Ruff vs. Fluff

by Spencer Quinn

  “But why would I?” Mom said.

  Good for Mom! Why would she know anything about some map? Why would any of us? I certainly didn’t.

  “The thing is, Yvette,” Carstairs said, “no map was found on the body. That seemed a bit strange to us—why have a map if you don’t take it with you?”

  How complicated that sounded, way above my pay grade, as Bertha likes to say. Bertha and I are great buddies. We spend lots of time together. In the kitchen.

  “Map’s got to be somewheres,” the sheriff said. “Unless the dog ate it. Heh heh.” He slapped his thigh and said it again: “Unless the dog ate it.” The sheriff laughed some more, as though something funny was going on.

  Carstairs, standing slightly behind the sheriff, rolled his eyes—an always-interesting human trick—and said, “That’s a good one, Sheriff.”

  “Knew you’d like it,” the sheriff said. “So any info you can help us with, Mrs. Reddy?”

  Mom didn’t answer right away. She seemed to be looking my way, in fact directly at me. And so were Harmony, Bro, and Matty, all of them looking at me. That was very friendly of them. I raised my tail and thumped it down on the rug, which is how I wag while in a reclining position. Mom turned to the sheriff.

  “All I can tell you is you’re not the first one to ask about this map,” she said.

  “Let me guess,” the sheriff said. “Was the first one this gentleman, by any chance?” He pointed his finger straight at Matty.

  “Actually it wasn’t,” Mom said. She folded her arms across her chest. Sometimes Harmony does the same thing. My way of doing it is by digging in my heels. I can make myself just about impossible to move, always a fun time.

  “Mind telling us who the person was, Yvette?” Carstairs said. “If you please?”

  “I don’t mind telling you, Al,” Mom said. And she started in on a story about a text, a woman from Brooklyn, a suitcase, and a whole lot of other stuff that flew by at a great distance, like a flock of birds high in the sky. I myself have no interest in birds, although I have an acquaintance who does. I glanced up at her on her stupid bookshelf, looking down on us like … like she was above it all! Just once I’d like to … but then I remind myself, Arthur, think of the speed of those claws and the way you don’t know what hit you till it’s all over, and then I settle down.

  Meanwhile Carstairs was saying, “Mind getting that address for us?”

  “Not at all,” Mom said. She went out to the hall, came back with a sheet of paper, and handed it to the deputy.

  He read it out loud. “ ‘Ms. Mary A. Jones, 419B Zither Street, Brooklyn, New York.’ That should be helpful.” He moved to the far side of the room and got on his phone.

  At just about the same time, the sheriff’s phone buzzed. He answered, “This is the sheriff,” then listened, said, “Thanks much,” and stuck the phone in his pocket. “That was the ME,” he said, in that strange, mouthless way he had of talking. “Cause of death—blow from behind with a blunt instrument. In other words, murder.”

  He gazed at Matty. Matty gazed back at him. How long that would have gone on was anybody’s guess, but we got lucky and Carstairs soon came back, putting his own phone away.

  “There is no Zither Street in Brooklyn. I’m afraid the ID was fake, Yvette.”

  “Can’t say I’m surprised,” the sheriff said.

  “Oh,” said Mom. “I certainly am.”

  “On account of you being a civilian.” The sheriff tapped the side of his nose. “I’ve been smelling something fishy from day one.”

  Wow! What a surprise! The truth was this sheriff dude had not been making a good first impression on me. But now it turned out he could smell things I couldn’t? I sniffed the air: not a single trace of fish, and fish is one of the easiest smells out there, along with bacon and … and more bacon. And yet he somehow smelled fish? I made up my mind then and there to keep a close eye on Sheriff Hunzinger.

  At that moment Harmony piped up. “When was day one?” she said.

  The sheriff gave her a look that some adults give kids when they pipe up. “Huh?” he said. “Not sure I get your question.”

  “Uh, I think the answer has to be ‘today,’ right, Sheriff?” said Carstairs. “Today being when the body was found and all.”

  “So?” said the sheriff.

