by Jack Lugar
I nodded and smiled. “I can’t say I was doing my job, nor was I being a clown.”
Mr. Barncat laughed. “I’m always thankful for good fortune.”
Knowing the clock was ticking, I redirected the conversation. “Before I go back out, I do have one question for you.”
“What’s that?” he responded.
“The broken guide wire from the tightrope,” I started. “I was trying to find it…”
“Well, that’s easy,” he interrupted. “It’s under the bleachers. I had it put there because I figured you’d want to take a look at it.”
“But that’s just the problem,” I said. “It’s gone.”
The look on C. T. Barncat’s face said it all. He had been hoping that all the occurrences of possible sabotage were just accidents. That the wire breaking, the weight falling on Bobo, and even the fire in the bleachers were just bad luck; but the wire disappearing, that had to be at the paw of a cat. It had to be someone who worked at the carnival and had regular access to the big performance tent.
“As you can see, I have some work to do,” I said, breaking the silence.
I started to get up when I heard what sounded like a small squeaky sneeze. Turning, I saw a quick movement in the corner.
“What was that?” Mr. Barncat asked.
“I think we have a guest,” I whispered as I gradually moved to the corner. I could see what looked like a tiny, hairless tail sticking out from behind a box. Crouching down, I held still for a moment and then pounced grabbing the tail between my paws. Without disturbing much of Mr. Barncat’s collection, I was able to emerge with what I thought would be a tiny mouse. Instead, as I opened my paws, and took the creature by its tail, I revealed a sharply dressed miniature cat dangling at the end. It was Teeny Tiny Tom.
“Tom?!” Mr. Barncat exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“L…L…let me explain C. T.”
C. T. Barncat stepped up close to Teeny Tiny Tom. His teeth sparkling.
“I… I… I was concerned about the bad things that were happening and when this new clown appeared, I thought he might have something to do with all the problems. Then I saw him with you, and I was concerned that he might hurt you. Please don’t let him eat me!” he squeaked.
“Eat you?” I asked. “Why would I eat another cat?”
Mr. Barncat had a bit of a sheepish look on his face, and I started to put things together. Teeny Tiny Tom was not at all what he appeared to be. Teeny Tiny Tom wasn’t the world’s smallest cat. He was just a mouse dressed as a cat. It was all a hoax. I, along with all the other patrons of C. T. Barncat’s Catastic Carnival, had been fooled by a mouse in a cat costume. It’s like many things in life. We believe what we want to believe no matter how much logic tells us it’s not true. I wanted to believe that Tiny Tom was the smallest cat in the world. And why not? It was fun to believe. Fun to let my imagination take me on a journey to places otherwise unreachable. Fun to believe that somewhere in the world cats could be as small as a mouse.
“Let me explain, Katz,” Mr. Barncat said as he took Teeny Tiny Tom from my paws and set him in the chair. “Tiny Tom is an old friend of mine back from my days in the barn in St. Pawl. We met when I was only a kitten and didn’t know that cats and mice don’t get along. We’ve had a secret friendship for many years, and he’s worked with me ever since I started my first carnival. In fact, he is my best and most trusted friend.”
Sitting down next to Tiny Tom, Mr. Barncat explained to him that he’d hired me to help investigate all the mysterious accidents. He continued, explaining, “The disguise is an attempt at Mr. Pajamas keeping a low profile. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know.”
Mr. C. T. Barncat paused a moment, thoughtfully looking at the mouse. It was obvious this was a true friend. “I guess a proper introduction is due,” he said as he looked over at me. “Katz, this is Cassius Peanut, or as you know him, Teeny Tiny Tom.”
The mouse bowed and extended the tiniest of paws. As you can imagine, I’ve found myself in many strange situations with my line of work, but I would have never guessed that one day I would shake the paw of a mouse. Today was that day.
“Cassius, this is Katz Pajamas,” Mr. Barncat continued.
