Puzzle Cat and the 710
It was the last week in August and Dean Feed was out with Kiki-Jian and Puzzle Cat to help judge the University’s annual junior and senior high school science fair. Unlike past years, this year’s Fair was being held outdoors in the renovated soccer fields north of the engineering complex. Like past years, the cat detectives were popular guests, not in small part due to Feed’s enthusiastic promotion of her university’s Honors program at local schools, and that mainly through the ambassadorship of Cutie (Puzzle Cat’s alternate identity) and Yuki (Kiki-Jian’s alternate identity).
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"Looks like paw prints." Cutie and Kiki confer on a tough case.
Also, the three favorites to win the grand prize were mentored by the same three teachers as last year and who, though very effective, were known to be terrible tyrants and virulently competitive with one another. In fact, the previous year’s Fair had been nearly ruined by an open argument, which came almost to blows, among all three mentors over whose student would get preferential placement near the front of the display area.
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But this year the university’s maven of secondary school education programs, Dr. Persephone Lamarr, decided to play down the competition aspect in favor of the educational advantages of the program. In what seemed a particularly clever move, she’d placed movable screens across the field to subdivide the display area according to specialization, enabling exhibit viewers to select the areas whose projects they wished to view, as against having to trudge past displays they weren’t really interested in. An added, much less obvious advantage was that it kept the three feuding teachers away from each other, as each had their students in three (as it happened!) widely separated sub-areas.
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The first favorite was the sophomore Indian wunderkind, Arvind Sharma, mentored by an Armenian, Dr. Tukhig Markarian. Housed in booth 3455 at the extreme north end of the display area, Sharma’s project was a revolutionary, and inexpensive, method for dissipating oil spills using only materials readily available naturally in most wetlands. Arvind's project had already won one first place and one second place prize in local level competition. Markarian had already been in talks with representatives of three different international oil giants over how to patent the process.
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In booth 7101, near the western edge of the exhibit, was the sophomore Libby O’Connor, mentored by a Korean, Dr. Dae-Hyun Chu. Raised on a farm in central Illinois, O’Connor had designed a super-efficient plow blade, based on very complex efficiency equations of drag and resistance calculated on the supercomputer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. O’Connor had won admission to UIUC at the age of 15, to begin next August, in what would have been her sophomore year of high school.
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The third favorite contender, Shannon Cho, a brilliant transfer senior from British Columbia, was mentored by the Venezuelan Dr. Luis Baralt, recipient of his country’s highest academic recognition for linguistic research in obscure languages. Under Dr. Baralt’s direction, Shannon had decoded some messages chiseled on ancient Mayan artifacts using an inventive model for probability occurrence of characters found in groups of three (triplicities). Although no one but Dr. Lamarr apparently knew it, Shannon’s family had already been contacted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for possible employment in their cryptography division, following her graduation from college.
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Dean Feed was going the rounds, filling out evaluation cards for the projects related to human communication, her area of specialization. Kiki and Puzzle Cat followed behind her, as usual interested in just about everything around them. Just as they rounded the corner from the first row to the second, though, they were distracted by the voices of two people arguing fiercely behind the screen at the back of the Fair director’s table. Dean Feed recognized one of the voices as that of Dr. Lamarr, with whom she’d spoken often as part of her Honors duties. The other voice was of a male, seemingly speaking accented English, though Feed couldn’t tell any more about it; a trifle alarmed (they hated hearing people argue), Puzzle Cat and Kiki touched noses and Puzzle Cat started to sing loudly in Cat, only to be shushed by Feed.
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“Listen!” whispered Feed.
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“What are you talking about?” said the unknown voice. “These projects have been screened repeatedly! And now you’re telling me mine—er, my student’s—relies on proprietary processes? Lady, it doesn’t get any more serious than that—you’re not just talking scandal, you’re talking fatal lawsuit!”
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“What are you going to do now?”
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“This one must have slipped through the cracks,” said Dr. Lamarr, defensively. “I got the word from an anonymous informant just this morning—and they wouldn’t tell me which of the top three challengers were guilty, just that one of them was. I’ve already talked to the other two and I believe they are innocent—that, and you just confirmed it. And this is really dangerous territory, mostly for you mentors, because you are supposed to be screening for this stuff. As you know, all three of the top challengers are situated in proprietary material up to their necks—Sharma’s involved in secret petroleum industry processes, O’Connor’s had access to a security-classified supercomputer, and Cho’s even being courted by the CIA, for Heaven’s sake!”
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“Do? Why, I have to disqualify all of them until we can get this sort—
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“I’d advise you not to do that—you’re in an area whose dangers you do not appreciate, Professor!”
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“What was that—a threat? Try that again, sir, and I’ll have you and your student cited and removed from this place immediately!”
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Alarmed, Kiki and Puzzle Cat started around the barrier hiding the two arguers, but Feed waved them back, retreating from the scene with her finger to her lips.
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About an hour later, Feed, finished with her judging, noticed some red-and-blue flashers outside the display area entrance, and moments later, spotted her former student, Detective Tim Gutterson, and his chief, Theodolinda Bonner, speaking with campus security personnel. Waving to the police officers, Feed and the cats joined them.
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“Why are you guys always around where there’s trouble?” said Gutterson, ignoring Bonner’s severe glare, ostensibly warning him not to be so casual at a murder scene.
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“Just luck, I guess,” replied Feed. “Why, what’s up?”
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“Sorry to tell you, Dr. Lamarr’s been found dead, with her head caved in, behind the screen back of her officiating table.” In the shocked silence, Puzzle Cat began singing loudly and mournfully in Cat, realizing what the earlier argument they'd overheard was really about.
