Sherlock, Dinosaurs!

5.2- Jack Be Nimble

Episode 5, part 2
('Smarter than you')

Eleanor bounded up the stairs, searching for her new friend, Eli. He had managed to find her behind the curtain, to her surprise. Most grown ups wouldn't have guessed to look there.

As she made her busy way past one of the open doorways, Sherlock's voice carried into the hall, and caught her interest,

"-yes, evident by the larger footprints in the soil of the garden bed below. I'd say... a size ten mens?" Sherlock guessed, half hanging out the window. Eleanor silently entered the room, and cracked open the wardrobe door, thinking that Eli may be hiding there. It was somewhere most people wouldn't check, after all, and if Sherlock had taught her anything, it was to be thorough.

There was no Eli, but something else perked her interest; there were almost no clothes, either.
A kidnapped kid with a suitcase full of creature comforts? That just didn't add up.

"Sher-lock?" She asked, her mind whirring in her small head.

"And the scrapes on the windowsill here, from where the kidnapper must have wedged something- a crowbar, maybe- probably something smaller, actually." He ignored her, totally absorbed in his deductions. "Something easily concealed."

"Sher-lock!" She called, coming closer to him. Again, the curly haired man didn't make any indication that he had even heard her speak.

"SHERLOCK HOLMES!" Her small voice boomed, and finally, a rather irritated looking Sherlock turned his icy gaze on her.

"Eleanor. I am working." He told her, obviously fighting to keep his voice steady,

"He wasn't- kid-napped!" She told him assuredly.

"I'm sorry?" Sherlock appeared dumbfounded. Lestrade looked mildly amused,

"Jack run- way." She said next, and she could see her caregiver's jaw work back and forth in frustration.

"No, no- really!" She nodded, and glanced up and around at each of the adults in front of her. "Look." She opened the cupboard door wider, to reveal the nearly bare closet. The curly haired man looked totally shocked.

"And- the scrapes..." she moved to the window, and stretched to place her hand atop it. "Shallow, and- only on bottom. Not on window." She tried to explain that a crowbar or other tool would have made a decent dent in the wood of the frame as well as the sill, but there was no need to worry; her adoptive father had understood her completely. He picked her up into his arms, and whirled her around, surprising her. He laughed out loud in a most jovial fashion, and by the time he stopped, the toddler felt rather dizzy.

"Brilliant!!" He grinned at her. "Did you see that?!" He turned proudly to the gawping Watson, and the shocked Lestrade. Sherlock turned and kissed her head proudly. He stroked his hand across her hair, smoothing it. "I don't know why you all look so shocked, she is a Holmes!" He grinned, and then noticed Watson's open mouth, and joked, "You'll catch flies."

Watson's jaw snapped shut, but he still looked quite surprised.

"You've got a runaway, Lestrade." He told the grey haired man, who gave him that ever so familiar blank stare. It was so annoying, it almost ruined Sherlock's good mood. "Lestrade, kidnappers don't pack up their victim's wardrobe up for them." He said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. The police detective realised what Sherlock was getting at and then said,

"So... whose footprints are in the garden?"

Sherlock's eyes lit up, "he had an accomplice."

"A- friend." Eleanor elaborated, suddenly remembering her own friend, still hiding somewhere.