Smells Like Dog (25 page)

It’s just a statue,
he told himself. He turned off the flashlight and stuck it back into his pocket. Then he pushed the grate. It opened easily, just as Lorelei had said. He swung his legs out the opening and was about to jump onto the marble floor when footsteps approached. Pulling his legs back in, Homer quickly closed the grate, then shrank into the tunnel’s darkness.

Mr. Twaddle, his suit coat flapping, hurried down the hall. “I have to do everything around here,” he mumbled. He must have stopped at the gift shop because he was shoving Dinookies into his mouth. Crumbs flew as he imitated Madame’s shrill voice. “Get rid of the boy, Twaddle. Deal with the trespassers, Twaddle. Find the map, Twaddle. Do what I say, Twaddle, or I won’t keep paying for your vacations.” He threw the empty cookie package onto the floor. In his other hand he clutched Ajitabh’s sword. “I hate her.”

Something buzzed. Twaddle froze as Madame’s voice shrieked from a wall speaker. “Twaddle! What’s taking
you so long? Get back down here this instant! I need you to deal with this girl and her ugly mutt.”

Lorelei and Dog were in Madame’s lair. Homer clenched his fists. If she did anything to Dog…

“On my way,” Mr. Twaddle said through clenched teeth.

“You’d better be on your way.” Then she added, “You big dummy.”

“One of us is a big dummy and it’s not me,” Mr. Twaddle muttered.

“I heard that!”

Homer inched forward to get a better view as Mr. Twaddle stopped in front of the tortoise statue. “Why should I have to deal with the girl?” he mumbled. “I’m not the one who hired her.” He reached up and poked the statue’s left eye. Then he stepped back. A grinding sound rolled down the hall. Homer gasped as the tortoise’s mouth slowly opened.

The mouth grew larger and larger, stretching like a grotesque sock puppet.
It’s mechanical,
Homer realized as the grinding sound continued. When the grinding stopped, Mr. Twaddle took a quick look around. He slid the sword into the tortoise’s mouth, then pulled himself into the cavernous hole. After his two-tone shoes had disappeared, the mouth snapped shut, then shrank back to normal size.

Of course! A secret lair had to have some kind of secret entrance. It reminded Homer of the entrance to the Reptile King’s Temple, which was guarded by an enormous stone serpent. According to the biography
The Life of Wilma von Weiner,
it had taken Wilma three days to figure out that she had to crawl into the serpent’s mouth to enter the tomb.

Homer opened the grate and jumped to the floor. Then he shut the grate and crept toward the statue. He reached up and pressed the tortoise’s eye. The grinding sound began and the mouth cranked open, wider and wider, until Homer found himself looking into a yawning black hole. A sick feeling churned in his stomach—a mixture of nervousness and horror as he remembered that his uncle had spent his final minutes inside a tortoise’s stomach. Or maybe he hadn’t. But it was still a repulsive image.

But there was no time for nervousness because Dog was in trouble.

Homer took a deep breath, then stood on tiptoe and pulled himself into the mouth. As soon as his feet cleared the opening, the mouth snapped shut. Blackness engulfed Homer. The space was a tight fit. Is this how Odysseus felt when he sat inside the Trojan Horse, waiting to sneak up on the enemy? Homer didn’t want to
use the flashlight, just in case Mr. Twaddle was nearby. He took a deep breath. The only direction to go was forward.

And that’s what he did. He crawled a few feet forward.

And that’s when the ground gave way.

W
hoa!”

Homer slid face-first, around and around, in a dizzy corkscrew. It was just like the Whirl-a-Tron at the Milkydale County Fair. The one time Homer had ridden that contraption, he’d upchucked his curly fries. Terrified, he closed his eyes as he flew off the end of the slide and landed in a belly flop on the floor. The impact knocked the air out of him and pressed his compass into his chest. “Ow.” Sitting up, his
head still spinning, he tried to get his bearings and his breath.

The room was small. The end of the slide jutted out from the wall behind Homer. A narrow staircase wound back up the slide, for exiting purposes. In front of Homer, light trickled from an open doorway, as did distant voices. The room swayed as he struggled to his feet. Once the dizziness had passed, he checked his compass to make sure it wasn’t broken. Then he stuck his head out the doorway.

