The Pet-Sitting Peril

by Willo Davis Roberts

  PRAISE FOR

  The Pet-Sitting Peril

  “Another smooth, tightly plotted mix of psychological unknotting and scare-surmounting.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  To my grandchildren, readers all

  Chapter One

  The hall light was out again.

  Nick saw that as soon as he rounded the corner. He broke stride, though the dog continued to pull him along in spite of himself. It was the third time in a week, he thought uneasily. This was Thursday, and it had been out on Monday, and last week Friday. Why did that light keep going out?

  It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dark, like a little kid. After all, he was nearly twelve. It was only that it seemed peculiar for a lightbulb not to last more than a few days at a time; and that entry hall was sure black when the light wasn’t on.

  There was still a glow in Mr. Haggard’s first floor apartment to the right of the double doors. The middle part of the big window was ordinary glass, but it was surrounded by a border of multicolored glass segments that glowed like jewels when the light came through them. There was colored glass like that around the windows in the doors, too; and when the hall light was on you could read the big numbers of the house on the glass: twelve on one side, thirty on the other.

  Twelve-thirty Hillsdale Street. In the daytime you could read the sign secured to one of the posts that held up the porch roof: HILLSDALE APARTMENTS. Now you couldn’t tell there was a sign on the porch, let alone read it, because the outside porch light was out, too.

  It was almost as if someone were deliberately unscrewing the bulbs, Nick thought, stepping off the opposite curb as Rudy tugged on the leash. Only why would anyone do that? And how? Since the outside doors were locked, nobody could enter except the residents who had keys.

  He wondered if Dad would let him bring a flashlight with him at night from now on, the little one that would fit in his pocket. He’d ask tomorrow.

  Rudy, not in the least tired although they’d been gone for over an hour, strained to cross the street and bound up the steps onto the dark porch. Rudy was an Airedale, and he weighed eighty-five pounds, so when he pulled against Nick’s small frame there wasn’t much choice except to move with him.

  Nick had the key ready in his hand, sorted out while he was under the streetlight. He unlocked the door and heard a short “whuff” from Rudy that might have been a warning. Nick stood still, his heart pounding unaccountably; Rudy didn’t bark again, and after a few seconds there was the sound of a door closing, somewhere far back in the building.

  “Is somebody here?” Nick asked, and felt silly when no one answered. Rudy was again tugging him along, toward Mr. Haggard’s apartment; he could find that without any lights—it was only a matter of putting out his free hand until he felt the doorknob. Of course nobody was in the hallway with him, or Rudy would know it. Dogs could tell that kind of thing.

  Still, there had been that odd half bark when Nick first opened the front door. Rudy had never done that before, and Nick had been walking him for almost three weeks now, twice a day, every day. There must have been some reason for it.

  He had a little trouble getting the key into Mr. Haggard’s door, because he couldn’t see the lock and Rudy was too eager to get inside and receive his treat. He always got a bone-shaped dog biscuit when they returned from a walk.

  “Sit,” Nick commanded, and was relieved when the dog obeyed so that he could finally insert the key and twist it.

  It seemed bright in the big, cluttered room when they first walked into it. Mr. Haggard was seated in his chair with a blanket over his legs, reading the evening paper.

  “Have a nice walk?” he asked, pushing his glasses into place on his nose.

  “More of a run, it was,” Nick said, slipping the choke chain over Rudy’s head so he could go for his “cookie,” as Mr. Haggard referred to the treats. “We ran all the way around the park. The light’s out in the hall.”

  “Again?” The old man shook his head. “They don’t make anything that lasts any more. We’ll have to tell Mr. Griesner to replace it again. You in a hurry, boy? You care to make us each a cup of cocoa before you go? And there’s a package of cookies on the counter, there.”

  Nick liked Mr. Haggard. He seemed to be about eighty years old, and he was sort of shriveled up so that his clothes all seemed a little bit too big on him. He had wispy white hair around a pink bald spot, and there were blue veins showing in his hands. When his leg was hurting, his voice wasn’t very strong. But he had a nice smile and he was kind. Anybody could see that he loved Rudy.

