Hoot (16 page)

“That's right.”

“How do I check up on something like that?” Roy asked. “You know, just to make sure it's all legal.”

“I suppose you'd call the building department at City Hall.”

“The building department. Okay, thanks.”

After the door closed, Roy heard his parents talking softly in the hallway. He couldn't make out what they were saying, so he pulled the covers up to his neck and rolled over. Right away he began drifting off.

Before long, someone whispered his name. Roy assumed he was already dreaming.

Then he heard it again, and this time the voice seemed so real that he sat up. The only sound in the bedroom was his own breathing.

Great, he thought, now I'm imagining things.

He lay back on the pillow and blinked up at the ceiling.

“Roy?”

He went rigid under the covers.

“Roy, don't freak out.”

But that's exactly what he felt like doing. The voice was coming from under his bed.

“Roy, it's me.”

“Me
who
?”

Roy's breath came in rapid bursts and his heart pounded like a bass drum. He could feel the presence of the other person beneath him in the darkness, under the mattress.

“Me, Beatrice. Chill out, man.”

“What are you doing here!”

“Shh. Not so loud.”

Roy heard her slide out from underneath the bed. Quietly she stood up and moved to the window. There was just enough moon in the sky to light up her curly blond hair and cast a reflection in her glasses.

“How'd you get in our house?” Roy struggled to keep his voice low, but he was too rattled. “How long have you been hiding here?”

“All afternoon,” Beatrice replied, “while you guys were gone.”

“You broke in!”

“Relax, cowgirl. I didn't bust any windows or anything. The sliding door on your porch popped right off the track—they all do,” Beatrice said, matter-of-factly.

Roy hopped out from under the sheets, locked the door, and switched on his desk lamp.

“Are you completely wacko?” he snapped at her. “Did somebody kick you in the head at soccer practice, or what?”

“I'm sorry about this, I really am,” Beatrice said. “It's just, uh, things got kinda hairy at home. I didn't know where else to go.”

“Oh.” Roy was instantly sorry he'd lost his temper. “Was it Lonna?”

Beatrice nodded gloomily. “I guess she fell off her broom or somethin'.”

“That really sucks.”

“Yeah, her and my dad got in a huge fight. I mean huge. She threw a clock radio at his head, so he beaned her with a mango.”

Roy had always thought that Beatrice Leep wasn't afraid of anything, but she didn't look so fearless now. He felt bad for her—it was hard to imagine living in a house where the grownups behaved so idiotically.

“You can stay here tonight,” he offered.

“For real?”

“Long as my parents don't find out.”

“Roy, you're pretty cool,” Beatrice said.

He grinned. “Thanks for calling me Roy.”

“Thanks for letting me crash here.”

“You take the bed,” he said. “I'll sleep on the floor.”

“No way, José.”

Roy didn't argue. He gave Beatrice a pillow and a blanket, and she stretched out happily on the carpet.

He turned off the light and said good night. Then he remembered something he meant to ask her. “Hey, did you see Mullet Fingers today?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, he told me he had something planned for last night.”

“He's
always
got somethin' planned.”

“Yeah, but this stuff can't go on forever,” Roy said. “Sooner or later, he's gonna get caught.”

“I believe he's smart enough to know that.”

“Then we've gotta do something.”

“Like what?” Beatrice asked faintly. She was fading toward sleep. “You can't stop him, Roy. He's too darn thickheaded.”

“Then I guess we've gotta join him.”

“ 'Scuse me?”

“G'night, Beatrice.”

SEVENTEEN

Curly stared hard at the phone, as if staring would make it quit ringing. Finally he braced himself and picked up the receiver.

On the other end was Chuck Muckle, of course.

“Do I hear the sound of bulldozers, Mr. Branitt?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not? It's Monday morning here in beautiful Memphis, Tennessee. Isn't it Monday morning in Florida, too?”

“I got some good news,” Curly said, “and I got some bad news.”

