Mosquitoes of Summer

by Julianna Kozma

  Normally Emily would have been chasing Meg up and down the beach, neither tiring of playing fetch. But she desperately ached to be a part of Hannah’s ‘big-girl world.’ Tagging along with her sister made Emily feel more important, even though she did not always understand, or even care about what was going on.

  Before leaving Lucy’s house, the girls promised to meet up as soon as their parents allowed. They needed to plan their next move. On the drive back, Emily fell over onto Hannah’s lap, exhausted by the hectic day. She was fast asleep within minutes. Usually Hannah did not tolerate Emily sleeping on her (she tended to drool), but this evening she was deep in thought, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the knife. She leaned her head back on the seat and closed her eyes. Within minutes she too was asleep.

  The next day dawned bright and hot. And noisy! Frustrated, Hannah slammed her blue Harry Potter pillow over her head, muffling the sounds that were coming from right above her.

  “Squirrels!” she said disgustedly. Normally she thought they were cute furry brown things and she enjoyed listening to them chatter in the trees. But not today. Today they were hopping all over the vinyl tent covering of the camper.

  Making an effort, Hannah squinted from under her pillow. She sat up instantly. She was staring face to face with one of these suckers. He was hanging off the screen window like a mini vampire, glaring at her. Hannah swore she saw tiny fangs sticking out from his upper lip! Beady little black eyes bored into her skull. On the smallish side, the mangy squirrel had a small scar over his left eye. He also had a stumpy tail.

  “Crazy squirrel! Shoo.” Hitting the screen mesh, Hannah watched the diabolical little rodent drop like a stone off the tent. Plunk! “Bye-bye. Have a nice trip Squirrellee!” Smiling, she snuggled down into her sleeping bag and prepared to go back to sleep. Cracking open one eye, she glanced at the digital clock sitting beside the sink.

  “Nine o’clock! Way too early,” she mumbled. With very little effort, she started drifting off again, dreaming of….

  “WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!!!!!!!!!”

  Flying out of bed, Hannah’s legs got tangled in the sleeping bag and she went down hard on the floor.

  “What are you yelling about?” she shouted to Emily. “You made me fall out of bed.”

  “THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE CAMPER,” cried Emily, not lowering the decibels. “It’s right under my bed, in one of the storage containers. Just shut up for a change and LISTEN!”

  Eyes near bursting from their sockets and hair all twisted in ugly knots, Emily pointed to a spot near her feet. Standing as still as possible, Hannah strained to listen. Sure enough, she could hear furtive scratching noises. Then a thump. Scratching. Thump.

  “Something’s hitting the lid,” whispered Hannah. “We need to get Dad. Fast!”

  She sprinted out the door, leaving poor Emily alone with the evil monster. In record time she was back with her small army. Mom, Dad and the Bean (hanging precariously onto Hannah’s middle finger), found Emily huddled in the far corner of the camper, knees drawn to her chin and staring wildly ahead. A shaking finger pointed down.

  “The noise is coming from there, where we keep our Trivial Pursuit game and drawing papers.”

  Hannah watched her dad cautiously lift the cushions off the offending storage box. Slowly he opened the lid. Wow, thought Hannah. A garbage bag worth of shredded white paper filled the box to the brim. Chewed up cardboard game pieces added colour to the pile. Poking aside the mess of paper with a fly swatter, Dad carefully looked for the monster. Suddenly, a pair of black beady eyes poked up out of the mess. A small scar was over its left eye!

  “CRAZY SQUIRREL!” shouted Emily, at which the squirrel promptly disappeared into its little mountain of paper. The last thing Hannah saw was a stumpy tail being quickly pulled back in. Banging shut the lid of the box, Dad went outside, looking underneath the camper.

  After listening to her dad while he let off a few choice swear words, Hannah managed to make out the fact that the squirrel had chewed a nice big hole in the bottom of the camper, right where the storage box was located. Dad came storming back inside and asked the girls whether they had food stored away somewhere.

  “Only our chocolate bars,” said Hannah. “And they weren’t in the box. Besides, with the lid closed, the squirrel is trapped in there. He can’t come into the tent.