“You obviously have a good eye or keen sense for sniffing out deception,” I said, complimenting my new acquaintance. “You did better than I did because I had no clue that you weren’t a cat, and I’m a trained professional.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pajamas,” he said with an air of formality, “but you have to remember, while your livelihood depends on sniffing out deceptions, my life depends on maintaining mine.”
I nodded, acknowledging that his situation was direr.
“Tonight, I almost let my curiosity get the better of me,” Cassius continued. “Unlike a real cat, I don’t have nine lives.”
“And curiosity won’t only kill a cat,” I added.
“Agreed. I’m probably the last of my litter,” he said. “At one point there was Caspian, Calvin, Carlos, Cameron, Clifford, Crispin, Carrington, Carmichael, and Coltraine. But now it’s only me and maybe Cornelius.”
“Maybe?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen or heard from Cornelius in years.”
“He was always looking for trouble,” C. T. Barncat interjected.
“So you think he finally found it,” I said.
“Or it found him,” Cassius replied as he nodded, looking much like a bobblehead doll.
I found the cat imposter to be very engaging. I could tell he had many stories to tell, and who wouldn’t if you were a mouse pretending to be a cat. As much as I wanted to just sit, have a mocha milk, and hear the harrowing tales of being a mouse in a cat world, I knew I had to be about my work.
Excusing myself from Mr. Barncat’s tent, I went to my smaller changing tent where Saber… or maybe it was Barkley, I still didn’t know which one was which, met me with a change of costume. Gladly, I was able to remove my clown disguise and trade it for something a little more normal. In fact, I took on much of the appearance of the carney cat, Ichabod, with a skimmer hat, candy-striped jacket, and bow tie. With this outfit, my hope was to blend right in with the other carnies on the midway and get a different angle on all the mysterious occurrences.
Taking one last look at myself in the mirror by the front entrance of my changing tent, I straightened my bow tie and cocked my hat before exiting back into the chaotic energy of the carnival midway.
It’s moments like these when I wished there were two of me. I wanted to go back and talk to Ichabod, extend my abbreviated conversation with Bobo Bananas, and revisit the underside of the bleachers where the broken wire had last been seen all at the same time. As I walked into the midway, I decided that a short visit to the bleachers might be the easiest way to quickly fill in some of the blanks. Plus, it would only take a moment since I already knew the wire was missing.
My plan was to double check that I hadn’t somehow overlooked the broken wire and then move on to find Bobo. Of course, I know better than to expect my plans to go according to design because something usually pops up that takes me in a new direction. That never stops me from making plans, but it helps me stay on my toes and be ready to follow the clues.
I entered the tent and turned toward the bleacher section when I heard a feminine voice from behind me. “You must be lost.”
A little startled, I turned to discover Caterina, the tightrope walker, standing there propped up by her crutches. Seeing her, I realized I hadn’t calculated for the fact that I was pretending to be someone completely different than the trapeze artist she had met earlier. Would she recognize me, or would my new disguise be enough to continue the ruse?
All I could do was continue what I’d started and hopefully not be discovered. “You would be right,” I said with a smile, trying not to let on that I had a secret.
Seeing my face, she cocked her head a little. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“
You look familiar,” she said. “Weren’t you here earlier?”
She did recognize me, but I had an idea. “Here? I don’t think so.”
“You look a lot like a cat I met earlier. He’s new to our carnival. A trapeze artist.”
“Oh! You mean my brother!” I said, thinking quickly. What had I said my name was? Milktooth? Milton? Mike? Miles? Yes, it was Miles. Miles Milktooth. “My brother is Miles. I’m Mick. Or Mickey. Mickey Milktooth.”
“Are you identical twins?” she asked. “You sure do look a lot alike.”
“We’re from the same litter. A litter of seven,” I replied, “but he’s the one with all the talent. I’m afraid of heights,” which wasn’t really true. “Wherever he goes, I can usually tag along.”
“So what can I help you find?”
“Actually, Mr. Barncat said something about a broken wire and that I could find it under the bleachers. Do you know where that might be?”
