Annie's Adventures (11 page)

"Anything," Annie promised. "Anything!"

Pete disappeared inside his van again, then returned with two large wooden blocks to which he'd attached giant rubber bands.

"Here," he offered, holding them out to Annie, "I have the feeling your dad has grown shorter since I last saw him. If he puts these on the gas and brake, he should have no trouble reaching them."

Now there really were tears in Annie's eyes.

"Thanks," she said, rising up on tippytoes to lay a kiss on Pete's stubbly cheek. "You're the best mechanic
ever!
"

"Thank you." Pete touched the place where he'd been kissed. "Almost no one ever kisses me." Then he got serious again as he moved toward his truck, calling, "And promise me one more thing?"

"Anything," Annie said again. "Anything!"

"You still have my number?" he asked.

We nodded.

"Promise me you'll use it if you ever need someone to help you with emergencies even bigger than cars that are perfectly fine or cars that won't start. I'm going to be worrying about you lot."

"You don't need to worry about us, Mr. Pete," Annie said. "We're the Sisters Eight, after all. But I promise, if we need you, we'll call."

***

The ride home was less hair-raising than the previous rides had been, even with the falling snow. With those new blocks on the pedals, Annie could now drive without help.

But it was still hair-raising because we didn't know what we were going home to. Someone had cut a cable in our car, delaying our arrival home. Someone maybe didn't want us to get home at all.

And yet, although we were filled with fear and anticipation, we were tired too.

"It is exhausting," Jackie said, "telling all of these lies to people. Do you think it's wrong of us to do it? Do you think it makes us bad people?"

"No," Annie said slowly, as though she were working the thoughts out even as she was speaking the words, "I don't. Adults train us to tell white lies all the time. They say, 'Tell Aunt Martha she doesn't look fat in that dress.' They say, 'Tell Uncle George his cooking tastes great.' None of that stuff is ever true, but we have to say it to save other people's feelings. Well, now we have to save something bigger: we have to save Mommy and Daddy, maybe even ourselves. If we can lie about fat clothes and bad food and it's okay, I don't see anything wrong with lying to save people's lives. Even if we are having fun while we're doing so."

We were silent for a long moment, digesting all that she had said. Annie really had grown as smart as any adult we knew. Then:

"What do you think is going on at our house right now?" Georgia asked.

"To that," Annie said, driving on into the night, "I have no answer."

CHAPTER TEN

Annie parked the Hummer at the bottom of the drive and killed the lights.

"What are you doing?" Rebecca asked.

"I'm creating the element of surprise," Annie said. "If someone is in the house, it would be better if they didn't see us coming."

"Shouldn't we run the other way?" Petal said.

"No," Annie said. "There are eight of us. Whoever might be up there can't catch all of us at once. We could probably overpower whoever it is. Or at the very least, some of us would be able to get away to tell the tale."

"You don't make that sound very encouraging," Georgia said. "Maybe we'd be better off calling the police?"

"Or maybe we could smoke the person out with a fire?" Rebecca suggested.

"I keep telling you," Annie said, ignoring Rebecca, "the police can't help people like us. They're equipped to handle kids getting kidnapped but not parents getting parentnapped."

"What about Pete?" Georgia pressed. "He comes when we call."

"True," Annie said. Then we saw her shrug in the dark of the car. "But he knows now that we're on our own. If we call him, he'll rethink leaving us that way and turn us in to the coppers."

"What are we going to do, then?" Marcia asked.

"We're going home," Annie said simply.

Then she got out of the car, inviting all of us to do the same.

"I'm not dressed for walking up the driveway in new snow," Petal said.

"I don't like to complain," Zinnia added, "but I am sliding around."

"Hold on to each other's hands," Annie advised, starting a chain. "If we hold on to each other, we'll hold each other up."

"Or," Rebecca said, "one of us will fall, bringing the rest down with her, like dominoes." But she took hold of Georgia's hand just the same and now our chain of eight stretched across the whole driveway.

