Hunter Moran Hangs Out (4 page)

We stop dead.

“Hunter? Zack?” Linny screams.

Another clue. Terrific. “See you right after lunch,” I tell her.

She blows breath through her braces. “Dr. Diglio, the dentist, is seeing me after lunch. I'll catch up with you.”

“Can't you just tell us now?” I ask.

But Yulefski's into suspense. “See you later.” She skips up the street.

We head for home. Zack is still chewing over the book situation. “How are we going to read three books in a couple of days?” he moans as we gallop along. He takes a massive jump from the edge of the lawn to the coyote gravestone, and then to the front path.

He snaps his fingers. “Suppose we make the whole thing up?”

“No good. Sister Appolonia has probably read every book in the world. What else does she have to do?”

Nana's in the kitchen. She gives us a hundred hugs. Even with a face that's a little cracked, she's not bad-looking, and
she gives out the best birthday presents in the world. Too bad she's hoping the baby will be named after her. Maizie. I can't think of anything worse. “It's a boy,” I say, to let her down easy. “K.G.”

She tilts her head.

“Kenneth Gerard.”

She smiles, then mixes us up as usual. “Your teeth are really straightening up nicely, Zack.”

They're my teeth, and Dr. Diglio says I'll be lucky if I don't lose them by the time I'm twenty.

Who'll care at that point?

We slide into chairs around the table. Becca sits across from me, going on about gymnastics and Olympics and how she's going to sacrifice everything to win a medal.

She frowns. “I just need to get six bucks to pay Gussie's Gym for the next couple of weeks.”

Linny picks the weirdest friends.

One time, Zack and I sneaked up to Gussie's window to watch. Diglio the dentist was doing push-ups. If I had matchstick legs like his, you'd never catch me in a pair of shorts. After two push-ups, he collapsed on the floor, ready to pass out. Or pass away. Sister Appolonia had to stop swinging from bars to help him lean against the wall.

Nana dishes out melted-cheese sandwiches, burned around the edges. Her cooking tastes like Mom's. She turns to Zack. “I've made your favorite lunch, Hunter.”

We both hate cheese.

Actually, it's William's favorite. He loves burned stuff.

Mary hangs out of her high chair by the straps, dropping cheese all over the floor. Lucky Mary. She does whatever she pleases.

Becca goes on. “I've already earned two You Did the Best You Could medals.” She raises her arms over her head, congratulating herself.

Next to her, Zack looks grossed out.

“Here's mail.” Nana dumps it on the table. As if any of us would be getting something. It's always junk: advertisements for steaks, a furnace, and life savers for a swimming pool, which we do not have, even though we've asked for one for our double birthday every year. We'll try Nana again in November.

But here's something new. A letter addressed to Mom, which looks a little odd.

Weird, as a matter of fact.

Huge letters in red read:
PRIVATE! PERSONAL! READ IMMEDIATELY!

Could it be from the kidnapper?

Mom's mail is sacred. But poor Mom is in the hospital having Killer Godzilla. Checking out that mail is the right thing to do. But not in front of Nana, and definitely not in front of Linny.

I slide the letter off the table and shove it into my back
pocket. I tear off the black edges of cheese and stick them in there, too.

Linny has eyes like a hawk. She stares at me as if I've just committed a major crime.

Zack leans under the table; he's going to get rid of some cheese. Fred eats anything. But Zack comes up looking uneasy. “Where's the dog?”

I look around. Never mind Fred. What about Steadman?

I push my chair back from the table so fast it falls over. A piece of cheese is a lump in my throat. I talk around it—actually, I'm almost screaming. “Where's Steadman?”

William with an empty head on his shoulders looks under the table.

Nana clutches her throat.

But Linny sits there calmly for a change. “He's on the living room floor asleep, with Fred.”

I sink back in the chair until my heart gets started again. Zack does the same thing. “Can you imagine . . .” He doesn't finish. He can't get the word
kidnapper
past his lips.

I think of the letter in my pocket. I tilt my head toward the door to let Zack know we have to get out of there.

