The Night Thief

by Barbara Fradkin

  The Night

  Thief

  BARBARA FRADKIN

  Copyright © 2015 Barbara Fradkin

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Fradkin, Barbara Fraser, 1947–, author

  The night thief / Barbara Fradkin.

  (Rapid Reads)

  Issued also in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0866-9 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0867-6 (pdf).—

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0868-3 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

  PS8561.R233N54 2015 C813'.6 C2014-906675-9

  C2014-906676-7

  First published in the United States, 2015

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952061

  Summary: Cedric O’Toole, an unlikely sleuth, sets out to discover who has been stealing from his farm. (RL 3.2)

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Jenn Playford

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  18 17 16 15 • 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated to all the teachers, social workers and community workers who hold the welfare and happiness of children close to their hearts.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Acknowledgments

  One

  It was supposed to be a perfect October night. The moon was huge and the sky so clear I could see all the way across the field to the woods.

  But after less than an hour, I was freezing to death. My toes had gone numb. My back ached and I couldn’t feel the tip of my nose. Good move, O’Toole, I grumbled to myself as I eased my stiff fingers from the shotgun. You couldn’t wear a warmer jacket?

  I was lying in wait for the night thief. For more than three weeks now, I’d been trying to stop him from raiding my vegetable patch. My usual scarecrows and whirligigs had been useless. So first I’d welded together a tall fence using every piece of metal I could spare. Bits of car hoods and washing machines, rusty pipes and chicken wire. It wasn’t pretty, but I thought it would do the trick.

  It didn’t. The next night he dug up a whole row of baby carrots and snapped a prize ear of Peaches and Cream corn off its stalk. So I put chicken wire over the whole garden. A foot-long zucchini disappeared. I’d never seen anything like it. I share this backcountry piece of scrub my mother called a farm with lots of wildlife. I don’t mind a rabbit stealing a carrot or two, or a deer nibbling the buds off my flowers. But this beast, whatever it was, had to be feeding a whole village!

  I don’t ask for much. I know the locals laugh at my organic garden, my milk goat and my fields of rusted junk. But I like to invent things. You never know when that three-wheeled ATV might make me a million dollars. In the meantime, I get by with handyman jobs and my vegetables, which my aunt Penny sells at her corner grocery store in the village. This night thief was seriously messing with my livelihood.

  So next I got out my welding torch again and surrounded the whole garden with homemade humane traps. I caught a groundhog and a skunk, but the rest of the bait, along with half a dozen more ears of corn, was gone.

  My dog was no help either. Chevy is a border collie mix who barks if a leaf blows across the yard. Usually she sleeps on my bed, but for three nights I tied her out by the vegetable patch. I figured her barking would chase off anything. The first night she did bark, but by the time I ran downstairs and out to the back field, she was wagging her tail and there was nothing in sight.

  After that she didn’t even bark. Even when my best crop of cherry tomatoes went missing. A chill ran through me. What was this thing? What kind of creature could get through my fence, steal the bait from my traps and hypnotize my dog?

  That’s when I oiled up my mother’s shotgun. I hate guns. Hate the sight of blood, to tell the truth, ever since I was nineteen and had to identify my mother’s body in what was left of her car. But now I wasn’t just angry. I was spooked.

  I didn’t plan to kill it. I can’t shoot a tin can off a stump at three feet. But I did plan to scare it off into someone else’s vegetable patch. Now, as I crouched behind the shed with my fingers growing numb, I wondered if it had outsmarted me again.

  Just half an hour longer, I told myself. The dry cornstalks stood like stiff sentries in the moonlight. An owl hooted. A coyote yipped. Then a dark shape came out of the trees. Hunched and formless, it floated across the field. I stared at it, hardly daring to breathe. A bear cub?

  Behind me a twig cracked, and I gasped. Spun around, waving my gun. Nothing. I turned back just in time to see the dark shape melt back into the woods.

  Damn!

  I waited until the moon slid low in the sky and the shadows grew long. But the creature never came back. The next night I wore my parka and hid behind a tall stand of goldenrod near the woods. The wind was up, blowing clouds across the moon. The grass rippled and danced, making it hard to see. As I waited, my mind drifted. A hairy werewolf was sneaking across my land, slipping the latch on my back door and coming up my stairs…

  I awoke with a jolt. Sat up to see a black creature moving through my garden, bending, reaching, scooping. I almost shouted aloud. Hunched low in the grass, I raced closer. Its shape was half hidden by the corn. Too skinny for a bear but too big for a raccoon. I watched as it unwound the wire at the corner of my fence, slipped out through the hole and turned back to reattach the fence.

  What the hell?

  I ducked lower as the creature, cradling its armload of loot, scurried past and headed back toward the trees. I kept fifty feet between us as I followed it. In the forest, even the weak moonlight disappeared. The figure became a shadow that moved quickly in and out of the trees. It was like it could see in the dark. I couldn’t. I tripped over roots and cracked my head on branches. Before long, the shadow was gone.

