Oberon's Meaty Mysteries: The Purloined Poodle Read online

  When the sun finally bailed on us, the moon was almost full and very bright in a cloudless sky that looked like salt crystals floating on top of a rich beef broth. Nicer than Eugene, honestly, where it was all cloudy and a bit chilly.

  Eventually, a distant rumble announced the approach of a vehicle of some kind, and I hoped it would be the police, but it turned out to be a big stinky truck, the kind you always see being advertised during football games where dudes with deep bass voices talk about torque and power and reliability and horsepower even though there are never any horses in the commercials. The headlights blinded us for a while until we blinked the glare away.

  Atticus said in his animal voice, and I half-growled my response.

 

 

 

 

 

  The truck passed by us, and Atticus rose from the ground, trailing after it. We followed, and once it parked outside the house and the motor choked and died, Atticus crouched down behind it. The other hounds could be heard barking now in response to the noise. They knew somebody was home and might pay attention to them.

  he said.

  That was a good call. Clive opened his driver’s side door, and I could hear him say, “Stay there, damn it!” in a surly drawl. He was a tall, lanky sort, wearing bow-legged jeans, a dirty old trucker’s hat pulled down over his hair, and cowboy boots crunching in the gravel of the road. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, inviting toxins into his lungs and then puffing them out in white wispy clouds. Then he walked around to the passenger side, and we paced in tandem with Atticus that way, keeping well behind him and out of sight in the darkness, and once he turned the corner and his back was to us, heading to the passenger door, we slunk forward to close the distance.

  Clive hauled open the door, blocking the exit with his body, and then reached in with a hand, searching for Jack’s leash. Once he had it, he said, “Come on. Come on outta there,” and opened the door wide. Jack hopped out, the paragon of poodles, all curly and proud and no doubt exhausted from being cooped up with Clive all day. As soon as Clive shut the door, Atticus gave the signal.

  he said. I leapt forward, not caring if Clive heard me, because there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop his imminent pratfall. He half-turned, putting all his weight on one leg as he pivoted, and that just made it easier to knock him down. He made a strangled cry in his throat, his cigarette dropped out of his mouth as he saw me coming, and I’m pretty sure Starbuck missed his hand entirely because of all the flailing he was doing, but it didn’t matter. He let go of Jack’s leash in an attempt to deal with me. But I planted my front paws right in his chest and bore him down, noticing that he smelled like stale smoke and cheap whiskey, and then I trampled over him as we cleared the truck and turned left toward the pasture, his curses floating behind us like so much foul wind. And Jack was with us, happy to stretch his legs and be free, and it was so very good for about ten eons or so. But then Atticus had us stop and bark in the middle of the pasture, totally exposed.

  he said.

  We barked and woofed until Atticus was satisfied. That was when he saw Clive coming after us with something like a staff cradled in his hands.

  Atticus said. We took off again, far faster than Clive Yarbrough and possessed of much better night vision, and he was shouting that he’d kill us all and feed us to his neighbor’s hogs. I was glad that Starbuck and Jack couldn’t understand him. Farther away I heard a woman’s voice—Mary, I presume—shouting Clive’s name, telling him to wait, she had to tell him something.

  Since I knew what she had to tell him was to get rid of all the hounds, I was glad he didn’t listen. Atticus’s plan was working so far.

  We got to the edge of the pasture and Atticus had us all stop and turn around to check on Clive, barking a few more times to encourage him to continue. He was kind of jogging with that shotgun now, which I’m pretty sure is against one of the rules, even if it’s far below the one about not stealing my sausage and not putting mustard on it.

  Atticus said. I thought that was a fine idea, right up there with pot roast and pork tenderloins.

  I was about to tell him that when a noise behind me in the woods startled me and caused me to say instead,

  They could all hear just as well as I could and we turned around at the same time, our noses quivering in the air. A grunt, a musky scent, and then a roar. It all added up to—

  I shouted at Atticus.

  he said, We scampered out of there as a black bear crashed after us, all teeth and claws and muscle. It must be the one that Starbuck awakened because of that squirrel. Since we’d invaded his territory and peed on it, he’d tracked us down the mountain. Running directly away from him toward Clive seemed like a great idea until I remembered that Clive had a shotgun. And he was slowing down, raising it up to his shoulder, because he heard a whole lot of trouble coming his way.

  I could feel its snorting breath on my backside.

