Читать книгу The Runaway - Alison Hart - Страница 7

MARYELLEN GRITTED HER teeth in anger. Should she confront the dog thief? Or wait and tell her parents?

Before she could make a decision, Tom came skating down the sidewalk hollering, “Mom says to come home!”

Maryellen whipped her head around and motioned frantically for him to shush so that Mr. Brad wouldn’t notice they had followed him. By the time she looked back, the ice cream truck was pulling away.

With Buster in the truck? Maryellen scanned the yards and sidewalks but saw no sign of the big reddish-brown dog. Jumping on her bike, she pedaled after the ice cream truck, but it had already turned the corner and disappeared.

“Mom says now,” Tom hollered after her.

With a deep sigh, Maryellen braked and rode her bike back up the sidewalk. Tom was already skating back toward home, but Beverly remained almost where Maryellen had left her, hunched over her bike. “You saw that, Beverly, right?” Maryellen asked her sister.

“Saw what?” Beverly straightened.

“Saw that big brown dog hop into Mr. Brad’s truck.”

“Umm…” Beverly’s cheeks reddened. “I didn’t. My pants leg got caught in my bike chain and I was trying to get it loose without tearing it.”

“Phooey!” Maryellen hit the handlebars. “I saw that dog Buster jump into his truck, but I didn’t see if he jumped out again because Tom came hollering down the sidewalk.” She glanced at the nearby lawns and porches to see if she could spot the dog, but Buster still wasn’t in sight. “What if Mr. Brad took him?”

“Why would he? More likely Buster ran home,” Beverly said, turning her bike. “Which is where we need to be going. Maybe the Happy Hollisters can look for Mr. Brad again tomorrow after school. The ice cream truck usually comes around about then.”

“Maybe.” Maryellen blew out a frustrated breath. Maybe it was time to call the police and report what she had seen. Only what had she seen? Beverly could be right: Buster might have simply run home.

When she got back to her house, Maryellen called Angela and the Karens to let them know Scooter was still missing.

“I’ll help you look tomorrow,” Karen King said when Maryellen phoned her.

“You must be soooo sad,” Angela said when Maryellen told her the news.

And Karen Stohlman insisted that calling the police was the right thing to do.

Mr. Larkin helped Maryellen write down important details to tell the Daytona Beach Police Department. Her stomach did flip-flops as she dialed, but her dad gave her an encouraging smile.

She was put through to an Officer Polansky, who took her information. “Other folks have reported pets missing in the area,” he told her, “so we’ve asked the officers to keep an eye out for strays.”

“Scooter is not a stray,” Maryellen declared. “He has a red collar and a family who loves him.” She described the dachshund in detail so that if a policeman did find him, he would know to call the Larkins right away. She thought a moment before adding, “You might want to check with ice cream truck drivers in the area.” She knew she couldn’t accuse Mr. Brad of anything yet, but she could at least alert the police. “They drive through neighborhoods and may have seen something suspicious.”

When she hung up, her father smiled. “Don’t look so sad, honey. You did a good job, and I bet by tomorrow, Scooter will be waiting at the back door.”

Only he wasn’t.

In the morning, the moment Maryellen’s eyes opened, she hurried to the back stoop to check for Scooter. By now the kibble in his bowl was soggy, so she threw it out and washed the bowl.

When Maryellen arrived at school, her friends met her with serious faces.

“We all agreed that if Scooter wasn’t home today, we would help you look for him after school,” Karen King said.

“I forgot I can’t today because I have a piano lesson,” Angela said, looking especially glum.

“My mom said she’d pick us up after school and take us to your house,” Karen Stohlman said.

Karen King grinned excitedly. “I can’t wait to do some detective work just like Nancy Drew!” Now here was a detective worth imitating, Maryellen thought. She and her friends loved Nancy Drew mysteries.

“If only Nancy Drew was real,” Karen Stohlman said. “She, George, and Bess would solve ‘The Case of the Missing Dachshund’ in nothing flat.”

