Zoobreak (11 page)

His cell phone rang. From the display, he recognized the number of Detective Harrigan, the lead officer investigating the robbery.

“I hope you have some good news for me, Detective,” Nastase said into the handset. “Klaus and I have been going through the wreckage here, and it hasn’t exactly been fun.”

“We found a few webcams we believe were used to case the boat,” Harrigan replied. “Their server seems to be overseas — ultra-secure, dead end. But we’ve got something else that might turn into a lead. There have been reports of an aggressive owl terrorizing cats and dogs in a Long Island town not far from you. You lost an owl, didn’t you?”

“Yes, a very valuable one,” Nastase confirmed. “But surely there are a lot of owls on Long Island.”

“The timing’s a little suspicious. And the location — it’s across the sound from the spot where we found your life raft. Maybe you’ve heard of this town — Cedarville.”

Cedarville!
All Aboard Animals
booked
hundreds of school visits. But that name sounded familiar.

“Thanks, Detective. Please keep me posted.” As soon as he was off the phone, the zookeeper went to the office and took out the appointment log for school tours.

There it was — Cedarville Public School District. They’d sent several groups the week before the robbery. It rang an unpleasant bell. That girl — Sabrina, Susanna, something like that. The one who’d accused him of stealing her monkey! The family had even gone so far as to have their lawyer call.

He began flipping through the register, searching for his notes on the incident.

Klaus ducked in through the hatchway. “Find something, boss?”

“That girl — the one who insisted Eleanor was hers.” He slapped the page. “Here it is — Savannah Drysdale from Cedarville, New York. The same town where owl sightings are happening right now.”

“Great news!” Klaus exclaimed. “Call that cop and tell him what we know.”

Mr. Nastase looked thoughtful. “I don’t think we should involve the police just yet. I want to handle this — quietly.”

The security man was mystified. “What for?” He frowned. “Wait a minute. You’re not telling me we really
did
steal that monkey?”

“Of course not!” the zookeeper replied in a wounded tone. “It’s just that things can get complicated when you’re dealing with false accusations.”

Klaus fixed him with a piercing stare. “But we definitely didn’t steal the monkey, right?”

“Do I look like a thief?”

Klaus’s eyes fell on the desk lamp. The sticker on the shade read:
PROPERTY OF HOLIDAY INN
.

“
B
en, are you all right?”

Ben opened his eyes to find Nurse Savage leaning over the cot where he took his special nap every day. He moved his arm across his chest to make sure she didn’t notice the bump in his sweatshirt that represented Ferret Face’s hiding place of the moment.

“Uh, I’m fine,” he answered. “I just can’t sleep.”

She raised her eyebrows. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’re supposed to sleep. You’ve always slept before. Has anything changed in your medical condition?”

“I don’t think so,” Ben said carefully. Being saddled with a ferret 24/7 was definitely a condition, but it wasn’t medical. The truth was painfully obvious to him. Narcolepsy
or not, he was no longer in danger of falling asleep during the day. Any time he showed signs of nodding off, Ferret Face would grab hold of his skin and bite down just hard enough to keep him awake.

How could he explain
that
to the school nurse?

She had a theory. “It’s almost as if you’re trying to sleep, but something is preventing you from letting go. Are you having bad dreams? I distinctly heard you say ‘ouch.’ ”

“Well, I’m definitely not sleeping, so it can’t be dreams.”

The nurse probed further. “How is your sleep at night?”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m asleep at the time.” But the truth was, the nights were okay, since Ferret Face slept then, too. The ferret liked to crawl all the way to the end of the bed and sleep under Ben’s feet. It was actually pretty comfortable — if you could ignore the fact that the room was starting to smell like
All Aboard Animals
. Mom had been giving him gentle reminders lately about using deodorant.

The nurse sighed. “Well, if this continues, I’m going to have to get in touch with your pediatrician.”

Ben swallowed hard. His doctor might not be as smart as the sleep experts at the DuPont Youth Academy for Sleep Science, but he would probably notice a ferret living inside his patient’s shirt.

He could feel the walls of the Health Office closing in on him. He had to talk to Griffin.

“Ah-choo!”