  “Only family I got left,” Mr. Haggard had said, dropping a hand to caress the big shaggy head. “Almost ten years old. That’s seventy years in man years, you know. Rudy’s getting old, the same as me.”

  “He doesn’t seem old,” Nick said, and it was true. “He’s strong enough to pull me along whether I want to go or not, especially if he takes me off guard.”

  Mr. Haggard chuckled. “He’ll usually mind if you tell him to sit. He’s been through obedience school, Rudy has. Airedales are hard to train, though, and they don’t always do what you want. Not, you understand, that Airedales aren’t smart. They’re plenty smart. The thing is, you have to make them want to do the same thing as you want. They have to see the advantage to themselves before they do it. That’s one reason I give Rudy a cookie when he comes back from a walk. To reward him for taking me along, you see?”

  Nick wasn’t sure he saw, but what the heck, this was a job, and he hadn’t turned up anything before this. Everybody had looked at him, ignored his age, and decided he was too small for whatever they wanted done, even when the jobs didn’t require any special strength. Not as much muscle as this job took, actually.

  He brought the cocoa, topped by two fat marshmallows in each cup, and the package of cookies. Store-bought ones, but fairly good, nevertheless. “Rudy acted funny when we came in,” he said. He’d been debating whether or not to mention it all the time he fixed the cocoa. “He sort of ‘whuffed’ when I opened the front door, as if there was someone inside. And then I heard a door close way in the back of the house. Rudy didn’t bark any more, so I didn’t know if there was somebody inside that didn’t belong here or not. We made enough noise coming up the steps so they had plenty of warning, if anybody didn’t want us to see them.”

  Mr. Haggard looked at him thoughtfully, warming his hand on the cup of cocoa. “Why would anybody want to hide from you? Couldn’t be anybody inside unless they had a key. The door was locked the way it’s supposed to be, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Only Rudy’s never made that kind of noise before. I thought he was reacting to something.”

  Mr. Haggard sipped melted marshmallow off the top of his drink. “More’n likely he was reacting to one of those confounded cats. I doubt he’d actually hurt one of ’em, but he always dives for a cat when he sees one. You have to brace your feet to hold him.”

  “I know. He pulled me into a stack of garbage cans in the alley, chasing a cat. Yeah, maybe that was it. One of the cats was there in the hallway.”

  Later, though, walking home through the chilly night air that was typical of the Northern California coastal area where he lived, Nick wondered. If it was a cat, then who had closed the door, far back there in the dark?

  • • •

  In the daytime, Hillsdale was an ordinary looking street, though quite different from the one Nick lived on only four blocks away. The Chamber of Commerce handed out brochures to tourists, telling of the interesting things to be seen in town and around it: the beaches; the museum; the fish hatchery; the magnificent house built many years ago by a millionaire in the lumber and shipping business, and Hillsdale Street, two blocks long and lined
with Victorian houses, most of them nearly a hundred years old. Once they had been grand, elegant family mansions. Now most had been converted to apartments and rooming houses. The one at 1230 had been divided into five apartments, including the one at the first floor back where Mr. Griesner lived. Mr. Griesner enjoyed a reduction in his rent in exchange for maintaining the place and collecting the rents for the owner; he was supposed to see to things like lightbulbs in the hallways.

  Nick had talked to Mr. Griesner once, the first time the lower hall light went out. The man came to the door in dirty, greasy pants and a soiled undershirt, tall and skinny with a head of fuzzy gray hair and a sour expression. He wasn’t very happy about having his TV viewing interrupted, but he’d fixed the light. Only it didn’t seem to stay fixed very long.

  A couple of Sundays ago, on their way home from church, the Reeds had driven down Hillsdale so Nick’s family could see where it was he’d taken the job of caring for Rudy.

  “I love these old houses,” Mrs. Reed said. “Imagine, having seven bedrooms and four bathrooms! We’d never have to line up again!”

