Ruff vs. Fluff

by Spencer Quinn

  There was a long pause before Mom said, “Ah, yes. Thanks for the reminder.”

  “Postcard?” said Ms. Jones.

  Mom took the postcard from a drawer behind the desk. “Fell out of the suitcase when we were closing it up.” She handed the postcard to Ms. Jones.

  Ms. Jones gave it a close but puzzled look, front and back, then slipped it in the back pocket of her jeans. “I was actually thinking of something a little different.”

  “Different how?” said Mom.

  “More … more like a … or maybe I should say bigger.” She held up her hands to show bigger, although my guess was we’d all gotten the idea, me, Mom, and Bro. “Yes,” Ms. Jones went on, “bigger—and with lines on it.”

  “Lines?”

  “Like markings, really. For roads and stuff. Towns. Rivers. Mountains.”

  “Do you mean a map?”

  “That sort of thing.”

  Mom shook her head. “There’s only the postcard.”

  “Well, then, um, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Ms. Jones went outside again. Through the fantail window, I saw her get in the car. She said something to the man. He made angry gestures at her. She made angry gestures back. What a snappish couple! They drove off, and none too soon.

  Meanwhile Mom was staring at the door in a thoughtful way and Bro was polishing off the brownie.

  “Um,” he said. “The postcard.”

  Mom turned to him. “What about it?”

  “You forgot it was in the drawer?”

  Mom gave him a long look. “No.”

  Bro nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. Not then. Now.”

  Mom laughed. She went over and gave Bro a hug.

  “What?” he said. “Did I do something wrong? Or right? Or …”

  “I was being sneaky about the postcard,” Mom said. “Why is it worth three hundred dollars to Mr. Mahovlich? Why did Ms. Jones come back for it?”

  “But she didn’t. She wanted the map.”

  Mom paused. “You’re right.”

  “And Mr. LeMaire has a map, Mom. Harmony and I saw it.”

  “Speaking of whom,” Mom said, letting go of Bro, “git.”

  Bro zipped up his jacket and opened the door. Coming up the walk was Harmony. So much action today, although none of it the money-making kind. She was with an ax-carrying guy who looked like … why, yes, Matty—a big favorite of mine. He has the most comfortable shoulders I’ve ever sat on. Also there was one other party, waddling along behind with his tongue hanging out. Not a pretty picture. I turned my attention on Harmony, and at that very instant she saw Mom and began to run, her arms outstretched.

  NORMALLY I’D BE SETTLING IN FOR A nap around now, most likely on my bed—the one I share with Harmony—where it’s nice and quiet during the day. There’s nothing like a good nap, especially a nap chock-full of exciting dreams. Dreams with birds in them are my personal favorite. But right now there was simply too much going on and I felt surprisingly wakeful, sitting on my bookcase shelf in the Big Room.

  Before me and slightly below—as if this were all a play put on for my amusement … and why not? Was it possibly true? Could all of what we call life be just a performance for the amusement of me? What an interesting thought, so deep! But this was not the time for exploring deep thoughts. I turned my attention to the goings-on in the Big Room.

  On the couch we had Mom sitting next to Harmony with her arm over Harmony’s shoulder. Bro sat cross-legged on the chair by the fire tools, eating another mocha brownie. Matty stood with his back to the fireplace. And zonked out on the rug in front of the fire, all four paws extended straight out and therefore taking up as much space as possible, was the other party.

  “So Hunzinger’s out there now?” Mom was saying. “It’s his jurisdiction after all?”

  Matty’s eyebrows rose. He has lovely eyebrows, beautifully shaped, not too thick, not too thin. In fact, all of him is the same way: just right. “Sure, it’s his jurisdiction. Was that ever in doubt?”

  “How did someone like him ever get to be sheriff?” Mom said.

  Bertha stuck her head into the room. “Political influence,” she said. “But don’t let me interrupt.”

  “As for the sheriff being out there, he had to turn back at the cliff,” Matty said. “Bum knee from high school football.”

  “Pah,” said Bertha. “No Hunzinger ever played high school football or any other sport. Bone-laziest family in these here hills.”

