Hoot (10 page)

Mullet Fingers stared straight ahead, his eyes narrowing.

“I don't get it,” Roy said. “Why would you try crazy stuff like that? Who cares if they build a stupid pancake house here?”

The boy's head snapped around and he froze Roy with a cold look.

Beatrice spoke up. “My stepbrother got bit by the dogs because his arm got stuck when he reached through the fence. Now ask me why he was reaching through the fence.”

“Okay. Why?” Roy said.

“He was putting out snakes.”

“The same snakes from the golf course? The cottonmouths!” Roy exclaimed. “But why? You trying to kill somebody?”

Mullet Fingers smiled knowingly. “They couldn't hurt a flea, them snakes. I taped their mouths shut.”

“I'm so sure,” Roy said.

“Plus I glued sparkles on the tails,” the boy added, “so they'd be easy to spot.”

Beatrice said, “He's telling the truth, Eberhardt.”

Indeed, Roy had seen the sparkling tails for himself. “But come on,” he said, “how do you tape a snake's mouth closed?”

“Real carefully,” said Beatrice, with a dry laugh.

“Aw, it ain't so hard,” Mullet Fingers added, “if you know what you're doin'. See, I wasn't tryin' to hurt them dogs—just rile 'em up.”

“Dogs do
not
like snakes,” Beatrice explained.

“Makes 'em freak out. Bark and howl and run around in circles,” her stepbrother said. “I knew the trainer would drag 'em outta here soon as he saw the cottonmouths. Those Rottweilers ain't cheap.”

It was the wildest plan Roy had ever heard.

“The only part I didn't count on,” said Mullet Fingers, eyeing his bandaged arm, “was gettin' bit.”

Roy said, “I'm almost afraid to ask, but what happened to your snakes?”

“Oh, they're fine,” the boy reported. “I came back and got 'em all. Took 'em to a safe place and let 'em go free.”

“But first he had to peel the tape off their mouths,” said Beatrice, chuckling.

“Stop!” Roy was completely exasperated. “Hold on right there.”

Mullet Fingers and Beatrice looked at him matter-of-factly. Roy's head was spinning with questions. These kids must be from another world.

“Would one of you please tell me,” he begged, “what's all this got to do with
pancakes
? Maybe I'm dense, but I really don't get it.”

Grimacing, the boy rubbed his bloated arm. “It's simple, man,” he said to Roy. “They can't put a Mother Paula's here for the same reason they can't have big ole nasty Rottweilers runnin' loose.”

“Show him why,” Beatrice said to her stepbrother.

“Okay. Gimme the hamburger.”

Roy handed over the package. Mullet Fingers peeled off the plastic wrapper and scooped out a handful of ground beef, which he carefully rolled into six perfect little meatballs.

“Follow me,” he said. “But try and be quiet.”

The boy led Roy to a hole in a grassy patch of ground. At the entrance of the hole, Mullet Fingers placed two hamburger balls.

Next he walked to an identical-looking hole on the other side of the lot and left two more meatballs there. He followed the same ritual at another hole in a far corner of the property.

Peeking into one of the dark tunnels, Roy asked, “What's down there?”

In Montana, the only animals that dug holes like that were gophers and badgers, and Roy was positive there weren't many of those in Florida.

“Hush,” the boy said.

Roy trailed him back to the bulldozer, where Beatrice remained perched on the blade, cleaning her eyeglasses.

“Well?” she said to Roy.

“Well, what?”

Mullet Fingers tapped him on the arm. “Listen.”

Roy heard a short high-pitched
coo-coo
. Then, from across the open lot, came another. Beatrice's stepbrother rose stealthily, tugged off his new sneakers, and creptforward. Roy followed closely.

The boy was grinning through his fever when he signaled for them to stop. “Look!”

He pointed toward the first burrow.

“Wow,” Roy said, under his breath.

There, standing by the hole and peering curiously at one of the meatballs, was the smallest owl that he had ever seen.

Mullet Fingers chucked him gently on the shoulder. “Okay—
now
do you get it?”

