Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job

by Willo Davis Roberts

  A moment later, we heard men’s heavy feet on the attic stairs.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It would be only a matter of minutes, at most, before the kidnappers found the tiny door behind the mattress. They’d seen our signal lights; they knew we had to be up here.

  I’d hoped that if they saw the light they’d take the money and run, leaving us to be rescued. If they were coming after us, instead, I figured it was for one reason, because I saw it that way on TV: they would hold us as hostages, to make sure the police wouldn’t shoot at them and keep them from getting away.

  The kids were looking to me for help, the fear back in their faces, even Shana’s, though I’m sure she didn’t know what was happening. She only knew that everyone else was afraid, so she was afraid, too.

  The plastic bag was there, and a few of the wasps had come out of the grayish globe and were crawling around. The rest of them would undoubtedly come out, too, as soon as they could.

  I didn’t have much time to think. “Come on, out the window, all of you,” I ordered. Only Jeremy obeyed, and I picked up first Shana and then Melissa and stuck them through the opening after their brother.

  “Don’t move around, lie down right there,” I instructed. The last thing I wanted was for any of them to get near the edge of the roof. With the lights blazing in the cupola, we could at least see where the edge was, but the kids were so little, Shana hardly more than a baby and still groggy from just waking up.

  The men below had found the door to the cupola room. I had only seconds to spare as I slid through the window opening out onto the roof and reached back inside for the plastic bag.

  Just as Henry’s head appeared at the top of the stairs opposite my window, I turned the plastic bag upside down, inside the room, and tugged the window closed.

  Henry had seen me, and he had no idea what I’d just done. He ran toward me, with Dan only a few steps behind him, his rage plain enough on his face to make me shudder.

  And then all of a sudden, just as Henry put out his hands to raise the window again, the wasps did what they were supposed to do.

  I was terrified of the men, and I guess maybe I hated them, too, for what they’d done and were trying to do. Yet I almost felt sorry for them as the wasps began to sting.

  There were a dozen or more of them around Henry’s head, landing on his face and his ears, before he understood what was happening.

  He took his hands off the window and started yelling and beating at the wasps, which only made them madder than they already were. I hadn’t even had time to flop down flat on the roof like the kids—for once they’d obeyed orders immediately, without argument—and I was staring straight into Henry’s face as the wasps landed on him, all over every exposed bit of skin.

  He screamed and clawed at his eyes, and then he turned and stumbled back down those steep, narrow stairs.

  By this time Dan was screaming and crying. He, too, headed almost blindly for the stairs; I heard him fall, still screaming.

  Some of the other windows had remained open, so we heard them very plainly. A few wasps darted out into the darkness of the rooftop, but most of them buzzed and spun in the cupola room, seeking their enemies. So far none of them had come anywhere near us; they stayed in the lighted area.

  From below, Pa Hazen started to yell. “Hey, what’s going on up there? What’s happening? Come on, we gotta get out of here!”

  I doubt if Henry and Dan heard him. I could imagine them still fighting off the stinging creatures that crawled down their necks and up their sleeves and into their ears.

  A new element was added about then, when the dogs began to bark furiously. I thought Pa Hazen had become alarmed enough to get out of the car—which wasn’t a wise thing to do, because the Dobermans went after him, from the sound of things.

  Jeremy, wide-eyed, was sitting up, tugging at my pants leg. “Darcy, look! Look!”

  And when I turned away from the awful sight of the Hazen brothers and the wasps, I saw the most welcome sight in the world.

  Coming fairly fast through the woods was a car with spinning blue lights that flickered in and out between the trees.

  • • •

  Things were pretty confusing for a while. Expecting to drive out immediately, the Hazens had closed the gate but not locked it. The police car came through, and before it had stopped in the yard beside the black sedan, I could hear sirens in the distance, and then we saw the lights of more emergency vehicles. There were at least four of them.

  “It’s the cops!” Jeremy cried. “We’re saved, Darcy! We’re rescued!”

  It wasn’t quite as simple as that, because we were on the roof three tall stories above the ground, and we couldn’t go back through the cupola room because it was full of wasps, though Henry and Dan were gone. Even if they were in the attic, or downstairs, I didn’t think they’d be dangerous anymore.

  I dropped to my hands and knees and crept over to the edge of the roof, staying far enough back to be sure I wouldn’t fall. Two uniformed officers had gotten out of the patrol car—between their headlights, the revolving blue lights, and the headlights on the old black sedan, it was light as day down there—and they drew their guns.

  Pa Hazen had gotten back into the black sedan and one of the Dobermans was on each side of it, leaping toward the windows, barking and snarling. I made a mental note never to kick a Doberman. Apparently they didn’t forget easily.

