Chapter 4: Cats, Cases, and Crushes (JB)

The walk around town was a little bit awkward. Actually, thinking back, that walk may have been the longest amount of time that Jimmy had ever gone without speaking, and that includes when he sleeps.

He shuffled around like a zombie, trapped in a trance-like state ever since we had left the clubhouse. I tried joking around with him and lightening the mood. When that didn't work, I tried telling him about all of the fun stuff that we could do that summer. I spoke while he silently shuffled. At last, when I told him that I thought his SauerKrause pun was very funny and he didn’t even give me a grunt in return, I gave up on conversation. He seemed to need some time to digest what I had said in the tunnel, and that was alright. Sometimes you just have to meet people where they are, which was another thing that my dad taught me. Jimmy wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, so I settled into a comfortable silence and just walked along beside him. 

In the absence of conversation I wondered if I should tell him that Mr. Gruetwine had OCD and that he did everything three times, including tapping the goldfish food. This was something that a good detective would have noticed. After mulling it over, however, I decided to keep that information to myself.

We walked a long loop around the park and then up and down a few side streets. Our route seemed like an aimless journey. Jimmy shuffled and sometimes muttered a bit beneath his breath, but otherwise didn't seem to be too aware of his surroundings. By the time I realized that I had this dead wrong, it was much too late to change direction.

Looming largely about fifty yards in front of us, eerily empty at the moment, was our school. Our stupid school! My stomach dropped. We just left this stupid place! Turning to confront Jimmy, I observed that his eyes no longer looked glassy and he was suddenly free of his trance. His pace, I also noticed, had miraculously returned to normal, if not slightly accelerated. I broke into a light jog to keep pace with him. By the time I was able to grab his shoulder and bring him to a stop, we had already walked past the big rock at the entrance to the school, the one with a gold plaque memorializing Norma Berger.

“I’m starting to feel better,” he said with an annoyingly smug look on his face.

"I could tell," I told him. "You were practically skipping there for a minute."

Rather than respond, Jimmy took a slow look around and clucked his tongue. “Gee whiz, we're back at the school? What a crazy coincidence." I hadn't thought it was possible but the smirk on his face got even smugger. Smirkier. "Well, as long as we’re all the way back here we may as well investigate for a bit. What do you think?” For the second time in the last hour, he took off without waiting for me to respond. Sometimes I think that I should make some new friends.

When I caught up with Jimmy, he had already taken out a red bandana and wiped a clean circle into the glass of Mr. Krause’s office window. As he crumpled up the now filthy red bandana and returned it to his pocket, I noticed that it sure looked a lot like the one I had. One that I hadn't seen in a while. Before I could ask him about that, he beamed up at me with his patented half-smile, the one that made you just want to just sock him one. “About time you caught up. You're getting a little flabby there guy, have you been keeping up on the workout I gave you? The guy on the internet said it was the real workout that The Rock does.”

As a matter of fact, no, I hadn’t been keeping up on the workout that Jimmy gave me. The main reason for that was because it was pure nonsense. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the guy even spelled the name Dwayne wrong. The ‘Dwain Johnson’ workout involved so many stupid versions of pushups and curls that it read like a wikipedia article of exercises that someone had copied and pasted with tiny bits of wrestling references sprinkled in. Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what it was. Yet for only a cool twenty dollars, Jimmy was convinced that it would take his training to the next level.

“Up yours,” was the best I managed to say back. I was still fuming at how easily he had tricked me into coming here. I was flustered. When I saw him trying to pry open one of the windows, I figured it was time to repeat my earlier declaration. “I’m not doing any cases with you this summer. I mean it. I don’t need to explain why again either. I’m done, just done. You got it?” This time it was me who walked away without waiting for a response.

Screw that. I just got out of school, I’m not trying to break back in.

I wound my way around the corner to the back of the building. Just as I had hoped, the playground was completely deserted. I stomped my way over to the swings and I sat down, trying to pump my legs hard and swing some of my angry energy out.

Jimmy always does things like this. He tricks me into these stupid situations and then when I get upset, he calls me things like Over-reacto 5000 and all these other dumb nicknames he makes up on the fly. To hell with that, not this time. This time is different. This is going to be a relaxing summer, even if it kills me!

While I tried to sort out my thoughts and calm down, I noticed a shadow appear and lengthen on the ground as it approached from behind me. I didn’t look up. “I’m mad, douchebag. Leave me alone,” I shouted grumpily over my shoulder. I didn’t care what Jimmy said. Nothing he could do or say would change my mind about this.

“I’m sorry,” an unfamiliar and hurt voice responded, “I didn’t mean to bother you.” A big sniffle and a whine made me stop my swinging instantly. I dug my heels into the wood chips and came to a complete stop. When I turned around, it wasn't Jimmy. It was a girl. A pretty one. She seemed to be about my age, although I had never seen her before. She was wearing a deep blue rain jacket, the hood pulled up even though there wasn’t a cloud in sight. She pulled the hood tighter as she cried a little bit, obscuring her face before I could see her too clearly. At that moment, I felt like the biggest jerk on the planet.

