Big Game (10 page)

My entire house had disappeared.

At first, I thought I'd
made a mistake. It didn't seem possible that an entire house—even if it was only a trailer home—could vanish. I looked around, wondering if maybe I'd wandered the wrong way through the trailer park. I'd walked this way hundreds of times before, but that night I'd been distracted.

I hadn't made a mistake, though. Everything else was exactly where it should have been. All the neighbors' trailers were there. But where ours had been that morning, there was only a bare rectangular cement slab.

I immediately called Mom at her office at Monkey Mountain. She answered on the fourth ring. “Hey, kiddo. . . .”

“Mom, our house is gone!”

“Theodore, that isn't funny.”

“I know it's not. It's true.”

Mom sighed, still not believing me. “I don't have time for any pranks right now. One of the apes is sick, and Doc's here to check on her. . . .”

“I'm not joking!” I yelled. “I promise! I'm standing right where our house is supposed to be, and it's not here!”

My tone convinced my mother I wasn't messing around. “Teddy, how could a whole house disappear?”

“I don't know, but it did.”

“Stay where you are. I'll be right there,” Mom said, then hung up.

I tried calling Dad, but it went straight to voice mail. I figured leaving a message that our house had vanished might panic him, so I just asked him to call me when he could.

It was now very cold. I hadn't worn my warmest jacket or my gloves that day; both were in my bedroom, which was in my missing house. So I looked for a warm place to wait. Unfortunately, none of our neighbors were home. This wasn't rare. None of them had kids and most had offices that were far cozier and more comfortable than the cheap trailers FunJungle had given us. I had to settle for trying to move as much as possible. I jogged in place and waved my arms around, trying to get my blood flowing, then searched the area for clues as to where the house could have gone.

It was a moonless night, and we lived far from civilization and the light pollution that came with it, so it was very dark outside. Using the light from my phone, I tried to scan the ground around the cement slab for tire tracks or drag marks but couldn't find any. None close by, at least. So I widened my search, spiraling out around the slab. I'd done only two circles before Mom arrived. She raced up, then froze the same way I had and gasped, “It's gone.”

“I told you,” I said.

Mom shook her head, trying to make sense of everything. “This isn't possible. The house was right here this morning. Homes don't just get up and walk away.”

“Mobile homes can be moved. Maybe someone stole it.”

“Out of all the mobile homes in the world, why would someone steal
ours
?” Mom asked. “It's not even the nicest one here.”

I shrugged. “I tried calling Dad.”

“So did I,” Mom said. “Let's try again.”

She pulled out her phone, but before she could start dialing, a pair of high-beam headlights lit us up. I'd been in the dark so long, they were blinding. I had to shield my eyes as the approaching vehicle thumped along the trailer park's dirt access road.

As it got closer, I realized it wasn't a car at all. It was a souped-up golf cart. It was also tilting sharply to one side due to the weight of the driver. Marge.

To my surprise, Mom sighed with relief. “Thank goodness. Security's here to help us.”

“I wouldn't bet on it,” I said under my breath.

There was only one bush anywhere near the cement slab, but somehow Marge still managed to hit it. She plowed right into the poor plant, then clambered out and glared at it angrily, as if somehow it were at fault. “You ought to have that bush removed,” Marge told us. “It's a driving hazard.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It jumped right in your path, didn't it?”

Mom signaled me to not start anything. “Marjorie, thanks for coming so quickly. . . .”

“I need to talk to your son,” Marge interrupted rudely, then turned on me. “I didn't get the chance to finish my interrogation this afternoon.”

“Interrogation?” Mom asked. “Wait. Why are you here?”

Marge proudly removed a piece of paper from her jacket and dramatically unfolded it. “This is an official warrant to search your home for stolen candy.”

“What are you talking about?” Mom demanded.

“Teddy here is the number one suspect in a heist perpetrated this morning at Carly Cougar's Candy Corner. I suspect the stolen items may have been concealed within your domicile.”

“Be our guest,” I said. “Feel free to search the house.”

“Oh, I will,” Marge sneered. She turned toward the previous location of our front door—and only then did it occur to her that something was seriously wrong. Her expression went blank. “Where's your house?”

“That's what
we
were wondering,” Mom said.

Marge scowled and wheeled on me. “You think you're so clever, don't you? Hiding your whole house so that I can't search it?”

“You actually think I did that?” I asked. “Moved an entire house?”

“It's a
mobile
home,” Marge pointed out. “ ‘Mobile' means you can move it.”

“Why would I hide the candy in my house and then move the house?” I asked. “Why wouldn't I simply move the candy?”

Marge screwed up her face as she tried to make sense of that. “How am I supposed to know how a little deviant like yourself thinks?”

“Teddy isn't a deviant,” Mom said sternly. “And he didn't move our house. Someone else did. It's been stolen!”

Marge looked to Mom. Understanding slowly seeped through her thick skull, and she finally seemed to comprehend what was going on. “Hold on. Someone stole your whole house?”

“Yes!” Mom yelled, exasperated. “That's what we've been trying to tell you!”

