Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job

by Willo Davis Roberts

  I cleared my throat. “When is Mr. Foster going to bring the money?”

  “After dark,” Dan said. “Boy, kid, you must get a lot of practice at this. Let’s try Road Racing.”

  I could tell by the funny little half-smile on Jeremy’s lips that he was pretty good at Road Racing, too. If he kept Dan thinking about video games, was there anything I could do that would help us?

  “I hafta go potty,” Shana said.

  Dan didn’t take his attention off the game, because Jeremy was good enough that Dan had to concentrate to hold his own.

  I thought of the bathroom upstairs and figured there had to be another one down here; if the old caretaker had been using the upstairs one, there would have been more supplies in it. “Can I take her down here?” I asked, and Dan nodded, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

  “In there,” he said.

  I was going to wear my heart out, making it hammer so hard. I took Shana into the little hallway off the kitchen. Okie’s bedroom I’d already seen into. But hidden from the kitchen was the door to a tiny bathroom, just as old-fashioned as the one upstairs. The window was too small for anybody but Shana to fit through. There was no help there. When we came out, however, I saw that Dan and Jeremy were neck and neck with the Road Racing, and I took a chance.

  “Wait here,” I whispered to Shana, and I ducked into Okie’s bedroom.

  The window opened easily. It was big enough for me to go through it, and it was only about six feet off the ground. My chest hurt and I almost forgot to breathe, trying to figure out what to do.

  I could get out, all right, but what would I do then? If there had been a close neighbor I might have taken a chance and run, trying that little gate we’d seen from the attic, but the nearest house was a mile or more away. And if they caught me before I got help, we’d be in worse shape than we already were.

  I came out of the bedroom and took Shana’s hand as we walked back to the kitchen. I felt even worse than I had before, because now I knew it might be possible to get out of the house, at least. Only I didn’t know what would happen to the kids if I left them.

  Or to me, if I couldn’t get through that little gate! If they turned the dogs loose, they’d find me in minutes.

  Still, my mind kept racing furiously as I watched Jeremy win another video game, and Dan doggedly begin the fourth one. Dan wasn’t terribly smart, and it might yet be possible to outwit him.

  If I was smart enough to do it.

  Chapter Twelve

  It wasn’t bad until Henry showed up. He was wearing coveralls that made it look as if he worked in a service station, and when he came in the kitchen door, taking us by surprise, the dogs leaped to their feet and growled.

  Henry jumped backward, bellowing something profane about getting rid of them, and Dan yelled, too. “Sit! Stay!”

  The Dobermans obediently sank onto their haunches. Melissa had been frightened by them, and she clung to my hand. Shana didn’t appear to have been scared at all, regarding the dogs and Henry with an equal amount of interest.

  “It’s the coveralls,” Dan said. “They’re not used to the coveralls.”

  Henry glared at the animals, stepping warily around them to reach the telephone. “Once this is over, I’ll never wear coveralls again,” he said, and dialed a number that he read from a scrap of paper.

  “Did something go wrong?” Dan asked nervously. He’d just won his first video game, probably because it was one Jeremy had never played before. I wondered if the old man called Okie had had someone to play them with, or if he’d just entertained himself with them all alone.

  Henry finished dialing before he answered. “No, I’m just going to check in with Foster; he wants to be sure we actually have the kids before he pays over the ransom. Hello, Mr. Foster? Did you get the money together?”

  His grin toward his brother told us what Mr. Foster had said to that. “Good. Good. Now, you want proof we got your kids; I’ll let you talk to the little one.”

  He bent over and held the phone for Shana. “Talk to your daddy, kid.”

  Shana brightened. Obviously she liked to talk on the phone. “Hi,” she said in a very soft voice. “There’s big doggies in the shicken.”

  Henry jerked the phone away. “That convince you? Here, I’ll put the middle one on.”

  Melissa’s voice trembled when she lifted her hands to steady the phone. “Daddy, I want to go home.”