“No, no, no, no,” I clumsily jumped down from the swing and I grabbed her shoulders to comfort her, the way that I had seen people do in movies. “It’s me who should be sorry. I’m having a bad day, and I thought you were somebody else. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

I gave her shoulders another awkward squeeze before letting go and stepping back, giving her some space. I was unsure whether or not my stupid attempts at comfort had any effect on her, but either way she very quickly got herself under control and wiped the last of her tears away. She opened her hood back up and let it drop down a bit, but not all the way off. It looked like a move she had practiced a lot, it was very smooth. I still couldn’t make out too many of her features, her dark black hair fell over her eyes as she looked frequently at her feet.

“Sorry,” her small voice came again, this time louder and calm. “I’m not usually like this, it’s been a very emotional day. My cat is missing.” It was then that I noticed she had a small stack of papers clutched in her fist. They were all copies of the same poster. She smiled a sad smile and handed me one. LOST CAT it read, with a picture directly below. The missing cat in question was an orange tabby cat, curled up with a plush version of a doobie that read Meow-o-rana on the side. Under the picture was a phone number to contact and the basic cat stats. Two years old. Green collar. Little M shaped pattern above the eyes. The name of the cat was Velcro.

“Cute cat,” I offered, knowing as soon as I did that it wasn’t much help. After the obligatory thank you in return, I asked how long he’d been missing. “Just today, but real early in the morning. He’s never been outside before so I’m worried that he won’t do well when it’s night time.” Tears threatened to storm the corners of her eyes once more. I quickly told her that it would be okay, and that a good place to hang posters would be by the library or along the Prairie Path.

From not too far off, we heard a crash of broken glass, some kind of liquid spilling, and some extremely choice words. Jimmy came flying around the corner of the building, freezing at the sight of a hooded person that he didn’t know. “It was like that when I got here,” he uttered unconvincingly to the girl standing there. It was then that I realized I didn’t know her name yet.

“Um, it’s okay. I don’t work here you know.” The girl nervously fumbled with the zipper of her jacket, causing the head of a small stuffed panda bear to stick his head out of the front pocket. Jimmy looked her up and down and frowned.

“Oh,” he said. “Well then buzz off, we’re doing work here. You’ll contaminate our crime scene.”

Her face momentarily teased more tears, but she held strong and instead she clenched her fists and dug her heels into the ground. She raised a tiny hand to offer a copy of the poster to Jimmy. “I lost my cat and I was—“ Jimmy rudely swatted the poster away.

“Look sweetheart, I’m sorry you lost your cat but, if we’re being honest, you girls lose your stuff all the time. I have two sisters and they can’t find their own butts with four hands. We’re on a dangerous mission here, we don’t have time for your average missing pet case. We’re trying to stop the third, fourth, or even the fifth Reich over here!”

Before Jimmy could set off on his fourth tangent about Nazis that day, I stepped in and pulled him aside, giving the girl my best 'we’ll be right with you' smile. As soon as we were out of earshot, I hit him hard in the shoulder with a balled fist. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked him in as harsh a whisper as I could. “She’s trying to find her cat, there’s no reason to be such a jerk to her. And weren’t you just saying that you wanted to solve a lot of cases this summer?”

Jimmy fixed me with a hard stare, his beady eyes sizing me up from underneath his lucky green beanie, the one that he wears for infiltrations. Crap, I really should have seen today coming. “And weren’t YOU just telling me that absolutely, no way no how, would you be taking on any cases this summer at all or else you owe me a hundred bucks?”

I popped him in the shoulder again and decided to not even acknowledge the comment about the money. “Look man, I’m still not sure I want to do this, I’m so worn out from the year. So let’s start with something small, something just like this, to see how I feel about working cases this summer. And didn’t you just say that it’s a basic missing pet case? You should be able to solve it in twenty four hours easy, right?”

He was nodding, already thinking a few steps ahead, the gears in his head fully in motion. “Fine,” he said while eyeing me suspiciously. “We’ll take the case. And you can owe me the three hundred bucks you mentioned earlier. Three fifty it might have been.”

I waved the girl over, who had now half unzipped her jacket revealing a black promo shirt for the movie Scream underneath it. Her panda was once more in hiding, the pocket he was in hung heavily and gently thumped against her jeans as walked over. I quickly let her know that we would help her.

Her hood came down a bit more and she brushed her hair back, revealing for the first time the full features of a face that I would never forget. “Hey,” she said nervously, revealing a big beautiful smile, “I’m Lizzy.” She handed the poster to Jimmy, who took it this time. “And this is Velcro. He’s been missing since this morning.”

Jimmy looked it over and nodded, murmuring to himself as he took in the details. “Right,” he said, “and did he run away because he wants to change his stupid name?” After convincing Lizzy that he was only kidding, which was no easy task considering he wasn’t, I told her our names in return.

She was shy, reserved, but had a great smile when you could coax a small one out. I assured her that we could handle it and I made great care to fold a copy of the poster and put it in my pocket. I had a feeling I would need the phone number on it.

After a few more minutes of clumsy conversation, we all parted ways, Jimmy desperate to return to the clubhouse to discuss this stupid case so he could wrap it up and go back to hunting evil old Germans.

I didn’t know why, but I really didn’t like having to say goodbye to her.