Who Stole Halloween? (9 page)

I touched my forehead to see if it still hurt. It did. I think it was Dad's scrubbing that inflicted most of the damage, but it hadn't been such a hot idea to run into the tree in the first place.

“Anybody would've been scared,” I said. “Anybody would've run.”

“Anybody would not have run into a
tree
,” she said. “It takes the distinctive talents of my next-door neighbor Alex Parakeet to do that.”

“Can we change the subject?” I said.

“Absolutely,” Yasmeen said. “The new subject is how you're going to help me do Mrs. Lee a favor.”

“That wasn't the new subject I was thinking of,” I said, “but what favor?”

“We're supposed to return one of the baby monitors—the fancy one from Mrs. Jensen. Marjie Lee says it's too powerful. She keeps picking up cell phone conversations, and it's embarrassing.”

“But why are
you
doing this?” I asked her.

“
We
are doing this because my mom volunteered us,” Yasmeen said. “Come on, Alex. It's only over to Biggest Buy-Buy. We can walk there after school.”

There was no way carrying one baby monitor required two people. But there was also no way I was going to get out of this if Yasmeen had made up her mind. So I said, “Sure. Now can we talk about my subject?”

“Sure,” Yasmeen said.

“I told you about the gravestones, what they said?”

“Right,” said Yasmeen.

“Well, didn't it seem strange to you—especially Mr. Harvey's?”

“It's unusual,” she agreed, “but every Christian believes Jesus rose from the grave so that we will, too. Isn't that all he was saying?”

Something hit me. “Wait a second. Isn't that all
who
was saying?”

“Who else are we talking about?” Yasmeen said. “Gilmore Harvey.”

“Gilmore Harvey wrote what it said on Marianne's headstone. He was there to do it after she died. But
when
did he write his own?” I asked. “He died all of a sudden. It's not like he had time to be composing his own—what do you call it? An epo—?”

“An epitaph,” Yasmeen said slowly, like she was thinking as she spoke. “So unless he had it ready to go in advance, he didn't write it. Someone else did.”

“Someone else,” I repeated, “but who?”

“I don't know,” she said, still like she was thinking. But then her voice changed. “Look,
Alex, this is all ancient history, right? It's not helping us find the missing cats.”

“You sent me to the cemetery!” I protested.

“That was because I thought you might find a clue to what's going on in this century—the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. I think we better forget about the cemetery for now. Don't you want to hear about the baby? And Mr. Lee was even there.”

“Amazing.”

“That's what my mom said. You know what's kind of a weird coincidence? The baby's room is all decorated with pictures of cats—big ones like lions and cheetahs and lynxes. Mrs. Lee told us it's because of Mr. Lee's business.”

“What is his business anyway?” I asked. “All I know is that nobody ever sees him.”

“His business is exotic pets,” Yasmeen said. “He travels all over the world buying and selling. His customers are super-rich people who want something unusual.”

“Pets?” I said. “Yasmeen, what if . . . ?”

“What if what?”

“What if Mr. Lee has something to do with the missing cats?”

“You aren't listening, Alex. No offense to Luau, but there is nothing exotic about a house cat.”

“Not here in Pennsylvania,” I said, “but maybe somewhere house cats are exotic, or—what about this? What if he
does
something to them to make them exotic?”

There was a pause, and I could hear Yasmeen breathing. Then she said, “No. No way. If you ever got a chance to talk to Mr. Lee, you'd see. He's nice, really.”

My head hurt. And arguing with Yasmeen would only make it worse. So I didn't. But all the same, this is what I was thinking: Was Mr. Lee really the nice guy she thought he was? Or could he be a serial catnapper?

Mom walked into the family room as I was hanging up the phone. She was just getting home and still had her uniform on. She tried to smile at me and say, “Hi, honey,” but she was yawning, so her face got twisted and her words came out, “Hi-yuh-ee.” Then she took a good look and woke right up. “What on earth happened to your
head
?” she asked.

I touched the bandage. “Little accident. I'm okay.”

“Did your dad clean it up?” she asked.

“
Oh
, yeah,” I said. “I think he used steel wool.”

Mom looked sad. “I wish I had been home to do it, but somebody's got to make College Springs safe for decent people—and decent cats.”

“Anything new?” I asked.

“Another cat is missing,” Mom said.

“Another negligent owner?” I asked.

Mom dropped into the big, comfy chair, closed her eyes, and nodded. “I may never figure this one out, but at least you got a new vocabulary word.”

“And did this one see the thief in action?”

“Saw something, but no good description,” Mom said. “I swear, whoever this is moves like a ghost.”

My ears pricked up. “A ghost?” I said. “See, Mom. Maybe it really is—”

Mom silenced me with a look. Obviously, she did not want to hear any more from me about ghosts. Should I tell her my suspicion about Mr. Lee? But I didn't think she'd appreciate me suspecting our next-door neighbor without an atom of evidence either. So I asked a different question. “Did you have a chance to talk to Kyle's family?”

“For quite a while,” she said. “They were a positive joy after the other folks I've been visiting lately. Except that boy is morbid, don't you think? I asked what he does for fun, and he said, ‘I visit the cemetery across the street.' ”

“Did you notice anything else about Kyle?” I asked Mom. “Like was he—I dunno—
scared
of you or anything?”

I was thinking of how nervous he had seemed in the cafeteria when he told Yasmeen and me to stop detecting. If it scared him for
us
to investigate Halloween's disappearance, wouldn't he be terrified by a police detective asking questions?