I could see that the mention of the broken wire was unpleasant to her, which was also reflected in her tone as she replied, “Well, you’re standing by the bleachers, so I guess it would be underneath.”
As a detective, I’ve never been afraid to ask what might appear to be a stupid question. The worst that can happen is I get a stupid answer as I did in this case. However, sometimes the stupid question yields so much more. Maybe there was another set of bleachers I hadn’t seen, which was unlikely.
I turned to look at the bleachers and feigned surprise at seeing the section of seating. “What do you know! If it were a snake, it would have bitten me.”
“Yeah, what do you know,” she responded dryly. I don’t think she’d bought much of my story, but she didn’t really seem to care much either.
I decided to keep to my work and bid her goodbye and swiftly ducked under the bleachers and out of sight. Quickly doing a once around the space, I hoped to find that I’d overlooked it the last time. I checked behind the metal support posts that held up the seating and found nothing. There really weren’t many, if any, places for the wire to be hiding, which seemed to indicate only one real possibility. The hole.
I had noted the lines in the dirt that had led to the hole when I’d been there earlier. The same trail was still there leading directly to the hole. I figured that the trail in the dirt was from the wire that had been dragged into the opening in the ground and not caused by a snake. At least that’s what I hoped. But who did it? And why?
Getting down on all fours, I poked my head into the hole, but all I could see was pitch black. However, what I lacked in not being able to see was replaced by the awful stench that hit me in the face. It was the same putrid smell that I’d encountered before, but this time it wasn’t just a whiff, it was a full force stink bomb.
As much as I wanted to walk away from the hole and never look back, I knew that I had to explore further. First, I had to find out if the broken wire had been taken into the hole, and second, I had to find out what was on the other end of what I quickly discovered was more than just a simple hole. In fact, it was a lengthy tunnel.
With my smart phone in hand and the flashlight app on, I took one last breath of fresh air before submerging myself head first through the entrance of the tunnel. In situations like this, I have to stay focused on the case and not let my imagination get carried away. It’s easy, when crawling into a dark, narrow space to picture giant snakes or carnivorous moles waiting below to devour me. I know thoughts like that are mostly ridiculous, but that doesn’t stop my mind from venturing into the fantastic.
Considering that I was investigating a mystery at a carnival with a sideshow of amazing oddities, a giant cat-eating snake didn’t seem like an impossibility. To ease my mind, I reminded myself that much of the carnival was just make believe, noting that Teeny Tiny Tom wasn’t a small cat at all but a normal sized mouse. On the other hand, the hole’s opening was extremely large, which meant it was created by something of considerable size.
It was a tight fit for a cat my size, but I never entered a section that impeded my progress and only a couple times did I have to crawl on all fours.
After working my way through the tunnel for about fifty feet, I came to a spot where it split into two directions. With only one of me and two options, I had to make a decision.
And that’s when it hit me. I remembered where I’d come across that smell before thanks to the pungent odor wafting from the tunnel on the right.
Back when I was a Cat Cop, my team came across an ominously dark alley with burrows like this one all over the place. There was one at the corner of a brick wall and a dumpster. Another by a barrel where a fire blazed unattended. After further inspection of the burrows, we discovered that they were an intricate network of tunnels leading to places all over the city like a subway without trains.
Having discovered where the smell, the combination of rotting food and hamper full of unwashed sports socks, had come from back in my Cat Cop days, I had no need to follow the tunnel on the right. I was pretty sure I knew what I’d find at the end of that tunnel. Right now, I wanted to see where the opening to the left would take me.
I continued to inch my way through the tunnel until I finally could see a dim light in the distance. My curiosity of what might be at the end encouraged me to increase my pace. The closer I came to the exit, the light grew brighter and the sounds of carnival music, games, and children started to fill my ears.
Finally, I was at the opening. A place I hadn’t expected at all.
I pushed my head through the opening and into the momentarily blinding sunlight, which forced me to scrunch my eyes shut. Gradually opening one to a squint, I took in my surroundings and concluded that I was in one of the game booths. Opening my second eye, I wasn’t able to see everything quite clearly yet, but I was able to make out a figure moving toward me.