  Atticus said, and we four hounds dodged left and kept running while the bear and Clive got closer. The bear was going to turn after us and roared again, but that put him close enough to Clive to make him shoot in panic. The pellets sprayed out and caught the bear broadside, but it was far enough away that it did little except make the bear rage out. We were forgotten, and Clive was the new target. He shot again, and it only provoked the bear further. Clive went down for the second time, the shotgun clattered away, and his high scream floated above the bear’s roar.

  Atticus said.

  I didn’t know what Atticus had planned, but I quickly agreed with his bear removal initiative.

  Two cars drove up said road and parked behind the big truck. Mary’s voice sounded panicked now. “Clive? Clive! Answer me! Somebody’s here!”

  Atticus said, bringing us to a halt a decent distance away.

  I imagine that he could have handled the bear more easily if Clive hadn’t shot it, but eventually he convinced it to head back up the mountain and wait until he could see to its wounds, leaving a whimpering and well-shredded Clive Yarbrough bleeding in his own pasture.

  The two cars, meanwhile, disgorged police officers and a veterinarian. They would have very little trouble finding where the hounds were kept since they were quite upset by all the noise they heard—especially the roaring bear.

  Atticus coached us to move in closer to the holding area so we could see and hear what was going on without giving ourselves away in the darkness.

  The police had a warrant to inspect the hounds only and see if they were the missing ones from the Pacific Northwest, but those shotgun blasts and the scream they heard g
ave them probable cause to do a whole lot more than that. They brought out flashlights and guns and fanned out into the pasture, finding Mary with no problem since she called for help and finding Clive soon after that. A whole bunch more police and an ambulance got called in as a result, but the veterinarian took that time to check those microchips and confirmed that all the hounds were stolen—even the extra ones we didn’t know about. They belonged in Northern California.

  I said.

  he admitted, and he made it so. Jack trotted right up to the vet in the light of the back porch and got his microchip scanned.

  I said.

  Atticus swung his hound face around to me and his ears pricked up.

 

 

 

  Chapter 8:

  The New

  Holmes

  and Watson

  Atticus retrieved his clothes and destroyed the burner phone for Scott Fitzgerald, who made his single call to the police and then vanished. We climbed back up the mountain and found the bear, which Atticus kept firm control of this time and even asked the elemental for help in healing him. He got all of the shot out of the bear, then asked the elemental to relocate him somewhere safe and far away, because he was sure that humans would come hunting him after what he did to Clive.

  With that taken care of we shifted back to Oregon, and Atticus became Connor Molloy again, replacing his phone batteries and calling Detective Ibarra. She was a lot nicer to him this time because, despite his timeline issues, she had all the evidence she needed to clear the case off her books, and he had pointed her in the right direction—thanks to me and Starbuck, of course. Not that she never did anything—she found out that Julia Garcia’s absence was an innocent visit with her family on the East Coast, for example, and yes, Julia and Gordon Petrie had a past together, but they had suffered a breakup so bad that she now had a restraining order against him.

  Detective Callaghan had gone to Tracie Chasseur’s house and found a dart gun—or a “projector”, as they call it. Atticus showed me what they looked like online and it sure seemed like a gun to me, but you can buy most dart projectors without a license or background check.

  They also found lots of veterinary gelatinous goo at her place that shouldn’t be necessary for two healthy English setters. She tried to play it all off as normal and legal and their allegations as nonsense, until they told her they’d found the hounds in Arkansas, as well as ads for the stolen hounds’ stud services online. Then everything became Clive’s fault and she couldn’t wait to confess. Atticus learned all of this when he went into the Eugene police station to give his statements that they would use in the trial, if there was even going to be one. It looked like they were going for a plea instead.

  Tracie said she’d only been trying to help her sister, Mary. Clive Yarbrough had lost his job a while back and slipped into alcoholism and meanness as a result. When he was drunk he liked to hit things, including his wife. Mary had cooked up an idea with Tracie to bring in some money through stud fees, the idea being that if Clive had money again and needed to drive the dogs around for their, uh…romantic rendezvous, he wouldn’t drink as much and be nicer to her. The plan had only been partially successful. It had kept him out of the house and drinking a bit less, but he had traveled too far down the path of eternal asshattery and remained abusive.

