“Why? They aren’t lost anymore.”
“Too many dogs have gone missing.”
“It’s just a coincidence,” I say.
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Then I think of something else that seems odd, and my mind spins. I swing onto my bike, balancing on the toes of my sneakers. I remember Emma saying other dogs had been missing. Could the gray cat who escaped from Witchy Woman be a lost pet too?
How many pets are missing in Sun Flower?
“Now you’re the one with a weird look,” Leo says as he coasts his gyro-board beside me.
“Not weird—inspired.” I grin. “I just had a great idea that will help us care for our kittens.”
- Chapter 11 -
Bird-Drone Blast-Off
I can’t wait to research my idea online, but when I get home, my brother has custody of the computer—of course. I plead with him to let me use it, but Kyle seems to think applying to colleges is more important. I liked him better before we moved, when he was a slacker, shooting hoops with his buddies instead of obsessed with his future. Fortunately we have a family rule about spending no more than an hour on the computer, so Kyle finally gets off.
It takes only five minutes to strike gold on the Pet Finder site with reports of missing animals. There are over a dozen listings for Sun Flower—lost dogs, cats, rabbits, and even a pig. I print them out and file the papers in a CCSC Pet Project folder.
The next day at school I’m bursting to tell Becca my idea. Leo already knows, and—shocker— he likes it. But it’s impossible to talk to Becca privately because she’s always with her jabbering group of Sparklers.
I can’t wait to see her at the Skunk Shack. Leo has his fencing class, so it’ll be just Becca and me, which is nice. I like her so much, and I have this secret hope that she’ll get bored with the Sparklers and become my best friend. But I know it’ll never happen so I add this secret to my collection.
I’m popping open a can of food for the kittens when Becca steps into the clubhouse. I’m here first because Becca stopped by her house to change from her chic clothes into comfy jeans and a T-shirt. Our after-school routine works great. My parents don’t mind if I’m late as long as I’m home in time for dinner. They’re just glad I have a friend and have stopped complaining about moving to an apartment.
“Ta-da!” Becca says with a wave of her hands as she enters the shack. “You are looking at the social sleuthing queen. I found out who lives in three houses on Willow Rose Lane.”
“I bow down to your royal skills.” I toss an empty cat food can into a garbage bag. “Details, please.”
“You know who Sophia Ramirez is, right?”
I nod, well aware of her Sparkler friends: Tyla, Sophia, and Chloe.
“Sophia’s grandmother lives at 343 Willow Rose. Only Nana Ramirez doesn’t have a dog or fish. She breeds Persian cats and is super sweet to her kitties, so cross her off your suspect list. But her neighbor, Mrs. Tupin, is way suspicious,” Becca adds, her dark eyes shining. “Mrs. Tupin is vice president of the Sun Flower Garden Club and obsessed with her prize-winning roses. And her address is 347, plus she has koi fish.”
We’ve ridden around the block so many times I have the addresses memorized. “Witchy Woman!” I exclaim, thinking of the woman in the robe and slippers who threatened to kill the gray cat.
“She did look like a wicked witch when she caught that poor cat in her net,” Becca says, punching open a juice packet from a cooler and handing one to me too. “I bet she’s the one who dumped our kittens. And she probably did in their mother too.”
“You think?” I say, leaning closer.
Becca nods. “I have a theory that the mother cat, probably a stray, had her kittens in Mrs. Tupin’s yard. Mama Cat either ran off or something bad happened to her. Then the witch found the kittens and dumped them in the trash.”
“Or the mother cat belongs to Witchy Woman,” I suggest, remembering that the receipt we found included cat food. “But your scenario still works—she didn’t want any kittens so she dumped them.”
“Our poor kitties.” Becca shudders. “I’m so glad we found them.”
“Me too. That horrible witch should be punished.”
“She will be if we can prove she’s guilty,” Becca says.
“We still have to investigate other clues. You said you know who lives in a third house on Willow Rose?”