Marge burst into laughter. “And you don't know where it is? There's finally a crime that Teddy the genius can't solve?”

“You think this is funny?” Mom asked, nearing her wit's end. “Everything we own is in that house!”

Marge held up both hands, signaling Mom to calm down. “Keep your britches on, Charlene. I'm on the job.” She snapped her radio from its holster on her belt and called in. “HQ, this is O'Malley. I'm out in the employee housing area, and the Fitzroy family trailer appears to be missing. Thieves suspected. Backup requested.”

There was a moment's pause on the other end. Then the dispatcher replied, “Uh, Marge . . . Today was the first day of the employee housing relo project.”

“It was?”

“Yes. I'm looking at the schedule right here.”

“Gotcha. Cancel that request for backup, then.” Marge reholstered her radio, then turned back to us, grinning proudly. “Good news. I've solved the case. Your home wasn't stolen. It was moved.”

This didn't make me feel any better. Mom still seemed upset as well. “Where?” she demanded. “And why?”

The smile quickly faded from Marge's face. “No one told you anything about this?”

“No,” Mom said. “What's the employee housing relo project?”

“Um,” Marge replied, “I think you should talk to J.J. McCracken about that.”

A half hour later, I
was back in J.J.'s office. This time both my parents were there with me. Dad had been at Carnivore Canyon, installing some cameras in the tiger exhibit. Much of the Canyon was carved into solid rock, so cell phone service was nonexistent there. After being around tigers all afternoon, Dad smelled like them, a combination of musk and cat pee. Because of this, Mom was keeping her distance from him, sitting at the opposite end of the couch.

Summer was in J.J.'s office as well. She and her father had been about to head home when word of our misplaced trailer came through. Now she was sitting at his enormous desk, doing her homework while he paced the room.

For the first time since I'd met him, J.J. seemed embarrassed. Normally, J.J. was full of confidence, but at that moment, he looked as uneasy as a man in a rattlesnake nest. “I want you all to know how dreadfully sorry I am about this,” he said. “I'm going to find out what went wrong and fire whoever was responsible.”

“You mean our house wasn't supposed to be moved?” Mom asked.

“Er, no,” J.J. admitted. “That was supposed to happen, all right. But you should have been notified
weeks
ago.”

“Why was our home supposed to be moved?” Dad demanded.

“Actually,
all
the homes are supposed to be moved,” J.J. corrected. “Yours was merely the first.”

“Why?” Dad repeated.

“I found a better location for them,” J.J. said. “You're gonna love it. It's farther from the park, so you won't be downwind from the stench of antelope poop.”

Mom gave J.J. a hard stare. “Know what stinks worse than antelope poop? That lame answer. Why are you
really
moving the trailers?”

J.J. glanced at his office door, as if hoping someone was going to come through it and bail him out of trouble. Then he sagged and admitted, “I need the space where the employee housing is.”

Mom's annoyance turned to relief. “Why didn't you just say so? What do you need it for? A new animal exhibit?”

“Are you going to expand SafariLand?” I asked hopefully.

J.J. glanced at the door once more, then said, “Er, no. It's not for a new animal exhibit at all.”

“Then what?” Dad asked.

J.J. hedged for a few more moments, then owned up. “I'm going to build a roller coaster. And some other rides.”

All of us sat up in surprise at this. Even Summer. “Daddy!” she cried. “You promised you wouldn't ever build things like that here!”

J.J. flashed her a weak smile. “No. I promised I wouldn't build rides that would interfere with the animals' well-being. No river rafting through the hippo exhibits or coasters through SafariLand. But the fact is, this park has suffered some financial setbacks, what with Henry's death and the theft of Kazoo and all, and according to my research, if I want to bring more guests in, I need to build rides.”

“But this is a zoo . . . ,” I protested.

“It's a tourist attraction,” J.J. corrected. “And for Pete's sake, even zoos have rides. San Diego's got a sky ride. The Bronx has a monorail. Every darn one of them has a carousel.”

“But they don't have roller coasters,” Mom pointed out. “Coasters are loud. They'll startle the animals every time they go past.”

“I'm doing everything in my power to protect our animals,” J.J. explained. “My engineers have made noise reduction a priority. And the whole reason I'm putting the rides out where your house used to be is to get them as far from the animals as I can.”

“I don't like this,” Dad said. “When you recruited us here, you swore that providing the best possible care for these animals was going to be the number one priority of this park, not making money.”

“Well, if I don't make any money, there isn't gonna be a park!” J.J. shot back. “All these state-of-the-art facilities I built—Monkey Mountain and Hippo River and Carnivore Canyon and all that—they ain't cheap. High-quality care costs money. Our conservation and breeding programs cost money. All of sudden today I had to double my security expenses to keep some yahoo from picking off our rhinos. That costs money too. This park is a money pit. If you don't want the gates closed and all your precious animals shipped off to the circus, then you're all gonna have to cut me some slack here.”

We all bit our tongues after that. I didn't like the idea of rides being built at the park, but I understood J.J.'s point.

The office door opened and Pete Thwacker rushed in. His arms were full of blueprints.