by Kin Platt
Now this wasn’t like Sinbad. He has the same kind of appetite as me. We both eat, according to my dear old dad, like there’s no tomorrow.
“You can always have the canned meat,” I told him, figuring maybe he thought I made a mistake. “This is fresh meat. It’s healthier for dogs.” He whined again. “Well anyway, it’s good for a change once in a while.”
There were so many newspaper ads and TV commercials lately, about how great canned meat was for dogs, I was brainwashed and really didn’t know which was better anymore.
I waited another second to give my deep thinker a chance to make up his mind. But he only kept looking at it, lying flat, and whining softly. Maybe he wasn’t hungry.
I thought I’d put it in the icebox and reached down to take it away from him.
He growled at me.
Now that’s one thing Sinbad never does, no matter how rough we play or what I do to him, including half-nelsons, strangle holds, and toe holds. Of course he gives me the playful growls, the ferocious fakes, but his tail is wagging and it’s just a game. This growl was different.
It was the kind of snarling growl he reserved for people like those two hard guys up at Mrs. Teska’s. Or for a boxer, one of his natural enemies.
“Are you for real?” I told him. “It’s me, you dope. Your loyal loving master. You don’t have to eat it now if you don’t want to.”
I reached down again and picked the dish up slowly, right under his nose. His growl rumbled in his throat, getting deeper. But now I noticed he was growling at the meat! Not me.
I put the dish on the table. Went to the telephone, and dialed. Sinbad sat up. “Hello, Mr. Maytag? This is Steve Forrester.”
“Hi Stevie,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“It’s about this meat you delivered to us,” I said.
“Hold it, hold it,” he said, “What meat?”
“The meat you just sent over,” I said. “You know, the hamburger steak meat. Did my mother order it?”
“Not to my knowledge, Steve,” he said. “And I know I didn’t send any over to your house. Unless maybe my delivery boy made a mistake,” he added.
I couldn’t help thinking, a couple mistakes like that and I’d have my good part-time job for the summer. If I could get a license to drive a panel truck.
“You sure my mom didn’t order it?’
“I’m sure,” he said. “But she might have ordered it from one of the butchers in the new village. They got good meat too.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” I said.
“Okay, that’s nice to hear,” he said. “So, anyway, what’s the problem? You got meat? You don’t know who sent it to you. Consider it a gift. Enjoy it. Your mother is probably out shopping now. When she comes back she’ll tell you where she got it.”
“She’s not out shopping.” I said. “She’s out of town.”
“Oh?” he said. He sounded puzzled now.
“Sinbad thinks there’s something wrong with it,” I said slowly, looking down at Sinbad. He cocked his head and let out a deep sigh, like he was glad I was finally getting with it.
Mr. Maytag sounded serious, “If you got a minute, Stevie, bring it down. Wait a second—has Sinbad eaten any?”
“No,” I said. “That’s the trouble.”
“Good,” he said. “Bring it down here, Stevie. I’d like to have a look at that meat.”
I dumped the meat out of the dish onto the brown paper. It still looked good to me but what do I know about meat? I wrapped it up just the way we got it and sealed it with the little strip of cellophane.
“Watch the house, Sinbad. Mr. Maytag wants to know why you’re so fussy.” I heard a snore and looked down. He was asleep already.
Mr. Maytag’s a fat jolly red-haired man. And another in the long list of Sinbad’s admirers.
The first thing he said when I handed to him the package was, “That’s not my meat.” He pointed to the cellophane seal, then turned and pulled a strip of rolled paper off an iron dispenser. He has his name, address, and phone number printed on his seal. I should have remembered that.
He said, “Now that mystery’s cleared up, let’s take a look.” He unwrapped the meat and said, “Fresh ground chuck.” He picked it apart and looked at it intently. Then he held it very close and smelled it. The red color seemed to drain right out of his face leaving him quite pale. “You sure Sinbad didn’t eat any of it?” he asked.
