The Case of the Clever Secret Code

by Cindy Vincent

  There was only one place where I knew I could get the kind of advice that I needed.

  The Wise One.

  And Miss Mokie was only a few rooms away. So I turned and walked toward the sunroom. Slowly. Very slowly. For some reason, I always felt a little nervous when I was around Miss Mokie. Maybe it was because she was so smart that it almost seemed like she could read my mind.

  Or maybe it was because she was absolutely revered in our house. It was said that she once ruled the roost with an iron paw. And other cats learned pretty quickly to show her respect and not to talk back to her. I only hoped I would be as old and wise as she was one day.

  Then again, Miss Mokie was so old that nobody even knew exactly how old she was anymore. I guess she had lived a lot longer than most cats ever did. I remembered Gracie once saying that Miss Mokie was over a hundred in human years. I wasn’t sure how old that made her in cat years, though. But it still sounded really, really old to me! I did know that she'd been to lots of different places and seen lots of different things in her life. Some said she'd even flown on an airplane once. Bogey told me she'd lived in five different states and two different countries.

  I guess that's what happens when you get to be so old. It seems like the more candles you count on your birthday cake, the more stuff you've done and learned in life. So by the time you get to be really, really, really old, you have all kinds of wisdom.

  Yet even though Miss Mokie had become very wise, her joints were kind of stiff and achy. That meant she had a hard time getting around the house. So she mostly just stayed in the sunroom. Because she liked to feel the warmth of the sun as soon as it came up in the morning. The heat made her aching joints feel better.

  I finally made it to the sunroom door and I peeked inside. Then I paused to take a deep breath. Sure, I had to run surveillance on this room every night. But that was a whole different ballgame from going inside and asking for advice. Running surveillance was just part of my job.

  But asking for advice? Well, sometimes that took a little more courage than I really had.

  So I closed my eyes and took another deep breath. I tried to remember all the brave things I’d already done in my life. For some reason, I couldn’t seem to think of a one. And it didn't help that I knew even Bogey felt a little nervous around the Wise One.

  Still, I wanted to know what she thought about Gracie’s situation. Especially since I didn’t want to see Gracie feel so sad. And sometimes a guy just has to be brave for the ones he loves. So I opened my eyes and stood up nice and tall. Then I stepped into the room.

  Miss Mokie noticed me the second I walked in. Just like always. She is a huge, gray cat with long fur. Her fur sticks out in a ruff around her neck that kind of makes her look like a lion. Bogey said she was a kind of cat called a Norwegian Forest cat. And even though she’s a little shaky these days, her green eyes are still bright and full of life.

  She was lounging on her purple velvet couch, like she always did. She raised a paw just as I stepped inside the room, letting me know that I should halt.

  “Please identity yourself,” she commanded.

  I bowed, just like Bogey had taught me to do. "It's me, Miss Mokie. Detective Buckley Bergdorf."

  She nodded to me, like a queen nodding to her subject. “Ah yes, young Detective. Please enter and partake of a drink.” She pointed a paw in the direction of her private water dish.

  I noticed the Princess was also in the room. She was stretched out on a flowered chair with her front feet crossed. She waved to me.

  Of course, seeing the Princess with her big, green eyes didn’t exactly help matters. My heart started to pound, but I quickly leaned over the water dish and took a nice sip. Luckily the cool water helped me to keep my cool. Besides that, it would have been rude not to take a drink. And us cats always used our very best manners around Miss Mokie.

  When I’d finished, I stood up straight and turned to face her. Before I’d walked in, I had a pretty good idea what I wanted to say. But now all of a sudden, my mind went blank. And I do mean blank. It was like all my thoughts had just completely disappeared. Like someone had wiped them away. And I had no idea what to say.

  But the Wise One knew exactly what to say. I guess that’s the way it goes when you’re so old and wise.

  She nodded to me. “Ah, young one. I see that you are terribly troubled and something is weighing heavily on your mind. Perhaps some event has distressed you. Perhaps it has something to do with the very kind daughter of our human parents.”

