Who Stole Halloween?

by Martha Freeman

  When I got to the part about the grocery receipt, she said, “Wait one minute, Alex. Let’s think this through, shall we? Chances are Mrs. Timmons did buy salt-dough ingredients. But there are other classes at your school making relief maps, right? So other teachers may have bought the ingredients as well. Are all those teachers catnappers?”

  I sighed. Till that moment, I had never realized the journey from genius to idiot could be made so quickly. “Probably not,” I said.

  Mom got out her notebook and a pen. “Tell me the items on the receipt again,” she said, and wrote down each one. Then, probably just to make me feel better, she asked, “Have you found out anything else?”

  I thought of telling her about Prime Suspect No. 2—the mysterious Mr. Lee. But I didn’t even have a grocery receipt’s worth of evidence against him. So I just shook my head no.

  “I’m frustrated, too,” Mom said. “In fact, I’m almost hoping something happens tonight, something to blow the lid off the case once and for all.”

  Of course I knew something was going to happen that night. But I couldn’t tell Mom about it. She would have put a stop to the whole thing, probably would even have called Yasmeen’s parents and Sophie’s parents, not to mention Mrs. Lee because it was her baby monitor we kind of borrowed when we were supposed to be taking it back to the store.

  Yasmeen had said she was going to rest up this afternoon since we’d be awake practically all night. That sounded like a good idea to me, too. But before going upstairs, I took Luau’s bed from its usual corner and put it out on the front porch so we’d be ready after trick-or-treating.

  In my room, Luau was napping with his new catnip ball tucked under his ear like a pillow. I had the collar and the receiver in my backpack.

  “Hey, lazy,” I said. “Wake up.”

  Luau opened one eye and mrrfed, which meant, You know, Alex, to us cats the word “lazy” is a compliment. Then he saw the collar in my hand and stretched to give it a sniff. Usually he hates collars and tries to shake them off, but when I buckled this one around his neck, he sat up tall like a person proud of new clothes. I took a good look at the microphone, which was dangling from the ring where you were supposed to put a license. It looked like some fancy electronic beeper to scare birds. At least I hoped it did.

  “Are you ready to catch a catnapper?” I asked Luau.

  He bumped his head against my head, which meant, Undercover Kitty at your disposal, sir.

  “Good man,” I told him. “Now, move over.”

  A little before six, I was in the bathroom making final adjustments to my ears when someone rang the doorbell. On my way to answer it, I stopped in my bedroom to get the receiver, which I put in my sweatpants pocket. Luau followed me down the stairs and slipped outside when I opened the front door.

  It was Yasmeen.

  “You’re early,” I said. “Where’s Jeremiah?”

  “Coming.” She was looking at her feet. “But first I wanted to warn you about something.”

  I had a bad feeling. “What?”

  “It isn’t just me and Jeremiah who are going trick-or-treating with you.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Not . . .”

  Yasmeen nodded, still looking at her feet. “Sophie asked and—after all she did—what was I supposed to say?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll deal.”

  A second later, Jeremiah and Sophie appeared on the sidewalk, walking toward our house. Sophie was wearing her angel costume, which featured real feathers and a light-up halo. Jeremiah was going as a peanut butter sandwich.

  “Isn’t that what he went as last year?” I asked Yasmeen, but she said no, last year he had been a jar of peanut butter.

  “Trick or treat!” they shouted when they got to the door.

  Mom came up behind me in the front hall. “Don’t you guys look great!” she said.

  “My costume’s from a catalog,” Sophie answered. “I got to pick whatever one I liked. I liked this because it was the most expensive. Do you want to know how much it cost?”

  “Not especially,” Mom said. “Come on in, though. Would you prefer Tootsie Pops or pretzels?”

  “Dumb question, Mom,” I said.

  Jeremiah and Yasmeen each took a Tootsie Pop and said thank you. Sophie took a handful of Tootsie Pops and forgot to say thank you.

  Mom gave her a look. “You know, Sophie,” she said, “there are going to be a lot more trick-or-treaters tonight.”

  “I know.” Sophie nodded. “That’s why I always go early, ’cause if you’re late, you might get stuck with pretzels.”

