The Ghost of Cutler Creek (11 page)

They careened toward a pair of stout metal poles that had once held a sign marking the entrance to the plant. Allie screamed and grabbed the wheel, pulling it sharply to the right. L.J.'s foot seemed to be frozen all the way down on the gas pedal, and the truck veered in a tight circle. The engine roared and the tires spewed gravel.

Allie pounded on Mr. Cutler's arm with her fists, but it didn't have any effect, and she was afraid she was hurting L.J. more than his father. The truck continued to race in wild circles. Mr. Cutler was shouting and swearing, trying to keep his footing while his body was hanging from L.J.'s neck, and Dub was leaning across Allie to hold on to the steering wheel.

Allie looked at the bare skin of Mr. Cutler's arm around L.J.'s neck and did the only thing she could think of. She leaned over and bit down hard.

There was a screech of pain and outrage, and Mr. Cutler's arm slid from around L.J.'s neck. L.J. straightened up, held tightly to the wheel, and turned out of the parking lot and onto the road, still going very fast.

Dub opened his window, stuck his head out, and looked back. “He's just standing there, rubbing his arm,” he said. “He can't catch us now.”

It took a moment before L.J. was able to communicate that news to his foot. He slowed down at last, and they continued none too steadily down the long, straight, deserted stretch of road that led into town. They were all far too shaken to talk. The muzzles must have come off a couple of the dogs because frantic barking sounded from the back, and the puppies were whimpering and squirming in Allie's lap. Allie felt like whimpering, too.

L.J. turned when they reached the main crossroad in town. There were no other cars about, and the town center had an eerie, lonely feel.

“The police station's right around here someplace, ain't it?” L.J. asked.

Dub directed him to turn right and turn again onto Exchange Street, and they pulled up in front of a big brick building with white pillars.

L.J. switched off the engine. Staring straight ahead, he said in a flat, dull voice, “All right. Here's where you two take over and I disappear.”

“What do you mean,
disappear
?” Allie asked.

L.J. gave a slight shrug. “Go away.”

“Where?” Allie asked, feeling totally confused.

“Someplace far from him.”

Allie looked at Dub to see if this made any more sense to him than it did to her, but he looked just as bewildered. She turned back to L.J., who was still staring straight ahead, as if into his uncertain future.

“But
where
?” Allie persisted. “You can't just
walk away
.” She had an idea. “Where's your mother?”

“Texas,” he answered. “I think. I don't know for sure. But that's where she's from, and she always wanted to go back there.”

“Can you call her?”

“First thing I gotta do is get away from him.”

“You could—” Allie began.

L.J. kept on talking, slowly and deliberately. “I keep thinking,
This time he'll go to jail and I'll be free of him.
But it's always the same. Like in Georgia, he was about to get caught, but we ran off. Then he started up again here. Now he'll drag me off someplace new…”

This was by far the most talking L.J. had ever done, and Allie didn't want to interrupt him, even though there were a lot of questions she wanted to ask.

“It'll be the same old thing. He'll read the want ads and get every dog that people are giving away. ‘Free to a good home.'” He gave a bitter laugh. “He'll steal some fancy-breed dog like that one belongs to the teacher, if he thinks he can get away with it. He'll call it his moneymaker and say he's about to make big bucks. And then something will happen, just like always—”

L.J. stopped and shook his head angrily. “He just changes the name of his crummy business and starts all over. He thinks he's smart, but if he was so smart we wouldn't have to run away from every place we ever went.”

There was a long silence in the cab of the truck, and then L.J. spoke again. Standing up to his father seemed to have released feelings he'd been keeping inside for a long time. “After what happened to Belle at Cutler Creek—”

“Wait a second,” Allie interrupted. “Where's Cutler Creek?”

“It's not a place,” L.J. answered, sounding tired. “That's just the nice-sounding name the old man gave his business back then: Cutler Creek Kennels.”

Allie glanced quickly at Dub. Now they knew what the crossed-out word had been on Mr. Cutler's business card.

“It was a bunch of dogs shut up in plywood cages out in the yard in the blazing sun,” L.J. went on. “No creek. No water for miles around unless I carried it out in a bucket.”

“What happened there?” Allie asked quietly.

An expression of pain and fury passed over L.J.'s features. He didn't answer the question directly, but kept talking in the same low, tight voice. “After Belle died, Mom couldn't take it anymore. She ran off and took me with her, but we didn't get far. He came and got me. Stole me is more like it. She came for me again, but he got me back.” He gave that short, bitter laugh and added, “He always wins. Not that he wants me around, except to do stuff for him.”

