The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (22 page)

“Don’t you dare!” I shouted, running toward him.

He smirked, stuck his own screwdriver and dental pick in his pocket, and reached for the latch.

I tackled him.

He was a big guy—five or six inches taller than me and solidly built—but I had momentum and surprise on my side. We landed in a heap on the barn floor.

“Don’t you dare let them out, you moron!” I shouted. “You’ll only—”

He punched me in the face. Hard.

And then he leaped up and ran over to the hyena's cage.

After a couple of seconds of lying on the barn floor, stunned with pain and anger, I jumped up with a scream of pure fury and went for Shea. Luckily Michael and Sammy ran in just as I got my hands around his throat. Michael dragged me away, and Sammy restrained Shea—which didn’t take much of an effort. I suspected he wasn’t trying to break away from Sammy so much as hide behind him.

“Get that harpy away from me!” Shea shouted.

“Are you all right?” Michael asked.

“He punched me in the face,” I said. I was mopping my bloody nose with the bottom of my shirt and blinking back involuntary tears.

“He what?” Michael whirled and took a step toward Shea.

“She started it!” Shea whined, backing slightly. I didn’t blame him. Michael didn’t often lose his temper, but when he did, watch out.

“Never mind that now,” I said. “He was trying to set the hyenas loose. Let's make sure he doesn’t succeed. Someone check to make sure their cage door is securely closed.”

Sammy hurried to do so. Shea backed away, glancing from me to Michael, as if not sure which of us was more likely to strike.

“Wow, a little push and they’d have been loose!” Sammy said. He pushed the latch more securely closed. Then he bent over to retrieve the padlock.

Shea kicked him in the rear, and sprinted for the barn door. Sammy fell against the cage, to the great delight of the hyenas, and then landed on the ground with the padlock still in his hand.

“Damn!” Michael exclaimed. With a visible effort, he turned away from the door through which Shea was fleeing, and restored the padlock to the hyenas’ cage. I raced to the barn door, pulling out my cell phone as I ran.

“Just let him go!” Sammy said.

“I’m not chasing him,” I said. “But I’m checking out which way he's heading, so I can tell the chief when I report that Shea was trespassing and turned the animals loose.”

“Good idea,” Michael said. “I’m sure the chief can think of all sorts of other interesting things to charge him with.”

“Assault and battery, maybe,” Sammy suggested. “Doesn’t look as if the nose is broken, but you’re going to have a really impressive black eye.”

“And maybe the chief should take a close look at what Shea was up to Friday night,” I said. “Because as an animal-rights protest gesture, letting the animals go seems pretty stupid. But it would make a pretty good diversionary tactic, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess,” Michael said. “But I’m not sure I see what he's diverting our attention from.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “That's why I said it was a pretty good diversionary tactic. As soon as we get all the animals back— hello, Debbie Anne? Sorry to bother you again so soon.... “

Chapter 35

It took several hours to round up the fugitive animals.

The wolves were our first priority. Fortunately, none of them seemed to be alpha wolves, or even particularly bloodthirsty— though when they suddenly appeared out on the road, where the protesters were still diligently marching and singing, they made quite an impression. About half of the protesters fled, screaming, while the other half valiantly leaped to the rescue of the sheep that they assumed the wolves were after. Not that the sheep were in immediate danger. Some of them were loitering in our backyard, under the protective eyes of the llamas. The few still in the pasture spotted the wolves within seconds and fled in the direction of their barn. Any ambition the wolves might have had to nibble on the fleeing sheep or the protesters vanished after they’d been whacked a few times with a “Let My Creatures Go” placard. They seemed almost happy to see Dr. Blake when he showed up with crates to ferry them back to their enclosure. Especially the lone wolf who’d been dashing about in the backyard. After escaping from my attack umbrella, he’d spent the rest of his brief spell of freedom dodging kicks from the two largest llamas.

Mrs. Fenniman gathered up most of the meat that had been on the picnic tables during the monkeys’ rampage and slung it into the wolves’ cage.

“They’re on carefully controlled diets!” Dr. Blake protested.

“Time they had some fun, then,” Mrs. Fenniman muttered as she tossed a monkey-gnawed roast of beef into the cage.