"We're like a line of linebackers," Marcia said with a nervous giggle.

"Or a line of cut-out paper dolls," Zinnia said.

"Or a line of idiots," Rebecca said.

"Shh," Annie whispered. "We're getting closer."

Now that we were practically upon the house, we sensed that something was wrong.

"There are no lights on," Marcia observed. "If it wasn't for the moonlight, we wouldn't be able to see anything. It's too dark."

"Of course it's dark," Annie hissed. "We didn't leave any lights on."

"But why didn't we?" Jackie asked. "What are we, nuts?"

"We may be," Annie said, "but that's not it. We didn't leave any lights on because we thought we'd be coming home in daylight. We didn't plan on someone sabotaging the Hummer."

"So what will we do when we go in?" Marcia asked. "Will we leave the lights off in case the intruder, if there is one, is still there?"

"Maybe we could bark like a pack of mean dogs to scare the intruder off," Rebecca suggested.

"Don't be daft," Annie said, ignoring Rebecca. "How will we find anything in the dark? Besides, if we leave it dark, someone could sneak up behind us."

We were on the stoop now and we waited, scared, as Annie slowly turned the doorknob. As she turned it, we heard a flutter. In the moonlight, we saw a carrier pigeon, perhaps the one who'd visited us before, circle the house and then fly away.

"I wonder what he wanted," Durinda said, watching him go.

"I guess we'll never know," Annie said. Then she opened the door.

The moonlight revealed a delegation of eight cats waiting for us right inside the door. This was not unusual. We'd been gone longer than planned, and they were probably hungry. Either that or they were planning to lodge another complaint about the condition of the human toilets.

"Meow!" Anthrax said as soon as we were in the door.

"Yes, I know you're hungry," Annie whispered, "and we'll feed you as soon as we can, but we need to take care of something else first."

"Meow!" Anthrax said more violently as Annie switched on the lights.

"Really," Annie started to say, "I promise we'll—"

But Zinnia cut her off. "She's not complaining about hunger," she said. "She's trying to tell us something else."

"How would you know?" Rebecca scoffed. "I suppose you think the cats are talking to you again?"

But Annie ignored Rebecca's scoffing of Zinnia, even if Zinnia didn't.

"Let's look around," Annie said. "We need to investigate each room."

"Shall I run ahead and get your spear for you?" Georgia offered.

We'd noticed that Georgia had changed somewhat. She could still be as testy as Rebecca, but it was as though seeing Annie take charge of the household had caused a grudging admiration to grow in her.

"No, thank you," Annie said. "If you run ahead without us, you might get yourself killed."

That shut Georgia up. That shut all of us up. We were that scared.

The front room was the obvious first room to investigate because, well, it was right there.

"Daddy and Mommy are missing!" Marcia observed with a cry.

"Of course they're missing," Georgia said, proving that while she might now admire Annie, she didn't necessarily admire the rest of us. "They've been missing for weeks!"

"Or dead," Rebecca added.

"I don't mean that," Marcia said. "I mean Daddy Sparky and Mommy Sally." She indicated the spot near the window where they had spent most of their time. "They're not there."

"That's because we moved them to the drawing room so they could have tea while we were at Will's party," Georgia said. "Don't you remember?"

"Oh, right," Marcia said.

It was obvious at a glance that nothing had been disturbed.

But something was still wrong.

The cats were going crazy.

As we tried to move through the front room to the rooms beyond, they kept circling our feet and tripping us up.

"What is the
matter
with all of you?" Annie said, in her annoyance speaking louder than she had been. "Now look what you've done! You've made me speak too loudly, as a result of which the jig is probably up!"

Anthrax would normally have been cowed by the tone in Annie's voice. But instead, she continued to
meow!
loudly, as though she really were trying to tell us something.

"What is it?" Annie hissed.

Anthrax tilted her head upward, making a great show of inhaling. She kept doing it, flaring her nostrils each time.

"I really do think she is trying to tell us something," Zinnia offered.

"Yes, but what?" Annie said.

