The Pet-Sitting Peril (2 page)

Disneyland was a long way off. People in other places thought if you lived in California you must be right next door to Disneyland, but from where the Reeds lived it was over 800 miles. Before Mr. Reed could get his mouth open to point that out, Winnie said with a smile, “Everybody has a job now, except me, and I'll give my allowance. If everybody
saved their money to pay for the gas, couldn't we go, Daddy?”

They'd looked at each other, torn between the lure of a vacation and the sacrifice it would take.

Molly was the first to speak. Molly was the oldest, at seventeen, and she had a full-time job all summer, taking care of two little boys while their mother worked. “I need a new coat for school, and I'd have to keep a little out for movies and skating. But . . .” She hesitated, then made an offer that astounded her brothers. “I'll put seventy-five percent of what I make into a Disneyland fund, if the boys will do it, too.”

Charles, who worked at a hamburger place, did some quick calculations. “Well, I guess I could do that, too. How about you, Barney? You lined up enough lawns to mow to do us any good?”

Nick had seen the chart Barney had made, with a column for each day of the week, divided into hours, with names written in for each place he was to cut the grass. Barney was fourteen and considerably taller and heavier than
Nick; he was saving for a motorcycle when he was old enough to drive, though his parents had not said they would allow him to have one. If he put three-quarters of his earnings into a family vacation fund, it would delay the acquisition of a motorcycle considerably.

Barney swallowed hard, considering the matter. “What about Nick?” he asked, stalling. “He isn't making enough to help, is he? Even if he gave the whole paycheck, walking a dog isn't worth much.”

“I'll put in my seventy-five percent, the same as Charles and Molly,” Nick said at once. He wanted and needed some new running shoes, but maybe somebody would get him a pair for his birthday—his grandmother was very good at such things if you dropped a hint or two—and he really wanted to go to Disneyland.

“Disneyland is for little kids like Winnie,” Barney said.

“Sam went,” Nick said. Sam Jankowski was his best friend. “The whole family loved it.”

“It isn't just for kids, anyway,” Molly said. “I read that more than half the people who go
there are grown-ups. Don't be so tight, Barney. Put in your share.”

Barney flushed. The whole family kidded him about the way he hung onto his money. He didn't waste it on Cokes and hamburgers or pizza—if he was hungry he ate at home—and he fixed things rather than replaced them, if replacement meant putting out his own funds. “Well,” he said reluctantly, “I guess I can contribute, too.”

“Seventy-five percent?” Charles asked, grinning a little.

And Barney had had to nod, yes.

So it had been agreed. They would each put a regular portion of their pay into the cookie jar set aside for that purpose. And if they could save enough to pay for the gas, they'd use the last two weeks of the summer—if Dad had the painting and the roof finished—to go to Disneyland.

Barney made fun of Nick's dog-walking job, but Nick felt lucky to have found any way at all to earn money during the summer. He'd just about given up before he heard about Rudy.

He hated being the smallest boy in the sixth grade. For that matter, a lot of the girls were taller than he was. His mother said that was only natural at his age, because the boys didn't have their growth spurt until later than the girls. Nick still hated it, and it kept him from getting jobs.

Barney made fun of his friendship with Sam, too, because Sam was the
biggest
kid in the class. He was bigger than some of the boys who were in ninth grade.

“You look so funny together,” Barney would say. “He's so big, and you're so little. A giant and a short person.”

Nick had all he could do to keep from hitting his brother in the mouth when he said things like that. The only reason he didn't do it was that Barney was not only older, he was taller and stronger. He was always trying to provoke Nick into a fight; if Nick struck the first blow, Barney could say, “He started it, so I had to hit him back, didn't I?”

Once their mother happened to overhear an exchange about Sam and came to stand in the doorway of their room. “Barney, I don't
want you to say things like that. A giant and a short person. Nick's not short, he's just growing slowly right now. Even if he were short, it would be a terribly cruel thing to say, to criticize anyone for his size, large or small. People can't help what size they grow to be.”

After she'd left—and Barney peeked into the hallway to make sure she'd gone downstairs—Barney's lip curled in derision. “I still think you look funny together, you and that overgrown lunk. Why don't you find a buddy your own size.”

