The Pet-Sitting Peril Read online

  Nick moistened his lips. “I guess we really better see what’s the matter with Maynard,” he said, hoping Sam would contradict him, wishing he’d stayed at home tonight instead of letting one of Barney’s friends sleep in his bed.

  “Yeah. Let’s get dressed and go see,” Sam agreed.

  They debated whether to take Rudy with them or leave him locked in the apartment. “Let’s take him,” Nick decided.

  The streetlights had been repaired, but when Nick opened the door the windows in the front doors glowed with muted reds, golds, greens, and blues that did nothing to diminish the blackness. Mr. Griesner turned off the inside lights when he went to bed, and Nick felt oddly nervous crossing to flip the switch beside the front door, even with Sam right behind him.

  The hallway was quite ordinary with the light on. Maynard had stopped barking now, but Rudy pushed against Nick’s leg, quivering with eagerness to do something.

  “The outside door’s locked,” Nick observed, trying it. “There couldn’t be anybody inside that didn’t have a key. I guess we’d better check on Maynard and Fred, anyway.”

  They delayed long enough to put Rudy on his leash, then mounted the creaking stairs, the dog eagerly leading the way.

  “I’d have nightmares, living in this house,” Sam muttered as one step gave a particularly loud protest under his weight. “I hope that’s all that’s the matter with Maynard, that he’s having a bad dream.”

  Nick realized, when they reached the upper hall, that he was trying to smell smoke, and that there wasn’t any. There was no sound behind the door of apartment three; either Clyde and Roy were asleep and hadn’t heard anything, or they hadn’t come in yet.

  “Maybe you better keep Rudy out here,” Nick suggested, fitting the key into the door across the hall. “So Fred doesn’t break anything more, trying to get away from him.”

  Maynard met him with ecstatic yapping, throwing his small body against Nick’s legs. Fred, curled in a big chair, opened one eye and then closed it again when Nick turned on the lamp.

  There was nothing wrong in the place that Nick could see. The stove was still off, the way it was supposed to be. He pushed aside the curtains and stared out at the house next door. It stood dark and silent, its occupants sleeping. “Nothing going on over there to make him bark,” Nick said, and dropped the curtains back into place.

  He knew the back door that opened onto the outdoor stairs was locked, but he tried it anyway. There was a bolt that hadn’t been secured, and he slid that into place just to make certain there was no access from the alley.

  “Come on, let’s go back to bed,” Sam called, and Nick rejoined him.

  “Okay. I can’t find anything to get Maynard excited. Maybe they both heard something we didn’t hear, outside.”

  Neither of them mentioned the footsteps they’d heard earlier in the lower hallway. That was what had started the whole thing, waking them up and disturbing Rudy.

  Nick checked the doors again before they went to bed. He didn’t feel much like sleeping; he was more than ever aware of every sound in the big old house. He didn’t hear any more footsteps, and finally Sam began to breathe regularly in sleep beside him.

  Somewhere in the distance a siren rose and fell. He didn’t know if it was a fire truck or an ambulance or a police car, but it sent chills through him so that he moved closer to Sam’s warmth. Rudy slept on, undisturbed. Apparently Rudy was used to sirens, or didn’t pay any attention to sounds that far away.

  What was he going to do tomorrow night, Nick wondered, if Sam couldn’t stay with him again?

  • • •

  He didn’t have nerve enough to bring the subject up right away. They walked the dogs, put out fresh food and water, and then both headed for their own homes for breakfast, after deciding that another can of chili wasn’t exactly what they wanted so early in the morning.

  In the daylight they laughed about being scared during the night. Nothing had happened, had it? They’d heard some unexplained sounds, and that was all. In the bright sunshine the old house was just an old house, nothing sinister about it.

  Sam didn’t say anything about meeting Nick again that day. They walked together part way, and Nick almost called after him when Sam left to go toward his own home, but something kept him from it. Nick hated to admit he was a coward, even to his best friend.

