Sally's Bones (10 page)

“You're doing great, Sal,” Mr. Simplesmith said as he greeted his daughter at the monkey-bar jail.

“Thanks, Dad.” Sally smiled. She pet her incarcerated pup, who wiggled and wagged in delight. “I just want this whole nightmare to be over.”

“Oh, I'm sure you do, you poor dear!” Vivienne Vanderperfect said as she appeared at Seymour's side. Viola slogged behind her.

“Well hey there, Viv.” Mr. Simplesmith smiled. “Wasn't that nice of Viola and her mom to come out and show their support, Sally?”

“It really was,” Sally agreed. “Thanks so much for your testimony, Mrs. Vanderperfect.”

“Now, I told you to call me Vivienne, darling!” Viola's mother reminded. “And no thanks are necessary. I simply answered that man's questions. I have faith that things will turn out right in the end.”

Sally beamed at Vivienne, and for her sake tried hard not to glare at Viola, who refused to look up from her newly manicured nails.

“I just think it's so terrible that you have to go through this. And you, Seymour,” Vivienne took his hand. “I'm sure it was hard enough when Sally brought home that…well, ‘dog' is probably the wrong word. But to agree to house him and then have him turn on you like that? Such a shame.”

“But Bones is innocent, Mrs. Vanderperfect,” Sally declared, shocked that the same woman who had just given such helpful testimony was actually suspicious.

“Of course he is, honey,” Vivienne humored.

“No, it's true,” Sally insisted. “He doesn't even like bones!”

Viola looked up. “How can he not like them? He's made out of them.”

“No, I mean he doesn't like chewing on them. He thinks it's repulsive,” Sally explained. “That's how I know he didn't do what he's accused of. It would gross him out too much.” Sally waited for some sort of apology from Viola and her mother, but Viola merely shrugged as Mrs. Vanderperfect indulged Sally with an exaggerated expression of concern. Sally was preparing to explain again when her father spoke.

“But Sal,” Mr. Simplesmith said uneasily. “Don't you remember the chicken bone, that first night?”

Officer Stu returned to the picnic bench and called the court to order.

“What?” Sally asked, surprised.

“The first night you brought Bones home, I gave him a chicken bone. And, well, don't you remember honey? He took it.”

Sally pulled her father away from the Vanderperfects. “Oh, yeah, that,” she mumbled as Stu's gavel banged for the fourth time. “Look, Dad, I can't explain now, but not everything is exactly how it looks. I'll fill you in later, but please keep the chicken bone to yourself and trust me. I swear Bones didn't do this, all right?”

“But—”

“Daddy. Please.”

Mr. Simplesmith hovered for a moment but said nothing more and returned, perplexed, to his seat. Sally looked at Bones through the monkey bars. “You ready, boy?”

“GGGgggrrr-uff!” he replied. Sally smiled at him proudly.

“Court is now in session,” Officer Stu announced. “Does the prosecution have any other witnesses?”

“Not at this time,” the D.C. grumbled. Sally felt her heart skip.

“Sally, is there anyone you'd like to call to the stand?”

“Yes, Officer Stu, there is. I would like to call the defendant, Bones Simplesmith.”

Bones was released from the monkey-bar jail and led to the witness box. The majority of the onlookers glared and growled at him as he paraded past. The confused canine dropped his ears and tucked his tail. He looked at Sally, who offered him her most comforting smile as she guided him to the chair behind the milk crate.

“Now, Bones,” Sally began. “I will make this brief. Since you can't speak, please just reply in the affirmative or negative to each question asked. Are you one Bones Simplesmith?”

“GGGgggrrr-uff.” The incarcerated carcass spun around in a circle.

“Thank you.” Sally proceeded. “Are you guilty of the crime brought against you? Did you steal all the neighborhood dogs' bones?”

“Grwof,” Bones replied. He placed his front paws on a milk carton and lowered his chin on top of them.

“If it please the court, I'd like to do a demonstration that will prove why my client could never have committed this cruel crime.” Sally motioned to Chati Chattercathy, who stepped forward with a brown paper bag.

“Thanks, Chati.” Sally smiled at her friend. She was wearing a homemade “Free Bones”
button, and Sally had to force down the lump in her chest that had grown out of Chati's kindness. She cleared her throat.

“In this bag, I have two items. One of them Bones loves, while the other, he detests more than anything else in the world.” Sally handed Officer Stu the bag. “If you'd please pull out one item and offer it to Bones, you can judge his reaction for yourself.”

Officer Stu reached his hand into the bag. He pulled out a plush toy bone and waved it in front of the little cadaver. Bones panted and wiggled and wagged excitedly.

“GGGgggrrr-uff! GGGgggrrr-uff!” he yapped. He jumped out of the witness box and onto the picnic table. He grabbed the toy in his teeth. The crowd tittered at the joyous display.

“Officer Stu,” Sally continued, “please offer Bones the other item.”

