Case of the Ostentatious Otters

by Jeffrey M. Poole

  Jon strode straight over to Randall.

  “What’s the count? You’ve called me here, so I can only assume something’s off.”

  “Both adults are accounted for,” Randall reported.

  “And the babies?” Jon asked, as the tone of his voice grew angry.

  “I counted 14.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Jon breathed. “That cannot be. Check again.”

  “I did,” Randall insisted. “I counted them all, three times. Then I brought Kathy in and had her count. She came up with the same number I did, each time.”

  Jon looked over at the woman, Kathy, and then realized introductions needed to be made.

  “I’m sorry. This is Kathy Sutherland. She’s head of MBH. Nothing happens down here without her knowledge.”

  “Nothing ever has,” Kathy quietly stated. “Until today.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “You’re missing one of those babies, aren’t you? Would a sting from a young octopus be enough to kill?”

  “It didn’t have to be enough to kill,” Jillian reminded me. “It just had to be enough to paralyze. The open water took care of the rest.”

  “Are we missing one of the juvenile, blue-ringed octopuses?” Meredith incredulously asked.

  “There should be 15,” Jon confirmed. “One of our blue-ringed octopus juveniles has gone missing!”

  NINE

  “Can you believe this is happening?” Jillian whispered, in my ear. “They’ve closed the entire aquarium! All on account of this missing octopus. This is spooky!”

  “Did you hear what they said about that octopus?” I reminded her. “That thing is one of the deadliest creatures to live in the sea. There’s enough tetrodotoxin in one of those tiny octopuses to kill 26 adults within minutes. That’s not something you want to screw around with, let alone admit someone made off with one.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Jon solemnly said, as he appeared by my side. “I simply cannot believe that one of our staff made off with a juvenile octopus. The ramifications of this are… staggering. I can’t even begin to fathom the amount of bad press this is going to generate.”

  “I know you guys have security cameras outside,” I began, “but I’m guessing there aren’t any behind the scenes here?”

  Jon shook his head, “No. I’ve petitioned for a security system for years now, but the public never wants to fund things like that. The only thing they like seeing is the addition of more exotic animals. That’s why we have those blasted octopuses. The more dangerous an animal is, the more of a draw it is to the people. I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “Let’s start with this,” I began. I looked over at Jillian and winked. Correctly guessing what I was about to do, she nodded, signaling her approval. “Contact some security companies. Get some estimates for a professionally installed security system, complete with cameras, off-site data backup, remote access, and so on.”

  “That would cost a fortune,” Jon lamented. “We won’t be able to put anything else to vote until early next year.”

  I shook my head, “No, you don’t understand. Get some estimates. Jillian and I will cover the bill. Consider it a private donation.”

  “While I appreciate the thought,” Jon began, “you have no idea how much a proper security system can run. I wouldn’t want to impose on…”

  “We insist, Mr. Hawk,” Jillian added. “It’s our gift to the aquarium. That way, if you’re pressured to respond to public outcry, then you can tell them that, to avoid incidents like this in the future, a top-of-the-line security system is being installed. It’ll make the people feel better.”

  “You do realize that a system like the one you’re describing will probably cost upwards of a million or two?”

  We both nodded. Jon’s eyes bugged out.

  “Seriously? You’re okay with that?”

  “We are.”

  “Wow. Thank you both.”

  “We’re not as loaded as these two, but we’d like to help, too,” Harry added, drawing a nod of approval from Julie.

  “Then it’ll be from the four of us,” I announced.

  “That… that’s a relief,” Jon finally admitted. “I wasn’t too sure how to handle the press, but I think you’ve got us on the right track. Now, if we could only locate Jack’s damn dive log, we might be finally able to put everything to rest.”

  “It’s probably long gone by now,” Julie decided.

  Jon confidently shook his head.

  “Believe it or not, we believe that book is still in here. Somewhere. We just don’t know where.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Jillian asked. “Wouldn’t whomever stole it want to move it as far away as possible from here?”