  “So Deputy Carstairs is handling things,” Matty went on. “He didn’t look too happy about it—just got back from Disney World, not even unpacked.”

  “Boo-hoo,” said Bertha.

  Bro looked up. “Mr. LeMaire is dead?”

  “For god’s sake, Bro!” said Harmony. “Have you been listening?”

  “Yeah. It’s just, well … we were with him. On the trail and all. Like yesterday. He said he wouldn’t be … what was it, Harm?”

  “Needing us anymore.”

  Bro looked down at the floor. “So maybe he did, huh? Need us, I mean.”

  He turned to Mom. So did Harmony. For a moment I got the idea that Mom didn’t know what to say. That would have been a first. But before I could find out one way or another, Matty spoke up. “It’s a very good thing you guys weren’t there. The medical examiner makes the final call, but Carstairs is pretty sure the cause of death wasn’t a fall or a bear or anything like that.”

  Bertha put her hand to her chest. “It was murder?”

  Matty nodded. “Struck with a blunt object, in Carstairs’s opinion.”

  “But who would do a thing like that?” said Bertha. “And why?”

  “I wonder … ,” Mom said.

  “Wonder what?” said Harmony.

  “Well,” Mom said, “while you were up on the mountain, we had this odd visit.” Her eyes got a far-off look. “Much odder now.”

  “What do you mean, Mom?” Harmony said.

  “Remember the text Mr. LeMaire sent—about sending someone for his stuff? Well, they came. She came, that is. A woman named Mary Jones from Brooklyn. I actually don’t know if she was alone. Bro? Can you help on this?”

  “Huh?”

  “Think back. You opened the door to go get Harmony. Then the woman came in. Did she have a car in the driveway?”

  “She musta, right?”

  “But did you see it?”

  “I … think so.”

  “Was anyone in it?”

  “Like who?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “Dunno.”

  “Why is it important?” Matty said.

  Harmony sat up straight. “Because Mr. LeMaire’s text said he’d gone home but he hadn’t. He was dead on the mountain.”

  “Hey,” said Bro. “That’s like a contradiction.”

  “You got that right,” said Matty. He turned to Mom. “What did she want, this woman from Brooklyn?”

  “His things,” Mom replied, “like the text said.”

  “Especially the map,” said Bro.

  “Map?” said Harmony.

  “Belonging to Mr. LeMaire,” Mom said.

  Harmony gave Bro a look. “Bro? You blabbed about the map?”

  “Huh?”

  “Sorry,” Harmony said. “Of course you don’t know. You weren’t there. Sometimes when you’re not around I still get the feeling you’re around.”

  Bro nodded, like he understood what she was talking about.

  “Mind clueing the rest of us in, Harmony?” Mom said. “What map?”

  “Uh, nothing, Mom. It’s not important.”

  “I’m waiting,” Mom said.

  Harmony sighed. “I don’t want to rat him out, and besides, no one will believe it.”

  “Rat who out?” said Mom. “Nobody will believe what?”

  Harmony glanced over at a certain party, snoozing his life away by the fire, not a care in the world. “Arthur ate the map,” she said.

&n
bsp; Matty laughed. “The old dog-ate-the-homework ploy.”

  “Exactly,” said Harmony. “No one will ever buy it.”

  And then came a long saga of an adventure in a clearing up on Mount Misty. Pretty soon all eyes were on the sleeper. He remained oblivious. This saga was filled with twists and turns, but one thing for sure. The part about the map and who ate it? I believed it, totally. He was capable of doing the exact wrong thing at the—no, let me change that. He specialized in doing the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong moment. I was so busy glaring at the offender with my golden glare that I almost missed the sound of the front door opening. I turned slightly, bringing the hall into view from my spot on the top shelf, and saw two men in uniform. The tall one with the sunburned nose was Deputy Carstairs, often seen here at the inn because of his daughter Emma being friends with Harmony. The short, round one with the bushy mustache I’d seen only once—something about a guest, an ice storm, and a fender bender—but I remembered, probably because the bushy mustache pretty much covered his mouth, the sort of detail you want to forget but can’t. This gentleman was Sheriff Hunzinger.

