Who Stole Halloween? (10 page)

Bub set a bowl of soup in front of her, and she started shoveling. For a moment I understood what my mom means when she talks about “blessed silence.” But soon she slurped the last of her soup and started in again.

“Did you notice how Bub's doorbell worked so good when I rang it?” she said. “I'm the one that fixed it. Bub didn't pay me though, but I'm not saying I care, because some people don't have money like the Jensens do. My family has a lot of money because my dad earns thousands and thousands every year—I forget how many thousands—only my mom says the Jensens have an ungodly amount of money.
Ungodly
is a word that means ‘even more than us.' My mom also says—”

“Sophie?” Bub's expression was patient.

“Yes, Bub?”

“Sometimes the things mom says are best left with mom.”

It took a second for that to sink in. Then
Sophie said, “You mean I should shut the heck up?”

Bub nodded.

Sophie shrugged. “Okay.”

I got up and took Yasmeen's and my bowls to the kitchen. When I came back to the table, Bub was twiddling his thumbs, a sure sign he was thinking.

“Have you got an idea about the case?” I asked him.

He nodded. “Ah, yup. But I don't know what good it's gonna do you. Think a bit—except for Kyle's, what do the missing cats have in common?”

“The owners were negligent,” Yasmeen said.

Bub nodded. “So it seems like your thief is particularly after cats that aren't well taken care of. Now, why would that be?”

Of course I knew about the coincidence. But I hadn't thought much about what it might mean. And there was the problem that Kyle's cat Halloween didn't fit the pattern. Maybe because Halloween was stolen by a different thief? But
then I thought of something else. “Kyle's little sister didn't think
he
was taking good care of Halloween either!” I said. “Maybe she told other people, and—”

Bub nodded. “She was happy enough to tell the police.”

“So,” Yasmeen said, “it might be that the thief isn't really
stealing
cats. Maybe he's
rescuing
cats. Maybe he's a good guy, not a bad guy.”

“I don't know about that,” Bub said. “Stealing is stealing even if your motives are good. Think what would happen if everybody took it into their heads to ‘rescue' other folks' possessions.”

My mom would have to work even more overtime, I thought, and I was about to say so, but the phone rang and Bub got up from the table to answer it.

It is funny how sometimes one thing leads to another. Later, we found out it was Jo, Bub's niece, on the phone. Jo is a student at the university. The dryer in her dorm was broken. She called to ask if she could use Bub's.

If the dorm dryer hadn't broken, Jo wouldn't
have called. If Jo hadn't called, Bub never would have left us alone when he did.

And if Bub hadn't left us alone, Yasmeen would have told
him
her idea, and he would have said it was too risky, and we would have forgotten about it.

So in a way, everything that happened next was because the dryer in Jo's dorm at the university broke down two days before Halloween.

Yasmeen's crazy idea was this: Spread the word that Luau was a neglected cat, too, a cat that badly needed rescuing. College Springs is a dinky town. If we told enough people, pretty soon the thief would hear about it—same as he must have heard about Kyle “torturing” Halloween. When that happened, the thief would go after Luau.

“And that's when we get him!” Yasmeen said.

There was a pause, and during the pause I expected her to say, “Ha-ha.”

Only she didn't.

So finally I had to say,
“What?”

And Sophie said, “Wow, Yasmeen. I never saw before why people said you were smart, but now I finally see because that is just
so smart
—”

“Hey—aren't your lips supposed to be zipped?” I said.

“Don't be rude, Alex,” Yasmeen said. “Thank you, Sophie.”

“Oh, that's great, now you're ganging up on me, not to mention poor, innocent Luau. . . .”

My cat had been peacefully watching the glamorous leopard on TV, but now his ears perked up and he said, “
mrrrrf
,” which meant,
Did I hear my name mentioned?

“I admit the plan still has some bugs that need working out . . . ,” Yasmeen said.

“No, it doesn't,” I said. “No bugs because no plan. Not gonna happen.”

“Listen a minute,” said Yasmeen.

“No.”

“Seriously.”

“No.”

“We could fix it so Luau isn't in any danger,” she said. “We could be
really
careful.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head. Luau, meanwhile, jumped off the recliner and walked toward us. I expected him to hide under my chair—seeking protection from the crazy person with the crazy plan—but Luau, that traitor, jumped into Yasmeen's lap instead.

“See?” she said. “He's volunteering.”

“You get down from there!” I said.

Sophie interrupted. “I could keep him safe if I had the right equipment. I could ‘wire' him like the FBI does. You know, hide a radio transmitter on his body so we could hear whatever was happening to him—”

“That is totally insane,” I protested. “I mean, apart from everything else, don't you geniuses see the obvious problem? People wear clothes. Cats don't. Where are you going to hide a transmitter?”

“A collar would be enough,” Sophie said. “If the transmitter is small, it could dangle from it. Are there stores for teensy transmitters? I bet
I could take something apart. Like a wireless phone? Or a walkie-talkie? It has to use radio waves—”

As soon as Sophie said it, I remembered Yasmeen already had precisely the right source for such a transmitter. It was at her house, waiting to go back to Biggest Buy-Buy. Would Yasmeen remember it, too? I tried mental telepathy: Forget, forget, forget. . . .

