Sherlock Dog Read online

whereas John Watson sort of swung himself over, because he's shorter."(I)

  I wagged my tail. Mommy not rambling at all.

  Mommy hopped back over the bagwell. She couldn't hop over the counter because she's shorter than John Watson by more than John Watson is shorter than Sherlock.

  "The thing with the Jump, Grab and Run," said Mommy, "is somebody always witnesses these thefts. Even if every employee and customer in the store had their back turned at the instant of the Jayjee Arr, it would have been picked up by the security camera. The whole back of the cigarette counter is covered by video camera."

  Mommy took her phone out of her pocket and did some calculations.

  "Also," she observed, "Approximately 33.33 cartons have gone missing, which is about 1.11 cartons every day. There is just no way a customer has been stealing a carton of cigarettes every day via Jump, Grab and Run."

  I wagged my tail. No. Yes. What? (I have observed that humans use fancy numbers to sound sure when they're not really sure of their numbers)

  "So," said Mommy, "we have eliminated the delivery men and the customers. That leaves the employees. An employee or employees has somehow stolen two thousand dollars worth of cigarettes in one month."

  "But how?" queried Mommy. "How how how how how." She did the thing Sherlock does when he's thinking: she pressed her fingers together and held them up in front of her face. She doesn't do this in front of Ubu because it makes Ubu roll around on the floor laughing. Supposedly it looks funny because Mommy has really short fingers. She can span an octave on the piano and that's it. Myself, I think Mommy looks just fine.

  "Again," said Mommy, "the entire back of the cigarette counter is covered by video camera. The cigarettes travel directly and immediately, via me, from the receiving door to this cigarette counter. How is an employee stealing 1.11 cartons of cigarettes every single day, under those circumstances?"

  I wagged my tail. Excellent question!

  " How would he or she even get them out of the store?" Mommy wondered. "Even with a big winter coat, a carton of cigarettes . . ."

  "Hang on . . . , " said Mommy. I wagged my tail with great enthusiasm: Mommy had a big Thought!

  "Employees are here only five days a week. That's . . . 1.67 cartons of cigarettes a day."

  I wagged my tail. It wasn't actually that big a thought, but that's okay!

  "That's a lot to sneak out of the store every day. I don't think they make inside coat pockets large enough to stick a carton of cigarettes into. And someone would have noticed the employee standing funny or walking funny or hugging himself to keep the cigarettes from falling out of his coat. Or hers."

  I wagged my tail. Certainly: to all of that.

  "Uh, Sherlock Dog?"

  Wag.

  "It's all impossible."

  Oh.

  "Really going to have to think about this," said Mommy. She picked up my lead and we walked, rather dejectedly, to the outer doors. Mommy set the alarm and we left the store.

  "Everything all right?" asked the police officer.

  "Sure," said Mommy.

  The next many days were miserable. On one day, Mommy would be very excited, talking to Ubu at length about how she was going to catch the cigarette thief.

  "I can't search employees: that's illegal; this is Merica, and it's a store, not an airport. But I can—oh, oh—I'll make sure to say goodbye to each employee as they leave the store for the day. I'll be rebuilding a display around the doors as each employee leaves. I'll look busy with my display, and the employee will be leaving, and I'll look up and say, 'See you, Bill! Have any fun plans for the afternoon?' Or I'll say, 'Thanks, Sandra! Off to pick up your kids?' And while I'm saying those few words I'll be using my powers of observation . . . "

  Ubu giggled.

  "Shut up!" said Mommy.

  "You're near-sighted, Dubu," said Ubu. "Sherlock probably has really good eyesight. Like 20/8 or something."

  "20/8? Is that even possible?"

  "I think that's what Superman has."

  "Sherlock's a homo sapiens. Look, it's not what you have: it's how you use it. Like John Watson didn't even know how many steps led up to their flat because he sees but he doesn't observe."(d)

  "I thought you said you're John Watson and the dog is Sherlock."

  "John Watson can learn from Sherlock. He can try to use his methods."(o)

  "And he's usually wrong. Or very incompletely right."

  "How hard can it be to decide whether someone has or has not got two cartons of cigarettes on their person? Seriously!"