“Thanks, Nana,” I say. “That cheese sandwich was the best.”

“Yeah,” Zack adds. “You ought to be on one of those TV cooking programs.”

That's going a little too far. Nana looks at us suspiciously.

“Want us to help clean up?” I know she loves to do dishes, even without the dishwasher.

“Aren't they great!” Nana tells Linny and William.

Mary spits out her cheese.

Then we escape. We trot around the side of the house. It's a mess, filled with weeds and junk. No one can see it from the street, so Pop has let it go back to nature. At least, that's what he says.

Fred loves it. He likes to roll around in the smelly weeds, looking as if he's in heaven. We sink down in Fred's heaven, weeds to our eyeballs.

I hold up the envelope, then run my finger under the seal, so slowly we could be there all afternoon. We'll lick the whole thing back together afterward. No one will ever know that we had a first look.

Excellent.

“Let's ask Nana for a fingerprinting kit for our birthday,” Zack says. “Genuine. Police type.”

I nod. We can put the pool idea aside until Christmas.

“Yeow!”
Zack yells.
“Bees!”

I jump, ripping the whole envelope open, and the letter flutters away in a couple of pieces. “Are we dead?” I yell.

Zack is swatting his head, dancing around; then we're out of there.

But not before I get a quick look into the living room window. No one is asleep on the floor. Not Steadman. Not even Fred.

We dart around the side of the house and nearly knock Becca over. “Great lunch,” she says, “if that dog didn't keep going for my shins.” She rubs her leg. “Have to get to Gussie's Gym. The new kid, Alex, is waiting.”

“Go for it,” Zack says.

We barrel through the house, yelling, “Steadman! Fred!”

In the kitchen, Linny is telling Nana that we're operating on half-cylinders.

We race through the living room and peel off to take the stairs two at a time.

Nobody.

Nothing but a crumpled-up Hershey bar wrapper on Steadman's bed.

“Stolen from me,” Zack says.

We head for the basement, even though we know Steadman wouldn't set foot down there. We've told him an alligator lives in the furnace room.

It's probably not true, but you never know. We saw that on
Would You Believe?
Monday, 6
AM
.

Zack and I clump down loudly. We make noises deep in our throats to terrify the maybe-alligator.

The light at the bottom of the stairs is out again. When I'm grown-up and rich, I'm going to have a guy work for me; he'll do nothing but change lightbulbs every two minutes.

We trip over a ratty old rug that Mom calls an antique and crash into Pop's tools. Pop says he's building a retreat for himself down there. Zack says it's more like a dungeon.

“Steadman,” I whisper. “Where are you?”

We stand absolutely still.

Steadman doesn't answer.

Fred doesn't growl.

We do hear something. What? We don't wait to find out. We race up the stairs and out the front door and sink down on the steps.

There are no two ways about it. Steadman has been kidnapped.

“What should we do?” I ask Zack.

“We can't tell Nana,” he says. “She'll drop dead of a heart attack.”

“William is useless,” I say.

“And Linny will never believe us.”

“She will if she can't find Steadman.” We poke our heads in the front door. “Hey, Linny.”

“She's out back somewhere,” Nana calls.

We dash around the side of the house, through Fred's oasis, and into the yard. Linny is leaning against the playhouse. And she's holding . . .

Holding . . .

“The kidnap letter,” Zack says.

And that's when Linny begins to scream at the top of her lungs.

Linny loves Steadman. We all do. This is the worst thing that's ever happened to us. Steadman won't even make kindergarten. “I'm glad that at least he had that Hershey Bar,” Zack says over Linny's yelling.

We go over to her. With both hands she's ripping up what's left of the letter.

“Stop!” Zack sputters. “Are you demented?”

We dive for it, but Linny dashes around the playhouse. We tackle her, and the three of us crash into the birdbath, which is more muck than bath.

A thousand pieces of the letter float over the yard, some of them caught in Pop's half-dead rosebush, most of them covered with mud.

Linny is still screaming.

“We're going to get Steadman back,” I tell her as Zack crawls around, gathering up microscopic pieces of paper.