“He did seem anxious,” Mom said. “But it fit in with him being an odd kind of kid. What did Fred call him? A Gloomy Gus?”

“What else did you find out?” I asked.

“That Fred Krichels was right about something else,” Mom said, “that little sister of his—Cammie. I think I am now a leading authority on the life of Cammie. She's making a unicorn out of play dough at preschool. Her favorite song is ‘The Cat Came Back.' ” Mom shook her
head and laughed. “Yah-yak-yak—gosh, a kid like that can get on your nerves!”

Shoot, I thought. Was my mom as bad as Officer Krichels? People who are little and annoying are not necessarily dumb, too. Mom pulled her notebook out of her back pocket and flipped through the pages.

“Here it is,” Mom said. “According to Cammie, Kyle
tortured
the poor cat.” She read from the notebook: “ ‘He always went around yanking Halloween's ears and pouring poison in them.' ”

“What?” I tried to picture pale, sad-faced Kyle hurting a fly, let alone his own cat.

Mom laughed, which wasn't precisely what I expected when she had just told me about a kid torturing a cat. “Alex,” she said, “haven't you ever yanked on Luau's ears and poured poison in them?”

I was shocked. “Of course not. Luau's my buddy!”

“Oh yes?” She was still smiling. “Let me ask you something else. Do the words
ear mites
ring a bell?”

Ohhhh
. Now I got it. Ear mites are tiny, itchy bugs. If your cat gets them, it goes crazy trying to scratch, so the vet gives you a bottle of eardrops. When I gave them to Luau, he hated it—kept trying to wriggle away while I held tight.

“Cammie must have seen Kyle treating the ear mites and thought he was torturing his cat,” I said.

Mom nodded. “Plus she's a typical kid, loved tattling on her big brother. I double-checked with his parents. They even showed me the bottle from the vet.”

Good old Mom. She had solved one mystery, at least. Kyle did love his cat. You would never go to the trouble of “yanking its ears and pouring poison in them” if you didn't.

The next day turned out to be one of those unusual ones where everything we did in school actually required the use of my brain. That meant I didn't have a chance to think about who stole Halloween—not to mention five other cats—till Yasmeen and I were on our way home.

As we turned the corner onto Chickadee Court my stomach rumbled. Dad hadn't made it to the grocery store yesterday, so instead of a sandwich there was a Ziploc bag of Pirate Berry Crunch in my lunch. And Pirate Berry Crunch just doesn't stick with you.

Thinking of soup, I said, “What if we talk to Bub again?”

Yasmeen was hungry, too. “Good idea.”

Bub had another guest in his living room when we walked in. This one was curled up on the recliner with his head resting on the remote. On TV was a black-and-white movie with the sound turned down. In it a pretty lady on scaffolding was trying to fix a big dinosaur skeleton.

Bub nodded at the set. “
Bringing Up Baby
,” he said. “ ‘Baby' is a leopard—and from the feline point of view, a dish. Luau purrs every time she comes on.”

Luau heard his name, stretched, and rolled over, exposing his tummy. I tickled him, and he
mrrrrow
ed and batted at my hand, which meant,
Please, Alex, not in front of the neighbors!

Bub served us lentil soup and sat down at the head of the table. “How's the other guy look?” he asked me.

It took me a second to realize he was talking about the Band-Aid on my forehead. “The other guy was a tree,” I said.

Bub nodded thoughtfully. “There's been a lotta that lately,” he said, “trees attacking innocent kids. I saw it on Fox.”

Bub tried to keep his face straight but couldn't. He laughed and laughed, which made me laugh, too. Yasmeen shook her head like we were a couple of kindergartners. Finally Bub wiped the tears from his face with a paper towel and asked us how the case was going.

“We're kind of at a dead end,” Yasmeen said. Then she told him about the missing cats with their negligent owners and about Halloween's ear mites. She did not tell him about Mr. Lee, I noticed. She still thought I was crazy to suspect he might be stealing cats for his exotic pet business.

“Still no sign of a ransom note, though?” Bub said.

“Mom said Kyle seemed anxious,” I told him. “But he didn't say anything about a ransom note. And I guess none of the other cat owners did either.”

Yasmeen and I were finishing our soup when we heard the doorbell ring. Officer Krichels? Al,
the delivery man? It could even have been Dad. “Come on in, it's open!” Bub called, and into Bub's house walked the last person we wanted to see, Sophie Sikora.

I looked at Yasmeen, who looked at me, and our identical expressions said,
Oh, no
.

On her way in, Sophie bumped the recliner, which made Luau
mrrrrrow
. When she got to where we were sitting at the table, she ran into that, too. It's a good thing our bowls were almost empty, or there would have been a couple of soup tsunamis right into our laps.

“Hey, Bub!” Sophie greeted us. “Hey, Yazzie and Al! What's the haps?”

Nobody calls me “Al.” And my dad is the only person allowed to call Yasmeen “Yazzie.” We both opened our mouths to set Sophie straight, but she kept right on talking. “
I
just fixed Billy's remote control jeep,” she said. “Mrs. Jensen paid me, too. It was a whole
lot
she paid me, but I can't tell you how much, because you'd be
so
jealous, and my mom says I shouldn't brag, even though my dad says it's okay provided you have
something to brag
about
, like I do, because I'm so good at fixing stuff, so how much she paid me was ten dollars.”