by Nic Saint
“Huh,” I said as we watched him streak off in the direction he came from.
“I guess he’s not as tough as he looks,” said Dooley, who seemed disappointed that he hadn’t been able to engage the horrible cat.
“That was very brave of you, Dooley,” I said as I placed my paw on his shoulder. “Probably the bravest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Sometimes you just have to stand up for yourself, you know.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
We both turned, intent on locating that elusive exit, when suddenly we found ourselves face to face with the biggest, meanest-looking rat I’d ever seen! It was baring its fangs, saliva dripping from the pointy snappers, and it looked about to move in for the kill!
Without a moment’s hesitation, Dooley and I turned around and fled the scene—running as fast as our legs could carry us! Before long, we’d reached the staircase, scrambled down at top speed, and kept on running, through the living room, streaked through a crack in the sliding door and out into the open. And as we ran, I thought for a moment I heard Gran’s voice. It must have been my imagination, though, for I knew she couldn’t possibly be there.
And as Dooley and I stood panting, he said, “So that’s why Tank turned and ran! He wasn’t afraid of us but of the big, nasty rat!”
“He must have dropped down from that vent—same as you,” I said, trying to catch my breath. I’m one of those cats that’s built for comfort, not speed, you see, and cardiovascular activity always has a deleterious effect on me.
“Did you hear Gran?” he asked.
“I did.”
“We must be hallucinating.”
“It’s because we were imprisoned. Prisoners often start hearing things.”
“Let’s go home,” said Dooley. “Odelia might not be the ideal human we thought she was, but she’s a damn sight better than the people that run this house—or the big, scary rats that infest the ventilation system!”
“I can’t believe you were cooped up in there—with that rat!”
“I know!” he said, his eyes wide as saucers.
We both glanced up to the second-floor window of the room we’d just escaped from, and saw to our elation that Pussy was sitting there, looking down at us. And she was smiling!
She held up her paw in greeting, and Dooley shouted, “We’re coming back for you, Pussy! We won’t leave you there to die!”
Pussy gave us a cheery wave, and then we were off at a trot. Unfortunately we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, still not fully ourselves after our harrowing ordeal, and before long we found ourselves not on the road to Hampton Cove where home and safety lay, but back in the petting zoo.
“We’re back where we started, Max,” said Dooley, who’d come to the same conclusion.
“It sure looks that way. Oh, well. I guess all roads lead to Rome,” I said.
“They do? And how does that work, exactly?”
“It’s just an expression. I don’t think all roads literally lead to Rome.”
“They’d have to cross an entire ocean, which I think is a little tricky.”
And on this note of wisdom, we entered the petting zoo. Any place was better than the Flake house, which had turned out to be a house of horrors.
Chapter 24
Lauren Klepfisch and Zak Kowalski had been staking out the Flake house long enough to know that the place was practically a beehive, with people coming and going at all hours. First a bunch of black SUVs had passed through the gates, probably transporting a US government contingent, or maybe SEAL Team Six, then Odelia Poole had arrived with her cop sidekick, had come and gone, only to return a little while later with her grandmother, before passing out again.
“Something is definitely going on in there,” said Lauren, with her reporter’s nose for a scoop.
“No shit, Sherlock,” said her cameraman. They’d been out there for too long, and Zak was getting a little antsy. He was also hungry for some real food, and not the pizzas they’d had delivered about an hour before.
“I say we move in for a closer look,” Lauren suggested. She tapped her nose. “I have a nose for these things, Zak.”
“Yeah, like you had a nose for barging into the police station this afternoon and getting kicked out?”
“I may have reacted a little hastily that time.”
