“Yes,” I said. “We all agreed we could call that second victim the Secretary which only made sense since he was, in fact, Mr. Smith’s secretary.”
“That is also correct, although the Secretary – an American, I might add – did have a name, and that name is Stangerson.”
“Potato, potahto,” I said. “Plus, if we start calling him that now, Stangerson being so close in name to Inspector Strange, I shall become thoroughly confused. If he figures further into the tale, can we not continue calling him the Secretary?”
After much thought, the dog nodded. “I will agree this time, to what you think are simplified names, but I do hope, if we are to continue in business together, that soon you will embrace what is accurate rather than what is easiest for your brain.”
It sounded to me as though there were more than one insult buried in there. A couple of other things rankled about it as well.
One, ‘if we are to continue in business together’? What, was I on trial here? I thought he was! Just because I’d let him move his things in, no one ever said I’d let him make this situation permanent. It was still my house.
Two, this idea of a longer acquaintance with him changing me in some way. What about me needed to change? I would confess that since meeting the dog, my limp had decreased both in severity and the amount it troubled me. Perhaps I limped less because he kept me so active. Or – and oh, how I hate to entertain this thought – maybe he was good for me in that he kept me so busy, both in mind and body, I no longer had time to dwell on what was really a minor physical impediment?
But then, hadn’t he changed too? When I first met him, even though so much about him had struck me as strange (what kind of dog wears a deerstalker hat?), he had in essence been your typical dog – panting, over-eager – and he was now a little less so. Interesting. Our acquaintance was causing us to change already.
A large paw passed in front of my field of vision, quickly followed by the sound of snapping paws.
“Huh?” I said, uncharacteristically struck dumb. I felt as though I was emerging from a trance.
“Earth to Catson,” the dog said.
Is there anything more annoying than the old “Earth to X”?
“Earth to Catson,” the dog said again, flicking his paw gently against my skull repeatedly in a tapping motion.
Apparently so. A skull-flick definitely beats “Earth to X” on the annoyance scale.
“I am, as always, present and accounted for,” I said with no small degree of grumpiness.
“I don’t know about that ‘always’ … ” he started to say before I interrupted.
“Are you going to say something important soon, or are you simply going to go on insulting me? Because if it is to be the latter, I may as well go back to daydreaming.”
“Dreaming of squirrels, were you?”
“I prefer not to say.” Well, I certainly wasn’t about to tell him that I’d actually been thinking of him.
“Fine, have it your way,” he continued. “Finally, you will recall that the murderer, who I apprehended through the use of my superior detecting skills, was a rather tall man with tiny feet by the name of Jefferson Hope.”
“I don’t know as that I’d word it all quite like that, but yes, that is what happened.”
“Good, because that brings us to – ”
“Utah!” I cried triumphantly.
Two could play at this game.
“Just about,” the dog said. “I have a story to tell you first. Shall we repair to the drawing room?”
He meant the living room, of course. I’d learned rather early on in my acquaintance with him that he would never use one word for a thing if he could use a grander, more important-sounding one.
Whenever Bones settles down on the floor, it’s always massively annoying. He either flops down wherever he’s standing, with no regard to where he is or what he might knock over with that great big tail of his, or he adopts a trial-and-error approach – this spot here, that spot there – as if it’s so hard to get it just right. He’s a regular Goldilocks like that. Me, I’m so much simpler. I just find whatever spot is in line with the sun coming through the window, so my fur will feel warm and cozy, and I’m all set.
As I curled up before the fireplace, preparing to listen, I did wonder. I’d heard of drawing-room mysteries, of course. Hasn’t everyone? But it had never occurred to me before that it could mean me in a drawing room listening to a dog tell me about a mystery.
“The story I am about to tell you,” he started, draping an elbow over the mantelpiece, “begins a few decades ago … ”
He had a way of speaking, drawing every word out, milking it for all the drama it was worth. I would have liked to walk away, show him I wasn’t really interested in his story. There was just one problem: I totally was. Then:
Knock.
Knock. Knock.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
Who could it be?
For the first time it occurred to me. Despite Bones’s overconfidence that clients would just somehow find us, could this be about a new case?
“I’ll get it, Bosses, I’ll get it!”
Mr. Javier came flying out of the kitchen, held aloft by his jetpack. Expertly, he flew down the long flight of stairs and pulled open the door.
Was there another murder afoot?
Or – perhaps even worse – could it be the dreaded Moriarty?
No. It was puppies.
I could tell this from the incessant yapping that is particular to the youth of the dog species. You’d never hear a group of kittens being so loud. Also because I heard Waggins say to Mr. Javier, in his street-urchin accent: “Is Mr. Bones at home? Can he come out and play?”
“Your little friends are here,” I said wryly.
“Yes, he is,” I heard Mr. Javier say to Waggins. “But he and Dr. Catson are busy discussing important matters in the drawing room.”
I collapsed my head into my paws. Great. Now the dog had the turtle calling the living room the drawing room too.
“That’s quite all right, Mr. Javier!” Bones bellowed. “You may send the puppies up!”
