The dogs and I have to stroll along the edge of the street since there are no sidewalks. This could be another mistake of the day, as they will probably do their business on someone’s very-well-looked-after lawn.
I don’t exactly know where Mrs. Watier lives, just that her house is on this side of Brant Street. I’m starting to doubt my eyes by now, anyway. How could it have been her driving? Sure, she sometimes drives a little fast, but would she have such heavy bass playing?
Around the bend of the street is Jessie’s old house. I feel like sneaking in the backyard to peek in the pool house, just for old times’ sake. But that’s not something I’d ever do. He doesn’t live there anymore, so it just wouldn’t be the same.
Besides, Ping starts barking at this point and Pong yanks me forward. Ahead is the skateboarding dude again, dressed in baggy jeans and a T-shirt this time. He has a wooden ramp in the middle of the street and he’s skating up it. His eyebrows scrunch on his forehead, his teeth clench in a frown, and his face is the colour of a stop sign. He looks like a different guy, more than just determined, maybe even angry.
In the middle of the street, really? If the skateboarder lives in this neighbourhood, he must have a driveway big enough to practise safely. Does he have a death wish or something?
I pull the dogs back hard. Ping hacks like he’s choking.
The skateboarder sails over the edge of the ramp for a second. Then crash, he clatters down onto his side.
For a full thirty seconds, he doesn’t move.
Is he unconscious? I grab the cellphone from my pocket to call an ambulance, but then he’s back up, cursing and rubbing his elbow. He approaches the ramp again.
Are you kidding me?
I see a car coming around the corner a little too fast, and I want to flag it to slow down.
Crash! The skateboarder’s on the ground again. I wave madly at the car.
Does the driver see me? Does he understand someone’s lying in the middle of the street? “Stop, stop!” I call.
Happily, the car slows down, gives a honk, and then drives safely around him.
The dogs and I walk up to the skateboarder, whose cheek is bleeding. “Are you okay?”
“Great,” he grumbles.
Ping reaches in with his nose to lick his face. The skateboarder pushes him away. Pong wags his tail and whimpers in sympathy but keeps his distance.
“Do you think it’s a good idea to practise jumps in the middle of the street?” The words come out of my mouth before I can stop them, my ninth mistake of the day. I’m in shock, so I babble, sounding a lot like Renée, and it comes across as a mini safety lecture. We all know the answer — even the skateboarder.
His nose wrinkles, and his strange two-coloured eyes look up and burn holes into me. “Mind your own flippin’ business.”
day one, mistake ten
Okay, the skateboarder said something way more harsh than flippin’. Ping and Pong bark out their disapproval, but I apologize because I did ask a stupid question. I have to drag the dogs away. As we shuffle off, I notice a flash of orange on the left.
The Beetle sits in a three-car driveway. That’s Jessie’s old house! He never mentioned who bought it. Is that Mrs. Watier’s house now? Her TZX isn’t there, but that would only make sense if she drove the Beetle home.
I wonder if the skateboarder lives next door to our principal. Or does he just skateboard in random neighbourhoods, maybe so his parents won’t know about his dangerous habits?
We circle around the block and cross over Brant Street again, but instead of going through the park, I walk the team through the townhouse complex instead. Lots of dogs live here, so there’s plenty of good sniffing for Ping and Pong. We head toward a jogger decked out in a lime-coloured sweatsuit and matching runners. She’s flanked by a large, panting Rottweiler.
As we draw closer, his tail stub winds around like a boat propeller.
“Is he friendly?” I call loudly. She’s wearing earbuds.
“Buddy loves meeting other dogs,” she answers.
The three dogs get tangled up in each other’s leashes immediately, and suddenly, there’s a low growl and a snap from the Rottweiler. Pong snaps back and they go at it, snarling and biting at each other with fangs bared. Ping barks hysterically on the side as I unwind the leashes. The Rottweiler suddenly turns and lunges at Ping, who squeaks like a toy.