“The good news being that you've found employment elsewhere?”

“Please, lemme finish.”

“Sure,” said Chuck Muckle, “while you're cleaning out your desk.”

Curly hastily spilled his version of what had happened Saturday night. The part about the missing bulldozer seats definitely took some shine off the rest of the story. Not wishing to make things worse, Curly didn't mention that his pistol had somehow ended up submerged in a portable toilet.

A fuzzy silence lingered at the Memphis end of the conversation. Curly wondered if Mother Paula's vice-president for corporate relations had hung up on him.

“Hullo?” Curly said. “You there?”

“Oh, I'm here,” Chuck Muckle replied tartly. “Let me get this straight, Mr. Branitt. A young man was arrested for attempted burglary on our property—”

“Right. Assault and trespassing, too!”

“—but then on the very same evening, another person or persons unknown removed the seats from the bulldozers and backhoes and whatevers.”

“Yessir. That would be the not-so-good news,” Curly said.

“Did you report this theft to the police?”

“ 'Course not. I didn't want it to get in the newspaper.”

“Maybe there's hope for you yet,” said Chuck Muckle. He asked Curly if it was possible to operate the machines without driver's seats.

“Only if you're some kinda octopus.”

“So I'm correct in assuming there'll be no bulldozing today.”

“Or tomorrow,” Curly reported grimly. “I got new seats on order from the wholesaler in Sarasota, but they won't be here till Wednesday.”

“What a happy coincidence,” Chuck Muckle said. “That turns out to be the last day that Miss Kimberly Lou Dixon is available to us. Her mutant-insect movie begins shooting next weekend in New Mexico.”

Curly swallowed. “You wanna do the groundbreaking this Wednesday? What about the site clearing?”

“Change of plans. Blame it on Hollywood,” said Chuck Muckle. “We'll do the ceremony first, and as soon as everybody leaves you can crank up the machines—assuming they haven't been stripped down to the axles by then.”

“But it's just ... Wednesday's the day after tomorrow!”

“No need to soil yourself, Mr. Branitt. We'll arrange all the details from our end—the advertising, the press releases, and so forth. I'll get in touch with the mayor's office and the chamber of commerce. Meanwhile, your job is incredibly simple—not that you won't find a way to screw it up.”

“What's that?”

“All you've got to do is lock down the construction site for the next forty-eight hours. Think you can handle that?”

“Sure,” Curly said.

“No more alligators, no more poisonous snakes, no more stealing,” Chuck Muckle said. “No more problems, period.
Comprendo?
”

“I got a quick question about the owls.”

“What owls?” Chuck Muckle shot back. “Those burrows are abandoned, remember?”

Curly thought: I guess somebody forgot to tell the birds.

“There's no law against destroying abandoned nests,” the vice-president was saying. “Anybody asks, that's your answer. ‘The burrows are deserted.' ”

“But what if one a them owls shows up?” Curly asked.

“What owls!” Chuck Muckle practically shouted. “There are no owls on that property and don't you forget it, Mr. Branitt. Zero owls.
Nada
. Somebody sees one, you tell him it's a—I don't know, a robin or a wild chicken or something.”

A chicken? Curly thought.

“By the way,” said Chuck Muckle, “I'll be flying down to Coconut Cove so I can personally accompany the lovely Miss Dixon to our groundbreaking. Let's pray that you and I have nothing more to talk about when I arrive.”

“Don't worry,” Curly said, though he was plenty worried himself.

 

Beatrice Leep was gone when Roy awoke. He had no idea how she had slipped out of the house unnoticed, but he was glad she'd made it.

Over breakfast, Roy's father read aloud the brief newspaper account of Dana Matherson's arrest. The headline said: “Local Youth Nabbed in Break-in Attempt.”