There followed all the scampering and annoying displays of enthusiasm one would expect from a six-pack of puppies as they made their hurried way up into the drawing room. Er, I mean living room.
Behind them, a hovering Mr. Javier brought up the rear.
“Waggins!” Bones enthused. “And puppies!” This last confirmed something I’d been suspecting: that Bones had his own issues with names, meaning he had never bothered to learn what the other five were called, still had no clue, and now was too embarrassed to ask.
Before anyone could say anything further, the six-pack of puppies were falling all over themselves in their eagerness to greet their good friend, the dog. Big as he was, their sheer numbers soon brought him to the floor. Then commenced the kind of overenthusiastic canine display of affection that I hope to never see the likes of again – all that tumbling and rolling. At one point I had to actually shout, “Look out for that vase!” but no one was listening.
At last, the puppies exhausted by their exertions, order was somewhat restored.
“Now, you lot sit and behave,” Waggins admonished the other five, as though he hadn’t been involved. “You just sit there on the couch and listen to what Mr. Bones has to say.”
Obediently, the puppies lined up in a military straight line side by side on the sofa, with Waggins all the way at one end and Bones sitting up importantly on the floor in front of them.
“I was just about to tell dear Dr. Catson,” Bones said, “a story involving the last case we worked on. You do remember, don’t you, er, John Smith, the Secretary, and the double murder which culminated in the arrest of Jefferson Hope?”
The five unnamed puppies thumped their Cocker Spaniel tails and wagged their heads and Waggins said, “Remember it, sir? We helped you to solve it!”
“J
ust so,” Bones said. “Would you like to hear the story as well, then?”
More eager tail thumping and head wagging. Oh, I did wish they would stop. If they kept it up, Bones would return to his overeager ways.
“Ahem.”
Who said that?
“Ahem. Ahem-ahem-ahem-ahem-AHEM!”
“Oh!” Bones said. “Mr. Javier!”
“Why have all the puppies been invited to listen to the mystery story but not Mr. Javier?”
“Well, I – ”
“Does Mr. Javier not like mystery stories? Is Mr. Javier not considered to be intelligent? Do you think that Mr. Javier is just a housekeeper/cook without a brain in his head?”
When did Mr. Javier become so testy? And when did the turtle begin referring to himself in the third person?
“Yes, well – ” Bones tried again.
“Has Mr. Javier no feelings? Does Mr. Javier not bleed when you prick him?”
And now the turtle was quoting Shakespeare!
“Of course you are welcome to join us,” Bones said graciously, recovering from his initial surprise at the turtle onslaught. “Please sit.” With his paw, he indicated the one comfy seat not currently occupied by puppies. It just so happened to be the comfy cushion in the bay window, my usual favorite spot for napping.
I was forced to settle for one of the wing chairs. Since it was still facing the fireplace, and since I couldn’t turn it around by myself, I was further forced once I was seated to crane my neck around the back of the chair so I could see the group. I suppose I could have taken a seat on the floor, like the dog, but I prefer not to floor-sit in polite company. Or impolite, for that matter – you know, puppies – because company is still company.
“I just assumed,” Bones said, continuing to placate the turtle, “that you were too busy with more important things to listen to my story.”
“The dusting can wait,” Mr. Javier said. “I would like to be entertained. I would like to be intellectually stimulated for once.”
“Very well. Then I shall begin.”
Finally! I thought.
“But it is quite a tale I am about to tell you,” the dog said with his usual air of self-importance, as he gave stern looks all around but mostly at the puppies, “so I do hope there will be no interruptions.”
The puppies smirked and snickered at this.
“Limited interruptions?” Bones tried, hopefully.
“HA!” Mr. Javier barked a most un-Mr.-Javier-like laugh. “We shall see about that.”
“Once upon a time,” the dog began, “or, in this instance, several decades ago … ”
“I hope this won’t be too much like a history lesson,” Waggins piped up. “I’ve never been much good with history.”
“You should learn to be,” Bones said, glaring at him, “but I assure you, it will not. As I was saying – ”
“He’s going to tell us all about Utah,” I whispered to the puppies and Mr. Javier.
“Not geography!” Waggins cried, clapping a paw over his eyes.
“Not that either!” Bones assured him loudly. “Now will you all please just listen!”
We stared back at him, uniformly wounded. Well, he didn’t need to shout at us, did he?
“Somewhere, in the United States of America, in the desert – ” Bones attempted to begin again.
“Is it all desert over there,” Puppy #1 asked, “in the United States of America?”
“Not at all,” Bones said. “Some of it is desert, some of it contains mountains, and much of it borders on the ocean. In fact, it contains nearly every form of landscape and weather one could imagine.”
He may have hated to be interrupted, but he equally loved being the one with all the knowledge. Which was annoying.
“You talk about it as though you have firsthand knowledge,” I said testily, “like you’ve been there yourself.”
“Oh, but I have, my dear Catson,” he said, clearly surprised by my comment. “I’m a world traveler. I’ve been just about everywhere.”
Well, lah-di-dah. A world traveler. This made me feel like Fred the horse. “Even Antarctica?” I said, accompanied by a snort.