"I think she wants us to try doing what she's doing," Zinnia said, tilting her own head upward. "Maybe then we'll find out."

Feeling ridiculous, we all did what Anthrax and Zinnia were doing. At first, we smelled nothing. Perhaps the long walk up the driveway had interfered with our sense of smell. Could our nostrils be frozen?

But then, there it was: the faint odor of ... what was that?

"Fruitcake," Annie said with certainty. "I smell fruitcake."

"Are you quite sure?" Marcia asked. "But that's not possible. You threw out the fruitcake the Wicket brought us right after she left that night. The odor should be long gone." She turned to Durinda. "Haven't you taken out the trash since then?"

"Of course," Durinda said. "What kind of slob do you take me for?"

Annie, with Anthrax at her side, led us toward the kitchen, our noses sniffing the air all the while.

But when we got there, it was like playing the game Too Hot, Too Cold, and the scent was almost nonexistent.

"Let's try the other rooms," Annie suggested.

And so we moved on, noses in the air, turning on lights as we went.

We checked the drawing room, cautiously peeking our heads around the corner, one head topping the next from shortest to tallest. We were relieved to find Daddy Sparky and Mommy Sally still having tea. The scent seemed slightly stronger than in the front room, but we looked around and couldn't see anything that had been disturbed.

"Check behind the loose stone to see if another note or something has been left there," Jackie suggested.

But when we looked, there was only empty darkness.

Next we tried Daddy's study, with similar results: a stronger scent than the front room, but no disturbances.

We checked Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall. There was nothing except for in Summer, where the cats had apparently used the beach sand there as a litter box, in a sign of protest.

"Let's check upstairs next," Annie said.

"But shouldn't we first—" Jackie started, but Annie cut her off.

"No," Annie said. "We'll leave
that
room"—and we all knew which room she was talking about—"for last."

But upstairs, the scent was dead cold: no fruitcake aroma at all. Not to mention the cats were going crazy again. They kept circling us, jerking their little heads toward the hallway and the stairs. They were looking at us like we were crazy. Or stupid.

"I guess there really is no avoiding it any longer," Annie said, and we followed once again as she and Anthrax led us all back downstairs.

Once we were at the bottom, Annie placed her hand on Georgia's arm and in a tone of total seriousness said, "Please get the spear now."

Which Georgia did, looking very grim.

With Annie armed ahead of us, we at last approached the closed door to ... Mommy's study.

It was the one room in the house our parents had never allowed us to roam through freely. And since they'd disappeared—or died—other than briefly checking it on New Year's Eve, we'd avoided it like, well, the plague, or at the very least a nest of hornets. Even though our parents were gone, we couldn't disobey their strictest orders. We might eat pink frosting straight from the can or drive their car, but we wouldn't go in Mommy's private study.

But now we had to. There was no other choice.

The smell there was the strongest it'd been yet. More, there was a cold draft coming from beneath the closed door.

"It hasn't been cold like this back here before," Durinda said. "I'm sure I'd have noticed that when I vacuumed the hallways."

"This is no time to defend your cleaning practices," Annie whispered, and she slowly turned the knob on Mommy's study door.

But as she pushed the door open, some force on the other side shoved it closed.

Annie turned the knob again, pressed back against the door with all her might, and wedged the door open a half inch.

The force on the other side pressed harder, and it slammed it shut.

Not even thinking of the danger, we threw our bodies against the closed door, helping Annie push. All we knew was we needed to get in.

This time, we succeeded in pushing the door open a full inch.

But the force on the other side must have been very strong, for the door then slammed shut, and we heard the click of a lock.

"Quick! Get the key!" Annie commanded to someone, anyone.

Jackie raced off and quickly returned with the key.

The key turned with ease, and this time the door gave easily as we pressed against it.

The smell hit us as soon as the door was opened, a smell of fruitcake so big and awful, we gagged.

Worse, the light on Mommy's desk was on and the window behind the desk was wide open. The wind made the sheer white curtains dance into the room.