FREE SHORT STORY! (Mystery, pets)

Monsieur Parrot Investigates

On Friday evening Mrs. Day stood with her back to the kitchen window. Sunset flowed through the farmhouse curtains, past the pots of slightly ragged herbs, over the big old-fashioned sink and onto a little girl, upon whose jutting index finger a blue-and-yellow parakeet fluttered to keep its balance.

The little girl was a smaller, more intensely freckled copy of her mother. She raised the parakeet toward Mrs. Day and said: “Ah— may wee! You suspect the dog, ness pah?”

The little girl said this because Mrs. Day was now examining an aluminum baking sheet. There were no longer any frozen pollock fillets on this sheet and Mrs. Day set it carefully into the sink. Her words were full of annoyance, but her voice somehow managed not to be.

“Sunny! Stop waving that poor bird around. What do I always tell you? Be gentle with the animals. Put him back in the bird room. What’s that you’re jabbing at his face?”

Sunny held up her opposite finger, to which was stuck a curl of black electrical tape.

“It’s a mustache.” Her mother did not seem to understand, so she clarified, exaggerating her humorous accent. “Trademark of ze great detective, Hercule Parrot.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

“Monsieur Parrot is here, Madame, to investigate. He has, how you say, the theory. It may be that ze dog is not who done it.”

Mrs. Day plucked the dish towel up from where it customarily hung to dry over the edge of the counter, pinned down by a cutting board. She wet it under the faucet and bent toward the oven door that stood wide open, a red checkered hot mitt still looped through its handle.

The little girl thrust herself in the way. Monsieur Hercule Parrot fluttered more wildly than ever. “No, Mom! Don't erase the clues!”

Indeed, the inside of the oven door was marked with small, four-toed paw prints.

Before Mrs. Day could tell Sunny to move, she was interrupted by a clattering of claws. What looked like a perfectly miniaturized Husky came rushing into the kitchen and, despite the tiny dog's recent thievery, Mrs. Day couldn’t resist those sparkling eyes and that wildly vibrating curly tail. She tucked the dish towel back in its place and scooped the creature up in her arms.

“Naughty little Kleekie, stealing all that fish! Well, no more counter surfing. We’re trying to find you a home and who’s going to adopt a widdle, iddle, way too smart...”

And here Sunny was relieved, for her mother had exited the kitchen with Kleekie and left the clues, such as they were, behind.

Hercule Parrot clung patiently to her finger and scratched his head with one foot as she held the toy mustache under the blue flesh of his nostrils. “Inspector Day. Let us interview our uzz-aire suspects.”

***

Hercule Parrot now sat on Sunny's shoulder, safe from a suspect’s reach.

“Murder mittens,” whispered Sunny, for such was the name the internet gave to feline paws. The internet was packed with interesting reading: mystery novels, for example, and free French lessons.

“Mademoiselle,” she said to the barn cat, “Will you show to me your mittens? Or perhaps we call zem not mittens, but gloves. Yes: gloves for ze hands, booties for ze feet.”

The barn cat let Sunny take its right front paw. She squeezed each digit in turn, four toes and then a thumb, making each razor-sharp claw extend and retract. The owner of the murder mittens lay still, but when it raised its eyes to Sunny’s shoulder, and its pupils began opening wider and wider, and its thumbless hind paws suddenly shifted to a position under its body in preparation to leap, Sunny stood up. Monsieur Parrot took no foolish risks.

***

On Saturday evening, as Mrs. Day passed the bird room on her way to the kitchen to start dinner, she gave it the once-over.

In the furthest cage, a pair of doves looked peaceful. On the opposite side of the room, an enclosure full of finches bounced happily about. Between them a window with an old but mostly intact screen admitted just the right amount of clean, fresh air. With satisfaction she noted that the parakeet was not being tormented with any mustaches but was safely stowed in his own spacious cage.

But that didn’t mean the investigation was over. As Mrs. Day arranged frozen pork cutlets on the aluminum baking sheet, her daughter said:

“Madame. A message from Monsieur Parrot. He says: my theories progress. I have now ruled ze horses out.”

Mrs. Day smiled. “Oh?”

“Wee. Zey are too big, Madame, to enter ze kitchen, and do not eat fish at any time. As for ze bunny: true, he is an indoor bunny. And bunnies make ze leap— le grand boing!— but I feel we must clear him, too, of suspicion. He also does not eat fish.”

