The Pet-Sitting Peril (15 page)

Sure enough, when the attention turned away from her, Eloise had deflated to her normal size and was slowly sneaking up on the fish stick as if it were a mouse. When she put her head cautiously inside the open end of the box, Roy moved, fast.

“There you are! One cat in a box,” he said, laughing, and handed it over to Nick.

Eloise didn't take kindly to the container; for a minute or so she thrashed around inside and complained noisily, but the lid was latched down. Nick decided he didn't care what Mrs. Sylvan thought, he wasn't going to let Eloise out of the box before morning. There would be no medicine tonight. And if Eloise still needed medication after she saw the vet tomorrow, he was going to tell Mrs. Sylvan that he was resigning from the job.

“Thanks,” he told Roy, meaning it. “I'll get her out of here, now.”

“If Clyde wins a prize with this canvas,
bring her back to make some more pictures,” Roy suggested. He reached for the control on the stereo, and the abrupt cessation of the throbbing music left Nick feeling strangely unbalanced, as if it had actually been holding him up. “Come on, Clyde, if you're going to come and hear me play, let's go. I gotta be there in half an hour, man.”

“Okay, okay, just let me finish this.” Clyde applied the final touch to another footprint and stood up. “See you later, kid.”

They clattered down the stairs ahead of him, making the sort of racket his mother complained about when Nick and Barney did it. And then they were out the front door, and he heard their van starting up. Nick stood on the landing with the cat box in his arms, his flashlight beam very tiny in the vast darkness of the entryway.

He heard no sounds at all except his own breathing. And that seemed odd to him, because ordinarily Rudy would have given some sign that he knew Nick was there.

Slowly, hugging the cat box against his chest with one hand while he focused the light
with the other, Nick went the rest of the way down the stairs. “Rudy?” he said, close to the door of Mr. Haggard's apartment.

There was no sound behind the door.

Nick put down the cat box, making Eloise mew another protest as her position shifted, but he wasn't thinking about Eloise. He unlocked the door and shone the light into the apartment.

Rudy lay on the rug before the couch, not moving. Nick suddenly felt as if his blood had thickened so that it couldn't move through his veins, except where it pounded in his ears.

“Rudy?” he said again, louder this time.

The big Airedale didn't move.

Nick ran quickly across the room and dropped to his knees beside the dog. “Rudy? Are you okay?”

The dog opened one eye, to Nick's vast relief, but he didn't lift his head. Only when Nick stroked his warm flank did Rudy's tail flicker, just barely.

“There's something the matter with you,” Nick said.

He'd spent plenty of time in this apartment lately, but it was different with no lights on. It no longer seemed a pleasant place.

He continued to kneel, stroking the dog, speaking to him. Rudy was breathing all right; and when Nick put his ear to the dog's side, he could hear his heart beating. Yet this was completely out of character, for Rudy to lie still
this way, to respond so faintly when spoken to. Not even to bark at Eloise!

Nick rose and got down the choke chain, slipping it over Rudy's head. Always before, Rudy had gotten excited at the mere jangle of the chain, knowing he was going out. This time, he simply closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

Nick felt a moment of panic. Something had to be seriously wrong. “Come on, boy, get up!” he urged, tugging the chain. “Come on, Rudy, let's go for a walk!”

It took several minutes to get the dog on his feet. “Come on. I can't leave you down here, and Maynard's sick upstairs, so I can't leave him all alone, either . . .”

His voice sounded too loud in the empty room. Both dogs sick at the same time? Wasn't that a most peculiar coincidence?

Rudy took a few wobbly steps with him toward the hallway as Nick's mind raced. Could someone else have fed both dogs? Something that made them both sick?

Who? Did someone else have keys to both apartments? And why would anybody want to make the dogs sick?

The house was so still. Unless Mr. Griesner was home, Nick thought, he was alone here with the animals. The realization made him break out in goose bumps. He'd been home alone in the dark lots of times, and he'd never given it any thought. He certainly hadn't been scared.

He was scared now.

