Саманта Сильвер - Busy As A Beaver

When we reached the car, there was a bit of an animal ruckus. I thought it was a couple of raccoons for a moment, until I got a better look at who was out there.

“Are those…” Sophie started, and I nodded.

“Beavers? Yup.”

“You,” one of the beavers said, a dark brown one who going by his size was probably male. “You’re the human we can talk to, right?” He spoke with a bit of a lisp, probably due to his oversized front teeth. There were five beavers in all—I assumed a mother, a father, two of the previous years’ litters and a newborn.

“That’s right,” I replied. “What can I do for you?”

“Someone has been messing with our lodge, and we want you to find out who it is.”

“Alright, where is your dam?”

“We can’t tell you. You’ll destroy it,” one of the other beavers piped up.

“Well, I can’t help you if I don’t know where you live,” I replied. “Besides, if you want my help, I need to go and see it, so that I can tell you what caused it.”

“I can tell you what caused it. It was one of you lot,” one of the other beavers said. “Saw him with my own eyes.”

“It’s too bad your eyesight is awful, Naba,” one of the other beavers said. Great. Beavers had pretty bad eyesight as it was; a beaver with bad eyesight was basically what I would consider blind.

“Oh, shut up, Lolo. You wouldn’t know a human if it swam straight into your den.”

“Hey, I knew how to find this one, didn’t I?”

“Can it, both of you,” the first beaver ordered. “Fine. We don’t like to give away the location of our lodges, but since you need it, seemingly for good reason, and because you come highly recommended from the local animal life, we will give you that information.”

“Alright, where is it?” I asked.

“Do you know the creek that runs parallel to the coast?” the beaver asked. “We call it the stream of the sea, as it leads to the ocean, but not until it reaches the large park you humans use.”

“Oh, yeah, Ripple Creek.” I nodded. “I know it.”

“If you go upstream from your human park around four hundred feet, you will find our lodge,” the beaver said. “It is our territory. There are no other lodges in that part of the creek.”

“Ok,” I told him. “I’ll do my best to leave no trace so no one else knows that your lodge is there.”

“Well, it’s too late for that, isn’t it?” one of the younger beavers said.

“Can I come by tomorrow during the day?”

“I suppose. We do prefer nighttime, but if it must be daylight, then so be it.”

“Unfortunately, being human, my eyesight is my best sense,” I explained to them. “I see best during the day, so I’ll try and come in the late afternoon, but it will be daytime.”

“I thought that might be the case, seeing as the other human came during the day,” the beaver named Lolo said. “At least one of us will be awake then.”

“Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I told the beavers. As Sophie and I got into the car, she raised her eyebrows.

“Trouble in Beaverland?”

“Apparently, someone found their lodge and messed with it,” I explained.

“Oh, that’s not nice,” Sophie said. She frowned. “Who would do something like that?”

I shrugged. “Who knows? Teenagers looking to make trouble? Someone who liked having more water cross their property before the beavers built their dam? Honestly, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to find out who did it. But I’ll go over and have a look for them all the same. I hate it when people destroy nature. Beavers are majestic, and they worked hard to build that lodge. It’s not fair for someone to come over and destroy it.”

“Agreed,” Sophie nodded. “No one comes over and destroys our homes for no reason. We shouldn’t do it to animals, either.”

“And speaking of, I think we need to look into Michael Carlton’s life as much as possible.”

“Right. Should I come over to your place? After all, Jason will be there, and maybe he’s got some information as well.”

The two of us hopped into the car and headed home—making a pit stop for pizza on the way.

“Well, this just made my night of investigation a lot more palatable,” Jason grinned as Sophie and I walked in.

“Awwww, look how sweet he is,” Sophie said, but Jason shook his head.

“I meant the pizza.”

I stuck my tongue out at him as I placed the boxes on the kitchen counter and got out some plates. Charlotte came in from the next room at the aroma.

“It smelled way better than when you usually come home,” she said, and I pretended to be hurt.

“Does no one appreciate my presence here anymore?” I said, faking an overly dramatic pout.

“I appreciate you, because you’re the greatest human known to man, and you take such good care of your perfect and obedient cat,” Bee said, rubbing herself against my legs.

“You’ve overdone it,” I said to her. “Now I know you’re just trying to get some pizza yourself.”

“I knew calling you the greatest human known to man was just too unrealistic,” Bee muttered. “Can I at least get a slice for trying?”

“You can have a small piece,” I said with a stern look, and the contented look that appeared on my cat’s face let me know just how pleased she was with that decision. I made my way to the small dining table, on which sat Jason’s iPad.

“I wanted to look up Michael Carlton,” I said, pressing the home button.

“Oh, yeah, let me just look something up first real quick,” Jason said, grabbing the iPad out of my hand. That was definitely weird; he never seemed to care if I used his tablet without asking in the past.

He tapped away at a few things for a moment, then handed it back to me. “Sorry, I’m waiting on an important email from my boss about whether or not we’re running with the angle that there might be a link between Gloria and Michael Carlton.”

I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just use his phone for that, but what did I know?

What I did notice was that when I opened Facebook, Jason’s account—which he kept perpetually logged in because he constantly forgot his password—was logged out.

I didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t help worrying slightly as I logged into my own account to do the search for Michael.

“Why couldn’t our murder victim have a less common name?” I muttered as I did the search, Sophie poking her head over my shoulder as she took a huge bite of pizza and placed two slices of veggie supreme on a plate in front of me.

“I vaguely know what he looks like,” Jason said, coming over. “I got a picture of him from an old, un-updated page on the city’s website. That’s him, there.”

I clicked on the name, the profile picture a man with graying hair but a friendly face and mischievous eyes. He looked a lot like a kindly grandfather, but the kind who would get you candy and take you on adventures so long as you promised not to tell your parents about it.

“He doesn’t seem to have much on his personal profile,” Sophie pointed out. “He mainly shares memes and stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said, disappointed. “That’s too bad. I was hoping there would be more here to help us.”

“Did you two see Gloria and ask if she knew him?” Jason asked, and I nodded.

“We asked, but she didn’t know the name.”

“That’s too bad,” Jason mused. “You don’t think she’s lying about it, do you?”

“What reason could she possibly have for that?” Sophie asked. “No, I felt like she was telling the truth.”

“Well, you never know. It certainly sounds like something happened in here that links Michael Carlton to Gloria. We just need to find out what.”