“Steadman?” Linny yells. “Steadman?” Her face looks
like a purple eggplant. Skinnier, though. “What are you talking about?”

“You don't know? Steadman's been kidnapped,” I say. “And the letter is probably the ransom note. You never should have ripped it up. We need all the clues we can get, and we have only . . .”

“. . . two and a half,” Zack puts in.

Linny sinks to the ground, getting more purple by the second. “I knew it. You have the brains of mentally challenged fleas.”

I shake my head. What am I missing here?

“It's a ransom note, all right!” Linny screams. “But I'm the one. Me. Not Steadman. I'm going to be kidnapped any minute.”

Zack holds up his hand. “What did the note say?” He's calm. Intelligent. Right to the point.

We lean forward. Linny runs her pretzel-thin hands over her face. “Some of it was ripped up already.”

Zack and I look at each other, remembering the bees.

“I couldn't stand reading the rest of it,” she says. “Once I saw
one million dollars
and
ransom
. . .” Her lips quiver. “Once I saw
Lin
. . . 
Mor
. . .”

She sinks down on her knees. “Linny Moran. My name. I'm the kidnappee.”

I swallow. The kidnapper thinks Linny is worth a million bucks? Amazing. “Are you sure you didn't see Steadman's name?”

She takes a ragged breath. “Piles of paper are still floating around. They probably want him, too.”

Poor Pop. Where will he get a million dollars to pay the ransom?

And Linny, bent over, moans: “I should have listened to Sarah Yulefski.”

Linny is part of this family, I tell myself. What would Mom do without her? Somehow we'll have to save her, and Pop's money.

“Sarah told me the kidnapper wants to keep a kid in a cage. A kid who never shuts up. A kid who'll fit . . .” Linny holds out her arms, skinny as strings. “That's me. Linny Moran.”

She looks furious. “But my conversations are right on. Dynamic. Even Sister Appolonia said so.”

I cut in. “How much did you pay Yulefski for her information?”

“What are you talking about?” she says. “Nothing.”

Great. And we paid a fortune for the same thing.

Linny looks around. “What will I do?”

“You could hide in the basement while we figure things out,” Zack says.

She shudders. “There might be an alli—” She breaks off. “Not the basement. No way.”

“The attic,” I tell her, hoping she won't remember the colony of dive-bombing flies and hanging wasps' nest up there.

Linny glares at me.

“How about the bottom kitchen drawer?” Zack's getting impatient. “Pull out the pots and pans and slide right in.”

I wiggle my fingers, trying to remind him about the worm farm with the apple cores for their treat.

But I'm getting impatient, too. There hasn't been a sound out of Fred all this time, a lifetime achievement for him, not a somersault, a backflip, or a walk on two back legs. I almost miss him.

And poor Steadman, who loves to talk, might be gagged and blindfolded, just like the kid on
Terror in the Night
, Wednesday afternoons, one o'clock.

“Linny, dear,” Nana calls from the kitchen.

Linny looks toward the house, head tilted. “I'm locking all the doors and windows. Then I'm hanging out with Nana until Mom and Pop get home with Peaches.”

Peaches? What is she talking about?

Zack knows. “K.G.,” he mutters.

I nod at Linny. “Nana's your best bet with those fat grandmother arms. Great for protection.”

We watch as Linny dives around the side of the house
and slams herself inside. Then we take another minute to gather up the scraps of the ransom letter. Later, we'll put them together like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Now what?” Zack asks.

“The lookout tower,” I say. “Steadman has to be somewhere. We'll keep an eye out all over town.” This is the worst. The kidnapper might be after our whole family.

We dash across the street, then hesitate. A van is parked in the driveway of the used-to-be-empty house. The van is the worst mess I've ever seen, probably smashed up in about forty accidents. We tiptoe around it. The hood is up, showing innards that are rusted together.

“That baby belongs in a junk heap,” Zack says.

We keep going into the woods and begin to climb. The tree shakes and bends with our weight. I reach the top first. My head is almost level with the lookout tower, and . . .