The bell rang, and all four girls hurried to their classes with the other students. Maryellen usually loved school, but she couldn’t wait for the day to be over so she and her friends could search for Scooter.

That afternoon, the two Karens and Maryellen quickly ate an after-school snack of Wheaties. Maryellen planned on getting her friends to tromp up and down the streets that her family hadn’t searched, and she wanted to check on Mr. Brad again, too. The ice cream man was still the perfect suspect—he was always in the neighborhood, he’d admitted he loved dogs, and she’d seen Buster jump into his truck for a treat. She couldn’t picture Scooter jumping up into the cab—his legs were too short—but maybe Mr. Brad had helped him inside, getting hairs on his uniform. It made sense, because who wouldn’t love a pudgy sweetie pie like Scooter?

“I sure would like to be Nancy Drew,” Karen Stohlman said with a sigh.

“No, Maryellen gets to be Nancy. It’s her dog,” Karen King declared.

“I’ll be George then,” Karen Stohlman said.

“Why do you get to be George? You’re not sporty at all,” the other Karen argued. “You’re more fashionable, like Bess.”

“Both of you are Karen, so both of you can be Nancy or George or whoever you want,” Maryellen said. She wanted them to hurry and change so they could get outside. Mrs. Larkin had taken the younger kids with her to the supermarket, so for once they weren’t hanging around. But there was only an hour and a half before Mrs. Stohlman would be back to pick her friends up.

Karen King put her hands on her hips. “I vote we all be Nancy then.”

“I second the motion,” Karen Stolhman said. “Now we’ll need to look for clues. Do you have a magnifying glass?” she asked Maryellen.

“Somewhere in that old science kit.” Maryellen pointed to a torn box in her closet, and Karen Stohlman started to rummage in it.

“And we need disguises!” Karen King exclaimed.

Maryellen frowned. “Disguises?”

“Of course! If Mr. Brad the ice cream guy sees you snooping around again, don’t you think he’ll get suspicious?”

Maryellen thought a minute. “Not if we’re buying ice cream…. I have twenty cents saved from my allowance.”

But Karen King was already using Carolyn’s lipstick and mascara. “With a little makeup, we’ll look like teenagers, not twerpy fifth-graders.”

“Carolyn’s not going to like you using her stuff,” Maryellen warned. “And I’m not allowed to wear makeup until I’m fifteen.”

“But we’re older than fifteen.” Karen King grinned, the smudge of red around her lips making her smile look as huge as a clown’s. “We’re Nancy Drew, remember?”

“Look! I found a magnifying glass. Now we need a flashlight,” Karen Stohlman said, backing out from the closet.

“It’s daylight out,” Maryellen protested.

“We might get locked in a dark room,” Karen Stohlman said in a spooky voice.

“Then we better have a whistle, too,” Karen King said, “in case we have to call for help. And a pad of paper to write down all our clues.”

“And a camera to take photos of suspicious characters. Hey, I want a disguise, too!” Karen Stohlman said when she saw her friend’s made-up face.

Maryellen rubbed her forehead. She loved the Karens, and they had some good ideas, but if they didn’t hurry, they’d never get any sleuthing done. “Mom keeps a flashlight in the kitchen in case the power goes out. Tom has a toy whistle. I can’t use Dad’s camera—he’s afraid we kids will break it. I have a school notepad that will fit in my pocket and a pencil. Now, let’s hurry before you have to leave.”

It took ten minutes of hunting in the boys’ room before Karen King finally found Tom’s whistle under his pillow. She tried it out as they clattered downstairs. Maryellen found the flashlight, and finally got her two friends outside.

“What time does the ice cream truck come around?” Karen Stohlman asked.

“I think we should knock on doors,” Karen King said. “Maybe a lonely little old lady has Scooter and is feeding him steak so he doesn’t want to leave.”

