Marlowe, Crime-Solving Corgi

Marlowe the Crime-Solving Corgi in: "Rat Fancy"

I waited patiently in the car for my partner Phil to open the passenger side door for me.  Even though it was already night time, the air was still thick with humidity.  The car ride to SuperPet wouldn’t have been so miserable if it hadn’t been for the fact that Phil, conscious of rising gas prices, refused to use the air conditioner.  We had the windows open, but the hot air did little to comfort a hot dog like myself.
My name is Marlowe.  My friend Phil works part-time as a private investigator, and I help him out by tagging along on his cases.  If nothing else, having his loyal Welsh Corgi by his side helped lift the poor guy’s spirits; usually I was the only one trying to help him figure out the truth.  Phil is a little overenthusiastic about his job, which usually ended up making everyone from the culprit to the victim try to convince him to give up the case.  He makes a lot of mistakes, but he means well, and is very dedicated to the fight justice.  One time Phil downed a small donut with chocolate sprinkles to prove that a poisoned box of pastries was used for the murder of a reputable policeman.  The murderer was caught and found guilty, but Phil had to spend a couple days in the hospital.
I expected today to be free of any deadly donuts, murder, or intrigue.  Phil and I had simply come to the local SuperPet for more of my dog food.  He had just realized about an hour ago that I was completely out of Kibbles ‘n Bits, and SuperPet was the only place still open at this late hour.  Since pets were welcome in the store, Phil brought me along for the trip.
Phil and I walked through the automatic glass doors and were blasted by a wave of freezing air from the store’s air conditioners.  To say SuperPet was gargantuan would be an understatement: I couldn’t even see the back of the store from where I was standing.
“Awk, welcome to SuperPet!” squawked a large green parrot in a cage not far from the store’s entrance.  Its shrill voice hurt my sensitive ears.  I was sure that this bird’s yell could be heard throughout the entire building.
Phil looked around in amazement at the store’s size.  “Looks like they’ve upgraded since the last time I’ve been here, buddy.  Granted, that was back when I was still in middle school… maybe I should ask someone about where to find the dog section.”  We made our way to the only cash register open, where there was a small crowd of people.
Manning the register was a young brunette of about 18.  Her nametag revealed her name was Christie, and her face revealed that she really didn’t want be working here this late.  She impatiently chewed a wad of gum in her mouth and rolled her eyes as the large woman in front of her babbled on and on about the critter she kept in a large glass container.
The loud woman was talking about how her fancy rat, Duke Edward Wellington IV, had just won the tri-county rat show today.  Her fat arms jiggled like Jell-O as she made exaggerated gestures while describing the post-show party.  She dropped the names of a number of supposedly famous rat breeders and grooming specialists as the poor cashier in front of her grew increasingly bored.  Curious to see what was so special about her fancy rat, I stood up on my hind legs and leaned against the register to get a better look.
A small, white rat with black spots peered down at me with beady eyes from inside the terrarium.  He wore a small blue ribbon tied around his neck.  The fancy gold letters on the ribbon read, “FIRST PLACE”.  And people said that my doggie necktie looked ridiculous.  After a second the Duke broke eye contact with me and turned up his little pink nose and whiskers in disdain.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but are you actually going to buy anything?” asked the cashier impatiently.  The woman snorted a little and said that yes, she was looking for a new rat cage for the Duke, but she couldn’t find a blasted thing in the stadium-sized store.  She was about to give Christie some lessons on manners she didn’t ask for when a well-built bald man interrupted.  He wore a tag that declared him the store manager.  He knew exactly how to deal with the self-important woman’s type, and wasted no time in complimenting her hair, her clothes, her rat, and her hair again as he lead her away to the small animal section of SuperPet.  She decided to leave Duke Edward Wellington IV behind because she didn’t want to be bothered with carrying his tank around with her.
When the overbearing rat owner was gone, Phil was finally able to ask the cashier how to find the dog section of the store.  However, when we actually tried to find the damn place, we somehow got lost amidst the aisles catering to large draft animals.  Daniel Boone Phil was not.  I tried to put my nose to work in order to find what aisle the dog food was kept in, but there were just too many clashing scents in the store to get a good read on anything.  That’s when we heard a scream.