Logan’s sneeze was completely unconvincing. He grimaced in annoyance. He was never going to get that allergy commercial if he couldn’t come up with a better sneeze than that. And then Logan Kellerman would never get to be as famous as Ferris Atwater, Jr., already was.

Practice!

“Ah-choo! Ah-choo! Ah-
choo
!”

He was sneezing so loudly that he almost missed his mother’s scream. By the time he ran downstairs, she was on the phone, wide-eyed and ranting:

“It’s the biggest rat I’ve ever seen in my life! Right in my basement! There’s no way those little mousetraps are going to work on this monster! Bring a shotgun!”

Heart sinking, Logan opened the door
and peered down the cellar stairs. It was too dark to make out much detail, but the beaver’s eyes burned up out of the gloom, red and wild.

He had a giddy vision of the coverall-clad exterminator coming up out of the basement. “Mrs. Kellerman, you don’t have rats; you’ve got beavers. And turtles and salamanders and frogs. In fact, you’ve got a lot of stuff that disappeared off that zoo boat. And your son bears a striking resemblance to Ferris Atwater, Jr.!”

This called for drastic action. As soon as his mom hung up the phone and left the room, he pounced on the handset and hit redial.

“Cedarville Pest Control,” came a voice on the other end.

“Hi. Did you just get a call from the Kellerman house, 414 DeWitt? I’m calling to cancel. It was all a misunderstanding. It wasn’t a rat. It was a stuffed otter. Sorry for the mix-up. Don’t come.”

Man, that was close! Logan didn’t want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t been home.

But an hour later, he was experimenting with different combinations of pepper and
smelling salts, looking for the perfect sneeze, when he heard his mother on the phone again.

“Where are you people? You said right away! … Cancel? Of course I didn’t cancel! Why would I cancel? There’s a rat downstairs that could eat my children! Come
now
!”

And when Logan called to nix the appointment yet again, the exterminator was so angry that he vowed he would refuse to come to the Kellerman house even if there was a T. rex chewing on the roof shingles.

Logan let out a breath. He was safe — for now. But there were other exterminators in other towns. Mom wasn’t going to let this lie. They had to get rid of the animals. And fast!

Cleopatra was the first to sense that something was not right. She danced nervously around the kitchen, swinging on the cabinet knobs, chattering in agitation.

“What is it, Cleo?” Savannah asked. “What’s wrong?”

Ding-dong
.

The monkey jumped into Savannah’s arms and clung there, trembling.

“Come on, sweetie, we’ll see who it is.”

She threw the front door wide open. There stood Mr. Nastase and Klaus.

“I knew it!” the zookeeper exclaimed in triumph. “I knew I’d find Eleanor here!”

Savannah slammed the door in their faces. “
Dad!
”

In a split second, Mr. Drysdale was at her side. He opened the door again. “Is there any reason why you two are trespassing on our property?”

“That monkey was stolen from my zoo!” Mr. Nastase said coldly.

“I’ll tell you what you told our lawyer a couple of weeks ago,” said Mr. Drysdale. “All capuchins look alike, and you can’t prove this one is yours. My daughter’s pet was lost, and now she’s home. That’s all that matters here.”

“Your daughter is a criminal,” the zookeeper accused. “She was part of a group of juvenile delinquents who broke into my zoo and stole forty valuable animals!”

Mr. Drysdale was blown away. “Who do you think she is — Jesse James? Savannah and her friends are eleven years old! They’re no more capable of pulling off what happened at your zoo than they are of flying to the moon!”

“The kid who attacked me was half the size of her,” rumbled Klaus.

“Look,” said Mr. Drysdale, “we’re animal lovers. We have a lot of pets. But don’t you think I’d notice if there were forty extras around?”

“That depends” — Mr. Nastase’s mustache was nearly two parallel lines — “on how hard you look at what’s
right under your nose
!” He reached for the capuchin in Savannah’s arms.

Cleopatra let out a shriek of terror.

With a
woof
that shook the very foundations of the house, a large, dark shape leaped over the fence from the backyard. By the time Luthor’s big paws hit the grass, he was in full flight, bounding up the front walk to come to the aid of his dearest friend.

Klaus caught sight of the Doberman first. He picked up Mr. Nastase and hoisted him away from the front door. A heartbeat later, Luthor landed on that very spot.

“Run, boss!”

