Suspect #2 My Boy AKA Professor Plum
Serious business calls for serious investigation. If I had to choose the perfect private eye to lead the missing, or possible murder case, (oh, please don’t let Banana Dog be dead), I’d have to choose My Boy. Just the way he was dressed was something serious to see.
Professor Plum must have been a stuffed-shirt of a suspect in the game of Clue because he was all duded out in dress pants, long sleeved shirt, button-down vest, bow tie to match his vest, a tweed cap, and to top it all off, he was smoking a cigar. Even his glasses were fitted exactly for his angular face, covering his eyes completely from corner to corner. If he hadn’t still smelled like My Boy, I would have thought Whiny brought him home from some stuck-up place near where Dr. Sneaky and her big nails live.
His knowledge of most everything was attributed to all the hours he spent shut up in his study reading. “Knowledge,” he reminded us, “comes from the written word and must be ingested just like food.”
Right after his statement, My Girl usually said something like hog-wash, or maybe that’s what Chester said on the black box that the Booga-man watches every night. Hog-wash and Tom-foolery must mean the same thing, and by the eye-roll that My Girl gave My Boy each time he spat out bits and pieces of what he called knowledge, I’m pretty sure those two phrases, or one like Oh Sure, were running to-and-fro inside her head.
It was true though that My Boy did make a perfect Professor Plum if the professor part meant that you secluded yourself from the rest of the pack and ate big words so you could bark them out at all the others. But I guess somebody must be in charge!
Professor Plum had been at the dining room table ready to eat lunch just like the other five suspects. He’d come down from his study carrying his briefcase stating he had test papers inside that he needed to correct after lunch was over. His leather bag didn’t smell nearly as good as Whiny’s leather bag as it hadn’t made the rounds of ninety-nine and four thousand trips to McDonalds like her purse. But I had sniffed his briefcase a couple of times and it had a scent of foreigners, you know, like orange chicken and fried rice.
It was a fine bag, one that would have helped My Boy to sneak out craft instructions or words to skits so that he could sell them to other summer camps. Very important stuff that should only belong to the Camp of Two Wishes. I was always greatly suspicious of that bag.
Professor Plum has a habit of securing his plate of food and then excusing himself before he ever takes one bite. I followed closely behind him one day, and right before he shut the smelly room’s door in my face, I glimpsed him pulling out a small electronic device that had a wire running to an undisclosed place under his clothes. Which makes me believe he is in touch with other life forms outside of our encampment at Wish Island. Even possibly some strange looking two-legs with many, many eyes like the ones on Mrs. Peacock’s dress. Or he could be texting the creatures responsible for the holes dug inside the flower garden on night’s that have a huge moon so bright it shines into mine and Fred’s padded condo.
No matter if My Boy is talking to strangers about the secret goings-on at Whiny’s house, just the fact that he had a bag big enough to hide Banana Dog and haul him away to his study makes him the perfect suspect for the theft. I’d believe the studious one pulled off the theft before any of the other five suspects as he has the kind of calculating mind to plan it and get ‘er done.
You should see the way My Boy gets those around him to do his bidding without really asking anyone to do anything. It’s more like suggestions of what fun it would be if everyone gathered in the den in ten minutes to discuss strategy for their laser gun fights later that night. His few words would have four of the other five suspects clearing out of his study and making sure they were in the den in under ten minutes. There they would wait at least forty-five minutes for the leader of their pack, the big dog, to make an appearance.
His followers always exclude Beauty because she’s never shot a gun in her whole twenty years of life, and if she had of, and she’d play-like killed someone with her play-like gun, she would expect that person to stay dead for the rest of their entire life and wouldn’t understand when they wanted to rise up from the play dead and play again. It’s always best if she trots on back to her room and pow wows with her bed full of stuffed dolphins and whales and other creatures from the deep blue sea.
When I get a chance, I like to get a good taste of My Boy by licking his bare feet when he has them under the dining room table. It’s harder for him to push me away with all the chair legs and two-legs’-two legs under the table with me so I get a pretty good taste once in a while. I always try to pull off his socks to get to his feet if he comes out of his study wearing them.
He’s not like the Booga-man that tastes of pure, straight out of the shaker, kind of salt. My Boy tastes mainly of Oreos and sweet juice boxes with a little salt sprinkled on the top, a combination that I am extremely fond of.
Whiny said in all confidence with only me while she was gluing his Professor Plum picture to the case board, that she didn’t think My Boy would steal and then hide or, God forbid, destroy Banana Dog. She thinks he would simply sneak BD out of the room, operate on him, and return him minus his squeaky part. Reading and storing up knowledge is hard enough without a squeaking dog toy interrupting your learning.
After he’d done his dirty deed, My Boy would put him down as close to the scene of the crime and say something like, “I wonder if the thief might have left Banana Dog just outside of the kitchen?” And all the other campers would race away and low-and-behold there would be Banana Dog! Looking like he’s just trotted into the adjoining room on his own four yellow legs.
I’m sad because so far Banana Dog hasn’t appeared. If by the time we finish the case file and BD still hasn’t been returned, then Whiny and I will have no choice but to search Professor Plum’s study from the top book on the top shelf to the books scattered on the floor. Ugh! I can already feel the sneezes coming on from all the dust we will encounter. Here’s hoping in big doggie-time that Banana Dog will come home wagging his tail before we have to begin that search. I miss my yellow friend.
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