The Great Tomb Robbery Page 7

  Kenamon’s father? I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “And were there any others?” I asked, hoping there were.

  One ear flopped over her eye. “No one else.”

  “What about the Scribe?” Khepri asked. “Didn’t he have to go to Thutmose the Second’s tomb to check on the work? He could have found the way into Setnakht’s tomb then.”

  Menwi stiffened. “Are you implying that my Scribe is a criminal?”

  “No,” said Khepri, “I was just—”

  “Because if I thought that you were,” Menwi continued, “you would get no further help from me.” She snorted in indignation. “In fact, I’m inclined to think that this interview is over.”

  Khepri was watching her with a funny look in his eyes. “Really? I think perhaps you—”

  “Shhh!” I hushed him.

  He went on. “—protest too—”

  What else could I do? I put my paw on him. Very gently.

  “—much,” he finished, but my fur muffled the word.

  “My dear lady,” I said to Menwi as Khepri spluttered, “it is refreshing in this day and age to see such loyalty. But I’m sure my friend Khepri here was merely wondering if perhaps the Scribe might have seen some valuable clues.”

  Soothed back into good nature, Menwi said, “No, everything was in good order. There was no reason to suspect any of them of wrongdoing. But if you ask me, I’d look very carefully at Neferhotep. Did I mention that his uncle was a tomb robber?”

  Another strike against Neferhotep.

  “Is he close to his uncle?” Khepri asked.

  “Not anymore. His uncle was executed a long time ago,” Menwi said. “Maybe ten years back? But that kind of thing does tend to run in the family, you know. Of course, Huya may bear watching, too. He’s been getting too big for his boots lately, and his brother is the Captain of the Guard. Perhaps they’re working together.” She stifled a yawn. “But you must excuse me now. It’s time for my afternoon nap.”

  A nap sounded good to me. As Menwi trotted daintily toward her shed, it was all I could do not to roll over and fall asleep myself.

  Khepri, however, was wide awake. “We need to get to the bottom of this story about Neferhotep’s uncle, Ra. And learn more about Huya and the Captain of the Guard.” He wriggled up my fur. “Come on! Let’s investigate.”

  “All right, all right.” I leaped back up to the wall. “But I bet I’d be more efficient if I just had a quick doze.”

  “You want to sleep?” Khepri chirped in dismay. “Ra, we’re in the middle of an important case.”

  “It wouldn’t take long.” I skimmed my way along a wall that connected the backs of several houses. “Look at that courtyard there, Khepri. The one with the awning. Talk about a perfect spot for napping.”

  “No, Ra.”

  I jumped down. “But see, it’s so quiet. And it even has a charming model of a temple and tomb—”

  “Dirty kitty!” A small child shrieked behind me. “Dirty kitty!”

  I darted to the left, but it was too late. A whole pack of tiny humans had surrounded me.

  I’ve spent enough time with Pharaoh’s children to know what would happen next. Sure enough, the boldest one grabbed me by the middle. It was what he said afterward that surprised me.

  “Let’s bury the cat in the tomb!”

  Pharaoh’s Cat never bites children, but I was tempted.

  “Put me down!” I meowed. “Right now!”

  The child lifted up the top of the model tomb and dropped me inside, Khepri still clinging to my head.

  “And now we seal the tomb!” the boy shouted.

  The top of the tomb clunked down.

  We were trapped.

  Trapped in a Tomb

  “Open up!” I meowed to the children. “Immediately!”

  Khepri was crawling the walls. “They’re not listening to you, Ra. I don’t think they can even hear you. This model’s made out of stone.”

  “Then I’ll just have to meow louder.” I gave it all I had. “Enough is enough, children! This is Pharaoh’s Cat speaking. Get me out of here.”

  Khepri clicked in my ear.

  “And the beetle, too!” I added.

  Nothing happened, except I noticed how dark it was. And how quiet.

  “I think maybe they’ve gone away,” Khepri said.

  I stretched, trying to dislodge the lid of the tomb, but it wouldn’t budge. Same with the walls.