  Well, he thought, trudging up his own walk, night was a long way off, and he had plenty of time to talk to Sam again. Besides, there was no law that said he had to stay at 1230 Hillsdale tonight. He didn’t have to stay every night. But if he didn’t stay tonight, he ought to go tomorrow. Maybe today he’d just walk Maynard an extra time, during the afternoon, so that the pets wouldn’t be alone for so long each day. After finding that stove burner on, he felt as if he ought to check fairly frequently, anyway, just in case Fred accidentally turned it on again.

  The Reed household was the same as usual. Mrs. Reed was making waffles for breakfast, with delicious little sausages. It wasn’t the right time to discuss last night with anybody, Nick decided, not with everyone making plans and hurrying to get ready for church. Molly was wiping up Winnie’s spilled orange juice, the phone was ringing with a call for Charles asking him to come in early to work an extra shift, and Mr. Reed trying to talk all of the boys into helping with the painting.

  “Charles can’t today, if he’s going to work two shifts. How about you, Barney? Surely you don’t have any lawns to cut on Sunday.”

  Barney had just taken an enormous bite of syrup-soaked waffle and had to chew before he could reply, but his face was eloquent.

  “Hey, Dad, it’s not written on my schedule, but I have plans for this afternoon. Important plans!”

  “Oh? Something you can’t change? I really need help with the painting, kids; it’s a big job, painting the whole house. Your mother intended to help with it on weekends, but with Grandma in the hospital she has to spend most of her free time over there, which leaves it up to me and you. All of you.”

  “Well, this is important to me,” Barney said. “I met this . . . this kid I’m going to play tennis with. I promised. A new kid in town, who doesn’t know anybody else in town to play with. And I don’t know how to get in touch to cancel or anything, even if I wanted to. I haven’t had much time to do anything for fun so far this summer.”

  It was Charles who was perceptive enough to guess the truth. “This kid a girl, Barney?”

  To Nick’s mingled delight and envy, Barney blushed. He didn’t remember ever seeing his brother blush before.

  “Well, so she’s a girl, what difference does that make? I said I’d meet her, and since I can’t tell her . . . I have to meet her, don’t I?”

  “Maybe you could meet her and tell her you have to paint the house,” Winnie suggested, holding out her glass for more juice. “Maybe she’d like to come and help you paint.”

  Barney rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure! Some date that would be! Listen, Dad, I don’t have a job tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll help you from noon on, okay? Only I really want to play tennis today.”

  Nick wondered if he’d ever get to play tennis with a girl. Or do anything interesting with a girl, since so many of them were taller than he was, and they all seemed to prefer the taller boys. He didn’t really see why it mattered so much, which person was taller, but it seemed to be important to most people.

  Barney pushed back his chair, looked at the clock, and speared one more sausage. “Oh, I invited Chuck to stay over again tonight, Nick.”

  Nick stopped chewing. “Hey, I didn’t give up my half of the room permanently, you know.”

  “Well, he’s not coming tonight anyway. Has to go someplace with his folks. But he is coming tomorrow. We want to finish our Monopoly game, okay?” Barney paused then, surveying Nick with slightly narrowed eyes. “How was it, sleeping in that old mausoleum? Kind of spooky?”

  Mausoleum, if Nick remembered correctly, meant a place where they buried the dead, or was it stored them in crypts?
He thought he detected a certain malicious amusement in Barney’s gaze, and he made his reply casual, though he didn’t feel that way about it. “It’s just an old house, is all.”

  “No spooks? No ghosts?” Barney grinned. “Of course you had Sam there with you, didn’t you? It would take a brave ghost to take old Sam on, I guess. Big as he is. So you weren’t scared, huh?”

  After that, how could Nick admit that he had been, for a time, scared spitless? And it looked as if he had to spend tomorrow night at 1230 Hillsdale, whether he wanted to or not.

  He thought about it through the day as he went to church, helped paint the house for a while, and walked Maynard and Rudy both in midafternoon and evening, not to mention spending forty-five frustrating minutes medicating Eloise.

  It was stupid, Nick thought bitterly. Why hadn’t he admitted that he had been scared last night? If there was really something dangerous in the house wouldn’t it be smarter to admit it, and stay away from it, than to pretend there was nothing the matter and maybe get hurt? Especially if it only meant that he was saving face in front of Barney. What did he care what Barney thought?