We rushed back to the source of the commotion, which was all the way back at the cash registers at the back of the floor.  The only people there were the fat woman who owned the fancy rat and the store manager; the cashier was nowhere to be found.  Apparently the scream came from the woman who owned the fancy rat, who was frantically looking around for something.  “Duke!” she yelled.  “Where is my precious Dukey!?”  That’s when I noticed that the terrarium that once held the black and while rat was missing.
The manager put the gigantic wire cage that he was carrying for the woman down and tried to comfort her.  “Please try to relax, ma’am,” he said.  “I’m sure one of our staff saw where it went to.  It’s not like it could have just run away.”
Christie the cashier came back, struggling with a bag of Cheetos.  She slowly meandered back to the register, totally engaged in her battle to open the snack bag, paying no attention to the ruckus the upset rat woman was causing.  She walked behind the register, opened the bag, and stuffed a Cheeto in her mouth.  She finally looked up to see the manager and the woman staring at her.  “What?” she asked innocently.
The woman pointed a fat, sausage-like finger at the young girl.  “It must have been you!  Y-you, you dirty ratnapper!” she accused.
“What!?” exclaimed Christie.
“Now, let’s not jump to conclusions,” said the manager.  I thought he was going to be the reasonable one of the group, but he turned on Christie just as viciously as the rat woman.  “Mrs. Holstein here is a very valuable customer, Christie.  Tell us what happened to the rat, or you’re fired,” he hissed.
“Hey, I didn’t do anything with any dirty rat, okay?” exclaimed the cashier.  Mrs. Holstein eyes flashed with anger when she called her precious Duke ‘dirty’.  Christie jumped back and said, “I just went back to the break room and got some Cheetos.  I didn’t see a thing!”
“In my professional opinion,” started my friend Phil, butting into the conversation.  “It’s probably best to check the surveillance cameras.”
“No good,” said the manager, folding his muscular arms in front of his chest.  “The system has been under repairs for the past week.  It won’t get fixed until this weekend, so there’s no video to watch.”
“In that case, it seems we have a mystery on our hands!” shouted Phil excitedly, pointing a slender finger into the air.  Everyone stared at him in awe.  Oh, Phil…
Phil cleared his throat.  “Uh, well, what I mean is… My name is Phillip Spade, and I’m a private investigator.”  He produced his business card from his back pocket and handed it to the buff manager.  “Part-time, anyway.”
The manager eyed the business card suspiciously.  “Well, I don’t think we really need to make a big deal out of this, Mr. Spade.  It’s just a missing pet rat.”  He tried to hand the card back to Phil.
“Either you find Duke Edward Wellington IV, or I’ll sue!” yelled the fat woman.
The store manager withdrew the card from Phil and held it close to himself.  “On second thought, maybe you should help out.”  The store manager went to the front doors of the SuperPet and locked them.  I noticed a cat with long golden hair rub affectionately against his leg. “I’m pretty sure there are no other customers in the store, so nobody leaves until this is all cleared up.”
“But my shift ends in half an hour,” whined Christie.  Everyone ignored her.

While everyone else was talking, I decided to do a little of my own detective work, starting with the cat I saw sucking up to the store manager.  I followed her away from the store entrance and past the bird cages until she leaped up to a tall shelf.  She gazed curiously at me with her bright green eyes before nonchalantly washing her face with her front paw.  “So what do you want, pooch?” she asked.  Immediately I didn’t trust her.
“Someone stole that woman’s rat,” I explained.  “It was in a tank near the cash registers, but now it and the tank are gone.”
“That’s too bad,” she responded, her voice thick with fake sympathy.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
The cat groomed herself for a few moments and looked down at me in a disapproving way.  Just like how all cats look at anyone, really.  I was about to ask her again when she said, “Agatha.  I’m the store manager’s cat.  And you?”
“The name’s Marlowe.  I’m a part-time private investigator along with my friend Phil.  I need to find out what happened to that woman’s pet rat.  Tell me everything you saw.”
“Why should I?”  This dame was going to be difficult.
“Kidnapping is a crime.  I need to know the truth.”
Agatha sighed, “I didn’t see anything.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary?  Nothing suspicious?”
“Nothing.”  Agatha resumed washing her face, much to my annoyance.
“Maybe you’re covering something up,” I said.  “How do I know you’re not the one who took the rat?”
“Oh, please,” said Agatha, who kept her cleaning paw up.  “You think I’m strong enough to move a tank all by myself?  Besides, I don’t like rat.  It’s too stringy.”
I let out a little growl.  I wasn’t getting anywhere with this interrogation.  As I was turning to leave, Agatha called for me to wait.  She squinted down with her emerald eyes and said, “I can tell you one thing, Mr. Part-Time Private Investigator.  Whoever did take that rat must still be in the store.  We would have heard them if they left.”  I didn’t like the way she looked down at me.
“How?”
“The only exits out of SuperPet are the emergency exits, the exit in the break room, and the front doors.  If they left through the emergency exits, then there would be an alarm.  If they exited the break room now, there would be an alarm.  My human doesn’t like employees leaving early,” she said with a small chuckle.  “And if they left through the front doors, Mickey would have told everyone.”
“Mickey?”
“The green parrot at the front.  Surely you heard him when you came in here?  He announces whenever anyone enters or leaves the store.”  How could I forget his ear-piercing screech?  I turned to look at the bird.  He looked perfectly innocent perched in his cage, waiting patiently for his next opportunity to damage someone’s eardrums.  When I turned to thank Agatha for the information she had given me, I discovered that she was already gone.

