Big Blue and I arrived home to find my old man parking his car in the garage. He eased his tall frame out of the seat and leaned an arm over the car door. “Howard, Blue.” He gave a nod to each of us in turn. “How was your day?”
I pulled the note from Ms. Kowalski and the yellow folder from my bag and handed them over. After a brief perusal, he couldn’t hold back a grin. “‘Two p.m.,’” he read aloud, “‘Subject exited back door and smoked one cigarette behind the dumpster.’ You are good, Howard. I thought I got away with that.” Pops closed the folder and considered the note again. “Tell you what,” he said, handing them both back to me. “You write a proper essay, I’ll check it over and your mother never has to hear about it . . . or the cigarette.”
“Deal.” We shook on it, and I shoved the incriminating evidence back in my bag.
“Besides getting busted for academic negligence, what else happened today?”
I popped Blue’s kickstand and set her in her reserved parking spot, giving myself time to sort out which one of today’s developments could be divulged. Once she was settled, I turned and hit Pops with the major headline. “The new girl asked to get in on the business. Wants to be my partner.”
He paused, still reaching for his bag in the backseat, and shot a look at me over the top of the Volvo. “New girl?”
“Ivy Mason, four feet, ten inches, brown hair, brown eyes, no known aliases. Moved to Grantleyville a couple weeks ago. Keen to make her mark.”
“Credentials?”
“None to speak of. Says her father’s a cop and she picked up a thing or two along the way. I’m taking her on for a trial run, but I don’t expect it’ll work out.”
He gave a low whistle and shut the car door. “Partner. That’ll be a change—not to mention a blow to your gum supply.”
“Junior partner,” I pointed out. “If she even makes the cut. Plus, company rule: newbies bring their own gum.”
“That’s a solid rule.” Pops nodded sagely as we exited the garage and headed toward the house. He paused on the driveway and stopped me with his briefcase. “Let’s not count her out so quick. I think it’d be good for you to have someone to work with,” he said with a suspiciously casual shrug. “And to have someone to hang out with again.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shoved the case away from my chest. I’d had far too much Monday to deal with the direction this conversation was taking.
“Don’t get all worked up, Howard,” Pops sighed. “It’s been months since Noah moved away and over a year since Miles—”
“He has nothing to do with this.”
“All I’m saying is, gum concerns aside, it might be nice.”
“I don’t think anything to do with Ivy is ever nice,” I said. “So far it’s mostly frustrating and exhausting.”
“I like her already,” Pops said as he and I walked to the side door.
Inside, the usual pre-dinner chaos reigned. I’d no sooner set down my bag and hung up my coat than a hand snaked out and pulled me into the dining room. “Howeird, you should have been home, like, thirty minutes ago. At least.” Eileen Wallace: an unpredictable blond creature who was obnoxiously fourteen and irrationally annoyed at being related to me. She took after our mother in both looks and general aura of disapproval. A fistful of flatware was shoved into my hands. “It’s your turn to set the table, freak. And Mom said no shop talk at dinner, so spend the next ten minutes coming up with something normal to talk about.”
I wondered if Sam Spade got this much grief from his family. “I set the table yesterday,” I called after Eileen as she stalked back to the kitchen. “It’s your turn.”
“Your own fault for being late,” she said. “Next time, call.”
Hard to do when your phone’s been confiscated—indefinitely, according to my parents, or until I can learn appropriate usage. Why are there cameras in phones if not for taking surveillance photos?
After dinner, I sped through my homework (proper “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay included). I shoved my schoolbooks back in my bag and made sure Scotty’s trumpet was in there for the next day. With that taken care of, I could finally get back to some real work. Grabbing the bag of cat food obtained from Mrs. Peterson, I hit the streets.
One hour and a pack of gum later, I’d walked the entire neighborhood. Shaking the kibble and calling “Here kitty, kitty!” had provided mixed results. Three cats followed me—none of them my target. I gave them each a handful of food to get ’em off my tail and on the slim chance the sight of other cats eating his fancy chow would bring Gregory out of hiding. A search of the surrounding porches, trees, and bushes proved equally useless.
The streetlights started to flicker on, and I headed back home. Maybe I could cram in some paperwork (and clean my room) before bed. My home office was in the backyard. It was a pretty sweet tree house that my old man and I’d built over the summer. More tree-adjacent, if you wanted to get specific. Neither of us was that stuck on heights. I stored all my files there and my main gum stash.
The inside was set up with Pops’ old school desk, a rusty metal filing cabinet, and a camping lantern. In the corner sat a maroon easy chair rescued from the dump, surprisingly comfortable despite a few loose springs and suspicious dark stains. It was the place where I usually sat to work through a troubling case. Maps, notes, and surveillance photos covered every inch of wall space, making it a fire inspector’s nightmare. Pops had also managed to land a couple photos of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe to hang up. The detectives kept watch over the reference library: my two-shelf bookcase filled with secondhand detective novels. I waved at the guys on my way to the filing cabinet to retrieve the Harris file. After I finished an itemized bill for Scotty, I shut off the lamp and headed back in for the night.
Walking up to the house, I tossed the cat food bag absently from hand to hand. Shake. Thunk. Shake. Thunk. Mewl. I stopped in my tracks and tilted my head in the direction of the pitiful sound. “Gregory?”
Silence.
“You haven’t thought this through, Gregory. There could be eagles out here.” A soft meow came from behind a clump of peonies. “That’s right. And probably wolves. Nobody’s gonna think any less of you for coming in from the cold.” I gave the food bag a little shake, and Gregory emerged, covered in dirt and leaves. He rubbed up against my calves, purring and meowing. “Life on the outside isn’t for everyone, buddy.” I bent down to give him some food and a scratch behind the ears. Hauling him up off the ground, I headed over to Mrs. Peterson’s for delivery.
A shuffling noise caught my attention. I looked up to see a hand disappearing over the top of our gate. I ran over with all the speed I could muster while carrying a twenty-pound cat in my arms. Hitting the latch with one hand, I bumped the door open with my hip.
There was no one in sight.
I wandered down to the end of the driveway and scanned the sidewalks. The yellow glow of the streetlights illuminated an empty street. I listened for the sound of receding footsteps, but the quiet wisp of the wind through the trees told me what I already knew. Whoever had been there’d vanished. Gregory sank his claws into my arm and meowed pitifully. Our short jog had been the last straw of his big adventure. He was ready for a soft bed and a bowl full of food.
“Relax,” I said. “I’m taking you home right now.”
Slogging back up the driveway, I saw a glimmer of bright in the gathering dark. Taped onto the door of the gate, a little bit crooked and a lot crinkled, was a small white envelope. I pulled it down and held it out under the streetlight for closer examination. My name was scrawled across the front in very familiar block letters.
I removed the note from inside and read it out loud to Gregory.
“Drop the Reddy case or else.” I stuffed the letter into my pocket and looked around once more. “Or else what?” I called out. “Vagueness strikes fear in the heart of no one, you know.” The mysterious note-leaver didn’t jump out of the shadows with more specifics, so I continued across the lawn to Mrs. Peterson’s.
“It’s very interesting,” I said to Gregory. “Not many people know that Meredith hired me. So how’d the blackmailer find out?” Gregory stared at me and began grooming his paw.
“I agree. We should definitely ask our client that tomorrow.”