“Your father brought that from Vietnam many years ago,” Mrs. Gomez said sadly as she headed back to the scene of the crime.
Michael and the squirrels had come into the living room now that the coast was clear.
“Sorry, Mom,” Michael said, half sincerely. He could feel Pearl giving him the stink eye.
“It’s not your fault,” his mom said.
“Yes, it is,” Pearl whispered.
“Shhhhh.” Michael glared at her.
“Why don’t you all set up Merle and Pearl’s new house while I clean this up?” Mrs. Gomez said.
“That sounds wonderful,” Pearl said. “And I can tell Michael a little story.”
CHAPTER 7
“Merle, do you remember when Paul was in jail?” Pearl asked her husband as they began unloading plastic tubes from the hamster-house boxes.
“Jail?!” Michael said. “Why are you bringing up jail?”
“Relax,” Pearl said. “Nobody’s going to jail over a broken elephant table.”
“I dunno.” Merle looked at them through a plastic tube. “People have gone for less.”
“True,” Pearl said. “The apostle Paul was sent to jail for preaching.”
“Why would someone go to jail just for preaching?” Michael asked.
“The Romans thought the Good News that Paul was sharing stirred up too much trouble,” Merle answered.
“Paul was sent to jail several times,” Pearl continued. “He did a lot of writing there. In one letter, Paul wrote to a church he helped to start in Ephesus.”
“Paul told the Ephesians—that’s what they call people from Ephesus—about a great ‘mystery’—because of Jesus, they were all now part of one big family,” Merle added.
“And he told them how important it is for a family to tell the truth to one another. Paul said, ‘Stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth, for we are all parts of the same body.’”
“But I didn’t lie,” Michael insisted. “I just didn’t tell Mom what happened.”
“That’s the same thing as lying,” Pearl said. “Telling the truth is about telling the whole story.”
“Yep!” Merle nodded. “Not telling the whole story, exaggerating, cheating, not keeping your promises—all of that is being untruthful.”
Michael had never thought about lying that way. He’d always thought lying was just saying something that he knew wasn’t true. It was news to him that you could also lie by not saying something.
Pearl climbed up Michael’s arm and sat on his shoulder. “When the people in God’s family tell the truth to one another, it shows that we can count on one another, and it also shows people outside of our family the power of God’s love in our lives!”
CHAPTER 8
“Can you hand me one of those curvy tubes?” Merle asked. The hamster house was starting to take shape. Pearl handed Merle a tube while Michael sat on the bed, thinking.
“But it’s not like it makes that much difference if Mom knows I broke the elephant,” Michael said.
“Hey, guys!” Justin burst through the door. “Your mom tells me—oh, cool!” Justin exclaimed as he noticed the hamster house.
Michael kept talking to Pearl. “Plus, it’s no big deal for Jane to be grounded. She already went to the birthday party. Her favorite thing to do is stay in her room and play with Mr. Nemesis, anyway.”
“What are you talking about?” Justin asked.
But before Michael could answer, Mrs. Gomez entered the room.
“Oh, that’s coming along really nicely!” Mrs. Gomez said, watching Merle snap two more tubes together. “You’re very good with your paws, Merle!”
“Thank you!” Merle replied.
“So . . . I guess you filled your mom in on the squirrels?” Justin said.
“Yes,” Mrs. Gomez said. “He told me last night, and we’re going to tell his dad tonight, right, Michael?”
“Oh,” Justin said, with a hint of fear in his voice.
“Yeah, I guess,” Michael said.
“Is there anything else you’d like to share?” asked Pearl.
Michael glared at her. There was an awkward pause.
Finally, Justin broke the silence. “I . . . was actually wondering if you guys wanted to go to the park and play soccer?”
“Yes!” Michael said immediately. If he told his mom the truth about the table now, he would be grounded for sure. He needed to get out of the house as soon as possible.
“Oh, I love soccer!” Merle said.