“Yeah, he lives in the last house on the street—but he’s not a suspect,” Becca says quickly.
“We have to investigate all clues. What did Sophia tell you?”
“Um … it wasn’t Sophia … it was someone else.” Becca turns away from me to watch the kittens frisk in and out of a box. “It’s his uncle who lives on Willow Rose Lane—and has a fish pond too. But his uncle is the nicest man ever and would never, ever hurt an animal.”
Something clicks in my head and I gasp. “Burton Skeet’s uncle!”
“Well … yeah.” She drums her fingers nervously on the table.
“You talked to Skeet!” I stand up to face her. “But you were avoiding him a few days ago and told me you didn’t want to talk about him.”
“I don’t want to.”
“But you talked to him,” I accuse. “Why?”
She shrugs, her cheeks reddening.
“You can’t possibly like him?”
“Not that way,” she says sharply. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”
Abruptly, she turns away from me and over to the kittens, watching them play. I wait for Becca to explain why she’s being so weird about Skeet. But I don’t want to make her mad. So I join her on the floor, playing with the kittens. After a while, we’re talking again like the awkwardness never happened.
“So where’s your famous spy pack?” Becca asks.
“Famous? Not even.” I shrug. “It’s at home since it’s too heavy to lug around school with my textbooks. But I did bring this.” I hand her my CCSC Pet Project folder.
“What project?” she asks.
“Earning money for our club.” I cross my fingers and hope she approves.
“Lost pet reports?” Becca pushes back her dark hair as she flips through the papers. “Oh, here’s a listing for Jasper. But he’s already been found.”
“There’s one for Toby too,” I say. “I even found one for a missing gray cat, which sounds like the one that escaped Witchy Woman. Too bad we didn’t know she was missing.”
“Lots of pets are still missing,” Becca says.
“When we go back to Willow Rose Lane, we’ll look for the gray cat and other missing animals. We’ll return them and if we’re offered any rewards we’ll use the money for cat supplies. Finding lost pets is a perfect CCSC project.”
“But doing it for a reward feels wrong,” Becca says, frowning.
“We won’t ask for money—we’ll just look for lost pets while we ride our bikes. Not all pet owners offer rewards, and that’s okay. I’m happy to help for nothing. But if grateful owners give us a reward, it would be rude to refuse. Besides we don’t want the money for ourselves. It’s all for helping animals.” Honey frisks up my jeans and purrs in my lap. “Like our kittens.”
“It’s not that easy to find lost pets,” Becca points out.
“We already found one missing dog.”
“Roscoe wasn’t actually missing,” Becca says. “And Jasper had already been returned.”
“Returned for one hundred dollars! We could have had that reward if we’d found him first.” I point to the print-outs. “Twenty-five dollars for the gray cat, one hundred for a Chihuahua, and seventy-five for a potbellied pig.”
“We only need enough money to feed the kittens till the Humane Society fund-raiser next month,” Becca says.
“We’ll donate extra money to the fund-raiser,” I suggest.
> “Great idea!” Becca grins. “And after the fund-raiser, Wild Oaks will have room for the kittens. I may even talk Mom into letting me keep them.”
“I wish Honey could live with me.” I sigh. My dog is with Gran and my cat will be with Becca. Will I ever be able to keep my own pet?
“I’ll take good care of Honey and you can visit her whenever you want.”
“Thanks,” I say, sharing a sympathetic look with Becca. I like her more each time we hang out.
“Look at my silly kitten biting his own tail,” Becca says, giggling. “Chris is kind of klutzy. And I love him so much.”
I whisper, “Love you, Honey” as I hold my kitten against my heart.
Once we’re done with the kittens, we slip into spy mode. We ride our bikes to rendezvous with Leo beneath the willow tree on a shady corner of Willow Rose Lane.
“Leo, good news,” I say as we join him.
“What?” He glances up from a small metal gadget with pointed angles and lots of wires he’s tinkering with.
“Becca likes the lost pet idea,” I tell him.