Mrs. Day set the sheet of cutlets to thaw in their usual spot on the range burners atop the oven. “And bunny paws don’t have pads. No pads, no prints, Inspector Parrot.”

“Mom! I’m the Inspector. Monsieur Parrot is a detective.”

“Well, you two won’t do much inspecting and detecting tonight. Kleekie is in his crate. And anyhow, it’s time to feed. Why don’t you go bring the horses in? I’ll give Kleekie his special food and Mr. Floppy his hay and we can do the grain together.”

“As Madame desires.”

The evening routine followed. Horses were fed and watered. They filled the barn cat’s bowl with the dry kibble that supplemented mice. Only human dinnertime remained. Creak went the back door, opening into the kitchen...

The biggest pork cutlet was gone. The oven door was once again open. Again, the paw prints.

“What the fungus?” exclaimed Mrs. Day.

“It’s all right to swear, Mom. I'm not a baby.”

But Mrs. Day was off in search of Kleekie. She strode past the room where they kept his crate. Obviously having escaped, he was unlikely to be in it... and yet a joyful high-pitched bark stopped her in her tracks. “Kleekie, where are you?”

A second bark. Mrs. Day turned back to the crate room. A third bark pulled her inside and then Sunny sprinted to join her mother, just in time to hear her repeat the words “what the”— but this time, followed by another that was definitely not “fungus”.

Kleekie was still in his crate, behind its closed wire door.

***

On Sunday evening, before feeding time, Mrs. Day secured the door of Kleekie’s crate with the twist tie from a bag of bread. And yet it happened again, exactly as before, the only difference being that this time a chicken tenderloin was the victim.

“Well, sh—” exclaimed Mrs. Day, staring at the completely untouched twist tie. “—shampoo! How is Kleekie getting out?”

Inspector Day, in the bird room feeding the Detective a small piece of fruit, considered the window. “Do you think...?” she whispered.

“Ah, but of course! What a bird-brain I have been!”

***

On Monday afternoon Mrs. Day sat on the sofa, petting Kleekie and listening to Monsieur Hercule Parrot as he concluded his report.

“I admit, mee za mee, that this was not the most satisfying case. It did not tax my mental powers— there was, after all, only one other suspect.”

Kleekie yawned as though the proof of his innocence had lifted a great burden from him. The window of the bird room was just visible from the sofa, made a bit ugly by the duct tape patching its screen, but now completely cat-proof.

Mrs. Day squeezed Kleekie. “Well, Sunny, thank you for spotting that tear.” As her daughter’s freckled forehead began to wrinkle and her mouth began to open, she quickly added “I mean, thank you, Monsieur Parrot.”

That was the right thing to say. Sunny wiggled the mustache jauntily in front of the parakeet’s beak. “Think nothing of it, Madame. But— you continue to have some concern?”

“Well, yes. There’s a first time for everything, so I’m not saying the cat didn’t finally decide to come into the house. But how do you explain Kleekie’s paw prints on the oven door?”

“It is of the simplest, Madame.” The finger with the mustache on it left Hercule Parrot and pointed directly at one of the dog’s little feet. “Ze kitties, zey have their five-toed murder mittens, have they not? Ah, but only on ze front! The hind toes number four, just like those of doggies! And what was hanging over the edge of the counter, Madame, for a climbing creature to cling to with its famous front paws? A dish towel. No prints can be left on a dish towel.”

Mrs. Day laughed. “Oh, my goodness, Sunny, it all makes perfect sense! I always knew that cat was an evil genius. You can just see her mind going, strategizing, when she hunts. And she is strong enough to have yanked the oven door open by pulling on that hot mitt. She has— how you say, Monsieur Parrot? Ze hidden powers.”

Sunny grinned and took the parakeet back to its room.

“That was fun, mom! It was just like those mystery novels I’ve been reading!” As she shut the birdcage door, she had a fleeting regret that the case had ended so soon. There would be no more improvised step-stool, no more illicit snacking for Kleekie or the barn cat...

Or for someone else.

In a corner, from behind his pile of hay, Mr. Floppy the indoor bunny gazed longingly at the kitchen window.

The pots of herbs lined up on its sill were so very tasty. But alas, he would never taste them again. He could only reach them from the countertop— and he could only reach the countertop if he started from the open oven door. Otherwise it was too far, ze leap, le grand boing.

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