Did the jogger say Buddy loved meeting other dogs or eating them, I wonder. Finally, I drag my team away from the Rotti.
“They would have worked it out,” the lady says.
Much easier to wait when you own the tougher dog. Still, I smile and hand her a Noble Dog Walking business card just in case Buddy needs some exercise when she’s away.
Then I lead the Ping Pong team away.
The moment I get through the door, Dad’s cellphone rings. “Noble Dog Walking, Jim Noble speaking, how can I help you?” He pauses. “Hello, Mr. Bennett.” He pauses. “You’re both going out of town!” He shakes his head as he listens. “All right, it will be up to Stephen. But I have to tell you, we don’t usually board.” Another pause. “Three days would be a long time for them to be alone, I agree. All right. We’ll settle up later.” He ends the call and chews his lips. “Airline people.”
“What are you going to do?” I say sympathetically. But I know Dad wants to expand his business and sell his homemade dog treats and food. He doesn’t want to turn down any of his clients’ requests. “Mom’s going to be away for three more days also.”
“Exactly, so we might be all right.”
I smile. Real-life dogs are way better than the square-block Minecraft pets. “We’ll have to clean really well.”
“Or you can take them home and we can just feed and walk them. The Bennetts would be all right with us looking after them either way.”
“That would be cruel. These dogs really are social.” Still, keeping them at our house, will that prove another big mistake?
“You have to keep them out of our bedrooms,” Dad warns. “We shouldn’t have allergens in our sleep area.”
“Absolutely! They can sleep in the bathroom. No carpets, easy to wash down.”
“Good idea.”
So that night, I spread out a sleeping bag across the ceramic tile and give the boys some old stuffed animals and half a bag of dog treats. “Dad, we’re almost out of liver bites,” I call. “Maybe just enough for tomorrow.”
“Fine, I’m making some Wednesday.”
Perfect. The dogs cozily crunch on the bites I gave them, and we all settle down for a nice quiet night.
Not.
I’m just dozing off when they start.
Snap, growl, whimper, repeat. I think I can ignore it. I know I can. They’ll go to sleep eventually.
But then I can hear Pong hurling himself against the door. Whomp, whomp, whomp. It can’t hold up against him.
My three night lights help me navigate out of my bedroom to the bathroom, where I open the door. Hard to be annoyed when the dogs are so happy to see me, wagging themselves silly, leaping up on my pajama legs.
“Oh, come on, then.” I spread out the sleeping bag across my bedroom floor. Hopefully, the allergens will all be trapped in the bag. They seem to settle down nicely. I fall asleep quickly and deeply.
In the middle of the night, the dogs bark like the hounds of Hades, the mythical multi-headed dogs Renée presented on at school the other day. I get up. “Whatsa matter?” I can barely talk I’m so groggy. “Do ya need to go for tinkles?”
Pong leaps at the window. My room faces toward Brant Hills. Ping jumps on the bed to be able to look out. So much for allergens. I peer out to see what’s upsetting them.
The park lights make it bright enough to see a distinctly shaped little car drive across the school parking lot. That old Beetle keeps turning up everywhere. It stops an
d I pull the dogs away. Can’t be Mrs. Watier this time. Or can it? “Just somebody out driving,” I tell the dogs.
My explanation doesn’t soothe the team. Pong whimpers. Ping gives a few sharp barks. I’m not convinced, either.
Dad comes into my room, rubbing his eyes. “For Pete’s sake, what are they doing in here?”
“They were lonely.” I frown and point out the window. “There’s a car driving around in the school parking lot.”
“Big deal. Probably lots of cars drive there. We just don’t know it because nobody wakes us.” He scratches his stubble. “Look, if you can’t settle them down, we’ll have to take them back to their house. We need our sleep.”
“They’ll be okay, Dad. It’s just new to them. Shh, Ping, shh!”
Dad shakes his head and trudges back to his bedroom.