  Again Henry jerked the phone away. “You hear that? She wants to go home. You deliver that suitcase as scheduled, and you’ll have them all back within a couple of hours. Now, listen carefully. You got something to write with? You follow my directions exactly, and you’ll get your kids back unharmed. What?”

  He didn’t like being interrupted by Mr. Foster; he scowled, but after a few seconds he handed the phone to me. “He wants to talk to you. Don’t tell him anything about where we are, understand?”

  I nodded, my mouth suddenly dry. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Mr. Foster had been furious with me, letting his kids be kidnapped when I was supposed to be taking care of them, but he sounded nice. Nice, and very worried.

  “Darcy?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, almost in a whisper.

  “Are you all right? Are the kids all right?”

  “Yes, sir,” I repeated.

  “They haven’t mistreated any of you?”

  I thought of the tape on the kids’ mouths, and the way their wrists had been tied. “Not really. We just—”

  Henry put an end to that by taking back the receiver. “That’s plenty. You know we got the kids. Now, you write this down. At exactly ten o’clock tonight you take that suitcase full of money and leave your house in the gray Mercedes. Don’t call the police, don’t take anybody with you. Understand? You drive east out of town, on the main road—”

  But we had driven west out of town, I thought, feeling panicky. He’d never find us here if he went in the opposite direction . . .

  Henry’s instructions continued, read off from another paper he’d taken from his pocket. “There’s a pay phone two miles out of town, on a Union Station lot. You should be there by ten fifteen. Wait there until we call, and then you’ll get further directions. We’ll be watching you, so do just what we say.”

  “I want to go home!” Melissa cried, near tears; and Henry shot an angry look at her.

  “Shut her up, or I will,” he told me; and I hugged the little girl and murmured something soothing. I’d rather have yelled out where we were, if I’d known how to do it in just a few words.

  Henry finally hung up and glared at his brother. “How come they’re all down here?”

  “They needed something to eat,” Dan told him. “What difference does it make? Nobody got away.”

  Henry looked at the game on the TV set; Jeremy was still holding his set of controls. “Playing games, are you? Having fun?” He sounded angry.

  “There’s nothing else to do,” Dan said sullenly. “And they behave better if they have something to do.”

  “Who cares how they behave? There’s nobody to hear them. Come out and take a look at my car after you lock them up; it’s sputtering, threatening to stall, and the last thing we need is a car that quits in the middle of the operation.”

  Shana spoke up as if there were no serious conversation going on. “I want a jelly butter sandwich.”

  It was only midmorning, but I guess little kids get hungry fairly often. “If there’s peanut butter and bread and jelly, I’ll make it for her,” I said quickly.

  Dan hesitated. “I’ll look at the car. You keep an eye on things here,” he said; and as he started out the door, Henry spoke sharply.

  “Take the dogs out with you.”

  The Dobermans seemed happy to go, and Henry looked less tense when they’d left the kitchen. I made Shana’s sandwich, and on impulse an additional one for each of the rest of us, while Henry carried on a low-voiced conversation on the telephone. I wasn’t sure, but I guessed he was talking
to his father.

  Probably to make sure I didn’t make out what he was saying, he turned his back to me. I saw Jeremy walk casually over to the dog food bag and start putting handfuls of it into his pockets. When he caught my eye, he grinned a little, and I nodded. Jeremy had the same idea I did. I made an extra sandwich, just for the dogs, in case I needed to eat my own, though I wasn’t the least bit hungry yet.

  Henry suddenly turned around to face us. “Go on back upstairs,” he commanded. We did, and it was a relief to get out of the same room with him.

  I heard Dan coming back inside. “It was a clogged fuel line. I blew it out,” he said.

  “Good. Now put those wild animals back on guard duty,” Henry ordered, and Dan and the dogs followed us up the stairs.

  Once Dan had gone, I tried out my plan. So far nobody but Shana had fed the dogs from her hand, but they’d certainly responded to her. Maybe the rest of us could win them over, too. Maybe they weren’t trained guard dogs who’d been taught not to touch food unless it came from their master. Maybe they were just mean-looking dogs that the old man, Okie, had kept for company as well as to frighten prowlers away.