  The trouble was, though, that he did care what Barney thought. Or at least he cared about what Barney said. Barney had a way of not letting him forget it if he ever made a mistake. It never seemed to occur to him that Nick had feelings, too, and that it hurt to be taunted long after the episode should have been forgotten. Well, he had until tomorrow night to work something out.

  Mr. Haggard’s pension check came the next morning, and Nick took it inside. After the skirmish between Fred and Rudy on Saturday, he had decided to find a safer place to put the mail, in the drawer of a bureau. That afternoon, after a morning of painting and a check on all the animals, he decided to go over to the hospital and tell Mr. Haggard that the check was safe, and that Rudy was all right, too. He didn’t let himself think it was a way of keeping busy, of not thinking about the night to come. He hadn’t heard a word from Sam. And somehow he couldn’t bring himself to call. Yet, with or without Sam, he, Nick, was committed to spending the night at 1230 Hillsdale.

  Mr. Haggard looked even older than before, propped against pillows with his hair standing in white wisps. He grinned when he saw Nick, though, and lifted a hand in greeting.

  “Well, fancy that, I’ve got a visitor! How are you, Nick?”

  Nick relayed all his messages, glad he had come since the old man seemed so pleased to see him. Before he lost his courage, he blurted out the details of the mishap with the lamp and the pillow, though he left out the reason for Rudy’s wild reaction. Maybe Mr. Haggard wouldn’t like it that he’d brought someone else’s animals into his apartment.

  “My friend says his dad can fix the lamp. And I sewed up the rip in the pillow,” Nick said.

  Mr. Haggard didn’t seem too upset. What mattered to him was that Rudy was okay. They talked on a bit and then just before he was ready to leave, Nick remembered the gas can.

  Mr. Haggard looked bewildered. “Gas can? Well, I do remember you told me about it, and I meant to mention it to Mr. Griesner so he could move it, but my leg was hurting so bad—and those pain pills don’t exactly make a fellow any smarter—I don’t think I did it. And I sure didn’t move it out of the closet into the cupboard under my sink. No, sir, I don’t store any gasoline in the house. I knew a fellow, once, had some in his garage, and it exploded. He had third degree burns.”

  Nick listened to the details, wondering if Mr. Haggard could possibly have moved the can and forgotten it. The old man’s mind seemed perfectly clear now.

  If Mr. Haggard hadn’t put the can under his sink, who had?

  Walking down the broad tiled corridor toward his grandmother’s room, Nick remembered uneasily that Mr. Haggard’s apartment had been unlocked that one time he’d returned from a walk, even though he thought he’d locked it when he left. Someone else could have moved the gas can inside then, though he didn’t see why they would have.

  Talking to his grandmother took his mind off the situation at 1230 Hillsdale for a while. She, too, seemed smaller and older than he remembered. It was almost as if the hospital beds had the power to shrink people.

  She was cheerful, though, and glad to see him. “I saw the X-ray of the pin they put in my hip,” she told him, and gestured with her hands about a foot and a half apart. “It’s this long, and bent on the top where it goes through the hip joint, and it has what look like bolts through it, crossways, to hold it in place.”

  Nick swallowed. “Does it hurt a lot?”

  “Well, it does when they make me move around. Would you believe the physical therapy department is making me walk already? I wasn’t sure I’d ever walk again after an injury like that, but they get somebody on each side of me to get me up, and then I have a walker to hang onto, so I won’t fall down. And it hurts, all right, though they said the more I walk, the less I’ll feel it. Tomorrow I’m going to try crutches, and learn to go up and down steps. Imagine, so soon!”

  “I think that’s great, that you aren’t going to be crippled or anything,” Nick said.

  His grandma reached out and squeezed his hand. “I think it’s great, too, even if it does hurt right now. Thank you for coming to see me, Nick.”

  It almost made him hurt, to think about having a huge steel pin bolted through bone, even somebody else’s bone.

