Vera Vixen was one of the Herald’s news reporters. She was also one of the few staff members who seemed to actually live in the newspaper office, and she had long followed the journalistic tradition of drinking her java strong, black, and scalding hot. It was brewed for effect, not for enjoyment. The quick red fox seemed to thrive on the stuff. Almost everyone else just got their coffee from Joe. To be sure, Vera often did as well, but her personality demanded a constant supply.
Vera was always hoping for a big scoop, and today was no exception. Her pointed ears twitched when she heard Gladys buzz in, and she braced herself for a chattering account of the latest gossip. Instead, Gladys hurried to her desk without saying a word, which was so unusual that the fox got up and trotted over to the little hummingbird.
“Good morning,” Vera said with a smile.
Gladys nodded curtly and kept her eyes averted. Vera was not a top investigative reporter for nothing, and she noticed the smaller creature’s gulping breaths.
“What’s wrong, Gladys?” she asked. “You look upset. Did something happen?”
Gladys burst into tears. Concealing anything was against her nature. With only that small prompt, she completely forgot her resolve and spilled everything.
Listening to the hysterical hummingbird, Vera’s ruddy ears perked up and her black nose twitched. A death? In Shady Hollow? Vera was naturally curious. This made her an excellent reporter. Though some townsfolk called her nosy, Vera paid them no mind. A good reporter, she believed, had to take an interest in things and ask the questions others were afraid to ask.
After wheedling the main facts out of Gladys, Vera settled the still-weeping hummingbird in her office with a glass of the bird’s favorite sugar water and a stack of clean tissues. Vera’s mind was working furiously. If Gladys had just discovered the body, maybe no one else had seen it. If she hurried, Vera could get to the scene and record all the details. The death of Otto would be big news, if only because everyone in town had been on the receiving end of the toad’s rants at one time or another.
Unlike the hummingbird, Vera did not feel the slightest compunction about not going to the police immediately. The police chief of Shady Hollow was Theodore Meade, a slow-moving and slow-thinking black bear. He had no problem with things like shoplifting and noise ordinances, but that was about his limit. Vera would be happy to report the passing of Otto Sumpf to the authorities, but not before she had a look at the scene herself. She strapped her camera over her shoulder, ready to go.
On her way out, she peeked in at Gladys once more. The little bird was still gasping and wiping her eyes. As soon as Gladys regained her composure, she would be yammering to everyone who walked by. Vera had only a small window of time before the whole town showed up at the pond to view poor Otto’s remains. She headed out of the Herald office toward the pond.
Fortunately, it was still very early, and few creatures were about, other than some folks headed for the sawmill, which loomed over the far side of the pond. Its mill wheel turned steadily, casting ever-widening ripples upon the otherwise glass-like water.
Vera strode on purposefully, her camera bouncing on its strap on her shoulder. She peered out over the edge of the pond. Purple loosestrife grew thickly on the edge of the water, with little green algae blooming just beyond. It was deceptively peaceful. Only Otto Sumpf was there. Floating in the water. Faceup. Just as Gladys had described.
Vera leaned forward and snapped a few quick pictures of the body. The ground near the edge of the water was soft and damp. Out of respect for Otto, she tried not to trample any of the paw prints. Even dead, Otto would likely not care for anyone mucking about his surroundings.
Out of habit, she took some pictures of the prints, although she was not sure if they would be identifiable. She paced around clumps of weeds, her nose twitching furiously. She noticed an empty bottle, too shiny to be trash, half hidden among the muddy stems of the pond grass. It looked like someone had flung the bottle toward the water, but the reeds had caught and held it aloft. She didn’t touch it but snapped another picture.
Drawn to the specter of the dead toad, Vera glanced again at the body floating in the water. It was just a little too far from the shore for her to see much detail and certainly too far to fetch without a boat. She shivered at the thought of hauling poor Otto’s body back to solid ground. She had never exchanged more than a few words with the beast, but she certainly couldn’t imagine him dead. Was it a heart attack? Old age? Otto seemed like he’d live forever. Still, anyone can have an accident. He might have gotten drunk last night, misjudged the shoreline in the dark, and fallen in and drowned.
“But who ever heard of an amphibian drowning?” she muttered. “If Otto were to drown in anything, it’d be a bottle of spirits.”
Vera was running out of time. The sun had cleared the treetops by now, and the sounds of daily life were beginning to stir all around her. She looked around just a little bit more before deciding the time had come to call in the police. Chief Meade could get his paws on a boat and get Otto to dry land, at least.
Before heading to the police station, Vera slipped into the offices of the Shady Hollow Herald and casually dropped her camera into her desk’s biggest drawer, intending to pass by Gladys’s desk to check on her.
Long before reaching the hummingbird’s corner, she heard Gladys chattering and stopped short to listen.
“I got a shiver all up and down my spine, and then I saw poor old Otto just floating there…Oh, I knew when I woke up this morning that it would be a bad day!” Gladys yammered on to only the skies knew who. She seemed to have recovered fully from her ordeal. Vera noticed that she had had time to embellish her account, adding in the hints of doom that she hadn’t bothered with when she first told the news to Vera.
The fox shook her head and turned tail, intent on reaching the police station before someone had a chance to waylay her.
