"Oh nothing, nothing, please continue Captain Love." What Ewan had meant by that is that if Orde knew anything about love it was probably from very distant observation because he seemed to be completely oblivious to all female advances on him, and there were a few.

"Alright," started Orde. "This is love: first your heart falls into your gut and crushes your intestines. Then all the intestinal movement creates excess heat so you pant profusely and all the panting dehydrates your body so the blood rushes out of your head, finally your brain becomes deoxygenated and you can’t think straight... leaving you babbling like an idiot until she leaves."

"That’s love?" asked both Comet and Ewan.

"From the anatomical standpoint, yes."

"Well that happened to me once," Comet mused, "but I thought I was having a stroke. Is love like that for everyone?"

"Yes," answered Orde, with a small smile of amusement. "At least for all the males. Females might suffer different symptoms."

Ewan snorted. "Oh brother..."

..................................................................................................................................................

Later that evening Ewan and Orde were back at the house getting ready for their master to come home. It was still light out and the two were enjoying a quiet moment, one that they hadn’t had around Comet in a long time.

"This pup is insane," said Ewan. "I mean, its just ‘Ewan what's this?’ and ‘Ewan what’s that?’ and when he’s not asking questions he’s breaking things, or getting himself stuck in something, or antagonizing everybody else--"

"Give him some time Ewan," Orde replied wearily, still suffering a mild headache from the trip home. "He may be a bit much, but he’ll shape up."

"I doubt it," said Ewan. "He is the most obnoxious, the most annoying, he's--"

"Here!" shouted Comet jumping out from behind a chair and scaring Ewan and Orde.

"COMET!" shouted Ewan, his fur standing on end. That obnoxious little--! "Don’t ever, ever do something like that again."

"Lad," wheezed Orde still collecting himself from the scare. "What on earth is the matter with you?"

"Sorry," said Comet. "What were you guys talking about?"

Both Ewan and Orde looked at each other nervously. As obnoxious as he was, they didn’t want Comet to know that they couldn’t stand him. So they lied. "Er, crime." Orde smoothly covered, giving Ewan enough tiome to reply.

"Yeah, that’s it, crime," said Ewan "We were talking about how terrible crime is."

"Oh, that makes sense." Comet nodded. "Wait, why were you calling crime ‘he’?" he asked.

"Uh..." thought Ewan for a moment. "You see, when you work in the force as long as us you begin to see crime as a person that you need to fight. That’s why we were calling time ‘he’. Isn’t that right Orde?

"Indeed," nodded Orde.

"Oh, that makes sense," said Comet.

Just then the radio began to pick up static. "Captain Orde? Come in Orde," said a voice over the radio.

Orde was still a little wheezy from Comet's surprise entrance, so Ewan decided to answer for him. "Yeah, Orde can’t come to the radio right now," he said smiling. "He just had a heart attack."

"What!?" said the voice.

"Ha-ha, very funny Ewan," said Orde. "Just tell them thanks for the radio check.

"Thanks for the radio check. It works fine," said Ewan.

"No guys," said the voice. "This is for real. Somebody found a dead body on the beach."

Both Ewan and Orde’s eyes widened up at these words. "Uh, yeah," said Ewan scrambling to put his thoughts together. "We’ll be right there."

"What is it?" asked Comet?

"Comet," said Ewan grimly, "You better come with us. You might as well learn."

.................................................................................................................................

When the three got down to the beach a large crowd of officers and police dogs had already gathered. Murder was rare in Nome and so when it did happen the entire station often showed up to examine the crime scene. It was middle-aged Caucasian man. He was dressed in a set of overalls and a sweatshirt and wore wool gloves on both hands. The body was fresh and although it reeked of ocean water, it appeared to not have had a lot of time to decay.

When Comet got his first eye full of the body, he immediately gagged and almost threw up. Without pause Ewan and Orde began to examine the body looking for any clue as to why this man had died while Comet kept his distance from the corpse.

"How can you two do that?" Comet asked them as he felt another gag beginning to form.

"When you’ve worked this job as long as us Comet, you get used to it," said Ewan.

"That’s the most unfortunate part of this job," added Orde. "You do get used to it."

The men were just finishing forming a secure perimeter around the crime scene when Ewan looked into the man’s front pocket and discovered something important. It was a wad of cash and a lot of cash at that. The stack had to be at least an inch thick and all the bills appeared to be hundreds, making the bundle worth almost $15,000.00. When Ewan found this he immediately began barking for one of the humans to take a look.

"What’ve you got there boy?" asked Officer Jennings as he rushed over to the howling Ewan and saw the money. "Holy smokes!" he said as he took the cash and patted Ewan on the head saying, "Good boy."

"That’s funny," said Orde. "You’d think if the guy had that much money he could afford some decent clothing," he said pointing out the patchwork overalls and the holey gloves.

"Something tells me that money didn’t belong to him," said Ewan. "We’d better keep looking for more clues." The two continued to search the body until Orde reached into the back pocket and found the man’s wallet.

"Well, at least now we no who he is," he said as he opened the wallet and showed Ewan the man’s work id.

"Patrick Normoyale," read Ewan, "employee of Yellow Fin fish cannery." As he looked over the man’s workers card again his eyes widened as he remembered what Mirage had said about the cannery. "Orde," he said slowly, "I think we may have stumbled on something big."

"How do you mean?" asked Orde. "What kind of big?"

"I don’t know," said Ewan. "But I think that it has something to do with this cannery," he said as he looked down at the card again and then began to walk away.

"Where are you going?" asked Orde.

"To get some more information," said Ewan.

.............................................................................................................................................

"Well, well, well," Mirage drawled, looking at her nails. "Look whose come crawling back asking for my help."

"Aw come on Mirage," pleaded Ewan. "I never said I didn’t believe you. It’s just that you didn’t have anything to back up your suspicion, but now we’ve got a dead body lying on the beach and we need some help, so how’s about you give me a paw here?"

"Maybe I don’t want to." She said, examining her paws idly.

Ewan sighed. "Okay. I give up. What is that you want?"

"I’m glad you asked," Mirage smirked. "I want a nice evening together for a change, and you know what that means."

"Please don’t say I have to wear the hat," said Ewan

The smirk widened. "You have to wear the hat."

"I hate hat," complained Ewan.

"Aww, but you look so cute in the hat," she said pinching his cheeks.

"Alright, fine," he said shaking her paw off his face. "I’ll wear the hat. Anything else you’d like, your majesty?"

"I could get used to that," said Mirage. "What is it you want to know?"

"I need you to break into the cannery and get everything you can on file for Patrick Normoyale. The humans can’t move in until they’ve got the proper paperwork, and if this is anything like I suspect it might be too late by then. I can’t get in because that would be breaking and entering, but I’m sure you’d have to trouble."

"Please," said Mirage. "I could turn that place upside down and they’d never know I was there. You want me to bring you back something?"

"No," said Ewan. "You can’t let anyone know you’re there. Leave everything as you found it. Am I clear?"

"Crystal," she said and stole off toward the cannery.

...........................................................................................................................................

The fencing around the tuna cannery did very little to keep Mirage out as she quietly wedged herself under it. The doors were locked all around, but fortunately Mirage caught sight of a stack of crates on the side of the building and worked her way to the top where she made her way through an open window.

Quietly Mirage began to search around for any clue that might help Ewan in his investigation. She slipped into an office and began looking around when she spotted a large file cabinet with drawers labeled, "Employee A-C" and so on and so forth. She pawed through the L-P file, but found no trace of Mr. Normoyale.