The Secret of Rover (7 page)

There was a brief silence.

“Bowden, please. Sandra and Alan—they're staying there. They're guests.”

Another silence. Now David was frowning.

“You do—they are. They have a baby. They're the ones who just adopted!”

“David, ask to speak to the manager.” Hadn't their father said everybody there knew them?

“May I speak to the manager?” said David. “Hello . . . hello, I want to speak to someone in charge—is that you?”

For a moment David was silent, with the phone still clutched to his ear. Then the blood drained from his face, and slowly, without saying another word, he hung it up.

“They have never heard of Mr. and Mrs. Bowden,” he said woodenly. “There are no such people at their hotel.”

“Did you speak to the manager?” It simply could not be. “Give me that!” demanded Katie. “I'm trying their cell again!”

“Is it raining yet?” called Trixie from the hallway.

“Oh!” cried Katie, and her fingers once again stumbled.

“Thunder and lightning!” added Trixie.

Now the trembling in Katie's fingers was so wild that she almost could not dial at all. With an enormous effort she mastered herself and again she heard her parents' number ringing. And this time—on the third ring—someone picked up.

“They're there!” she cried. “Mom? Mom? Trixie, she's—”

But Katie broke off. As David watched her face, a pit seemed to open in his stomach.

“What?” she gasped. “Where? Where are—” Katie gave a short shriek and dropped the phone. David lunged for it, but he was too late—he could already hear the tone that said it had been hung up.

“They're gone,” said Katie desperately.

“What are you talking about?”

“A man answered. A foreign man. He told me he and some other guys have them—the baby, too. He said to stop calling. He said to tell no one or we'll never see them again. He said they'd kill them if we do—oh, David! He just said that and then he hung up! He sounded awful—David, they're gone!”

“You mean like kidnapping?” said David. “They're kidnapped—Mom and Dad and Theo?”

At this, a triumphant voice floated through the door from the hallway. “How are Mom and Dad?” sang Trixie. “How're they doing?”

“Trixie,” said David, as the terrible realization washed over him. “They're kidnapped, and she knew. She's probably in on the whole thing! That's probably why she's here! She's
not
a nanny! She's—she's a—”

“David, who cares about her now?”

“Because she's one of them, Kat! Mom and Dad are kidnapped, and one of the kidnappers is here and she's in charge! And—” The many pieces of this nightmare now
flooded into David's understanding; everything suddenly made sense. “And she's spent hours on their computer. She knows everything about them now. She knows all about Rover—Rover!”

David grabbed Katie's arm and his words tumbled out. “That's what this is about. It's a political thing in Katkajan; they're insurgents or something and they want Rover! They—”

“Rover? David, what if they kill our parents? What if Mom and Dad never come home?”

“They will come home. We'll get them home.”

“How?” Now Katie, too, began to understand. “David, think! It's not just Trixie and the guys in Katkajan. It's got to be all those people who were here last night—they're all part of this!” Yet another dreadful truth occurred to Katie. “And they were celebrating! They all did this, and then they had a party! That's what that was!”

“And the agency's in on it too—the agency that sent Trixie. And the people at that hotel,” said David. “They all knew. No wonder Mom and Dad were the only guests! We're going to fix this,” he continued wildly. “We're going to save them. We're going to bring them home!”

“David,
how
?”

“We'll get help. We need to call the police.”

“David, that man said they'd kill Mom and Dad! Mom and Dad and Theo, too! We can't tell anyone!”

“That's right!” called Trixie from the hallway. “You want your mom and dad to live? You don't—tell—
anyone
!”

“Oh!” cried Katie in fear and distress. “She's listening to every word!”

“True that! And now she's
opening the door
!” retorted Trixie. As she spoke they heard a pin twist in the keyhole and indeed, the door burst open.

Trixie's squat frame filled the doorway. The weird, slippery grin was stretched across her face, but now, for the first time, it betrayed a maniacal trace of actual pleasure. And while the phony Trixie had been awful, the happy Trixie was infinitely worse.

She put her fists on her hips and the grin faded as slowly, appraisingly, she looked around Katie's room. Her eyes came to rest on the phone, which lay on the floor where Katie had dropped it. She held out one hand.

“I'll take that,” she announced. “Since you don't really need it anymore.” Her grin returned as she expanded on this apparently comical idea. “You don't need that phone,” she amplified, “'cause you're not calling anybody. Seeing as how there's no one
to
call. Since there's nobody
there
.” And she laughed.

Her laugh sounded like splintering glass. So this is humor Trixie-style, thought David, appalled.

“Phone!” Trixie commanded, as they had not yet complied. Slowly, eyes down, Katie handed it over.

“Now, just you listen,” said Trixie, pocketing the phone in Mrs. Bowden's robe. “You listen to my rules. You're all done with that pool. Today you're staying home. Tomorrow, too. It's time you did a little work around here. That way you won't be in my hair.”

This was too much for David. “Like we've been bothering you!”

“We've barely seen you!” cried Katie.

The black brows rose. “Oh, are you talking back?” asked Trixie. “Let me see . . . where exactly are your mother and your father? Who has them, anyway?”

It worked. Katie shot an anguished gaze at her brother and both children fell silent.

Trixie observed their cooperation with satisfaction. “Now,” she said, “you mosey on down and fix up that kitchen. It's just a mess!” And laughing her brittle laugh, she turned to waddle from the room.

But their mother's robe was too long for Trixie's short body and the fabric tangled about her legs as she did so. At the very moment when she reached down to jerk it into place, the familiar black shape slithered silently between her ankle and the doorframe and the soft fur brushed her hand.

