The Pet-Sitting Peril

by Willo Davis Roberts

  “You got a key to the front door?” Al looked at the ring of keys Nick had taken out of his pocket. “No need to bother the manager if you kids can let us in.”

  Nick stared at him. “I don’t have any right to let anybody in except me, to take care of the dogs.”

  “Hey, we’re not here to rip anybody off,” Al said, and laughed. He had crooked teeth. “The owner sent us, to do some repairs.”

  “Funny time to start a job like that, this late on Saturday,” Sam said.

  “Well, we have to work at night and on weekends because we’re doing this on the side. We work regular jobs in the daytime. Besides we’re just here to look things over,” Al told them. “It don’t make no difference to me if you don’t want to let us in. Ring the bell, Greg, and get the manager. We’d ought to tell him we’re here, anyway.”

  Nick felt a little bit silly, letting himself and Sam and the dogs inside and leaving the newcomers to stand on the porch waiting for Mr. Griesner to answer the bell. But it wasn’t his house, and he didn’t intend to be responsible for anyone getting into it. He inserted the key into Mr. Haggard’s door, nearly tripping up when the dogs wound both leashes around his legs so that Sam had to disentangle them.

  Mr. Griesner, wearing his usual soiled trousers and a plaid flannel shirt, came toward them in the dimly lighted hallway.

  “What’s going on? You kids monkeying with the bell?”

  “No, sir,” Nick said. He got the door open, and Rudy pushed past him into the apartment. Sam dragged Maynard inside, too. Behind them, they overheard the manager and the repairmen.

  “Whatta you want?”

  “Mr. Hale sent us. Do some repairs, you know?”

  “He didn’t say anything to me about sending anybody over. What do you mean, comin’ at a time like this.”

  “You reported stuff needing repairs, didn’t you? We came to look it over. Call him up and ask him. We can wait. He’s paying us by the hour, so it don’t matter to us how long it takes,” Al said.

  Nick closed the door on the conversation. Maynard was sniffing the unfamiliar quarters; Rudy waited expectantly with his tongue lolling out for his treat.

  “I don’t know about Fred, but these two are okay together,” Sam said. “Where’s this dog biscuit Rudy’s supposed to get? I suppose I’d better give Maynard one, too, okay?”

  “In the cupboard under the sink,” Nick said. “A red-and-yellow box.”

  He was busy drawing the shade over the big colored glass window onto the street; he felt as if they were on exhibition otherwise, even if the window was high off the street. He turned around when he heard Sam’s surprised grunt.

  “Hey, Nick! Look what’s under here. The gas can you were talking about.” Sam lifted it and shook it. “It’s just about full, too. The old man must have taken it out of the closet and brought it over here.”

  Nick frowned. “Why would he do that? I mean, it would be Mr. Griesner’s job to get rid of it, and under Mr. Haggard’s sink isn’t a very good place to store it.”

  “No better than the closet,” Sam agreed. “Especially with the junk he’s got under here.”

  Nick stared into the compartment. Had it all been there before: the stack of rags and a paper bag full of burnable refuse? He didn’t remember noticing it the times he’d gotten out the “cookies.”

  “I don’t think we’d better leave it there. When I told him about it, Mr. Haggard didn’t act like it was his can.”

  “What’ll we do with it?” Sam set the red can on the counter and brought out the bone-shaped dog biscuits, making both dogs sit up for their treats. “Take it back to Mr. Griesner?”

  “Grouchy as he is, he probably wouldn’t appreciate having his TV watching interrupted again. I ought to call up that Mr. Howard and show him the can. At least then he wouldn’t think I made it all up.”

  “And it’s full, so nobody used it to start any fire,” Sam said. “You know how to reach Mr. Howard?”

  “No,” Nick admitted. “I don’t even remember his first name, so I probably couldn’t find him in the book. Well, give me the can. I’m going to put it outside, around the corner of the house, behind those bushes. Nobody’ll steal it from there, if it’s out of sight, and it’s not likely to do any damage from there before I can show it to Mr. Howard.”

  “Maybe it’s got fingerprints on it,” Sam suggested. “Maybe they can tell who handled it.”