  “Imagine,” Mr. Reed said less enthusiastically, “having to pay the heating bills on one of those places. They had fourteen-foot ceilings downstairs, ten-foot ceilings upstairs, Louise. Even in this climate, it would take my whole salary to keep the place warm.”

  “I know. It’s only a daydream, to have all that space. Aren’t they lovely old houses, though?”

  Most of them were similar in style to the Hillsdale Apartments. Very tall, narrow buildings, two stories high with an attic above that made another full floor if anybody wanted to finish it. Some, like 1230, had widow’s walks atop them. This was a flat area surrounded by a wrought iron fence where, Mr. Reed said, the women had paced as they watched for their men to return from the sea. “From up there, they could see the mouth of the harbor, and they recognized all the local ships, which were gone for weeks or even months at a time.”

  “I wouldn’t have liked that part of it,” Nick’s mother admitted, craning to see the upper part of the house they were passing. “Look at the gingerbread on that one! All those fancy shapes cut in the wood, curlicues and birds and geometric designs. You know, I think the one where you work, Nick, would be among the prettiest ones, if it had a fresh coat of paint.”

  The houses were certainly different from the ones on Groves Street, where the Reeds had lived ever since Nick was four years old. The houses there were modern and convenient, if not so spacious.

  His family reassured about the area where he was going every day, no one said any more about it not being safe for Nick to be there after dark. It was, except for the age and size of the houses, an ordinary neighborhood like his own.

  “Do you know how long this job will last?” Nick’s father had asked as they turned onto their own street.

  “As long as Mr. Haggard can’t walk very well, I guess. His leg hurts quite a bit, I think; when I’m there, he has me get things for him instead of walking across the room for them. Rudy needs a lot of exercise, and he helps me practice my running, so it’s working out all right.”

  Winnie piped up from the backseat of the station wagon. “Do you think we’re going to have enough money to go to Disneyland before school starts, Daddy?”

  Winnie was seven, the youngest in the family, and Nick’s favorite. She never made fun of him or tried to provoke him into a fight, the way Barney did, and she didn’t ignore him, the way Charles and Molly often did. Winnie thought he was clever and brave and strong. She had been talking about Disneyland for a long time.

  Usually the whole family went together on great camping trips, either to the beach or to the Trinity Alps, and once they’d gone to Yosemite, though there had been too many people there to satisfy the Reeds’ yearning for wilderness. This year, though, Dad said he had to paint the house and put a new roof on it, or they’d never make it through another rainy winter. And the cost of gas had risen so high that going anywhere very far from home was too expensive to think about. Dad was a teacher, and teachers didn’t make all that much. Even with his mother working, funds were tight.

  Disneyland was a long way off. People in other places thought if you lived in California you must be right next door to Disneyland, but from where the Reeds lived it was over 800 miles. Before Mr. Reed could get his mouth open to point that out, Winnie said with a smile, “Everybody has a job now, except me, and I’ll give my allowance. If everybody saved their money to pay for the gas, couldn’t we go, Daddy?”

  They’d looked at each other, torn between the lure of a vacation and the sacrifice it would take.

  Molly was the first to speak. Molly was the oldest, at seventeen, and she had a full-time job all summer, taking care of two little boys while their mother worked. “I need a new coat for school, and I’d have to keep a little out for movies and skating. But . . .” She hesitated, then made an offer that astounded her brothers. “I’ll put seventy-five percent of what I make into a Disneyland fund, if the boys will do it, too.”

  Charles, who worked at a hamburger place, did some quick calculations. “Well, I guess I could do that, too. How about you, Barney? You lined up enough lawns to mow to do us any good?”

  Nick had seen the chart Barney had made, with a column for each day of the week, divided into hours, with names written in for each place he was to cut the grass. Barney was fourteen and considerably taller and heavier than Nick; he was saving for a motorcycle when he was old enough to drive, though his parents had not said they would allow him to have one. If he put three-quarters of his earnings into a family vacation fund, it would delay the acquisition of a motorcycle considerably.

  Barney swallowed hard, considering the matter. “What about Nick?” he asked, stalling. “He isn’t making enough to help, is he? Even if he gave the whole paycheck, walking a dog isn’t worth much.”