Maryellen was torn about what they should do first. “Let’s go to Beachside Street. My family didn’t check there, and Scooter can cut through our backyard to get to it. If the ice cream truck comes by, we’ll check out Mr. Brad again.”

“Good plan, Nancys!” the Karens chorused.

“Wait—I’d better leave my mom a note.” Maryellen ran inside the house.

By the time she ran back outside, Mrs. Stohlman was waiting on the curb.

The two Karens hurried past her and into the house to get their school clothes and books. “Sorry, we have to go,” Karen King apologized.

Karen Stohlman gave Maryellen an encouraging pat on the shoulder as she left. “You’re still Nancy Drew, so keep investigating!”

Maryellen waved good-bye, not quite believing that they’d spent the entire time time getting ready to be detectives. She turned toward the house with a frustrated sigh, and then stopped midstep. Her friends had given her some good ideas. The afternoon hadn’t been a total waste.

She tucked the flashlight into her waistband and shoved the whistle in the pocket of her pedal pushers along with the twenty cents she’d put there earlier. Then, sitting on the front step, she began to write in her notebook.

For her first entry, Maryellen put yesterday’s date and wrote down what the Happy Hollisters had discovered:

Spots: the Bateses’ Dalmatian missing for two weeks

Misty: brown and white dog missing for how long??

Mr. Brad: dog hairs on his uniform

Chow-Chow treats in truck

loves dogs

drives all over the neighborhood

lured Buster into his truck and may have taken him

Officer Polansky: other dogs reported missing too

When she finished, Maryellen realized that she had quite a lot of information. Only none of it told her exactly where Scooter was.

How would Nancy Drew find a missing pet? Of course—she’d try to find its trail. Yesterday they’d been so busy hunting up and down the neighborhood, they’d never checked for tracks.

Maryellen ran into the house and out onto the back steps. No one had played in the backyard since Scooter had gone missing. Using the flashlight and magnifying glass, she searched for paw prints. She remembered it had drizzled the night he disappeared, which could have washed away tracks, so she would have to search carefully.

She found ants crawling up the steps to some spilled kibble, and an earthworm squirming in the moist earth. But there were no Scooter tracks around the steps or leading into the backyard. That meant he probably hadn’t gone toward Beachside Street.

She wrote her findings on her pad and then hurried to the front porch. When she’d let Scooter out the front door, it was the last time she’d seen him.

Carefully, she looked around the steps and down the Larkins’ walkway. There would be no prints in the concrete, she knew, but maybe there was a muddy one on it that the light rain hadn’t washed away.

She made her way down the length of the walkway until it met the main sidewalk. Nothing. It was as if Scooter had disappeared into thin air.

Or turned into a ghost like Casper.

Maryellen plopped dejectedly on the curb. If Scooter were here, he’d be playing her faithful sleuthing partner who could track lost kittens and, well, lost dogs. He would have helped her solve his own disappearance in a finger snap.

She sighed, missing him with an ache. Don’t give up, she told herself as she got to her feet. Scooter depends on you.

Taking baby steps, she made her way down the sidewalk along the street, searching for a sign of where he might have gone. Suddenly, she gasped. Muddy paw prints!

They came from the direction of the Larkins’ grassy front yard, crossed the sidewalk, and then disappeared right at the curb. Maryellen checked the prints carefully with her magnifying glass. They were faded and slightly dried, and about the size of Scooter’s paws. Had he crossed the street to the other side? Her stomach did a flip-flop. She really hoped he hadn’t. The speed limit was only twenty miles an hour, but the street was still no place for a little dog.

She used the flashlight to search the asphalt and found no sign of prints in the road. She blew out a relieved breath but then frowned in confusion. It was as if Scooter had stopped at the curb and then…flown into the sky?

Or been lifted from the curb and put into an ice cream truck!

Maryellen clenched her fists. Mr. Brad said he often parked in front of the Larkins’ house. She knew what she needed to do next.

It was time to confront the ice cream man.