  Which was when Bro jumped in. What was going on? Bro never jumps into this kind of thing. Then it occurred to me that we’d never had this kind of thing before. What an amazing thought by me, far beyond my usual type of thoughts. And just when I had that thought, the first one, so amazing, vanished in a way that felt like forever. Thinking beyond my usual thoughts turned out to be very tiring. I hoped it wouldn’t happen again, at least not for a while.

  But back to what Bro said, namely, “So you just started smelling something fishy today?”

  The sheriff looked at Bro, then at Harmony, then back to Bro. “You kids wouldn’t be makin’ fun of me, now would you?”

  Bro opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then Harmony shook her head and Bro shook his head, too. All I knew was that I still smelled nothing fishy.

  Carstairs rubbed his hands together. “Moving right along, then, how about we get started on the next phase?”

  “Of what?” said the sheriff.

  “The investigation,” Carstairs said.

  “Exactly my point.” The sheriff took a notebook from his chest pocket and flipped through the pages, then nodded to himself. “Next phase being the search.”

  “What search?” Mom said.

  “We’d like your permission to search the room where LeMaire stayed,” Carstairs told her.

  “Of course,” Mom said, rising. “It’s upstairs.”

  “Is there an elevator?” the sheriff said.

  “Afraid not,” said Mom.

  “Why don’t you handle the search, Al?” the sheriff said. He took out his phone. “I’ll check ongoing developments at the station.”

  Mom led Carstairs out of the Big Room toward the stairs. The next moment I found myself up and on my feet, trailing after them. Why? I had no clue, but that didn’t make it a bad idea, not in my experience.

  “Nice room,” said Carstairs.

  We were in the room at the end of the hall, the room with the balcony and the view of Mount Misty, now clouded over so there was no view.

  “Thanks,” Mom said.

  Carstairs looked around. What was he searching for again? Had someone mentioned it? I searched my mind, found not much going on at the moment. But I certainly didn’t smell fish, if that was what this was all about.

  “I have a method for this,” Carstairs said, getting down on his knees, which made a cracking sound I’ve heard before from the human knee, but never from me and my kind. Do we even have knees? I wasn’t sure. “Stole it from a detective novel—whenever you’re searching a room, start from the bottom up.”

  “You’re a reader, Al?”

  “When I can fit it in.”

  Carstairs raised the edge of the bedspread, stuck his head under the bed, and peered around.

  “Hey, Arthur,” he said. “What’s up, buddy?”

  Not much. I found myself right at the deputy’s side. Whenever a human gets down on all fours—the only way to go, in my opinion—I like to encourage them.

  Deputy Carstairs and I checked out what was under the bed, which turned out to be nothing, not even dust balls. We had standards here at the Blackberry Hill Inn—something Bertha says a lot.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?” Mom said from up above.

  “Not really,” Carstairs said. His eyes shifted over in my direction. Were those eyes trying to tell me something? I wondered about that, and immediately got nowhere. Carstairs backed out from under the bed and rose. Next he went to the chest of drawers and started opening them, bottom drawer first. Over his shoulder he said, “My divorce came through last month.”

  “Emma mentioned that,” Mom said.

 
; “She’s a good kid.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  Carstairs grunted. “Tough on kids, no matter what anyone says.”

  Mom gazed at Carstairs’s back and didn’t say anything.

  Was the search still going on? I wasn’t sure, but then Carstairs went into the bathroom and looked behind the shower curtain, so I guessed that it was. After that, he checked the little closet under the sink, the medicine cabinet, and even that tank thingy behind the toilet, where Bertha sometimes rattles the insides around when the guests have plumbing problems, never a good moment here at the Blackberry Hill Inn. Carstairs glanced in the toilet bowl, empty, and flushed it anyway, and then left the room. I lingered behind: toilet bowl water just after flushing is extremely tasty, something you may not know.

  “Is that it?” Mom was saying to Carstairs when I emerged from the bathroom, feeling refreshed.

  Carstairs glanced around. “I’ll just check the balcony,” he said. He crossed the room, opened the door, and stepped outside. A cold breeze swept into the room. Mom looked my way.

  “Why are you drooling?”

  Me? How embarrassing! I gave my muzzle a good lick, made everything right.