  Jon nodded, “If they could get it away from this facility, then I’m sure that’s exactly what they want to do. However, I have a feeling they haven’t.”

  Seeing the confused looks on our faces, Jon patted the air.

  “Let me explain. On the exact day we learned about Jack Carlton’s death, and discovered his office had been ransacked, we knew something was – and you must pardon the pun here – fishy. We instigated searches of all employees and volunteers who were leaving the facility. Backpacks, purses, and bags. Everything was checked. Did the dive log turn up? No.”

  “You think it was stashed somewhere in here,” I guessed. I looked around at the myriad of places a small book could be hidden and groaned. “What are the chances you’ll find it?”

  “Slim to none,” Jon ruefully repeated.

  “Too bad you don’t let dogs in here,” Harry quipped. “Zack’s two dogs could find your missing dive log in no time flat, man.”

  “How’s that?” Jon curiously asked. “You’re talking about the two corgis that Shannon is presently looking after? Are they trained police dogs?”

  I shook my head, “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Jon said. “So, I’m afraid it’ll be…”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” I interrupted. “They’re not police dogs, no, but they are official consultants. I kid you not. They’ve solved quite a few cases up in Pomme Valley.”

  “Cases,” Jon skeptically repeated. “Do tell.”

  “Sherlock kept his ass out of jail when Zack was arrested for murder,” Harry helpfully supplied.

  I watched Jon’s eyes widen and I groaned.

  “Couldn’t you have started with a different case than that one?”

  “You were arrested for murder?” Jon repeated, his eyes unblinking.

  “I didn’t do it,” I confirmed. “I was set up. I had just moved to town and found a dead person in my winery.”

  “Sherlock and Watson located a missing Egyptian pendant,” Julie announced. “It was once owned by King Tut. It was very valuable, and quite small, so it could have been hidden anywhere, yet Sherlock found it hidden in a tube of potato chips.”

  “Pringles,” Harry clarified.

  Jon grunted, “Hmm.”

  “Then Sherlock and Watson located a group of people responsible for stealing other people’s dogs,” Jillian said.

  “Those two dogs solved Zack’s late wife’s murder,” Harry added.

  “They caught the people responsible for…”

  Jon help up his hands, “All right! Enough. I could… I mean, I could simply say they were support dogs. Yeah, that’ll work. Very well. Meredith? Would you go bring Shannon and the dogs here, please?”

  Giving Jon a knowing smile, Meredith slipped away. A few minutes later, the young blonde, who had been dog-sitting my corgis, appeared. At her side were the PVPD’s secret weapons, namely, my two dogs. The girl handed me the leashes, gave the dogs a thorough scratching behind the ears, and left.

  “Okay, pal, you two are up. We’re looking for a missing dive log. Now, I don’t know if it’s around here, or somewhere else in the aquarium, only…”

  I trailed off as the leashes went taut. The dogs wanted to explore already. That was
a good sign, wasn’t it?

  I gave the corgis as much leash as I could and carefully navigated around the narrow walkways and low-hanging pipes. Sherlock, content to take the lead, sniffed along the base of several tanks before snorting and moving on. Looking behind me, I could see that we had amassed quite a collection of followers. Besides the four of us, we had Jon, Meredith, Kathy, and three others I hadn’t seen before, silently trailing behind.

  Sherlock threaded his way through another series of tanks, pausing only to tilt his head at several gurgling pipes that were running along the floor. Then, he changed course and headed towards a closed door. I looked behind us, intent on asking Jon to unlock the door, when I realized the door must lead back outside, to the public viewing area. I tried the handle: it wasn’t locked.

  Walking through the eerily silent hallways, with the numerous tanks visible on either side of the walls, and with the distinctive briny seawater smell filling every nook and cranny, I followed Sherlock as he pulled me toward what had to be the other side of the wall from where we were standing. Sure enough, Sherlock paused to sniff along a bubbling 20 gallon tank. Looking inside, I could see two remarkably tiny octopuses, with dark rings on their bodies and tentacles. Weren’t the venomous octopuses supposed to have rings on them? Did that make these two the proud parents of the missing juvenile?

