Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 17)

Lily and I convened in the karate club room at 5:30. The orange tree outside was a solid pitch silhouette clinging as hard as it could to visibility against twilight’s ebb. We had our work cut out for us too. Like they said, no rest for the whiskered. Or something like that.

Teabone purred peacefully in Lily’s arms. She was a cotton ball dotted orange and black, awash in even more orange thanks to the setting sun.

Shockingly, Black Lightning, the cat that attacked me the other day, made an appearance too. He was trailing Lily like a wisp, circling her ankles and mewing with delight. He and Teabone were making fast friends, it looked like. They’d been playing together all afternoon, Lily told me. She’d been watching Teabone while I made preparations for what was about to go down: either my finest hour, or my most embarrassing one. And that was saying something.

Lily let Teabone to the floor and then dropped a ball of feathery yarn after her. It landed without a sound. Teabone and Black Lighting started pawing at it together right away. “Boss,” she said, “did you know that nearly all calico cats are female? There aren’t many male calicos at all. Teabone is no outlier. She’s female too.”

“And Black Lightning is a male, right?” I said. “Thinking these two might become an item or something? Teabone’s still a kitten, but maybe someday.”

Lily nodded. “They get along swimmingly. By the way, Boss, what time is it?”

“Nearly 5:40,” I said.

“Almost time then.”

I nodded.

In just a minute, the game I’d set into motion would begin. Once it did, we’d find out if I was an insanely lucky guesser, or just plain insane.

The door clicked open, and my heart jumped.

Here we go.

“Sorry I’m a minute late. Wanted to grab an orange off the tree. Oh, the others aren’t here yet? Am I early?”

The person who stepped through the doorway, the one who was all questions, was none other than Monty.

One glance at the floor, and the two cats playing there, and he had his answer.

He hardened in an instant, his body stiff, his face setting like a cold stone.

At that moment, I knew my hunch was right. My gamble had paid off.

Now came the hard part.

“Alright,” said Monty. “Alright. Alright. Here we are. You guys. And me then. What do we want here? What are we doing?”

He knew it all in a flash. I could tell from his face. He knew the others weren’t coming. He knew that I’d lied when I told him Lily and I wanted to meet all of them in the club room at 5:40 sharp, and that it was important, so really, seriously, be there. He knew instantly that really, I’d only wanted to meet him.

What he didn’t know was that I’d asked Tuesday and Wednesley to go dark for a while, to keep from communicating with each other or Monty for a few hours. Please, I’d said. It sounds crazy, but just trust me. In the end, they did trust me. They agreed. And so, for maybe the first time ever, things went like I hoped they would. We had Monty alone.

And there was something I needed to ask him.

But of course, Monty was quicker on the draw. Before I could even get my question in, he got his out. That was the price I paid for pausing for dramatic effect. Whoever said “slow and steady wins the race” was a baldfaced liar.

“How’d you figure it out?” said Monty.

“What? That you were involved?”

He nodded.

“Sheldon spilled the beans.”

“What? How? I told him not to talk. He promised.”

“He didn’t talk. I just put two and two together. We traced Teabone back to Sheldon. You can’t really blame him for us finding out though. He was hiding her perfectly, doing his best to conceal every trace of Teabone he could. Like how he always vacuumed her hair up to keep from getting it on his clothes. We found him cause we realized his cat napping was a result of a catnapping.”

“You cannot cover the trail of a pun. The truth always shines through,” Lily added.

“Right. Hiding the pun of the catnapping wasn’t even on Sheldon’s radar. He had no clue that that was how he’d be found out after all.”

Monty appeared calm, but he was glaring at us.

“That was his first mistake. Like I said, you can’t really blame him for it. His second you can go ahead and blame him for. He let it slip right as we were about to leave with Teabone. ‘My dream of getting into an Ivy League is as good as broken. But it’s not…’”

Monty finished for me: “‘...broken yet.’ Dangit, Sheldon, I told you not to use my line! No matter how cool you thought it was!”

“As soon as he said it, I knew I had heard it somewhere before. Then, I remembered: it was you. You’d said almost the same thing the day we first met. So I thought back to the conversation we’d had back then. That’s when I realized you let something slip that you really shouldn’t have, gave yourself away right at that first meeting. Not that anyone could have known what you meant at the time, of course.”

“Say what?”

“You tried to backpedal once you realized what you said, and it worked. No one noticed a thing. But you know what they say about hindsight.”

“What!?”

“It’s a real bitch!”

“What are you talking about, Wallace?”

“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Monty,” I said. “Think back to when you guys first called us here. Or rather, when we first got assigned to this job. Little did any of us know how much you must’ve hated that. Suddenly, we were on the hunt for Teabone. The cat you helped steal. It flustered you, didn’t it? So much so that you let slip that Teabone had been kidnapped before any of us even knew.”

Monty’s lone earring glinted like a dare, rebelling against the expiring light.

“'What we’re dealing with here is a kidnapping.' That’s what you said. Just a few lines later, you tried to run it back to a 'disappearance.' Ringing any bells? It's true. Chapter 19. Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 2). Check for yourself.”

“Damn…” Monty muttered under his breath. “I didn’t think anyone caught that. Even the others. I thought I got away with it.”

“You would have too, if it weren’t for that meddling kid.”

“Sheldon.”

“Yep. I didn’t think twice about what you said at the time. But after Sheldon slipped and repeated your line, making the connection to you, I started thinking back, and it was clear as day. That’s where I first got the idea that you might have been involved. From there, the pieces began to fall into place. Sheldon had a good cover story, all to protect you probably. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made.”

“What do you mean? We worked on that cover story for like half an hour. How could you of all people have seen through it?”

“Sheldon is a total nuisance. When he has it out for you, he doesn’t let up, ever. Believe me, I would know. So why would a guy like that just let us walk away with his furry ticket to a 10th grade of straight As? He wouldn’t. Unless, of course, he wasn’t really overly invested in the situation. What’s more, Sheldon said he’d catnapped Teabone so he could cat nap during the day and have more time to study at night. This is the guy who’s in bed every night at 10, seven days a week. His time management game is better than most adults’. The excuse that he couldn’t get all his studying in was a flimsy one at best. Someone like him would always be able to handle his time perfectly, study enough and be in bed by 10 like usual. I was sure of it. Something wasn’t adding up, and we had a clue leading back to you. I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that you were somehow involved. It was all circumstantial of course. There was no way I could have known for sure. That’s why I had to make sure. And that’s why I called you here. You gave yourself away the moment you saw Teabone.”

“No!”

“Yes! Monty, you are the true mastermind behind the disappearance of Teabone! That much has become abundantly clear! What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Alright, alright. You got me.” Monty shifted his weight coolly onto one leg. He put up both arms, signaling defeat. But for some reason, the gesture seemed to mock us. His face rearranged itself into a scowl. Not the look of someone backed into a corner. “As for what I have to say for myself…? Well, what do you want me to say?”

“All I want,” I said, “is for you to answer one question.”

“What?”

“Why did you do it?” It was all I really wanted to know.

Monty scoffed. But I wasn’t laughing.

“Fine,” he said. “You want the truth?”

I nodded.

“It’s complicated.”

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 17)!
To be continued in Part 18!