It opened onto a balcony with a railing. The voices were too far away to understand or identify. Homer crept from the room and peered over the railing. And the first thought that came to his mind was,
I want a lair.

He gazed down at a huge underground fortress. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn it was the Temple of the Reptile King. How had Madame managed to build such a realistic replica? It looked exactly like the photos in Homer’s treasure-hunting books. The stone walls and floor, the giant serpent and lizard statues, even the murky pool where the king had kept his treasured potbellied toads, looked authentic.

However, Madame had added some modern touches. A snazzy red speedboat was moored at the edge of the pool. Dozens of chandeliers, heavy with crystal droplets, hung from the overhead pipes. Lush oriental carpets lay
here and there. A red velvet couch sat next to a red velvet throne. And there were three vending machines, one for snacks, one for espresso drinks, and one for live mice. A vending machine for live mice? The little white critters ran back and forth in their glass cubicles. A few of them sat very still, staring through the glass at a large tank in which a cobra lay curled.

A row of security monitors lined the other side of the room, revealing different parts of the museum and the museum grounds. One of the monitors was focused on a fog bank. Oh wait. It was the cloud cover for the cloudcopter.
So that’s how Mr. Twaddle knew we had landed.
One of the monitors was focused on the little VIP party balloon, still floating in the Life on the Edge exhibit.

The voices seemed to be coming from beneath the balcony. Homer still couldn’t catch the words or recognize the voices. And he didn’t see any sign of Dog or his uncle’s belongings. He’d have to take the steep stairway that led from the balcony down into the lair. But just as he worked up the courage to move, footsteps approached. Homer flattened himself on the balcony’s floor, then peeked through a space in the railing.

He caught his breath. Lorelei walked out from under the balcony. Her pink hair was messier than usual and her footsteps were slow and tired. She stopped at the vending machine and punched a button, then collected a bag
of potato chips. Leaning against the machine, she ate the chips, one at a time, as if she had nothing more pressing to do. As if she didn’t give a hoot that Homer might be worried and missing his dog. He clenched his fists.

“Get back in there!” Madame la Directeur appeared from under the balcony and stomped toward the vending machines. “I’m not paying you to snack. We need to find that map.” Her blouse had come untucked and she’d rolled up her sleeves. A few strands of her perfectly sprayed hair were out of place.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lorelei said, biting a chip in half. “Hold on to your bloomers, lady. A girl’s gotta eat.”

“That’s all you do is eat. And that ugly dog, too.” Madame punched a button on the mouse vending machine. A mouse disappeared from the upper-left-hand compartment. Madame reached into the dispensing drawer and picked the mouse up by its tail. It wiggled wildly as she opened the top of the cobra’s tank and tossed it in. “I don’t know why you insisted on bringing that dog here. All it’s doing is stinking up the back room.” She ripped the potato chip bag from Lorelei’s hand. “Get back in there and keep looking. The map has to be in that junk somewhere.”

Homer narrowed his eyes. He’d just learned four important things: Dog was safe, his uncle’s belongings were in the other room, Madame had not found Rumpold
Smeller’s map, and Madame clearly didn’t know that Dog could smell treasure. Which meant there was still a chance that Lorelei didn’t know.

Lorelei glared at Madame, then stomped beneath Homer’s balcony. “Little brat,” Madame snarled. Homer held his breath, pressing his body against the floor. His mouth was dry, his body sweaty. How could he get Dog’s attention and make a quick exit?

As Madame ate the last of Lorelei’s chips, Mr. Twaddle walked out from beneath the balcony. His suit coat was gone and his shirtsleeves were also rolled up. “This is a waste of time, I tell you. There’s no map to be found. Why would he have kept it in his apartment? That’s too obvious.”

“Exactly. No one would suspect a priceless treasure map to be sitting in an apartment. Drake was cunning that way.”

“But…”

Madame threw the potato chip bag into the pool, then pointed a finger at her henchman. “Don’t
but
me, you nitwit! The map is there and we’re going to find it. I need money. The self-destruct button’s on the fritz again. Do you know how much it costs to replace a self-destruct button?”

