by Peg Kehret
FUTURE HOME OF EVERGREEN APARTMENTS
Megan’s heart sank. Someone was going to build apartments on this field. But what about the cats? Megan wondered. What will happen to them?
She remembered the enormous rumbling bulldozers that had flattened the woods in such a brief time. She imagined the panic of the cats as they ran to escape the huge, noisy machines. Where would they go? Onto the freeway?
I have to help them, Megan thought. I have to find a way to catch the cats and tame them and find homes for them before the field gets leveled.
I have to keep the apartment complex from being built until the cats are safe.
But how?
“An enticing story for . . . Kehret’s legion of fans.” –Booklist
BOOKS BY PEG KEHRET
Cages
Don’t Tell Anyone
Earthquake Terror
I’m Not Who You Think I Am
Nightmare Mountain
Searching for Candlestick Park
Terror at the Zoo
PEG KEHRET
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd. Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books,
a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000
Published by Puffin Books,
a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2001
Copyright © Peg Kehret, 2000
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DUTTON EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Kehret. Peg.
Don’t tell anyone / by Peg Kehret.–1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Twelve-year-old Megan does not realize that feeding a group of feral cats living in a field near her house will involve her as a witness to a traffic accident and in the dangerous plan of an unstable criminal.
[1. Feral cats–Fiction. 2. Cats–Fiction. 3. Single-parent families–Fiction. 4. Criminals–Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K2518 Dq 2000 [Fic]–dc21 99-089605
Puffin Books ISBN: 978-1-101-66168-0
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
For my grandsons,
Eric Carl Konen and Mark Edward Kehret,
with love from Moonie
Table of Contents
1
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10
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17
About the Author
1
Megan discovered the cats by accident. She was roller-skating on the sidewalk beside the field when one of her wheels came off. As it sailed into the tall weeds, a black-and-white cat flew out, streaked across the sidewalk, and disappeared into a large drainpipe.
Megan landed on her hands and knees. Unhurt, she crawled into the weeds and found the wheel. The nut that had come loose still lay on the sidewalk, so Megan reattached the wheel, tightening the nut with her fingers. She hoped it would hold until she got home and could use a wrench.
She knelt by the drainpipe and peered inside. Two amber eyes stared back.
“Hello, kitty,” Megan said.
“Hiss!”
“Nice pussycat,” Megan said. “I won’t hurt you.”
The cat hissed again and backed farther into the drainpipe.
“Here, kitty, kitty. Nice, kitty.” Megan wondered if the cat was a lost pet. Maybe the cat had a collar with an identification tag. If so, Megan would call the owner and say she’d found the cat.
Slowly Megan put her hand inside the drainpipe.
Slash! The cat’s claws ripped across the top of Megan’s hand. She jerked her arm back and put her hand to her mouth.
I knew better than to stick my hand in there, she thought, as she pressed her hand to her jeans to stop the bleeding.
She sat on the sidewalk to wait. If she was quiet, the cat would think she had left, and it might come out. Then she could see if there was a collar or not. If the cat wouldn’t let her touch it, she would get a good description so she could look in the lost-and-found ads to see if anyone was missing a cat like this one.
While she waited, Megan watched cars go up the freeway on-ramp. She also saw movement in the grassy field. Soon a large orange cat leaped forward, pouncing on something in the weeds. When he raised his head a moment later, a field mouse dangled from his teeth.
Megan wondered how many cats lived in this field. She sat quietly, watching both the weeds and the drainpipe.
The cat never emerged from the drainpipe, but in the hour that Megan waited she glimpsed two more cats in the field. Both of them fled when she called, “Here, kitty, kitty.”
She wondered how the cats had gotten there. Had someone dumped a box of unwanted kittens and they had managed to survive?
Megan went home to get her shoes and money, then went to the mini-mart to buy a bag of cat food. Back home again, she took a pie plate from the kitchen cupboard, filled it with cat food, and carried it the four blocks from her house to the field.
She saw no cats. Kneeling, she peered into the drainpipe. It was empty.
A lone maple tree grew in the center of the field. Megan put the plate of food in the grass at the base of the tree. Then she climbed the tree and sat on a limb to wait.
About fifteen minutes later, a scrawny black-and-white cat approached the pie plate. Megan wondered if this was the cat that had scratched her.
The cat slunk forward cautiously, his belly only an inch above the ground. He ate a few bites, stopped and looked around, then ate some more. Soon he was joined by an orange cat that had a nick out of one ear. Megan thought that it was the cat she had seen catch a mouse. Next a scruffy gray cat arrived.