  Visiting his grandmother and Mr. Haggard in the hospital gave him something to think about as he walked on home. Getting old wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t get sick or hurt, he thought. He wondered if Grandma would be able to play ball with them any more, or work in her garden the way she liked to do. He sure hoped so. If she couldn’t, it would be the same as if he were no longer able to run.

  The aroma of chicken met him at the front door. Everybody else was at the table, and they looked up when Nick walked in.

  “You’re late,” Winnie piped. “We’re having fried chicken, Nick. I got a leg.”

  “Nick gets the tail,” Barney offered. “He’s the last one here, he gets the back end of the chicken.”

  Nick ignored him as he slid into his place and spoke to his parents. “I went over to the hospital to see Grandma and Mr. Haggard.” In a sudden rush of words that showed the subject was still there, pushed to the back of his mind, he said, “Dad, could I talk to you for a few minutes tonight? After supper?”

  “My bowling night, Nick, remember? Though I’m so stiff from standing on that ladder all day I’ll be lucky to keep the ball out of the gutter. Here, how about a thigh? Or would you rather have half a breast?”

  Nick chose the chicken thigh, accepted a mound of mashed potatoes, poured gravy over it, and allowed his mother to serve him the peas. He watched the butter melt on a hot biscuit and felt tension building up inside him. He hadn’t consciously made the decision before, but he knew he’d been working up to it all day, to talk to his father about the things that had been happening at 1230 Hillsdale Street. He didn’t know if he was imagining things or not, but if it was really dangerous to stay there, it was stupid to do it. His father wouldn’t be like Barney, making fun of him for being afraid. Nick knew he could talk to his father.

  Only he’d forgotten it was bowling night. And by the time his father came home, he’d already have to be going to bed over at the Hillsdale Apartments.

  As usual, almost everybody had to go somewhere. Molly was to clean up the kitchen before she went out to a movie with a girl friend. Mrs. Reed was, of course, going back to the hospital. Charles was already at work. Barney was baby-sitting Winnie and having his friend Chuck over and they were going to finish their Monopoly game and work on Barney’s bike.

  Nick knew without asking that his mother didn’t have time to listen to him, either. If she’d had time, she would have helped with the kitchen cleanup, and he knew if she was late for visiting hours she sometimes had to park blocks from the hospital. She’d worked all day, and she was too tired to walk very far.

  So there he was, with it time to head f
or Hillsdale Street and no chance to talk to anybody about any of what he was thinking. He called Sam’s house, hoping Sam was going to be able to stay with him again tonight. By tomorrow, Nick promised himself, he’d get his father alone and have a serious conversation with him.

  Only Sam wasn’t home.

  “I’m sorry, Nick. My husband decided to take a couple of days’ vacation, and he and Sam went off to Willow Creek yesterday, on the spur of the moment,” Mrs. Jankowski told him. “They intended to be back tonight, but they just called to say they’re going to stay on and won’t be in until tomorrow afternoon.”

  Tomorrow afternoon. Nick felt as if he’d been hit in the stomach as he replaced the phone. What about tonight?

  Chapter Nine

  He supposed he could get out a sleeping bag and put it on the floor in Winnie’s room. Winnie wouldn’t care. But then there would be Barney and his big mouth. It had happened so often that Nick could almost see the scene unrolling like a movie in his mind. Barney’s nasty smile, his taunting voice. “What’s the matter, Nicky? Scared of the dark? Scared of the ghosts in that old place, eh?”

  All of that in front of Chuck Wilson, and by tomorrow everybody in the whole darned town would know about it. Nick could picture that, too. The other guys teasing him the rest of the summer, maybe longer than that, about being chicken.

  Better chicken than burned up in a fire some maniac arsonist set.

  The thought flashed through his mind, very quickly, and was gone. He didn’t know that there was an arsonist loose; the fire in the alley could very well have been only kids playing with matches or cigarettes. And besides, how could he ever face Mr. Haggard, or Mrs. Monihan, or even Mrs. Sylvan, if he didn’t take care of their pets as he’d promised?

  He didn’t run this time. He walked briskly because the air was turning chilly, as it almost always did in the evening, and thought out how he would explain it all to his father tomorrow.