  Right about then, my eyes flew wide open. How in the world did she know that?

  Wow, this cat really was wise. That, or she really could read my mind.

  Holy Catnip!

  “How did you . . .?” I sort of stammered.

  But she just waved her paw in front of her face. “After so many, many years of dispensing advice, I have come to read the signs. I know when someone is troubled. And I can often pinpoint the cause simply by looking into their eyes.”

  “Wow . . .” I breathed. “That’s amazing.”

  Miss Mokie smiled one of her rare smiles. “Of course, it didn’t hurt that the young Princess Alexandra filled me in before you got here.”

  I crinkled my brow. “Um . . . Oh okay . . .”

  She sat up straight. “So tell me, young Detective, exactly what happened today? What is weighing on you?”

  So I told her everything. From when Gracie practiced reading her essay, to the writer who grabbed her paper and made a whole bunch of changes. Then I told her about everything that happened at the essay contest. Exactly as it happened.”

  The whole time, the Wise One merely nodded her head and said, “I see. I see.”

  I finished by saying, “So now I don’t understand. Gracie won the contest and the trophy. But she’s upset. And well, now I’m upset, too. But none of that makes any sense. Because she won, and that’s what we wanted for her. So why aren’t we all happy?”

  The Wise One raised a paw. “Ah yes, it certainly is a complex situation. To get what one wants, but yet not get what one wants at the same time.”

  I crinkled my brows. “Huh?”

  The Wise One shook her head slowly. “It sounds as though Gracie was only proclaimed to be the winner. The only problem is, she didn’t actually win anything.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “I don’t understand.”

  Miss Mokie closed her eyes and nodded. “The word ‘win’ implies some sort of action. It says that someone has done something in order to achieve a prize. For instance, those who run races, or compete in other competitions, want the feeling of having earned their prize. To have the prize merely handed to you, well, that does nothing but make one feel unworthy. And without the sense of having achieved something, what good is the trophy? Humans and cats, too, feel a sense of pride when they’ve won something they worked hard for. They grow in their confidence in such a situation. But if the prize is awarded without a sense of having earned it, it hurts one’s pride. As well as their confidence.”

  “Oooh . . .” I said.

  Miss Mokie flexed her right front paw and studied her long nails. “You must be careful in simply giving people and cats various things. While gifts and other tokens of affection can be wonderful, handouts are another matter. Giving a handout can cause a problem. It can take away the receiver’s sense of independence and pride. It can hurt their confidence. It can actually make a person feel rather small and miserable.”

  I thought back to the time when Bogey and I went undercover at a cat show. We earned all the prizes we had won. And to tell you the truth, I was proud of those ribbons that were hanging on the wall in our Mom’s office. But I’m not sure I would have been so proud of them if someone had just handed them to me.

  And that’s when I understood — it must have been exactly how Gracie was feeling now. That’s why she was so miserable.

  I sat up straight and the words just started spilling out of me. “Now I get it! Gracie feels bad beca
use she was just handed that prize. She didn’t feel like she deserved it. Or earned it. Especially since she wasn’t doing a very good job of reading that essay. And, she didn’t even get a chance to finish reading it.”

  Miss Mokie held her paw above me in the air. “That is correct. You have done well, Grasshopper.”

  “Um, thank you,” I told her.

  Funny, but neither Bogey nor I ever really understood why she called us that sometimes. Like Bogey once told me, it’s just something she does.

  I scooted forward a little bit. “But what can Gracie do? What will it take for her to feel better?”

  The Wise One closed her eyes for a moment. “Ah, that is the difficult part. She must give up the trophy. Otherwise she will feel bad every time she looks at it.”

  Holy Mackerel! I sure didn’t want Gracie to feel bad just by looking at a trophy. But what could I do about it?

  “And now you must leave me,” Miss Mokie said. “For I must rest.”

  I bowed to her again. “Um, thank you, Miss Mokie.”