“How do you know about soccer?” Justin asked.
“Come on! Let’s go before it gets dark!” Michael grabbed his soccer ball and rushed out the door.
Justin looked after him, puzzled. “It’s only noon.”
CHAPTER 9
Michael and Justin raced their bikes to the park. Merle and Pearl rode along in their usual place inside Michael’s backpack, popping their heads out of the top like puppies hanging out a car window, ears flapping in the wind.
“Woohoo!” Merle shouted. “This is even better than roller-skating!”
“I know, right?!” Michael called over his shoulder. He was relieved to be out of the house. He’d been starting to feel guilty; any longer and he might have had to come clean to his mom about Jane and the elephant.
They rolled up to the park to find Sadie waiting for them. Before long, a three-versus-two soccer game was under way—Justin and Sadie against Michael and the squirrels. Merle turned out to be a natural. Squirrels’ ankle joints are super flexible, which helps them to climb up and down trees, and had the added benefit of helping Merle control the ball amazingly well. In no time, Michael and the squirrels were up 5–0.
“This is not a fair match!” Sadie complained.
Merle bicycle-kicked the ball into the back of the net. “Where has this game been all my life?!” he wondered aloud.
“Soccer’s been around for thousands of years,” Sadie informed Merle. “It was being played in China and parts of the Roman Empire in your day.”
“If you wanna know anything about history,” Michael said, “just ask Sadie.”
“Yep! You don’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been!” Sadie quoted. It sounded like something she had said many times before.
Pearl decided to sit out for a few minutes to rest and even up the teams. On the sidelines, she noticed a nice, straight line of acorns running from the soccer field into a hedge of bushes. Due to her squirrel instincts, Pearl was always on the lookout for food, especially tasty acorns. Had she thought about it a little more, she might have noticed that they were laid out a little too neatly. When acorns fall naturally from oak trees, they don’t land in a straight line.
“The Romans would wrap seeds or hair in linen cloth to make balls for kicking around,” Pearl heard Sadie say in the distance as she collected the nuts, picking up the nicest ones as she followed the line into the hedge. As she crawled into the bushes, she suddenly felt like she was walking on a wood floor. If she hadn’t had her mind on collecting acorns, she might have thought this was a bit odd and turned around.
Suddenly, a door snapped shut behind Pearl. She was trapped in a cage!
CHAPTER 10
With Michael and Merle now up 12–0, Justin was ready to call it quits. Sadie was more than happy to keep relaying the entire history of soccer to Merle, but not surprisingly, teaching while playing was not helping her team.
“I give up!” Justin said, huffing and puffing. “You win, Michael and Merle. Good game.”
“I was just getting to the Middle Ages,” Sadie complained.
“Save it for the next time you’re on Michael’s team,” Justin said. “You guys want to come back to my house for some lemonade?”
Merle looked puzzled. “Lemonade?”
“It’s a drink made out of lemons,” Michael explained.
Merle’s lips puckered, trying to imagine it.
“Not just lemons,” Michael said. “It’s got sugar, t
oo.”
Merle shrugged. “I’ll give it a shot.” He turned around, looking for Pearl. “Pearl! Time to go! Let’s go get some lemon-made!”
“Lemonade,” Michael corrected.
“Lemonade!” Merle called out. There was no answer.
“Where is she?” Sadie asked. Merle spotted a few acorns along the sidelines.
“Maybe she’s collecting acorns,” he said. “This way!” He followed the line of uncollected nuts into the hedge.
There was no sign of Pearl in the bushes. Merle and the kids looked all around the park and into the woods.
“This is really odd,” Merle said. “It isn’t like Pearl at all to run off like that. It’s a lot like me, but not like her.”
Suddenly, a familiar voice rang out.
“Pearl!” Merle shouted. He and the kids raced back onto the field, toward Pearl’s voice.
“Look!!!” Justin pointed at the parking lot.
Pearl turned and caught sight of them. “Help!!!” she called out again.