  “It’s solid,” Khepri said. “I think we’re stuck.”

  “Great.” I slumped down on the tiled floor. “How long will the air last?”

  “I don’t know,” Khepri said, “but I guess we’ll be okay for a while.”

  “You guess? Khepri, this is a matter of life and death. A guess isn’t good enough.”

  “It’s all I’ve got,” he chirped. “Anyway, look on the bright side: you can get that nap you wanted.”

  “How can I nap, knowing I’m about to suffocate?” I started to feel woozy just thinking about it. I wafted the precious air with my tail. “Is it me, or is it getting hard to breathe in here?”

  “If you can’t nap, then let’s discuss the case,” Khepri said.

  “Khepri, I’m dying! And you want to talk details?”

  “Great Detectives never let themselves get distracted,” Khepri said. “Now, I know Menwi didn’t want to talk about the Scribe visiting the abandoned tomb—”

  “Don’t talk to me about tombs,” I warned him. “I can only handle one at a time.”

  “Ra, be sensible—”

  “I am being sensible,” I wailed. “If you’re trapped in a tomb, it makes sense to panic!”

  “Ra, please calm down.”

  “What if we die here, Khepri? What if Anubis comes to weigh our souls?”

  All of a sudden the top of the tomb flew off, and something plunged down toward us.

  “It’s Anubis!” I shrieked. “Beware the gods!”

  But it wasn’t a god reaching for us. It was Kenamon.

  “Ra the Mighty? I’m so sorry.” The boy lifted me out and set me gently on the ground, Khepri gripping my tail. “My little sister told me what happened, and I came to rescue you.”

  His little sister had put me into that tomb?

  “She didn’t mean any harm,” Kenamon went on, “and she wasn’t the one who dropped you in there, but I’ve told her and the others that they’re never to treat a cat like that again. Especially not you.” He turned, and I noticed that there was a small girl standing behind him. Like most little kids, she wasn’t wearing anything at all, and her head was shaved except for one long sidelock of hair—but she had the same alert, worried eyes that Kenamon and his father had.

  “It’s okay, Isesu.” Kenamon put a reassuring arm around his sister. To me, he said, “She is awfully sorry.”

  She should be, I thought. But Isesu looked so sad that I softened. She wasn’t much older than Pharaoh’s own youngest daughter, who was hardly more than a baby. Besides, she had told Kenamon everything—and that was what had saved me. I guessed I could forgive her.

  Eyes brightening, Isesu reached for me. “I want that kitty.”

  I jumped back. Forgiveness only goes so far.

  “He’s not yours,” Kenamon said firmly. “He belongs to Pharaoh.”

  Isesu pouted. “But I want him.”

  “Maybe someday we’ll have a cat,” Kenamon told her. “A different one. Not this one.”

  “Someday when we’re rich,” the girl said happily. “Are we rich now, Kenamon?”

  “Hush.” Kenamon pulled his sister closer to him. “Father doesn’t want us talking about money.”

  Isesu wrenched herself free. “Then let’s play!”

  “In a minute.” Kenamon set a cup down before me, with a tiny p
ortion of what smelled an awful lot like spiced goose. “It’s all I could take from my meal without Father noticing,” he explained to me. “But it’s yours, if you want it. And there’s water in the trough against the wall.”

  “Kenamon? Isesu?” Pentu called to them from inside the house, and then his anxious face appeared at the door. “Where are you?”

  “Here we are!” Isesu ran toward the door.

  “I have to go,” Kenamon murmured.

  As he dashed away, I snarfed up the goose stew in one bite. Sure enough, I tasted cinnamon—and a touch of cumin.

  “Hey!” Miu appeared at the top of the wall at the end of the courtyard. She jumped down to us. “I see you found a snack, Ra.”

  “Miu!” I was glad to see her, but then Old Green Eyes appeared at the top of the wall.

  “Oh,” I said, with less enthusiasm, “I see your cousin’s with you.”

  “We’ve made an incredible breakthrough.” Miu was so excited that even her ragged ear had perked up. “It turns out Sabu is really good at this detecting business.” She motioned for us to follow her. “Come on. We have a lot to tell you.”