  Autopsy results reported that Verity Boone-Sutcliffe’s heart had failed due to a dangerous drug interaction between her prescriptions and the tranquilizer. Shooting her had been a total accident, Tracie insisted. She’d been there for Starbuck and had been trying to draw a bead on him in the house when Verity surprised her in the kitchen and she fired in panic. Horrified at her mistake and worried that Verity might recognize her somehow from the forum, even though she was masked, she ran out of there before Verity even hit the floor. The district attorney was going to charge Tracie with manslaughter instead of murder, and then a bunch of lesser charges stemming from her hound-snatching spree.

  Mary Yarbrough corroborated all of it, though she was going to face lesser charges like “possession of stolen property” and might get nothing more than probation. Clive was going to face those same charges once he got out of the hospital, but also domestic assault charges and a pretty mean divorce lawyer.

  It didn’t really matter to me: What mattered was that we had returned the Grand Champions to their humans for proper care and feeding. I asked what would happen to Tracie’s English setters, so Atticus inquired. Tracie had no one at home to take care of them, so Mr. Lumbergh down in Bend offered to let them live with his pack of Brittany spaniels.

  And since Verity Boone-Sutcliffe had no living relatives, Detective Ibarra was fine allowing Starbuck to stay with us until they could figure out what plans she might have made in her will.

  To celebrate, Atticus cooked up some bacon-wrapped sirloins for me and Starbuck, then took us into Portland, where they have a real haberdashery that sells all kinds of hats, including deerstalkers. He bought me one, and a churchwarden pipe at another store, and then took us into a photography studio to get our portrait taken as a proper crime-fighting duo. Who’s the new Holmes and Watson? Oberon and Starbuck, that’s who.

  Epilogue

  When Atticus writes his books he always puts one of these things in there, so I guess I will too.

  He told Granuaile he would be on the road for a few days, and she and Orlaith could just chill out in Poland if she’d like to for her work week. Atticus shifted us into Flagstaff, Arizona, where he shouldn’t be anymore since the Flagstaff pack banished him, but we were there only long enough to rent a big SUV and drive south.

  “I have to get some of my stuff before I leave Arizona for good,” he explained, “and I’d like to clear my debts now that I have the time to do so.”

  He drove us to the Salt River near Mesa, where humans like to float on inner tubes down the river, drink beer, and get their skin burned by the sun. He parked off to one side of the road and hiked a short distance into the desert, where we were concealed by mesquite trees and creosote bushes and the occasional very nasty cholla cactus. He squatted down and spoke to the elemental, Sonora, and the earth parted in front of us to reveal what looked like an iron coffin.

  “My rare books are in there,” he reminded me. “And a treasure map.”

 

  “There’s an x, I think, but none of the rest of it. And it’s in an old version of Spanish.”

 

  “Yes, we are.”

 

  This was a treasure map made by somebody named Sotomayor, who was with Coronado on some expedition long ago, and while on a side trip out of Coronado’s vision, Sotomayor’s group found a huge cache of Aztec gold that had been shipped up north purposely to be hidden from the Spanish invading Tenochtitlan. They planned to come back and get it later, cutting Coronado out of the deal, but never did. And Atticus had left it there all this time to see if someone else would discover it, since he really hadn’t needed the money. Now he would use it to pay off his debts to the yewmen who had helped him against the vampires.

  Tracking down the treasure wasn’t nearly as exciting as I thought it would be. We just drove north once he had his books all loaded up, and then Atticus had the elemental help him find the gold and bring it to the surface.

  It sure was shiny. Most of it went straight to Brighid, First Among the Fae, who then paid off the yewmen on his behalf, and he was fre
e and clear and had some left over besides. He was going to unbind the remaining gold from its finished shape and rebind it with some rocks and minerals out in California to make it seem like he dug it out of the ground there.

  So it was a long but happy road trip back to Oregon through California with our precious cargo of books and gold. Starbuck and I hung our heads out the window and made plans to fight more crime, bring an end to the villainy of squirrels, and eat more steaks. The future was all gravy as far as we could see.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank Deborah Flynn-Hanrahan for showing me all the spiffy things in Portland. Should you wish to follow Atticus and Oberon’s path through the city to Verity’s house, you can pretty much do so starting at Peninsula Park. Random Order Pie Bar is a real place, and across the street from it, just a few doors down (at least at the time of this writing), is a café simply called Barista where Atticus got his flat white. And the houses in the Irvington neighborhood are really worth a look.

  I owe a great debt to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for inventing the world’s most famous detective, to whoever came up with Boston terriers, and to Delilah S. Dawson for platypus puns.