  “Where did you keep your chocolate?” asked Dad.

  Turning to point to the counter opposite the storage box, Hannah found herself staring at the empty wrappers. Mr. Bean stared too.

  “My Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup! Emily, you ate it!”

  “Did not! You ate my Mars bar.”

  “Did not!”

  “WATCHA DOIN?!”

  “Girls, enough!” yelled Mom. “You too, Mr. Bean!”

  “Poop, Mr. Bean!”

  After giving the bird a dirty look, Mom turned back to her daughters and told the girls to take a closer look at the chocolate bar wrappers. Sure enough Hannah could see tiny teeth marks etched into some melted chocolate.

  “He scraped it clean! I can’t believe it.” Hannah turned to her dad. “But how did he get in? The windows were screened and the door was closed. It wasn’t through the box!”

  Everyone started searching the camper, looking for an opening. Minutes passed.

  “Oh no!” wailed Mom, pointing to the screen where Hannah had her bed. On the bottom of the screen was a big hole. Small mesh shavings littered the foot of the bed. More swearing from Dad.

  “We have to trap him and then take him far away from here,” he said, rubbing his hands together with an evil glee as he planned his attack. “I’ll use the red cooler box as the trap. Hannah, get some peanuts from the Bean. It’ll be our bait.”

  “Watcha doin?” Again from the Bean.

  Dad set to work quickly. He tied some string to a cork, and then placed the cork between the hinged door of the cooler, propping it open. Inside the cooler he scattered a handful of peanuts. When he pulled the string, the lid came crashing closed. The cooler was then placed near the camper. Dad set up his camp chair about 8 feet away, holding the string in one hand while drinking his coffee in the other.

  “Perfect! Now we wait.”

  Ten minutes later Dad was carrying a noisy cooler to the car, trying to hold it steady as the enraged rodent banged around inside. Once he was back he told everyone that he let the squirrel off near the Darnley Greens golf course, a couple of kilometers from the house.

  “Maybe now he’ll keep busy chasing balls instead of destroying our camper.”

  The rest of the day passed pleasantly enough. The girls tidied up in the camper, making sure the remaining chocolate bars were back in the house. Dad sewed up the squirrel hole in the tent and then patched up the hole in the storage box using a piece of tin. “Let’s see the little tree rat try to get through that!”

  In the meantime, Mom vacuumed the house which meant a bath for the Bean. Unlike other normal parrots, Mr. Bean hated water. However, for some reason the vacuum cleaner forced him to seek out water. But even this trick had its limits and the crazy bird would not take more than one bath per week, if they were lucky!

  After lunch the girls changed into their bathing suits and decided to ride their bikes down to the beach at Twin Shores. Hannah’s mom and dad joined the girls a couple of hours later, bringing down boogie boards, sand toys, beach umbrellas, chairs and most importantly, food! A bag of ketchup chips, chocolate chip cookies, and sliced cucumbers (for Emily) were gobbled up in no time.

  “Mom, did you bring anything to drink?”

  “Oops!”

  “Dad, do you have any money for slushies?”

  “Oops!” again.

  “Mommy, I’m shriveling up from thirst!” cried Emily.

  “I guess we’ll have to walk around the beach and collect empty bottles,” Hannah sighed while searching through the cooler for plastic bags. “We can cash them in at the General Store and use the money to buy the slushies. Wit
h the two of us taking different sections of the camp site, we can cover a lot of ground. Let’s go.”

  An hour later the girls came back with blue-red and orange slushies brimming in clear plastic containers. “That was hard work. We had to beg for more bags because we found so many bottles. I guess everyone likes to drink in this heat. We couldn’t carry the beer bottles though, so we left them.”

  “It was heartbreaking!” sniffed Emily, having a hard time forgiving Hannah for forcing her to throw money away like that. “All those beer bottles would have made us rich! Hundreds of dollars!”

  A perfect eye roll from Hannah.