Megan expected the cats to fight over the food, with the first ones keeping the late arrivals away, but that didn’t happen. Instead, as each cat approached, the others looked up briefly and then continued to eat. Soon the pie plate looked like the center of a wheel, with multicolored cats angling out like spokes all the way around it.
Hidden by maple leaves, Megan sat still and watched. She decided to name each of the cats. The black-and-white one was Claws, because of the scratch on Megan’s hand. The orange one was Pumpkin, and the gray one became Twitchy Tail.
One of the cats, a brown-and-tan striped tabby, was much plumper than the rest. Suspecting that the cat was pregnant, Megan named her Mommacat.
When the food was gone, the cats scattered–all except Mommacat, who licked the bottom of the empty dish and then sat washing her whiskers. She’s still hungry, Megan thought. I need to bring more food next time.
She decided to bring cat food to the field every day. When Mommacat’s kittens were born, Megan would make sure they were all right. Maybe when they were old enough, she could take
one home and keep it. Megan and Kylie, her little sister, had begged for years to get a pet, but Mom said animals took too much time.
“We’ll get one when you’re older,” Mom always said, “and more responsible. We’ll talk about it when you’re older.” Megan had turned twelve last month; maybe she was finally old enough.
Megan shifted position; Mommacat looked up in alarm, then bolted away. Megan climbed down, picked up the pie plate, and headed for home.
The next day she brought more food, plus an old soup bowl and a peanut-butter jar full of water. She poured the water into the bowl and put it beside the food. When the cats came, they lapped the water eagerly. Megan realized mice were probably plentiful in the field, but water might be scarce. After that, she brought food and fresh water every day.
When she returned home on the third day of feeding the cats, Megan’s mother was in the kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee.
“Chelsea called,” Mrs. Perk said. “She wants you to call her.”
Megan’s best friend, Chelsea, lived just two blocks away. The girls often played together after school. This week, however, Chelsea had chicken pox.
Megan washed the pie plate.
“Don’t try to pet those cats when you feed them,” Mrs. Perk warned. “Feral cats are wild things. They’ll scratch and bite. Probably none of them has been vaccinated for rabies. A scratch from a wild cat can be serious.”
Megan looked down at the slash on the back of her hand. It was puffed and angry looking, much redder than it had been the day it happened.
Mrs. Perk’s eyes followed Megan’s glance. “What’s that? Have you already been scratched?”
Megan nodded.
“Let me see your hand,” Mom said.
Reluctantly, Megan extended her hand toward her mother.
“Did you put antiseptic on it?”
“No. It looked okay until today.”
“It doesn’t look okay now. I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
After swabbing the wound with antiseptic, Mrs. Perk said, “You had better stay away from that field. We’ll be lucky if you don’t end up with an infection.”
“But the cats need me,” Megan said. “You should see how glad they are to get fresh water, and they eat every crumb of food.”
“They got along before you found them.”
“One of them is pregnant. She looks as if her kittens will arrive at any second.”
“They aren’t your cats,” Mrs. Perk said.
“But what if the mother cat needs help? What if there’s a problem when the kittens are born?”
“Wild animals know how to take care of themselves, and those cats are definitely wild animals.”
“I’ll be careful,” Megan promised. “Since that first day, all I do is set the food and water down, and then I climb a tree and watch the cats eat. I don’t try to touch them.”
The phone in Mrs. Perk’s office rang. She hurried to answer it. Megan’s mother worked for a stock brokerage firm. She had her home computer networked to the office and did much of her work from home.
Her reason for working this way was that, as a divorced mother, she wanted to be at home to supervise her daughters. In truth, however, even though Mrs. Perk was there physically, she rarely had time during the week to pay close attention to what Megan or Kylie were doing. Megan often wished she and Mom could finish a conversation without being interrupted by one of Mom’s clients.
Because of the time difference between the West Coast, where the Perks lived, and New York, where the Stock Exchange is located, Mrs. Perk was on the telephone by six-thirty every morning. Megan usually fixed breakfast for herself and Kylie, made sure Kylie got on the kindergarten bus, and then rode her bike to school.
After school Mrs. Perk took calls from clients, worked on their portfolios, and researched companies to determine if their stock was likely to go up in value. She supervised Kylie’s after-school play, but Megan was allowed to come and go, as long as she left a note or told her mother where she was.
Weekends were better. On Saturday afternoons, Mrs. Perk took her daughters hiking or swimming or bowling. Sometimes Megan and Kylie each got to invite a friend to go along.
Megan waited a long time for her mother to get off the phone. While she waited, she remembered her mother’s instructions. “Maybe you had better stay away from that field.” Her mother had not told her she had to stay away. She had said maybe.