  I yelled when it dawned on me that the officers were going to shoot the dogs. “No! Don’t shoot them, they saved our lives! Don’t shoot!”

  The officers looked up, and another patrol car eased through the gate. “You one of the Foster kids?” one of them called up, and relief flowed through me so strongly that I felt dizzy and pulled back from the edge of the roof.

  “I’m the baby-sitter, Darcy Stevens!” I shouted, to make sure they heard me over the sound of the dogs. “Down, boys! Sit! You hear me, sit!”

  To everybody’s astonishment, including mine, the dogs fell back from the black sedan, their tongues hanging out, their fangs catching the light in great sharp points.

  “Good boys,” I said. “Good dogs.”

  “Are the Foster kids with you?” There was a circle of police officers, now, and some other men who weren’t in uniform; I thought they were probably police, too. Plain clothes detectives, maybe, or FBI men.

  “They’re here. We’re all right, but we can’t get down the way we came up because the cupola is full of wasps. The other two kidnappers got stung, and they went down the stairs,” I explained.

  “You stay right there, back from the edge,” the spokesman told me. “We’ll get you down. We’ll call for a fire department ladder truck.”

  So that was how we got off the roof. Firemen carried Jeremy and Melissa and Shana, which Jeremy thought was great fun; and I climbed down by myself. I’d have felt silly being carried, as big as I was. I was glad I was wearing jeans.

  The fireman had to put on special clothes and masks because of the wasps. They didn’t have any trouble with Dan and Henry, who came out of the house in a very subdued state and were put into the back of one of the police cars. Pa Hazen was in a different one, yelling to be taken to the hospital.

  I decided Tim must be right about the stings being like the venom of a rattlesnake, because those kidnappers were so sick and swollen I wouldn’t even have recognized them.

  By the time we got down, Clancy was there with the others. He called me over to his own patrol car and stuck a mike in my face. “Here, talk to Mr. Foster.”

  Mr. Foster kept asking if everybody was all right, and I kept telling him they were. Mrs./Dr. Foster was there at the police station, too, and she sounded as if she were crying. And then they let me talk to my dad, who was there with them. I had to tell it all over again for him, that nobody was hurt except the kidnappers.

  After that it got sort of hokey. When we got to town—Jeremy had a terrible time choosing whether to ride in the police cruiser or the fir
e truck, and finally decided on the cruiser with the rest of us after they told him they couldn’t run the siren on the fire truck—everybody’d been crying or started crying all over again, except the Foster kids and me.

  “Darcy—” a familiar voice said, and I turned to see Mrs. Murphy extending a hand to touch my shoulder. “My dear child, I’m so glad you’re safe. All of you. I was so shocked when I learned that they used my car and my door opener to get into the garage—though it did provide a clue to your whereabouts, I suppose. It was found in a gravel pit, and the police thought whoever had driven it there had left on foot. So they were watching that area while Mr. Foster went to meet the kidnappers with the ransom money, and then they saw your signal. How clever you were, to think of signaling that way.”

  I felt sort of peculiar. She seemed very nice, but I didn’t like the way she’d taken care of the Foster kids. My mom was right, they needed more love and attention than they’d gotten from her while their parents were working. I didn’t know what to say to her; and I didn’t know if I should discuss it with Mrs./Dr. Foster, either. Mostly my mom taught me to mind my own business, but some things can really get to be a mess if nobody gets involved in matters beyond their own immediate business.

  Mrs. Murphy took her hand off my shoulder, smiling rather awkwardly. “I’m afraid I’m getting too old to be in charge of young children,” she said. “I’ve given the Fosters my notice, as soon as they can find another housekeeper.”

  I didn’t tell her I was glad, of course, but I was. I hoped the next housekeeper would be better for the kids. “I got to like them, quite a lot,” I told her, and to my surprise, I meant it.

  Mrs./Dr. Foster overheard that. Though her eyes were puffy from crying, she was smiling. “It sounds as if they’ve become rather fond of you, too. How’d you like a job for the rest of the summer, spending days with them when their father and I can’t be at home? Just keeping them entertained?”

  I drew in a deep breath. Such a short time ago I’d thought I’d be glad to be done with baby-sitting the Foster kids.

  “They need someone they like,” Mrs./Dr. Foster said. “Someone who really cares about them. We’ll give you a raise, of course. And a reward, for the way you took care of them during this kidnapping business.”

  I swallowed and stuck my neck out, the way Tim’s always telling me not to do. “Sure. I guess I could do that. Only I have some sort of strong feelings about them—that they need more attention from their parents, as well as from a sitter.”

  My heart was beating hard, because it really wasn’t any of my business, and maybe she’d take back the offer of a job.

