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“I believe, Watson,” Sherlock said, loudly and much too close, “that the customary salutation at moments such as this is ‘Eureka’. Watson. Watson.”
Joan groaned and rolled over and tried to bury her head underneath one of her pillows. Sometimes, if he was just excited about the idiocy of a talking head on cable news, or enthused about a flock of starlings that he’d seen during a walk, he’d subside and leave her to sleep. Not this time, it seemed.
After a few minutes she threw the pillow aside, sat up and glared at him. “Why are you whistling the theme song to ‘Bridge over the River Kwai’?”
“It seemed thematically appropriate,” Sherlock said, standing up. He was still wearing the t-shirt he’d first put two days ago; it was now smeared with what looked like engine oil and turmeric powder.
“For your declaration of eureka?” Joan pushed her hair back from her face. “At one in the morning?”
“Exactly,” Sherlock said, demonstrating once again that he had perfected the ability to blithely ignore sarcasm when it suited him.
Joan sighed. There was little chance of her falling back to sleep now—years as a surgeon had taught her to savour sleep when she could grab it, but it had also taught her body that if it was woken up at odd hours, it was probably for a good reason and she needed to stay awake. Sadly, her body’s reflexes had been honed before she’d ever encountered the kinds of things that Sherlock Holmes would classify as ‘a good reason’. “Explain.”
“I have managed to ascertain Clyde’s location,” Sherlock said, and beamed at her.
Joan peered at him. “You know, you phrasing it like that makes it sound like you lost him.”
“It wasn’t so much that I lost him as that he chose to absent himself—”
“How do you lose a tortoise, Sherlock? He can only travel at—”
“—Striking out on his own, as it were. Hence the theme song.”
Joan flopped back against her pillows. “You lost Clyde.”
Sherlock waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “He and I went to perform a certain amount of reconnaissance in the Lopez case.”
Joan sat up again. “After Marcus told you—”
Sherlock huffed out a put upon sigh. “Yes, yes, yes, hence why I went with Clyde. There was no need for me to set foot on the property if Clyde could go in my stead.”
“You sent a tortoise to case some storage units,” Joan said flatly.
“Exactly!” Sherlock said.
“And you thought that he’d be able to tell you his findings… how?”
“Well clearly I wasn’t expecting him to be able to verbally express anything.”
“Clearly,” Joan muttered under her breath.
“Which is why I engineered a small camera which I could strap to his shell, capable of broadcasting footage live back to my computer.” Sherlock brandished his tablet in one hand. “There’s a ventilation grill on the southeast corner of the building which gives access to an inner corridor. By proceeding along said corridor, Clyde could provide us with a much more detailed understanding of the building’s interior than we’ve previously had access to, and, should our luck hold, even give us proof of Walker entering one of the units in particular.”
“So your eureka moment is that you’ve got this footage?” Joan said.
Sherlock rocked back onto his heels. “Well, not as such. There were some operational hitches.”
Joan rolled her eyes. “To your plan to use a tortoise as an infiltrator.”
“Yes, well, when you put it like that…”
Joan arched an eyebrow.
“Fine, fine,” Sherlock said. “While the ventilation grill did provide direct access onto the corridor in question, it also seems to lead into a vent, and it proved somewhat difficult to persuade Clyde to head in one direction rather than another.”
“Studies have shown that tortoises don’t necessarily respond well to verbal reasoning,” Joan said.
“Sarcasm is not appreciated, Watson.”
“So exactly how long did it take you to realise that you had no way of getting Clyde back out of the building?” Joan said.
Sherlock’s shoulders sagged. “Several minutes longer than it should have. In retrospect, successfully jury-rigging the camera system may have made me over-confident.”
“Uh huh,” Joan said.
“However,” Sherlock said, waving the tablet at her once more. “While it did take me a couple of hours to brush up on my coding skills, I have managed to remotely activate the GPS tracker.”
“You put a GPS tracker on our tortoise?”
“One never knows when it may come in useful.” Sherlock’s chin tilted upwards.
“So you’ve found him?” Joan asked, deciding that it was better to focus on the pertinent issue. At any rate, it was less likely to result in her developing a headache.
“I have indeed pinpointed his location. He is at present at an elevation which would indicate he is in a basement level.”
Joan frowned. “The building plans didn’t say anything about a basement.”
“Precisely,” Sherlock said. “Which in itself would leave our proprietors open to several fines under the municipal building code, but it’s what the camera shows which is most interesting.”
This time, he held the tablet under her nose long enough for Joan to be able to see what Clyde’s tiny shell-cam was broadcasting. Clyde was making his way across the floor of a low room, lit by a harsh fluorescent bulb. As slow as his progress normally was, it was further hindered by the bags and boxes which were stacked here and there, and while Joan had never been particularly interested in jewellery, even she could recognise Tiffany blue when she saw it.
“The armoured car heist?” she said. “If we can prove Walker’s whereabouts on the 21st—”
“Indeed,” Sherlock said, “We link him successfully to two individual crimes, demonstrate likewise the culpability of the owner of the storage units, and qualify for a reward of a quarter of a million dollars.”
“Huh,” Joan said, handing the tablet back to him. “I think that the eureka was justified.”
“Thank you for the endorsement, Watson,” Sherlock said gravely, though his eyes were bright. “I’m sure Clyde would do the same.”
There was a moment’s pause. “Uh,” Joan said, “so how exactly are we going to get Clyde out of there?”
“Well,” Sherlock said, looking at her so earnestly she knew he had to be faking it, just a little. “I thought it was time that your instruction expanded to include undercover work.”
(The pillow may not have provided good cover, but as a projectile it functioned just fine.)