Who Stole Halloween? (15 page)

“What are you doing?” I said.

Her answer was to brandish the Band-Aids she always keeps with her. “Will these work?” she asked Sophie.

“Yeah—yeah, probably. Give 'em over.” Sophie grabbed and a second later had ripped three Band-Aids open. Their wrappers fluttered to earth, and Jeremiah, who would never be a litterbug, retrieved them. Meanwhile, Sophie wrapped the Band-Aids around the receiver and pressed the switch. Instantly, there was a jumble of squawks, shrieks, and hisses.

What was going on?

“Maybe the receiver's still broken?” I said.

Sophie shook her head. “No, it's working okay. Whatever we're hearing”—she took an anxious breath—“that's what's happening to Luau.”

The noises were awful. Bumping, crashing, glass breaking. The constant squawk and hiss. Every once in a while, like an exclamation point, the earsplitting shriek that was Luau's meow.

It took Jeremiah to point out something totally obvious: “That doesn't sound like sleeping.”

Relief flooded over me. “Of course!” I said. “That's what's happening—Luau is running from her. We're hearing the chase scene!”

“Run, Luau, run!” Yasmeen said, and Sophie and Jeremiah joined in.

“Shhh,” I said. “Listen. What's that? A new noise . . .” This one was a rhythmic squeak. It had started slow—
squeak
, pause,
squeak
, pause,
squeak
, and then gotten faster—
squeak
,
squeak
,
squeak
, and now
sque-sque-sque
. . . . This was so hard, trying to understand what was going on only from sounds. This sound was familiar, but what did it remind me of? I scrinched up my eyes and concentrated, looking for the matching memory in my brain. I couldn't find it.

But Jeremiah could. “That's Arnold,” he said simply.

Sophie, Yasmeen, and I looked at him, not understanding. “Jeremiah?”

“You know, our class pet. The hamster. That's him. That's his wheel.”

In your whole life you have never seen a cat, a bumblebee, an angel, and a peanut butter sandwich run as fast as we did. In fact, I was standing, out of breath, on Miss Deirdre's front porch before I had time to think about what I was supposed to do when I got there.

Sophie still had the receiver—now so close to the transmitter, the sound was really clear. Knowing at last who the catnapper was, I couldn't believe I hadn't recognized her sing - songy voice sooner.

She was speaking now: “That's it, kitty cat. Stay right there. Now I've got you.”

“Ring the bell! Ring the bell! Hurry!” I said.

Sophie punched the button with her fist. The result was weird: We heard the bell ring indoors through the receiver at the same time we heard it ring outdoors in real life. And then we heard Miss Deirdre say, “
Drat
—what a time for trick-or-treaters!”

“Turn off the receiver!” Yasmeen whispered to Sophie, who quickly pressed the button.

And then the door opened.

I'm not sure what I expected. I guess I thought Miss Deirdre would look all of a sudden gigantic, or monstrous, or scary. But instead, standing in the doorway smiling brightly, she was plain old Miss Deirdre, the ditzy preschool teacher, Marjie Lee's nice friend who lived around the corner. It was totally hard to get that she was also the person who stole all those cats, who stole
my
cat, the person who a few minutes ago was threatening to send Luau “night-night.”

“My, aren't the four of you darling!” she said to us. “Isn't that my little Jeremiah? And your sister and her friend, too! And what's your name, dear?”

“Sophie Sikora,” Sophie answered.

“Well, you're a dear little angel, and I bet you're hoping for some treats, aren't you?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Sophie. “Only . . . I hope you don't mind, but Jeremiah's got to use the bathroom really,
really
bad. Can we come in?”

Jeremiah looked up at Sophie. “No, I don't have to—”

To shut him up, Sophie patted his head, only it was more like she thumped him. “I know it's embarrassing, Jeremiah, but she's your teacher, right? She knows about this kind of junk.” Then she smiled up at Miss Deirdre, whose own smile was all of a sudden pretty fake looking.

“Uhhhh . . . ,” Miss Deirdre said. “Well, of course, I
am
a child development professional, but my house is at sixes and sevens right now, and—”

“That's okay. My mother”—using Jeremiah as a battering ram, Sophie pushed past Miss Deirdre and into the house, talking all the while—“is a terrible housekeeper! Do you have cats? We have a cat. And her fur . . .”

Yasmeen and I, full of admiration, couldn't do anything but follow.

Inside, Miss Deirdre's smile disappeared and
her eyes darted corner to corner. From the stand next to the front door, she pulled a big black umbrella, then held it by her side.

Sophie pretended not to notice anything strange. “Bathroom's uh . . . 
that way
, huh?” she said, and shoved Jeremiah ahead of her.

“Wait! No!”
Miss Deirdre said.

Sophie paid no attention to her, just kept walking toward the back of the house. Most of the lights were off, but there was a room on the right that was all lit up. Through the doorway I could see it didn't have regular furniture in it but counters and stools, and on the counters were glittering glass containers of all sizes. I didn't see more, because Miss Deirdre dashed ahead of us and slammed the door shut.

“The bathroom,” she said, shooing us back toward the front door, “is down
that
hallway and—”

She never finished giving directions. From below us came a for-real caterwauling like you wouldn't believe. And leading the chorus was a familiar voice, my own Luau, the undercover
kitty:
It's about time you got here, guys! We felines in the basement could use a bit of rescue!