  Meanwhile, out on the balcony, Carstairs was moving a few folded-up lawn chairs. He went still and said, “Hmm.” When he came back in, he was carrying a bottle of golden-colored liquid.

  “What’s that?” Mom said.

  He showed her the bottle, a real dirty bottle, reminding me of toys I’ve buried all over the yard. “ ‘Maple Leaf Gold Canadian rye whisky,’ ” he said. “Any sign of LeMaire being a drinking man?”

  “Not that I saw,” Mom said. She peered at the bottle. “It looks old.”

  Carstairs rubbed away some of the dirt. “Seal’s still in place, so he hadn’t started in on it. Any empties found in the room?”

  Mom shook her head, then took another look at the bottle. “The label’s kind of faded.”

  “Maybe he left it out in the sun,” said Carstairs.

  We went downstairs, and Carstairs showed Hunzinger the bottle.

  “Well, well,” said the sheriff. “Half in the bag and wandering around the mountain, huh? Makes an easy target.”

  “No question about that,” Carstairs said, “but do we know for a fact that he had a drinking prob—”

  The sheriff interrupted. “Meaning an easy target for someone sneaking up from behind, carrying let’s say an ax. Back side of an ax head’s what you might call blunt.” He smiled a little smile. Most human smiles are nice to see. Others are just about showing teeth. This smile was one of those. “Speaking of axes, Matty, my friend, Deputy Carstairs happened to mention that you were carrying one, up on the mountain.”

  Matty shrugged. “Part of my job, clearing trails after storms.”

  “Is that so?” said the sheriff. “And while you were busy with that, did you maybe bump into this LeMaire fella digging around for Colonial art-ee-facts? Messing up the science and spoiling the environment? We recovered his backpack in that little shelter up there. Happened to have a fold-up shovel inside.”

  Matty, sitting on a footstool by the fireplace, changed his position slightly, his feet now more under him. “The first time I laid eyes on Mr. LeMaire was when Harmony showed me the body,” he said, his voice nice and calm.

  “Sure, sure,” the sheriff said. “No one’s saying that anything was premeditated. But you did mention that you’re no fan of the kind of outsiders who make a buck by digging up stuff. It’s wrong. Dead wrong. I get that. Throw into the mix that this city slicker was also a juicer and likely said or did some reckless things, taking a swing at you with his shovel, for example. Might even end up with a self-defense situation when the trial rolls around.”

  “Trial?” said Mom. “For goodness’ sake, Sheriff, what are you saying?”

  The sheriff smiled that nasty smile again. The next thing I knew I was on my feet. Why? I had no idea. I was still pretty tired, in fact.

  “Matty,” he said. “How about you explain to Mrs. Reddy here?”

  Matty rose. “You’re out of your mind,” he said. “And even worse, you’re lazy and stupid. That’s the only explanation I can think of.”

  The sheriff’s face went bright red. He put his hand on the butt of his gun. Carstairs touched the sheriff’s shoulder. “Sheriff? A quick word?”

  The sheriff shrugged him off. “Later, Al. Right now we’re taking him in.” He took out handcuffs, moved toward Matty. “This can be hard or it can be easy, Matty. Your call.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. This is a fantasy. You have no evidence.”

  “That’s not for you to say,” the sheriff said. “And in case it’s slipped your mind, you’ve been in trouble with the law before.”

  Harmony and Bro looked at each other in surprise.

  “For hunting out of season, for god’s sake,” Matty said. “And that was ten years ago. I’ve changed my thinking since then.”

  “Maybe,” the sheriff said, “but it’s on your record.”

  Now they were face-to-face.

  “Turn and place your hands behind you,” the sheriff said.

  “I won’t do it,” said Matty.

  “Yes you will,” the sheriff said, and he grabbed Matty with his free hand and tried to spin him around.

  Matty wouldn’t be spun around. He pushed the sheriff, not a hard push, but somehow hard enough to knock him down.

  “Al!” the sheriff shouted.

  Matty took off, sprinting toward the front hall. Carstairs, surprisingly quick, blocked his way. Matty swerved and raced to the doors that led to the patio.

  “Halt!” the sheriff called.

