40

His next stop was to Healer Brown to ask about his knees. Kneeling down for hours near Lena’s cottage had made them really sore. Sitting down in one place for so long wasn’t much better, either. With lots of stakeouts promised in his future, he needed to do something about it.

“Have you thought about hiring an apprentice, Michael?” said Healer Brown.

Brown had called him ‘Michael’ ever since he was a kid and he prescribed lotion for his chicken pox, and there was no point trying to change it now. He was one of the few people Mick didn’t bother correcting.

“I am an apprentice, technically,” said Mick. “I know what you mean, though. I just can’t afford to hire anyone to help me yet. Maybe if business takes off, and I start drawing a proper salary as town guard to boot.”

“I suppose until then, you’ll come knocking at the door of medicine to see you through like everyone else does.”

“Well…yeah. It is your job.”

Healer Brown took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, Michael. I had to call round the craftstead and check on Jack Cooper today. That man, I tell you, he’d infuriate a saint…anyway, take this to Paisley Porter’s store and she’ll fill the prescription.”

Brown had prescribed him a tincture he could apply to his knees when the pain was especially bad, but spent a few minutes before he left to stress that a better solution was to start a few daily exercises intended to strengthen his knees. Preventative maintenance, he called it. Like how a good tinkerer kept his gears well oiled.

After that, Mick caught the midday commuter cart to Full Striding, where he went to see Sammy Lee at the scrapyard. When he got there, Sammy was trying to fix a wagon wheel that was almost twice the size of her.

“If you’re here for advice, I told you. I’m a name on a form. No more, no less.”

Mick took out his Simple Observation, Forensics, and Stealth & Tracking skill tokens. “Just need you to sign off on these.”

“Fine. Where’s the form? Pass it here.”

“You’re supposed to get me to use one of the abilities from each tree. So you know I didn’t just give my tokens to someone else and get them to earn them.”

“Why in Easterly would someone do that?” said Sammy.

“Same reason anyone might fake getting any class. Gold. Fully classed sleuths can earn a good coin or two.”

Sammy set her wrench down. “I couldn’t give a rat’s arse if you get your tokens fairly or not. If you wanted to cheat, then that’s on you. It’d be yourself that you’re fooling, at the end of the day.”

“Well, the guard commission, too. You could at least pretend you know. Throw in a wise word here or there. It wouldn’t kill you.”

“I’m busy, Mick. You think these wagons fix themselves? Well, I’ll tell you. They don’t. Never, not once. That old story about the tailor and the elves is a crock of crap.”

“Alright. I s’pose just the forms, then.”

He righted a disappointing start to the afternoon not with a trip to a tavern for a beer and a pie covered in gravy, as tempting as that sounded, but by stopping at the Elmshore East station, where Sergeant Nichols was on duty. It was a quiet day by Elmshore East standards, and Nichols was passing time by arranging his pens in order of how much ink each of them had left.

“Hello, Mick,” said Nichols. “Here to hand yourself in? I always suspected you were the Striding Pie Stealer.”

Mick laughed. “You remember that old fella who was here when I was waiting to see Inspector Longwaite?”

“Old fella….old fella…”

“Guy who’d lost his cat.”

“Oh, right,” said Nichols. “Poor guy.”

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“Did they ever find it?”

“Let me see…”

Sergeant Nichols spent longer looking for the paperwork than any of the Full Striding guards had spent looking for Misty-Bell, the cat belonging to Tim Ritson. Mick didn’t blame them; they had a whole city to police, and their budget for doing so got smaller every year. Soon, Nichols explained while he looked through his files, they’d be expected to keep Full Striding safe on an annual budget of one copper coin and a tin of biscuits.

“Ah, here we go. Ritson, Tim. Missing cat. No progress, Mick. It’s been all the Striding inspectors have focused on for a fortnight, though. Dropped everything for it, we have. Our number one case, a cat that wandered off. But the moggy eludes us.”

“Mind if I look into it? I’m a guard, after all. Technically.”

“Mick, if you like, I’ll assign all the missing cat, dog, parrot, and rat cases over to you. You can have as many of them as your heart desires, my friend. It could be your special department.”

