The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe

by Josh Pachter

  So Sherlock was banished from the agency, and Nero and I went back to handling our couple of cases a day, all by ourselves. We averaged thirty-five to forty cents a case, and more from grown-ups, plus expenses—which was nowhere near as profitable as a good paper route but lots more enjoyable.

  Agency business took up most of our time, and as a result we didn’t get to see old friends as often as we used to. I hadn’t spoken to Sam Cabot in weeks when I walked into the Griffen garage, our office, one morning in August and found him seated in one of the yellow folding chairs we kept around for clients.

  “Hi, Archie,” Sam said, with a mournful look on his face.

  “Artie,” I said automatically. “Hi, Sam. What’s up?”

  “I just finished telling Nero,” Sam answered. “It’s about my dog.”

  “Caesar?”

  “Sure, Caesar!” Sam exploded. “He’s my dog, isn’t he? I—I mean, he was my dog.”

  I pounced. “What do you mean, was your dog? Has something happened to him?”

  “You’re sharp as a tack today, aren’t you, Artie?” Nero chuckled. “Sam, you’d better go back to the beginning and fill my partner in.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” Sam began slowly. “I was out playing with Caesar about three hours ago, at that vacant field at the corner of Hoover and Berkshire. I was throwing a rubber ball around, and Caesar was fielding. Well, the ball got away from me and rolled into Berkshire, and Caesar ran after it. There’s a thirty-mile-an-hour speed limit there, but this late-model, off-white convertible came tearing down Hoover, doing fifty at least, and made the turn into Berkshire without even slowing down. The driver must have seen Caesar, because he slammed on his brakes, but he was too late—he hit him. The guy started to pull over, then he changed his mind and beat it.”

  “Did you get his license-plate number?” I asked.

  “He was going too fast. They were out-of-state plates, I could see that, and I think the last number was a three or an eight, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I was too worried about Caesar to think much about the car. I ran up to him. I remember looking around for help and not seeing any other people or cars nearby, so I dragged him to the sidewalk, off the street.

  “There was blood all over the place. I felt for his heartbeat, but I couldn’t find it. Caesar was dead.”

  Sam slowly shook his head from side to side. He didn’t look like he was going to be doing any more talking for a while, so I shifted my glance to Nero.

  “Sam then moved the corpse to a corner of the vacant field,” Nero told me, “and ran home to tell his parents what had happened and to find out what he should do. There was no one home.”

  “I—I couldn’t just leave him there, lying around with blood all over him and everything,” Sam sniffled, “so I took a shovel and went back to the vacant field and dug a big hole and buried him. After I filled in the hole, I just stood there for a while and, well, cried. I loved that dog, Archie!”

  “Artie,” I said. “So you want us to find out who killed your dog?”

  “There’s more to the story,” Nero frowned. “Go on, Sam.”

  “Well, I f-finally went home and sort of mooned around for a while. Then I decided to go back and get Caesar’s collars and tags, so I’d have something to remember him by. So I went to the field and dug up the grave and—and—”

  “And what?” I prompted.

  “And Caesar’s body was gone.”

  “What!” I yelled.

  “You heard him, Artie,” Nero growled. “He dug up the grave and the dog’s body was gone.”

  “He must have dug in the wrong place,” I said.

  “No!” Sam cried. “I didn’t!”

  Nero leaned back.

  “This is about where you came in, Artie,” he said. “Sam was telling me that, because it hasn’t rained around here in almost a week, the top layer of dirt at the vacant field has turned a kind of dry, dusty, light brown. When he dug the hole and buried Caesar, moister dark-brown dirt from underneath got left on top of the grave. Sam?”

  “So when I went back for the collar and tags,” our client said, “I just looked for the spot where the dirt was dark-brown instead of light, and dug there. And Caesar was gone.”

  “Do you have any idea why someone would want to steal Caesar’s corpse?” I asked.

  “No, I can’t see why anyone would do a thing like that! I can’t figure it out at all!” Sam’s voice trembled.

  “Who knew where you buried your dog?”

  “No one—well, I didn’t tell anyone, not even that he was dead. But I guess a few people walked by while I was digging the grave, and some cars must have passed by, too, and they might have seen what I was doing.”

  “Did you recognize any of the people or cars that passed?”

  “No, none. But I wasn’t looking at them carefully or anything.”

  “Could the convertible that killed Caesar have been one of the cars that passed?” Nero asked.

  “I—I didn’t notice, really. I don’t think so.”

  “What about the driver?” I said. “Could he have been one of the people who walked by?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know. I just wasn’t paying much attention to anything except Caesar.”

  “All right, Sam,” Nero said, rising, “that’s all we need to hear right now. We’ll take your case.”

  “You’ll find out who killed Caesar?” Sam asked eagerly.

  “No promises. But we’ll do our best.”

  “And you’ll get the body back?”

  “We’ll try. Our retainer is fifteen cents, which you can give to Artie. Of course, the final fee will depend on our results. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can, maybe today or tomorrow.”

  Sam got up from his yellow chair.