Once the wolves were locked up and happily devouring Mrs. Fenniman's bounty, many of the mild-mannered animals appeared almost immediately out of whatever hiding places they’d found, as if eager to return to the safety of captivity. The main exceptions were the monkeys and the llamas. The monkeys retreated from the buffet tables to the trees and led squads of my relatives a merry chase for hours.

Apparently their valiant defense of the sheep had fired up the llamas, and they seemed determined to remain a part of the party. They spat gobs of foul-smelling green stuff on people who tried to lead them to the pasture, until everyone got the message and left them alone.

Through it all, the party continued unabated. The Shiffleys were notably absent—presumably they were all out looking for young Charlie—as were the police, who were pursuing both Charlie and Shea Bailey. And at any given time, several dozen of my relatives would be off in some remote part of the yard coaxing lemurs off roofs, convincing stubborn camels to stand up and walk, recklessly grabbing irritated porcupines, and managing to get bitten and scratched in such large numbers that Dad found himself operating an impromptu field hospital.

Meanwhile, Mother's troops were scurrying around to replace the food the monkeys had eaten or spoiled. I pointed out, several times, that only a small portion of the assembled provisions had been out on the picnic table during the monkeys’ raid—probably less food had been spoiled than we usually had left over after one of my family's bashes. But no one paid the slightest attention to me, so I eventually gave up.

Anyway, perhaps they had a better handle than I did on how much food would be needed for this particular party. Apart from
more than the usual number of relatives, we also had quite a few visitors. About twenty of the SOBs were still around. Apparently the animal prison break had been the work of Shea and a small hard-core cadre within the organization. The rest, after assisting in the wolves’ recapture, stayed around to eat and apologize repeatedly for their leader's misdeeds.

“I mean, what a stupid thing to do,” I overheard one of them saying. “Like turning a bunch of wolves loose at a picnic is striking a big blow for animals’ rights.”

“He yelled at me last week for getting a cat from the animal shelter,” another one said. “As if keeping a pet were something really immoral.”

“You know, I don’t think he really likes animals all that much,” the first one said.

And many Caerphilly residents seemed to be turning up— ostensibly to help with the animal roundup, though I didn’t see many of them leaving when they found out that the roundup was complete.

Practically the only people I didn’t see were the Sprockets. And that worried me. I’d been surprised how easily they’d let me evict them earlier, and I’d fully expected them to show up and try to resume their digging, under cover of the party. The fact that they hadn’t seemed to indicate that they had something sneakier and more annoying planned. Like showing up in the middle of the night and beginning to dig with ponderous and unsuccessful efforts at silence.

So at dusk, with the animal roundup mostly complete and the party definitely hitting its stride, I was sitting in Dr. Smoot's Adirondack chair with an ice pack on my black eye, scanning the crowd with my good one, and fretting.

“Don’t worry,” Michael said, dropping by to check on me for the twentieth time. “We won’t be taking any pictures tomorrow.”

“Speak for yourself,” Rob said. “I plan on taking millions.” “But not of Meg,” Michael said.

“Aw, come on,” Rob said. “I’ve never seen such an awesome black eye.”

I glared at him, and he snapped yet another picture of me with the ice pack over my eye and nose.

“I think the ice pack's probably done all the good it's going to,” Dad said.

“Better safe than sorry,” I said. “Besides, it's soothing.”

Actually, the ice pack was almost as annoying as Rob, and the intense cold was giving me a headache, and I might have abandoned it, except that Rob's annoying determination to take a picture of me with my eye swollen half shut had brought out my stubborn side.

“Dr. Langslow!” One of the off-duty protesters came running up, looking agitated. “They need you over in the trenches. Someone fell in, and we think he's hurt himself.”

I followed Dad to the side of the house where the trenches were still in active use. A crowd had gathered around one of the trenches near the barn, and when I had wormed my way to the front of it, I saw Barchester Sprocket lying at the bottom. Rutherford Sprocket was standing directly across from me on the other edge of the trench, holding a shovel and frowning down at his fallen comrade.

“Ah,” I said. “I was wondering when they’d show up. Is he all right?”