“What are you doing here?” the familiar sounding figure said as he approached. “Did the boss send you to replace me?”
Still trying to get my bearings, I wasn’t able to respond.
“C’mon, hurry up and get out of there,” he said as he pulled me out of the hole. “Can’t let anyone see you. They might get suspicious.”
“Suspicious?” I questioned.
“Yeah, the boss says there’s some cat snooping around dressed as a clown,” he divulged.
“Really?”
“Yeah, so we gotta step up our game and make this place come crashing down,” he snarled. “Apparently, he’s the one who put out the fire at the clown show. I knew he couldn’t have been a real clown because none of them is smart enough to know what to do.”
My eyes had finally adjusted to the light and I was able to clearly see who had greeted me at the hole. I can’t say that I was surprised, finding Ichabod on the other end of the tunnel, but I wasn’t sure what his angle was. Was he the catalyst for everything going wrong? He mentioned a boss, so he surely wasn’t in charge. Unless… Maybe he knew I was the one who was investigating, and he was trying to get me to spill the beans.
The sun glinted off the thick lens of his glasses as he circled me. “Wowsers, this is a really good costume,” he said. “I can’t see the zipper anywhere.”
Costume? I thought to myself. Zippers? He obviously wasn’t referring to my candy-striped jacket and skimmer hat. Quickly, I realized he thought I was in a cat costume.
It was all starting to piece together for me. The costumes. The smells. The tunnels. Ichabod had helped me answer some of the most pressing questions, and he had no clue it was me because we’d met when I was dressed as a clown. Only one question remained now that I knew Ichabod was one of the perpetrators creating all the damage around the carnival.
That question? Who was this boss he spoke about?
It was my hope that maybe Ichabod would accidentally say his boss’s name and I could wrap this up. “Yeah, the boss sent me,” I told him. “He wants to see you.”
“Me? Why?” The sound of sudden panic was clear in his tone.
Who w
ould strike such fear in Ichabod? What cat would have such an intimidating presence? I mentally scanned through everyone I’d met who could be a suspect. Gigi? Bobo Bananas? N. Kahoots? Barkley or Saber?... I still didn’t know which was which. Or Caterina? None of them seemed like candidates to be the boss. Bobo Bananas and Caterina had been injured because of the sabotage, Gigi just seemed and sounded too innocent, and Barkley and Saber both already knew that I was investigating. That only left N. Kahoots; the funny shaped, police clown.
“I… I… I just… just saw him a little bit ago,” he stammered. “How could he think I’d know anymore by now?”
Shrugging, I replied, “You know how the boss is.”
“Yeah, but, it’s not fair. Did he say what he wanted?”
“No, but maybe he just wants you to…” I really wasn’t sure what to say, so I was hoping Ichabod would take my lead. “You know…”
“I know. He probably just has a new plan for me to put in motion with this investigation going on. It’s just that he’s so intimidating.”
I nodded hoping to elicit more information.
“Where’s he at?”
Of course, I had no clue where the boss was located because I didn’t even know who that boss was, let alone what he was. All I knew was that he was intimidating, so I responded, “He said you’d know where to find him.”
“Right,” Ichabod replied. “That guy eats like a pig. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t let anyone win the stuffed mouse. I promised my kid I’d swipe it for him and that’s my last one.”
Before I knew it, Ichabod had disappeared into the hole and left me alone at the Balloon and Dart game. Of course, I had no interest or time to spend watching a game with a mystery to solve.
I needed to find out who the boss was and the only way to do that was to follow Ichabod, but to crawl back into the hole might draw too much attention and leave me no escape if he realized I was following him. Instead, I decided to take a more traditional path to Vittles Village, which was the main location for all the traditional carnival foods. While there were several little food carts throughout the park, it was impossible to efficiently check all of those since I wasn’t directly following Ichabod. Instead, I was hopeful that his boss’s favorite spot to eat was in Vittles Village. It was a gamble, but one I was going to have to take.