“Uh-huh,” Leo says in a distracted voice, adjusting gears with a tiny screwdriver. He’s working on a tiny robot that looks just like a sparrow with wings on hinges and reflective eyes like camera lenses.
“Kelsey printed out a list of the pets to look out for,” Becca tells Leo, her silver Sparkler necklace swaying as she bends over to study his metal bird.
“Be on the lookout for a the gray cat we saw last time, a brown Chihuahua, and a pig,” I say.
“Pig?” Leo looks up from his tinkering.
“Potbellied.” Becca taps the print-out showing a stout brown pig the size of a basset hound. “We fostered one once and he was really smart. But he was huge because his owners overfed him. They don’t need much food but people think they’re like garbage disposals and feed them then decide they don’t want a chubby pig.”
“But it’s not the pig’s fault,” Leo argues.
“Tell that to the owners.” Becca throws up her hands, her dark eyes blazing. “Do not get me started about irresponsible pet owners. When I give tours at Wild Oaks Animal Sanctuary, I lecture people about proper pet care. Mom says I’m too bossy, but I’m just trying to help.”
“I’d love a tour of your sanctuary,” I say. “It sounds like you have so many cool animals. Do you really sleep with a snoring goat?”
“Every night,” she says, chuckling. “Sinbad is a baby pygmy goat and thinks I’m his mom. He’s scared of thunderstorms so he started sleeping in my room—which is okay except for the snoring.”
“Is he potty trained?” I ask.
“I wish! But he wears a diaper.”
“A goat in a diaper?” I laugh. “I’d like to see that.”
“So come over for a tour tomorrow,” she says with that friendly smile I like so much.
“Me too?” Leo sets down a wrench and looks up at Becca hopefully. “I really want to see the alligator.”
“Sure. And you can meet Mom too. She doesn’t know about our club but I told her I have two new friends.”
Friends. I smile to myself. Not best friends, but it’s a good start.
“Prepare for liftoff!” Leo announces, holding out the tiny metal bird in the palm of his hand.
“Supercute bird,” Becca says.
“It’s a drone for aerial surveillance,” Leo corrects.
Becca looks confused but I’ve read about drones in spy articles. Think flying saucer meets toy airplane. They soar overhead like remote controlled planes but are almost invisible tools for covert spying missions.
“I call this a bird-drone,” Leo says proudly. “It’s a micro-drone since it’s so small. If anyone looks up, they’ll think it’s a bird. But this robotic drone will be recording everything with camera eyes.”
So the reflective eyes are cameras. Amazing.
“The only drawback,” Leo adds, “is that my remote loses control of the bird-drone if it goes beyond sixty-eight yards or stays airborne longer than eleven minutes.”
He says “eleven minutes” so precisely that I’m sure that at ten minutes and fifty-nine seconds, the bird will plummet like a rock.
“Coolness,” Becca says. “Let’s try it out!”
“Over there.” I point across the street to Witchy Woman’s house. “If we prove she has koi fish, then she’s likely the cat dumper too. Maybe she’s netted lots of cats and they’re all prisoners in her yard.”
“Let’s find out,” Leo says, stepping out of the shade.
He balances the bird-drone on one hand while operating his remote with the other. At the flip of a switch, red lights flash—and blast off. The metal bird seems as light as air as it zooms into the sky like a rocket. Leo explains that the wings turn with a tilt of his lever and the tail whirls like a propeller.
The bird spy-cam zooms higher than tree branches, fluttering in midair while Leo adjusts the directional knob. There’s a whirring sound and then the bird-drone soars across the street. I focus to keep the shimmery brown drone in sight as it flies above the Witchy Woman’s house. Its wings tilt as it glides over the backyard.
“I bet she has a koi pond,” Becca says, hopping excitedly from one sneaker to the other.
“And graves of animal victims,” I add gruesomely.
Leo twists a knob on the remote, which I guess is like a steering wheel. “We’ll look in other yards too. The camera will record images as it passes over each home.”
