“And what did that further lead you to deduce?”
“Naturally, I first thought you were a lunatic. But I realized almost immediately that you said squirrel. I get distracted by squirrels too. This thought, in turn, led to: ‘Now this makes sense’ and ‘I love chasing squirrels too – finally, something we share in common! Their beady eyes; there’s just something about them, makes me want to chase them all the time.’ And there you have it.”
“Not quite. While I can be as easily distracted as the next chap by a squirrel flashing by, I – unlike you – do not chase willy-nilly after random squirrels.”
“Willy-nilly? There’s no need to be insulting about – ”
“That, my dear Catson, was no random squirrel.”
“Oh no?” I said mildly. “Then who was it?”
“It was the villain.”
“As far as I’m concerned, all squirrels are villains. But, somehow, I’m guessing we don’t mean the same thing.”
“I did not say the squirrel was a villain. I said the squirrel was the villain.”
“Seems a bit specific, not to mention a heavy charge,” I said, unable to hide the skepticism in my voice. “So, you know that squirrel personally, do you?”
Really, how can anyone tell one squirrel from another? They all look alike.
“Oh, yes,” he said with vehemence. “I have known that squirrel for some years now, have been deviled by him regularly in fact.”
“Really?” I said, thinking he must be joking. “And who is he?”
“Why, the squirrel is a criminal mastermind, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” I scoffed.
“He goes by the name of Professor Moriarty.”
I couldn’t help it. I burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” the dog demanded.
“It’s just that you – ” I could barely contain my mirth. OK, I couldn’t contain it. “You … you … you said the squirrel is a criminal mastermind – the squirrel! – and that he has … has … has a name and – ”
“I fail to see the humor.”
“I’ve never known a squirrel with a name before!”
“That’s because you’re prejudiced, Catson. If you weren’t, you would know that all living creatures have names, if only you pay attention and listen. It’s not just cats and dogs and humans and Castilian turtles that have names. Speaking of which … ”
The dog was off again, one paw in the air. He trotted over to a horse idling in the traces of a cab on the street in front of our home, traces being the leather reins and such keeping the horse tethered to the cab, shouting “Fred!” like another might shout “Eureka!”
Huh. I hadn’t even noticed the horse and cab there when I’d first raced outside, and from the looks of the horse, he’d been there for some time. I could tell that because he wore the bored-with-it-all look horses tend to get when waiting in traces for too long.
I caught up with the dog before he had the chance to engage with the horse, this so-called “Fred.”
“How many times have I told you?” I said. “There’s no point in talking to horses.” In the short time we’d lived together, I’d told him at least twice. “All you ever get out of a horse is ‘Blah, blah, blah’ and ‘Oats, oats, oats’ and possibly ‘Dude, where’s my carrot?’ They’re useless!”
The horse turned to me, giving me an offended look from between his blinders. “You don’t need to be so insulting about it,” he said. “Some of us have to work for a living.”
I sat back on my haunches, placed my front paws on my hips. “I resent that! I’ll have you know, I’m a board-certified surgeon. I’d still be working at the Cat Hospital had I not been injured in the Cat Wars.”
“Ooh, lah-di-dah. He says he’s a surgeon.” The horse didn’t bother to stifle his yawn. “Well, aren’t I impressed.”
“Not he, you stupid beast. She. Can’t you see I’m a girl?”
“Frankly, no.” Another yawn from the horse, who turned to the dog with much more alertness than he’d shown me. “What can I do for you today, Mr. Bones? Can I be of some service?”
Mr. Bones? Mr. Bones? That seemed like an unnaturally high level of respect to show the dog.
“Yes, please, Fred,” Bones said, his voice filled with an equal level of respect. “I know how alert you always are and I wondered if you could tell me: Have you seen which way Moriarty went?”
“You mean the nefarious Professor Moriarty?” the horse said. As he spoke the name, the horse’s giant black nose quivered and his ears shot back so they were almost flat against his head.
Wait. The horse knew this Moriarty squirrel?
“The very same,” the dog said with an earnest nod.
“Oh, I wish I could help you out, Mr. Bones,” the horse said ruefully. Huh. I didn’t know horses could be rueful. “I do know what a thorn that villain has been in your side all these years. He’s been such an enemy to the city, the country – the whole world, even! – but most especially to you, sir.”
“That he has, Fred.”
All of this “Fred” this and “Mr. Bones” that – it was enough to make one sick. Not to mention …
“Time out!” I cried, raising one front paw straight up and than laying the other front paw flat on top of it to make a T.
“Yes, my dear Catson?” That, of course, would be Bones. I most definitely was not the horse’s dear.
“How is it possible,” I said, “that there is a squirrel at large who goes by the improbable name of Professor Moriarty; a squirrel that not just you, Bones, have knowledge of; and yet I have never heard of him before this very day?”
“I don’t know, Catson,” the dog said. “Perhaps, as I’ve been trying to tell you, you need to get out more? Or perhaps, as I’ve suggested often enough, you might try reading a newspaper from time to time?”
