confirmed. “Our word is our bond!”

  “Good, I wouldn’t want it to get out.”

  “Come on, Yoda,” Sunny said.

  The two dogs turned and made their way back to the steps. They were both eager to find Levi and make their report.

  “Yoda!” Biggles called.

  Yoda turned about as Sunny continued cautiously down.

  “What?”

  “If you want to come back some day and watch television with me, that would be okay…I mean, if you want to,” Biggles said nervously. “We could watch Ace’s cartoon show. If you want to.”

  “Yeah that would be great,” Yoda replied. “See you later, buddy.”

  Yoda found Sunny waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Are you going to?” she asked.

  “Am I going to what?”

  “Go back to see Biggles some afternoon and watch cartoons with him.”

  “Sure, watch cartoons,” Yoda said, “and listen to him talk about all his ribbons and trophies from shows.”

  “He probably has more of those than he has friends,” Sunny commented. “You should probably visit him.”

  “Not my idea of a good time, palavering with some narrow-minded purist,” Yoda grumbled.

  “Not if they choose to be that way,” Sunny agreed. “But some dogs are like that because they do not know any better. If there was ever a dog who could be called clueless about life, it’s that boy. You should give it some thought; it might do you both some good.”

  They exited unnoticed from the condos the same way they had entered, and soon returned to where they had left Levi. He was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where did Levi go?” Yoda asked nervously.

  “Here I am!” Levi called.

  They looked up, in the direction of Levi’s voice, and saw him standing atop the cinder-block wall surrounding the dumpster area, about eight feet off the ground.

  “How did you get up there?” Then Sunny laughed. “No, don’t tell me, I’m not sure I want to know.”

  “Well, I want to know why you’re up there,” Yoda said.

  Instead of answering, Levi leaped from the wall, hit the sloping edge of the dumpster, letting his paws remain in contact only long enough to push away, then seemed to run down the side of the block wall to the walkway, leaping as soon as he hit the concrete and landing with grace. The little Dachshund-mix grinned.

  “Show-off,” Yoda muttered, though he knew it was something he would never be able to emulate.

  “One of these days, Levi, you’re going to break that long back of yours with stunts like that,” Sunny scolded. “Those legs may have been created for leaping, but your back is pure Dachshund.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Levi protested.

  “What’s next?” Sunny demanded. “Running with scissors?”

  Yoda laughed. “As if a dog could run with scissors!”

  “Don’t you start!” Sunny snapped. “You know what I mean!”

  “Okay, Sunny, I’ll try to be more careful,” Levi said with mock contrition.

  “And no more jumping over the couch!” Sunny added.

  Levi grinned.

  “I don’t know why I bother,” Sunny grumbled.

  “Because you care,” Levi said. “And that’s what we love about you, even if it is wasted on something of a lost cause.

  “Well, I thought it was impressive,” Yoda said.

  Sunny sighed resignedly.

  “Getting up there was even harder, but it was well worth the effort,” Levi said. “I found where our mystery dog sat, and how he got up and down from there.” He paused. “He climbed.”

  “A dog cannot climb that wall,” Yoda protested.

  “Few dogs could jump up there, but none could climb,” Sunny agreed. “There’s nothing to hold, nothing to push against.’

  “This dog could,” Levi averred. “He came to the back of the wall, then, as incredible as it sounds, climbed straight up, putting his paws on top and pulling himself the rest of the way up. Departing, he held on with his paws, then lowered himself to the ground.”

  “The same scent you found in the park?” Sunny asked.

  Levi nodded. “Very doglike, and yet very different.”

  “Weird,” Yoda breathed.

  “Come around to the back of the dumpster enclosure,” Levi invited. “There are some tracks I want to show you, and then you can draw your own conclusions.”

  They followed Levi around the wall, then gathered about some depressions in the soft bare earth. They all felt a chill.

  “That is impossible,” Sunny breathed.

  “Those are not dog prints,” Yoda asserted. “The paws are flat to the ground, absolutely flat.”

  “No dog of any breed walks with flat paws,” Sunny agreed. “It cannot be done…our paws are not made that way.”

  “Look closely,” Levi advised. “Every structure in the paw of a dog is present; the only difference is that the paw is flat, not arched like normal. It’s all there, even the dew claw and the carpal pad.”

  “But neither of those portions of our paws even touch the ground,” Sunny pointed out.

  “Why do we have them then?” Yoda asked.

  “They are vestigial organs, like your caecum,” Levi explained.

  “My…what!” the Pomeranian exclaimed.

  “It’s a little pouch in your digestive system,” Levi said. “Like your dew claw and carpal pad, they are remnants of organs which once had a purpose and were used. As dogs changed over time, due either to selective breeding or responses to changing environments, we stopped using those organs, but they never went away, probably never will, at least not entirely.”

  “I don’t get it,” Yoda complained.

  “It’s like tails,” Levi said.

  “You mean, like some dogs have them and some dogs don’t?”

  “Actually, all dogs do have tails,” Levi said.

  “I know dogs without tails,” Yoda said. “And
I don’t mean dogs who have had their tails…ugh!...docked.”

  “Even so-called tailless dogs have either a little nub on the rear or the bone structure beneath the skin where a tail was attached,” Levi explained. “Tailless now, or nearly so, but they all had a tail at one time, and even though it may seem absent, something of it still remains, and that’s what vestigial means.”

  Yoda nodded, but he did not look at all convinced.

  “That’s all very interesting, but there is no way you can make me believe a dog made that paw print,” Sunny said.

  Levi sighed. “Give it a sniff.”

  Both Yoda and Sunny moved in close and examined the strange paw print with their noses. While their sniffers were nowhere near as sensitive and discriminating as Levi’s, their noses were still wonders of nature. They sniffed the print carefully and thoroughly, not rushing. Finally, they lifted their heads from the ground and stared at Levi in startled wonder.

  “It’s a dog’s print!” Sunny exclaimed.

  Yoda nodded. “Yeah, what she said!”

  “It’s the same scent as you found in the park?” Sunny asked.

  “The same,” Levi confirmed. “Dog…but also doglike.”

  “It’s a strange dog, it wears a mask, and it’s got stripes and spots, maybe,” Yoda murmured.

  Sunny and Yoda filled Levi in on what they had learned from Biggles. Levi looked up surreptitiously and saw the Welsh Springer Spaniel watching them; he told them it was time they headed out and cautioned them against acknowledging Biggles in any way.

  “Why not?” Yoda asked. “I’m really feeling sorry for the guy. All he does is attend dog shows and watch cartoons – not much of a life, if you ask me.”

  “Because it might be dangerous for him if anyone figured out he helped us, or that he watches from his window,” Levi explained. “What he told you about the dog coming out of the police station is interesting because I am sure I was watched keenly while I checked around the dumpster.”

  “Did you see who it was?” Sunny asked.

  Levi shook his head. “It was a feeling more than anything else, of someone watching from the shadows of the parking garage, but I have no doubt some dog was watching.”

  “Could it have been Antony or Arnold?” Yoda asked

  “They did avoid us earlier,” Sunny pointed out.