122218

Cat got your tongue?

I was typing up my notes on a complex case involving a crooked construction company, a lion, and a unicorn, a tale the details of which I am not yet at liberty to disclose, when a frog hopped up on my desk.

"Gaah!" I said, flinging my bottle of liquid paper in the air. Fortunately the lid was on. I was a little startled.

"Sorry to frighten you," the frog said. "I figured, you being a private detective and all, that you knew I was here and why. Maybe I came to the wrong place."

I had to redeem myself somehow. If I wanted the job. Whatever it was. "I've been meaning to block that gap under the door," I said."Thanks for dusting the sill."

"I guess you've redeemed yourself a little bit," the frog said. "Do you want the job? I assume you know why I'm here."

"Hmm." I rubbed my chin. "Who broke up your wedding?"

"You read the papers," the amphibian acknowledged. "But how do you know Miss Mouse just didn't show up?"

"I know the lady in question," I replied. "That's why I read the wedding announcement in the first place. She's the reason you're here."

"Bingo. You're hired."

"How do you know I want the job?" I asked.

"Simple. You like Minnie; otherwise why read the wedding announcement? And if you didn't want the job, why put up with the Spanish Inquisition?

"It was a cat who broke up the wedding reception. I don't know her name, but she showed up with two of her kittens. Maybe she objects to cross-class relationships. We held the reception in a Moose Lodge. I helped a moose once, pulling a splinter out of its hoof, and we got a good price as a result. I don't know what they'll say the next time I ask for a favor. The feline marauders trashed the place, ate my bride's uncle and who knows how many of the guests, and just about killed Minnie. She's in the hospital right now. In the ICR. To top it all off, on my way over here, I was nearly eaten by a duck. A mallard I think. My nerves are shot.

"I want those animals brought to justice!"

"Let me see what I can do."

-----

First things first, I went to the hospital to visit Minnie. She had hired me on one of my first cases. We'd known each other a long time, and although we'd not seen each other recently, I cared deeply about her. I hated to see her feeling so low, but I hated not visiting a friend even more. I made my way to the Intensive Care: Rodent unit and stuck my head in the doorway of her room. She was asleep, only her whiskers twitching. At first I thought she was alone, but then I realized there were a couple of tadpoles in a jar on the table beside her bed. I guess a couple of Mr. Frog's young cousins had stopped by to see her. That was really sweet of them. The spring tadpoles were only about four weeks old, so they couldn't know her very well. I didn't want to wake her, so I just tiptoed away.

My next step was to interview the minister who had married them. Parson Rook had his office down near the river. It was a low-budget operation. He worked out of a hole in the wall in an abandoned church. He specialized in the kind of clients who might pay for his services with a half pint of ripe blackberries or a few recently deceased snails.

"Reverend Rook," I said. I knew I was in the right place because his name was scratched into the brickwork above the door. "I'm looking for..."

"I know what you seek, my son," he said, interrupting me. "You will find Him here. He is everywhere in fact, even in the mud on the sole of your shoe, Even in the foul-smelling black mud at the bottom of the cesspool behind the school, even in the mote irritating the left eye of a squirrel residing in the second tree to the left at the hospital entrance to the city park, but you will find Him here most readily."

"Um, yeah. I'm looking for information about a wedding you performed yesterday. Between a mouse and a frog?"

"A terrible tragedy," he said, "terrible, terrible. And they never caught the ones that did it."

"That's what I'm here about, Sir," I replied.

"How so?"

"You were there, did you recognize any of the perpetrators? And who was, ah, consumed? My name is Deadbolt, Hasp Deadbolt. I'm a private eye."

"Well, it was a cat, a gray cat. Female. I didn't get a good look; I didn't stick around to chat. I think she had a kitten with her. I went back afterwards, but no one was there. Everybody who wasn't eaten had fled." He stopped and took a drink from a small flask, then cleared his throat.

"But I heard later that they almost got Miss Mouse. Excuse me, Mrs. Frog. I believe one of the kittens swallowed Mr. Flea. He was sick, and couldn't move fast enough to get away. Beyond that, I really don't know."

I thanked him and was on my way. It was a simple matter of leg work to track down the rest of the survivors. Unfortunately, no one had gotten a good look at the cats and no one had recognized them. The flea actually was still alive, after a dark, smelly, and harrowing journey. They are notoriously difficult to kill. It seemed the only fatality was Minnie's uncle, Mr. Rat.

At least, that's what I thought at first. When I got back to my office I had a few messages on the answering machine. The flea had died in a freak hammer accident. A chickadee, with whom I'd spoken only an hour earlier, had turned up dead and partially eaten in an alley near her nest. And Parson Rook had been found floating in a small pool of water in a low spot in the churchyard, his throat torn out. Somebody wanted to silence everyone who had been at the reception. That somebody was probably a cat. This was now down to a game of cat and mouse. And frog. I picked up the phone.

I caught Mr. Frog just as he was heading out for a swim, and told him to meet me at the hospital. Then I made a few more calls, and headed out. When I got to Minnie's room, Mr. Frog was already there. They were alone.

"Hasp!" Minnie called, "I heard you 'd been here. How are you?"

"Doing fine, Minnie. Glad to see you on the mend. Listen, I'm going in here." I jerked my head towards the bathroom. "You haven't seen me today."

"But..." I put my finger to my lips, slipped into the bathroom, and closed the door almost to, leaving just a crack. And I waited. I didn't have to wait long.

I didn't hear the door open, but a large gray cat was suddenly padding across the floor, followed by two nearly grown kittens. Mr. Frog must have closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again, because he suddenly shouted when they were about halfway across the room.

"Get out of here!. I have a gun."

Uh-oh. I hadn't planned on there being any shooting. I stepped out of the bathroom and quickly moved to the door to the hall, closing it behind me with my foot. The mother cat, who was crouching to pounce on Mr. Frog, whirled around. She hissed, and puffed up her fur. The kittens did the same. Mr. Frog was holding the tiniest pistol I'd ever seen. It couldn't shoot anything big enough to stop a cat. His whole body was shaking like a badly balanced washing machine. But the cats weren't paying any attention to him, they were looking at the fire extinguisher I held in my hand. I caressed the trigger.

"I would love to embed you in a gigantic mass of sticky foam," I said, "just give me a reason." For a moment, no one moved.

Then the mother cat sat up and started licking one of her front paws. "Whatever," she said.

"Mr. Frog," I said, "call hospital security. Then call the police."

We never did catch the duck. By the time we set up the trap in the hospital room, he probably had already flown the coop.

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More stories about Hasp Deadbolt in Nursery Rhyme Noir: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/42875