  Granted, I really didn’t know what poisonous octopuses were supposed to look like, but what I saw in the tank didn’t look particularly harmful to me. These were the dangerous critters carrying tetrodotoxin? These two octopuses were smaller than my hand and looked photogenic as hell. If I came across that in the wild, especially as a SCUBA diver, I’d be tempted to reach out and pet it. But, I also remember a little bit of my high school biology class, where my teacher informed us that the more vibrant the colors an animal had, the higher the risk of it being dangerous. Plus, I didn’t see any baby octopuses anywhere. Perhaps they were being held in another tank?

  Sherlock moved on. This time, he led me to a larger viewing area, where nearly a third of the room had a shallow, open water tank in it. Glancing in, I saw what looked like a manta ray, resting on the sandy bottom of the tank.

  “It’s a skate,” Meredith explained, correctly guessing that I must have been wondering what type of animal it was. “It’s perfectly harmless.”

  Nodding, I gathered up the leashes, intent of guiding the dogs away from the tank when I noticed both Sherlock and Watson had sit down. Sherlock looked at me, gave me a head tilt, and then back at the tank. Much to my surprise, the little tri-colored corgi then reared up on his legs, so that he could get his nose up and over the rim of the tank. Watson followed suit a few moments later.

  “Why are we here?” I heard Jon ask. “What are they doing? Zack, they really shouldn’t be getting too close to the animals.”

  “You heard him,” I scolded the dogs, giving the leashes a firm tug. “Come on, we’re looking for something to do with...”

  I trailed off as I stared at the dogs, who were staring inside the tank. I wordlessly turned to Jillian, who shrugged, and then to Jon. I pointed at the tank.

  “Can you tell if there’s anything different about this exhibit?”

  Jon stepped up to the tank, looked down at the quiescent skate, and then looked over at Meredith.

  “Who maintains the skate exhibit?”

  “I do,” Kathy said, as she stepped around Meredith. “Is something the matter?”

  Jon pointed at the tank, “You tell me. If you’re the one who cleans this tank on a daily basis, then you’d be able to spot any differences, wouldn’t you?”

  Kathy shrugged, leaned over to study the tank, and immediately frowned.

  “What is it?” Jon asked. “You frowned awfully quickly.”

  “She’s spotted something,” Jillian deduced.

  Kathy nodded, “I have. That. That right there. Do you see that gray rock? It wasn’t there two days ago when I vacuumed the sand.”

  I raised a hand, “Umm, could you run that by me again? Did you say you vacuumed the sand?”

  “It’s an underwater vacuum,” Kathy explained. “There’s not enough suction to suck up the sand, or small rocks, but bits of debris will be pulled in. Practically every aquarium utilizes some type of vacuum system to keep their underwater exhibits clean.”

  Jon pointed at the rock.

  “Could that have been thrown in by a visitor?”

  Kathy nodded, “Sure. I’ve seen that type of thing happen before. Want me to get it?”

  “I would appreciate it,” Jon said.

  Kathy took off her boots, rolled up her pants, and waded into the water. The big skate, seemingly asleep up until this point, suddenly darted to the opposite side of the tank. Slowly reaching into the water, Kathy retrieved the rock and had taken a few steps back toward the edge of the large tank when she hesitated. She had rotated the rock in her hand and was now looking at the reverse side.

  “Huh. Will you get a load of that?”

  She held up the stone for us. Bits of metal flashed at us in the bright viewing area lights. The aquarist was holding one of the otter rocks!

  Jon held out a hand, “Would you?”

  Kathy passed it over, then stepped out of the tanks and started rolling her pants back down. “What is it? Why would there be metal on it?”