  They entered the Big Room. “Sorry to barge in, Yvette,” said Deputy Carstairs, Yvette being one of Mom’s other names. Mrs. Reddy is another, and there’s also Ms. Reddy. That strikes me as a bit confusing. I’m Queenie, and that’s that.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about this … incident up on Mount Misty,” the deputy went on. He glanced at Harmony, and in a gentle voice said, “How you doing?”

  “All right,” said Harmony.

  “You did good up there,” the deputy said.

  Mom patted Harmony’s hand. A nice sight, and everyone was taking it in, with the exception of Sheriff Hunzinger. His eyes were on Matty.

  “We’ve got some questions about this guest of yours, Alex LeMaire,” the deputy said.

  “Is it true he was murdered?” Mom said.

  “Have to wait on the ME for that,” said the deputy. “But—”

  Hunzinger interrupted, his mustache sort of billowing in the breeze of his own speech, like a hairy curtain. “I don’t have to wait one darn minute. Murder for sure. So for starters, how about filling us in on what this city fella was doing up there?”

  “He just wanted to hike the old Sokoki Trail,” Mom said. “Other than that he didn’t say much.”

  “Any idea what had him interested in that particular trail?” said Carstairs.

  Mom shook her head.

  “No mention of digging up Colonial artifacts?” said Hunzinger.

  “Colonial artifacts?” said Mom.

  Hunzinger turned to Matty. “Maybe our archaeologist buddy here can explain.”

  “I’m not an archaeologist,” Matty said.

  “No? Word is you got an advanced degree.”

  “Nice to know my background’s of general interest,” Matty said. A remark that made Bro snicker. I’d never heard him snicker, and if you’d asked me whether he’d even been following this conversation, my answer would have been no. But Bro can be unpredictable, as I’ve mentioned before. Was he growing more unpredictable? I’d have to mull that over some other time. Right now Matty was saying, “… a few undergraduate courses, that’s it.”

  “That’d be a few more’n me,” Hunzinger said. “So maybe you can …” He turned to Carstairs. “What’s the word I’m lookin’ for?”

  “Not sure where you’re going with this, sheriff,” said Carstairs, wrinkling up his nose. Emma did the same thing, and on her it was cute. In the deputy’s case, his nose being so sunburned and rather large for a human, not so cute. I had a sudden urge to look in a mirror, but none were in my line of sight.

  The sheriff snapped his fingers. I’m no fan of finger snapping in general, and this kind, like a gunshot, was particularly unlikable. “Enlighten! That’s the word. Maybe you can enlighten us on how trained archaeologists feel about random folks comin’ in to dig stuff up.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mom said. “What stuff are you talking about?”

  “Trading post stuff,” said the sheriff. “Muskets, blankets, pots and pans, beads—from this trading post up on the old Sokoki Trail going back to Colonial days, and the French before that.”

  “There’s no proof a trading post even existed,” Matty said. “The records are sparse and really vague.”

  “But some folks believe it,” Hunzinger said. “This LeMaire character wouldn’t be the first to come diggin’ around. So enlighten us on how archaeologists feel about folks like him.”

  Matty has interesting blue eyes, sometimes deep blue and sometimes more icy blue. Right now they were icy blue. He gazed at Hunzinger and said, “I can’t speak for all archaeologists.”

  “How’s about yourself?” said Hunzinger. Carstairs did his nose-wrinkling thing again, as though smelling something bad.

  “I can speak for myself,” Matty said. “I don’t like people coming to dig stuff up.”

  “Aha!” said the sheriff.

  But at the same instant, Carstairs was saying, “Why is that?”

  “Huh?” Hunzinger said. “What’s the point of going there?”

  Carstairs took a deep breath. Before he could say anything, Matty said, “Because they hurt the environment, ruin the sites, and make the science impossible. Archaeologists aren’t interested in making money off artifacts. All they want to do is understand the past.”

  “Say again?” said Hunzinger.

  Matty said it again. Since I’d caught it the first time, I didn’t listen, instead imagining some alternate world where I was the sheriff and this was all moving along much quicker.

  “’Kay,” the sheriff said. “I get the gist. We’re all on board?”

