It Never Rhines but It Pours (29 page)

“Put him down, Cecily,” I said wearily. I probably should have added a couple qualifiers to that order. Like “gently,” or “carefully.” Cecily took me literally and dropped Floyd on his head.

He sat up sputtering. “You can’t treat me like this!” he protested. “I have rights!”

“You have no rights, Floyd,” I said. “You’re trespassing.”

“I’m …” he stopped and stared at me, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. “How do you know my name?”

I rolled my eyes.
Some
of the mind erase had worked. “I know a lot more than your name,” I said mysteriously. Or, at least, I hoped it sounded mysterious. “I know that you’re a …a …” Oh dang it! I couldn’t remember the word.

“A cryptozoologist,” Cecily finished helpfully.

“Yeah, what she said.”

“How did you know that?” Floyd was in awe.

“Why are you here, Floyd?” I asked.

He stood up, brushing grass off his pants. “I’m following a skunk ape!” he said excitedly. “It’s the discovery of the century!”

I groaned. Not again! And Annabeth had led him straight to my door. I did not need this right now. I wiped a trickle of sweat off my face. It was way too hot to be standing out here arguing with a crazy man. What was it with crazy people today? Couldn’t they go find someone else to go pick on? Why did they all have to bother me?

“Come on inside,” I said grouchily and stomped back towards the house, slinging the shotgun over my shoulder. My heart rate was coming back to normal and I was still hungry. All this stress was making me crave a giant milkshake. And a double cheeseburger and fries. Lots of fries.

“Close the sliding glass door,” I said over my shoulder in the same tone I used with Megan and Cassidy. “The air is on.”

I couldn’t be sure, but I thought Cecily whispered, “Yes, Mommy.” I would pretend I hadn’t heard that.

Floyd came to a stop when he saw Annabeth and Harry sitting at the table. “Wha—,”

“Floyd, meet Annabeth,” I said. “Annabeth, this is Floyd.”

She leapt to her feet. “What’s he doing here?”

I sighed, slid back into my seat and took a gulp of ice water. “Would you like a sandwich, Floyd?” I asked politely.

“I … I … umm,” he was clearly flustered at coming face to face with the woman he was stalking.

“Pull up a chair, Floyd.” I bit into a chip. Cecily was right, they did taste like cardboard.

“I … I …” Floyd was still lost for words.

“Sit down,” I commanded, tired of the stammering. He sat.

Annabeth was still standing. “Piper!” she complained. “He can’t be here!”

I chewed my sandwich slowly and waited until she sat back down. “He
is
here, Annabeth. Sarah’s not. I can’t do anything about it right now. So let’s just sit down, have some lunch, and get to know each other … again.”

“I won’t sit here with
him
,” Annabeth said vehemently.

Floyd looked uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat and looked ready to run.

“Some people object to being stalked,” I told him confidentially.

“S-stalked!” he stammered, “I never …”

“You never thought that Annabeth was a real person, with a son to worry about?” I asked. “Oh, by the way, have you met Harry? Say hi, Harry.”

Harry was staring at Floyd, mouth open, last bite still half chewed.

“I know,” I said. “Floyd’s a little odd, but it’s okay.”

“Me?” he gasped.

“Yeah, you, Floyd. It’s not every day that normal people hang out with a stalker. Generally your kind is arrested and locked up where you can’t bother people.”

“I … I …” he protested.

“You, you.” I mimicked him angrily. “You never thought of it that way did you? You never thought of Annabeth as a person. Or Harry as a child. Or that stalking them, and taking pictures, and video, and writing articles in newspapers, might be making their lives harder.”

“I’m a scientist!” he said. “She’s abnormal! She should be documented! People have to know!”

“Why?”

“Because … because …” he was flustered.

“She’s not an animal, Floyd.” I said quietly. “She has rights, and feelings, just like everybody else. You’re trying to turn her into the freak show at the circus. Is that really what you want?”

“But … but … it’s the affirmation of everything I’ve worked on! You’ve no idea how I’ve been mocked! Ridiculed! If I can show them proof, they’ll have to take me seriously!”

“There’s your proof,” I pointed at Annabeth who was taking furious bites out of her sandwich. “She’s real. She’s a person. She has a life, and hopes and dreams, and a family, and you are threatening all of that. What is more important? You getting revenge for years of people laughing at you, or her life?”

“I … never …” Floyd came to a stop.

“You never thought of it that way,” Annabeth said bitterly. “You never stopped to think that every time you snapped a picture or wrote one of your articles, encouraging hunters to go out in the woods and take potshots at anything that moved, that you were hurting me.” She pointed an angry finger into his face. “You’re the reason I have to live in a trailer dump in the middle of the woods! You’re the reason Harry doesn’t have any friends!”

Floyd looked shocked. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

“You should be.” She tore off another bite of sandwich and chewed furiously.

“I just wanted to prove that there are creatures alive today that modern science dismisses as myths.” His voice took on a classroom quality. He’d obviously said this more than once. “Think of the Giant Panda! It was mocked and ridiculed and believed to be a myth until—”

Annabeth cut him off, “The Giant Panda is a dumb animal. An
animal
. Not a sentient being. I might turn into a skunk ape, but I’m still a person.”

Floyd’s mouth dropped. Until that moment I think he hadn’t really believed himself. “You really turn into a skunk ape?” he said in awe.

“Yes,” she snapped. “Isn’t that why you’ve been stalking me for years?”

“I know,” he looked dazed. “But … I wasn’t sure. I mean, I
thought
I was right …but, it’s true!” There was pure joy on his face.

Annabeth snorted. “Now what are you going to do? Call the zoo and take me in? Lock me in a cage so people can take blood samples? Test my DNA? How about an autopsy? That should answer all your questions nicely.”