The way he said it I got scared. My voice shook when I said he hadn’t. He sighed his relief. Then he picked up his phone and dialed.
“Sam,” he said, “I need a quick analysis. Can you send your boy right over?” He hung up and said, “It won’t take long. Sam’s a good fast chemist when he has to be.” He picked up a big cleaver and started to hack into a red ribbed quarter of beef. The bone splinters flew. “I only chop this hard when I’m mad,” he told me.
In a few minutes the druggist’s delivery boy came over. Another kid with a good steady job. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and was a couple of years older than me, but I looked at him enviously just the same.
Mr. Maytag handed him the package. “Right back where you came from, Sidney. This is a rush order. Tell your father I’m waiting for an answer.”
The kid said “Hi” to me and left. I was getting so jealous of kids working. I’d forgotten Sidney worked in his father’s drug store.
“How’s your mother and father?” asked Mr. Maytag, as he picked up the meat cleaver again. “Oh, that’s right, you said she was away.”
“They had to go up to Maine for a few days,” I said.
“That’s nice,” he said. Then he stopped chopping. He put down his cleaver and wiped his red hands on his white apron. “Do me a favor, Stevie,” he said. “We don’t know for sure yet. And maybe it was an accident. But from now on, until your folks come home anyway, you don’t eat any meat that comes to your house. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “Mom left plenty for us to eat anyway.”
“So then eat it!” he yelled at me. I was sure surprised at that. He’s never yelled at me before in all my life.
“After you finish that,” he yelled, “if you and Sinbad get hungry, you’re always welcome to a meal at the Maytags’. All right? You got that straight?”
Boy, was he mad!
“Was there anything wrong with that meat, Mr. Maytag?”
The telephone near him rang. He put a red forefinger across his lips as he picked it up. “That you Sam? So, okay. What do you know?” Then he just listened.
I heard the voice of the druggist but couldn’t make out what he said.
I didn’t have to.
Mr. Maytag said gloomily, “I thought so, too, Sam. Who? The Forrester boy. The one with the hoont! The bulldog,” he yelled. “What’s that you said? Yeah. I agree.”
He hung up and looked down at his cleaver, frowning.
“Well my friend, lucky for you that Sinbad is such a gentleman. Usually dogs are so greedy they’ll swallow anything.”
I guess I looked sick. I felt green.
“We don’t know who did it,” he said. “Remember Stevie, there are a lot of sick people in the world. Running around, keeping busy. Why they do these things, we’ll never know.”
“You mean the meat was poisoned?”
“Enough to kill you and three other bulldogs,” he said.
I thanked him and started out but he told me to wait. He scooped some meat out of his showcase with that big metal meat scooper. He didn’t put it on the scale but just dropped it on his brown paper and sealed it with his own brown and white seal. Then he handed it across the counter to me.
“What’s that for?” I asked backing off.
“Compliments of the house,” he said. “Go ahead, take it. You’ll be doing me a big favor.”
“How come?”
“I don’t want Sinbad to lose his faith in butchers,” Mr. Maytag said.
On the way back home I had plenty of time to think. I was real glad, for
a change, that Sinbad proved to have such a one-track mind. He remembered all the way back to the time he was a tiny little pup when somebody tried to poison him.
I never found out who did it to him then. Or why.
This time I thought I had a pretty good idea.
Some men don’t like to be stopped and scared off by a dog. Especially one they know isn’t afraid of them.
CHAPTER 11
Mystery Of The River Queen
Sinbad wolfed Mr. Maytag’s meat down like a shot. So there wasn’t any question about his memory and sense of smell being better than his appetite.
When the phone rang I thought it was my mom or dad calling long distance from Maine but it was Sheriff Landry.
“I’m glad you called, Sheriff. I was just going to call you.”
“If it’s about permission to marry Minerva, I think you’re both too young.”