  Apparently it's pretty hard. Mommy tried her strategy for a few days, until she had said goodbye at the doors to every employee at least once and a few of them twice. Then she ran out of displays to sensibly rebuild. You don't rebuild a display just for the exercise: the rebuild needs to look like part of a grand marketing plan. Mommy's employees understood this concept, and she feared blowing her cover.

  Out of displays and ideas, Mommy fell into a deep sadness. When she wasn't working, she just slept and slept and slept. I slept beside her, right on her bed, with my back pressed firmly against hers. Sometimes she would roll over and hold me as she slept. This made me uncomfortably warm, but I stuck with Mommy anyway.

  "She's as bipolar as Sherlock," said Ubu.

  "Stop it, that's a real condition," muttered Mommy. "I'm just thinking."

  Mommy was still on the South Pole when the security company called after yet another alarm. Mommy wearily trudged through the first part of the walkthrough with me trotting alertly alongside. We arrived at the door of the main storage room; Mommy yawned as she keyed it open.

  I froze. What? Yes! Yes!

  I launched into a full sprint, tearing the lead from Mommy's hand. I zipped between aisles to the far left corner of the room.

  The main storage room had always smelled faintly of cigarettes. The few minutes the cigarettes spent in the room twice a week definitely left their trace. But this was not a trace. This was a dense cone of scent leading to . . .

  I pointed my nose at the corner of the ceiling and began to bark. I don't bark often, but when I do it's a fantastic sound. Sound explodes from me with mazing force, shattering the air around me. I barked. And I barked. And I barked.

  How did I miss this, the last time? It was so obvious. Yes, I wasn't thinking about cigarettes the last time. Yes, the main storage room also smells powerfully of pet food and medicines and so many different kinds of soap. No excuses: I'm supposed to be Sherlock Dog. I was certainly making up for my lapse now.

  "What is it, Sherlock Dog? Do we have a rat? Is it a bat? Do we have bats? Birds? Is there a nest of birds? It is cold outside. Okay, I'll schedule the exterminator. Thank you, Sherlock Dog."

  I danced around in a circle, frustrated to no end by Mommy's funny little brain.(y) I danced around in the opposite direction. Mommy grabbed my lead and pulled; I tried to plant my feet. But the floor was too slippery, and after being dragged a way I walked with Mommy; but every few steps I looked back and whimpered.

  "Dust bunny?" said the police officer.

  "No, I think we have bats. I'm calling the exterminator tomorrow. I don't want bats calling us out to the store every morning."

  "Me neither," said the officer. "We have a lot more drunk drivers during the holiday season: we're too busy to come for bats."

  "If you can't come, don't come," said Mommy. "It's just bats."

  I didn't know it at the time, but my point-and-bark was what story writers call a catalyst. A catalyst is something that speeds up the story towards its big ending. Mommy called the exterminator the next morning. She also told the employees that her dog had smelled bats in the corner of the stockroom, above the trash compactor, and an exterminator would be coming soon to check it out. This made one employee very scared.

  The employee called Mommy's boss and told her that Mommy had been bringing a large dog into the store. M
ommy's boss called Mommy and screamed at her.

  "Don't you know that's a health code violation? We sell food!"

  "We don't sell fresh food. We don't sell warm food. I never let him into the food storage area. He's one hundred percent house-trained and cleaner than people."

  "I don't care. You can't bring him into the store."

  "We let people bring in Yorkies in their purses."

  "Is your dog a Yorkie?"

  "No."

  "I was told he's gigantic."

  "He's not gigantic. Nobody would mistake him for a pony."

  "I heard he weighs more than you, at least."

  "Well all right."

  "No big dogs in the store. If the health department shuts us down, you will lose the store. Clear?"

  "Yes."

  The scared employee also called a complice; and a buddy who had a handgun.

  The security company called the very next early morning. Mommy didn't bother to pick up the phone. She put on her boots and her coat and put me on my lead, and drove to the store because it was her duty to go; and also the security company would keep calling her until she reset the alarm.

  Mommy left me in the car in the car park of the store; and then (as I learned later):

  Mommy walked her usual route around the perimeter of the store to the main storage room. She walked to the far left corner of the storage room and looked up. The giant ladder was standing ready in the corner. Mommy thought she would climb up and get a look at the bats.

  As she climbed the ladder, Mommy thought nervously about getting bats in her long hair. She wondered if bats ever really did get hopelessly tangled in hair, and need to be