Because Dana was under eighteen, the authorities weren't allowed to release his name to the media—a fact that rankled Roy's mother, who believed Dana's mug shot should have been plastered on the front page. The story identified him only as a student at Trace Middle and said that the police considered him a suspect in several recent vandalisms. It didn't specifically mention Mother Paula's as the target.

Dana's arrest was the major buzz around school. Many kids were aware that he'd been picking on Roy, so they were eager to get Roy's reaction to the news that his tormentor had been nailed by the cops.

Roy was careful not to gloat or joke about it, or to draw any special attention to himself. If Dana blabbed about the imaginary cigarette stash, he might try to blame Roy for the bungled theft. The police had no reason to believe anything the kid said, but Roy wasn't taking any chances.

As soon as the bell rang ending homeroom, Garrett took him aside to share a weird new detail.

“Rattraps,” he said, cupping a hand over his mouth.

“What are you talking about?” Roy asked.

“When they caught him, he had rattraps stuck on his shoes. That's how come he couldn't run away.”

“I'm so sure.”

“Seriously, dude. The cops told my mom he stepped on 'em while he was sneakin' around the trailer.”

Knowing Dana, Roy could actually picture it.

“Broke three of his toes,” Garrett said.

“Oh, come on.”

“Absolutely! We're talkin'
humongous
rattraps.” Garrett held his hands a foot apart to illustrate.

“Whatever.” Roy knew that Garrett was famous for exaggerating. “Did the police tell your mom anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Like what Dana was after.”

“Smokes is what he said, but the cops don't believe him.”

“Who would?” said Roy, hoisting his book bag over his shoulder.

All morning he looked for Beatrice Leep between classes, but he never saw her in the hallways. At lunch hour,the girl soccer players were sitting together in the cafeteria, but Beatrice wasn't among them. Roy approached the table and asked if anybody knew where she was.

“At the dentist,” said one of her teammates, a gangly Cuban girl. “She fell down some steps at home and broke a tooth. But she'll be ready for the game tonight.”

“Great,” said Roy, but he didn't feel so good about what he'd just heard.

Beatrice was such a phenomenal athlete that Roy couldn't imagine her falling down the stairs like some ordinary klutz. And after seeing what she could do to a bicycle tire, he couldn't picture her breaking a tooth, either.

Roy was still thinking about Beatrice when he sat down in American history. He found himself struggling to concentrate on Mr. Ryan's quiz, though it really wasn't that difficult.

The final question was the same one that Mr. Ryan had asked him in the hallway on Friday: Who won the Battle of Lake Erie? Without hesitation, Roy wrote: “Commodore Oliver Perry.”

It was the only answer that he was sure he got right.

On the bus ride home, Roy kept a wary eye on Dana Matherson's hulking friends, but they didn't glance once in his direction. Either Dana hadn't gotten the word out about what Roy had done, or his buddies didn't care all that much.

 

The police captain was reading the arrest report when Officer Delinko and the sergeant came in. The captain motioned for both men to sit down.

“Nice work,” he told Officer Delinko. “You've made my life a whole lot easier. I just got off the horn with Councilman Grandy, and he's one happy camper.”

“I'm glad, sir,” Officer Delinko said.

“What do you make of this Matherson kid? What's he told you?”

“Not much.”

The interrogation of Dana Matherson hadn't gone as smoothly as Officer Delinko had hoped. In the training films, the suspects always caved in and confessed to their crimes. However, Dana had remained stubbornly uncooperative, and his statements were confusing.

At first he'd said he was snooping around the Mother Paula's property in order to heist a load of Gladiator cigarettes. However, after speaking with a lawyer, the boy changed his story. He claimed he'd actually gone to the trailer to bum a cigarette, but the foreman mistook him for a burglar and came after him with a gun.

“Matherson's a hard case,” Officer Delinko told the captain.

“Yeah,” the sergeant said, “he's been around the block a few times.”