  As usual, Shana left her crusts, eating out the middle of her sandwich. When she’d finished the good part, she tore the scraps in half. I wasn’t worried about her walking up to the dogs this time, because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t hurt her, at least not if she didn’t try to go past them.

  She dropped a half-circle of crust before each of them, which they caught and swallowed almost instantly.

  I decided I didn’t need either of the sandwiches I’d carried up, wrapped in paper towels. I stood in the doorway for a moment, gathering my courage, a sandwich in each hand.

  “Good dogs,” I said uncertainly.

  The dogs lay with ears pricked, heads alert, watching. They didn’t growl.

  That made a me a bit braver. “You want something to eat?” I said, using a soft voice I hoped was disarming. “You like jelly butter sandwiches?”

  They didn’t wag their tails, nor move, except that their noses quivered.

  I took a couple of steps, carefully, so that I wouldn’t startle them. I held out the sandwiches. “You want some?”

  Behind me, Jeremy said unexpectedly. “Come!”

  To my astonishment, both dogs rose to their feet and took a few stiff-legged steps toward us.

  “Sit!” Jeremy ordered, and the dogs sat.

  Excitement began to build within me. The dogs had been the companions of an old man, and though they’d seen Dan and Henry when they’d worked on the grounds of the estate, they didn’t seem to like them particularly. If they’d been pets of Okie’s, they might be coaxed into liking someone else who fed them. Neither of the Hazens petted them, or spoke to them except to give orders. And if the dogs would obey Jeremy’s orders . . .

  I remembered a dog we’d had when I was little, old Foxie. Foxie had done tricks that Tim taught her. “Speak,” I requested, and then jumped backward when they each emited a sharp, single bark.

  Quickly, I tossed each of them a full sandwich; they ate them as quickly as they’d eaten the hamburgers earlier that morning.

  Downstairs, I heard Henry’s voice. “What’s going on? What’re those kids doing? The dogs barked.”

  “The kids probably got too close to ’em,” Dan said. He’d come to the foot of the stairway, and I moved hastily back into the bedroom. “The dogs are doing just what they’re supposed to do.”

  It seemed as if the dogs should be full by that time, but after the Hazens returned to the kitchen, they continued to watch us hopefully. Jeremy put a hand into a pocket and slowly drew out a few chunks of the dog food.

  “Don’t make them speak again,” I warned him, but he was already edging forward, extending his hand.

  “Here, one for each of you,” he said, and dropped the food before them.

  Better and better, I thought, my excitement continuing to build. If we won over the dogs, we had a brighter chance of getting out of here.

  “I wish I’d got to talk to Daddy,” Jeremy said. “I’d have told him to come and get us.”

  “They wouldn’t have let you,” I assured him. “Don’t feed them any more now, wait until later. Maybe they’ll let us out of here. If we’re lucky, it may be only Dan who stays here while the others are out watching your father and collecting the ransom money. Maybe you can get him to play video games again, so he won’t pay so much attention to the rest of us.”

  “Are we going to escape?” Jeremy demanded.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll try, but you mustn’t say anything to make them suspicious,” I warned. “Don’t let them know the dogs are beginning to trust us because we’re feeding them. Come on, let’s read some books for a while, to make the time pass faster.”

  “Let’s go up to the little playroom,” Melissa suggested.

  “No. Not now. It’ll be better if they don’t know we’ve been up there,” I said, though I wasn’t really certain why it should matter. It might make us look too adventurous, and I wanted them to think they had us too scared to think.

  So the day passed slowly, ever so slowly. I thought about Mr. Foster and a suitcase full of money, and for the first time I realized that the Hazens were asking for a fortune. I didn’t know the exact amount, but it was surely a lot of money. It wouldn’t be right for them to get away with it.

  The only good thing I could see coming out of it was that if they took the money and ran off to Mexico, they’d probably go without Diana, if nobody’d found her by now. I didn’t think her mother would be mean to her; if her father and brothers were gone, she’d be safe right here at home. I was glad for Diana, if she could stay hidden long enough; there wasn’t yet a reason to be glad for the rest of us.

