“The coin has to be perfectly rotated to have letters appear in the holes,” I said. “Right now we have an ‘E’ and an ‘O.’?”
“We need the missing piece of the coin,” Diesel said. “Without that piece it’s impossible to know if the coin is oriented correctly, if we’re missing letters, or even if we have the correct letters.”
“What about the outer rings?” Josh asked. “They all have letters in them, too.”
Diesel put the coin on top of the outermost ring. The width of the coin was exactly the width of the “doughnut ring,” the space between the outside ring and the next one. In fact, each of the concentric rings, though they formed smaller and smaller doughnuts, had the same exact width of approximately one and a half inches, the same width as the diameter of the coin.
“Try to rotate the coin in the outer ring and see if you can find letters in the holes,” Diesel said to me.
I chose a random place within the doughnut ring and put the coin inside it. I rotated the coin slightly until letters were visible through the holes. I used that as my starting point and rolled the coin, like the wheel of a bicycle rolling down the road, so that it stayed inside the confines of the doughnut ring. It looked like a planet revolving aro
und the sun. As the coin moved through its orbit, additional letters were revealed through the holes. I rolled the coin around all of the rings, and Diesel wrote down all of the letters.
“This makes no sense,” Diesel said, looking at what he’d written. “We need the last piece of the coin from Wulf. We can’t decipher the map without it.”
Ammon was on his feet, looking around. He spied Cat, gave a woof, and chased Cat into the living room. Cat planted his feet, hissed, and swatted at Ammon, slashing a four-inch rip in Ammon’s pants leg. Ammon yelped and jumped away from Cat.
I pointed at the couch. “Sit!” I said to Ammon.
Ammon got on the couch, scrunched around a little, and curled up.
“We have to do something with him,” I said to Diesel. “He can’t stay here. Either we turn him over to Rutherford, or else we take him to the animal shelter.”
Crash! Ammon fell off the couch.
“What the heck?” I said. “Is he okay?”
“I think he tried to lick his dog balls and fell off the couch,” Glo said.
Rutherford arrived fifteen minutes later. We were outside on the sidewalk with Ammon. Ammon was no longer bound, but Diesel had a grip on him so he wouldn’t chase after cars or squirrels.
“I found him on my doorstep,” I said to Rutherford. “He seems confused.”
Ammon growled at Rutherford.
“He must be in shock from the traumatic fire,” I said. “He’s not himself.”
“It’s true,” Josh said to Rutherford. “He thinks he’s a doggy. You’ll want to watch him on the carpets.”
Rutherford gaped at Ammon. “He’s bloody!”
“Yeah,” Diesel said. “He might have fallen down.”
Rutherford loaded Ammon into the Mercedes sedan, and they drove off with Ammon’s head out the window, his nose pointed into the wind.
“Go figure,” Glo said.
We drove the van back to Dazzle’s. We all got into our own cars and drove home. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that Diesel was following me. I parked in my space alongside my house, and Diesel parked on the street one house down.
“Not going home?” I asked him.
We were on the sidewalk in front of my house, and Diesel looked toward the front door. “I left my monkey here. And Wulf is here.”
“How do you know Wulf is here?”
“I have a cramp in my ass.”
Diesel went in first, flipped the light on, and I saw that Wulf was sitting in a chair in the living room. He looked deadly calm and perfectly at ease. He didn’t blink in the sudden bright light. He didn’t smile. He didn’t scowl. He didn’t look surprised to see Diesel.