  Then I scooted backwards out of the room. I nodded to the Princess on my way out. She smiled back at me.

  Yet all the while, I kept wondering what Gracie could do about her situation. Especially since there was a lot more to being the winner of that contest than just getting a trophy. She was supposed to read her essay on Saturday night. And she was supposed to ride on the float that morning, too. People were expecting her to do those things.

  But what could she do about all that? And what could us cats do to help her?

  Holy Catnip!

  CHAPTER 10

  Holy Mackerel!

  The words the Wise One had spoken stayed with me as I trotted through the upstairs hallway. The whole house was dark and all the humans had gone to bed. But that didn’t bother me one bit, since us cats can pretty much see in the dark anyway. So I could still see really well when I made a beeline down the stairs to our Mom’s home office. I knew I’d find Bogey there, since he’d told me he’d be working on the computer. Most humans have no idea how good cats are with computers. Lots of us learn to work on them as shelter cats. When I was at the shelter, we’d get on the computer every night. Right after the humans had gone home for the day.

  Bogey and I even opened our Buckley and Bogey Cat Detective Agency on the Internet. The BBCDA. We got our very first case from an email.

  My paws touched the bottom stair and then I jumped down to the first floor. I took a right and went through the open French doors to our Mom’s office. I spotted Bogey in the light from the computer right away. He was on top of our Mom’s huge, antique mahogany desk. It had a wide wooden top that was covered with a thick piece of glass. The legs were round and carved so they went from thin to wide to thin again. Then there was a piece of wood at the bottom that connected all the legs. It was sort of like a curved “X.”

  Bogey was typing away when I jumped up onto the desk to join him.

  “Be with you in a minute, kid,” he told me. “I’m just finishing up an email to my agent.”

  I crinkled up my brow. “You have an agent?”

  Bogey grinned. “Yup, kid. Had her since the days when I did cat food commercials.”

  Bogey had told me he’d been in commercials once. But it was long before I knew him, and long before he’d even come to live at our house. And even before he’d become a cat detective, too. In fact, he still had some money from his commercials stashed away in a secret, private bank account. We used the money for our emergency fund.

  Bogey passed me an open bag of cat treats. “Here you go, kid. Help yourself while you’re waiting.”

  And so I did. This bunch was turkey flavored. Some of my favorites.

  Bogey finally finished what he was doing and waved me over to the computer. “You’ll never guess what I found on the Internet, kid.”

  Well, he sure had that right. I didn’t even know where to begin when it came to guessing.

  Luckily, I didn’t have to. Bogey called up a big picture on the computer screen just as I slid on over. There before me was a photo of the same stone that we had seen at the library.

  Holy Mackerel!

  I gasped. “I can even see all those carved letters!”

  Bogey grabbed a couple of treats from the bag. “Me, too, kid. But I’m going to enhance it. To give us a clearer picture. And see if there’s anything we’re missing.”

  I tilted my head back and forth, and looked at that picture from a bunch of different angles. Maybe I could make sense of it if I found the right view of that stone. But no matter how I looked at it, I still couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to say.

  Instead, I just read the article attached to the photo. It was an old news story from the St. Gertrude Times. And the title read, “Famous Fartheringston Stone Remains a Mystery to This Day.”

  Then it went on to talk about how no one else had been able to figure out what that stone was supposed to say, either. Apparently experts had been coming from all over the world to look at it. And they’d been doing that for decades.

  I pointed to the picture. “Look, Bogey. Maybe no one figured this out because no one thought it might really be a secret code.”

  Bogey nodded. “Maybe not so far, kid. But maybe they have now.”

  I looked at my brother. “What do you mean?”

  Bogey handed me another cat treat and took one for himself. “Think about it, kid. We’ve had some pretty weird things happen today.”

  I let out a long sigh. “Boy, you can say that again. First that limo showed up. Then Steele Bronson showed up. Then he stayed and stayed and stayed. Right after he bought tons of furniture from our Mom’s store.”