“Of course,” he said, amending, “well, in the summer.”
I resented this, all of it. I’d never had occasion to travel very far from home. Even the Cat Wars were fought somewhat locally.
“In the desert of the United States of America, several decades ago, there was a man and a little girl,” Bones said.
“How old was the little girl?” asked Puppy #2.
“About five, if memory serves,” Bone said. “Now, this man and this little girl were not related, but they were, however, the sole survivors of a group that had originally numbered at least twenty.”
“Were the rest of their company murdered?” asked Puppy #5, with an unseemly level of glee at such a prospect.
“Not at all,” Bones said. “The rest were merely the victims of a variety of misfortunes that tended to befall travelers traveling west in those days.”
“But will there be a murder in the story?” Puppy #5 pressed. “Like, really soon?”
“Perhaps,” Bones said. “You must wait and listen.”
“The man and the girl, as I said, were near death,” Bones said.
“Did he say that part before?” Puppy #3 said.
“I don’t think so,” Puppy #4 said. “If he had, I’d surely have remembered.”
“Bones,” I said, “do you think we might have some names for the man and the girl? I think it will get confusing, calling them ‘the man’ and ‘the girl,’ if there are other men and girls in the story.”
“Quite so, my dear Catson. For while there is just the one girl, there are as yet many men to come in the tale. We shall call the man … ” Here he tapped his paw against his chin thoughtfully. “Joe Fur.”
Fur. Now, there was a fabulous name!
I have a lot of fur myself, all over my body, and I am very fond of it.
“And the girl?” I prompted.
“Well, since there’s only one of her in the story, I see no point – ”
“Yes, but what if she grows up during the course of the tale? It will be odd calling her ‘the girl’ if she becomes an old woman at some point in the telling.”
“Fine. We shall call her Lucy. Lucy Fur.”
“And why does she have the same name as the man? They weren’t related, right?”
“They weren’t, but since all of her family died before the tale begins, the man, Joe Fur, claims her as his daughter.” Bones sighed. “May I go on now?”
I stared at him blankly. “Who is trying to stop you?”
“As our scene opens,” Bones said, “we find Joe Fur and Lucy Fur –although she is not known by that last name as yet, Catson – in the desert. They are near death, like so many have been before them. Suddenly!” And here he waved an arm in the air as if calling the vision in his mind into sight. “On the horizon, a thunderous cloud of dust approaches!”
“Will they die in a dust storm?” Puppy #2 asked, sounding fearful.
“That would be disappointing,” said Puppy #5, exhibiting what I now suspected to be his very bloodthirsty nature. “I was hoping for a murder, possibly two, to kick things off.”
“I’m afraid to disappoint you, my young friends,” Bones said. “But at this juncture, there will be no deaths by dust or otherwise. Rather, the dust storm is the prelude to their salvation!”
“Salvation?” Puppy #5 made a face. “That doesn’t sound like very much fun.”
“Perhaps not for you,” Bones said. “But for Joe Fur and Lucy, it is a wonderful thing. Coming towards them are ten thousand living people, some on horseback, some in wagons, and many on foot. There are men, women, and even children in their numbers.”
“Did he say ten thousand?” Puppy #4 said, incredulous. “That would be like a whole town!”
“I did indeed say that,” B
ones said, “and it was like a whole town, as you so brilliantly put it.”
Puppy #4 preened with pride. I doubted he had had anyone in his life to compliment him on his brain power before now.
“Because,” Bones said, “these ten thousand were heading west for that very purpose: to start their very own town.”
“But why?” Puppy #2 asked.
“Oh, I could list all sorts of reasons, all having to do with either politics or what-have-you.”
Personally, I was curious about the what-have-you.
What can I say? Politics tends to bore me. Perhaps one day, if they ever allow a cat to hold elected office – Prime Minister Catson, perhaps? – I’ll change my mind. But until then, give me what-have-you over politics any day.
Bones gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “That part really doesn’t matter. For our purposes, it is enough to know that their purpose was to find their own little place in the world. I will tell you, though, that there are some people who believe that only people who think like them are right and that everyone else is wrong. The people heading toward Joe Fur and Lucy were those kinds of people. They all had like-minded beliefs on certain subjects and they only wanted to live among those who shared those beliefs.”
“Kind of like their own private Utah,” I said.
“More or less,” Bones said.
“No, I mean really,” I said. “We’ve finally arrived at Utah, haven’t we?”
“Just about,” Bones said. “Now, this group of ten thousand … I can’t keep calling them ‘this group of ten thousand.’ It’s becoming cumbersome. Nor do I want to use their real name, for I know some of you,” and here he cast a glance at me, “have trouble with certain names from time to time. So we need to pick a new title for them.”
I resented this.
“How about,” Bones suggested, “if we simply refer to them as the Group?”
The puppies looked at each other, then at me. I looked back at the puppies before we heard a loud “Ahem!” Then the puppies all exchanged looks with Mr. Javier before Mr. Javier exchanged looks with me. I can safely say that by the time we were done exchanging looks, we were all dizzy from spinning our heads every which way.
Sherlock Bones 2: Dog Not Gone! Page 3