Trixie shrieked in terror and withdrew her hand as if it had been burnt. Leaping aside, she drew back her leg and dealt Slank a swift and vicious kick.

He yelped and fled under Katie's bed.

“Oh!” Katie's hands balled into fists and, enraged, she turned on Trixie to deliver a piece of her mind. But she stopped short with her mouth open as she remembered Trixie's threat: Don't talk back. Remember who has your mother and your father.

Katie turned her burning gaze to the ground, breathing deeply.

It was not even possible to find and comfort Slank. Instead she and David slowly followed Trixie from the room and downstairs to the filthy kitchen.

They would not talk back—not yet. But they would get rid of her. They would send her packing, they would free their parents and their sister and they would get even.

They would find a way.

That day people came.

The first to come was Katie and David's piano teacher, and with her went their first hope.

Not, of course, that this hope had been very specific. It had been more of a feeling that the teacher's presence in the house would be an opportunity for
something
. The feeling had begun to stir in them in the kitchen, as they had scooped the revolting mess from the previous night's pizzafest into the trash. That was when Katie had reminded David in low tones that today was Thursday and Mrs. Ivanovna would be ringing the doorbell at nine thirty.

Each of them would be alone with her at the piano
bench for forty-five minutes. Neither of them was sure what they would say or do in that time. After all, they knew that telling was forbidden and might mean danger for their parents. But Mrs. Ivanovna was an adult and she was not from Katkajan, and they awaited her arrival with desperate eagerness.

By nine fifteen they were back upstairs and were straining their ears for the sound of the bell. It rang at 9:31.

Trixie was in the hall and they heard her sharp response to the sound. “Who's that?” she called.

With studied casualness, both kids emerged from David's room and headed for the stairs. But they were not to reach them.

“Where do you think you're going?” demanded Trixie, clomping into view and cutting them off.

“It's just Mrs. Ivanovna, Trixie,” Katie said. “It's our piano teacher. Today's our lesson.”

“I don't think so?” said Trixie, and their hearts sank.

The bell rang again and Trixie thumped downstairs toward the door. Creeping to the landing, the children heard her open it and inform the startled woman outside that lessons had been permanently canceled. Hadn't Mr. and Mrs. Bowden told her? Katie and David no longer studied piano.

Their teacher's words did not carry upstairs, but the
consternation in her kind voice did. Tears smarted behind Katie's eyes at the sound of it. Good Mrs. Ivanovna! What would she think of them? And who would help them now?

Their teacher's voice was the last kind sound that David and Katie heard that day. The others—the Katkajanians—began to arrive at noon. The children, who watched these arrivals unnoticed from the top of the stairs, observed with surprise and alarm that they all brought luggage.

The first to come was a woman, as squat and square as Trixie herself. Trixie emerged from her usual haunt in the office and met this unknown person with a snort of recognition and a rapid slurry of foreign words. The stranger tossed a bulging and battered suitcase under the hall table and at once retreated with Trixie to the kitchen. The sounds of cupboards banging and chairs scraping immediately followed.

Soon afterward a man rang the bell. Just as if it were her own home, the new woman wandered out from the kitchen to admit him. She gestured to her suitcase and the man dropped his long, lumpish duffel beside it. Exchanging rapid chatter in Katkajanian, these two left the door slightly ajar before retreating again to the kitchen, where they were greeted with shrill ecstasy by Trixie.

“The door's standing open!” whispered David. But Katie, hearing wheels and brakes on the driveway, hastily shushed him. And indeed, moments later another man
and another woman let themselves into the Bowdens' house.

“We're up to five,” said David grimly.

“There were more than that last night,” replied his sister. “How much do you want to bet they're all coming back?”

It was starting to sound like a party in the kitchen. They heard the TV snap on and the sound of someone reading the news begin to drone beneath the rising chatter of voices.

“David, did you see that last woman—the one who came with the guy?” Katie was sprawled on the hall carpet. She stared downstairs between two railings that she gripped with both hands.

“What about her?”

“She's not Katkajanian. She's American. Or at least,” Katie added, recalling the woman's lank, colorless hair and gray face, “she looks like she is.”

“So? So they have an American with them. Big deal.”

“It's a very big deal,” said Katie testily, “because maybe she won't speak Katkajanian.”

“And this is important because . . . ?” David raised his brows and spoke with elaborate patience, as if dealing with someone very dense. Katie's anger flared.

“Because then they'll have to talk to her in English! Which we understand. So maybe we can hear it and figure something out,
duh
! Don't start on me, David! You aren't that smart.”

“
You
aren't that smart. I already thought that about the English—it's obvious,” said David, lying.

“Right.”

“But it won't matter what language they're using, because we won't hear. They're not going to let us listen. You think we're going to get within earshot of the kitchen?”

“Aren't you forgetting something else?” said Katie acidly. “Like, um, the vents?”

“Oh!” This idea was too stunning in its excellence for David even to pretend he'd also thought of it. “That's great,” he admitted, excited. “Let's go.”

The kids had discovered soon after moving to their new house that the same vents that carried heat and air-conditioning from room to room also carried sound. You couldn't hear anything just by walking around, but if you lay on the floor and pressed your ear straight to them, sometimes you could.

Katie was still thinking. Each vent connected only to certain rooms. The vent in the kitchen connected to their parents' bedroom. “We'd have to be in Mom and Dad's room,” she said. “And that's where all Trixie's stuff is. She really wouldn't want us in there.”