She put her fingers to the keyboard and started from the beginning again. This time she played her song perfectly.
She practiced clear through until dinnertime. While our family ate, Bogey and I had a bite to eat, too. Then I stretched out on the family room couch.
I was so tired from the day, that I just closed my eyes for a second. I must have dozed off at some point, because the next thing I knew, Bogey was shaking my shoulder.
“Look alive, kid,” he said. “We may have company.”
I rolled on my side and stretched. “Company? I like when our Mom and Dad have company.”
“Not that kind of company, kid,” Bogey told me. “This is the bad kind. You won’t like this company.”
“The bad kind?” I opened my eyes and glanced around.
The whole house was dark. Our family had gone to bed. I couldn’t believe I’d slept through it all.
“Time to get our package upstairs,” Bogey said to me.
“Um, okay,” I told him while I stretched. “But what about the company? The bad kind?”
Bogey nodded toward the hallway. “I’ll show you from the upstairs window, kid.”
I tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes with my arm. That’s when it dawned on me. If we were taking our package upstairs, that meant . . .
Suddenly I was wide awake. “Bogey, is it time to open our package?”
He grinned at me. “Yup, kid. We’ll run surveillance right after that.”
I could hardly believe it! Pretty soon I would finally get to see what was wrapped up in all that paper.
I pulled it out from under the couch and carried it in my teeth as I followed Bogey down the hallway. Funny, but that package seemed even heavier now than it had before. Especially when I took it up the stairs.
Bogey pointed to a spot on the landing. “Let’s leave that thing here for a minute, kid. I’ve got something to show you outside first.”
So I dropped the package and ran after Bogey to our favorite upstairs window. The one where we got a good view of the whole street. And a big part of the block in our neighborhood, too.
We jumped onto the seat cushion and looked outside.
“Over there, kid,” he told me. “See her?” He pointed a paw toward a streetlamp.
I turned in the direction he had pointed. And sure enough, I saw someone standing under the streetlamp and leaning against the pole.
“Bogey, that looks like . . .” I started to say.
“Yup, kid,” Bogey finished. “It looks like Delilah, all right.”
“What’s she doing out there?” I asked.
And just as soon as I said the words, I already knew the answer. Or at least, I had a pretty good idea what the answer was. I started to shake just a little bit. I was really glad we were on the inside and she was on the outside.
“Do you think she’s watching our house?” I asked my brother. “Maybe in case she’d like to break in and well . . .”
Bogey nodded. “I’d say so, kid.”
Holy Catnip. I gulped.
Bogey put his paw on my shoulder. “Maybe it’s time we found out what’s inside that package, kid. And the reason it’s so important to these people. So take it in the sunroom and start opening it. I’ll be along in a minute. First I need to do something in our Mom’s office.”
I felt my brow go up. “You do? What?”
Bogey grinned. “Let’s just say the St. Gertrude Police are about to get a mysterious tip, kid. Something about a stranger lurking in our neighborhood.”
I tilted my head. “O-o-o-h.”
Without another word, Bogey took off for the first floor. And I went back and retrieved our package from the landing. Then I carried it into the sunroom.
As soon as I walked in, I spotted the Wise One on her purple velvet couch. The Princess was lounging on a chair across from her.
I tried to bow like Bogey had taught me to do. But it wasn’t exactly easy to do while I was carrying that heavy bundle.
Miss Mokie waved her paw over me from above. “No need for formalities, young Detective. It appears you are carrying a heavy load. Please come in and unburden yourself. The good Princess Alexandra has told me of your recent case. She said you’d be bringing a package up to be unwrapped.”
I dropped the package in the middle of the floor and turned to the Princess. “But how did you know?”
She smiled and stared at me with her big, green eyes. “I heard all about it while you were napping, Buckley. Bogey told Lil and me everything that happened today. We all agreed the sunroom would be the best place to put this package. Because we can hide it up here if we need to.”