Nick refrained from pointing out that if he picked someone his own size it would have to be a fifth grader. “I like Sam,” he told his brother coolly. “Which is more than I can say about you.” And on that note he left the bedroom he had to share with Barney and went downstairs, too, just so he wouldn't have to listen to his brother any more.

He'd sure be glad when Charles went away to college and freed a room so the two of them wouldn't have to share anymore. Then he wouldn't have to hear what Barney thought about Sam, or dog-walking jobs, or anything.

As soon as he got home from Mr. Haggard's, he went downstairs and asked Dad about the flashlight, so if that light kept going out in the entry hall of the Hillsdale Apartments he wouldn't have to walk into the pitch dark every night when he brought Rudy home.

It wasn't that he was afraid of the dark, of course. It would just make it easier to get the keys in the locks, if he could see what he was doing.

Nick had started his Rudy-walking job with Mr. Haggard right after school was out. It didn't pay as much as he would have liked to make, especially now with 75 percent going to the Disneyland Fund. But it was better than nothing. The Monday after the third lightbulb burned out in the hall, however, things began to look up. Mr. Haggard reported to him when he came in that morning that two other tenants in the building were interested in his services. So after he had taken Rudy for his morning gallop, he went to find out about the new jobs.

Mrs. Helen Sylvan had apartment two, across the hall from Mr. Haggard's. It was identified by the same means as all the others in the place, with a scrawled numeral in black
crayon on the brown painted door. Mrs. Sylvan also had a neat white card with her name on it, tacked below the crayon writing.

Mrs. Sylvan was tall and skinny. Even her voice was thin and high-pitched. She had a cat named Eloise, a big white Persian that looked as if she were washed and brushed every day.

Nick glanced around. The place was smaller than Mr. Haggard's, and much fancier. There were knickknacks on white painted shelves—all kinds of little animal and human figures made of glass and wood and china—and crocheted doilies on everything. It was neat and orderly, with no books or papers lying around. The furniture was polished and there was no dust, though the sofa and chairs didn't look as comfortable as the ones in Mr. Haggard's place.

“I wouldn't trust Eloise to anyone who didn't love animals,” Mrs. Sylvan said. “She's very sensitive to things like that. She would know if you didn't like her.”

Nick glanced at the cat, who regarded him with wide, unblinking blue eyes. “I like dogs and cats,” he assured her, looking back at Mrs. Sylvan. “That's about the only animals I've
been around. I think I saw Eloise the other day, when I was walking in the back alley.” He didn't mention that Rudy had nearly jerked him off his feet, lunging for the cat, and that he still had black and blue marks on his shins where he'd been dragged into a pile of garbage cans.

Mrs. Sylvan's lips stretched out thin. “She got out when Mr. Griesner came in to fix a leaking faucet. He doesn't care for animals, and he's careless. Whenever you come in or out, you must take care that Eloise doesn't escape. She's too valuable to be loose outside where she's in danger from cars and dogs.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Nick said.

“She has medicine to take three times a day.” She showed him the bottle and the eyedropper. “I'll give her the morning dose before I leave. I'm a bookkeeper at Capland's Department Store, downtown. I work on a shift where I start late and leave late, and sometimes I stop off to visit with my sister on the way home. But I can give Eloise her last dose before I go to bed. What I need is someone to come in in the afternoon, or even very early in
the evening, to give the middle dose. You can start today.”

That didn't sound too bad a chore. After a few more instructions Nick put her key on the ring with Mr. Haggard's keys and went on upstairs to apartment three.

There was loud music playing, the kind that Barney liked and Nick hated, so they were always fighting over Barney's radio being on. Sometimes Nick suspected that his brother didn't really like that music, either, but was playing it mostly to annoy Nick.

Behind him, from the foot of the stairs, Mr. Griesner, the apartment manager, yelled so that Nick jumped and spun around.

“Turn that darned stereo down!”

The music went on, unabated, and Nick cleared his throat. “I don't think they heard you, sir.”