  Whatever Mom wanted to say, I didn’t want to hear. “Can we go now?” I asked quickly.

  Mom nodded. “Trick-or-treating ends at eight, so you’ll be back at a few minutes after, okay? I’ll be working, but Dad will be home. And don’t go beyond St. Bernard’s on one side or the school on the other.”

  Just like I expected, things started out bad. Yasmeen, Jeremiah, and I always turn right at our front gate and hit the Blancos first. But Sophie said the Blancos had seaweed lollipops this year and we should skip them altogether. We were on the sidewalk in front of my house arguing when Mom called to us: “One more thing! The most important thing!”

  I expected “Watch for catnappers” or “Be careful crossing streets,” but what she actually said was, “Be sure to save me anything with coconut!”

  We skipped the Blancos. At the Dagostinos we got peanut butter cups, and I gave mine to Jeremiah.

  Mrs. Lee had forgotten to buy candy so she gave us each a handful of loose change. It must have come from the bottom of her purse because it had lint on it.

  Mr. Stone gave us packets of cocoa mix.

  And Bub had sugarless gum because, he said, he didn’t want us kids to end up fat like him.

  By the time we turned the corner onto Groundhog Drive, Sophie had accidentally kicked over two jack-o’-lanterns, but she was remembering to say thank you. Meanwhile, Jeremiah had taken a break from worrying to say he liked the light-up halo because cars could see it.

  In other words things were going surprisingly well, which meant, as Jeremiah could have told you, that something was about to go wrong.

  We had just turned onto Ari’s front walk when Yasmeen said, “Hey, did I see your feline going outside when I came up to your door?”

  I said, “Yeah, I guess. He likes to see what the squirrels are up to.”

  “Was that a good idea? Letting him out early?” Yasmeen asked.

  “The catnapper never shows up till at least midnight, I thought,” Sophie said.

  “Catnapper?” Jeremiah said.

  “Never mind,” Yasmeen said. “Did you bring the receiver with you?”

  “In my pocket,” I said.

  “Why don’t you turn it on? Maybe we can figure out what the feline is doing.”

  Sophie said the batteries ought to be okay, so I held the receiver to my ear and pressed the button. At first there was only static. But then, suddenly, out of the tiny speaker blared a voice so loud it startled me, and I bobbled the receiver but caught it again. “Poor, pretty kitty. Are you cold? Yes, you are. Come on, pretty kitty, and I’ll take you home.”

  “Whoa, it really does work!” said Yasmeen. “That’s amazing!”

  “But who was that talking?” I said.

  “Your mom,” said Sophie. “Wasn’t it?”

  Yasmeen laughed. “Mrs. Parakeet doesn’t talk like—”

  More noise from the speaker interrupted her. It sounded all rumbly like a car engine, but that wasn’t quite right. It was a sound I recognized, though . . . what was it?

  “Ohhh!” I laughed. “Luau’s purring!”

  “Whoever it is must’ve picked him up,” said Yasmeen.

  “Would somebody please tell me—” Jeremiah started to say.

  But Sophie interrupted. “Wait a sec. If that lady who just picked up Luau isn’t Alex’s mom, then who is she?”

  It hit me
like a rock, and judging from Sophie’s and Yasmeen’s faces, it didn’t feel so good to them either. Here we were grubbing for crunch bars door-to-door while, a couple of blocks away, my cat was in the process of being catnapped.

  Talk about lousy cat owners. For this I’d make the Guinness Book.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “Will somebody please tell me—” Jeremiah tried again.

  “It’s the catnapper!” Sophie snapped. “The catnapper’s a girl, and she’s got Luau!”

  Yasmeen is not real calm in a crisis. “Okay, okay,” she said, but her voice had turned all breathless, the way voices do when you panic. “Everybody let’s just sit down over here on the curb. Everybody, let’s just try to keep calm. We don’t know it’s the catnapper. The catnapper always strikes after midnight. This is probably just some harmless lady taking Luau home. . . .”

  The monitor crackled again, which—mercifully—shut Yasmeen up, and through the speaker came the sound of a car starting.

  “Oh, my gosh!” I moaned. “She could be taking him anywhere. Sophie, quick, what do you think the range of the baby monitor is now?”