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“Could we take a look, then?” said Feed, clearly crestfallen and shaken.
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“Sure,” Chief Bonner said, but the cats were already racing to the crime scene.
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The body had already been moved and Dr. Lamarr’s final position outlined in white chalk. Viewed from the “feet” of the outlined figure, parallel to it on its left side, and within reach of the fallen professor’s left arm, and marked off by a stick-and-string barrier, were some curious deep scratches in the grass-covered earth, apparently made with a pen or other sharp object.
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Dean Feed, shaken but quickly recovering her well-known composure, said, “It looks Dr. Lamarr scratched that into the ground, probably as she was dying. It was done with the back end of a laser pointer." Bonner added, "And that pointer is back at the lab.”
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“Wow,” said Gutterson, sarcastically, “a dying message—just what we need!”
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“Good thing Sing isn’t here,” Feed said. “He hates dying message mysteries.”
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“Well, I agree she must have been telling us something,” Bonner said, “but what? What’s wrong, Dean Feed?”
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Bonner had seen Feed was clearly discomfited, and she told Bonner of the argument she and the cats had overheard earlier.
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“You’re right, of course,” said Gutterson, “because dollars to doughnuts, the guy arguing with Lamarr killed her to keep her from revealing which of the contestants was illegally using proprietary information.”
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“And since most teachers don’t get personally involved with the judging process, you can bet it’s one of those three that almost ruined last year’s Fair,” said Bonner.
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“Sadly, you’re probably right,” sighed Feed. “And that fight we overheard confirms it, which means that the UnSub arguing with Lamarr was almost certainly either Markarian, Chu, or Baralt, and those scratches on the ground point to one of them.”
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“Well, let’s reason it through—and feel free to join in, guys,” said Gutterson, smiling at Puzzle Cat and Kiki, who had been sniffing around the chalk outline of the body. Consulting the Fair’s official program and riffling through the index, Gutterson said: “Hey, here’s something. Chu’s student, this Libby O’Connor, the one with the new plow blade, was in booth 7101, and those scratches look, sort of, like a “7,” a “1,” and a “0,” the first three numbers of her assigned booth. Why, what’s wrong?”
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Dean Feed had pursed her lips and shaken her head ever so slightly. “You and your imagination, Tim—doesn’t that seem a little far-fetched to think that, in her dying moments, she’d summon the strength to identify something as obscure as a booth number? That’s why my husband hates dying message mysteries—he says it’s stupid to think that someone could, or would, do that kind of convoluted thinking as their life is draining away, especially in intense pain and agony.”
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“Well, I don’t agree,” said Bonner. “My admittedly limited experience is that those moments are precisely when the dying are able to summon superhuman powers to avenge themselves on their killers!”
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“Okay, okay,” said Gutterson, ears reddening. “So what do you think?”
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“Well,” said Feed, “if it is a dying message—and it seems it is—and the message is intended to point to one of the three projects—which seems at least reasonable—then maybe we should look to something more elemental.” Checking her program, Feed said, “How about this? Maybe we’re reading too much into these scratches. Maybe they don’t say ‘710’ or anything else but are just three symbols—might that not point to Baralt’s student, Shannon Cho, and her Mayan artifact decoding project, which, it says here, relies on probability occurrences of triplicities—that would be three-character combinations. Could the three scratches be referring to that?”
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“Well, that’s a little better,” Gutterson conceded, “but not much. Wait—what are those cats doing?” Feed looked, seeing Kiki nosing in the area to the left of the scratches, and then joined by Puzzle Cat. Both cats were prowling about, carefully nosing in the grass, seemingly trying to catch a scent.
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“Hey you guys! That’s the wrong side, dummies—the body was found on the other side of the scratches, you know, where the chalk outline is?” Gutterson laughed. “Crazy cats!”
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But Chief Bonner said, “Wait a minute,” and strode over to where the cats were prowling, bending down and inspecting the grass-covered area with a pocket magnifier. “It looks like the grass in this area has been mashed down.” Her observation immediately stimulated loud singing in Cat from Puzzle Cat and repeated tiny “mews” from Kiki, usually their clearest expression of assent.
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“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Gutterson. “Who or what could have been here while Dr. Lamarr was being killed but then vanished later?”
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Puzzle Cat crossed over just below the scratches, screened off by sticks and strings. He stretched out to his full length and then fell over on his right side, the beginning of a game he played with Dean Feed’s husband, Sing, and which Sing called “Flop Kitty,” the "flopping" always followed by a very vigorous massage on whichever side was exposed to his hand.
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“I don’t—” Bonner began, but was interrupted by Puzzle Cat, who sprang up, turned completely around and performed the “flop kitty” on his left side.
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“Does he know your husband isn’t here to play with him?” Gutterson asked. But a light had dawned in Dean Feed’s eyes: “I don’t think there was anyone or anything else here when Dr. Lamarr was killed. And I know who she was pointing to.” Turning to Chief Bonner, Feed said, “You should detain Dr. Markarian immediately.” Drawing Bonner to one side, Feed explained why, and, nodding enthusiastically, Bonner sent Gutterson off to find Markarian. About an hour later, Bonner got a phone call from Gutterson saying they had apprehended Markarian after a high-speed chase down a back road toward O’Hare airport, where he’d booked a last-minute flight to Yerevan, Armenia.
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“It looks like the cats nailed another one,” Bonner said. “But what led you to the answer?”
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“Well,” Dean Feed said, grinning impishly, “I think in these Puzzle Cat mysteries, there is a more conventional way to ask that question and since Tim isn’t here, I’ll do the honors…”
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How did Puzzle Cat know?