I pick the little one up and dump him onto the bed. Pong jumps up to join him. I’ll wash the sheets and vacuum my bed when they leave.
They curl up but still end up taking most of the room. An engine starts up in the distance, and Ping growls low and menacing.
I peek out the window again. The Beetle seems to be jerking back and forth across the lot now. It reminds me of the bomb-detonating robot.
Sighing, I settle myself back down into the space left for me on the bed. It’s 12:01 on my cell; technically, it could be called tomorrow already. Another low growl comes, this time from Pong. A chill runs up my spine. What bothers them so much about that car? The last mistake of the day, number ten, turns out to be not investigating more closely.
day two
day two, mistake one
I don’t sleep great, squished against the wall by Ping and Pong. Next morning the phone wakes me. Dad calls me downstairs and, standing at the kitchen counter, hands me the receiver. It’s Mom and she’s at the airport in Amsterdam just finishing her lunch. “Hi, Stephen, how are you?”
I tell her about the fire alarm and remote-control bomb-detonating robot. “Then, in the middle of the night, there was a Volkswagen Beetle driving in the school parking lot.”
“The new model or the classic?”
“The classic.”
“I love those. You don’t see them that often.”
“It was the middle of the night, Mom.”
“You’re reading too much into things again. The fire alarm and the car don’t have anything to do with each other. People go for drives. Teenagers like to park and kiss late at night, you know.” She sighs. “Listen, I heard a great story from one of the other flight attendants.”
“Nothing involving pilot errors, right?”
“No, of course not.” Over the thousands of miles between us, I can hear the smile in her voice.
I smile, too.
“Yesterday, at LaGuardia Airport, a mastiff escaped from the cargo hold.”
“Don’t dogs have to be in cages to fly?” Already, her story makes me uneasy. Where are Ping and Pong? Oh good, I can see them outside the patio door. Dad’s let them out. “How could a mastiff escape from a cage?”
“They figure he chewed open his carrier, and when the baggage handlers came to get the luggage, he just burst through the door.”
“It’s really not safe for animals to travel in cargo, is it?”
“Lots of passengers are allergic, not just me, Stephen. It wouldn’t be healthy for us to have them in the cabin.”
I twinge with guilt over keeping Ping and Pong at our house overnight. Will they make Mom wheeze?
She continues. “So the escape isn’t the worst of it. The dog gallops away from the baggage handlers. And, of course, Flushing Bay borders the runway.”
“He doesn’t drown, does he?”
“No, no, silly.” She chuckles. “But he does jump in and starts swimming as fast as he can to get away from them. Forty-five minutes later, the coast guard finally catches up to him. By this time, the mastiff is so exhausted he’s happy to get in the boat.”
“That’s a great story,” I tell her. Where are Ping and Pong, anyway? Next door the Lebels have an in-ground pool, and there’s a gap under our fence.
I slide the patio door open but don’t call out to the dogs. Mom can’t know we’re keeping them at our house.
“Listen, I’ve got to go,” Mom says. “They’ve just finished repairing the engine, so we’re ready for boarding.”
“Did you have engine trouble?” I step outside and walk toward the gap.
“Gotta go. Love you, Stephen. See you Friday.” Click.
“Love you, too, Mom,” I whisper to a dead phone. Then I look under the fence. “Ping! Pong!”
It’s a warm day for October, and I can feel the hair at the back of my neck getting moist. Suddenly, there’s a rattle in the bushes behind me. Ping leaps on my back; Pong noses at my knees. I slump under their attack. “Come on in, guys.” I sigh but can’t help smiling as they follow me.
Inside, Dad smiles back at me and passes a bowl of oatmeal across the counter.
“They fixed the engine on the plane. Mom had to go,” I tell him.
He raises one eyebrow. “You know the mechanics always look over the planes between flights. That’s how they keep them safe.”
After twenty years of working at airports, Dad would know — I shrug my shoulders and sit down to eat. Ping and Pong look hopeful at my feet.
“What will we feed them?” I ask.
