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Where We Left Off:

Ollie and Gus had a complicated investigation when they found a crime scene with a pile of feathers.

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The Price is Mice:

Something has drastically changed in the past couple years. We know what it is. Talking about it gets all the humans angry, sad, and depressed (hint: new neighbors). One of the obvious changes: more dead bodies turning up than usual. In mid-September, it was still happening.

Ollie got in his buggy. Gus yelled at the door while I got his gear on. I gathered the daily servings of birdseed and we went out for our daily adventure. I certainly didn’t expect a mystery to hit us within seconds of getting out the door. We were still in the glow of the light mounted on the house when something gleaming white caught our attention. It was small and in the grass near one of the hedge rows with a lot of English ivy carpeting the ground and the rock wall.

“What is it?” Ollie asked of his cousin.

“A dead mouse.” Gus sniffed the body without a lot of interest before his attention turned to the bed of ivy.

“Who kills a mouse and doesn’t bring it back to their humans?” Ollie asked.

Gus said, “Someone who doesn’t have their own humans.”

I added, “And doesn’t need the mouse for food so they’re getting fed by someone.”

We definitely had a mystery right in front of us. I put on my gloves. I engaged Oliver’s parking brakes and clipped Gus to the carabiner on the buggy. The mouse might serve as a creature’s meal if it was farther away from the house. I walked the mouse’s body all the way to the edge of the Forbidden Forest in the north. The boys were anxious when I got back. They didn’t appreciate being parked while I was away, but I was on my own. Gus was particularly peeved at his tether. Ollie yowled at my inconsideration of treating his buggy like an anchor.

It was still dark outside. We discussed this new case as we explored. When we got into the hangar to look for more rodents (alive or dead) and say hello to the Carolina Wren who lives in the rafters with egress through a hole near the roof. Knowing Gus was secure from running away, I sat on a chair next to Ollie’s buggy. Together we reviewed security footage from that night on my phone.

• 08:11 PM to 07:30 AM – deer came and went regularly
• 08:32 PM – raccoons, Big Baby Pudding Snatcher and Diamond Doris, spotted
• 06:13 AM – an opossum, Detective Veronica Marsupial, waddled through

After a break for chicken treats, Gus and Ollie were ready to go out to the Big Rock hoping to find critters who might be willing to give us more information. There were a lot of mourning doves milling about and cooing. They flew off to the nearby trees which allowed some smaller birds to get to the Big Rock. Lottie Brisco has been an attaché between the birds and the Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency for several months. She’s efficient and quite good at her job. She perched in the jumbled mess of wild honeysuckle, forsythia, pokeberry, and wild raspberries.

“We’d like you to get word to Detective Veronica to find out if she has information on this crime,” Ollie said to the blushed brown and tan cardinal.

“That’ll take time. She only comes out when I’m asleep. I’ll have to send a message through one of my network branches. You’ll have a response tomorrow morning.” Lottie agreed to meet us in the same place the next morning.

While we had to wait for witnesses to come forward, there was still the mystery of who this mouse was. It’s unlikely we’d have the chance to talk to any mice while their kin were being killed left and right. They’re sometimes brave, sometimes smart enough to be afraid of cats and humans. Fortunately, Detective Veronica didn’t let us down!

The next day, we met Lottie at the Big Rock again. Gus politely sat in the artemisia and weeds. Ollie’s buggy was close enough to see her but far enough that I, as le chauffeur du jour, wouldn’t scare her. She relayed Veronica’s information. The victim was identified as Nae-Nae, an old timer by outside mouse standards. He was well-respected in the community. Small critters ached with grief.

“Well? Who killed him?” Ollie yelled.

Lottie took a long pause to force the cat detectives into practicing patience. She went up to a branch on the skinny black walnut tree besides the rock. This allowed her more distance to look down at us.

“For creatures who spend most of your time sleeping, you seem to have a lot of anxiety,” Lottie said with a note of smugness.

“Who?” Gus jumped up on to the Big Rock startling Lottie. He extended his fore-claws like Wolverine.

“Easy, Gus,” I said.

Lottie flapped her wings and lifted off for less than a second. No feathers were lost. We’d be lucky if she shared any of the information at all with these (occasionally blood-thirsty, often rude) detectives.

She was louder than she needed be as she chirped out, “Savile! It was Savile the tuxedo!”

Oh, we know Savile.

Lottie settled back down on the branch. I don’t know if birds can take deep breaths, but it seemed like the time for one. Then she let out a cartoonish wolf whistle.

“For a cat, he’s awfully handsome.” If heart emojis could have come out of Lottie’s eyes, they would have. “Savile is actually a well-known taker of lives. We, in the critter community, rarely use the M word today because killing is part of instinct.”

None of us were surprised to hear that Savile struck down an old m0use. Savile has been living outdoors since birth from what we heard. He’s a dapper fellow with the most brilliant jade eyes. He’s also one of the most cunning and absolutely loves to hunt.

Case Findings:

After finding a crime scene without any forewarning practically at our back door, Ollie and Gus immediately took up an investigation. The body of a mouse named Nae-Nae, an old critter in the community, was left in the grass. There was no dignity to his murder—not that murder often has any. Poor Nae-Nae was left out under the moonlight, supine with arms and legs spread out like the Vitruvian Man. It was a depressing, haunting scene.

Ollie and Gus utilized the new attaché to the critter community, Lottie, a hard-working cardinal who always gets the job done. She touched based with a nocturnal friend, Detective Veronica Marsupial, who had triggered one of the cameras during the time frame of Nae-Nae’s death. The opossum said she had seen the wandering tuxedo cat, Savile, in the area. He’s a known killer and thief. With no other leads, we felt confident in declaring Savile the perpetrator.

Case Status: Closed