9ddba8405c712dc705f6095a3ea49417

“So Gwayn took a whack at this wall and this skeleton popped up,” said Alec, jotting down a couple of notes.

“Yeah, Gwayn figured there was an issue with the connection to the water main—a leak maybe—so he wanted to take a closer look before he called in the people from the water company. And that’s when this old skeleton suddenly popped up,” said Marge.

Gwayn Partington had gone home already. Or, as was more likely, to his favorite bar.

“Clothes are mostly gone, too,” said Alec. “Though they look like a man’s clothes to me.”

The skeleton had a few rags draped around itself. It was hard to see what they’d been, though, in spite of what Odelia’s uncle said. Everything looked old and ragged.

“Look, just get it out of here, will you?” said Marge. “So I can call Gwayn and he can fix my plumbing and I have water again.” And with these words she moved up the stairs.

“So how long do you really think it’s been there, Uncle Alec?” asked Odelia.

“Hard to say, sweetie. These houses were built in the fifties, so it has to be less than that, and bodies take a little while to turn into skeletons, so it can’t be recent, either. But like I said, it’s up to the experts to tell us the age of the body, or how it died.”

“And how it got stuck inside this wall,” Chase added.

“But it didn’t get stuck inside the wall, did it?” said Odelia. “Someone put it there.”

Alec moved a little closer and stuck his head in to look up.“Yeah, doesn’t look like a chimney or anything, so it’s definitely not some wannabe Santa who got stuck.”

“Ha ha,” said Odelia. “Very funny.”

“No, it happens,” said Alec, retracting his head. “I once heard about a case where a guy went missing. Years later a house in the same neighborhood was sold and when the builders came in to do some remodeling they found a body stuck inside the old chimney. Turns out he’d been burgling the house and had gotten stuck and died.”

“You know what this means, right?” said Odelia.

“What?”

“This is a murder case.”

“A murder case!” said Alec.

“Of course. What else could it be?”

“Anything! A very elaborate suicide. An accident. Um…”

“It’s murder, and whoever put this poor person in there managed to get away with it for all this time.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you think we should…” Alec began.

“Investigate who killed him or her? Of course. It doesn’t matter if it happened yesterday or fifty years ago, we need to get to the bottom of this.”

“But—”

“There’s people out there who lost a brother, a sister or a mother or a father. And who never had closure. People who want to know what happened, and who deserve answers, and to see justice done. And the murderer is probably still out there, happy they got away with it. Well, I would like you to promise me you’re not going to let that happen. That you’re going to do whatever it takes to bring this person to justice.”

Chapter 3

“I’m getting very hot, Dooley,” I said.

As you may or may not know, cats don’t sweat, unless it’s through the soles of their paws. But since the available acreage for sweating is so limited we usually seek other ways of cooling our overheated bodies down, like placing ourselves on top of a cold surface, seeking shade, or drinking cooling liquids. But since none of those avenues were available to me, I was suffering.

“That means it’s working, Max,” said Dooley. “Just hang in there.”

I was frankly melting, so if that’s what Dooley meant when he said it was working he was probably right. But I was still stuck in that door, and if anything I had the feeling I was expanding, not shrinking.

“I think you’ve got this all wrong, Dooley,” I said. “I shouldn’t be heating up, I should be cooling down. Physical objects exposed to heat expand, and when exposed to cold, they contract. So you should be turning down the heat and turning up the AC full blast.”

He thought about this.“There’s something in that,” he admitted. “So what are you saying, Max? That we should turn this house into a freezer?”

“I think what I’m saying is that I’m about to expire,” I said, puffing some more. “And if you don’t turn off the heat you won’t even have to bother getting me out of this door. The county coroner will do it for you before arresting you for murder by central heating.”

“Just hang in there a little bit longer,” he encouraged me. “I’m sure it’s working. Have you tried to move again?”

“Yes, Dooley. What do you think I’ve been doing? I’m completely stuck!”

“Let me give it another try,” he said, and put his paws on my nose and pushed.

“Owowowow!” I said.

“What?” he asked, pausing to listen to my complaint.

“Retract your claws already, will you?!”

“Oops, sorry. Force of habit.” So he tried again, only this time without claws.

“It’s not working!” I cried as I wriggled to get some traction.

“Uncle Alec should have made that door a lot bigger,” said Dooley, giving up.

“Uncle Alec, Tex and Chase,” I said.

For a moment, we both lay there, staring at each other, then he said,“I’ve got it. Repeat after me, Max. ‘Every day, in every way, I’m getting thinner and thinner and thinner.’”