  “Because this appears to be a 1720 Spanish two reales coin,” Jon answered, unable to hide the astonishment in his voice. “I’ll be damned.” The director of the aquarium looked over at me, and then down at the dogs. “All right, you have me convinced. Sherlock, is it? Do you think you and your friend can find the missing dive log? If you can do that, then... then... I’ll tell you what. Zack, if your dogs find that missing dive log, then I’ll give you and your wife lifelong memberships to the aquarium.”

  “You’re on,” I said.

  “I’m your wife now, huh?” Jillian whispered in my ear, as she passed by me holding Watson’s leash.

  My face flamed up. Had Jon called Jillian my wife? And I hadn’t said anything to contradict him? Hoo, boy. What does that say about me? That’ll have to be a conversation I save for a later day.

  Feeling Sherlock tug at his leash, I increased my pace and allowed him to begin exploring once more.

  “Someone knows,” Jon’s voice suddenly said, almost in my ear. I turned to see the aquarium director walking alongside me. “Someone here at the aquarium knows about San Augustin. I’d even go so far as to say they’ve probably located it. As for the skate exhibit? Someone placed that rock in there, in broad daylight.”

  “It was the perfect hiding place,” I surmised. “It’s out in the open, and unless you knew what to look for, perfectly invisible in the big manta ray tank.”

  “Skate,” Jon corrected.

  “Whatever,” I grinned. “Hey, where does that door lead?” I asked, as I pointed at a sturdy metal door with the top half made up of iron bars, allowing someone to see into the room. In this case, however, the room was dark.

  “That? That’s the equipment room. It’s where we store SCUBA gear. Tanks, regulators, buoyancy control vests, weight belts, suits, and so on. Why do you ask?”

  I silently pointed at Sherlock. He had stopped in front of the door and was staring at it, as though he had heard a strange noise coming from the other side. Without argument, the keys were produced and the door was unlocked. Stepping inside, we saw exactly what Jon had described: SCUBA gear, and it was everywhere. There were at least ten tanks lined up against the opposite wall. A metal shelving unit contained regulators and vests. Another shelving unit held several complete weight belts, and quite an assortment of various weights. Diving knives, masks, fins, and just about anything else a diver would need was on the third wall. Sherlock, however, ignored all of it. He looked back at Watson, shook his collar, and turned to the left.

  The far left corner of the equipment room held a large open crate. Inside were bright orange life jackets, the kind which you’d typically find stowed und
er the seat on a boat. The corgis trotted over to the crate, sniffed around the edges for a few moments, then promptly sat. I studied Sherlock, wondering yet again how he knew where to look. Was there something in the box besides life vests?

  Jon was already at the crate. He was pulling out vests and handing them to Meredith, who then stacked them in a neat pile nearby. Nearly a dozen life jackets later, Jon hit the bottom. However, there was nothing else to find. Jon then gave me a quizzical look, but then noticed I was still staring at Sherlock. The corgi was now staring at the pile of stacked life vests.

  What happened next had the entire room laughing. Jon proceeded to pick up a life vest, hold it out to Sherlock, and when the corgi ignored it, he tossed it back into the crate. Eight jackets later, Sherlock perked up as a life jacket that was seemingly identical to the previous ones was presented. Curious why that particular jacket had attracted Sherlock’s attention, Jon gently squeezed each section of the jacket, pausing only when he hit the larger chest sections.

  What was that song from Sesame Street? One of these things is not like the other?

  Jon felt along the seams and carefully pried the Velcro apart. The jacket should have contained something along the lines of polyethylene foam, but that particular section contained something entirely different: a small padded green notebook. It was a match to the other four that had been in Jack Carlton’s office, which meant... it was the missing dive log!

  “Hot damn!” I exclaimed. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “It’s a dive log,” Jon confirmed. He flipped open the page and began to read. After a few moments, he was nodding. “It belongs to Jack, all right.” The aquarium director knelt down next to Sherlock and gave him several scratches behind the ears. “Well done, boy. Good job!”