But she was so sure that they would find a great little scoop there that she’d decided to go for broke and barge into the place. It hadn’t worked out so well, and their exclusive interview with Gabriel Crier or Chief Alec or both had been a bust. And now they were forbidden from ever setting foot inside the police station ever again. And after Chief Alec had called Lauren and Zak’s boss at WLBC-9, he’d chewed her out and told her in no uncertain terms he was unhappy with her behavior. And if she ever pulled a stunt like that again, she was off the story and off the air. And when she told him she had another scoop, and that Odelia Poole could talk to cats and she could prove it, he’d called her a long list of opprobrious names and slammed down the phone.
Looked like the world wasn’t ready to learn Miss Poole’s secret yet…
“Let’s get the inside scoop,” she said. “Something is going on in there and we need to know what it is.”
Zak groaned, but he wasn’t saying no. A scoop would put food on the table, and maybe even propel him to the next level: a fixed contract. Anything was better than the piecemeal stuff he did now—being paid as a freelancer.
“Let’s go for it, Zak,” she said. “And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll tell them it was my fault. I’ll take full responsibility.”
“Like you will take all the credit if we hit the jackpot, huh? No way, Lauren. We share the credit this time. And no buts.”
“Sure. Fine,” she said, glad he was willing to follow her into the lion’s den. She eyed the fence with a keen eye. “So how high do you think that thing is?”
Leonora Flake was staring out across the grounds that backed the estate. It was dark out, so there wasn’t a lot to see. She didn’t mind. She needed to put all of her ducks in a row. The words of that horrible old woman kept ringing in her ears: you’re going to destroy this company with your stupid ideas.
Could she be onto something? Was the reason Leonidas Flake had been as successful as it was, the wedding of two minds: her son and his boyfriend’s?
She’d always thought the company was going down the drain, and had tried to save it from Leo’s incompetence many times, even if it turned him against her. She’d always justified her actions by arguing she was doing Leo a favor. And now this woman had offered her a completely different view.
She decided to take a little ride through the grounds. It always gave her a fresh perspective to go for an evening stroll, even if stroll wasn’t exactly the word that applied to the wheelchair-bound sojourn she liked to undertake.
She lived in her own villa, not far from her son’s estate, and also had an apartment in Paris, from where she’d launched her campaign to convince the board that she was the better choice to run the company. It hadn’t worked that time, but now it finally had, even if the price was high: the death of her son. It was something that weighed heavily on her mind. She knew she’d miss him, that stubborn mulish man. But she also knew it was all for the best.
At least that’s what she’d always thought. She wasn’t so sure now.
The numbers didn’t lie: Leonidas Flake was in a bad way. But was it in a bad way because of her son’s mismanagement, or because of her actions?
She took off along the little dirt path that wound its way through the rolling parkland that stretched out for half a mile in every direction. She soon arrived at what she considered emblematic of her son’s silliness: the petting zoo. And as she pushed the wheelchair along the path, she found herself listening to the sounds of the animals. They were soothing sounds, and she had to admit that perhaps there was something to be said for the zoo.
Leo had always told her it calmed his frayed nerve
s after a long day when surrounded by his little flock, and maybe he had a point. She heard the soft snorts of a horse, the quiet braying of a donkey, and the rustling of straw as the hog dug its snout into its trough. She even heard the grunting of rabbits.
Nice, she thought, and felt her mood improving with leaps and bounds. She’d wanted to get rid of the zoo the moment she took over the house and the company, but now she reflected that maybe she would keep it instead. She’d fired the zookeeper that afternoon, along with the rest of Leo’s staff, and had called a local farmer to pick up the animals the next day. Now she might hire a new zookeeper, or rehire the old zookeeper and tell him that she’d made a mistake, and did he want to stay on at half his salary? If he refused, she’d tell him that the animals were all going to the slaughterhouse. He’d quickly agree, as apt as these half-witted animal lovers all were.