  “Sure,” Nick said. “It’s got yours and mine. What’s that going to prove?”

  He put the can safely outside and returned to find Al and Greg in the front hallway, with Greg writing down things on a paper and talking as he wrote. “Fix that broken board on the back step. Shore up the railing to the outside stairs where it goes across the roof. Replace the linoleum here by the stairs. Check to see how the wiring looks for these front lights. What else did you want to check, Al?”

  “He said something about water stains on the wallpaper upstairs. Maybe a leak in the roof.”

  “Hale’s going to blow his stack if he needs a whole new roof,” Greg observed, with the objective air of one who isn’t going to have to pay the bills. “How do we get in the attic to see where it’s coming through?”

  Nick was in the act of closing Mr. Haggard’s door when Al’s eyes met his. “You know, kid? Is there a stairway to the attic?”

  Nick shook his head. “I don’t know. I told you, I don’t live here.”

  “You staying here for now, though?” Al laughed, looking around the gloomy entryway. “Spooky old place, isn’t it?”

  “He’s right about that,” Sam observed when Nick had closed the door. “It’s like one of those places in the movies, where a ghost comes floating down the stairs and everybody’s found murdered in their beds in the morning.”

  “Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s haunted,” Nick told him. “What are we going to watch on TV?” Sam had turned the set on.

  “Reruns, I guess. There doesn’t seem to be anything else.” Sam settled into a corner of the shabby couch and allowed Maynard to crawl into his lap. “Good thing Rudy’s willing to stay on the floor. If he got into your lap, he’d squash you flat.”

  As it was, the Airedale chose to rest his head against Nick’s foot, as if he drew comfort from the contact with a human being. He misses the old man, Nick thought, and reached out a hand to stroke the big head.

  From time to time they heard hammering as Greg and Al seemed to be testing various parts of the building. Finally, with much banging and bumping around, the repairmen let themselves out and drove away in the pickup.

  “I guess it’s time we went to bed, huh?” Sam asked, yawning. “We’ve eaten everything we brought with us.”

  “Okay. I’m tired, too. I suppose I better go up and check on Fred first. Do you think I should bring him down here, too? I’d hate to have Rudy go for him and wreck something.”

  “I’ll put the choke chain on Rudy and hold him while you hold Fred,” Sam proposed. “If it looks like it’ll get wild, you can always put Fred back in his own apartment.”

  Nick felt strange climbing the stairs in the quiet house. It was different at night. Spooky, just as Al had said. Nick knew that Mr. Griesner was home, downstairs in the back of the house. And probably Mrs. Sylvan was home, too, though he hadn’t heard her come in.

  Up here on the second floor there was no one but himself. No music throbbed behind the door of Clyde and Roy’s apartment. The stairs creaked even under Nick’s meager weight, and though the bulb was on in the upper hallway, it didn’t produce much light.

  Nick let himself into Mrs. Monihan’s apartment, and was halfway across the living room toward Fred when an odor reached him. For a few seconds he didn’t identify it, and then he did.

  Hot. Something was hot, burning.

  Panic gushed through him; for a moment he almost turned and ran, but reason took over almost immediately. It wasn’t a fire, not yet, he thought. Something was simply overheated.

  He went i
nto the kitchen and reached for the light switch, staring at the electric stove. One of the burners glowed crimson, and smoldering at the edge of the red circle was a cereal box that had fallen over onto the element.

  Nick reached for a spatula from the set of utensils on the wall and pushed the blackening carton into the sink. When he ran water on it, charred bits of cardboard flaked off and gave off an odor much like the one he’d smelled in the alley.

  Nick turned off the burner and waited until the heat and color faded from it, inhaling deeply so that his breathing slowed to normal.

  Who had turned the burner on? It couldn’t possibly have been on ever since Mrs. Monihan left to visit her sister. Nick knew he would have noticed it.

  He’d been in the kitchen several times a day, to put out fresh water and food for Maynard and Fred. Fred followed him now, leaping onto a chair, switching his long, thick tail.

  Could Fred have been on the counter and knocked over the cereal box so that it fell across the burner? Yes, Nick decided, that could have happened. He wiggled the knob experimentally. Could Fred have accidentally turned it on if he’d brushed against it? Even now the big cat sprang onto the window sill looking out over the back stairs; obviously he wouldn’t have any problem leaping onto the counter and the stove.