  “I’ll put in my seventy-five percent, the same as Charles and Molly,” Nick said at once. He wanted and needed some new running shoes, but maybe somebody would get him a pair for his birthday—his grandmother was very good at such things if you dropped a hint or two—and he really wanted to go to Disneyland.

  “Disneyland is for little kids like Winnie,” Barney said.

  “Sam went,” Nick said. Sam Jankowski was his best friend. “The whole family loved it.”

  “It isn’t just for kids, anyway,” Molly said. “I read that more than half the people who go there are grown-ups. Don’t be so tight, Barney. Put in your share.”

  Barney flushed. The whole family kidded him about the way he hung onto his money. He didn’t waste it on Cokes and hamburgers or pizza—if he was hungry he ate at home—and he fixed things rather than replaced them, if replacement meant putting out his own funds. “Well,” he said reluctantly, “I guess I can contribute, too.”

  “Seventy-five percent?” Charles asked, grinning a little.

  And Barney had had to nod, yes.

  So it had been agreed. They would each put a regular portion of their pay into the cookie jar set aside for that purpose. And if they could save enough to pay for the gas, they’d use the last two weeks of the summer—if Dad had the painting and the roof finished—to go to Disneyland.

  Barney made fun of Nick’s dog-walking job, but Nick felt lucky to have found any way at all to earn money during the summer. He’d just about given up before he heard about Rudy.

  He hated being the smallest boy in the sixth grade. For that matter, a lot of the girls were taller than he was. His mother said that was only natural at his age, because the boys didn’t have their growth spurt until later than the girls. Nick still hated it, and it kept him from getting jobs.

  Barney made fun of his friendship with Sam, too, because Sam was the biggest kid in the class. He was bigger than some of the boys who were in ninth grade.

  “You look so funny together,” Barney would say. “He’s so big, and you’re so little. A giant and a short person.”

  Nick had all he could do to ke
ep from hitting his brother in the mouth when he said things like that. The only reason he didn’t do it was that Barney was not only older, he was taller and stronger. He was always trying to provoke Nick into a fight; if Nick struck the first blow, Barney could say, “He started it, so I had to hit him back, didn’t I?”

  Once their mother happened to overhear an exchange about Sam and came to stand in the doorway of their room. “Barney, I don’t want you to say things like that. A giant and a short person. Nick’s not short, he’s just growing slowly right now. Even if he were short, it would be a terribly cruel thing to say, to criticize anyone for his size, large or small. People can’t help what size they grow to be.”

  After she’d left—and Barney peeked into the hallway to make sure she’d gone downstairs—Barney’s lip curled in derision. “I still think you look funny together, you and that overgrown lunk. Why don’t you find a buddy your own size.”

  Nick refrained from pointing out that if he picked someone his own size it would have to be a fifth grader. “I like Sam,” he told his brother coolly. “Which is more than I can say about you.” And on that note he left the bedroom he had to share with Barney and went downstairs, too, just so he wouldn’t have to listen to his brother any more.

  He’d sure be glad when Charles went away to college and freed a room so the two of them wouldn’t have to share anymore. Then he wouldn’t have to hear what Barney thought about Sam, or dog-walking jobs, or anything.

  As soon as he got home from Mr. Haggard’s, he went downstairs and asked Dad about the flashlight, so if that light kept going out in the entry hall of the Hillsdale Apartments he wouldn’t have to walk into the pitch dark every night when he brought Rudy home.

  It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dark, of course. It would just make it easier to get the keys in the locks, if he could see what he was doing.

  Chapter Two

  Nick had started his Rudy-walking job with Mr. Haggard right after school was out. It didn’t pay as much as he would have liked to make, especially now with 75 percent going to the Disneyland Fund. But it was better than nothing. The Monday after the third lightbulb burned out in the hall, however, things began to look up. Mr. Haggard reported to him when he came in that morning that two other tenants in the building were interested in his services. So after he had taken Rudy for his morning gallop, he went to find out about the new jobs.