Take that stupid cat Pussy, for instance. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could love a cat the way Leo and Gabe had. And a pretty hideous cat the creature was at that. With those horrible claws and that terrible cat smell. At least for now, though, she needed to keep the foul beast around. To parade in front of the world’s media at next week’s press conference, and for the board of directors. But as soon as she didn’t need the stupid little bag of bones, it was off to the vet for a lethal injection. Or maybe she would put the thing down herself, and have Pussy buried somewhere on the grounds right next to those other two cats, Max and Dooley. Stupid names for stupid beasts. At least if Chris managed to catch them, which he better had, or else there would be hell to pay. Maybe she’d better ask Helga. Her trusty nurse never messed up.
And she was so lost in thought that she didn’t even notice that she’d taken a wrong turn and had gone off the path. She only perceived something wasn’t right when she was riding downhill, unable to stop her progress. The next moment she was crashing into a ditch. When she dropped out of her chair and splashed into the water, she screamed, but to no avail. She’d told Helga she wanted to be alone, and of course Leo’s security people didn’t care what happened to the new owner, since they were all about to be laid off anyway.
Soon she was sinking, and discovered this was no ditch but a pond. And before long the water closed over her head, and she was drowning!
Chapter 25
We’d been wandering around the petting zoo for a while, absolutely lost, I don’t mind confessing. The problem with being locked up and then escaping by the skin of your teeth is that you’re so pumped up on adrenaline that you don’t know which way is up or down. We were so elated to be out of our temporary prison that we’d simply been trucking along, without really looking which way we were going. And we were still pottering about the zoo when suddenly loud voices greeted us. They sounded awfully familiar.
“No, I’m telling you, Max would never be seen dead in a pigsty,” a female voice said.
“And I’m telling you that Max loves all creatures great and small, so this petting zoo is exactly where we’ll find him and Dooley.”
“Hey, isn’t that Harriet?” asked Dooley.
“And Brutus!”
We made for the voices, and when we emerged from a bush found ourselves gazing at a wondrous scene: Harriet and Brutus, sitting next to a very sizable pig!
The pig was munching on something located in a trough, while Harriet and Brutus were arguing back and forth about the strategy they needed to employ to find me and Dooley.
“You guys!” I cried as we burst onto the peculiar scene. “You found us!”
“Max! Dooley!” yelled Harriet, and streaked forward and actually pushed her wet nose into my neck, overjoyed to see me. Displaying affection has never been Harriet’s strong suit and it surprised me to see so much of it now.
“Hey, Dooley, old buddy,” said Brutus with a grin.
“How did you find us?” asked Dooley.
“Well, you found us,” said Brutus, making a good point, “so you tell me.”
“Can you guys take this meeting elsewhere?” suddenly spoke the pig in a deep rumbling voice. “You’re interrupting a perfectly good meal.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Pig,” said Dooley. “I apologize for the intrusion.”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” said the pig. “Just don’t do it again, will you?”
“Of course,” I said.
We moved away from the pigpen and soon found ourselves wandering near a small duck pond. “So what happened?” asked Harriet.
“Oh, we’ve been hanging out all day in a chicken coop,” said Dooley.
“See?!” said Brutus, giving Harriet a light shove. “What did I tell you?”
“The chicken had fled the scene, you see. Her name was Samson,” Dooley continued the narrative. “But then we got tired of eating chicken feed, and so we went in search of something tastier and that’s when we met Pussy.”
In a few words, Dooley and I told the tale of meeting Pussy, attending the conference from the confines of Leo’s secret control room, and being locked up and threatened with death by lethal claw by Leonora Flake, Chris Cross and the very scary Tank. Harriet and Brutus were hanging on our every word.
“So they were going to kill you?” asked Harriet. “Actually kill you dead?”
“Yeah, and bury us in a very deep grave,” said Dooley.
“Gruesome,” said Brutus, duly impressed by our harrowing adventure.
“These are not very nice people,” said Dooley. “And Leo’s mother is the worst of the bunch.”
“Is she behind the whole thing?” asked Brutus.
“You mean did she kill her son?” I said. “That wouldn’t surprise me.”
