File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents. Lemony Snicket

Oliver said. “I think it was pinched.”

      “Somebody stole it?” Moxie said. “That’s a serious accusation to make.” She sat down and opened a case sitting on the floor. Inside was a typewriter that Moxie Mallahan always kept nearby, and she started taking notes immediately on the clattering machine.

      “I’m making it seriously,” Oliver said. “The Amaranthine Newt lives in a special tank on a desk in my examining room, so I can always keep an eye on it. It was there when I opened for business this morning.”

      “And how many patients did you have today?” I asked.

      “Just one,” Oliver said. “You were right about few people having pets, Moxie, but Polly Partial has two of the last cats in town, and one of them has a narcissistic disorder.”

      “Polly Partial, the grocer?” Moxie asked, and met my eye. Neither of us was fond of the woman who ran Partial Foods, but lots of people nobody is fond of have sick cats.

      “Her cat Paperbag has been a patient of my family’s for a very long time,” Oliver said. “I can’t imagine that his owner is a thief, but greed and newts can do strange things to people. I examined Paperbag and went to my desk to write out a prescription. Then I escorted Partial and Paperbag out and spent a few minutes in the backyard watering my father’s zinnias. The flowers match the trim on the office, as long as you keep them healthy, and I’d like to leave the place looking nice. When I went back into the office, the tank was empty.”

      “Someone must have snuck in while you were gardening,” Moxie said.

      Oliver shook his head. “I would have heard anyone else driving up the road.”

      “They need not have arrived by automobile,” I said.

      “To pinch my newt,” Oliver said, “they’d need a similar tank. You couldn’t fit one on a bicycle or a donkey. Polly Partial must have stolen the newt, but I don’t see how.”

      “I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but can you really trust your eyes? I notice you have not one but two pairs of glasses.”

      Oliver gave me a stern, lens-covered look. “My eyes aren’t perfect,” he said, “but with these glasses I can see perfectly well, and I keep the other pair on my head for reading.”

      “You don’t have bifocals?” I asked, referring to eyeglasses that combine two lenses into one.

      “There aren’t any optometrists left in town,” Moxie told me. “The closest eye doctor is way over in Paltryville, but she doesn’t have a very good reputation.”

      “Did you use your reading glasses when you were with Paperbag?” I asked Oliver.

      He nodded. “When I wrote out the prescription.”

      “Well, I’m sure you saw clearly,” I said, “but I’m not sure I do. Shall we walk over to the Sobol office?”

      Oliver said yes and so we did, Moxie carrying her typewriter and me trying to think. It was a warm, breezy day, with the wind carrying a salty smell from the seaweed of the Clusterous Forest, an eerie phenomenon that lay below the cliff we were on. But we walked the other way, down a road as bumpy and cracked as a vase falling down stairs. Soon enough, we could see the office of the Doctors Sobol, a faraway building with yellow and orange trim, but when we rounded a corner, something made us stop. There was a car, pulled over to the side of the road, and a man frowning at the car like it’d given him socks for his birthday.

      “Good afternoon,” I said.

      “Not in my opinion,” the man replied, and used his right hand to point at one of the car’s tires. It also looked a little sad. “I seem to have a flat.”

      “There’s a garage about a half mile thataway,” Moxie said, pointing thataway with one finger.

      “Thank you,” the man said. “I’m a doorknob salesman passing through town, and I’m late for an appointment. I guess I’d better walk on over to the garage. My car doesn’t have anything valuable in it, so I suppose it will be all right.”

      I peeked through the window of his car. I couldn’t help it. I’ve been trained to do such things. There was nothing in it.

      Oliver had other concerns. “You haven’t noticed a newt crawling around, have you?”

      “Or a suspicious person?” Moxie added.

      “What kind of person?” the man asked. “I saw a woman driving by in a beat-up grocery van. And what kind of lizard?”

      Oliver sighed in annoyance. “It’s an Amaranthine Newt,” he said, “and that woman is probably a thief.”

      “A newt will be hard to find,” said the stranger. “But I might look in a patch of zinnias I passed. It could blend in and hide there easily.”

      “You’re thinking of a chameleon,” I said, “but you’re probably right that we won’t find the newt. We might as well help you instead.”

      “What?” Oliver said, blinking in astonishment, and Moxie frowned.

      “Do you have a spare tire in the trunk?” I continued, talking to the man.

      The supposed salesman shook his head. “Nope.”

      “That’s too bad,” I said, “but maybe you have something that would do in a pinch.”

      “I don’t think so,” the man said quickly, in a pinched voice.

      “In a pinch” is a phrase which here means “in a difficult situation,” and a pinched voice is a whiny and nervous one. But neither of these pinches was the pinch I was thinking of. “Open the trunk anyway,” I said, “so we can see the special newt tank you have hidden there.”

      * * *

      The conclusion to “Pinched Creature” is filed under “Dishonest Salesman,” here.

RANSOM NOTE.

      Bouvard and Pecuchet Bellerophon, better known as Pip and Squeak, were the best cabdrivers in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, although to be fair, they were also the only cabdrivers I’d ever come across in town. The brothers weren’t really old enough to drive—or tall enough, for that matter—so Pip worked the steering wheel and Squeak worked the brakes, and in this way they got their customers around in the taxi belonging to their father, who they’d told me was very ill. The Bellerophon brothers were valuable associates of mine, so when they told me their mechanic needed help, I agreed to ride right over to Moray Wheels, a dirty and lonely-looking garage in what had once been a bustling district of town and now sat mostly empty.

      “I know it doesn’t look like much,” Pip said as his brother brought the taxi to a halt, “but Jackie’s an excellent mechanic.”

      “You can say that again,” Squeak said, in his high-pitched voice, but nobody did. We were busy watching an elderly man wander out onto the driveway with a limp and a sneer. He wobbled slightly as he walked and his fingers fluttered at his sides like he was counting to infinity on his fingers.

      “That’s the mechanic?” I asked doubtfully, imagining those fingers trying to operate a wrench.

      “That,” Pip said, with a shake of his head, “is the mechanic’s grandfather. Wednesdays he works at the bowling alley, but the rest of the time he sits around here eating molasses and bragging about his career as a race car driver. Jackie’s probably inside. Let’s go.”

      Let’s go we did. The brothers led me in a curve