  Mrs./Dr. Foster didn’t cut me down, though, the way I sort of expected her to do. Instead, she smiled.

  “We’ll have to discuss that, won’t we? I had a lot of time to think, while the children were missing. And I realized that we weren’t spending enough time with them, either one of us. You will come tomorrow, won’t you, and we’ll talk about it?”

  “All right,” I agreed.

  And then Shana tugged at my fingers. “I hafta go potty,” she said, as she’d said so many times before.

  When Mrs./Dr. Foster laughed, there were tears in her eyes.

  “I guess you’re hired, then, Darcy,” she told me. “I’ll take you to the bathroom, Shana.”

  “Come on, let’s go home,” my dad said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “I called your mother and told her you were safe, but she probably won’t believe it until she sees you.”

  So we went out and got in our car and went home.

  “Somebody’ll have to take care of the dogs, until Okie comes home from the hospital,” I told my dad. “Maybe I ought to be the one to do it. They’ll let me feed them now.”

  “Good,” Dad said. “You can get Tim to run you out there every day. I’m surprised you were able to make friends with a pair of guard dogs.”

  “I think they were Okie’s pets as much as guard dogs,” I said. “They’d gotten used to his granddaughter; and the kidnappers didn’t like them, so the dogs never got friendly with them.”

  I couldn’t wait to tell Irene all about it. I’d finally had an experience that Irene hadn’t had, and neither had anybody else we knew. Not that I’d ever want to go through anything like that again, but now that it was all over I was beginning to see what a good story it would make to tell my friends.

  My mom cried when we walked in the door, the way I knew she would. She hugged me and asked if I was hungry; and I decided I was. I had a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk, and for once Mom broke her rule about no sweets between meals and let me have a piece of carrot cake, too.

  While I ate, I called Irene, even though it was so late.

  She’d heard the news on a TV bulletin, and she sounded awed. “What was it like, Darce? Did they hurt you?”

  “No, we’re all okay.” I lowered my voice. “What’s happened to Diana? Is she still in the tree house?”

  “No. She came down after your mother found out she was there.” Irene hesitated, then confessed, “I had to tell her. I mean, I asked Diana first, and she said I could. Your mom called somebody from the Child Protective Services, and they said there’ll be a hearing Monday, to see if Diana has to go home or not. They talked to her aunt in California, and it sounded as if maybe they’d send Diana there if there’s evidence her father’s been abusing her. Boy, after this, I guess that’s all the evidence they need! Though he may not be around,” she added. “So maybe she can just stay with her mother.”

  “Her dad’s gone to the hospital to have his leg stitched up, and her brothers are both there, too, with about a million wasp stings,” I told her. “I think Mr. Hazen heard her sister Ellen talking about the Fosters and their house after she baby-sat for them, and he thought it would be a good way to get some money without working for it.”

  “Yeah. Poor Diana.”

  I swallowed some milk and agreed. “It would be tough to know your father’s a kidnapper. He won’t be abusing her anymore, though. They’ll put him in jail as soon as they fix up his leg. Clancy said it’ll be for years, if Jeremy and I testify before the court the same way we told it all to him.”

  I guessed it would probably take all night to tell her everything about the kidnapping, and I had to report to work at the Fosters’ in the morning.

  Still, when would I ever have this kind of news to relay again? Never, I hoped, so I might as well make the most of it now.

  It was way, way past my usual bedtime, and I thought my mom would say so; but she just squeezed my shoulder as she went past, smiling at me, with never a word about the time.

  “Tell me every detail,” Irene breathed.

  “Just let me get another piece of cake first,” I agreed, and made myself comfortable for a good long talk.

  WILLO DAVIS ROBERTS

  wrote many mystery and suspense novels for children during her long and illustrious career, including The Girl with the Silver Eyes, The View from the Cherry Tree, Twisted Summer, Megan’s Island, Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job, Hostage, Scared Stiff, and The Kidnappers. Three of her children’s books won Edgar® Awards, while others received great reviews and accolades, including the Sunshine State Young Reader Award, the California Young Reader Medal, and the Georgia Children’s Book Award.

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  DON’T MISS THESE OTHER WILLO DAVIS ROBERTS MYSTERIES:

  Surviving Summer Vacation

  The View from the Cherry Tree

  Megan’s Island

  The Kidnappers

  Hostage

  Scared Stiff

  The Pet-Sitting Peril

  What Could Go Wrong?

  Secrets at Hidden Valley

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  This Aladdin hardcover edition April 2016

  Text copyright © 1985 by Willo Davis Roberts

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  Jacket designed by Jessica Handelman

  Interior designed by Mike Rosamilia

  The text of this book was set in New Century Schoolbook.

  Library of Congress Control Number 2015957566