“If she can kill a cat, she can kill a human,” said Dooley with iron logic.
“She’s mean,” I agreed. “Capable of just about anything.”
Just then, we heard screams and shouts coming from the other side of the pond, and to my surprise it was the same woman we’d been verbally filleting, and who seemed to have landed herself in hot water herself now. Though I should probably say cold water, for as a rule duck ponds are not hot tubs.
“It’s Mrs. Flake,” I said as we hurried over to where the screams seemed to be coming from. And just as we reached the spot, the woman was going under for the third time, and the only thing that remained were bubbles reaching the surface. Then all was quiet as the watery grave closed above her head…
“We have to save her!” said Harriet.
“Yeah, but how?” I said. Cats, to their detriment, are not equipped with the type of accessories that allow for a waterlogged existence: webbed toes and gills and such. Even if we braved all and jumped into the water, what good would it do? We’d probably perish ourselves, and end up at the bottom.
Then Dooley suddenly started yelling his head off. “Heeeeelp!” he screamed. “Heeeeeeelp us!”
I felt bad for the kid. Obviously the day’s many brushes with danger and peril had gotten to him, and now he’d lost what little sanity he had left.
Soon, though, a cow waddled up to take a closer look.
“What’s going on?” she asked in her customary amiable way.
“Somebody’s drowning!” Dooley said. “You have to help her!”
“Ooh, that’s a job for Francis,” she said, then displaced a wad of grass from one cheek to the other and hollered, “Francis! We’ve got a jumper!”
Francis the donkey came toddling up, and directed a curious look at the pond. “No can do,” he said after a moment’s deliberation. “Too deep for me, I’m afraid. But maybe Streaker can handle it. Streaker! Come here a minute, will ya?”
Streaker the horse came cantering up. “Yes? Yes?” she said, eager for any fate. It was obvious that here was a horse dying to get some serious action.
“Jumper,” said Francis, indicating the pond with his hoof.
“Ooh, wee!” said Streaker happily, and jumped headfirst into the pond!
Moments later she returned grabbing the old lady between her large teeth, then proceeded to drag her on
to the shore!
“Way to go, Streaker,” said Brutus with admiration.
“Now we need to do CPR,” said Dooley, happy that his plan was working but still not fully satisfied with the outcome.
“CPR?” asked Streaker eagerly. “What is CPR? Can I do it? Please?”
“Thump her chest and then put your lips on hers,” said Brutus, “and blow.”
“Thump, lips and blow,” said Streaker excitedly. “I can do it.”
“Let me handle this, fellas,” said the pig, who’d joined the festivities. “I have the build for this kind of thing.” And so she heaved herself down on the woman’s chest for a moment, then put her lips to Leonora’s and blew hard.
“Nothing doing,” she said after a moment. “Looks dead to me.”
“Well, don’t you just stand there!” Francis told two sheep who’d come shambling up. “You perform heart massage while Empress does her thing.”
The pig, whose name appeared to be Empress, gave a curt nod of agreement, and soon the sheep showed a side of themselves I’d rarely seen in the Discovery Channel’s nature movies: they gently put their front hooves on the woman’s chest and started performing heart massage while Empress kept blowing into the woman’s mouth.
“Let me do it!” said Streaker. “I can do it! Let me do it!”
“Shush,” said Francis, who seemed to be the donkey in charge. “Empress is a natural. She’ll pull this off—just you wait and see.”
And then, suddenly, a miracle! The corpse came to life again with a start: first she spewed out a stream of mucky pond scum, and then she actually started sputtering and coughing. The ducks, who’d been awakened by all this activity, waddled up onto the shore, took one look at the drowning victim, then waddled off again. They obviously had no sympathy for landlubbers.
“Yesss!” said Francis. “We did it, you guys. She’s saved!”
“How are you doing, ma’am?” inquired Empress politely. “Anything else I can help you with? I have some nice slop in my trough you’re welcome to.”