Miss Deirdre's rosy cheeks went pale, but she wasn't giving in. “Only my kitties.” She tried to smile. “You'll just excuse me a minute, children, while I gather them up? You see, they're not well socialized. I wouldn't want any precious children to be scratched.”

“That's okay,” Sophie said. “We
love
cats.”

Desperate, Miss Deirdre ceased to be the so-sweet preschool teacher. Her eyes flared, and she held up the umbrella like a weapon. “You two stop
now
. No more nonsense.”

The change in Miss Deirdre even intimidated Sophie. She stopped in her tracks and pulled Jeremiah close to protect him.

Would Miss Deirdre really have conked Sophie with the umbrella?

Would she have catnapped
us
?

Or would Sophie have displayed unexpected martial arts skills that saved the day?

I will never know because two things happened, one right after the other.

The first cracked all us kids up—and you can't simultaneously battle a catnapping preschool teacher and crack up.

Through a doorway at the far end of the house came six cats, single file. The last in line was Luau, looking like his big-shouldered, muscley self. The others—well, they were the hilarious part. Each one was wearing his own little rainbow sweater, for one thing. And underneath, from tip of nose to tip of tail, each was as bald and pink as a watermelon jelly bean.

The other thing that happened was Mom. Lights flashing and siren blaring, she pulled up outside—with Officer Krichels right behind her.

No surprise that Mom had a lot of questions for Miss Deirdre. But Miss Deirdre wouldn't talk without a lawyer. So Officer Krichels drove her downtown to the police station. Then Mom called Sophie's parents and the Popps.

“They're fine,” she said into the phone. “I'll bring them home as soon as animal control comes for the cats.”

While we waited for Mom, Yasmeen, Sophie, Jeremiah, and I sat on the sofa in Miss Deirdre's family room, bald kitties draped all over us, snuggling for warmth. At first, it had been more than
creepy to touch these strange alien creatures in their fuzzy rainbow sweaters, but now we were getting used to it. If you focused on their eyes, you could almost remember they were cats.

“I have thought and thought, and I still can't figure out what Miss Deirdre was doing,” Yasmeen said. “Why did she shave them?”

“Why did she steal them in the first place?” Sophie said.

“I'm just glad nobody's pushing me around anymore,” Jeremiah said, glaring at Sophie.

“I'm sorry, kid, but it was an emergency,” she said.

“I thought you were really brave,” I told her.

Sophie looked at me, like she expected me to say more.

“And I am really sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean it when I said we shouldn't have let you help. I was just so frustrated. I thought I was never going to get Luau back.”

Luau twisted in my lap and looked up at me, which meant,
That would be enough to drive anyone over the edge
.

Sophie looked like she didn't think I was quite sorry enough. “Okay, I guess,” she said. “But it was a terrible thing to say after all the work I did. And I had to spend my own money at the hardware store, too. I had to buy—” She started to detail the teensy-weensy parts she had purchased to transform the baby monitor, and all their prices. It was not very interesting, so I interrupted her.

“Did anybody else notice that weird room? Miss Deirdre sure closed the door fast.”

Yasmeen moved the kitties on her lap aside, stood up, and grinned. “Who else wants to take a look?”

“I'm in,” I said. “Mom's still on the phone. Don't touch anything, Sophie.”

The room was toward the back of the house. I pulled my sleeve over my hand so I wouldn't get fingerprints on the knob. When I opened the door, the lights were still on.

“What
is
all this stuff?” I asked.

Yasmeen was looking around, shaking her head. “I know what it looks like,” she said. “A
laboratory. My aunt works in one at the hospital.” She pointed at a machine that looked like a mini-merry-go-round. “That's a centrifuge,” she said. “And this one is an autoclave—for sterilizing test tubes and stuff.”

“What I don't get is why a preschool teacher would have a room like this in her house,” Sophie said. “It's like she was a mad scientist or something.”

“She made really good play dough,” Jeremiah said.

I walked farther inside. On one counter I found Ziplocs full of dried green stuff like the herbs Bub keeps for soup. On a shelf above these were three larger Ziplocs full of something that looked like white fur. Next to these was a cardboard box labeled G
EL
C
APSULES
and a neat row of yellow pill bottles.

“These are like the ones my dad got from Mr. Blanco,” I said.

Then I looked again. Were they
like
the ones my dad got from Mr. Blanco? Or were they the
very same ones
my dad got from Mr. Blanco?

A second later, I had my answer. “What does
this say?” Jeremiah held up a white label printed with black letters.

Yasmeen read over his shoulder. “H
OMESPUN
R
EMEDIES
—E
YESIGHT
.”

And suddenly the whole thing made sense—more or less. We were standing in the lab where my dad's eyesight pills were manufactured. And what were they manufactured from? Cat fur, that's what! Miss Deirdre was stealing cats, shaving them, and using their fur as an ingredient in the pills. Cats have great eyesight, so the homespun idea would be that a dose of their fur would improve people's eyes, too.

It was a pretty lame idea, and I couldn't say I was real surprised that Dad's eyes were as bad as ever. I smiled when I thought of what he would say when he found out his miracle pills were full of cat fur.