I thought about what Agatha had told me as I made my way to the dog biscuit bar.  I had noticed it near the cash registers when Phil and I first came into the SuperPet.  No one was around to stop me from climbing up to the display with the exception of Christie, who wasn’t feeling any company loyalty at the moment.  She chose to ignore me.  The biscuit bar was set up so humans could fill a plastic cup full of biscuits for their canine companions, but since Phil wasn’t around, I decided to help myself.  I took a liking to a couple of small green biscuits that were shaped like bones.
According to the cat, the kidnapper was still in the store.  I’m sure I didn’t hear any alarms go off when Phil and I were looking for dog food, which was when the crime took place.  Mickey the parrot was loud enough to hear throughout SuperPet, so they couldn’t have left through the front entrance, either.  I gobbled up a few more green biscuits.  Deep down I knew it wasn’t good for me to eat so many of the things, but I was hungry.  I eyed a couple of biscuits that had some red coloring sandwiched between two white squares.  Those were Elaine’s favorite.
Elaine is… was my girlfriend.  She was a beautiful Golden Retriever who lived about a block from Phil and me.  We were a pretty happy couple for a while.  Phil and I would accompany Elaine and her human friend to a nearby park at least once a week.  But one day she decided I wasn’t good enough for her.  Said something about how all I cared about were my cases with Phil.  
On the day we broke up Elaine looked down at me and said, “You’re too obsessed with work, Marlowe.  You just can’t focus on anything else.”  I was just telling her that the tennis ball we were chasing reminded me of a smoke bomb that someone had thrown in Phil’s face once; I still didn’t understand why she had to get all serious about it.  I’ll never forget the way that blonde beauty looked down on me.  Maybe that was why Agatha got me all riled up, staring down at me from the shelf.  Maybe I’m just conscious about my height…
I hopped carefully down from the bar and decided that I needed to find some more clues.

I had no idea where to start looking, so I wandered aimlessly around the store, hoping to bump into someone or something of interest.  I wasn’t disappointed; near the aquariums I noticed a couple of employees battling with a giant octopus.  One of the employees was completely soaked, beating back a tentacle furiously with a broomstick.  The other watched nervously from a distance.  The timid employee wore a pair of thick eyeglasses and was visibly shaking at the sight of the fierce battle.
“Aw, this ain’t no big deal,” said the employee battling with the angry octopus.  “He’ll calm down once he gets his din-din, won’cha, big guy?”  The octopus answered by slapping a couple of suction cups onto the employee’s face.  “Go get the box of Octo-Flakes from the shelf over there, Carl.”
The timid employee followed his co-worker’s finger to a shelf full of boxes.  He took a while to decide which box to take.  “Hurry up, man!” called the other employee.  The giant octopus had managed to break the broomstick in two.  Carl grabbed a box seemingly at random and hurriedly handed it to the other SuperPet employee.
“What the hell, dude!  These are the soap suds for cleaning the tanks, not mmmphh!”  The impatient octopus had wrapped a tentacle around the employee’s face.  I figured I couldn’t just leave the timid Carl to handle the situation on his own, so I decided to bite the bullet and get involved in the fight—or rather, bite the tentacle.  I leaped into action and chomped down hard on one of the giant octopus’ appendages.  To my surprise, it let go of the employee immediately.
The SuperPet employee rushed to the shelf, picked out the right box, and emptied some of its contents into the octopus tank.  The octopus calmed down once it ate some of its Octo-Flakes.  The employee who almost became sea monster chow turned slowly to Carl and sighed, “Dude… you need to get yourself some new glasses.  The octopus really ain’t so bad, but he gets really rowdy when he don’t get fed on time.”  He knelt down next to me and gave me a wet pat on the head.  “Thanks, little guy.”  Feeling my work here was done, I left to find some clues elsewhere.  It was a fun little distraction, but it didn’t really get me any closer to finding the missing Duke Edward Wellington IV.