  After a quick supper of grilled cheese sandwiches the family gathered around the campfire in the backyard, roasting marshmallows and hotdogs until the evening turned too cool to remain outside. It had been a fun-filled day of squirrel hunting, swimming in the ocean, making sandcastles and eating junk food on the beach. There was no mention of the Arrowhead mystery, and it was refreshing to take a little break in between their detective work.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ASUSPECT

  The following day Lucy called the girls and begged them to come over in the afternoon. The Smiths had been out on Wayne’s boat earlier in the morning and Lucy had just gotten back. Breathlessly, she told Hannah to come over quick! Something had happened while they were out!

  Hannah’s mom dropped the girls off at the Buzzel House, promising to be back before supper. Meg came bounding out around the side of the house as soon as she saw the car. Out on the back porch, Lucy’s parents looked up, distracted by the sudden racket. They had been completely absorbed in what looked like a serious talk with a grey-haired man.

  “Everyone, I would like you to meet Mr. Bill Malone,” said Roger as he introduced his guest. “We seemed to have had some excitement while no one was home. A break-in, as a matter of fact. I don’t think anything was taken, but they sure made a big mess, especially in Lucy’s room. For some reason whoever came in here was mighty interested in her things.”

  Wide-eyed, the girls could not believe the news. This had never happened to the Smiths. They never even locked their door. Someone was looking for something and the girls were afraid of what that was. “Did the neighbours see anything?” Hannah asked.

  Nodding her head, Lucy’s mom, Alice, turned to Mr. Malone. “Actually, Bill did. He was coming back from fishing in the harbour this afternoon when he heard a large crash coming from our house. As he hurried up the drive, he saw someone running out and disappearing into the field and –”

  “Something didn’t feel right,” cut in Bill. “So I decided to take a look. By the time I made it up to the top of your drive the burglar was gone. That’s when I noticed that the backdoor window was broken. I didn’t call the police because I wasn’t sure that your parents would have liked that. So I decided to wait for them to get home. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good look at the intruder, so I’m little help to the police.”

  Bill directed his entire conversation towards the girls, keenly watching their reactions. He seemed unusually pleased by their uneasiness. Meg was barking again as two Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) approached Roger and Alice. As her parents moved off to make their report, Lucy turned to Bill, looking thoughtful. “Are you from around here? I don’t remember seeing you here before.”

  As if expecting this line of questioning, Bill quickly replied, “I just rented the Davis place. It’s been for sale since April when I was last here, looking at houses to buy. I left the day before the storm hit that brought in the wreck. I usually never stay in one place for too long, but I have some interests here. So I decided to come back and give this place a try before I actually bought into the area.”

  “What are those … interests?” asked Hannah, very curious about Malone. There was something about Bill that she did not fully trust. She just couldn’t put her finger on exactly what that was.

  “Oh, this and that,” said Bill. “I like to dabble in history and research, and this place offers some interesting potential. Take that wreck down at Arrowhead for instance. Where did it come from? What mysteries does it hold? If those planks of wood could talk, I bet they would have many stories to tell. Do you girls have any special stories? Maybe I can use them in my research.”

  “What are you researching?” asked Hannah.

  “Island shipwrecks. A most interesting topic, in my opinion. Did you know that many of the sailors who died during shipwrecks are now buried in PEI’s local cemeteries? Those graves hold many secrets. It would be interesting to know something about them. After all, those men sailed on boats that went down and only the dead know what was hidden away in cargo holds. Maybe the Arrowhead wreck held a few secrets of its own.”

  “What kind of secrets?” asked Emily in a hushed voice. Shrugging his shoulders, Bill said “Don’t know, but I wouldn’t mind finding out.”

  “Most of those shipwrecks were really only fishing boats,” said Lucy. “Not much of a story there.”

  “Of course,” replied Malone, an enigmatic smile on his face

  Hannah did not like where this conversation was going. Just who was Mr. Bill Malone, and why was he really there? He seemed to be fishing for information. “We went to visit the wreck too, but didn’t find anything mysterious about it.”

  “Really?”