It didn't work.

“The baby monitor!” Yasmeen said. “Mrs. Lee says it's
too
powerful! Plus it's really small. I've got it at home. Instead of returning it, we can sort of, you know,
borrow
it.”

“
Steal
it, you mean,” I said.

“We'll return it later—”

“After Sophie takes it apart?” I said.

Yasmeen shrugged. “We are not talking about Humpty-Dumpty, Alex. We are talking about simple electronics. After she takes it apart, she'll put it back together.”

I never officially changed my mind and agreed to go along with this nutso plan. But at some point
it became unavoidable, like a thunderstorm when the clouds bunch up. And when Bub came back from talking to Jo, I didn't tell him what was going on. Instead, the three of us—Yasmeen, Sophie, and I—looked at each other and it instantly became a kids-against-the-grown-ups alliance. I have noticed that this happens sometimes—usually when kids are about to do something totally clever that they know is also totally stupid.

Later, we finalized our plans. Sophie is the most spoiled kid on Chickadee Court, which for once was coming in handy. She was pretty sure her mom would buy her the collar if she said it was for one of her millions of stuffed animals. Meanwhile, Yasmeen would bring the baby monitor to Sophie's right away so she could work on modifying it for its new purpose. The big problem was that the transmitter's signal would need to be amplified. Sophie had an idea for doing this, but she wasn't sure it would work.

“There's one more job,” Yasmeen told Sophie. “And it's important. You have to tell everybody how badly Alex treats Luau.”

“But everybody knows about Luau and me,” I said. “Who would believe I treat him bad?”

“Badly,”
Yasmeen said. “And we've been over this. There's only one person who has to believe it, and that's the catnapper. We just start the rumor and wait. I know who I'm calling—Billy Jensen.”

I didn't say anything to my parents about the plan. I wasn't sure it was going to happen, for one thing. Telling them could wait. But there was someone I needed to consult right away. At bedtime he was sitting on my pillow with his favorite possession, the white ball of catnip.

“Was Yasmeen right today, Luau?” I asked him. “Were you volunteering when you jumped into her lap? You know it could be dangerous. You could end up catnapped yourself.”

Luau slithered beneath my sheet and blanket, purring. It took me a minute to understand, but when I did, I had to laugh.

“Luau Kitty,” I said, “goes
undercover
.”

I could have told you about seventy-five reasons this plan of Yasmeen's was bad. But there was one I never thought of—its effect on
me
. Billy Jensen was totally true to his reputation as the biggest blabbermouth in first grade, if not the entire school. He wasted no time spreading the rumor about how I mistreat Luau.

And Yasmeen hadn't left it at plain old “mistreat” either. She provided
details
. Supposedly, I buy Luau dog food instead of cat food because it's cheaper, and I make him sleep in the garage no matter how freezing it gets.

The next day, Thursday, it seemed like half the school wasn't talking to me. I even caught Mrs. Timmons glaring at me once, at the same time she brushed a few white cat hairs off her shoulder. One girl, a second-grader, hissed and clawed the air when she passed me in the hall.

“I'm really sorry, but it won't be for long,” Yasmeen told me at lunch. We were the only ones at the table because no one else wanted to sit with me. “And for now, you should be glad it's going so well.”

“I hope Sophie works fast,” I said.

“I talked to Sophie this morning after recess,” Yasmeen said. “She pitched one of her famous fits, and her mom went straight to the pet store for a cat collar. Sophie says those fits never fail. She thinks she can do the work today after school. The monitor should be ready by Halloween—tomorrow.”

I swallowed the last bite of my peanut butter sandwich and gulped some milk. “I think we should go over the plan again,” I said. “I'm not sure I've got it totally straight.”

Yasmeen nodded. “The catnapper usually strikes around midnight. So tomorrow after trick-or-treating, you'll put Luau's new collar on him and let him out.”

“Right,” I said.

“You've got the cat bed ready, right?”

“I can put it on the front step. For the catnapper it'll be like an invitation,” I said.

“Good,” Yasmeen said. “But just in case there's a problem, you'll have the baby monitor, the receiver half.”

“But that's only for emergencies,” I said.

“If everything goes the way I think it will,” Yasmeen said, “we won't even have to use it.”

“So Luau's safely in his bed . . . ,” I said, “and then comes the hard part.”

Yasmeen nodded. “You
have to
stay awake until 3
A.M
., watching out the window—making sure Luau's okay. Then, assuming he is, I take over. You'll know it's okay to go to sleep when I blink the lights in my bedroom. That means I'm on duty.”

“And if Luau's not still safe—if I see somebody in the yard . . .?”

“Shine a light!” Yasmeen said, just the way she would in church.

I laughed. “And what do you think will happen then,” I asked, “when I
shine a light
?”

“I
think
whoever it is will drop Luau and run, but by then we will have seen him.”

“Or her,” I said.

Yasmeen nodded. “And anyway, if he or she doesn't drop Luau, we've got the transmitter in the collar. What we hear will tell us where Luau is, and we'll rescue him.”

When I got home from school, my dad was in the kitchen making dinner. Usually a gourmet dinner by Dad means using stuff out of two cardboard boxes instead of one, but now he was looking at an actual cookbook.