  “For what?” said Mom.

  Hunzinger turned to her. “How about if I told you that before checking in here to your place, Mr. LeMaire spent some time over at the library, talking to old Mrs. Hale?”

  “Go on,” Mom said.

  “And in that conversation he asked what she knew about any digging that had gone on over the years on the old Sokoki Trail.”

  Mom looked at the sheriff and didn’t say anything.

  “Mrs. Hale being the resident town historian, if you follow,” the sheriff said.

  Mom remained silent. That’s usually my policy as well.

  “Point being,” the sheriff continued, now focusing on Matty, “that Mr. LeMaire was all psyched on the subject of artifacts. Any reaction to that, Matty?”

  Matty’s eyes got icier. The sheriff’s mustache fluttered a bit, like maybe some sort of smile was going on underneath that mustache. I’ve never bitten a human—well, never say never—but I was getting a strong impulse. My teeth are not ridiculously oversized, like the teeth of a certain party I won’t name—but they are extremely sharp.

  “No,” Matty said. “No reaction.”

  Then came a long silence when everyone seemed to be waiting for the sheriff to speak, and he seemed to be waiting for who knows what. At last Carstairs said, “Perhaps we could move on to that other matter.”

  The sheriff blinked. “Other matter?”

  Carstairs leaned over and whispered in the sheriff’s ear. A large and hairy ear. You might say that I myself am covered in hair of a sort, but the effect in my case could not be more different. Oh, and by the way, what Carstairs whispered was, “The map.” Human whispers are a snap to pick up, at least with hearing like mine. A certain party also has good hearing—I’ll give him that—but what good does it do when you’re off in dreamland?

  WE WERE OUT IN THE BACK GARDEN on a nice summer day. Bertha was grilling thick steaks on the barbecue and I was keeping her company. Thick and juicy steaks, the kind, I think, that’s called a ribeye. Or possibly a New York strip. That doesn’t really matter because I’ve never tasted steak I didn’t like. And like isn’t even the word. Love is the word. I’ve never tasted steak I didn’t love.

  Bertha flipped one over. Sizzle sizzle. “This one’s for you, Arthur,” she said. “Yo
u like ’em rare, don’t you?”

  Yes!

  “Or is it medium rare?”

  Yes!

  “Or medium?”

  Yes! Yes, yes, and yes! I was yessing away with all I had in me when I woke up. Why did that have to happen? I didn’t have to pee or anything like that, and even if I did, which was sort of the case, now that I thought about it, I’m great at holding on. Also, I was still plenty tuckered out from whatever it was I’d been doing earlier. So why was I awake?

  I opened my eyes. What was this? We had a sort of crowd situation in the Big Room? Guests at last! That had to be a good thing. Then I noticed that I knew some of these guests, like Matty and Deputy Carstairs, so they probably weren’t guests. The dude I didn’t know was kind of scary, with a huge mustache that hid his mouth. It didn’t take me long to spot the fact that he was wearing a uniform, and not only that but a uniform not unlike the deputy’s, the color of some puke I’d once puked up after snacking on a bowl of pickled olives, a one-time event as I promised myself then, although it had kind of happened again. But the point was that very quickly I was totally on top of the situation in the Big Room, and all this while still lying comfortably in front of the fire. Sometimes I amaze myself.

  “The other matter,” this mustached dude was saying, “concerns a map.”

  Mom, sitting beside Harmony on the couch—a couch called an antique, by the way, that I’m not allowed to sit on, a detail that turns out to be surprisingly hard to remember—paused before saying, “Map, Sheriff?”

  Aha! The mustache dude was the sheriff! Bertha talks about him from time to time, always using strong language. I was following along just perfectly! They seemed to be talking about a map. That didn’t sound too interesting, but maybe they’d quickly move on to something else.

  “What sort of map?” Mom said.

  “You tell me,” said the sheriff.

  “Excuse me?” said Mom.

  “I believe what Sheriff Hunzinger meant to say,” Deputy Carstairs said, “is that old Mrs. Hale down at the library had shown Mr. LeMaire a map. Evidently he made a copy. We were just wondering if you knew anything about it?”