9ddba8405c712dc705f6095a3ea49417

Grudgingly, Harriet agreed. And they were moving up the wooden staircase to the door when it suddenly slammed shut. And when they tried to shove it open, they couldn’t!

“Great,” said Harriet. “And now we can’t get out.”

“Take that, cat!” the mouse shouted, and tiny little feet could be heard scurrying away from the basement door.

“Did he do that?” asked Harriet. “Did he really lock us up down here?”

“Looks like,” said Brutus. A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Clever little…” He swallowed the rest of the sentence when Harriet threw him a furious look. “Nasty critter,” he muttered instead, and hunkered down at the foot of the stairs.

They’d have to wait it out, until Odelia found them missing, and decided to go look for them. Until then, they were prisoners down there.

Prisoners of a mouse. How absolutely embarrassing was that?

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Odelia was glad to finally see Abe Cornwall arrive. The big guy with the mass of frizzy hair was panting as he lumbered down the stairs into the basement.“So what do we have here?” he asked, ducking for a low-hanging wooden beam and then again for the canoe Tex had once stored there and promptly forgotten about.

“A body,” said Uncle Alec dryly. “But a very peculiar one.”

“Oh, goodie,” said Abe, rubbing his hands as he caught sight of the skeleton.

This was what Howard Carter must have felt like when he entered Tutankhamen’s tomb, Odelia thought. The coroner actually looked thrilled with this new assignment.

He moved closer and eyed the body from top to toe.“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes.”

“Well?” said Alec finally, when the doctor had muttered as much as he seemed willing to. “What can you tell us about the poor bastard?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Abe. “In fact there isn’t anything I can tell you right now, apart from the fact that it’s a human being and not a dog or a cat.”

“Yeah, well, I could have told you that,” said Alec. “But how long has it been here? And how did he or she die—and is it a she or a he?”

“I’d say it’s a male, judging from the width of the pelvis, the shape of the jawbone and the length of the long bones, but to be absolutely certain I’ll have to take this fine specimen back to my lab and perform a series of tests on it.” He was actually rubbing his hands now, in obvious glee. “I’ll call in my team. They’ll be absolutely thrilled.”

“So when will you be able to tell us something?”

“Not soon, Alec,” said Abe. “Though of course I’ll do my best for you.” He suddenly frowned and moved in for a closer look, using a small penlight. “Will you look at that,” he murmured, and then they all moved in closer. The coroner’s light shone down into the space between the two walls, and hit something shiny and glittering located at the feet of the body. And as the coroner carefully lifted it from its hiding place, Odelia gasped when she saw what it was: a diamond brooch. Very large, and obviously very, very valuable… “Ta-dah,” Abe said with satisfaction, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Chapter 6

“So how are we supposed to find out who that body belonged to?” asked Dooley.

“Good question, Dooley,” I said. “And I have absolutely no answer for you.”

We were walking along the sidewalk, pretty much going where the wind led us. Odelia and Marge and Tex’s houses are part of a neighborhood of similar houses. Maybe not tract housing, necessarily, but since they were all built around the same time they all look similar in design and construction. Both Marge and Odelia’s houses, for instance, have a small entrance, that leads straight into the living room, a sitting room now mainly used to watch television and in the olden days where people entertained their guests.

The living room is also the dining room, though not in Odelia’s house, since she usually eats in the kitchen, which is connected to the living room. Off the kitchen is the laundry room. Upstairs there are three more rooms and a bathroom: the master bedroom where Odelia and Chase sleep, and of course me and Dooley, though sometimes Dooley favors Grandma’sbed in the house next door. Then there’s the guest bedroom, which Odelia and Chase are converting to an office slash home gym, and then finally there’s a small room where Odelia stores a lot of her junk. It’s filled with all the stuff she can’t fit in the rest of the house. Oh, and there’s also a crawl space she calls an attic, and a basement, which apparently has become the home of a mouse or mice.

We wandered idly through the neighborhood, trying to come up with a plan of campaign.

“No animal is old enough to have witnessed the events that killed that person,” I said.

“We don’t even know how old it is,” Dooley pointed out.

“He must be younger than the house, though, or else how would he have managed to get stuck in its basement?”

“How do you know it’s a he?”

“Just a hunch. Only men are dumb enough to get stuck inside a basement wall.”

“True,” Dooley admitted. “Harriet would never allow herself to be trapped like that.”