Merle looked up and could hardly believe his eyes. There was Pearl, trapped in a cage, being lowered into the trunk of a white Toyota by the man in the suit and sunglasses!
CHAPTER 11
Michael sprinted toward the bikes parked behind the soccer goals, Sadie and Justin close behind. “C’mon, Merle!” Michael shouted over his shoulder.
Merle just stood there for a moment, still in shock. But soon he shook it off and raced to catch up with the kids. If you’ve ever seen a squirrel crossing a street or running away from a dog, you know how fast they can be! Merle bounded into the backpack as Michael climbed up on his bike and began pedaling as fast as he could across the grass toward the parking lot.
“We’re coming, Pearl!” Merle shouted. But now the trunk was closed, and there was no way of knowing if she could hear him.
The man in the suit and sunglasses revved up the car as the kids reached the edge of the parking lot on their bikes.
“Hey! What are you doing with our squirrel?!” Michael called out.
“Stop!” Justin shouted.
The tires of the car spun out on the blacktop, white smoke billowing out of the wheel wells.
“Can Toyotas do that?!” Justin wondered out loud. The car sped toward the road, leaving the kids struggling to keep up in its smoky trail.
“Pearl!” Merle screamed in his loudest squirrel voice.
Through the haze, Sadie was able to make out the license plate number. “CPG 872, CPG 872, CPG 872,” she repeated.
Michael huffed as his legs spun faster than they ever had before. Finally, with the car around a corner and out of sight, he gave up and coasted down the street, struggling to catch his breath. “I can’t keep up! I’m sorry, Merle. I’m sorry.”
Merle said nothing as he gazed after the car.
“What are we gonna do?” Justin asked as he caught up with Michael.
“We need help.” Michael turned and pedaled hard toward home, Justin and Sadie close behind him.
CHAPTER 12
Mrs. Gomez turned and smiled as Michael, Merle, Justin, and Sadie came bursting through Michael’s bedroom door. She had been assembling Merle and Pearl’s new house all afternoon and had just finished. The final result was a complicated network of plastic tubes, running wheels, and compartments of different sizes that took up almost half the room. Mrs. Gomez loved homemaking—even for squirrels. “Well? What do you—?”
“Mom! Someone kidnapped Pearl!” Michael shouted, interrupting her.
“I think the correct term would be squirrelnapped,” Justin pointed out.
“That’s not a thing,” Sadie said.
“Well, she’s not a kid.”
“You don’t have to be a kid to be kidna—”
“What happened?!” Mrs. Gomez asked, looking worried.
“This place is AMAZING!!!” Merle exclaimed, temporarily forgetting the matter at hand as he gazed upon the Taj Mahal of hamster/squirrel cages.
“Isn’t it fun?” Mrs. Gomez replied, pleased by Merle’s reaction.
“MOM!!! MERLE!!! EVERYONE!!! This is serious!” Michael yelled. “We need to find Pearl! The guy. In the park. It’s the same guy we saw on the plane and in the airport and at the roller rink. He must have been following us for a while.”
“You saw him on the plane?” Mrs. Gomez frowned. “If he followed you over from Israel, we’re going to need to let your father know right away.”
“But he won’t be home until later tonight!” Michael cried.
“We’ll go tell him now,” Mrs. Gomez replied. “If that man has ties to Israel, your dad needs to know right away. He may be a government agent.”
“I thought I was grounded?” Jane asked as her mom strapped her into her car seat.
Justin and Sadie piled into the back on either side of her while Michael buckled up in front, with Merle tucked away in Michael’s backpack at his feet.
“We’re going to visit Daddy at work,” Mrs. Gomez said.
Jane grinned. “Being grounded is fun!”
Justin and Sadie laughed.
“Why are you grounded?” Sadie asked Jane.
“I broke the elephant with a cupcake,” Jane responded.
Had Michael bothered to turn around, he would have seen Justin and Sadie trade suspicious looks.