“Pah.” I waved a dismissive paw at this last. “I would if they ever printed anything worth reading.”
“I rest my case,” Bones said, although I failed to see his point. He turned back to the horse. “So,” he said sadly, “nothing?”
“’Fraid not,” the horse said. “I’d tell you which way Professor Moriarty went if I could, sir. But I never saw him, did I? I was too busy wondering where my next oats might be coming from.”
HA! Like I said, there’s no point in talking to horses.
“That’s all right,” the dog soothed the horse with more gentleness than I’d have suspected the dog capable of; certainly more than I’d have offered the beast. “You do your best.”
“I do that, sir.”
“And it’s possible,” the dog said, “that the squirrel isn’t at all involved in the case at hand. It’s possible that Moriarty is just a mere distraction today. Of course, if not this case, he’ll figure into another before long.”
I was about to laugh at them again, the very idea of the dog and the horse seriously discussing this Moriarty as though he might really be some criminal mastermind, when everything I know about squirrels hit me:
Devious. Highly intelligent. Incredibly organized. Deceptively adorable to humans. And you never quite know what nefarious things they might be hiding under their bushy tails.
Was it possible … ?
But also:
“Wait!” I made my time-out sign again. “What just happened here?”
The dog and horse turned and stared at me.
“How do you mean?” the dog asked.
“You said ‘the case at hand,’ not long after followed by ‘this case’. Since when was there a case?”
The dog laughed at this. “My dear Catson,” he said with a roar, “there is always a case!”
Worse, the horse was roaring with laughter too.
“Bones,” I said testily, “what specific case?”
The dog turned to the horse. “Have you heard anything lately, Fred?”
The horse cast his eyes heavenward, consideri
ng. Finally:
“Well, I did hear someone say Utah … ”
“Utah?” I said. “Utah? You mean that dry state that resides somewhere within the western confines of the United States … of America?”
The dog and horse exchanged a glance.
“Do you know of another one, Fred?” the dog asked.
The horse shrugged. “Not I, Mr. Bones. But then, I don’t have your vast knowledge of geography. Or anything else for that matter.”
This mutual admiration society of theirs really was nauseating.
“You can’t just pick a place at random,” I said. “It’s not like you can spin a globe, stick a pin in it blindly, say, ‘Ooh, look, Utah!’ and then declare ‘There must be a case there!’”
“How is it random?” the dog said. “Did you not hear Fred say he heard someone say Utah?’
“Yes, but that’s not the point!”
“Which is?”
“The point – ”
And then, just like that, I stopped myself cold.
My mind harkened back to our first case file, Doggone, which I’d written up upon its completion (and which you can also read).
I have a confession to make:
That incredibly long day, during which Bones had solved not one but two murder cases, had all been a bit of a muddle to me. With his weird assortment of expertise, Bones knew things that no normal being could possibly know – and oh, how I hate to admit that. But it was also true that I hadn’t paid enough attention to the dog, putting down much of what he had said to leaps of illogic. And yet, afterward, I couldn’t escape the feeling that had I only paid closer attention, I could have figured things out too, or even at least understood what happened.
I internally vowed that this time it would be different. If we did indeed have a case, this time I would pay close attention and try to figure this thing out too, whatever this thing was.
Even as I made this vow to myself, I could almost hear Bones’s voice chortling inside my brain: “But I’m brilliant, so how could you possibly ever keep up?”
I chose, in my wisdom, to ignore that imagined chortling voice and level my steady gaze at my two companions and ask:
“So. Utah. What are we going to do about Utah?”
“No, really,” I said to Bones, “what are we going to do about Utah?”
We were back inside in our (ugh, there’s that we again) cozy living room to be precise. Thankfully, Bones had not invited the horse indoors with us. If he had, our living room would have been considerably less cozy.
“We shall get to that, my dear Catson,” said the dog. “But first, I’m famished, aren’t you?”
“A bit,” I agreed.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Pardon?”
“The state of being famished is an extreme state to be in, so I don’t think you can be a bit famished any more than one can be a bit dead. The states of being dead or famished are both either/or propositions. In other words, either you are or you are not, and there is no ‘a bit’ about it.”
“Thank you so much for the language lesson, Bones,” I said sarcastically. “Now that that’s out of the way, what would you like Mr. Javier to prepare us for lunch?”
He considered. “I could go for a nice Dover sole.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Mr. Javier has gone off fishing.”
“You mean to say the turtle is not here?”
“No, that is not what I mean to say at all. By ‘off fishing’ I do not mean it in the usual way to imply one is on vacation somewhere. I mean he’s gone off the thing itself. He refuses to do it anymore.”
“And why is that?”
“He says some of the creatures who live in the water are friends of his and he refuses to be party to their being turned into dinner anymore.”
“The turtle says all that, does he?”