  Bogey stretched out his right front paw. “Furniture he couldn’t afford.”

  I stared at my brother. “He couldn’t?”

  Bogey shook his head. “Nope, kid. Remember, his credit card didn’t go through.”

  I gasped. “Oh yeah . . . I forgot about that. But he’s a famous movie star, and I guess they have tons of money. He should be able to pay for all that furniture. Maybe there was just something wrong with his credit card.”

  Bogey passed us each another round of treats. “Sometimes people who make tons of money get into some pretty bad spending habits, kid.”

  “Oh . . .” I sort of breathed. “Do you think Steele Bronson might be . . .?”

  “Flat broke?” Bogey finished for me. “I dunno, kid. But there’s more here that doesn’t add up.”

  I’m sure my eyes went about as wide as my food dish. “There is?”

  Bogey stashed the bag of cat treats into a vase on our Mom’s desk, the place where he always hid them. “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that he showed up like he did? Right here in St. Gertrude?”

  I licked my paw to get rid of the crumbs from the cat treats. “Um . . . well, I don’t know. I guess so.”

  Bogey shook his head. “Rich, famous movie stars don’t usually do their own shopping, kid. And they don’t go riding around small towns in a big limo.”

  I had to think about that for a second. “Oh . . . okay. Then what was he doing at Gracie’s essay contest? And why did he tell everyone that she was the winner before she even finished reading her essay? Especially when he didn’t even hear all the other essays?”

  Bogey nodded. “Great questions, kid. You’re really thinking like a cat detective. The same things have been crossing my mind. I’ll say it again — I smell a very big rat.”

  I was about to ask Bogey more about this rat. But then I remembered it was just an expression. And I also remembered what had started us talking about this stuff.

  I pointed to the computer screen. “So what’s all that got to do with a secret code?”

  Bogey tilted his ears toward the picture. “What if Steele Bronson caught wind of this, kid? Maybe he thinks the writing on that stone is a secret code, too.”

  I crinkled my nose. “So he came to St. Gertrude because he likes solving secret codes?”
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br />   Bogey shook his head. “Nope, kid. Do the math. If Steele Bronson needs money . . .”

  And that’s when it seemed like a light bulb went on inside my head. “Maybe he’s here because he wants to crack the secret code. Because he thinks it leads to something that is worth a lot of money. So then he won’t be flat broke anymore.”

  Bogey reached over and gave me a paw bump. “You got it, kid. Good job. But if it’s true, it’s also a pretty shady deal. And I don’t much care for it.”

  I crinkled my brow. “It is?”

  Bogey pointed to the computer screen. “Think about it, kid. Arthur Fartheringston went to a lot of work to carve that code into a rock. You can bet he meant if for somebody special.”

  I stood up and stretched. “But who?”

  Bogey shook his head. “I’ve been wondering the same thing, kid. It would help if we knew what that secret code led to.”

  That got my attention. “You mean like hidden treasure?”

  Bogey flexed his right front paw. “Who knows? Could be something even more valuable, kid.”

  I started to pace back and forth across the desk. “But if Steele Bronson cracks the code, and then he finds whatever that code leads to, we might not even know about it. He could just take it and keep it secret. And leave town with it.”

  Bogey nodded. “Exactly, kid. And that’s the part that ruffles my fur.”

  I stopped pacing and looked at my brother. “Maybe it really belongs to someone else. And they just might like to have it.”

  Now Bogey got up and moved to the edge of the desk. “Couldn’t have said it better myself, kid.”

  I shook my head. “I sure wish there was something we could do.”

  Bogey grinned. “There is, kid. We could crack that code before Steele Bronson does.”

  Right about then, I’m sure my eyes went pretty wide. “We could?”

  Bogey glanced into the hallway. “Seems like it would be the smart thing to do.”

  I’m sure my eyes went even wider right then. “Is this the new case for the Buckley and Bogey Cat Detective Agency? The one you were talking about earlier?”