He’s always trying to talk me out of marrying his daughter. As if I’d ever marry a girl that I couldn’t beat running, anyway.
I said, “This is about something else. You remember those two men I told you about? The Lincoln Continental? The black one?”
“Oh. Those two. What about ’em?”
“Well, they just tried to poison Sinbad,” I told him.
“I suppose you can prove that,” he said.
“You bet I can,” I said. “I brought it to Mr. Maytag. He checked it with Sidney’s father.”
“Who’s Sidney’s father.”
“Mr. Beller. The druggist.”
“Oh,” Sheriff Landry said. “Well, I’ll accept that as pretty good proof.”
“I told you,” I said.
“Now how do you know it was those two men that tried to poison him? Was it meat?”
“It sure was,” I said.
“Did they sign their names on the package?”
“Well, no.”
“Did they leave any fingerprints that you checked?”
“No.”
“Maybe you saw them do it.”
“No, I didn’t.” There’s no kidding about the law moving slow.
“Well, maybe you saw their car drive up to your door with it.”
I said, “It was a white panel delivery truck.”
“Not too much difference,” he said. “Anything else you wanted to
tell me about, Steve?”
“Well, aren’t you going to do something? Maybe I didn’t see ’em, but I’m willing to bet they’re the ones.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Sinbad they wanted to poison,” he said. “You live there too.”
“Boy, that’s funny,” I said. “Anyway I just happened to remember where you might find them. You know the Red Roost Motel on Highway 27? Going out to Montauk? Well, these two fellows asked me about a place and I sent them there.”
“Those same two fellows in the black Lincoln Continental?” he asked.
“Yeah. Yeah.”
“Well, that’s one of the reasons I called you. We just a fished Lincoln Continental out of the bay there. Black one. This year’s model, too.”
“Boy,” I said. “So they’re rotten drivers too. I told them it was on the Montauk Highway and to take a right at the bridge and they couldn’t miss it.”
“Are you sure you told them that?” he asked.
“Of course I’m sure,” I said. “I’m positive.”
He sighed. “That’s too bad, Steve.” Then, he said, slowly, “Going to Montauk, you ought to know, the Red Roost Motel is on the left side at the bridge.”
I thought for a second. “Say, that’s right. I guess I was thinking of it coming back from Montauk.”
“You can’t afford to make mistakes like that, Steve.”
I said, “Okay, so it was a mistake. Besides, I just told you, they tried to poison Sinbad. Not to mention wrecking Mrs. Teska’s store.”
“That what makes your mistake look bad,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. He sounded a little sore at me for something.
“Now we know you had a motive,” he said.
“What?” I yelled
“Don’t leave town,” he said and hung up.
I stared in this shell-shocked condition for about a minute. I heard a whine and found Sinbad sitting there looking up at me.
“I hope you know what we’re doing,” I told him. “I think I’m wanted by the police.”
He blinked once. Then slid down to his prone position. I looked at the clock.
“I got no time for a conference now,” I said. “‘Aqua Man’s’ on.”
Sometimes Sinbad watches TV with me. He sits up for the good ones. Sinbad’s crazy about water, so for this show he sat next to me on the floor.
“Aqua Man” is usually pretty good. The hero, Rick Battles, wears all the latest scuba ear, mostly always that black neoprene skin suit with fins and goggles and one of those automatic decompression meters on his wrist. Plus the underwater watch and depth gauge and underwater compass I guess he needs for his work and adventures. When he takes the goggles off he looks like a pretty shifty, cowardly guy, not at all like a hero. But he’s a good swimmer and diver, so after a while you forget his mean face.
This episode was about some kids who got into trouble exploring caves along the water. The tide trapped them and Rick Battles came in and got them. Except one kid, the brave one and the only good swimmer, who’d swum out to get the Coast Guard but managed instead to attract a giant squid. It had him stranded on a big rock, pulling at him. Rick came back for the kid, dived, had his scuba tank ripped off by the squid, and couldn’t breathe. But he came up for air, remembered his underwater knife, which he should have used the first time if he had any sense, and after he dived again there was a big inky explosion underwater.
