The Case of the Vanished Sea Dragon by Gareth P. Jones

some of your crunchy shelled food?’
    â€˜Knock yourself out, but you might want to try using this?’ Dirk threw something at Alba.
    â€˜What is it?’ asked Alba.
    â€˜It’s called a tin opener,’ he replied, moving the blinds out of his way and leaping out.
    Across the road from Holly lived a nosy old woman called Mrs Baxter who spent her days sitting by her window, behind her net curtains, watching every single event in Elliot Drive and noting them down in her diary. If Mr Perry at forty-seven got an extra pint of milk delivered, or if Mrs Standen at forty-one had a longer than usual conversation with the postman, it went down in Mrs Baxter’s diary.
    She had noted that Holly Bigsby at forty-three hadn’t left the house at all since she and her father had been spotted stepping out of a very expensive-looking silver car on Saturday. A blond-haired boy about her age had visited every day but had been sent away.
    However, like all suburban gossips, Mrs Baxterassumed that the most interesting events involved humans and therefore occurred at street level. Had she looked up at the roof, she would have seen a dragon squeeze through Holly’s window. Instead, she was busy jotting down how Mr Mynard at number thirty-eight had left his car headlights on and would probably find in the morning that his battery had gone flat.
    â€˜Where have you been?’ asked Holly, throwing her arms around Dirk’s soft green belly. ‘I kept trying to call.’
    â€˜I’ve been out of town on a case. That’s why I’m here.’
    â€˜So you didn’t come to see me,’ said Holly, unable to hide her disappointment.
    Dirk lifted her chin with his paw. ‘I’m sorry, kiddo, I’ve been wrapped up in this case,’ he said.
    â€˜What’s it about?’ she replied.
    â€˜Well, the newspaper headline would be “Sky Dragon kidnaps Sea Dragon”,’ said Dirk.
    â€˜Cool,’ said Holly. ‘What are Sky Dragons like?’
    Dirk told Holly what little he knew about Sky Dragons and then said, ‘The problem is they’ve been living in the clouds for a long time. No one knows much about them. I was hoping I’d be able to find something that might help in Mrs K’s book.’
    Holly looked away. ‘Oh,’ she said.
    â€˜
Oh
doesn’t sound good,’ said Dirk, picking up Willow, who had been rubbing herself against his leg, and stroking the cat.
    â€˜I haven’t got it,’ Holly admitted. ‘It was confiscated.’
    â€˜Do you know where it is?’
    â€˜Well … Yes.’
    â€˜Fine. I’ll swing by and grab it,’ said Dirk.
    â€˜It won’t be that easy,’ said Holly.
    â€˜Come on.’ Dirk spread his paws and grinned. ‘Remember who you’re talking to here.’
    â€˜It’s been confiscated by the seventh richest man in the world, and is being kept in the upstairs office of a high-security animal experimentation lab,’ said Holly.
    Dirk laughed. He put Willow down. ‘So you’ve been busy, then?’ he said.
    Holly told Dirk everything that had happened over the last two days. She told him about Brant Buchanan, her dad accepting a job for Global Sands, and the conversation she had overheard about the AOG Project.
    â€˜He must be after the QC3000,’ said Dirk.
    â€˜That’s what I thought but why would a billionaire businessman want a weapon?’
    â€˜I can think of lots of reasons,’ he replied. ‘For a manlike that, business
is
war. So how did he end up with the book?’
    â€˜I wanted to find out what they were up to, so I broke in, but I got caught.’
    â€˜They didn’t see you blending, did they?’
    â€˜No, but I got taken upstairs and they took away the book as a punishment.’
    â€˜You think he knows what the book is?’ asked Dirk, nervous about a human with so much wealth and power possessing a book