Eliza had no idea what to do with that fish. She didn’t even realize she’d caught one. For all she knew, there was a sea monster on the end of that line. Or a cantaloupe. She puckered her lips and her eyebrows got all wavy as the fishing rod bent toward the water.
“Pull, Eliza,” I said. “Pull it up.”
But I guess all of that movement on the end of the line was too scary.
“Bad,” Eliza said, as the end of the pole dipped down and the reel started spinning. Eliza threw the rod on the floor of the canoe.
Nanny X snatched it up and turned the handle. I suppose I should stop being surprised when Nanny X moves quickly. It’s like a snake stalking a mouse: slow, slow, and then bam.
Jake leaned over the side of the canoe—hadn’t he learned his lesson?—and reported on her progress like a sports announcer.
“It’s moving through the water. It’s almost here. Closer. Closer. I can see it!”
And then so could we. Nanny X reached down and grabbed the line with her hand. She pulled a gleaming fish out of the water.
“Oh!” Eliza said.
The fish flicked its tail, and Yeti barked and sniffed it. Then he lost interest and went back to his end of the canoe.
“Good job, Eliza,” I said. But Eliza lost interest, just like Yeti. She started coloring again.
The fish was smaller than you would have thought for all of that pulling—about the size of Boris’s right hand, which was reaching out toward the fish, holding a pair of scissors to cut the line.
When he did, Nanny X put the fish in a white bucket, and we peered inside.
The fish was slightly reddish in color, with a lower lip that stuck out, like it was pouting. Its body was shaped like the leaves on the rhododendron my dad planted last fall.
“It looks sick,” said Stinky.
“That’s how I’d look if I were caught.” I made my eyes sort of sad and googly, to show him.
“He’s a strange color,” Stinky said.
“But the tail’s moving in a healthy way,” I said. Still, two other things bothered me.
One: The fish had gills, but the gills weren’t moving, which meant it wasn’t breathing, right?
And two: We weren’t supposed to be obsessing over the health of the fish or even the river. We were supposed to be fishing for a criminal—a criminal who had threatened the president of the United States. A criminal who had threatened to destroy national treasures starting at noon, which was only two hours away. Time was running out.
“This fish,” Nanny X announced, “is a Pacific herring.” How could NAP think she didn’t know enough about fish to take the case?
Jake looked confused. “There shouldn’t be any Pacific herring in the Potomac,” he said. Jake reads a lot of books that have animal facts, but this bit of knowledge didn’t come from a book; it came from the Fish of the Potomac place mat he’d bought at the hardware store. Only my brother would spend his allowance on a place mat. “Bass,” Jake recited. “Perch. Pickerel. Black drum. Plus, Pacific herring are found in the Pacific.”
“Maybe it got here accidentally,” Stinky said. “Maybe they stocked the river with Pacific herring for a fishing tournament, which would be irresponsible to the ecosystem.”
Nanny X lifted the fish by the snippet of fishing line. “It’s heavy. Heavier than it should be. Still, I wonder if it would work for lunch.”
Leave it to Nanny X to find a way to cook a fish in a canoe in the middle of the river. My stomach got queasy as Nanny X took the fish in her hands and turned it over.
“That’s odd,” she said. She reached into her diaper bag and pulled out a pair of baby nail clippers. She pushed a button, and out came a sharp knife that shouldn’t be anywhere near a baby. Eliza looked up, and she was mad. Even if she wasn’t interested in the fish, that didn’t mean she wanted Nanny X doing anything to it.
“Distract her,” Nanny X said to me.
Wait a minute, I thought. What kind of nanny kills a fish in front of an almost-two-year-old? Or an almost-eleven-year-old?
“I don’t believe it’s even alive,” Nanny X said, reading my mind again.
“But the tail is moving.”
“True.” But Nanny X didn’t put her knife away. She waited until Eliza turned to look at a butterfly that landed on the side of the canoe. Then she plunged the knife into the fish, just behind the dorsal fin. There was a crunching sound as she cut a small slit in the fish’s back.
I expected Nanny X’s hand to fill up with blood and fish guts. But there was no blood. She tilted the fish upside down and her hand filled with a bunch of cogs and gears.
“Just as I thought,” she said.
Boris pulled a small bag out of his pocket (his pants had an awful lot of pockets) and held it beneath the fish, so that none of the parts got away.
Nanny X held up the bag to show Eliza. “Broken,” she told her. “Toy.”
But it wasn’t exactly a toy. And it wasn’t exactly a fish, either. It was a robot.