The station was quiet, but the doors were wide open, so Vera entered without knocking. Unsurprisingly, Chief Meade wasn’t in yet, but Vera reported what she had seen to his deputy, Orville Braun. Like his boss, Orville was a large bear, though of the brown variety and much sharper.
He told Vera he would go to the pond immediately to investigate and to retrieve the body for a proper burial. He knew the chief would not be in for a couple hours at best, even for something as momentous as a death. Orville, however, liked to get to the station and start his day in relative peace, long before his boss arrived. It allowed him to deal with the day-to-day issues of policing Shady Hollow. Working alone in the station also let him indulge in some grander dreams, in which Orville himself was the chief of police, adorned with a shiny new hat and badge and offered the respect and admiration of the entire town.
Perhaps his dedication would pay off now. He could take care of the sad matter of Otto Sumpf’s death before lunch, and that vixen of a reporter would mention how competent and stoic he was throughout the ordeal. Yes, that sounded good indeed.
Coming back to reality, Orville warned Vera not to tell anyone else what she had discovered before he took care of things.
“Alas, that bird has flown. Gladys Honeysuckle was the one who told me,” Vera said.
The bear rolled his eyes. “Oh, well. So much for keeping mum.” Deputy Orville collected his usual policing accessories—a hat, rope cuffs, and a scowl—and headed over to the pond with Vera at his side. She had not precisely asked to join him, and Orville was still a bit sleepy. In any case, he didn’t have any reason to keep the fox away. He knew about Vera’s reputation as a reporter. She would’ve been there soon enough anyway.
“I’ll have to commandeer a boat,” Orville growled on the way. “The chief took the police boat on a fishing expedition.”
“What’s he hoping to find?” she asked, curious.
“Fish, I’d guess.” Orville looked blankly at the fox. “What else?”
Vera stared back at the brown bear, suspicious. “A literal fishing expedition?”
“Is there another kind?”
She narrowed her eyes, then sighed. “Never mind. I know you don’t see the inside of a courtroom that often in Shady Hollow.”
“Nope.” Orville grinned, showing huge teeth. “Most creatures confess right away.”
“I bet,” Vera breathed. Orville could be very intimidating when he wanted to be.
He was looking at the shore while they walked. “So I’ll have to find another boat now.”
“The sawmill always has a few,” Vera volunteered, “for when lumber falls off a barge.”
“Good enough,” he grunted.
They reached the spot where Vera had taken her pictures earlier. She said she would stand guard while Orville secured a boat. She watched as the big bear hurried on to the sawmill, his hulking form slowly shrinking in the distance.
She waited. After a quarter hour, she saw a boat making its slow way from the sawmill’s dock to where Otto’s body was floating. A few creatures had begun to notice that something was amiss and were now gathering on the shoreline to watch.
When Orville reached the body, Vera heard him give a startled yell, and she thought for a wild moment that perhaps Otto was still breathing. But the bear did not change his pace, suggesting there was no need for haste. He tethered Otto to the boat with a rope and then began to row for shore, toward where Vera stood.
A few lengths from land, Orville jumped out with a huge splash and hauled the boat up onto the mud. He saw the gathering crowd and roared, “Get back! Get back, all of you! Give us some space! Show some respect!”
Cowed by the spectacle of an enraged brown bear, everyone melted back…with the exception of Vera. She knew something was not right.
“Shall I help you pull him out?” she asked.
“No need.” Orville waded over to the body and picked it up gently, as if it was a cub instead of a corpse. Showing no discomfort, he walked Otto’s remains up onto shore and deposited it carefully on the cool muddy ground, facedown. The huge bear shivered once, not with disgust or even cold, but with anger.
Vera saw why when she got a better look.
In addition to the fact that Otto was facedown and unmoving, there was a dark trickle of blood seeping from his body, and most distressing of all was the hilt of a knife protruding from his back.
Vera stepped away, her insides lurching.
There was almost no crime in Shady Hollow, and to Vera’s knowledge, there had never been a murder. Otto may have been grumpy, but he was a resident and had lived near the millpond for many years.
“Who could have done this?” she whispered.
Orville stood at his full height, shaking off water. “I don’t know, but I will find out.”
If the deputy remembered that he worked under Chief Meade, he didn’t seem to care. He could collect evidence, take pictures, and contact the Peaceful Hollow Funeral Home on Yew Street to collect Otto’s body before the chief even rolled out of bed. Orville liked his job and knew he was good at it. It bothered him that he did most of the work while his boss took most of the credit, but it seemed petty to complain. After all, who really cared which bear solved the case of a stolen ice sculpture?
But now he felt differently. Petty crimes were part of life, but murder was an affront to civilized society. Otto might not have been the most charming neighbor, but no one deserved an end like this. Despite the situation, Orville felt some excitement in the pit of his stomach. Wasn’t this the very reason he’d chosen his particular career? It was too late to protect Otto, but Orville could certainly seek justice for the murdered toad.
For her part, Vera also knew that this discovery would change everything. She left Orville to his work and fled back to the newspaper offices. For once, she had scooped Gladys on a story. Unfortunately, this was a tragedy.
But perhaps it could also be an opportunity.