The two took off out of the yard and down the street. If Savannah hadn’t called off her dog, Luthor would have pursued them to the ends of the earth.

The zookeeper and his security man were
still running when they reached their rental car. They threw themselves inside and locked the doors.

“Thank you for that quick thinking, Klaus!” Mr. Nastase panted. “I can’t believe they sicced that monster on us!”

“I think the monkey did that!” Klaus gasped. “It was her voice that brought the dog.”

Still shaken, the zookeeper opened his window. The angry barking had stopped. “The coast is clear.”

Klaus looked puzzled. “I thought Eleanor would be happy to be rescued. But she seemed pretty comfortable with the kid.”

Mr. Nastase was disgusted. “A dumb animal is comfortable with anybody who feeds it.”

“
We
used to feed her,” Klaus pointed out, “but she sure didn’t like it when you got too close. Those people have it wrong, huh? You definitely didn’t steal her?”

“Of course not. I bought her from a reputable animal dealer.”

“Yeah, but how did the dealer get her?” Klaus probed.

The zookeeper was annoyed. “Your job, Klaus, is security — which you might have done better, since all our exhibits are gone.
You let me worry about the animals. I know everything there is to know about each and every one of them.”

From the waterfowl pond in the park next to the Drysdale home, the loon yodeled its distinctive mournful call.

“Filthy pigeons,” Mr. Nastase commented. “Rats with wings.”

W
hen Griffin arrived at school the next morning, the sight that met his eyes nearly stopped his heart. There, seated in the glassed-in outer office, was Mr. Nastase.

Oh, no!

Since the zoobreak, the one thing that had been going in their favor was the fact that the search for the missing animals was taking place in Connecticut. But now Mr. Nasty had found Cedarville. And Dr. Alford and her baboons were not due back for another eight days.

Don’t panic
, Griffin told himself.
It’s just him
;
no cops. He doesn’t know anything for sure
.

When he found the note in his locker, he was certain it was his summons to the office for a face-to-face grilling by the zookeeper. But it wasn’t from the principal. He unfolded the paper and read:

EMERGENCY MEETING!
THE BALLROOM! NOW!

The ballroom was Coach Nimitz’s graveyard for all the broken balls and equipment he couldn’t bring himself to throw in the garbage. Griffin headed down the hallway behind the gym and slipped into the storage room. They were all there, up to their knees in flattened sports gear — Savannah, Pitch, Logan, Melissa, and Ben.

Griffin addressed his best friend first. “I was wondering why I didn’t see you on the way to school.”

Ben looked contrite. “Sorry to gang up on you, Griffin, but everybody agrees. We’ve got to get rid of the animals before it’s too late.”

Griffin nodded in resignation. “I was going to call a meeting anyway. Mr. Nasty is in the principal’s office.”

“Forget that!” Savannah was close to the edge. “He was at my
house
yesterday! Griffin, he
knows!”

“He
suspects
,” Griffin amended. “But remember — that’s Nastase in the office, not the police. He doesn’t want the cops nosing around because he doesn’t want it to come out that he stole Cleopatra in the first place.”

“Are you saying that we’re safe?” Pitch asked incredulously.

“No,” Griffin admitted. “When he finds out exactly where the animals are, and who’s got them,
that’s
when he’ll go to the cops — when it’s an open-and-shut case and we’re the crooks, not him. That means there’s still time.”

“No!” The word was spoken with such force that no one believed it had come from quiet, shy Melissa. “Please! No more time! My baby brother is afraid of stuffed animals because one of them moved! My mother found an egg in my slippers! It can’t go on!”

“Amen to that!” said Logan. “I can’t call every exterminator on Long Island and tell them my mother’s crazy!”

“We got our electric bill,” Ben put in. “It was over seven hundred dollars! My family’s
going broke just to keep the sauna running for the chuckwalla!”

“Our garage is starting to smell like a barn,” Pitch complained.

“I hear you,” Griffin said sadly. “I’m having problems, too, you know. The meerkat tunneled into Mrs. Abernathy’s vegetable garden. Lucky for us the cops thought she was reporting a ‘mere cat’ rather than a ‘meerkat.’ That was a close one.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” Pitch demanded. “Sooner or later we’re going to run out of these lucky breaks.”