  Sophie shook her head. “Hard to tell. I tested it to about a half mile; by then it was getting faint.”

  “So now,” Yasmeen’s panicky voice had gone all quiet and pathetic, “we are just going to sit here on the curb in front of Ari’s house and listen to Luau driving out of our lives forever like Halloween and those other cats, and it’s all my fault, me with my brilliant plan, and—”

  “No, it’s not your fault,” I said. “It’s mine for letting him out. I never figured he’d be in danger so early—”

  “Jeez, you two!” Sophie was disgusted. “Some kind of detectives you are. One little setback and you give up! Well, I’m not giving up. What about you, Jeremiah?”

  Jeremiah just shook his head. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  Without really noticing, we had been hearing the hum of the car engine through the speaker. Now, abruptly, it stopped, and then we heard the voice again, singsongy, but farther away, so we couldn’t make out words. I wished to heck the monitor didn’t distort sound so much. There was something familiar about the voice—it seemed like one I had heard before.

  Rustling, bumping, slamming . . . what did all the sounds mean? Going from the car to the house? And then a double thump that maybe meant Luau was jumping to the ground. And finally something I recognized for sure, meowing. Lots of meowing. Was it one cat? Two cats? I couldn’t tell.

  “Is that Luau?” Yasmeen asked me. She was whispering.

  “Uh-uh,” I whispered. “Luau’s meow is more drawn-out—you know.”

  Sophie said, “Plus the volume is wrong. I mean, Luau’s mouth is only a couple of inches from the mike. Any noise he makes will be so loud it’ll distort—probably be more like a shriek.”

  Sitting on the curb, I could feel the cold from the concrete rising right up my backbone. A group of kids I didn’t know ran past on their way to Ari’s. I envied them. They didn’t have anything more important to worry about than whether Nestle’s Crunch is better than Hershey’s Krackel.

  Without thinking, I turned to Sophie. “What do we do now?”

  Sophie was decisive. “Sit and listen until we hear something to tell us where they are. Remember—they can’t be too far away. If they were, we wouldn’t be able to hear them.”

  “It would be good if you had taught Luau to talk,” Jeremiah said. “Then he could just whisper a street number into the mike.”

  Yasmeen started to answer, but a blast of sound from the monitor interrupted her—and almost blew out all eight of our eardrums.

  “That was Luau’s meow!” Sophie said.

  “What was he saying?” Yasmeen asked.

  “I can’t understand him,” I said. “I don’t think it was an address.”

  “Say it again, Luau.” Yasmeen spoke into the receiver like it worked both ways.

  The chorus of meowing continued, with Luau apparently keeping quiet this time. I thought I could pick out at least two other cats. One had a small, high-pitched meow, while the other’s was gruff and squeaky, like a rusty hinge.

  A rusty hinge. Why did that seem familiar? Had somebody said something once about a cat . . .?

  “Hey—wait!” I said. “I know one of those cats! It’s Halloween!”

  Yasmeen frowned. “What do you mean?” she said. “You never even met Halloween.”

  “But remember,” I said, “the time we went over to Kyle’s? He said Halloween had a funny meow. And that’s it—I know it is.”

  Yasmeen nodded slowly, then faster, as if one piece of good news was just what she needed to shake her into action. “I do remember,” she said.

  “We’re going to get them back,” I said.

  Yasmeen nodded, and Sophie smiled. “Well, that’s better. Give me over the receiver a sec, Alex. I want to take a look at—” Sophie grabbed for it, but at the same time I heard the voice again and jerked it back to listen. I don’t know whose fault it was—well, yes, I do, it was Sophie’s—but next thing the receiver dropped to the street, bounced once, and broke in two.

  Chapter Thirty

  For a moment we all stood staring at the broken, silent receiver. Then Jeremiah said, “Nice move, foofoo-heads.”

  “We can fix it—maybe,” Sophie said. “All I need is—”

  I looked up at her, and it was like my body decided to spit out all the anger and worry and frustration that had built up since we started trying to find Halloween. “You broke it!” I shouted. “We never should’ve let you help!”

  Yasmeen put her hand on my shoulder. “Alex,” she said, “that wasn’t fair.”