  By late afternoon I’d run out of games to play and songs to sing, and my voice was hoarse from reading. Shana had fallen asleep on the mattress, and the other two were playing a game with some pictures I’d torn out of the magazines, when I heard the dogs growl.

  Instantly alert, my heart in my throat, I waited. I didn’t have to wait very long.

  Pa Hazen’s voice came from the foot of the stairs. “Come here and call off those blamed dogs! Whose side are they on, anyway?”

  “Okie’s side, I reckon,” Dan told him. “They never been around anybody but Okie and that granddaughter of his that was here a few weeks ago. They don’t like strangers. Why don’t you just stay away from those kids, Pa? I’ll check, but I know they’re still up there. They can’t get past the dogs. You see how mean they are.”

  Pa Hazen muttered what he thought of the dogs, but he didn’t come upstairs. It was Dan who appeared.

  “I’m hungry,” Shana informed him, rubbing her eyes. The conversation had awakened her. She was adjusting to being kidnapped pretty well, I thought. Better than I was. I kept wondering if they would really let me go, when I could tell the police who they were. We were a long way from Mexico, and if the police knew which direction they were heading, they could stop them before they reached the border.

  It gave me chills, thinking what the Hazens might do to prevent my telling anybody anything. I tried not to think about it.

  “I’m hungry, too,” Melissa said. She wasn’t as brave as Shana, though. She hung onto my hand whenever she spoke to our captors, as if she thought I could protect her, at least a little bit.

  “I’m going out for food right now,” Dan told her. “I’ll bring back something in about half an hour.”

  As he turned and started down, Henry called to him. “The car’s still spluttering. If you’re sure it’s the fuel filter, maybe you’d better bring back a new one. You can change it before I leave tonight.”

  I was glad when they’d all left us alone. The time was coming close, now, when we’d either be rescued, have to escape, or . . . whatever else was going to happen.

  I didn’t want to think about what that might be, so I concentrated on something else.

  “Sit,” I
said softly to the dogs, and they obeyed. Had they played with Okie’s granddaughter when she came to visit? Was that why they liked Shana? Because they’d learned to like another little girl?

  “Roll over,” Jeremy commanded, and the dogs rolled over.

  Even Melissa got into it. “Down,” she said, and the Dobermans sank to the floor and rested their heads on their front paws.

  Would they let me past them? I wondered, if I offered them a few more bits of dog food? Or would trying set them to barking and give away the fact that I wasn’t as docile as I seemed to the Hazens?

  It was too early to try anything. Dan had gone off to town, but Henry and Pa Hazen, who struck me as much more dangerous, were in the house. I could hear their voices from time to time, though I couldn’t make out what they said.

  I’d hoped they’d let us go downstairs to eat again, but they didn’t. Dan brought us a big red and white tub of fried chicken; it was only half-full, so I guessed the others had taken a share of it for themselves. There was cole slaw—none of the kids would touch it, and the dogs didn’t want what I didn’t eat, either—and potato salad and rolls.

  We ate what we wanted, while the dogs watched us. I didn’t want to give them chicken bones, but we gave them some skin and the remains of the rolls and a little bit of potato salad.

  This time, I dished it out to them myself instead of letting Shana do it. They accepted me as if I’d been feeding them for some time, and gradually my hopes climbed.

  Jeremy leaned over and asked me in a loud whisper, “When are we going to escape, Darcy? If we get away soon enough, Daddy won’t have to give them the money, will he?”

  “I don’t know if we can get away that soon,” I told him. “Let’s all be quiet for a while, now. I want to hear the car when it leaves, all right?”

  Jeremy rose and went to the window, pressing his face against it. “I can see it. I can tell you when it leaves.”

  “It may not leave until after dark. But if it does, let me know. When there’s only Dan in the house—” I prayed that there would be a time when it was only Dan we’d have to contend with. “—maybe we’ll have a chance.”