The cats did need the food and water, especially Mommacat, whose sides now pushed out so far she looked like a bubble that was ready to burst. The phone conversation went on; Megan gave up waiting.
The next morning Megan wanted to stay home from school and go to the field to wait for the kittens to be born. But she knew what her mother would say to that request, so she didn’t bother to ask.
Instead she carried the cat food and her jar of water to school in her backpack. After school, Megan rushed for her bike, removed the padlock, and pedaled as fast as she could toward the field.
She hoped she wasn’t too late. She wanted to be there when the kittens were born.
About a block before she got to the field, something white caught her attention. Oh no, Megan thought, as she saw that a large white sign had been erected on the edge of the field. Filled with anxiety, she rode toward it.
Megan had seen such signs before. They went up on vacant lots as a way to announce to the neighborhood that the lot would not be vacant for long.
The woods where Megan and Kylie used to play had been cut down last year, soon after such a sign was erected. Dozens of new houses now stood where the woods used to be, and the first thing each of the new owners did after they moved in was plant some trees.
She stopped her bike next to the sign.
FUTURE HOME OF EVERGREEN APARTMENTS. 160 LUXURY UNITS.
Megan’s heart sank. Someone was going to build apartments on this field. But what about the cats? Megan wondered. What will happen to them?
She remembered the enormous rumbling bulldozers that had flattened the woods in such a brief time. She imagined the panic of the cats as they ran to escape the huge, noisy machines. Where would they go? Onto the freeway?
I have to help them, Megan thought. I have to find a way to catch the cats and tame them and find homes for them before the field gets leveled.
I have to keep the apartment complex from being built until the cats are safe.
But how?
2
Tuesday night, Shane Turner unlocked the office of Colby Construction Company, stepped inside, and locked the door behind him. He did not switch on any lights; there was no point calling attention to the fact that the building was occupied so late at night. What if Brice Colby, Shane’s brother-in-law, happened to drive past? If Brice saw a light, he’d be in there in a flash, asking Shane what he was doing, and then what would Shane say?
Brice did not know that Shane had a key to the office. It had been easy to get; Shane simply pretended to have trouble with his truck one morning. He borrowed his sister’s car for the day, then made duplicate keys of everything on Ruthann Colby’s key ring before he returned the car.
The office windows faced the parking lot. Shane looked out. His blue pickup was the only vehicle parked there.
Colorful hammers and wrenches floated on the computer’s screen-saver program. Shane walked to the glowing screen.
He uncovered the keyboard, then punched in the commands for Colby Construction’s bookkeeping program. The first time he had done this, two weeks earlier, it had taken him three tries to correctly guess the password. He had tried Brice’s birthday first, and then Ruthann’s birthday. When those didn’t work, he tried their wedding anniversary, November 23, and the Colby accounts appeared on the screen.
When the system asked for the password this time, Shane typed in 1123. Next he clicked on Accounts Payable.
While he waited for the information to appear, he wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans. The blue screen gave an eerie glow to that cor
ner of the dark office.
Shane typed in Bradburn Cement Company, a nonexistent business. He typed Amount due for work completed on Bayview Place, a furniture store that Colby Construction was presently building.
He made the check payable to William Bradburn. One of Shane’s driver’s licenses was in that name; he would use it for identification when he cashed the check.
Shane could type in the amount of money that Colby Construction “owed” William Bradburn and print out a check, and no one would know. He had done it once before, and neither Brice nor the bookkeeper had caught on.
Although Shane knew he was alone, his heart raced as he typed the numbers: $15,104.23. He made the amount uneven so that it would look more like a real billing from the fictitious cement company.
Shane pressed Print Check. The machine that printed checks warmed up; the pale green paper slid forward, and the finished check emerged from the other side.
Shane held it toward the glow from the computer screen, making sure that it was made out properly. If the check didn’t match Shane’s fake driver’s license, he’d never be able to cash it.
The check was perfect. Shane forged Brice’s signature on the bottom of the check. He had practiced it so many times, he could do it without even looking at Brice’s real signature.
Shane put the check in his wallet, then exited the bookkeeping program. The dancing hammers and wrenches returned to the screen.
A band of light flashed across the wall as a car drove into the parking lot. Shane’s heart pounded. He hurried to the window and looked out, keeping to the side of the glass where he could not be seen. He did not recognize the car.
The car made a U-turn, went out the same driveway it had come in, and drove off.
This is the last time I’ll do this, Shane promised himself. It was too risky. If Brice ever found out, Shane knew he would lose not only his job, but his freedom.
When Shane had been released from prison six months earlier, his sister, Ruthann, had pleaded with Brice to give her brother a job. No one else was willing to take a chance on an ex-con with a record of armed robbery and forgery.