L.J. had been speaking in a monotone, but his words grew suddenly louder and stronger. “Well, you know what, old man? I can't take it anymore, either. And I'm big enough now to cut out and never have to look at your face again.”

He reached for the door handle. When it appeared that he really was about to leave, Allie said, “L.J., wait!”

L.J. turned and his eyes focused on her for the first time since he'd begun talking. His dark eyes looked like two wounds.

Now that she had his attention, Allie didn't know what to say. She wanted to do something to change the awful things she'd just heard, but that was impossible. Nothing in her own life so far had prepared her for this moment. But she had to try something. It seemed like a good time for the truth.

“L.J.,” she whispered, “I think Belle knows what a good, brave thing you did tonight.”

At the mention of Belle, L.J.'s gaze grew even more intense. “I saw Belle in a dream,” Allie continued quickly. “She was in one of those plywood boxes, and she was sad and dirty and sick.”

Different emotions passed over L.J.'s face. Allie knew he must have witnessed the scene she had described, and that he had to be wondering how she could have seen it, too.

“I know this sounds crazy, L.J.,” Allie said. “But I see ghosts. And I saw Belle.”

L.J.'s expression became wary, as if he feared he was being made fun of.

“It's true, L.J.,” Dub said quietly.

Allie nodded and hurried on. “They—the ghosts—come to me for help. This is the third time it's happened. And this time, the ghost was a dog. I wasn't sure until now, but it was Belle.”

L.J. was listening hard. Allie could see how much he wanted to hear news of Belle, in spite of any doubts he might have about the existence of ghosts.

“When you had Belle, you made a sign for her crate, didn't you?” she asked. “You wrote each letter of her name with a different color crayon. It must have been a few years ago, because the letters looked like a younger kid had written them.”

L.J. had the haunted look of someone in the midst of a painful memory. “I was seven,” he whispered. “Belle was a great dog. She was
my
dog. She wasn't part of the lousy business. She was so pretty and so smart, you wouldn't believe how smart.”

He paused, making a choking sound. Then his eyes narrowed and he continued. “He couldn't stand it. He had to breed her. You shoulda seen her pups. They were so cute. Everybody wanted 'em. He began to make money, more than he'd ever made before. So he kept on breeding her. She needed to rest and get her strength back, but he kept on doing it, until—” He broke off then and looked away.

“L.J.,” said Allie, “Belle's ghost came back to stop your father from doing the same thing to other dogs. She tried in lots of ways to make me see what was going on. But it was hard—I mean, she couldn't talk, and I'd see these terrible pictures, but I couldn't tell what they meant. Then Dub and I thought we'd finally figured out what was going on, but when we came out with the police, your father tricked us. But, tonight—well, don't you see?
You did it
. You stopped him. Now Belle can rest in peace. I feel it. She's gone.”

It was true. Now that they had saved the dogs, Belle's ghost was no longer lingering in the world of the living. Her job was finished.

“For real?” L.J. asked in a whisper.

Allie nodded.

L.J. smiled then, a real smile, filled with happiness.

And for a moment he, too, seemed to be at peace. But then a shadow of fear passed over his face. “I gotta go,” he said, and reached once again for the door handle.

“L.J., no,” Allie and Dub both cried at the same time.

“Let's just go inside,” Dub urged. “Your father can't hurt you at the
police station
.”

“Dub's right, L.J.,” pleaded Allie. “Come in with us. We can get this all straightened out. You'll be safe.”

“You don't understand,” L.J. said in a resigned voice. “The only safe place for me is far away from him.”

“But he's going to be in big trouble,” Allie said. “He'll have to go to jail or something, won't he?”

“He's gotten in trouble plenty of times before,” L.J. said hopelessly. “And, somehow, he always talks his way out of it. Or there's not quite enough proof of anything to arrest him, or he runs. And then it's just him and me again, and somehow everything was my fault. No way. Not again.”

He opened the truck door, jumped down, closed the door, and looked back into the cab. He spoke quickly, saying, “All the towns we been to, I never got to know nobody much. But this place could have been different, maybe.” He hesitated, as if there might be more he wanted to say, then shook his head. Looking down, he mumbled, “Sorry about the teacher's dog and all.”

He walked a few paces and turned around. “Don't go inside yet, okay? Give me a chance to make tracks outta here.”

“Wait, L.J.!” Allie said. “Why don't you take the truck?”

He had broken into a run. Over his shoulder, he called, “Too easy to find me.”

A few seconds later, he disappeared.

“Are we going to just let him run away?” Allie asked when L.J. was out of sight.

She and Dub looked at each other, frozen with indecision. With each moment that passed, L.J. was farther away, and it was evident that they
were
, indeed, giving him the chance he had asked for.

The puppies in Allie's lap began to cry.