“Yeah,” said Roy. “I get it.”

ELEVEN

Officer David Delinko had made a habit of driving past the construction site every morning on the way to the police station, and again every afternoon on his way home. Sometimes he even cruised by late at night if he went out for a snack; conveniently, there was a minimart only a few blocks away.

So far, the policeman hadn't seen much out of the ordinary except for the scene earlier that day: a wild-eyed man waving a red umbrella and chasing several giant black dogs around the property. The foreman of the Mother Paula's project had said it was a K-9 training exercise, nothing to be alarmed about. Officer Delinko had no reason to doubt it.

Even though he'd hoped to capture the vandals himself, the policeman agreed it was an excellent idea for the pancake-house company to put up a fence and post some guard dogs—surely that would scare off potential intruders.

That afternoon, after another eight dull hours of desk duty, Officer Delinko decided to swing by the Mother Paula's site once more. Two hours of daylight remained, and he was eager to see those attack dogs in action.

He got there expecting a mad chorus of barking, but the place was strangely silent; no sign of the dogs. Walking the outer perimeter of the fence, the patrolman clapped his hands and shouted, in case the animals were hiding under Curly's trailer or snoozing in the shade of the bulldozing equipment.

“Boo!” yelled Officer Delinko. “Yo, Fido!”

Nothing.

He picked up a two-by-four and clanged it against a metal fence post. Again, nothing.

Officer Delinko returned to the gate and checked the padlock, which was secure.

He tried whistling, and this time he got an unexpected response:
Coo-coo, coo-coo
.

Definitely not a Rottweiler.

The policeman saw something move inside the enclosure, and he strained to see what it was. At first he thought it was a rabbit, because of its sandy brown coloring, but then it suddenly lifted off the ground and swooped from one corner of the property to another, finally landing on the cowling of a bulldozer.

Officer Delinko smiled—it was one of those stubborn little burrowing owls that Curly had complained about.

But where were the guard dogs?

The patrolman stepped back and scratched his chin. Tomorrow he'd stop by the trailer and ask the foreman what was going on.

As a warm breeze swept in, Officer Delinko noticed something fluttering at the top of the fence. It looked like a streamer from one of the survey stakes, but it wasn't. It was a ragged strip of green cloth.

The policeman wondered if somebody had gotten their shirt snagged on the wire mesh while climbing over the fence.

Officer Delinko stood on his tiptoes and retrieved the torn piece of fabric, which he carefully placed in one of his pockets. Then he got into his squad car and headed down East Oriole.

 

“Faster!” shouted Beatrice Leep.

“I can't,” Roy panted as he ran behind her.

Beatrice was pedaling the bicycle she'd taken from the rack at Trace Middle. Mullet Fingers was slumped across the handlebars, barely conscious. He had become dizzy and fallen from the fence as they were hurrying to leave the construction site.

Roy could see that the boy was getting sicker from the infected dog bites. He needed a doctor right away.

“He won't go,” Beatrice had declared.

“Then we've got to tell his mother.”

“No way!” And off she'd ridden.

Now Roy was trying to keep her in sight. He didn't know where Beatrice was taking her stepbrother, and he had a feeling she didn't know, either.

“How's he doing?” Roy called out.

“Not good.”

Roy heard a car and turned his head to look. Coming up behind them, barely two blocks away, was a police cruiser. Automatically Roy stopped in his tracks and began waving his arms. All he could think about was getting Mullet Fingers to the hospital, as soon as possible.

“What're you doing!” Beatrice Leep yelled at him.

Roy heard a clatter as the bicycle hit the pavement. He turned to see Beatrice bolting away, her stepbrother slung like a sack of oats over one shoulder. Without glancing back, she cut between two houses at the end of the block and disappeared.

Roy stood rooted in the center of the road. He had an important decision to make, and quickly. From one direction came the police car; running in the other direction were his two friends....

Well, the closest things to friends that he had in Coconut Cove.

Roy drew a deep breath and dashed after them. He heard a honk, but he kept going, hoping that the police officer wouldn't jump out and chase him on foot. Roy didn't think he'd done anything wrong, but he wondered if he could get in trouble for helping Mullet Fingers, a fugitive from the school system.

