“Who cranked up the heat like that?” said Brutus as he puffed a little. “That furnace has been blasting away non-stop since we came down those stairs.”
He was right. For some reason the furnace was working overtime, emitting a dry heat that was searing Harriet’s sensitive features.
“You don’t get it, do you, cat?” said a voice from within the wall. “We don’t need doors. We move around this house and never use any of those passageways humans like to use, or cats.”
“He’s right,” said Brutus. “Mice are notoriously clever little creatures. They can probably move through the walls and reach any part of the house without being seen.”
“So how do we fight the annoying critters?!”
“You can’t!” said the mouse from within the safety of the wall. “Just accept it, cat. We’re here to stay. Now beat it. I’m trying to take a nap and you’re bothering me.”
In response, Harriet moved fast as lightning and jammed her paw into the tiny hole. “Come here, you annoying little beast!” she cried. For a moment she thought she could feel something soft and squishy being impaled by her sharp claws. But when she retracted her paw she saw it was just a piece of old styrofoam.
“Beat it, you stupid cat!” said the mouse. “You’ll never catch me. Never, you hear? Never, never, never!”
And with these words, suddenly a piece of cheese was projected from the tiny hole. It wasn’t so much a piece of cheese as a rind, though, neatly nibbled down to the plastic. It hit Harriet right on the nose.
“Oh, you horrible little…” she growled.
“Oh, well,” said Brutus, who didn’t seem overly concerned by the cheek of the cheese-eating little mite. “Live and let live, right? So maybe we should go back upstairs? I’m burning up down here. Place is turning into a sauna.”
“I’ll get you!” Harriet cried, shaking her paw. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get you, you stupid mouse!”
The sound of laughter echoed through the basement, and this time, even though she tried to locate its source so she could jam her paw in and grab the miscreant, it could have come from anywhere. The mouse was right: it moved through the walls like a ghost.
“Let’s go,” said Brutus again, “before we both melt.”
Grudgingly, Harriet agreed. And they were moving up the wooden staircase to the door when it suddenly slammed shut. And when they tried to shove it open, they couldn’t!
“Great,” said Harriet. “And now we can’t get out.”
“Take that, cat!” the mouse shouted, and tiny little feet could be heard scurrying away from the basement door.
“Did he do that?” asked Harriet. “Did he really lock us up down here?”
“Looks like,” said Brutus. A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Clever little…” He swallowed the rest of the sentence when Harriet threw him a furious look. “Nasty critter,” he muttered instead, and hunkered down at the foot of the stairs.
They’d have to wait it out, until Odelia found them missing, and decided to go look for them. Until then, they were prisoners down there.
Prisoners of a mouse. How absolutely embarrassing was that?
Odelia was glad to finally see Abe Cornwall arrive. The big guy with the mass of frizzy hair was panting as he lumbered down the stairs into the basement. “So what do we have here?” he asked, ducking for a low-hanging wooden beam and then again for the canoe Tex had once stored there and promptly forgotten about.
“A body,” said Uncle Alec dryly. “But a very peculiar one.”
“Oh, goodie,” said Abe, rubbing his hands as he caught sight of the skeleton.
This was what Howard Carter must have felt like when he entered Tutankhamen’s tomb, Odelia thought. The coroner actually looked thrilled with this new assignment.
He moved closer and eyed the body from top to toe. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“Well?” said Alec finally, when the doctor had muttered as much as he seemed willing to. “What can you tell us about the poor bastard?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Abe. “In fact there isn’t anything I can tell you right now, apart from the fact that it’s a human being and not a dog or a cat.”
“Yeah, well, I could have told you that,” said Alec. “But how long has it been here? And how did he or she die—and is it a she or a he?”
“I’d say it’s a male, judging from the width of the pelvis, the shape of the jawbone and the length of the long bones, but to be absolutely certain I’ll have to take this fine specimen back to my lab and perform a series of tests on it.” He was actually rubbing his hands now, in obvious glee. “I’ll call in my team. They’ll be absolutely thrilled.”
“So when will you be able to tell us something?”
“Not soon, Alec,” said Abe. “Though of course I’ll do my best for you.” He suddenly frowned and moved in for a closer look, using a small penlight. “Will you look at that,” he murmured, and then they all moved in closer. The coroner’s light shone down into the space between the two walls, and hit something shiny and glittering located at the feet of the body. And as the coroner carefully lifted it from its hiding place, Odelia gasped when she saw what it was: a diamond brooch. Very large, and obviously very, very valuable… “Ta-dah,” Abe said with satisfaction, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.
Chapter 6
“So how are we supposed to find out who that body belonged to?” asked Dooley.
“Good question, Dooley,” I said. “And I have absolutely no answer for you.”
We were walking along the sidewalk, pretty much going where the wind led us. Odelia and Marge and Tex’s houses are part of a neighborhood of similar houses. Maybe not tract housing, necessarily, but since they were all built around the same time they all look similar in design and construction. Both Marge and Odelia’s houses, for instance, have a small entrance, that leads straight into the living room, a sitting room now mainly used to watch television and in the olden days where people entertained their guests.
The living room is also the dining room, though not in Odelia’s house, since she usually eats in the kitchen, which is connected to the living room. Off the kitchen is the laundry room. Upstairs there are three more rooms and a bathroom: the master bedroom where Odelia and Chase sleep, and of course me and Dooley, though sometimes Dooley favors Grandma’s bed in the house next door. Then there’s the guest bedroom, which Odelia and Chase are converting to an office slash home gym, and then finally there’s a small room where Odelia stores a lot of her junk. It’s filled with all the stuff she can’t fit in the rest of the house. Oh, and there’s also a crawl space she calls an attic, and a basement, which apparently has become the home of a mouse or mice.
We wandered idly through the neighborhood, trying to come up with a plan of campaign.
“No animal is old enough to have witnessed the events that killed that person,” I said.
“We don’t even know how old it is,” Dooley pointed out.
“He must be younger than the house, though, or else how would he have managed to get stuck in its basement?”
“How do you know it’s a he?”
“Just a hunch. Only men are dumb enough to get stuck inside a basement wall.”
“True,” Dooley admitted. “Harriet would never allow herself to be trapped like that.”
“I think I once read that the oldest living organism on the planet is a fungus,” I said.
“So where do we find a fungus to interview?”
“Not sure. And I’m not even sure Mr. or Mrs. Fungus would want to talk to us. I hear they’re very private organisms.”
We both lapsed into silence. This was a tough assignment Odelia had given us. One of those impossible missions Tom Cruise likes so much. Only Tom’s missions usually end up with him dangling from high-speed trains, skyscrapers or the outsides of airplanes. At least our mission didn’t involve that kind of hair-raising stunt. At least I hoped it wouldn’t. I’m not all that keen on hair-raising stunts, and I don’t think Dooley is either.