“Poor things,” she said. “I bet they're hungry.”

A knock on the window next to Dub startled them. “Hey, kids. You all right in there?”

A uniformed policeman was peering through the glass. Dub rolled down the window, and the policeman shone his light on them.

“Yes, sir,” Dub answered, squinting in the beam from the flashlight.

“I kept hearing dogs barking out here. What's going on? Who's driving?”

Allie and Dub glanced at each other. Dub murmured, “Here we go.”

“It's kind of a long story, Officer,” said Allie.

“How many dogs are back there?”

“Ten. Plus these puppies.”

“This got anything to do with that wild-goose chase Officer Burke went on earlier?” the policeman asked.

Allie saw Dub's face flush. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

The policeman sighed. “All right. Let's go inside.” He opened the door of the cab, and Dub and Allie got out. “Whew,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“It's the puppies,” Allie explained. “They're not very clean.”

With a grimace, the policeman said, “I can see this is going to be one of those nights.”

You can say that again,
thought Allie.

Inside the station, Allie and Dub related the bare bones of the story. Their parents were called, along with Ed McHugh from the Humane Society and Officer Burke. Both of Dub's parents came. Mr. Nichols came alone, while Allie's mother stayed with Michael.

As Allie and Dub related more and more details about what had happened, the station grew busier and noisier. Phone calls and radio dispatches were made at a frantic pace. A warrant was issued for Mr. Cutler's arrest. Teletypes and faxes including L.J.'s description and that of his father were sent out to every state from New York south. Even though neither L.J. nor his father had more than a half hour's lead, the police had concluded from Allie and Dub's story that either or both of the Cutlers might head south to Texas.

The dogs were loaded into the Humane Society van and taken to the shelter, where, Allie and Dub were told, they'd be cared for and held until L.J.'s father was found and charged.

To Allie's dismay, Hoover was taken, too.

“Just for tonight,” Ed McHugh explained. “We'll have a vet check her out thoroughly, and document her condition for the record. You can pick her up in the morning.”

It was almost 4 a.m. when Allie and her father got home. “I'm proud of you and Dub,” he told her as they headed up the stairs to bed. “And I'm glad you're safe. But tomorrow we're going to have to talk about this business of sneaking out of the house.” He kissed her good night and looked at her, his stern expression changing to one of wonder. “I can't believe you
bit
his arm.”

Allie laughed. “Neither can I.”

She fell into bed and slept, undisturbed by ghosts.

The next morning, Allie lay in bed, trying to imagine what L.J. was doing at that very moment. Where was he? Had he slept somewhere? Had he caught a ride with someone? Had he eaten? She said a silent prayer that he was safe and on his way to find his mother.

She heard voices and a hammering sound outside in the yard. When she looked out the window, she saw her parents, their neighbor Tom Wright, and Dub's father working together to fence in a portion of the Nicholses' back yard. Michael had made a fort out of the cardboard crate the sections of fence had come in, and was busy playing with his X-Men action figures.

Allie ran down the stairs and into the yard. “What are you guys doing?” she asked.

“Well, honey,” said her mother, “we began thinking that we can't have Hoover going back home, not with Mr. Cutler still on the loose. We can't take a chance by leaving her there alone, and we don't want you going over there to take care of her. So your dad was at the building supply store when they opened at seven this morning, and—” She shrugged and gestured to the fence. “She'll have to stay out here because of Michael, but I think she'll be fine until Mr. Henry gets back.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Allie said. “Thanks, everybody. Can I help?”

Mr. Whitwell handed her a spool of wire and some wire cutters and told her to cut pieces long enough to twist around the metal poles to hold the fencing in place. She had bent to the task when Michael came over, cupped his hands around her ear, and whispered, “I'm whispering 'cause this is secret.”

Allie smiled. “Okay.”

“I had a bad dream last night. I came to your room, but you weren't there.” He stared accusingly into Allie's eyes.

“I know, Mike. I'm sorry. I was trying to stop the bad things from happening.”

Michael nodded wisely. “I thought so. 'Cause the sad noises and the poopy smell are gone.”

“I know,” Allie said happily.

“Did
you
make them go away?”

“I had help from some friends,” she said.

Michael nodded, satisfied, and returned to his fort.

Dub walked across the yard then.

“Hi, Dub!” Allie called. “Where's your bike? Oh, I forgot. At the bean plant, with mine.”

“I had to walk all the way over here,” Dub said grumpily.

“Poor baby,” Mrs. Nichols teased. “You need some breakfast?”

“I had cereal,” said Dub. “But thanks.”

As they finished up work on the makeshift fence, they talked about what had happened. They were all careful to watch what they said in front of Michael, although he seemed completely occupied with a battle going on among the X-Men in the fort.