  “Thanks, Nero,” he said, shaking Wolfe’s hand goodbye. “I really mean it, thanks a lot.”

  Then he handed me a sticky dime and a nickel, shook my hand, and said, “You, too, Archie. Thanks.”

  “Artie,” I said, as I pocketed the coins and ushered Sam out of our office.

  Numbers have always fascinated me.

  Like, did you know that if you multiply any number, any number at all, by nine, and then add up the digits of the product, and then add up the digits of that sum, and keep adding until you wind up with a single digit, that final digit will always be nine?

  Or did you ever notice that, out of all the millions of squiggles that could have been chosen to represent our ten numerals from zero to nine, two of the ten that were chosen happened to be shaped exactly the same? The only difference between a six and a nine is that one of them, and I wish I knew which one, is upside down.

  That particular afternoon, as I pedaled along Berkshire toward Hoover and the vacant field, I was thinking about how a three is just an eight with the left side sliced off, and how it would be easy to mix up a three and an eight if your mind was on something else and you only got a quick look. People get confused when they’re worried about the life of a loved one, I thought, even when the loved one is an animal, and they can’t be expected to pay attention to trivial details. Still, I wished Sam could have been more definite about the license plate of that convertible.

  After Sam Cabot left the Griffen garage, Nero and I had tried to figure out why anyone would want to steal the body of a dead dog. Even alive, Caesar was just a scrawny little dachshund, not worth much of anything. Why was he so important now that he was dead?

  The most logical answer seemed to be that the hit-and-run driver felt that somehow he could be identified through the corpse of his victim, so he had returned to the scene of his crime and removed the incriminating corpse. It didn’t make much sense, but that was the best we could come up with, so my job was now to investigate the scene for clues, and then to hunt for an off-white, late-model convertible with out-of-s
tate plates and a license number ending in either a three or an eight.

  I braked at the corner of Berkshire and Hoover and got off my bicycle, leaving it on the sidewalk with the kickstand down.

  Carrying a shovel in my right hand, I explored the vacant field. Most of the lot was nothing more than the dusty light-brown dirt that Sam had described, with small patches of weeds and crabgrass here and there and yellowed papers and slivers of glass scattered all around. Two sides of the field were open, bordering on Berkshire and Hoover, and the other sides were separated from the adjoining lots by a tall wooden fence.

  I quickly located the circular patch of dark, recently turned earth which showed where Sam had buried the dead body of his dog, and began digging. After twenty minutes or so, I had hollowed out a hole about four feet deep and found nothing but four feet of dirt. Satisfied that Caesar was indeed not where he was supposed to be, I filled in the hole and went back to my bicycle.

  This may sound a lot like second guessing, now, but as I climbed on my bike I took a good look around, and I got the funniest feeling that something was missing, something besides the body I’d been looking for. You know how it is—you know something is wrong, but you just can’t pin it down. Something was missing, something that should have been there, and I sat for a while, trying to figure out what the heck it was. Finally I shrugged and, giving up for the time being, pushed off.

  I rode around town for a long time looking for the murder car. I saw off-white convertibles with in-state plates, and out-of-state plates on old off-white sedans, but I drew a blank on late-model, off-white converts with the right kind of plates. Even without the three or eight at the end of the number.

  Disappointed, I turned back to the road. But while I’d been looking in different directions I’d been steering blind, and now I found myself heading straight for a parked station wagon. I swerved toward the curb and backpedaled hard, trying to avoid a crash. At the last second, I closed my eyes.

  There was a sharp jolt as I smacked into something, and I spilled off my bicycle onto the sidewalk. I opened my eyes and saw that I had missed the station wagon and had hit the curb instead. I just lay on the cement for a while, groggy, until I was sure I could get up. A small group of people had collected, mostly kids, and a man helped me to my feet.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I think so.”

  My knees hurt and my arms hurt and I think my teeth even hurt, but I could see that I wasn’t bleeding anywhere, so I—

  No blood.

  My head was swimming, and there were kids and grown-ups all around me asking questions left and right, but the words no blood were like jackhammers inside my brain, pounding so hard that I had to pay attention to them and to nothing else. No blood, no blood, NO BLOOD!

  Caesar was struck by a convertible on Berkshire, Sam had said, and before he died he had bled all over the place. Those were Sam’s own words.

  I picked up my shovel, pushed through the crowd of onlookers, got on my bicycle, and rode back to the vacant field at the corner of Berkshire and Hoover. As I rode, I glanced down at my badly skinned arms. The pain had died down to a steady throbbing, and small flecks of red oozed out at several spots. Blood.

  Caesar was hit by a car and had bled all over the place.

  But when I got to Berkshire there was no blood on the street, no blood on the sidewalk, no blood anywhere.

  Blood! That’s what had been missing!

  But why?

  The street cleaners only came by early in the morning. And what about the sidewalk? And the field itself? Who could have cleaned Caesar’s blood from the field? And why?

  Then slowly, piece by piece, the puzzle fitted itself together inside my head. Caesar killed, no blood, body stolen …

  I rode over to Sam’s house and, leaving my bike in the driveway, carried my shovel into the back yard.

