Some time later, we were in the midst of our salmon croquettes when our dinner was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell ringing.

I was going to get up to answer it myself—I certainly wasn’t about to let the dog answer my door a second time—when I was stopped short by the sight of Mr. Javier, bobbing through with his jetpack.

“Don’t worry, Boss!” he cried excitedly as he picked up speed and flew down the stairs. “I’ve got it! This time, I’ve finally got it! I’ve—”

Crash.

I can only imagine how much it hurt his little turtle head when he smashed into the heavy wooden door.

But whatever the damage, a moment later he was back in the room announcing, “Visitor to see you, Boss, for Mr. Bones too. Says there was a notice in the paper.”

I was glad I’d taken my nap so I could be alert right now because this—this!—was exciting.

There was the sound of a slow, heavy tread on the stairs. Apparently, our visitor was not as speedy as a turtle with a jetpack. Well, who is? Bones and I hurried to the living room where we waited eagerly for our visitor to appear.

I don’t know what we were expecting, exactly.

Actually, I do know.

We were expecting a man about six feet tall with incredibly tiny feet and a funny smell about him. In short, we were expecting our murderer.

Not a little old lady.

“I’m here about the ring?” her creaky voice stated as she came into view. A scarf covered what little hair she appeared to still have, and her body was so badly stooped over that it was impossible to tell how tall she might be if her form were fully stretched out. Since the upper half of her body was practically parallel to the floor I could not see her eyes as she prompted, “The ring?”

I knew Bones’s newspaper ad would draw out all the crazies.

Judging from her frayed and torn scarf, she did not appear to be well off. I suspected that, having seen the notice about the ring in the paper, she was likely trying to claim it so that she could immediately sell it for cash.

There was no way the golden wedding ring we’d found was hers.

“Of course,” Bones said. “I’ll go get it for you right away.” He turned to exit the room.

Oh, Bones. I groaned inwardly. If I didn’t think it would be interpreted as rude, I’d shake my head in disappointment and disgust. The dog was just going to hand over the wedding ring—or at least the copy he’d had made while I was sleeping—to this obvious charlatan? (I always wanted to use the word charlatan, meaning “imposter.”) What an idiot. The dog, that is, not the old woman. She was obviously quite clever in her own way.

“There’s only one thing,” the dog said, pausing in the doorway and then turning to face us once more. “Could you describe it for us, please?”

Could she …

Oh, Bones! I thought. Good one! Previously, he had only relaxed her into thinking he would just hand the ring right over, but now he was going to trap her by demanding she provide a description.

“Well,” the old woman said after a long pause for deep consideration, “it’s gold, isn’t it?”

Bones likewise paused for several long moments, then brightly said, “Right! Well, that should do it! I’ll just go get … ”

I was tempted to slap him. Well, it’s gold, isn’t it? That was enough description to satisfy him that this was the true owner? Come on, Bones!

Idiot.

Once more, Bones paused in the doorway, turned.

“Yes,” he spoke slowly, “the ring is gold, as you say. But can you tell me anything more about it?”

OK, so maybe not such an idiot.

“What more can there possibly be?” She looked puzzled. Then: “Unless of course you mean the scratch inside it that looks like the letter Z?”

I shot a questioning glance at Bones, who nodded back at me. I supposed I should have examined the ring more closely earlier, but he apparently had.

“It does indeed have such a marking,” he said before finally succeeding in exiting the room.

So, the ring we’d found had the telltale Z on it. Then she really was …

“Then you really are the true owner?” Bones asked, returning with the fake ring, complete with the letter Z, which he promptly handed over.

“Of course not!” She laughed, more of a cackle really.

She wasn’t? And he just gave her the—

“It’s my daughter’s!” She laughed that cackle again. “What would one such as I be doing with a ring like this?”

She placed the ring in her skirt pocket and then slowly turned her back on us.

“How did your daughter lose the ring?” Bones shouted after her.

He must have been thinking of the abandoned building where we’d found it, beneath a murder victim no less. How had it got there?

“Not for me to say, is it?” the woman said. “I’m not the one who lost it.”

And then she was gone.

Or at least as quickly as a hunched-over old woman can be gone when first she needs to negotiate a long flight of stairs.

“Well, that’s that,” I said.

“Of course, that is not that,” Bones said witheringly. Then he raced to the front window. I raced after him and jumped onto the cushion. And so it was that I was able to see what he saw when he pushed the curtains aside:

It was the old woman, below us, hopping into the front passenger side of a cab. For one so old and bent, that hop was disturbingly nimble.

“Mr. Javier!” Bones cried.

Mr. Javier almost instantly hovered in the air beside us. “Yes, Boss?”

How I resented that Yes, Boss. Previously, I had been the only Boss around here. But my resentment didn’t get much time to fester, not with all the crackling excitement in the air as the dog screamed at the turtle:

“Follow that old woman in that cab!”