CHAPTER 13
“Professor? There are some people here to see you,” announced Esteban through the speaker. Esteban was one of the students helping with Dr. Gomez’s research.
Michael’s dad was in a special lab, running a test on a series of scrolls to find out how old they were. “Who is it?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“Your whole family, plus a couple of other kids,” Esteban said.
“Oh, great! Tell them I’ll be right there, please.”
“It’s a little late for lunch, but it’s good to see you!” Dr. Gomez said as he entered his office carrying a clipboard. He was wearing a white suit with a hood that made him look like a cross between an astronaut and a beekeeper. “Something wrong?” he asked, noticing his wife and son’s concerned expressions.
“Michael has something to tell you,” Mrs. Gomez said.
“Okay,” said Dr. Gomez. “What is it?”
Michael took a big gulp and looked up at his mom, then over at Justin and Sadie, before looking back to his dad. “Um . . . when we were at the Dead Sea this summer, I brought something home,” he confessed. “Actually, two things.”
“Really?” Mr. Gomez asked calmly. “What things did you bring back?”
Michael took off his backpack and unzipped the top. He reached in and brought out Merle, who sat smiling sheepishly in Michael’s palms.
At the sight of the small animal, Jane gasped with glee. “It’s sooooo cute!!!”
Dr. Gomez’s response was quite different. “You brought back a live animal from another country?” he asked sternly.
Michael blushed and nodded.
“Well,” Merle broke in, “I, for one, am certainly glad he did.”
Dr. Gomez fainted dead away, his clipboard falling to the floor with a clunk.
“You seem to have that effect on people,” Mrs. Gomez commented to Merle.
CHAPTER 14
With the help of a couple of cups of cold water, Dr. Gomez soon came to. Michael, Justin, and Merle then proceeded to fill him in on the whole story. Needless to say, he was not happy with Michael for keeping the squirrels a secret.
“Michael, withholding the truth is dishonest. We’re a family, and we need to always tell each other the truth.”
Michael thought his dad’s words sounded awfully familiar. “I know, Dad. I’m sorry,” he said. “I just thought they were so cool. I figured if I told you before we came home you wouldn’t have let me bring them, and if I told you after, I’d get in trouble.”
“Do you realize that not telling me may have gotten Pearl into trouble?” Dr. Gomez asked. “If I had known about the man in the suit and sunglasses sooner, I could have
helped figure out why he is after the squirrels.”
Michael hung his head. “Yes, sir.”
“How do we find her now?” Merle asked.
“Sadie got the license plate number from the car,” Justin said.
“CPG 872,” Sadie repeated.
Dr. Gomez used one of the lab computers to track the license plate to a rental car agency in town. “It’s a Frugal Rental, down by the airport,” he said. “This is a long shot, but we might be able to track down the person who rented the car if we go to where the car was rented.”
“Let’s go!” Merle said urgently.
Jane stroked Merle’s head with a finger. “Mommy, I think Mr. Nemesis would like the squirrel.”
Merle laughed nervously. “Oh, I’m sure he would love me.”
Mrs. Gomez went back home with Jane while Michael, Merle, Justin, and Sadie piled into Dr. Gomez’s car and headed toward the airport.
CHAPTER 15
Dr. Gomez sped toward the airport.
“What do we do if the rental place won’t tell us the man’s name?” Sadie asked.
“They probably won’t,” Dr. Gomez said. “But we might be able to gather some clues there to help us find out who he is.”
As Dr. Gomez exited the interstate, Merle suddenly shouted, “Hold on!” He pointed. Along a frontage road sat a hotel with a few cars parked in the parking lot. One of them was a white Toyota. “Isn’t that the car?”
“That’s a very popular car and a very popular color, but it can’t hurt to take a closer look,” Dr. Gomez said. He pulled around into the hotel parking lot and slowly rolled up to the back of the white car.
Squirrelnapped! Page 2