  Unconvinced, Bill stared down at the girls. He was actually an old man, maybe about 70 years old. He was dressed casually, in faded and baggy blue jeans and a white Nike t-shirt. The silence stretched, with no one saying another word. Finally, Emily broke in and asked him how he did with his fishing.

  “My fishing?” He looked momentarily confused but then quickly got back on track. “Oh yes, the fishing I did this afternoon. I had no luck. I guess they didn’t like my bait.” He glanced away from the girls, and looked towards the house. “I see the police are done looking around inside the house. I think they’ll want to speak to me too.” He started to walk off but stopped suddenly and turned to face them again.

  “I wouldn’t play around that wreck too much if I were you. It might be dangerous. You never know what can happen with these old things. Sharp nails and stuff like that. I think it would be much safer if you forgot all about the wreck … for your own good.”

  The girls watched Malone walk off and then ran to the tree house near the woodshed, climbing up onto the small platform.

  “What was that all about?” demanded Hannah, clearly upset by Bill’s last words.

  “That sounded like a threat!” said Lucy. “For some reason he doesn’t want us snooping around the old boat. I think he’s afraid we’ll discover something.”

  “Do you think he was the stranger that Wayne saw the night the wreck washed in?” asked Hannah.

  “I don’t know.” Lucy shook her head slowly, thinking. “He said he left the area before the storm came in. He could be lying about that, but we can’t prove it. All he would have to do is hide out without anyone seeing him. And Wayne never saw his face.”

  “Mr. Wayne also said the man he saw the night of the storm had dark hair, but that could have been due to the rain,” said Hannah. “It was also dark, so who knows what the stranger’s real hair colour was. Grey can easily look dark when it’s wet.”

  “Do you think he knows about the knife?” asked Emily. “Maybe it’s his!”

  Hannah and Lucy looked stunned. The knife! Maybe that’s what the burglar was looking for. He probably thought that Lucy had the knife hidden in her room and came looking for it. In fact, Hannah still had it in her backpack. But why the interest? Could it be that someone actually saw them find it? They never really paid much attention to the other people down at the beach. Maybe they should have been more careful, but who would have thought they were in danger.

  “His story about the burglary sounded phony to me,” intoned Hannah. She started ticking off her fingers. “First of all, he couldn’t describe the burglar. If Malone was really in the driveway and saw the guy running away, he should h
ave had a clear view. After all, it’s the middle of the afternoon, with lots of light out. He was not that far away from the ‘supposed’ burglar.

  “Secondly, why was the back door broken? Your parents don’t lock it so anyone could go in. It seems like someone wanted to make it look like a real burglary. Why?

  “And third, for someone who came from a fishing expedition, where was his gear?”

  The three friends exchanged puzzled looks. Deep in thought, they sat high up in the old maple, watching the house from their platform. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves and warm sunshine dappled the girls’ faces. “I think we need to keep an eye on Mr. Malone.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  JACK JACK

  The Crazy Squirrel came back!

  “Daaaadd!!!!!!” The camper swayed erratically. Whacking noises beat an unusual rhythm. The tent’s soft side walls shook with each whack.

  “Hannah, what’s wrong?” yelled Dad from the roof of the house. He was desperately trying to reach the ladder. Strong winds were wreaking havoc with anything and everything that was not securely tied down, including the rickety wooden ladder which kept on angling away from the house.

  The camper door slammed open and Hannah bounded outside, arms waving wildly above her head. “The Crazy Squirrel is back! He’s running around inside the camper, mad as hell!”

  “Oh … My … God! Dad!!!! Hannah said a bad word,” yelled Emily, face planting in the grass in front of the camper, completely missing the first step down. Bad habit, that face planting, thought Hannah, not even remotely trying to suppress her giggles.

  “Hah! That’s what happens when you don’t mind your own business,” Hannah shot back. Picking herself up while sticking her tongue out at Hannah, Emily quickly made her way to the side of the house. The ladder was now barely gripping the corner ledge of the house’s roof.

  “Emily, push the ladder back towards the window,” advised Dad. “I’ll come down and see about the squirrel, but I doubt it’s the same one.”