I’m sure the things the Princess was saying probably made a lot of sense. But at that moment, I could hardly make sense of anything. All I could see where those big, green eyes. I just sort of went gooey inside and my heart started to pound really loud.
Miss Mokie sat up very straight and very tall. “Shall we open it now, young Detective?”
“Um, okay,” I managed to say.
And that’s when it hit me. Finally, at long last, I was going to see what was inside. I had waited so long to find out. It felt like a year had gone by since I first found the package in that cabinet.
I only hoped it would be something worth waiting for.
I turned to see Lil join the party. She saluted me. Perfectly, without hitting her nose, her ears or even her whiskers.
“Thought you might need some help, Detective Buckley,” she told me.
“Thanks,” I said with a smile.
Then I ducked my head down and started yanking at the knot in the string. Someone had tied it pretty tight. But after a few tries, I was able to pull it loose and then pull it apart. I moved onto the next knot and did the same thing.
After that, Lil helped me pull the string out from around the whole bundle.
Next we started working on the brown paper. We used our claws to pull it off in shreds. Underneath, we found a layer of soft cloth. In fact, it looked like the whole object had been wrapped in this cloth. So Lil grabbed one end of the cloth and I rolled the object in the opposite direction. I pushed it over and over and over.
Until the thing that had been wrapped up finally appeared.
A little black cat statue.
Made from a shiny, sort of sticky black plastic. It had a tail that curved around in a half circle.
“It’s a cat,” I said. Though I figured everybody could probably see that.
Right at that moment, I wasn’t sure whether I should be happy or disappointed. Sure, as plastic cat statues go, this one was a nice one. Still, it probably wasn’t worth a lot.
The Princess jumped down and moved closer to get a better look. “That plastic looks kind of rubbery. And stretchy. It’s sort of funny looking.”
I stared at the black cat. “I know.”
That’s when I realized something wasn’t right.
I glanced at Lil. “But why would a plastic cat statue be so heavy? Plastic should be light.”
The Wise One’s voice floated down from above us. “Look deeper.”
Look deeper? Huh? How was I supposed to do that?
Now Bogey trotted in and joined us. He walked right over to that cat statue, put a sharp claw into the plastic and ripped it wide open. Suddenly something sparkly popped out. Something that was a beautiful dark blue, with some shiny silver beside it. In fact, there was lots and lots of blue.
Blue gems.
The Princess and I both gasped. The cat statue had been covered in a black plastic coating. But just below that . . .
All of us cats jumped in to rip up the rest of the plastic coating. Before long, we had pulled all that plastic off in strips.
And revealed the cat statue underneath.
It was made from a silver-colored metal and mostly covered in blue stones. The nose had a red stone and the eyes had green stones.
The Princess sort of sighed. “Oh my goodness, those blue stones are sapphires. Kashmir sapphires
. The best kind.”
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I’m sure, Buckley. I know my gems.”
And then I remembered that she did. In her life before she came to live with us, she had been around a lot of jewels.
“The green stones are emeralds,” the Princess went on. “And the red ones are rubies. And the main part of the cat is made out of platinum.”
“Wow,” Lil and I sort of murmured.
The statue was so shiny and beautiful, I couldn’t stop staring at it. None of us could stop staring at it.
Lil finally spoke. “So . . . is that what I think it is?”
Bogey grinned. “Yup, I’d say so.”
Then he turned to me. “Why don’t you be the one to say it, kid? You know what it is.”
Well, I had to say, Bogey was right. I knew exactly what that cat statue was.
I took a deep breath before I spoke. “It’s Tobias,” I said. “One of Danby Daunton’s cat statues that went missing.”
“Looks like it’s not missing any more,” Bogey said.
Holy Catnip!
CHAPTER 18
_____________________________
Holy Mackerel! I could hardly believe it. I closed my eyes a couple of times and looked again, just to make sure it was real. But every time I opened my eyes, there it was. One of Danby Daunton’s most favorite pieces. Not to mention, one of his most famous!