Nick dropped the leather handle on the chain and patted Rudy's head. “Stay, boy,” he said, and went back along the hallway to Mr. Griesner's door.

There was no crack of light under it. Nick knocked, anyway, just in case. There was no reply, and after a moment he turned and went back to the front entryway.

Should he take Rudy out and try to walk him as far as his own home? Realistically, he didn't think Rudy could walk that far, the way he was, and even if Nick got the dog there, he'd still be on his own. His parents wouldn't be home for hours, maybe.

Ordinarily, if his parents weren't available in an emergency, he'd have called his grandmother, only she was in the hospital. And even
if he could get Rudy anywhere, it would mean leaving the other animals here.

That didn't seem like a very good idea, to leave them alone in the house.

In the end, he took Rudy and Eloise upstairs, one at a time, after he'd shut Fred into Mrs. Monihan's bathroom. With Eloise in her cat box, he decided it ought to work all right to have them all together. After all, Maynard and Rudy got along all right, even when they weren't sick.

Rudy walked up the stairs as if he'd had too much to drink; and when Nick let go of the leash, he sank down at once, just inside Mrs. Monihan's apartment.

Maynard opened an eye and thumped his tail halfheartedly without getting up.

Something was terribly wrong with the dogs. More to try something, anything, than from a conviction that Rudy was thirsty, Nick offered him water. To his surprise, Rudy lapped at it eagerly, and then Maynard did the same, but it didn't make any difference. Each immediately went back to sleep.

In the bathroom Fred scratched and
protested being put into solitary confinement; Eloise replied with scratching of her own, and Nick hoped her claws wouldn't tear the box apart from the inside.

He tried once more to call his father, just in case he'd come home earlier than expected and hadn't seen the note Winnie had left for him. There was no answer at all, though Nick let it ring and ring.

Which meant, he hoped, that Winnie had gone to sleep and Barney and his friend were in the garage where they didn't hear the telephone. He hoped they hadn't gone off and left Winnie alone, when they were supposed to be watching out for her.

Melody's window across the way was dark now. Had she gone to bed? The window was still open, anyway.

Nick wanted to yell at her, call her to the window, just to make contact with
somebody.
What could he say, though, that wouldn't sound idiotic? And she'd think he was a sissy, afraid to be alone in a house.

He turned away from the window and switched on the TV again. He had to have
some sound in the place besides the quiet breathing of the two dogs.

For a few seconds he didn't know why the face that appeared on the television screen was familiar, and then he recognized the man. Mr. Hale, who owned the Hillsdale Apartments. He was making a speech about something to do with protection of the county's natural resources.

Nick wanted the trees and the beaches preserved, but he didn't care to listen to a speech on the subject. He changed the channel and was back in the middle of the horror movie. The monster was sucking down into the swamp a girl with torn clothes who was shrieking and kicking.

Nick muttered under his breath and turned the dial again, then pushed the button to turn the set off. What was he going to do to keep from going crazy until his dad got home?

He jumped when Rudy began to make peculiar sounds. Gagging, Nick realized, and he tried to get the dog on his feet, to head him toward the kitchen, off the living room carpet.

He didn't quite make it. Nick felt a
prickling in his eyes, as if he were going to cry, though of course that was absurd. An almost-twelve-year-old didn't cry just because a dog threw up on a carpet, even if he did have to clean it up.

He gritted his teeth and did the job, thinking of Barney mowing lawns out in the fresh air and getting better money for it.

Rudy went to Maynard's water dish and lapped at it, then stood, his expression groggy, staring at Nick as if in apology.

Nick melted. He put an arm around Rudy's neck, sitting there on the floor beside him, and hugged him. “Poor old guy. What's happened to you, anyway? You and Maynard both. What did you get hold of? I know you ate one glob of garbage out there in the alley, but that was a long time ago. I hope you're not both getting some disease or something. When my dad calls, I'll have him take a look at you both, and maybe we'll call a vet.”