“I’m testing out my special dog stew.” He buzzes the food processor. “Leftover chicken from last night, mixed with carrots and oatmeal.” He sets down a couple of bowls on the floor.
They rush the bowls. Like I said, Dad’s a great cook, for dogs.
“Okay, so you’re off to school. I’m off to walk other dogs. These guys —”
“I can take them home and let them out at lunch.”
“You’ll need a note, then.” Dad grabs a sheet of Noble Dog Walking stationery and dashes off a permission note. “I’ve made it out for the whole week.”
“Great.” I grab it and stuff it in my backpack.
“Hurry and get dressed now. You’ll need to leave earlier to get these guys settled.”
The first mistake of the day turns out to be not asking Dad to drop off the dogs because I can’t hurry enough. By the time I struggle with them and their leashes and walk them to their house, not only do I feel bad for leaving them, I’m also ten minutes late for school, just enough to need a slip from the office.
As I head for the walkway at the front of the building, I’m surprised to see so many kids still outside. They seem to be heading in the other direction, laughing and chatting along the way like it’s the most normal thing. This feels like one of those nightmares where everyone knows something I don’t. “Hey, guys?” I want to call. But thinking of the fire alarm yesterday and how stupid I looked when I called out then, I stay quiet and try to figure it out myself. Why isn’t everyone settling down in their classrooms, waiting for announcements?
Then I spot the two police cars in the parking lot.
I try the front door and discover it’s locked. Something is terribly wrong.
day two, mistake two
“School’s closed for today. Go home.” The custodian, Mrs. Klein, walks up from behind me, coffee cup in hand.
“Why? It’s really nice out so we don’t even need the furnace today. Did the pipes burst?”
She shakes her head. “A car drove through the back doors.” Mrs. Klein sits down on the steps, sighs, and sips from her cup. “I found it when I came in this morning. Still running.”
“Was anybody hurt?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No one was in the car and no one was in the building. Some bricks are damaged, the doors and frame are wrecked, plus a couple of banks of lockers.”
“Was it an accident?” I remember Mr. Ron telling me how he learned to drive. L
ate at night might be the best time to practise in a school parking lot.
She shakes her head again. “Oh, no, someone drove it into the doors on purpose. And the car ran for a long time. The halls are full of fumes.”
Something bothers me about this, something I can’t put my finger on. “So, when will school open? When the doors get repaired?”
“No, it won’t take that long. When the air clears. We’ve got huge fans in here blowing. Tomorrow we should be fine.”
I shrug my shoulders. “So everyone gets a holiday.”
“Not everyone,” she grumbles. “It’s convenient for Mrs. Watier, though. She’s going to have extra time to get ready for her rehearsal tea. And good for the rest of the teachers.” Mrs. Klein frowns. “But I’m cleaning up the broken bits of wall and locker in here.”
“You’re not invited to the tea?” I feel sorry for Mrs. Klein. It’s like she’s Cinderella.
“Well, I’m not part of the wedding party, so that makes sense. I wish they’d remembered to invite me to the special assembly, though. I had to ask them to let me sign the card.” Another sigh. “If you do your job right in this business, most people don’t think about you much.” She sips and swallows hard. “You have a good day, though, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”
A mom with a little kindergarten-sized kid at her side walks up now, and Mrs. Klein repeats the news.
I stand there for a moment, mouth hanging open, as I take in the details a second time, all the while remembering last night, the dogs growling, that car …
Mrs. Klein didn’t say it was a Volkswagen, but when I shake myself out of it, I cut to the back of the school to get to the path. The yellow crime tape screams out warning and danger to me. I feel a little sick but I have to see anyway. A tow truck starts up just as I pass, and sure enough, it drags out a squashed orange VW Beetle.
I take a deep breath.
Nothing to do about it now. First a bomb threat, then a car smashes into the school. Am I the only one who sees the link? Last night we definitely should have called the police.
The Best Mistake Mystery Page 4