The Tobias half of his Best Friends statues.
A statue that had been missing for almost a hundred and fifty years!
All of us cats just stood there and stared at it for a few minutes. The blue stones sort of lit up like little blue lights. The whole thing was so shiny and sparkly that it even sort of glowed. It was one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen in my whole life.
Mr. Daunton sure went to a lot of work when he made this cat statue. It was in the perfect shape of a cat. And it must have taken him a long, long time to put all those stones in. Plus the huge curved tail was designed to fit perfectly with another cat statue. I could tell it was meant to be part of a set.
But even by itself, it was too beautiful for words. It was so much prettier than the painting of the cat statues that we’d seen at the Museum. And then later on the Internet.
Suddenly I understood why all those people had come into our Mom’s store. If they were looking for this statue, I could sure see why. It was so stunning and probably worth a lot of money.
But how did this statue even get into our Mom’s store in the first place? Who put it there?
Above us, Miss Mokie purred. “Ah, such a remarkable piece, young ones. Of course a true artist would only use his cats as subjects for his greatest works. After all, what better subject could there possibly be?”
The Princess smiled up at Miss Mokie. Then she sat right next to the statue. The blue of the sapphires sort of reflected off her snowy, white fur. Funny, but to me, the Princess was just as pretty as any statue. In fact, when I looked back at the statue, I wasn’t as dazzled as I was at first. Then I remembered what Miss Mokie had told me before. About not being dazzled by shiny things. And about looking deeper.
That’s when I noticed the little symbol on the bottom of the statue. It was in the outline of a cat. Exactly like we’d seen in the picture of the painting on the Internet.
I pointed to the bottom of the statue. “Bogey, look! There’s a symbol here.”
Bogey patted me on the back. “Good job, kid.”
“Um, thanks,” I told him. “I still wonder why he put those symbols on his statues.”
Bogey nodded. “Me, too, kid. I have a feeling they’re connected to this case somehow. But I’ll bet we find out how pretty soon.”
For some reason, I kind of shuddered. Sure, I wanted to find out what those symbols had to do with our case. But then again, if it meant running into people like Delilah . . . well, let’s just say I wasn’t in a big hurry.
Still, a whole bunch of other questions raced through my mind.
“I wonder where the other cat is?” I asked out loud. “Where is Tessa?”
Bogey shook his head. “That’s a good question, kid.”
The Princess ran her paw over the front of the Tobias statue. “Before I came to live here, I used to hear a lot about the Daunton statues. It’s said that Mr. Daunton never made any more after the Tobias and Tessa statues disappeared. He was so heartbroken. He put his heart and soul into those statues.”
I shook my head. “Wow, that’s really sad. Because I’ll bet Mr. Daunton would have made a whole bunch more statues if he hadn’t been so upset.”
Bogey leaned against the Wise One’s couch. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, kid? If he quit making statues all of a sudden, he probably had lots of stuff left over. Stuff he would’ve used to make more statues.”
Suddenly my heart skipped a beat. “You mean more gems and gold and silver? Stuff like that?”
Bogey grinned. “Yup, kid. That would be my guess.”
Now Lil joined in. “So what happened to all his statue-making materials?”
Bogey raised his brow. “I don’t know. But you can bet he put it in a safe place. He probably hid it.”
Lil looked back to the hallway. “I believe you’re right, Detective Bogart. Because, if his beloved cat statues were ever found, he would’ve been happy once more. And he would’ve started making new statues again.”
Bogey grinned. “You got it, Lil. And wherever he hid his stuff, I’ll bet it’s still there today.”
Lil looked at the statue. “Because there’s never been any record of a treasure trove like that being found.”
By now, my head had been going back and forth. Looking at Bogey then Lil then Bogey then Lil and on and on. When they finished talking, I had to shake my head to make all the pieces fall into place.