Floyd was still lost in his world of discovery. “A real live skunk ape! The illusive Big Foot! Do you have any idea what this means for science?”

Annabeth laughed. “Illusive? You mean, smarter than me. Most don’t get caught.”

“Most?” I asked. I’d rather thought that she was one of a kind.

“My family,” she said sadly. “They’re better at not getting caught. It helps when you live in a community.”

“Skunk ape villages!” Floyd breathed in amazement.

“Try towns,” Annabeth said.

“But,” I had to ask, even though I thought it might be too personal a question. “Why don’t you live with your family?”

“Because,” she looked lovingly at Harry. “I fell in love with a human, and had his child. We’re banished. Procreating with humans is not allowed.”

“That’s not fair!” I was indignant.

“No, it’s okay. When Harry reaches puberty we’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“We’ll know which genes are dominant. If he turns into a skunk ape, we can move home. If not,” she looked resigned, “then I’ll go home and Harry will make his own way in the world.”

“You’ll abandon him?” I was shocked.

She shook her head. “Eventually. The same way that every parent abandons their child when they send them off to college, or off to live on their own. I won’t leave Harry until I’m sure he is assimilated. And he can always come visit.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “It’s the way we do things. I knew what the consequences were when I had Harry, and I have never regretted them.”

“Still want to get out your camera and test tubes?” I asked Floyd.

He looked shaken to the core. It must be hard to have your dreams come true and then realize that you shouldn’t share them with the world.

Cecily was lounging at the counter, looking lean and elegant, and staying remarkably quiet through this whole exchange. She’d stopped making horrible faces every time she bit into a fat free Pringle and was merely watching our faces as each person spoke. After an awkward moment of silence, she raised her hand for permission to speak.

“Yes?” I asked, like she really needed my okay before saying something.

“Maybe it’s just me,” she said carefully, “but it seems that both Floyd
and
Annabeth could profit from a … partnership.”

“Partnership?” they both said.

“Yes,” she smiled, showing sharp teeth. “There’s money to be made in cryptozoology, isn’t there?”

Floyd looked hesitant, “Perhaps, if you can produce proof.”

“Proof?”

He looked a little guilty, “Not uncontestable proof, just enough that your claim seems likely.”

“A highly scientific field,” I heard Annabeth mutter under her breath.

Floyd bristled, “Every true cryptozoologist knows that absolute proof is almost impossible to find. If it was easy to find cryptids, they wouldn’t
be
cryptids!”

“Exactly,” Cecily concurred, “All Annabeth has to do is let you take enough pictures and samples to make your claim seem … likely.”

Annabeth and Floyd looked at each other. She frowned. “You’d pay for that?”

Floyd stared at Cecily, then at her. “You’d let me take pictures? Good pictures?”

She crossed her arms, “Maybe.”

His face lit up, “Really?”

“I said, maybe.”

My cell phone rang. I smiled encouragingly at them and slipped out of the room to take the call. I felt like I had just witnessed potential peace between Israel and Iraq.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Babe!” It was Mark.

“Hi, Honey. How’s your day going?”

“Great. Busy, but great. You?”

I looked back into the kitchen where Annabeth and Floyd were yelling at each other. I closed the door carefully behind me. “Couldn’t be better,” I said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Cool. Hey, some of the guys are having a poker night tonight. Do you mind if I go?”

“Sure, what time do you think you’ll be back?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Depends on how I play. Two or three?”

I rolled my eyes. Playing a card game ‘till three o’clock in the morning sounded like torture to me, but to each his own. “Sure, hon. That’s fine.”

“Oh, by the way,” he sounded puzzled. “I had a weird phone call from my mom.”

“Your mom?”

“Yeah, she said something about somebody having her and the girls over and they couldn’t come home ‘till they heard from you?”

My heart lurched in my chest. “What?” I felt like the room was slowly spinning around me.

“Yeah, it didn’t make a lot of sense. I was working on a proposal so I didn’t quite catch it all and she hung up before I could ask her to say it all again. She’s not picking up now, but I thought that maybe you’d know what was going on.”

I sat down on the floor, sliding down the wall. My stomach flipped over a few times and I felt bile rise in my mouth. “Did she say what she needed to hear from me?”

He thought for a moment. “Something about you quitting something? I’m sorry, Piper. I just wasn’t paying enough attention. Why don’t you try to call her?”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “I will.”

“Okay then,” he was back to being cheerful. “How are the girls?”

I felt like I was beginning to hyperventilate. “Oh, you know, they’re fine. I’ve got to run, babe! See you in the morning if I don’t wake up when you come home.”

“All right. Thanks for letting me go.”

“No problem. Love you.”

I hung up and stared at the phone in my hand. For a moment all I could hear was my pulse in my ears. The door opened and Cecily stuck her head in.

“What’s wrong?” she said with concern. “I could hear your heart rate increase.”

Okay. That was kind of freaky. I held up a hand for silence and dialed my mother-in-law’s number. It went straight to voice mail. Not good. She always kept her phone with her when she had the girls.

“Piper?” Cecily sounded worried, “Your face is white. What’s going on?”

I stared up at her, not wanting to put it into words. Tears welled up in my eyes and my voice broke as I said, “I think someone’s kidnapped Megan and Cassidy!”

Chapter Thirty:

The Girls are Gone

In a flash, Cecily was squatting before me, holding my hands, “Why do you think that?”

I gulped some air and tried not to break down into hysterical tears. “Mark said that Carolyn called him and said something about somebody having her and the girls and they couldn’t come home until I quit.”

Cecily rocked back on her heels. Her eyes went vampire black, no whites visible. “We’ll get them back, Piper.”