The kid was only trying to take care of some owls—how could that possibly be a crime? Roy thought.

Five minutes later, he found Beatrice Leep resting under a shady mahogany tree in a stranger's backyard. Her stepbrother's head was cradled on her lap, his eyelids half-shut and his forehead glistening.

The deep bite wounds on his swollen arm were exposed, for the bandage had been pulled off (along with a sleeve of his green T-shirt) when he'd toppled from the fence.

Beatrice stroked the boy's cheeks and sadly looked up at Roy. “What are we gonna do now, cowgirl?”

 

Curly was done fooling around with attack dogs. And while he wasn't thrilled about spending nights at the trailer, it was the only surefire way to stop the delinquents—or whoever was sabotaging the construction site—from jumping the fence and going wild.

If something were to happen over the weekend that resulted in another delay of the Mother Paula's project, Curly would be fired as foreman. Chuck Muckle had been crystal-clear about that.

When Curly told his wife of his overnight guard duties, she received the news with no trace of annoyance or concern. Her mother was in town visiting, and the two of them had planned numerous shopping excursions for Saturday and Sunday. Curly's charming presence would not be missed.

Sullenly he packed a travel kit with his toothbrush, dental floss, razor, shaving cream, and a jumbo bottle of aspirin. He folded some clean work clothes and underwear into a carry bag and grabbed the pillow off his side of the bed. On his way out the door, his wife handed him two fat tuna sandwiches, one for dinner and one for breakfast.

“You be careful out there, Leroy,” she said.

“Yeah, sure.”

Upon returning to the construction site, Curly locked the gate behind him and high-stepped to the safety of the trailer. All afternoon he'd been fretting about those elusive cottonmouth moccasins, wondering why the reptile wrangler hadn't been able to find them.

How could so many snakes disappear all at once?

Curly was afraid that the moccasins were lurking nearby in some secret subterranean den, waiting for darkness before they slithered out to begin their deadly hunt.

“I'll be ready for 'em,” Curly said aloud, in the hope of convincing himself.

Bolting the trailer door, he sat down in front of the portable television and turned on ESPN. The Devil Rays were playing the Orioles later in the evening, and Curly was looking forward to the ball game. For the time being, he was perfectly content to watch a soccer match being played in Quito, Ecuador—wherever
that
was.

He sat back and loosened his belt to accommodate the bulge in his waistband from the .38-caliber revolver he'd brought along for protection. He hadn't actually fired a gun since he had been in the Marines, which was thirty-one years ago, but he kept a pistol hidden at the house and remained confident of his abilities.

Anyway, how hard could it be to hit a big fat snake?

Just as Curly was polishing off his first tuna sandwich, a commercial for Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House came on the television. There, dressed up as kindly old Mother Paula herself, was none other than Kimberly Lou Dixon, the former Miss America runner-up. She was flipping flapjacks over a hot griddle and singing some sort of goofy song.

Although the makeup artists had done a darn good job, Curly could still tell that the old lady in the commercial was actually a much younger woman, and that she was pretty. Remembering what Chuck Muckle had told him about Kimberly Lou Dixon's new movie deal, Curly tried to picture her as the Queen of the Mutant Grasshoppers. Undoubtedly the special-effects department would give her six green legs and a pair of antennae, which Curly found intriguing to contemplate.

He wondered if he would be introduced personally to Kimberly Lou Dixon when she came to Coconut Cove to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the new pancake house. The possibility wasn't so far-fetched, him being the supervising engineer of the project—the top guy in charge.

Curly had never met a movie star or a television actress or a Miss America or a Miss Anything. Was it okay to ask for an autograph? he wondered. Would she mind posing with him for a picture? And would she speak to him in her phony Mother Paula's voice, or as Kimberly Lou Dixon?

These were the questions knocking around inside Curly's head as the image on the TV screen dissolved to electric fuzz before his disbelieving eyes. Heatedly he banged a mayonnaise-smeared fist on the side of the television console, to no avail.