  I shook her hand off. “Leave me alone,” I said. “Anyway,”—my face was wet with tears and snot. I sniffed some back and wiped the rest—“it’s too late.”

  They all looked at me.

  “Because of what the catnapper was saying,” I went on, “right before it broke.”

  “What was she saying?” Yasmeen asked.

  It was hard even to get the words out—they were that creepy. “She said,”—I took a breath, and my voice shook—“ ‘C’mere, kitty, this won’t hurt. You’re just going night-night now.’ ”

  “Oh, no,” Yasmeen said.

  Sophie picked up the broken receiver and studied it. “Nothing inside’s busted, I don’t think. If I had some way to stick it together, I could probably get it working.”

  “There’s no time!” I said. “Luau’s in la-la land by now, and who knows what awful thing the catnapper is doing to him!”

  While I was talking, Yasmeen was tugging the bottom of her fat bumblebee costume up over her waist, trying to reach something in the pocket of the jeans underneath. If this hadn’t been one of the two or three most terrible moments of my life, I would have cracked up because she looked extremely ridiculous.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  Her answer was to brandish the Band-Aids she always keeps with her. “Will these work?” she asked Sophie.

  “Yeah—yeah, probably. Give ’em over.” Sophie grabbed and a second later had ripped three Band-Aids open. Their wrappers fluttered to earth, and Jeremiah, who would never be a litterbug, retrieved them. Meanwhile, Sophie wrapped the Band-Aids around the receiver and pressed the switch. Instantly, there was a jumble of squawks, shrieks, and hisses.

  What was going on?

  “Maybe the receiver’s still broken?” I said.

  Sophie shook her head. “No, it’s working okay. Whatever we’re hearing”—she took an anxious breath—“that’s what’s happening to Luau.”

  The noises were awful. Bumping, crashing, glass breaking. The constant squawk and hiss. Every once in a while, like an exclamation point, the earsplitting shriek that was Luau’s meow.

  It took Jeremiah to point out something totally obvious: “That doesn’t sound like sleeping.”

  Relief flooded over me. “Of course!” I said. “That’s what’s happening—Luau is
running from her. We’re hearing the chase scene!”

  “Run, Luau, run!” Yasmeen said, and Sophie and Jeremiah joined in.

  “Shhh,” I said. “Listen. What’s that? A new noise . . .” This one was a rhythmic squeak. It had started slow—squeak, pause, squeak, pause, squeak, and then gotten faster—squeak, squeak, squeak, and now sque-sque-sque. . . . This was so hard, trying to understand what was going on only from sounds. This sound was familiar, but what did it remind me of? I scrinched up my eyes and concentrated, looking for the matching memory in my brain. I couldn’t find it.

  But Jeremiah could. “That’s Arnold,” he said simply.

  Sophie, Yasmeen, and I looked at him, not understanding. “Jeremiah?”

  “You know, our class pet. The hamster. That’s him. That’s his wheel.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  In your whole life you have never seen a cat, a bumblebee, an angel, and a peanut butter sandwich run as fast as we did. In fact, I was standing, out of breath, on Miss Deirdre’s front porch before I had time to think about what I was supposed to do when I got there.

  Sophie still had the receiver—now so close to the transmitter, the sound was really clear. Knowing at last who the catnapper was, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t recognized her sing - songy voice sooner.

  She was speaking now: “That’s it, kitty cat. Stay right there. Now I’ve got you.”

  “Ring the bell! Ring the bell! Hurry!” I said.

  Sophie punched the button with her fist. The result was weird: We heard the bell ring indoors through the receiver at the same time we heard it ring outdoors in real life. And then we heard Miss Deirdre say, “Drat—what a time for trick-or-treaters!”

  “Turn off the receiver!” Yasmeen whispered to Sophie, who quickly pressed the button.

  And then the door opened.

  I’m not sure what I expected. I guess I thought Miss Deirdre would look all of a sudden gigantic, or monstrous, or scary. But instead, standing in the doorway smiling brightly, she was plain old Miss Deirdre, the ditzy preschool teacher, Marjie Lee’s nice friend who lived around the corner. It was totally hard to get that she was also the person who stole all those cats, who stole my cat, the person who a few minutes ago was threatening to send Luau “night-night.”