  “I’m not so sure I want to talk,” I mumbled as Khepri climbed onto me. But I went ahead and followed Miu over to the next house, where Sabu had staked out a spot by a palm tree.

  “Well, look at what the dung beetle dragged in,” he drawled as I approached. Then he caught a whiff of me. “Whew-ee. Is that some more of your fancy palace perfume? Smells like pig.”

  “Hush, Sabu,” Miu said. “Tell them what we’ve discovered.”

  “Thanks to my army of cat informants,” Sabu said, “we’ve narrowed the field of suspects—”

  “So have we,” I announced. “We’re down to Huya the carpenter and Neferhotep the goldsmith and the Scribe of the Tomb.”

  “And Pentu the painter,” Khepri finished, jumping down between my paws. “He’s a possibility, too.”

  “But not a likely one,” I told Miu. “Did you know Neferhotep’s uncle was a tomb robber?”

  “That doesn’t mean Neferhotep is one, too,” Khepri said to me.

  “But it’s more likely,” I said.

  Khepri disagreed. “I don’t see why—”

  “This is how you guys play detective?” Sabu gave us a cool flick of his ears. “You make wild accusations and argue about them?”

  “They’re not wild accusations.” I set him straight. “And we don’t ‘play detective.’ We are detectives. Great ones. That’s how we found this stuff out.”

  I let Khepri give them the details of our interview with Menwi.

  Sabu looked taken aback.

  “So much for wild accusations,” I said. Pharaoh’s Cat might be covered in mud, but he was hard to beat.

  “Wow,” said Miu. “You found out a lot.”

  “It’s easy when you’re a Great Detective,” I said. “So what did you two discover?”

  “Plenty,” said Sabu, with just the edge of a snarl.

  Miu quelled him with her paw. “We started from the other end, working out who was where on the night of the robbery. Luckily, we had Sabu here to organize the village cats for us. He did an amazing job.”

  The compliment seemed to soothe Sabu. “It was a matter of leadership. I told them there had to be two witnesses for each alibi, and they had to report back to me.”

  “Take Sabu’s human, Bek, for example,” Miu told us. “Sabu was one witness to the fact that Bek was home last night, and the goose next door was the second. She says Bek’s snoring kept her goslings awake all night.”

  “We cats were having a party ourselves last night,” Sabu said. “So that made things more complicated. But a smart leader always gets the job done.”

  “We’ve narrowed the field to a few suspects, and they’re the same as yours,” Miu said. “Pentu the painter, Huya the carpenter, Neferhotep the goldsmith, and the Scribe of the Tomb. They all contributed spiced goose to the feast, and none of them have strong alibis for later that night.”

  It was an impressive piece of work. Maybe Sabu was worthy of being our sidekick.

  But then he said something to Miu that got me in a cat-twist. “You forgot to mention Kenamon, Pentu’s son. He doesn’t have an alibi, either.”

  “Oh, come on, Sabu,” I said. “He’s too young to be a tomb robber.”

  “If he’s old enough to work in the tombs, then he’s old enough to rob them,” Sabu said. “Besides, he could have been helping his father.”

  “Talk about wild accusations,” I said.

  Sabu twitched his ears in annoyance. “I just told you. The boy’s father is a suspect, and the boy himself doesn’t have an alibi. That’s not an accusation. It’s a fact. And there’s more.”

  “More?” I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Was I wrong about Kenamon and his father?

  Suspicions

  I looked down at my paws as Sabu outlined the case against Pentu and Kenamon.

  “Everyone here knows that Pentu’s family needs money to pay off their debts,” Sabu said, “and Miu’s told me about the strange way Kenamon behaved in the cave. Plus, one of my cats heard the boy and his father arguing this morning. She didn’t catch everything, but it was about keeping something a secret.”

  Uh-oh. I felt a prickle of worry. “Probably just some family tiff,” I said to the others. “Let’s not make too much of it.”