The cable had gone out in the middle of a Mother Paula's commercial! Not a good omen, Curly thought sourly.

He used many bad words to curse his rotten luck. It had been years since he'd gone a whole night without television, and he wasn't sure how else to amuse himself. There was no radio in the trailer, and the only reading material was a construction industry journal with boring articles about hurricane-resistant roof sheathing and anti-termite treatments for plywood.

Curly considered a quick trip to the minimart to rent some videos, but that would require crossing the property to reach his truck. With dusk approaching, he couldn't get up the nerve to venture outside—not with those deadly cottonmouths skulking around.

He bunched the pillow under his head and tilted his chair back against the thin paneled wall. Alone in the silence, he wondered if it was possible for a snake to worm its way into the trailer. He remembered hearing a story about a boa constrictor that had crawled through the plumbing and popped out of a bathtub drain in a New York City apartment.

Imagining that scene, Curly felt his stomach knot. He got up and padded cautiously to the entrance of the trailer's small bathroom. Placing one ear to the door, he listened....

Was it his imagination, or did he hear a rustle on the other side? Curly drew the gun from his belt and cocked the trigger.

Yes, now he was certain. Something was moving!

The instant Curly kicked open the door, he realized there was no poisonous snake in the bathroom, no cause for mortal alarm. Unfortunately, the message didn't travel fast enough from his brain to his trigger finger.

The boom from the gun startled Curly almost as badly as it startled the field mouse that was sitting on the tile floor, minding its own business. As the bullet whizzed over its tiny whiskered head, shattering the toilet seat, the mouse took off—a squeaking gray blur that scooted out the doorway, between Curly's feet.

His hand trembling, Curly lowered the pistol and stared ruefully at what he'd done. He'd accidentally shot the commode.

It was going to be a long weekend.

 

Mr. Eberhardt was in the den, reading at his desk, when Mrs. Eberhardt came to the door with a worried expression.

“That policeman's here,” she said.

“What policeman?”

“The one who brought Roy home the other night. You'd better come talk to him.”

Officer Delinko stood in the living room, holding his hat in his hands. “Nice to see you again,” he said to Roy's father.

“Is something wrong?”

“It's about Roy,” Mrs. Eberhardt cut in.

“Possibly,” said Officer Delinko. “I'm not certain.”

“Let's all sit down,” suggested Mr. Eberhardt. He was trained to remain calm while sorting through loose snippets of information. “Tell us what happened,” he said.

“Where is Roy? Is he home?” the policeman inquired.

“No, he went to a friend's house to work on a science project,” Mrs. Eberhardt said.

“The reason I ask,” Officer Delinko said, “is that I spotted a couple of kids on East Oriole a little bit ago. One of them looked sort of like your son. The weird thing was: First he waved at the police car, and then all of a sudden he ran away.”

Mr. Eberhardt frowned. “Ran away? That doesn't sound like Roy.”

“Certainly not,” Mrs. Eberhardt agreed. “Why would he do that?”

“The kids left a bike lying in the street.”

“Well, it's not Roy's. His bike has a flat,” Roy's mother announced.

“Yes, I remember,” the policeman said.

“We had to order a new tire,” Mr. Eberhardt added.

Officer Delinko nodded patiently. “I know it's not Roy's bicycle. This one was stolen from Trace Middle School earlier this afternoon, shortly after classes let out.”

“You're sure?” Mr. Eberhardt asked.

“Yes, sir. I found out when I radioed in the serial number.”

The room fell silent. Roy's mother looked gravely at Roy's father, then fixed her gaze upon the policeman.

“My son is no thief,” she said firmly.

“I'm not making any accusations,” said Officer Delinko. “The boy who was running away looked like Roy, but I can't say for sure. I'm only checking with you folks because you're his parents and, well, this is part of my job.” The policeman turned to Roy's father for support. “Being in law enforcement, Mr. Eberhardt, I'm sure you understand.”

“I do,” Roy's father mumbled distractedly. “How many kids did you see on the road?”

“At least two, possibly three.”