“Why don’t you just help yourself to another gem from the Cave of Brilliance?”

“Because I’ve already replaced most of them with fakes and the rest I’ve reported as stolen. So you see, I have no more money. I need Rumpold Smeller’s treasure.” She grabbed Mr. Twaddle’s shirt collar. “Finding his treasure is going to make me rich and famous and I’m tired of waiting to be rich and famous. Now get back in there and keep looking.”

“But I still need to go to the police station, to press charges.”

“You can do that later. Ajitabh and Zelda aren’t going to get in our way. They’re just a couple of amateurs. I’m not worried about them. But I’ll tell you who I am worried about.” She leaned close to him. “I’m worried about the girl. She knows too much. As soon as we find that map, I want you to get rid of her.”

“You want me to throw her out, like I did with the boy?”

“No. Read between the words, Twaddle. I want you to
get rid
of her. Just like I got rid of Drake. Feed her to the tortoise.”

Homer almost cried out.

Twaddle backed up. “Hurting a child was never part of our arrangement.”

Madame smiled sweetly and patted Mr. Twaddle’s bald head. “Now, now, she’s just a street urchin. No one will even miss her. And then, you and I can claim our glory.
Oh, and get rid of the dog, too.” She walked beneath the balcony. Mr. Twaddle stood frozen, his face pale. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. Then he followed Madame.

Get rid of Lorelei and Dog? Lorelei had no idea that her life was in danger. But how could Homer convince her? She’d never believe him.

Something warm brushed against Homer’s cheek. Still lying on his stomach, he slowly turned his head and found Daisy’s beady black eyes staring into his. Her nose twitched. “Go away,” Homer whispered. Her nose twitched again. Then, she leaped onto his back and scratched at his collar. He tried to brush her off but she clung fiercely to the fabric, her nose pressed against his neck. He rolled from side to side, trying to rock her loose. Then something snapped. Daisy scurried away with Homer’s beloved Galileo Compass in her teeth, its broken chain left behind.

Thieving rat!

Homer crawled toward the stairs. He hoped they weren’t creaky like the ones at the Pudding farm. Another tortoise statue, large enough for him to hide behind, stood at the base of the stairs. While Madame barked orders from the other room, Homer tiptoed down the stairs, then darted behind the statue. From his vantage he had a clear view of the room beneath the balcony.
His uncle’s belongings lay on the floor—books, boxes, clothing, vases, globes, parchment, shoes, pillows, all in a massive pile. Lorelei sat cross-legged, pulling socks from a drawer and sticking her hand into each one. Mr. Twaddle disassembled a pair of Extra Strong Borington Binoculars while Madame snooped through some letters, tossing them over her shoulder after reading them. But where was Dog?

“Another letter from the fat kid,” Madame said. “ ‘Dear Uncle Drake. Thank you for the book about Angus MacDoodle and his backyard treasure. I started to look for Celtic coins in our goat pasture, but Dad told me to stop digging so many holes or the goats would break their legs falling into them.’ ”

Homer cringed. How dare she read his letters? They’d been sent to Drake’s postal box and addressed to Drake,
NOT TO HER
!

“Another letter from the kid. ‘Dear Uncle Drake. I’m glad you’re coming to visit on Sunday. Mom is going to bake a cherry pie because it’s your favorite.’ ” Madame tore the letter to pieces. “Useless. I want that map. SOMEONE FIND ME THAT MAP!”

“Urrrr.”

Homer’s heart skipped a beat as Dog waddled into view, his rope leash dragging behind. He appeared unhurt and just as droopy as ever. He started sniffing the pile.
Homer waved his hand, trying to catch Dog’s attention. Even though he desperately wanted to race in there and grab Dog, he knew he’d never be able to outrun Lorelei or Mr. Twaddle. He had to get Dog to come to him. The farm dogs would have picked up Homer’s scent, no problem. They’d have been circling at his feet, ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. But not Dog.

“What’s that rat got?” Mr. Twaddle asked as Daisy climbed onto the pile. “It’s a Galileo Compass.”

“Give me that.” Madame grabbed the compass. “It’s probably just a fake.”