  Matty didn’t even pause. He banged those doors open and bolted outside. But what was this? The sheriff, stumbling to his feet and drawing his gun, with Matty framed between the open doors? My teeth felt this enormous urge, by far the most powerful urge that had ever possessed them, stronger than any power on earth. In short, what was about to happen couldn’t be stopped.

  WHAT A SITUATION, UNUSUAL IN many ways. One of those ways had to do with the doors to the Big Room—French doors, I believe they are called—now wide open. I filed that little tidbit away for later.

  Meanwhile, Matty was no longer in sight, although Deputy Carstairs could still be seen, perhaps chasing after him, if that’s what his slow-motion running through the snowy back meadow was all about. In the Big Room we had a lot of drama going on with Sheriff Hunzinger, who had rolled up his pant leg and was moaning in pain. All I could see was what looked like a scratch on his skinny calf. A disappointingly tiny little scratch: Bertha knelt and dabbed at it with a paper towel.

  “There,” she said. “All better.”

  “All better? What are you talking about?” The sheriff’s voice, never pleasant to my ears, had risen to a kind of shriek. “Has it had its shots?”

  “We think of Arthur as a he,” Mom said. “But yes, of course he’s had his shots. And he barely broke the surface.”

  The sheriff lurched away, shook his finger at Mom and Bertha. “The ugly cur bit me, plain and simple. That’s assault!”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean—”

  The sheriff’s voice overwhelmed Mom’s. “He’s going to regret it! You’re all going to regret it!”

  Mom turned to Harmony and Bro. “Kids? Can you get Arthur out of here?”

  As for Arthur, where to even begin? Certainly not with what he was doing at the moment, namely prancing around the Big Room with that ridiculous stubby tail of his wagging nonstop. Why had he done what he’d done? What had gone on in his mind? Anything? I really had no idea. But I was very pleased with Arthur. Even if I couldn’t believe I was thinking such a thought.

  The kids rounded up Arthur—no one easier to round up—and hustled him out of the Big Room. A few moments later the sheriff, shouting orders into his phone, was gone, too. He hit the siren right away, a sound that does terrible things to my ears. More to get away from the siren than
anything else—anything to do with birds, for example—I made my silent way down from the bookshelf, across the Big Room, and toward the French doors, framing the view in a very pretty way. The bird feeder was part of that view; no one could help noticing that detail, even a peaceful type whose only interest was getting away from the noise and possibly stretching her legs a little.

  The French doors closed, practically in my face. Mom looked down. “Nice try, cutie.”

  Big Fred came over not long after that. Always interesting to see Big Fred. I especially like how he ducks when going in and out of rooms, but still manages to hit his head on something or other up above, like ceilings. Big Fred is Bertha’s boyfriend and also the boss of the volunteer fire department, meaning he has a police scanner.

  “Any news, Freddie?” Bertha said. She calls him Freddie, like he’s a little kid, but no little kid ever had a voice like Big Fred’s, a low rumble I could feel in my paws, all the way up on the bookshelf—and a very nice sound, by the way, almost the opposite of sirens.

  He shook his head. “Looks like Matty got himself clean away, for now. Al Carstairs is back at the station; lost one of his boots in the snow. Sheriff’s gone to the hospital.”

  “Hospital?” Mom said.

  “For tests, he said.” Big Fred glanced over at a certain party, now back to dozing by the fire. “How bad was the bite?”

  “Oh, good grief,” Bertha said. “Couldn’t call it a bite. Hardly even a scratch.”

  Big Fred nodded. “Kind of what I thought.”

  “Meanwhile,” Mom said, “what about Matty?”

  “He shouldn’t ought to have run,” Big Fred said. “Is it true he assaulted the sheriff?”

  “Assault?” said Bertha. “He hardly touched him. The sheriff was going to cuff him, Freddie! On these completely bogus charges.”

  “Shouldn’t ought to have touched the sheriff,” Big Fred said. “And the longer he’s in the wind, the worse it’s going to be.”

  “Then let’s go find him!” Harmony said.

  Big Fred turned to Harmony and smiled. “Find Matty Comeau somewheres in these mountains when he doesn’t want to be found? Good luck with that.”