Stu reached into the brown paper bag and produced a juicy, marrow-filled bone, fresh from the local butcher. Instantly, Bones froze. His tail stilled, and he dropped the plush toy from his mouth. He made gagging noises before rebuking Officer Stu with a resounding, “Grwof!” Turning his back on both the toy bone and the real one, Bones stomped over to the witness box and sat. The wounded animal refused to look in the lawman's direction.

“Let the record show that the accused could not have stolen the neighborhood dogs' bones because he is disgusted by them. In addition to having no motive, Bones would never have allowed himself to touch one in the first place!” Sally slammed her fist on the picnic table and shouted, “I call for an immediate dismissal of this shameful case!”

The assembled spectators erupted. The D.C.'s shouting was impossible to make out over all the noise, and Officer Stu's banging gavel barely made a sound. Sally picked up the two bones with which she had made her case and placed them back in the paper bag. She walked to the witness box and sat on a milk crate next to Bones. “I think it's over,” she whispered. The dead dog smiled.

In the general confusion, it took Sally a few moments to realize that the D.C. was demanding to call another witness.

“You've already called your witnesses,” Officer Stu hollered over the intensifying din.

“But I just found out what this witness knows. I only have two questions for…” The D.C. paused for effect. “Seymour Simplesmith!”

The crowd immediately fell silent. Sally's father apprehensively stepped forward. “Me?” he asked. “What do you want to know from me?”

The D.C. wasted no time, rattling off his questions before Seymour could even make it to the stand. “Are you the defendant's owner's guardian?”

“Well, I'm Sally's father, so I guess that's a yes.” Seymour looked questioningly at Sally, who shrugged.

“So you've known the defendant since your daughter brought him home,” the D.C. submitted.

“Sure.”

“Then you must have known that the accused hates bones, that he would never ever touch one himself. Tell me, Mr. Simplesmith. Is it true?” The D.C. waited.

“Oh, well, um…” Seymour stalled. Sally felt her entire body tense.

“I'm sorry, was that question too hard? How about this: Your daughter swears that the defendant could not have committed the crime of which he is accused because he absolutely detests touching real bones. But tell us, Mr. Simplesmith, haven't you seen him chew one?”

The entire crowd held its breath. Sally's father mopped his brow with his sleeve. He looked to his daughter, who was silently begging him to ignore his data just this once, to trust her, to lie. For all Seymour knew, Bones had enjoyed the chicken bone he had been offered their first night together. Sally had forced Bones to lie so that Seymour would accept him. She had never trusted her father with the truth, and now she watched, helpless, as he struggled between his paternal instinct to help his daughter and his scientific responsibility to trust the facts.

Mr. Simplesmith looked at the ground. “I'm so sorry, Sal,” was all she heard of her father's confession before the crowd was on its feet, roaring for a guilty verdict.

Sally looked at Officer Stu as he banged his gavel and shouted for order. She saw the D.C. turn red as he screamed for an immediate judgment. She watched her father, unable to look at her, nervously pinching his thumbs. She surveyed the audience of her bloodthirsty neighbors and their maniacal mutts. Then she looked at Bones, so small and helpless, boxed in by a half dozen milk crates. He tilted his head and looked up at her with empty black eyes. Leaning toward her hand, he gave it a single lick.

Looking back, Sally would never remember the first few steps she took toward freedom. It was only when she was running from the schoolyard with a liberated Bones in her arms that she even realized what she had done.

Sally Simplesmith was a fugitive.

“Four twenty-five, four fifty, four sixty, four sixty-five.” Sally regarded the money in her left hand. “All we've got is a lousy four dollars and sixty-five cents to start our new life on the lam.” She closed her fist around the cash. “We are so totally toast.”

Bones and Sally sat in a large abandoned drainpipe on the outskirts of town. Her first instinct had been to hide at the cemetery, until she realized it would be the first place the police would look. She couldn't go home, and school was off limits. She didn't have a single friend she was sure wouldn't turn her in, and how could she blame them? Her own father had just stabbed her in the back.

The old waterworks was the only place Sally thought they might be safe, at least for tonight. The fact that it was on the way to Watta City also worked in its favor. Sally hoped that there, in a city of millions, she and Bones might begin fresh. But with only $4.65 in her pocket, Sally was starting to think things might end before they could even get started. She was calculating the likelihood of becoming Tone Death's roadie when Bones began to paw at her crossed arms.

“Bones, stop,” Sally said, exhausted. The little corpse continued to tug and scratch, undeterred.

“Bones, come on,” she whined. “Just give me a few minutes to think.” She turned away, but the dog stayed with her.

“Rarara, Grruff,” he playfully yelped. He pounced on her chest, knocking her to the ground. He dug at her tightly crossed arms until Sally snapped.

“Bones, I said cut it out!” she yelled. “I need to think, to figure this out, and you're making it worse. So leave me alone, OK? Just leave me alone.”