I saw Phil, the manager, and Mrs. Holstein near the small animal tanks.  Apparently Phil had the idea that some employee might have mistaken the woman’s rat for a rat that belonged to SuperPet and put it with the others.
“Is this the one?” asked Phil, pointing at a brown female rat.
“No, most definitely not!” snorted Mrs. Holstein.  “Besides, my rat is male!  These rats are all females!”
“Oh,” said Phil.  He looked around for a second, and then looked into another tank.  “How about this one?” he asked, pointing at a black and white rat, who also happened to be a girl.  The manager rolled his eyes.
“No!  None of these inferior creatures are my prized Dukey!” said the woman.
“Hey, how am I supposed to know?” asked Phil with a shrug.  “Rats all look the same to me.”
“Well, I never!” snorted Mrs. Holstein indignantly as she turned to leave in a huff.  I guess she couldn’t see me under her immense girth, because she somehow managed to trip right over me.  She crashed into a stack of boxes containing hamster balls, sending a good number of them rolling down one of the aisles.
Under the guise of continuing our investigation elsewhere, Phil and I decided to run from the giant woman’s wrath.  

We soon found ourselves lost in the reptile exhibit.  After he had caught his breath, Phil got a biscuit from his pocket and gave it to me.  “Don’t worry about her, buddy,” he said.  “We can figure this case out for her whether she wants us to help or not.  Justice will prevail!”  I found his optimism comforting as I munched on the biscuit.
Phil admired the price tags and information plaques on some of the exotic snakes on display.  “Hey Marlowe,” he said.  “Did you know that you only need to feed some snakes every two weeks?”
I decided it couldn’t hurt to try interrogating some of them in case anyone had seen anything.  A sign on the biggest terrarium on the floor boasted that it contained a giant boa constrictor.  “Hello,” I said, pressing my wet nose against the glass.  “Is anybody there?”
“Don Ssslick is sssleeping,” said a small voice to my right.  I looked over to see a small gardener snake flicking its tiny tongue at me.  “The bossss always getsss like thisss after dinner.”
“Heh heh, yeah, the bossss, he’s tired, yeah,” said a voice from above the gardener snake.  It was a coral snake not much bigger than the gardener snake.  “He don’t like talking to visssitorss now.”
“Maybe you boys can tell me what I need to know,” I said.  “There’s been a kidnapping of a prize-winning rat.  You know anything about it?”
“We don’t know nothin’,” said the gardener snake.
“Yeah, nothin’!” echoed the coral snake.
I didn’t believe the goons.  “Let me talk to your boss, then.”
“We told you, mammal, the bossss doesssn’t want to ssspeak to anybody,” hissed the gardener snake.
“Want I ssshould fang ‘em?” said the coral snake.  He demonstrated there was a hole at the top of his terrarium by poking his head out.
I was afraid I was going to have to fight with the venomous mobster when Phil called me over.  “Hey Marlowe, look at what I found!”  I backed away slowly from the snakes and rushed to my partner’s side.
Phil carried a large terrarium in his hands.  “I found it lying with some other empty tanks behind the iguana exhibit,” he explained.  “It belongs to Duke Eddie… Willie… uh, whatever.  The show rat.  But it’s empty!”
Phil put the terrarium down on the floor in front of me.  I sniffed it carefully.  I detected the scents of Phil, the smell of rat, and the scent of two other humans.  The two other human smells were familiar, but SuperPet was full of strange, overwhelming smells, so it was hard for me to focus.  I suspected that one of the scents belonged to the woman who owned Duke Edward Wellington IV, but who could the other scent belong to?
I barked excitedly to let Phil I was onto something.  Phil and I had been through this sort of thing before, so he knew exactly what to do.  “You’ve got the scent, Marlowe?”  I barked in agreement.  I wagged my bob tail as hard as I could, but I didn’t know if Phil could see it.  “Okay, let’s do this!”

