“It must have been a disguise!”

I woke to the sound of the dog being his usual excitable self. He was speaking in exclamations and running around in circles on the carpet. Give him another moment, I thought, and he’ll start chasing his own tail.

“What’s going on?” I asked, groggy.

“Wake up, Catson,” the dog ordered. “The turtle is back!”

Now I was fully awake, and sure enough, there was Mr. Javier.

“Mr. Javier was just telling me the most extraordinary thing,” the dog said, before Mr. Javier could even open his mouth to speak, “that when the cab reached its destination, a man stepped out of it, not an old woman.”

“It’s true, Boss,” Mr. Javier said eagerly.

It took me a moment to register that when Mr. Javier said this, he was looking at Bones. There it was again: the turtle calling the dog “Boss.”

Before I could object to this—or better yet, correct him—the turtle continued.

“As the man walked away, I peered inside the cab. You know, I figured, maybe the man had already been inside when the old woman first got in? Maybe she was still in there?”

“And?” I prompted.

“And there was no one else inside, not even a cabdriver, Boss.” At least now he was calling the right person “Boss.”

“How is that possible?” I demanded.

“As I said, it must have been a disguise!” the dog said.

“Why do you think that?” I asked.

“Elementary,” the dog said, although initially, I failed to see how this could be so. “There never was an old woman to start with. It was someone else, wearing an old-woman disguise.”

“This is just like the story of Snow White!” Now I was the eager one.

“Excuse me?” the dog said.

“Snow White! You know, when she’s staying with the dwarves, and there’s a knock at the door, and at first it seems to be a kindly old woman, all hunched over, a head covering obscuring most of her hair, but in reality it’s the evil queen, and then she gives Snow White the poisoned apple?”

“This is nothing like that.” The dog snorted. Then he turned his attention to Mr. Javier. “How tall was the man who stepped out of the cab?”

Mr. Javier jetted up to approximately six feet off the ground. “About this tall, Boss.”

Six feet tall?

“Oh,” Mr. Javier added, “and he had really tiny feet.”

Six feet tall, with really tiny feet?

Earlier in the evening, I’d thought we were being silly, expecting the murderer to just walk through the door.

Yet, that is precisely what had happened. The murderer had waltzed right in and had not only tried, but succeeded, in claiming the ring. And then we had returned to our salmon croquettes.

What a bold chap this murderer was!

Then it hit me:

Just a short time ago, I had been face to face with a murderer, one who had stood as close to me as Mr. Javier was floating now.