  It didn’t seem likely that a cat brushing against the knob could have turned it, but how else could it have gotten on?

  Nick made sure the cereal box was soaked and no longer dangerous, then scooped up Fred and locked the door behind them to return downstairs.

  “I don’t think it’s safe to leave you alone in there,” he muttered, while Fred purred his pleasure at the attention.

  Fred was not quite so pleased when he was carried into Mr. Haggard’s living room. He stopped purring and glared at Rudy, who leaped up to meet him, restrained by the choke chain.

  “I thought you were never coming back,” Sam complained. “Once I got the chain on him, Rudy figured we were going for another walk, and it was all I could do to keep him still.”

  Nick related what had happened. “Do you think a cat could turn on a burner on the stove?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Fred’s a strong cat. Anyway, you caught it in time. Put him down, Nick, see what happens.”

  What happened left them both shaken. For though they had thought themselves prepared to handle the situation if Rudy and Fred took a dislike to each other, they had underestimated both Rudy’s strength and the determination of both animals.

  Nick squatted down with Fred in his arms, intending to protect the cat while allowing Rudy to get acquainted with him, perhaps touching noses, while Sam held the leash.

  Rudy lunged forward to touch noses, all right, and Fred freaked out. Fred knew that Maynard was a friend, but all other dogs were enemies. He swiped his claws across the end of Rudy’s nose; the Airedale yelped and pounced. Fred escaped from Nick’s arms and fairly flew to the back of the nearest chair and then onto a bookcase, and from there atop a tall cabinet.

  In the confusion, the leash was ripped out of Sam’s hands and Nick was knocked flat on his back, with Rudy running right over him in a frantic attempt to capture the cat.

  Standing on his hind legs, barking, Rudy was almost able to reach poor Fred, who arched his back, spat, and backed as far away as he could get.

  Nick scrambled to his feet. “Down, Rudy! Sit! Sit, boy!”

  Rudy was too excited to hear him. He leaped upward, sending Fred into a snarling fury as he first pressed against the wall and then sailed over the dog’s head in a performance worthy of a circus aerialist toward the nearest tall object.

  Unfortunately, that object was Sam’s head. Sam, who had grabbed for the leash and was trying to pull Rudy away, instinctively staggered backward when the cat tried to secure his position with his claws, and boy and cat went down in a sprawl that carried Mr. Haggard’s floor lamp with them.

  There was a popping sound, and that light went out. Luckily they’d left the light on in the kitchen, so they weren’t in darkness, but they were in chaos.

  Nick crawled toward Rudy, who now had Fred cornered atop the TV; Nick had a few horrified moments hoping Rudy wouldn’t knock it over, too, and then he got his arms around the Airedale’s neck and pulled him away, speaking as sharply as he could considering he’d had the wind knocked out of him.

  “Stop it, Rudy! Sit! SIT, darn it!”

  Sam, too, had gotten to his knees. He surveyed the damage, looking dazed, until Nick said, “Catch Fred, Sam, and get him out of here. We’ll have to put him back upstairs. The key’s in my pocket, but I can’t get it until you get Fred out of sight.”

  Maynard, confused and upset by all the commotion, had retreated to a corner of the couch; now he began to bark furiously.

  When it was all over, and Fred and Maynard had been delivered back to their own apartment—they’d decided that since Fred was obviously upset, he’d be better off in Maynard’s company—the boys ruefully examined Mr. Haggard’s belongings. The lamp was broken, but Sam was sure his father could fix it for them. There was a rip in one of the sofa pillows; it was on a seam, so Nick figured he could repair that himself if his mother had any thread the right color. Various books and papers had been knocked onto the floor, though none of them seemed a serious casualty.

  Sam bent his head and pulled his hair to each side so that Nick could examine his scalp. “It felt like I was gouged with red-hot pinchers. Am I bleeding?”