Phil got the store manager to call all the late-night SuperPet employees to the front of the store.  As everyone was lining up, Phil slipped me a couple of biscuits from the biscuit bar.  Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to be eating so many biscuits on the job, but I didn’t think much of it.  While we were waiting for the employees to assemble, Agatha walked by.  “How’s the case going, Mr. Part-Time Private Investigator?”
“Mmph?” I mumbled.  I choked down a mouthful of biscuits.
The blonde cat chuckled.  “Don’t you think you’ve eaten enough of those things?”
“I know when I’ve had enough,” I ate another biscuit from off of the floor.  “Anyway, the case is just about closed.  We’ve got this one in the bag!”
Agatha slowly walked right up to me.  “That’s good,” she said, walking slowly towards me.  We met eye to eye, unlike last time.  She was making me a little bit nervous.  “I don’t like criminals in my store.”  I could smell the wet cat food on her breath.  “I’m going to go take a little nap now,” she said.  She whipped her long tail under my chin as she turned to walk away.  “Eating dinner just makes me so sleepy.  Good luck, Mr. Part-Time.”  There was something about that cat… I liked the way she didn’t look down on me.

Finally all the employees had made it to the front of the store.  I guess I couldn’t blame them for taking so long, considering the size of the SuperPet.  Phil explained that I could find out who had been handling the terrarium through my sense of smell.  Whoever had handled the terrarium in SuperPet would be the prime suspect for the kidnapping of the Duke.
I worked my way down the line, carefully sniffing the suspects.  I had already identified Phil and Mrs. Holstein, so it had to have been one of the SuperPet employees.  It didn’t take very long to figure out that from the four employees left in the store, Carl was the culprit.
“That’s not cool, man,” said the octopus man from before.
“I told you I had nothing to do with it,” said an annoyed Christie.  “I better be getting overtime for this.”
“I-I didn’t do it!” said Carl, nervously adjusting his glasses on his face.  “I mean, what did I do?”
“You ratnapped Duke Edward Wellington IV!” accused the rat woman.  “My Dukey!  He was sitting right here in his glass tank when you stole him!”  The rat woman passionately grabbed Carl around his collar.  “What did you do with him!?”
“I-I-I don’t know what your talking about!”  Carl broke away from the woman’s grip.  “I didn’t ratnap any—“ suddenly Carl shut up, as if he had realized something very important.
“What was that?” said the store manager.  “Is there something you’d like to confess, Carl?”  The large man loomed over his timid employee.
“N-nothing.  I didn’t do anything.”  It was very suspicious.  “Please, you gotta believe me.  I didn’t steal… I didn’t steal any fancy rat, okay?  I’ve just been minding my own business.”
“Carl…” started the manager.
“I didn’t do anything!  Why would I steal anyone’s stupid rat?”  This time the woman lunged for Carl’s throat rather than his collar.  It took the entire SuperPet team and Phil to get her off of the glasses-wearing employee.  Despite the commotion, I couldn’t help but yawn.  It was late, I was tired, and maybe I had eaten one too many biscuits…
Biscuits!  That’s it!  Acting on a hunch, I rushed to the back of the store where the boa constrictor, Don Slick, was housed.  “Marlowe?” called Phil.

I didn’t even need to interrogate Don Slick.  When I reached the giant boa constrictor’s terrarium, he was struggling with regurgitation.  After a fit of gags and spitting, the evidence was clearly laid out in front of me: the don had thrown up a blue ribbon that read “FIRST PLACE” in fancy gold letters.  He had eaten Duke Edward Wellington IV, the winner of this year’s tri-county rat show.
Confronted with the evidence, Carl confessed everything.  Just as he had mistaken the soap suds for Octo-Flakes when he was helping his co-worker feed the giant octopus, Carl had mistaken the Duke for Don Slick’s dinner.  When the manager and the Duke’s owner were looking at new rat cages, Carl had taken it upon himself to feed the fancy rat to the boa constrictor.  Due to his bad eyesight, he didn’t notice that he was wearing a prize ribbon around his neck.  It was an amazing mistake to make.
I managed to figure out that the Duke was eaten due to the recurring theme of food coma around SuperPet.  If it weren’t for the smell of wet cat food on her breath, I might have suspected Agatha of eating the Duke.  The only other rat-eating animal I could recall being tired that night was Don Slick, and my hunch turned out to be true.  It was a lucky break.
Carl was immediately fired from his job at SuperPet.  For our help with the case, we were given a bag of Kibbles ‘n Bits for half off.  The store manager offered the former owner of the Duke a coupon for a lifetime supply of Rat Chow in exchange for avoiding a lawsuit, but she didn’t take.  The SuperPet was shut down less than a week later.  Because the store was no longer around, I never got to see Agatha again.
What is with me and blondes?