It didn’t take him long to cut a route north of Elmshore station to Tim Ritson’s house on Claridge Drive. Only when he got there did he realize he could have taken a shortcut by following an alleyway next to the bakery on Shaftsbrook Avenue, but he’d remember that for next time. Tim Ritson lived in a big house. At least three bedrooms, maybe four, Mick guessed while looking at it from the outside. When Tim opened the door and invited him in for a biscuit and a brew, he confirmed as much.

“Big ol’ place for me to be clanking around in,” he said. “Mind your arm on the wall there. Bit rough. Been meaning to sand it down.”

Tim had shared this house with his late wife, Kelly, and they’d brought up their kids Felicity and Simon here. With the children now not children at all and in fact having families of their own, it was a huge place for one guy.

It was a sad story, but Mick didn’t feel like he had to say anything. Seemed to him that Tim was more grateful for someone to say it to, rather than looking for any potential answer.

“S’alright, though,” continued Tim. “I’ve been busy enough. Busier than a bee that’s been kicked up the arse, some days, what with volunteering for the Forgetters and Misplacers Society, and my orienteering and hiking group. Only times it gets tough is the evening. Misty-Bell helps with that.”

Mick had vowed to himself over and over again that he wouldn’t say the following words, not even under threat of torture, but he found himself saying them regardless.

“I’ll find Misty-Bell for you,” he promised Tim.

Mick was the kind of guy who, when he made a promise, he’d work himself to the grave trying to keep it. Right now, it felt like he’d just dug his own. He also knew that when a cat went missing, your best bet was to find it in the first week or two. Every day that passed after that, and it got harder.

As well as that, though, he couldn’t charge Tim Ritson a single coin for this. He’d gotten the case lead through Elmshore East station, which meant he was technically acting under an official capacity as a member of their token program, and an official Sunhampton Guard. What this meant was that every second he spent on this was actually costing him money.

“Can you describe Misty-Bell?” he said.

“She’s black all over, with white patches on her side and her paws.”

“Got it. Anything else? Anything that might make her different from other black and white cats?”

“She’s Misty-Bell. She is different,” said Tim.

“Does she have a collar?”

Tim looked down at his carpet, a pretty dreadful floral patterned thing that Mick wouldn’t have chosen, personally.

“It snapped off, and I ordered her a new one. She went missing in between.”

“Okay. So she’s a black and white cat, no collar. I need something else, Mr. Ritson. Something so I know it’s her.”

“What else can I say, damn you!” replied Tim, then almost immediately after, “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to snap.”

Mick patted his shoulder. “We’ve all gotta let it out sometime. I’m as thick skinned as a rhino. You feel free to just go ahead and uncork it all.”

“No, really. I’m sorry. I haven’t been myself since Misty-Bell…”

This clearly wasn’t going to work. Mick needed a way to be able to know it was Misty Bell if he saw her, yet something about his straightforward questioning approach wasn’t working with Tim.

He spoke a bit softer now. “You know Misty-Bell like the back of your hand, I’d bet. Only thing is, Mr. Ritson-”

“Tim, please.”

“I don’t know her, Tim. The last thing I want to do is bring every single black and white cat in Striding here for you to inspect. All I need is just one little detail that I can use so I know it’s her, and so I know I’m reuniting you both rather than bringing the wrong cat here and getting your hopes up.”

Another vibration from his pocket told him that he’d earned experience, and he would have bet ten gold it was on his interrogation skill tree. This wasn’t an interrogation, as such, but questioning witnesses was included within the skill tree.

Tim thought about it, finally remembering that his granddaughter had made a drawing of Misty-Bell for him a couple of years ago. It was quite good, for a five year old’s rendition. That is to say, it was pretty awful. Still, it showed the general layout and shapes of Misty’s white patches, which Tim confirmed was actually pretty accurate.

Mick drank his brew, ate one last biscuit, then said bye to Tim and headed out onto the street. His first plan was hinged on one fact; cats had to eat. He wondered if maybe Misty-Bell had found some poor sap to feed her, and she’d started living there, maybe. Cats could be fickle. Everyone knew it.

They were like that friend who you made plans with, always knowing that they’d back out at the last minute. Yup, cats were like that friend but worse, because a cat would somehow manipulate you into thinking it was all your own fault, too.

His feeding theory didn’t help him a great deal, though, since he guessed that a cat could easily cross the whole city in a day. Misty could have found a generous benefactor anywhere in Full Striding.

What I need is some information, he thought. Something to narrow things down.