The captain nodded. “I saw his rap sheet. But here's what bothers me: The kid's a thief, not a practical joker. I can't picture him dumping alligators in port-a-potties.
Stealing
port-a-potties maybe.”

“I wondered about that, too,” Officer Delinko said.

The Mother Paula's vandal had displayed a darksense of humor that didn't fit the Matherson boy's dim-witted criminal history. He seemed more likely to stripthe wheels from a patrol car than to paint the windshield black or hang his shirt like a pennant from the antenna.

“What's his motive for the funny stuff?” the captain wondered aloud.

“I asked him if he had a gripe against Mother Paula's pancakes,” Officer Delinko said, “and he did say IHOP's were better.”

“That's it? He likes IHOP pancakes better?”

“Except for the buttermilks,” Officer Delinko reported. “He had nice things to say about Mother Paula's buttermilks.”

Gruffly, the sergeant interjected: “Aw, the kid's jerking our chain, is all.”

The captain pushed back slowly from his desk. He could feel another crusher of a headache coming on.

“Okay, I'm making a command decision here,” he said. “Considering we've got nothing better to work with, I intend to tell Chief Deacon that the Mother Paula's vandal has been apprehended. Case closed.”

Officer Delinko cleared his throat. “Sir, I found a piece of a shirt at the crime scene—a shirt that's way too small to fit the Matherson boy.”

He didn't mention that the remainder of the shirt had been tied, tauntingly, to the antenna of his squad car.

“We need more than a rag,” the captain grunted. “We need a warm body, and the only one we've got is sitting in juvenile detention. So officially he's our perpetrator, understand?”

Officer Delinko and his sergeant agreed in unison.

“I'm going out on a limb here, so you know what that means,” the captain said. “If another crime happens on that property, I'll look like a complete bozo. And if I end up looking like a bozo, certain people around here are going to spend the rest of their careers cleaning dimes out of parking meters. Am I making myself clear?”

Again Officer Delinko and his sergeant said yes.

“Excellent,” said the captain. “So your mission, basically, is to make sure there's no more surprises between now and the Mother Paula's groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday.”

“No sweat.” The sergeant rose to his feet. “Can we tell David the good news?”

“Sooner the better,” said the captain. “Officer Delinko, you're back on the road, effective immediately. In addition, the sergeant has written a letter commending the outstanding job you did in capturing our suspect. This will become part of your permanent file.”

Officer Delinko was beaming. “Thank you, sir!”

“There's more. Because of your experience on this case, I'm assigning you to a special patrol at the Mother Paula's construction site. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, beginning tonight at dusk. You up for that?”

“Absolutely, Captain.”

“Then go home and take a nap,” the captain advised, “because if you doze off out there again, I'll be writing a much shorter letter for your file. A termination letter.”

Outside the captain's office, Officer Delinko's sergeant gave him a hearty slap on the back. “Two nights and we're home free, David. You psyched?”

“One question, sir. Will I be on duty out there alone?”

“Well, we're hurting on the night shift right now,” the sergeant told him. “Kirby got stung by a yellow jacket, and Miller's out with a sinus infection. Looks like you'll be riding solo.”

“That's okay,” Officer Delinko said, though he would have preferred to have a partner, under the circumstances. Curly probably would be staying at the trailer, though he wasn't the best company.

“You drink coffee, David?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Drink twice as much as usual,” the sergeant said. “I don't expect anything to happen, but you'd better be wide awake if it does.”

On the way home, Officer Delinko stopped at a souvenir shop along the main highway. Then he swung by the Juvenile Detention Center to take one more crack at Dana Matherson. It would be such a relief if the boy admitted to even one of the earlier vandalisms.

Dana was brought to the interview room by a uniformed guard, who took a position outside the door. The kid was dressed in a rumpled gray jumpsuit with the word INMATE stenciled in capital letters across the back. He wore only socks because his toes were still swollen from the rattraps. Officer Delinko offered him a stick of gum, which the kid crammed into his cheeks.