“I can’t wait to see the pictures.” I try to follow the bird-drone with my eyes but it blends in the air like a speck of dust. Only its reflective eyes glint when they catch the sun. I blink and lose it for a moment. But there it is again, a tiny glint hovering high over the Witchy Woman’s backyard.
“Is it taking photos?” I ask Leo.
Leo nods, frowning at his remote where a light is flashing. He shakes the remote and it rattles then makes a click-clunk noise like a broken toy. The bird-drone soars over the next yard and continues on, moving farther away.
“Shouldn’t you bring it back now?” Becca squints into the sky.
Sweat drips down Leo’s forehead. “I’m trying.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask uneasily.
“A minor miscalculation.” His voice lacks his usual confidence.
I get a bad feeling. “How minor?” I ask.
“Why won’t it respond?” he cries as he struggles with the remote. He presses buttons and flicks switches on the remote.
“You mean it won’t come back?”
“Um …” Sweat drips from Leo’s brow. “That’s a possibility.”
“Hit the return button,” Becca says.
“There’s no return button, it’s a combination of … No! This has to work!” He smacks the remote and stomps his foot. “Turn around now!”
But the bird-drone sails away until it’s only a twinkle in the distance.
And then it disappears.
- Chapter 12 -
Clue or Coincidence?
“Gone,” Leo chokes out the word as if he can’t believe he’s failed.
“Can’t you track it down?” I ask, wondering if I should say something encouraging or eulogize the dead remote control in his hands.
“I could if I’d installed a tracking device—but there wasn’t time.”
“Oh,” is all I can say while Becca pats his arm sympathetically.
“According to my calculations,” Leo says in such a devastated tone my heart breaks a little, “it’ll fly no farther than .85 miles before it crashes.”
I shudder as I imagine the metal bird plummeting to earth and smashing into a zillion pieces. Bye, bye, bird-drone.
Leo looks pale and queasy like he’s going to be sick.
There’s nothing else to do except go home.
Drats. We didn’t find even one missing pet.
When I get home, Dad has prepared a great dinner, my favorite seafood Alfredo with broccoli. But I hardly taste my food and only halfway listen as my sisters talk about who will or won’t ask them to an upcoming school dance. Normally high school dating rituals intrigue me and I listen carefully to discover secrets. But I’m just not in the mood tonight. I go to my room and try to read, which I can’t do either since my brain is bouncing with questions.
Will Leo ever see his bird-drone again? Will we find any lost pets? How long can we keep the kittens hidden without anyone finding out? And the biggest mystery—will we discover who dumped them?
And I worry about my family. Everyone pretends that living in this cramped apartment is just fine, but when we talk during dinner it’s so fake. Like we’re living in a game of pretend, where Dad says, “Everything will be great.” And Mom says, “It’s so much easier to clean a small apartment.” My sisters spend more time away from home with their friends. And my brother is so desperate to win a scholarship, he’s always on the computer.
Despite all these worries I’m excited about tomorrow.
I’m getting a tour of Wild Oaks Animal Sanctuary!
After the tour, Becca will introduce me to her mom. Then Becca will show me her room where we’ll hang out and bond over our love for animals. We’ll have so much fun Becca will want to talk to me more often—even at school.
And (hopefully) we’ll become best friends.
I forgot one thing in my plan to become Becca’s best friend.
Leo Polanski.
How can Becca and I become besties if he’s always with us?
Don’t get me wrong—I like Leo a lot. He’s supersmart and interesting (when he’s not being annoying), and he’s an important part of CCSC. But he’s too serious—a thinker not a talker. Best friends talk about everything and can practically read each other’s minds (which is even cooler than lip-reading). That’s what I want with Becca—except she already has the Sparklers.
After school the next day, I head to the Skunk Shack. I’ve ridden a few blocks when I hear my name and turn to see Leo rolling up on his gyro-board.
The Curious Cat Spy Club Page 6