  I found what I was looking for in a strawberry patch in a corner of the yard. The patch had just been watered, so the soil was all a rich chocolaty-brown, but at the very rear of the patch, where no berry plants were growing, there was a small, slightly raised mound of dirt.

  The mound was roughly the same size and shape as the dark spot I had dug up earlier, at the vacant field.

  I started shoveling.

  When I entered our office for the second time that day, I was tired, sweaty, and awfully proud of myself.

  Nero was still seated in his overstuffed leather armchair, and Sam Cabot once again was sitting in one of the yellow folding chairs. When I walked in, they were discussing the relative merits of two different ways of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Nero insisted that, to get the best combination of flavors, you had to spread the peanut butter on one slice of bread and the jelly on another and then kind of smish the two slices together. But Sam held out for spreading both peanut butter and jelly onto the same slice of bread, and then putting the unspread slice on top to finish the sandwich.

  I listened to the debate for a couple of minutes, until I got good and hungry. Then I smacked my lips nice and loud. Sam and Nero looked at me.

  “Hi, Archie,” Sam greeted.

  I stood there for a few moments, deciding whether or not to remember that Sam was a client.

  “What’s the matter, Arch?”

  “Artie,” I said menacingly. “My name is Artie.”

  Sam was startled.

  “S-sure,” he mumbled.

  “Sure what?”

  “Sure, Artie.”

  “That’s better,” I growled.

  “Are you finished, Arthur?” Nero asked politely. He called me Arthur when he wasn’t mad at me but wanted people to think he was.

  “Just about.” I smiled. “Sir.”

  “Very good. Sam and I were talking about peanut butter and jelly, and I think we’re about ready for a practical demonstration. Have you eaten?”

  “That can wait,” I said. “First, I’d like to report.”

  “Something important?”

  “You could call it that. I’ve solved the case.”

  “This case?” he asked, nodding toward Sam Cabot.

  “Right.”

  “Well, then,” Nero smiled, “you’d better go ahead and report. Verbatim.”

  “What verbatim?” I scowled. “I haven’t said two words to anybody all day! I just rode around! Now do you want me to report or not?”

  “Certainly, Artie. Go right ahead.”

  “Okay,” I said. And I told Nero and Sam how I’d gone to the field and dug up the empty grave, and how I’d known that there was something missing besides the dead dachshund but couldn’t pin down what it was. Then I told them how I’d suddenly realized that what had been missing at the vacant field was—

  “Blood,” Nero interrupted.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “That’s what was missing. There should have been Caesar’s blood all over the place, but there wasn’t.”

  “When were you there?” I demanded.

  “I haven’t been out of this chair all day, Artie.”

  “Sam told you, then!”

  “Sam told me nothing,” he said smugly. “I told Sam, and he admitted I was right.”

  “Well, then, how did you—?”

  “Proceed, Artie.”

  I didn’t feel nearly so proud of myself anymore. If Nero hadn’t left his chair at all, and Sam hadn’t told him anything, how did he—?

  “There wasn’t any blood on Berkshire, or on the sidewalk, or on the field,” I said, “so I just thought about it until I figured it out. It was pretty simple, really. The obvious thing for me to do was to grab my shovel and—”

  “—and go to Sam’s house.”

  “There’s no way you can know I did that, Nero!” I exploded.

  “I don’t know what you did, Artie. I assum
e that you went over to Sam Cabot’s because that’s what I would have done if I’d been in your place. The fact that I’m right and you did go there doesn’t make me a mind reader. It just confirms my opinion that you’ve got brains.”

  “All right,” I said. “I went over to Sam’s and went into the backyard, and suppose you tell me what I found in the strawberry patch?”

  “Now, you see,” Nero said patiently, “there are some things I haven’t been able to figure out by myself. I know you dug a hole in Sam’s back yard, but the fact that you dug it in a strawberry patch is news to me. How did you know just where to dig? Different-colored dirt again?”

  “No, the whole patch had just been watered. I—”

  “Ah, then you must have come across a small mound of earth and guessed that was the spot. Correct?”

  “Yeah, great. I dug there, about three feet down, and found—”

  “—Caesar’s body.”

  “Caesar’s body. Will you let me finish one sentence, Nero, just one?”

  “I’m sorry, Artie. Go on.”

  “Caesar’s hair was all matted and sticky from dried blood,” I said. “He smelled like lemonade, and there was a note pinned to his left ear reading, ‘I wish you’d keep your crummy dog off my field. He keeps bleeding on the crabgrass.’”

  Nero blinked his large hazel eyes.

  I continued. “The note was signed, ‘Love and kisses, The Phantom of the Opera.’ And the whole thing was written in green ink. In your handwriting.”

  Nero blinked again.

  I swallowed, hard.

  “All right, Nero,” I said. “I give up. I found Caesar’s body, tags and all. He was dead, but he looked perfectly okay. No blood, no note, no nothing.”

  “I’d already figured out that was the case, Artie,” Nero murmured.

  “Yeah, I bet you did. Now tell me how you did it, and then tell me what it’s all supposed to mean, if you’re so smart.”