  The next day after work, I put Chevy on a leash and set off into the forest. Everything I know about tracking comes from watching bad Westerns on TV. But Chevy knows even less. So I was surprised when she began to wag her tail and pulled ahead in the direction the night thief had taken. Fallen leaves swished under our feet, making so much noise I figured any creature from here to the county line would be long gone.

  Chevy led me deep into the forest. This was all part of my back woodlot, an untamed jungle of boulders and fallen trees. As a kid I had loved to play here, bored by my mother’s endless Elvis records and TV soap operas. Imagining I was Robin Hood, I had built a cave in the roots of an old maple that hung over a cliff. Chevy headed straight there. As we got closer, I saw the ground in front was trampled. A pine bough blocked the
entrance to the cave. I froze. Terrified of what lurked inside the cave. Wishing I had brought my gun.

  But Chevy knocked aside the branch and barged straight in, her tail wagging. Inside, she raced around snuffling the ground. I crouched in the middle, bewildered. The cave was empty, but the dirt floor was covered by an old horse blanket from my barn.

  Outside, I searched for clues. There was a circle of ashes in the clearing and an old microwave full of my vegetables down by the stream. Astonishment shot through me.

  “Wow, old girl!” I said. “We have squatters. Can you figure out where they’ve run off to?”

  I led her in a big circle around the camp, hoping she’d pick up the trail. She doubled back and forth, confused. That’s when all those years of watching Westerns with my mother came in handy. Chevy’s not a fan of water, so I had to drag her across the stream. But sure enough, on the other side she took off with her nose to the ground and her tail in the air. My night thief must have watched the same Westerns. How to lose the sheriff on your tail.

  Forests change all the time. Trees fall, others grow, shadows deepen. But I’d fought many make-believe battles in these woods, and I knew every bluff and rock. I jogged as fast as Chevy could pull me. The afternoon sun was sinking fast. It was almost gone before I caught my first glimpse of movement ahead. A flash of gray against the red leaves. Maybe a deer or a coyote. But maybe not. I picked up my pace. I’m not a big guy, but luckily I’d been hauling cement bags on a construction site all summer. Between that and my gardening, I’d packed on some muscle. I was breathing hard, but I was gaining. Another flash of gray, scrambling up the hillside.

  I let Chevy go and she raced ahead, her tail wagging. She bounced in circles around the figure as it tried to run.

  “Stop!” I shouted. “I won’t hurt you!”

  The figure dived into the bushes. I ran forward, rounded the bush and nearly fell over a small boy huddled behind a rock. Chevy was licking his face.

  The kid looked like he’d been dragged out of a coal bin. His hair was one long tangle, and he nearly disappeared inside the dirty old parka that used to hang in my back barn. Eyes as blue as a winter sky glared out at me from the dirt.

  I squatted down in front of him. “Who are you?”

  The boy blinked. Shrank away.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. This is my farm. Where do you live?”

  Still no answer. Just a little frown. I patted Chevy. “This is Chevy, and she likes you. My name is Rick—Cedric Elvis O’Toole.”

  Cedric was my mother’s idea of class, and Elvis was her one and only true love. But the name has got me a lot of laughs over the years, so I hoped I’d get at least a smile from the boy. No such luck. He just hugged Chevy to him. “Are you hungry?” I asked, pretending to search my pockets. “I’ve got soup back at the farm. And cheese and eggs.”

  The kid stole a peek over his shoulder. Like he was looking for something and didn’t want me to know. But he didn’t say a word.

  “I’m going to call you Robin,” I said. “After Robin Hood. I used to pretend this was Sherwood Forest when I was your age. What? About eight?”

  The boy rose to the bait. “Ten,” he shot back.

  So he could talk after all. I stood up and held out my hand. “Okay, Robin. Let’s go get you some soup. And I have a better jacket than that too.”

  Robin stood up. He didn’t take my hand, but when I signaled to Chevy, at least he followed along.

  Two

  By the time we got back to the farmhouse, sunset had stolen all the heat out of the air. I was shivering. Robin trailed about twenty feet behind me, but when he saw the house, he stopped to stare, like he’d never seen it in the daytime. Now, I admit my house is a funny sight. Two walls are painted turquoise and the other two orange, because that’s what was handy. Both paints were rejects from someone else’s bad mix jobs—kind of like me.

  At first Robin wouldn’t even come up the front steps. Instead he headed for the barn, sending the hens squawking in all directions. So I told him I was going inside to feed Chevy, and soup would be ready in a few minutes. When I peeked outside again, he was down by the barn, feeding the hens. I could see him smiling at them. But when I called to him, the smile disappeared.