Rudy licked at his ear and wagged his stumpy tail. When Nick stopped patting him, he staggered onto the carpet again and went back to sleep.

Nick tried once more to call home, once more got no answer, and in disgust stretched out on the couch to wait for his father to come home. He had to move Maynard aside to have room for his feet; when he was settled in, Maynard snuggled against his ankles, a welcome warmth there.

He wasn't sure if he'd dozed off or not. But all of a sudden he sat straight up, listening.

There were footsteps coming up the stairs, slowly, carefully.

The only light he had on was a little lamp over the TV, which didn't give a great deal of illumination. It was enough, however, for him to see the clock beside it. A quarter of eleven. Early for Roy and Clyde to be coming home if Roy was playing guitar for the evening at one of the night spots where he worked.

It didn't sound like Roy and Clyde, at least not the way they usually took the stairs. Of course the lights were out, and they hadn't had a flashlight, he remembered. He'd lighted their way downstairs with his own.

Who else could it be, though? Nobody else ever came up here, not even Mr. Griesner except
to bang on the door and yell about turning down the music.

Rudy and Maynard just went on sleeping. No barking tonight because someone was in the hall. Did that mean they recognized who it was and accepted them? Or were they in such a heavy sleep that they weren't even aware of the sounds?

Nick dropped a hand onto Rudy's head, but the Airedale slumbered on. Nick's mouth was suddenly dry, because the dog was sleeping too soundly for it to be normal. Ordinarily he would have responded to such a touch.

Drugged, he thought. Were they drugged? Had there been something in that garbage Rudy ate in the alley? Or in the dog food both dogs had had in their dishes?

He really didn't remember putting anything out for them since breakfast, and yet there had been food left, though neither of them had ever failed to clean up his bowl almost at once.

Why was his mind working so clearly now, when he hadn't thought of it earlier? Had the dog food had something in it to make the dogs
sleep, or to make them sick? He thought if it had been a poison that would kill them, it would have done so before this. Poisons usually worked fast, didn't they? He wondered if throwing up part of what they'd eaten meant they'd gotten rid of part of it; he sure hoped so.

They'd had enough to make them sleep through just about anything, though. Nick sat on the edge of the couch, his heart beating so loudly that for a moment he couldn't tell if there was still anyone moving around out in the hall or not.

Nick eased onto his stockinged feet and moved silently toward the door, leaning his ear against it to listen.

Quite clearly he heard a key turn in the lock across the hall.

If it was Clyde and Roy returning, Nick thought, they'd turn on the stereo as soon as they turned on the lights. They always did, even at night, and they knew there was nobody home below them tonight.

There was no music.

Something clattered and fell, and a man's voice cursed.

“Gives me the creeps,” another voice said.

“Crummy old place like this, it's better off being burned down.”

“Come on, let's get the job done and get out of here. Wish we'd been able to do it last night. Those darn dogs! But the stuff we got today worked all right. No barking tonight to get people all riled up and investigating. Here, you take this one, and I'll take the other one.”

Nick, behind the door to Mrs. Monihan's apartment, sorted out what he was hearing. He was so cold he could hardly move. Did it mean what he thought it did?

It hurt his chest to breathe. He moved almost blindly to the telephone and dialed his own house. Still no answer.
When I get hold of Barney, I'll pound his brains out,
Nick thought. He was supposed to be baby-sitting Winnie and to stay within reach of the phone, and he knew nobody could hear it ring from the garage.

The police. He'd better call the police.

He didn't know what he'd say, didn't know if he could make them believe him, that something was terribly wrong at the Hillsdale
Apartments. Maybe he should just call the fire department, if what he suspected was the truth. Whoever was out there had been here before, had been scared off by the dogs; now they'd returned to finish their job.

Had the speaker meant it literally, that the house would be better off burned down? Was that what they were here to do?

You dialed 911 for emergency calls, he knew that. He was so nervous he could hardly get his finger in the right place, and then it was too late, anyway.

Because this time the key was clicking in the lock right across the room from him, and before he could do anything else at all, the door began to swing inward.