Bones froze and stared, puzzled, at his angry friend. Reluctantly he climbed off her and settled down a few feet away.

Sally lay on her back, letting tears fall from the sides of her eyes into her ears. After a good cry, she crawled over to her pet and gave him a hug.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you,” she whispered. Bones tilted his face up to hers and licked the salty spots where the tears had fallen. After a few minutes, he began to poke at her arm again.

“Geez Louise, Bones, what are you after?” Sally asked, and then she felt it. When they fled the schoolyard, she had been holding the paper bag with Bones's bones in it. At some point she must have stuffed the sack in her shirtsleeve and promptly forgotten about it. Now, as she produced the crumpled bag in the dank shelter of the drainpipe, Bones whined in anticipation.

“GGGgggrrr-uff!” he barked when Sally revealed the plush toy bone. Taking one end in his mouth and holding the other between his paws, he engaged in a game of tug-of-war with himself. Sally removed the other bone, the real one, from the bag and held it up to her face.

“Too bad we didn't have time to give this to one of the bone snatcher's victims,” she said. Bones put down his toy and growled angrily at the cause of their troubles. In one swift motion, he knocked the bone from Sally's hand into the mud.

“Hey! What'd you do that for?” she asked.

Bones did not reply.

“Seriously, Bones, that was a total waste. We could have at least given it to a dog we met on our way to Watta City. Anything to help out our karma—or to stop an angry dog from attacking you—would be good.”

Sally slumped her shoulders and rested her chin on her fist. “Whatever,” she groaned. “None of it matters anymore, anyway.”

Bones let out a heavy sigh. He climbed out of the drainpipe and waded into the mud, grumbling a little before focusing his attention on one puddle in particular. Sniffing around its surface, he inhaled all the smells of the marsh until he was able to isolate the one he wanted. He followed his snout in a zigzag formation until, suddenly, he froze, one paw raised and his tail sticking straight up. He shot Sally a sideways glance before plunging directly into the muck.

When he emerged, Bones held in his mouth the real-deal marrowbone. He tiptoed back over to Sally and flung it at her feet in a mixture of triumph and disgust.

“Aw, Bones.” Sally smiled guiltily. “You didn't have to do that.” Hugging her muddy mutt, she added, “And I'm sorry I'm so cranky. It's just that I can't believe all this is happening. I mean, if only we knew who the bad guy was, we could expose him and clear our names. There are definitely suspects.”

Bones cuddled onto Sally's lap as she laid out the possibilities. “Obviously, the D.C.'s on the list. He'd be the first to set you up.”

“Ggruff,” Bones agreed.

“Or maybe it was one of those PAD people. If they've got a problem with dead things, I can see why they'd go after you.”

Bones whimpered, his feelings hurt.

“Not that they should,” Sally clarified. “But they're totally the type to protest first and get to know you later.

“And then there's Tommy Gunn. His mom's a member of PAD, and he started acting really weird the first time he saw you—suddenly trying to talk to us, asking us to hang out.”

Bones stared at Sally blankly.

“All right, fine. I suppose he did actually help us out today. Maybe Tommy isn't the
worst
person in the world.”

“GGGggrrruff! GGGgggrrruff!!” Bones jumped off Sally's lap and yapped excitedly. Tommy Gunn seemed to have a fan.

“Of course, there's always Viola.”

Bones let out a low growl.

“But why now? She's had it in for us for so long, what was she waiting for? I just don't see it.” Sally lay back and stared at the ceiling of the drainpipe. “Seriously, though, what's the point? Why even bother trying to figure out who the real bone snatcher is? It's not like we're ever going home.”

Sally covered her face with her hands. “We'd probably have better luck winning the lottery. Our chances of finding the real bad guy are one in a million. Less than zero. It'd be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

Sally gasped as she shot up to a seated position. She grabbed Bones by the leg. “Or maybe it'd be like fishing a bone out of a puddle of mud!”

Bones cocked his head to one side and flicked his ears back.

“Here, smell this,” Sally said, as she thrust the marrowbone into her dog's face.

“Grwof!” he reprimanded and shuffled backward. He scurried to the far end of the drainpipe.

“Bones. I'm serious. Take a good whiff. It's what the real crook is stealing—fresh marrowbones—so the stolen ones must smell something like this. If you can follow the scent to the missing bones, maybe we can catch the real thief!” Sally eagerly held out the bone. Her dog did not move.

“Please, boy,” she begged. “This is our only chance to clear our names, and if we do…” Sally blinked away tears. “Then maybe we can go home.”

Reluctantly, Bones inched forward. He sniffed the marrowbone thoroughly, though Sally could tell he wanted nothing more than to turn away in disgust. When he was through, he looked at her and barked.

Exiting the drainpipe, Bones put his nose to the ground. Sally followed close behind as her dog, hot on the trail, directed them back toward Merryland and, she hoped, the villain who had set them up.