“He does, as of this morning. Although, to his credit, he says all of that quite cheerfully, given the subject.”
Since Bones had created the jetpack, a change had come over Mr. Javier. Many changes, in fact.
Oh, to be sure, in the beginning, when Mr. Javier first got the contraption, he had trouble controlling the thing. He was forever banging into walls and bashing his head against the ceiling.
But as the days passed and he gained mastery of the device, a new confidence was instilled in him and I noted an increased joy in his work. This made me wonder, guiltily: Before Bones came, had I been a bad mistress to Mr. Javier? But there hadn’t been much time for me to feel guilty because with his new confidence in his work, Mr. Javier had also acquired a stronger sense of self-worth. Which had led him to make what were becoming increasingly more annoying demands.
Like the off-fishing thing.
“So, no more fish?” the dog said.
I shook my head ruefully. “Not even a shrimp.”
The dog considered. “I suppose there will be a lot of chicken in our future, won’t there?”
“Well, unless the turtle goes off chicken too.”
Thankfully, the turtle had not gone off chicken.
About an hour later, Bones and I found ourselves seated on high-backed chairs in the dining room at either ends of the long table, enjoying our midday meal beneath the chandelier (which did add a lovely glow to the table).
“You know,” the dog said, sucking on a chicken bone as he considered our surroundings, “I’m thinking of painting the walls red. I read somewhere that red walls aid digestion.”
“You most assuredly will not,” I said.
“But I could.”
“But I will not let you.”
“And why is that? I’m a rather accomplished painter, if I do say so myself. My work, I am told, has a da Vinci flair to it.”
“Be that as it may – although I’m guessing that no one actually compared your painting to da Vinci’s, whomever she may be – I let you bring your chandeliers and all your other things in here, but I will not let you paint my walls. Changing my walls would be a bridge too far.”
“I’ll accept that,” the dog said, “for now.” He picked up and sucked on another chicken bone. “By the way, I do like a fricassee as well as the next chap, but I do wonder if Mr. Javier might not be persuaded to try doing something else with a chicken.”
“I wouldn’t ask him that if I were you.”
“No?” Bones raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“If you do, he might tell you that we can just do our own cooking from now on if we don’t like his.”
Bones considered and then came the rueful: “He might say that, mightn’t he?”
“The New Mr. Javier?”
Bones nodded.
“I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet. Then we’d be left with a housekeeper/cook minus the cook.”
Bones threw down the last bone. “Stop dawdling, Catson.”
“Me? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you want me to tell you about Utah?”
“I’m not going to tell you about Utah just yet,” the dog said, in that infuriating way he had.
“Well, thank you so very much for leading me right up to the thing and then leaving me hanging. Must every conversation with you be a series of cliffhangers?”
“Ah, but I don’t find the cliffs to hang things on; the cliffs find me.”
The cliffs find me? What arrogance! I was about to point out as much when he made things so much worse by adding:
“I am the world’s greatest consulting detective, am I not?”
I rolled my eyes.
“I do understand your feeling of professional jealousy, Catson, but only one of us can be the best. The best is another one of those things like famished or dead – you either are or you are not. And, in my case, I am the best and there’s nothing more to say about it.”
Now, not only was I rolling my eyes, but I wanted to kick him too, which I would never do. I’m not the vi
olent sort. In the Cat Wars, I didn’t fight; rather I stitched and sewed up and tried to repair and save those who did fight. But roll my eyes and want to kick him I did, because not only was what he said annoying to me, but I also knew that last part was wrong. Nothing more to say about it? I knew him. If he stayed living here long enough, he’d find plenty more to say about it. Over and over again.
“You were saying?” I prompted. “About not being ready to discuss Utah yet?”
“Why, yes. I thought that, first, it might be best to review the details of the last case we worked together, since that case is tied in to this case.”
“I still don’t know what ‘this case’ is!”
“All in good time, all in good time.”
How infuriating. It was the verbal equivalent of being patted on the head by a human.
“You will recall,” the dog said, “that our last case formally began with the murder of a man with a German name.”
“Yes, I do recall. And I also recall that at the time, I suggested – and you and the public human detectives all agreed – that we could just refer to him as, er, John Smith.”
I have the devil of a time trying to get names of foreign origin straight – really, any human names can throw me – and so I had settled on this as a solution that would work nicely for everybody, especially me.
I also remembered the two public human detectives involved in the case. One was an Inspector Strange, who Bones had apparently had several previous dealings with. Bones and Inspector Strange did not appear to like each other much. In my opinion, Inspector Strange resented that he had a need for Bones’s superior intellect and Bones resented that Inspector Strange never credited him for the cases he solved. The other public human detective, a rather quiet chap, I knew only as Inspector No One Very Important, due to the fact that I missed his name the first times it was spoken and it would have been embarrassing to ask for it after so much time had passed.
“Just so,” the dog agreed. “And you will further recall that a second murder took place.”
Sherlock Bones 2: Dog Not Gone! Page 2