Rick got the kid, Tommy, off the rocks, and back to the boat with the others where his girl friend was now in charge. All the kids promised to give up cave exploring and that was it.
I probably would have enjoyed the movie more but I wasn’t concentrating. I was trying to figure out what made me so sure it was those two men who had wrecked Mrs. Teska’s store and then tried to poison us.
I thought back to the note. The IOU. That was a clue, all right, if only I could make it mean something.
Sinbad was right in the middle of a big yawn.
“We’re gonna review the evidence,” I told him. He blinked and settled down, looking grave as a judge. So I spoke to him like this famous detective on TV.
“I submit that these guys looked like gangsters. Only we’re not sure, right?” Okay, so let’s assume they are. And let’s stay awake, your Honor, this is an important case.”
Sinbad hadn’t meant to doze off.
“All right. Now let’s say that Frank Teska, who we all know is Mrs. Teska’s son, got to gambling someplace and wound up losing five thousand dollars. So he made out an IOU. Only they wanted the money. So he said, ‘Go see my mother. Maybe she’s got some.”
This made pretty good sense. My mother always pays when I have to charge something at the store.
“All right. So they come up and get mad when she says, ‘Take a look around, you dopes. Does this place look like I got money?’ One fellow says, ‘Mean business.’ Maybe he said, ‘We mean business!’ Also, I submit, I heard her cry and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t over spilt apples.”
Sinbad blinked but he stayed awake.
“Okay. Then, if you recall, later they walked right in. Even though the door sign said CLOSED. So, I submit, they’re gangsters. What’s next? Oh, yeah. When they asked who I was and where I lived, like a dope I told them. That’s probably how they could deliver the poisoned meat. We’re the only Forresters around. They could have swiped the panel truck. Right?”
While Sinbad was thinking that over I reminded him about how the two men started to walk toward the back room of the store. “Like they owned the place, remember? Then you came out from behind that curtain, looking mean and tough.”
Sinbad liked that part of it.
“I got to admit you did a good job. You even scared me.” He wagged his tail to thank me for the compliment.
“So then what happened? Later that night they came back and tore the place apart, looking for the money. You were right about that too. I got to admit you tried to warn me. The only question is, did they find the IOU note she hid in the ice cubes or did she hide it someplace else?”
I went to the window seat and found the paper I’d been doodling on when Sinbad first gave me the hint about them being after money. That word “Mimi” I had written wasn’t for Chief Landry’s daughter. Her name is Minnie.
“Now why do you suppose I wrote Mimi?” I asked. Sinbad gave me his inscrutable look. I made myself see the car zooming off, but all I saw was the orange plate, no numbers. Then I remembered where I’d seen the word Mimi. It was over the rear trunk of the car on a small metal plate.
It might be a good idea if I told Sheriff Landry about the orange plate, anyway. He might know what state issued it. I went to the kitchen to call him at his house.
“Sheriff Landry’s residence,” his daughter said, nice and clear.
“Hi, Minerva,” I said. “This is Steve Forrester.”
“How could you flunk an easy subject like science?” she asked me. Right off.
“How do I know? I just did, that’s all. Seven other kids from our school did too.”
“Fifty-five didn’t,” she said.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Now let’s see how much you know. What state issues an orange license plate?”
“Where they grow oranges. Florida, of course.”
That was one of the troubles with her. She knew everything.
But now the word Mimi made sense. It meant Miami. I just didn’t see the whole word, that’s all. Miami Florida. That’s where those men in the Lincoln came from.
“I have one for you,” Minerva said. “What’s yellow and goes click, click, click.”
“Huh?” I said.
“A ball point banana,” she said.
“Ha, ha,” I said.
“What’s wrinkled and goes slam, slam, slam, slam?”
I told her I couldn’t guess.