Mr. Nichols surprised Allie by saying, “Officer Burke sensed something wrong out at the Cutler house, but—”

Allie couldn't help interrupting. “She did?”

“Yes, but since you didn't find anything in the barn, she couldn't push it. She thought Mr. Cutler's behavior was fishy, though, and that Dub had a good point about the pine scent.”

“So she didn't think we were just a couple of stupid kids?” Dub asked.

“Not at all,” Mr. Nichols said. “And she said you gave her something, a business card with his former address in Georgia. That helped her look into his past. It turns out Mr. Cutler has a long history of this kind of crime, managing to stay one step ahead of the law and avoiding punishment, just as L.J. said. Also, L.J. missed a lot of school by moving around all the time, and his father had been brought up on charges for that, too, back in Georgia.”

Allie looked at Dub. “I bet that's why he made L.J. show up for the last two days of school.”

“Probably,” Mrs. Nichols agreed.

“Anyway,” Allie's father went on, “even before she knew all this, Officer Burke was planning to keep a sharp eye on Mr. Cutler. But she wanted to make sure you two stayed away from him. She thought he was potentially dangerous. And, as you discovered, she was right. There,” he added, pounding the last corner pole into place. “For now, we're going to have to just wire the corner shut. I've got to get to work.”

“I do, too,” said Dub's father. Turning to Dub and Allie, he said, “But first, I want to say that you two had no business sneaking out like that last night.”

“It was a very dangerous—and foolish—thing to do,” Mrs. Nichols said. “It could have turned out much worse. I don't even like to think of all the things that could have happened to you.” Her voice wobbled a little bit, and Allie's father put his arm around her.

“We're going to have to decide what the consequences will be,” he said to Allie, and she saw Mr. Whitwell nod in Dub's direction.

Oh well,
thought Allie,
at least we're in trouble together.

“But,” Mr. Nichols went on, “even though you broke the rules and were incredibly foolhardy—well, you ended up doing something good, something important. So we'll have to think about your punishment in light of that. Fair enough?”

Allie and Dub nodded.

They were left to finish wiring the fencing to the poles while the grownups hurried off to get ready for work. Mrs. Nichols said she would take Michael to the baby-sitter's, then drive Allie and Dub to the Humane Society to pick up Hoover.

“Can I trust you two to stay here today with Hoover while I'm at the store?” she asked.

“Yes, Mom,” Allie said sheepishly. Dub nodded.

“No daring rescues? No slipping off to solve a crime better left to the police?”

“No, Mom. Honest.”

“All right.”

Later, when Hoover had been given a clean bill of health by the vet, they brought her back to Allie's house. Mrs. Nichols made them promise again that they would stay put and behave themselves, and she went to work. Allie and Dub brought the hose around to the back yard, filled Michael's plastic kiddy pool, and gave Hoover a bubble bath. They spent the day in the fenced-in yard with her, playing catch and teaching her to balance a bone on her nose, hoping to make her forget her kidnapping and the hours she had spent in the bean plant.

“She seems just like her old self, don't you think?” Allie asked.

“Like nothing ever happened,” agreed Dub.

But a lot
had
happened, and continued to happen. For one thing, Allie and Dub were both grounded for a week. It wasn't too bad, they decided, because they were allowed to use the phone and the computer. They were supposed to be thinking about how dangerous their middle-of-the-night escapade had been, but what they mostly talked and thought and wondered about was L.J. and his father and Belle.

The day their confinement ended, they learned from Officer Burke that Mr. Cutler had been caught and was going to be prosecuted. They learned, too, that L.J. had made it to Texas and found his mother. Officer Burke said Mrs. Cutler had been trying for years to track her son down and get him back, but Mr. Cutler had always managed to elude her. She'd hounded the police and hired private detectives, and had just about run out of money and hope when L.J. showed up on her doorstep.

Everyone was happy with this news, but Allie and Dub longed to know more. Then, a week later, a letter with a Texas postmark arrived at Allie's house. The address read only “Ally Nickels, Seneca, New York.” Luckily, it was enough. Allie opened the letter, her hands trembling eagerly.

“Lamar?”
Dub said when Allie read the letter to him over the phone.

“That's what it says.”

“Wow, I can't believe he wrote us a letter.”

“I know. He sounds good, don't you think?”

“Yeah, being with his mom and getting a new dog and all.”

“So you want to come over? We can write back.”

“Be there in a minute.”

When Dub arrived, they sat at the picnic table on the back porch with a pencil and tablet.

“This'll be our rough draft,” Allie said.

Dub laughed. “Mr. Henry would be so proud.”

Their final draft said: