The Case of the Lost Boy (7 page)

“Well ... okay. If you want to come along, that would be fine. Maybe you can write down what we see on the stakeout. Since your paws work better for writing than mine do.”

“We’re not going very far,” Mom warns me. “Just around the block. Maybe we’ll get an idea of where Connor could have gone.”

Around the block is exactly where we need to go.

Mom grabs my leash and snaps it to my collar. “Maybe we should think about putting in a doggy door,” she mutters. “The backyard is fenced. If we had a doggy door, you could go in and out whenever you wanted.”

“Really?” I say, wagging my tail. “You’d get me a doggy door? That would be SO COOL!”

I know other dogs who have doggy doors. But I’ve never had one myself. I’ve always wanted one.

Wait a minute. I won’t be here long enough to enjoy the doggy door if Mom puts one in. As soon as we find Connor, I’ll have to start looking for my family again. And when I find them, I’ll go back to my real home.

Mom leads me down the front walk and turns toward the hill.

“No, not that way,” I tell her. “We want to go this direction.” I pull her away from the hill.

But as usual, Mom doesn’t understand. And she’s strong, so we end up going her way instead of mine. We’ll still get to the place where Connor disappeared. We’ll still be able to set up a stakeout. It will just take us longer to get there.

We pass Mr. Parker’s house. Mr. Parker is out raking his lawn. Mr. Parker is
always
raking his lawn. There are never any leaves on it.

“Hello, there,” Mr. Parker says to Mom. My nose twitches. Something about Mr. Parker’s yard smells strange today. A new person has been here. It’s somebody I’ve smelled before, but I can’t quite remember where. It isn’t a very nice smell, though. Kind of sweaty and ... a little bit
scary
.

“Hi,” Mom says. “I’m Sarah Keene. We just moved in down the street.”

Mr. Parker sets his rake against a tree and limps over to us. Mr. Parker has a bad leg, but that never stops him from working in his yard.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” he says to Mom.

“Thank you,” Mom says. She takes out a picture and shows it to Mr. Parker. “My son was out walking the dog a little while ago, and the dog came back by himself. I’m afraid my son may have gotten lost. Have you seen this boy?”

Mr. Parker pulls a pair of glasses out of his pocket and rests them on the end of his nose. He peers at the picture.

“Can’t say that I have. But my brother is visiting from Mankato. He went out for a walk this morning. Maybe he saw your boy.”

I didn’t know Mr. Parker had a brother.

Mr. Parker turns toward his house. “Jerry!” he calls. “Hey, Jerry! Come out here a minute.”

The door opens, and I can hardly believe my eyes. The stranger from this morning steps out of Mr. Parker’s house. He stiffens when he sees me.

“That’s him!” I tell Mom. “That’s the stranger Connor and I saw this morning.”

“Buddy!” Mom says sharply.

“But, that’s the guy!” I tell her, tugging at my leash. “Can’t you smell him? Doesn’t he smell dangerous?”

I think he smells like things that jump out at you when you don’t expect them. Now I know why Mr. Parker’s yard smells funny.

“Jerry, this lady is looking for her son.” Mr. Parker limps toward Jerry with the picture Mom handed him.

“He was out walking with the dog—”

Jerry glances at the picture. “Yeah, I saw them.”

“Where?” Mom asks. “How long ago?”

“Did you follow us around the corner?” I ask Jerry. “Did you ...
kidnap
Connor?” I can usually tell if a human is lying or if he’s telling the truth.

I think Jerry knows this about me because he doesn’t answer Mom or me. He starts to back away.

“You’ll have to excuse my brother,” Mr. Parker tells Mom. “He doesn’t like dogs very much.”

Of course he doesn’t. Because we sense things that humans don’t.

“I know you don’t like me, Jerry,” I say, pressing closer to him. “And I don’t much like you, either. I don’t like humans who—”

“I had a run-in with a dog a couple weeks ago,” Jerry tells Mom. He rolls up his sleeve. His arm is covered with bandages.

I stop and stare. I’m ... stunned.

“You mean ... a
dog
did that?” I ask.

I think Mom is a little surprised, too. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Buddy is a nice dog, though.” She pats my head to prove it. “He won’t hurt you.”

I don’t know what to say. I sniff at Jerry again. He doesn’t smell so scary anymore. He smells ...
scared
, not scary. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between a human who is scary and a human who is scared. I think that’s because sometimes the scariest humans are also scared of something.

Jerry is scared of
me
. That’s why he watched us so closely. When he said “nice dog,” he was probably telling me to BE a nice dog. Be a nice dog and don’t hurt him.

Cross off another part of my plan to find Connor. I found the stranger from this morning—Jerry didn’t have anything to do with Connor’s disappearance.

Mr. Parker adjusts his glasses and takes a good hard look at me. “Say, have you met the Dixons yet?” Mr. Parker asks Mom.

My tail stands straight up.
The Dixons? Those are my people!
Kayla, Mom, and Dad.

“No, not yet,” Mom says. “Where do they live?”

“On the next street over,” Mr. Parker says. “They have a dog that looks just like yours.”

“Really?” Mom says.

“’Course, I haven’t seen that dog around lately,” Mr. Parker says. “The lady is in the military, and I think the dad and little girl went out of town a while back. They probably took the dog with them.”

I wish
.

“I’ll look forward to meeting them,” Mom says. “Goodbye.”

Then we start walking again.

Now I am on the lookout for Cat with No Name and for a place to set up our stakeout.

We continue down the street, around the corner ... and around another corner. We’re getting close to Kayla’s house. But we’re coming at it from a different direction. As we get close, I pick up Connor’s scent again. I follow it VERY carefully ... zigzagging across the sidewalk and the grass ... just in case I missed a clue before.

“What are you doing, Buddy?” Mom asks.

“Looking for Connor,” I tell her. She has a short memory. Isn’t that why we’re on this walk? So that we can set up a stakeout and find Connor?

I follow Connor’s scent across the grass and out toward the street. There is a sharp tug on my collar.

“No, Buddy,” Mom says. “We’re not going to cross the street.”

“But we have to,” I tell her. “That’s where Connor disappeared.”

I pull harder and Mom grabs the leash with both hands. She is stronger than she looks.

“I think we need to sign up for an obedience class,” she says, holding tight to my leash. “I’m not going to be able to take you to school unless I can control you better.”

I don’t know what obedience is, but I’m not going to worry about that now. We have to find Connor!

I look both ways, then pull hard on my leash one more time. Sniff ... sniff ... sniff ... I follow Connor’s scent to the place where it ends.

“Buddy,” Mom says. “Let’s get out of the street.”

“In a minute,” I tell her. “We can set up our stakeout over by that tree. But first I want to make sure I didn’t miss any clues.”

I sniff. I listen. I look.

Up ahead a bus wheezes to a stop next to the curb. I stand there and watch as three humans get off the bus and one human gets on.

Hmm. That gives me an idea.

Maybe we don’t need that stakeout after all.

Connor’s scent disappeared in the middle of the street. That might have meant he got into a car. But he could have gotten into something else.

He could have gotten into a bus!

“We need to find out where that bus goes,” I tell Mom. Finding out where that bus goes could be the key to finding Connor.

I give my leash a good tug. I’m surprised when it flies out of Mom’s hand. But I don’t give her a chance to grab the leash back.

“Buddy!” Mom screams.

I hear her running behind me, but I need to get to that bus. I need to get there before the door closes and the bus drives away.

I feel a sharp jerk on my collar, and my whole body flies backwards. I fall to the ground with a thump.

“Caught you,” Mom says. Her foot is firmly planted on top of my leash.

You sure did. Ow! My neck hurts
.

The bus driver smiles as Mom picks up my leash. “Looks like your dog wants to ride the bus.”

Mom gives the bus driver a half-hearted smile, then says to me, “Come on, Buddy. Dogs aren’t allowed on buses.”

“What? Why not?”

The door to the bus closes, and the bus pulls away.

“Let’s go home,” Mom says.

“But ... but ... how are we going to find out where that bus goes if we go home?” I ask. “If we don’t find out where that bus goes we may never find Connor.”

“You are so dumb,” says a familiar voice behind me.

Huh?

I turn, and Cat with No Name slinks out between the bushes. “It says where the bus is going at the top of the window,” he informs me.

“It does?” Unfortunately, the bus is already gone, so I can’t see where it’s going. And even if I could see, I probably wouldn’t be able to read the words. The only words I know how to read are:
P-O-U-N-D
, King, Kayla, vet, dog, cat, and food.

“Do you know where it’s going?” I ask.

“Of course.”

I hate that he can read and I can’t.

“Will you tell me?” I ask. He probably won’t.

But sometimes cats will surprise you. “All the buses that stop here go to the Minneapolis airport,” he says.

And airports have airplanes that fly to California.

Back at the house, Mom just keeps pacing back and forth in front of the living room window. Watching. Waiting for Connor to come back. Or maybe waiting for the police to come back with news about him.

The police are not going to find him. Not here in the neighborhood. And they don’t know that they need to go to the airport to look for him.

How do I get Mom to understand that we need to go to the airport?

I wonder if there is something in the house I can use to make her understand? I don’t see anything in the living room, so I go to the kitchen. There are several bits of scrambled egg on the floor. I don’t think these will help Mom understand anything, so I gobble them up. I LOVE scrambled eggs. They’re my favorite food!

Then I head for Connor’s room.

Hmm. The shirt that Connor wore while he slept is on the floor. I sniff.

His scent is stronger here than any where else in the room. And there are airplanes all over the shirt. It’s the perfect clue!

I grab the shirt in my mouth and bring it back to Mom.

She looks at it, but doesn’t say anything.

I go back to Connor’s room and look for something else to bring to Mom.

There’s a toy airplane sticking out of a box. I grab that and race back to the living room.

Mom lets out another one of those big breaths of air. “Please don’t drag things all over the house, Buddy,” she says. She takes the airplane from me and drops it onto the couch next to Connor’s shirt.