“We could sue,” Rutherford said. “Incredibly dangerous, just leaving trenches lying around like that.”

“There's caution tape around it,” I said. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, he fell in one of the trenches the two of you dug.”

“Poetic justice,” Rob said.

“Hoist by his own petard,” Michael added.

“We could still sue,” Rutherford said.

“I wouldn’t,” I said. “We have lawyers in the family.”

“So do we.”

“Lots of lawyers,” I said. I looked around at the assembled crowd, about a hundred of them, most of them relatives. “Will all the family attorneys present please raise your hand?”

Seventy or eighty hands went up. In fact, about the only people who didn’t raise their hands were the SOBs and Rose Noire, and I could tell she was tempted. For some things, like playing fast and loose with the truth when convenient, I could always count on my family. And at least a dozen of them weren’t lying. I wasn’t sure if Rutherford believed it, but he stopped muttering about suing.

“How is he?” he asked, looking down at Dad and Barchester.

“I think his leg's broken,” Dad said.

“I didn’t realize we’d been digging over there,” Barchester said.

“I think we need to mark the trenches more clearly,” Dad said. “Or we’re going to have more casualties by the end of the evening.”

“No we’re not,” I said. “That's it! Party called on account of darkness!”

Chapter 36

“Meg, be reasonable,” Dad said.

“Darkness and excessive excavation. I
am
being reasonable. It's too dangerous to have a bunch of people partying in the dark with all these holes and trenches.”

“But, Meg,” Mother said. “Everyone's come so far, and they only want to have a nice time. You can’t just send them home.”

“Okay,” I said. I climbed up on a picnic bench and took a deep breath.

“Party moving to Mother and Dad's farm!” I shouted. “Everyone grab the food and drink and head on over to the farm!”

To my amazement, it worked. People began packing up the dishes of food and the coolers of beverages and swarming, lemminglike, out to the parked cars.

“What a splendid idea!” Dad exclaimed. “I’m heading over to the hospital right now with poor Barchester, but I’ll get over to the farm as soon as I can.”

He trotted off beside the stretcher, looking cheerful, as he always did when someone was obliging enough to break a limb, slice an artery, or provide some other reasonably engrossing medical drama. Mother looked less than thrilled.

“Don’t worry,” I said to her. “If it's still going on when you’re ready for bed, you and Dad are welcome to come back here. You can have your pick of the guest rooms.”

“I suppose,” she said.

“And didn’t you say you had lots of odd jobs that needed doing around the farmhouse?” I asked. “While you’ve got everyone there, you can start recruiting people to do them.”

“Now that's a thought,” Mother said. She turned and walked toward the back door. On her way to the front yard to catch a ride, I hoped. But just as she was reaching for the doorknob, something caught her eye. She turned and stood on the back porch watching as Sheila Flugleman scuttled by with another bucket full of raw material.

“Meg,” Mother said, in what the family called her grand duchess tone of voice. “Who is that...person?”

Oops. “Person” was bad. “Lady” would have meant that she was impressed and wanted a suitably formal introduction. “Woman” would have been neutral. “Person,” with that slight pause, was as close as Mother ever came to using a four-letter word.

“Sheila D. Flugleman,” I said. “Her family owns the Farm and Garden Emporium.”

“Ah, the feed store,” Mother said, nodding. Apparently she was not in a mood to cut Sheila any slack.

“What's she done?” I asked.

“She's been circulating through the crowd passing out flyers,” Mother said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a sheet of paper, holding it by one corner as if it were made of Zooper-Poop! “And . . . collecting at the same time.”

“Well, someone has to clean up after the animals.”

“Not the sort of thing I expect to see at my parties. And not the sort of thing you want at yours, either, I should think,” she added hastily when she remembered that she wasn’t in her own garden.

“You know how hard small business owners have to work to
get the word out,” I said. Mother frowned at this. After years of threatening, she was finally launching her own small decorating business. Launching it in both Yorktown and Caerphilly, in all probability. Surely she wouldn’t condemn Sheila Flugleman for what she herself might soon be forced to do?

“Hmph,” she said, pulling something else out of her purse. “If this is true, I hardly think she needs to waste her time bothering my—our guests.”