  “Only a little bit,” Nick reported. “Maybe we better see if we need shots or something, with all this scratching. I’ve got a few marks, too.” The places where Rudy’s claws had sunk into his arm were beginning to hurt. “Only if I explain to my mom how it all happened, she’ll probably make me quit this job. As it is, I’m at least out the price of a new lightbulb, even if your dad can fix the lamp. What will we tell him about it?”

  “That it got knocked over. I don’t have to tell him everything. Boy, we’re lucky, the way those animals were leaping around here, that nothing more expensive was broken.”

  It was some time before they were able to settle down and go to sleep. Mr. Haggard’s bed was different from the ones they were used to, and the old house creaked and groaned as if it were a living thing.

  “My grandma’s house is like this,” Sam said, curled under the quilts. “Only in her house it didn’t seem so scary.”

  “It’s the wood contracting as it cools off,” Nick offered, not admitting that he, too, found it sort of spooky.

  He didn’t know how late it was when he was roused by some sound outside Mr. Haggard’s apartment.

  Nick raised himself groggily onto an elbow, for a moment uncertain as to where he was. Then he heard Sam breathing beside him, and on the floor at the side of the bed, Rudy whuffed a warning.

  Nick was suddenly cold, though he was still covered with the quilts to the middle of his chest. “What’s the matter, boy?” he whispered.

  As if in reply, Rudy whuffed again, and stood up. Nick stretched out a hand and felt the wiry hair bristling on the big dog’s neck as a deep rumble issued from his chest.

  “What’s the matter?” Sam asked sleepily, and then, when he came more fully awake, his voice changed to a sharper tone. “What’s Rudy growling at?”

  “I think there’s someone in the hall,” Nick said.

  His heart was beating so hard it was a wonder he could hear anything else, but he did.

  Footsteps sounded faintly through the wall, until Rudy actually barked, a great, deep bark such as only a very large dog can produce.

  The footsteps ceased, and the boys waited, holding their breaths, Nick’s hand on Rudy’s head to quiet him, for whatever was going to happen next.

  Chapter Eight

  “Maybe it’s just those guys upstairs, coming home late,” Sam whispered.

  “Rudy’s used to them by now. He doesn’t bark at them. Besides, whoever it is didn’t go up the stairs; they’re right on the other side of this wall, in the hallway.”
>
  They didn’t hear any more, however. Whoever had made the sounds realized he’d wakened the dog and was being more careful. After a time Nick felt the tension go out of him, at least most of it did.

  “What time is it, anyway?”’ Sam asked, keeping his voice very low.

  “Turn on the light, and we’ll see.”

  It was a quarter past three on Sam’s watch. Somehow neither of them wanted to turn the light off and go back to sleep. Nick got up to get a drink, and Sam trailed along into Mr. Haggard’s tiny kitchen, where they decided to make cocoa.

  “I’d make a sandwich if I saw anything to make it out of,” Nick observed, looking in the cupboard. “There’s a can of chili. How about some chili?”

  So they heated that, and gave Rudy an extra couple of dog biscuits, huddling on the couch with Mr. Haggard’s lap robe over their bare legs because it was cold in the room.

  Rudy lay at their feet. Once he lifted his head to listen, cocking his head to one side. Immediately Nick’s stomach muscles tightened again and he put aside his empty bowl, straining to listen too.

  Far away, through several doors and up the stairs, they heard the yapping of a small dog.

  “Maynard,” Sam said unnecessarily. “Nick, there’s gotta be someone prowling around, or the dogs wouldn’t keep acting funny, would they? If they act like this every time somebody who lives in the house moves around, nobody’d ever get any sleep in this place.”

  “I don’t suppose people walk around in the middle of the night very often. The dogs might just be barking about that, even if it’s somebody they know,” Nick said, his voice sounding hollow. “Maybe we should go check on Maynard. Maybe it isn’t a person, at all, but Fred’s turned on the stove again or something. Maynard might bark if there was smoke. Dogs do that all the time.”

  For a moment neither of them moved. Nick almost wished he hadn’t mentioned checking; he had no desire to unlock the door of Mr. Haggard’s apartment and go out into the hallway.

  Upstairs, Maynard barked again. Rudy rose from his place on the rag rug and went to the door, putting his nose to the crack. By now they ought to have been getting used to that whuffing noise he made, not quite a bark but more than a whimper.