That’s when it hit me. And let me tell you, it hit me hard. “You mean . . . hidden treasure?”
Bogey nodded. “Yup, kid, this case might just turn into a treasure hunt, too.”
A treasure hunt?
Holy Mackerel!
“But first we’d better hide this Tobias statue,” Bogey said. “So nobody finds it.”
Up until now, the Wise One had been sitting quietly on her couch. Listening to every word. Maybe that was just one of the ways she’d gotten to be so wise. By listening to things a lot.
She waved her paw above us. “I believe you’ll find a false bottom in the closet over there. It would make an ideal hiding place. No one would ever find it.”
Wow. Lil and the Princess and Bogey and I all looked at each other with big eyes. I sure had to wonder how the Wise One knew that. Then again, she was the Wise One. She knew a lot of stuff that no one else knew about.
Bogey and the Princess ran off to look in the closet. Then Lil helped me roll the statue up in the cloth it had been wrapped in before.
Minutes later, us cats had dragged that statue across the floor. Together we carefully tucked it away into the empty hiding place in the closet. Then we covered it with the false bottom. No one would ever know it was there.
Bogey glanced at me. “I’ve got a few things to check out kid. Then we’d better get back to our surveillance rounds. Meet you in ten?”
I tilted my ears forward. “Ten?”
Bogey grinned. “Minutes, kid. Ten minutes.”
I nodded. “Oh, okay. I’ll be there.”
Then one by one, all the other cats left the room. But I stayed behind. For some reason, I just wasn’t ready to leave yet.
The Wise One looked down at me from her couch. “Is something bothering you, young Detective? I sense that something is weighing on your mind.”
Well, to tell you the truth, I didn’t think anything was really bothering me. Except for the usual stuff. And, well . . . all the things going on with this case . . .
But before I could even think about it any more, a whole bunch of words just sort of came pouring out of me. It seemed like I started talking and I couldn
’t stop.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “The people that came into our Mom’s store today . . . the ones who were probably looking for this statue . . . Bogey thinks they used to be friends. And boy, they sure don’t act like they were ever friends. They’re really pretty mean to each other. But how can they act like that? How can they be friends once and then not be friends? I’d be pretty upset for a long, long time if Bogey and I weren’t friends any more. Having him as my best friend is the best thing ever. What would I do without the Princess or Lil or Ranger or Amelia? And . . . you. Having friends means more to me than anything.”
Miss Mokie nodded her head and smiled. “Ah, yes, young one. You are wise for your years and you have a good heart.”
I tilted my head. “Gee, thanks. But why do these people act like they do?”
Miss Mokie raised her paw and flexed her claws. “First, one must know something about human behavior. It can be quite difficult to understand, of course. Human behavior can be so far beneath that of feline behavior.”
“It can?” I asked.
“Most certainly, young Detective,” Miss Mokie said. “Humans are prone to such folly as greed.”
I leaned in to listen closer. Maybe if the Wise One became wise from listening, maybe I could become wise by listening, too.
Now Miss Mokie sighed. “Humans, I fear, often have a strange desire to own shiny and sparkly things. Objects they believe to be valuable. And in some cases, the more they own, the better. They see such objects as great treasures, things to be prized above all else.”
“Is that bad?” I asked her.
After all, I had a nice collection of cat toys. Some of them had sparkles on them. And some of them were shiny. Gracie had even made me some shiny cat collars. Plus I had a nice bed and a great food dish. And I sure did like all those things.
Miss Mokie leaned forward and stretched her front legs out before her. “It is certainly not wrong, unless one starts to value their possessions over anything else. And as long as one doesn’t lie, cheat, or steal in order to possess such prized objects. And as long as one doesn’t cause harm to their friends, or treat others badly. But so often, humans stop at nothing to own objects they consider to be valuable. They do so at the expense of the ones they care about the most.”
The Case of the Jewel Covered Cat Statues Page 15