Mr. Griesner's hair was a gray wiry brush atop his head, touched with various colors where the light came through the colored windows around the front door, so that it was tinted pink and blue and a soft green. On anybody else it might have evoked amusement,
but Mr. Griesner was a rather hostile man, Nick had decided. Nothing about him was funny.

“Well, bang on their door and tell them to cool it, will you? Fool hippies, they must be deaf, and they'll make all the rest of us that way, too. I told Mr. Hale we don't need no hippies in this place, but he says anybody can pay the rent, let 'em in. Well, rent or no rent, they can't play music that makes my ears hurt from clear down here. You bang on their door and tell 'em.”

“Yes, sir,” Nick said, though he didn't see why he should have to confront them. After all, nobody was paying him to be manager of the apartments.

He crossed the upper hall and tapped on the door behind which the music throbbed and crashed. It would be a miracle if they heard his knock over the music. These tenants must be new; he was sure Mr. Haggard had told him, when he first started walking Rudy, that the house was filled with elderly people.

The door swung open. “Yeah? What you selling, kid?”

“Nothing,” Nick said. “Mr. Griesner said to tell you the music is too loud. Sir.”

He didn't know if the young man was a hippie or not. He did have rather long hair, and he wore blue jeans that Nick's mother would have thrown in the rag bag and tennis shoes with his sockless toes showing through, but he was clean and he smelled of nothing worse than turpentine. There were paint smudges on his T-shirt.

“Oh. Hey, Roy, turn down the stereo,” he yelled over his shoulder. Then he grinned at Nick. “You live here, kid? I didn't know there was anybody your age around.”

Nick explained about his pet care activities, and the young man nodded. “I noticed all the dogs and cats. We're thinking about getting a pet of some kind, but so far there's only Roy and me. I'm Clyde. He's Roy.”

The apartment appeared to be one gigantic room, with a kitchenette at one end of it. Intrigued, Nick stood in the open doorway. There was no real furniture, only a couple of beanbag chairs and some pillows and two mattresses with sleeping bags on them. But there were paintings.

The music had softened, though it still reverberated so that Nick could feel the beat of the bass through the soles of his feet. “You're artists,” he said, craning his neck to see the big canvas at the end of the room.

“I'm an artist,” Clyde admitted. “Roy's a musician.”

Roy had long hair, too—dark instead of blond—that was tied back in a ponytail with a red rag. His jeans were even worse than Clyde's and he wasn't wearing any shoes at all. He nodded at Nick, more engrossed in his guitar than interested in meeting anyone. Nick wondered how he could play his guitar and hear it over the stereo.

“You like painting?” Clyde asked.

“Uh, yes, sometimes,” Nick admitted. The big canvas was a glorious splash of color, though Nick couldn't quite make out what it represented.

Apparently Clyde was used to that sort of reception to his work. “It's a sunrise,” he offered. “Or a sunset. I haven't decided yet.”

Without looking up, Roy said, “Looks like Jacobsmeyer's Drug Store to me.” And then, as
Nick hesitated, wondering if his leg were being pulled, Roy added, “The night it burned down. Fire, man. Fire. We were living above it at the time, which is one reason we don't have much furniture.”

It was rather interesting, but Nick remembered he was supposed to be taking on a new job. “Uh, thanks for turning down the stereo,” he said. “I have to go. I'll see you.”

“See you,” Clyde echoed. Roy didn't look up from his guitar.

When the door closed, Nick went on across the hall to talk to Mrs. Monihan, hoping that Mr. Griesner would be satisfied with the reduction in volume, though the music was still pretty loud.

Mrs. Monihan was the opposite of Mrs. Sylvan in almost every way, except that they both liked animals. She was short and plump, with a round face and a pale blue rinse on her white curls. Every time Nick had seen her, she'd been smiling, as she was now.

“Come in, come in. I have my tickets, I'll be leaving tomorrow.” She had been baking, and the apartment was fragrant with the scent of
spices. “I can't tell you how much I appreciate your taking care of Maynard and Fred. I couldn't have gone to visit my sister otherwise. I haven't been back to Chicago in twenty-five years, can you imagine? Viola visited me here once, about ten years back, but I haven't been anywhere. I'm so excited!”