  Sabu narrowed his green eyes, but it was Miu who spoke first. “Ra, you have to admit there’s a case to be made against Pentu—and maybe against Kenamon, too. But everybody should remember that we have other suspects as well: Neferhotep, Huya, and the Scribe.” She turned to her cousin. “Sabu, what do you know about the Scribe?”

  “Well, there’s no question he went into Thutmose the Second’s tomb, whatever Menwi says,” Sabu told us. “It’s his job to investigate tomb robberies and file a report. Though whether he filed an honest report is another question.”

  That got Khepri’s attention. “So the Scribe isn’t trustworthy?”

  “I’ve heard he takes bribes sometimes,” Sabu said. “And people say he and the Vizier are as thick as thieves.”

  “That’s just an expression,” Khepri protested.

  “Maybe not,” Miu said. “I mean, look at the way they’re running this investigation. The Scribe and the Vizier aren’t exactly knocking themselves out to crack the case. They didn’t want to open the tomb, and they swallowed the whole Anubis story without question. They’re not even trying to find other explanations.”

  “Good point!” Khepri tapped the ground, as if he were thinking things through.

  Not that anything needed thinking through. It was perfectly obvious what had happened.

  “They formed a conspiracy,” I told the others. “They realized it would be easier for two people to rob the tomb. Especially if one of them was in charge of the guards.”

  “Although I think one person could do it,” Khepri put in, “if he was strong enough. Those blocks were pretty loose.”

  “No, they’re in it together,” I said. “That’s what my instincts tell me.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Miu said. “We don’t have any evidence—”

  I swished my tail. Evidence could come later. “I always said that Vizier was up to no good, didn’t I, Khepri?”

  “I thought you just didn’t like him,” Khepri said.

  “I had my reasons, Khepri. Honestly, a man who treats cats like that is a menace. And the Scribe is no better. But we have them in our sights now. They won’t escape us.”

  “If they’re guilty,” Khepri put in. “We have other suspects, you know. Weren’t you the one saying it was Neferhotep who was guilty?”

  “I didn’t commit myself,” I said. “Now that I’ve had time to consider the facts, I think it’s the Scribe and the Vi
zier.”

  “Well, I’m not committing myself to anything,” Khepri said. “Not until we have more evidence.” He thought for a moment. “Sabu, did your cats notice anything else last night? Someone climbing the village wall, for instance? Or walking around where they weren’t supposed to be?”

  “No,” Sabu said. “We asked, but no one saw anything unusual.”

  “It doesn’t help that lots of them were having their own parties last night,” Miu added. “Or that we had that sandstorm before dawn. It wiped out all the smells, so sniffing around didn’t tell us anything, either.”

  “Too bad.” Khepri clicked in disappointment. “Well, what about the treasure? The thief must have hidden it somewhere. Let’s look for that.”

  “I’ve already ordered my cats to search for it.” Sabu sounded very superior. “I told them to make Pentu’s place a priority, but he keeps chasing us away. Suspicious, don’t you think?”

  “Well, the Scribe wouldn’t let me into his house, either,” I said. “I’d say that’s suspicious, too.”

  “Not when a cat is as dirty as you are,” Sabu said.

  I bristled. “Is it any wonder I’m dirty? This whole village is a mess.”

  “Are you criticizing my home?” Sabu’s back arched, and his fur went spiky. “I’ve had enough of your insults, you little palace fusspot—”

  “How dare you speak to Pharaoh’s Cat like that?” I said, outraged.

  Miu darted between us, and Khepri hopped after her, which I’ll admit was brave of him, since he’s teeny-tiny and Sabu and I were both making ourselves look as scary as possible.

  “Cut it out, you two,” Miu ordered.

  “She’s right,” Khepri agreed. “We need to work as a team.”

  Sabu and I slowly stepped back from each other.

  “Sabu, how about we go see how the search is going?” Miu said, coming up beside him. “Ra and Khepri, you can come along, too, and meet some of the cats.”

  Meet Sabu’s gang? “No thanks,” I said as Sabu rose to go with Miu. “We’ve got our own leads to pursue.”