  Even when my mother had remembered to feed me, she was never much of a cook. So early on I’d figured out how to use a stove and grow a few vegetables. My soup wasn’t fancy, but the smell was enough to get Robin inside the house. He took the bowl off the table and curled up on the kitchen floor beside Chevy. He emptied his bowl even faster than the dog would have. I put a refill on the table, but he took it down onto the floor too.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  He shrugged. I asked his name again. Same shrug. I took the receiver off my wall phone. It’s a rotary type that earns me lots of laughs, but after a few tweaks, it works just fine. His eyes followed every move I made.

  “Your family will be worried about you,” I said. “I better call the police.”

  I was hoping to reach Jessica Swan. She’s a constable with our local detachment, and she has a soft spot for underdogs. She might know how to help this kid without dragging in her boss. But as soon as I said police, Robin lunged for the door. I grabbed his arm and dragged him back to the table.

  “You can’t go out there. It’s cold. There are coyotes and bears looking for food for the winter.”

  “Not scared.”

  I looked at him. He glared back. He did seem scared, although not of the coyotes. “Are you lost?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Did you run away?”

  He looked down. Didn’t answer. Now, I’m not much good at conversation. It was just my mother and me on the farm until she died, and I spent most of my childhood with imaginary friends. Sometimes I go all week without talking to anyone except turnips and goats. Now here I was with this kid in my kitchen, filthy and scared, but silent as a mule. I’d been there myself a few times.

  I found a map in the drawer and spread it out. I traced some of the squiggly lines on the map. “This is Madrid County, where we are. Here’s my farm, and here’s Lake Madrid village, about three miles away. Over here is the woods where I found you.”

  He squinted at the map like he’d never seen anything like it. I moved my finger farther away. “Over here is North Grenfield, up here Ossington County. Can you see where you live?”

  He ran his finger across the words. I pointed to the biggest town in the area. “Here?”

  He lifted the paper to peer under it, like his house was hiding somewhere underneath. I had a sudden brainwave. Maybe the kid had never seen a map before. I pointed to the town’s name. “Can you read this?” I asked.

  “Read?”

  I grabbed a pencil and printed the word ROBIN in big letters along the edge of the map. “What does that say?”

  His eyes widened, and he reached for the pencil. “What this?”

  He had an odd accent, like he didn’t speak English well. He didn’t sound French either. I told him it was a pencil. “You write with its tip.”

  He tugged at the tip. “How it come out?”

  “Like this.” I took a piece of charcoal from the fireplace and made a black line across the map. By now the map was becoming quite a mess.

  He gripped the pencil in his fist, wrong way up, and tried to run it along the page. I turned it over and watched as he drew marks on the page. He began to smile as he scribbled and swirled. Not only had this kid never seen a map. He’d never even held a pencil!

  Was he slow? Was that why he was wandering around lost in the woods? I remembered some old games my mother used to play with me, before she gave up hoping I’d be a doctor. I took two cherry tomatoes off the windowsill. “How many tomatoes are there?”

  “Two.”

  I added four more. “Now how many?”

  “Five.”

  “Count them.”

  He pouted. I started with the first tomato. “One, two…Now y
ou.”

  “Three, four, five and five.”

  I wrote all the numbers down. “Which number is five?”

  He picked up one of the tomatoes. I pointed to the number four. I had to be sure. “Give me this many tomatoes.”

  He picked up all six tomatoes and gave them to me, smiling as if he’d figured out the game. I counted them aloud and then pushed two back to his side. He ate them. In spite of myself, I laughed.

  “You’re still hungry.”

  He ate three eggs and four slices of toast. I was just beginning to think he was a bottomless pit when he laid his head on the table and fell fast asleep. I studied his smudged face and callused little hands. Now what? I thought. Call the police? This was more than just a missing kid. This was a mystery kid who could barely speak and had never even learned to count.

  But he was still just a kid. It didn’t seem fair to haul him off in a cruiser in the dead of night. That had happened to me, more than once, and I knew how scary it felt. So I figured everything could wait until the morning, once he’d had a good night’s sleep in a warm bed.

  I carried him upstairs to my mother’s old bedroom. No one had slept in it in fifteen years. Her room was just the same, if you didn’t count the inch of dust. Her velvet Elvis still hung on the wall over her bed. Her shiny, hand-tooled red cowboy boots still sat on the floor by her dresser. There was a dusty box of shotgun shells on the cedar chest, beside the outline of her shotgun in the dust. But I suspected the kid had slept in worse places. The bed was comfy, and he barely opened an eye when I tucked a couple of old blankets over him.

  That’s when I noticed how filthy his sweater was. Dark stains smeared the front and cuffs. I touched them with my fingertips. They were dry and crusty. Mud? I sniffed. Sweat and barnyard manure. Carefully I pulled the sweater over his head, filled the sink with warm, soapy water and sank the sweater into the bubbles. The dirt softened. As it dissolved, it turned the water deep red.