Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job (15 page)

It took two of us. We were both scared, yet excited, too, as we took the little “shicken” table out onto the barely slanting roof so Jeremy could stand on it to hold the plastic bag in place after I'd eased it over the papery nest. I was shaking, and it was all I could do to make myself touch it, which was necessary because it just barely went into the bag.

“Now, you hold the bag up tight against the roof,” I said. We had the flashlight lying on the windowsill; we couldn't aim it at the wasp nest, so it wasn't easy to see what we were
doing. I had taken a tiny spatula from the toy dishes in the “shicken,” and now I began to pry at the edges of the nest where it was stuck to the eaves.

I could have done it faster if I hadn't been so scared I'd knock a hole in it and set the wasps free. I inched around it from all sides, loosening the nest, until Jeremy said, “Hurry up, Darcy, my arms hurt!”

I sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. Hold it as tight as you can now, and I'll knock it the rest of the way off.”

And then the nest came loose; I grabbed the bag, twisted the top, and secured it with the twistem that had come with it.

I was drenched in sweat when I placed the bag and nest on the little table and helped Jeremy down.

He was back inside the cupola, and I had one leg over the bottom of the window ledge, when we heard doors slamming and voices below. I could hear them as plainly as I had from the bedroom below.

“They're not in the house. You must have let them walk right past you or something,”
Henry said, furious. “We gave you the easiest job; even a moron could have done it; and you blew it!”

By now they had flashlights, too. I saw the beams sweep through the trees on that side of the house.

“Here's how they got out, you fool,” Pa Hazen said, and I heard the garbage can lid clatter. “They got past you and out the window.” It never occurred to them that we could have escaped without the garbage can and could only have moved it under the window after we were out, in order to get back in.

“Then they have to be still on the grounds,” Dan said defensively. “The gates were locked. We'll just get the dogs out here, and they'll find them.”

“The fool dogs let them go downstairs; what makes you think they'll find them for us?” There was a savagery in Henry that made me glad he'd stopped short of finding the tiny door at the far end of the attic.

“Well, even if the dogs
like
the kids, they'll probably find them,” Dan insisted. “Let me call them out here.”

“Not with me around,” Pa Hazen said, and then the car door slammed.

Dan whistled, and I heard the Dobermans. They went running.

“Find the kids,” Dan ordered, and I saw the lights touching the trees again.

It was dark where we were and I didn't dare use my own flashlight, even though they probably weren't looking for us on the roof. But I had to know what was going on. I began to walk very carefully toward the edge of the roof, then dropped down to my hands and knees, feeling very carefully ahead of me before I moved.

“Here!” Dan shouted, and the dogs ran barking enthusiastically toward him, plunging into the shrubbery. “There's another gate here, and it isn't even shut! They must have got out here!”

There was more cursing, and the brothers came back to the car. I couldn't hear what they said then, because they stuck their heads in through the open car windows. I prayed they'd all get in the car and drive away, and then I could use the phone.

Something flickered in the darkness. For a
minute I didn't know what it was. I stared off over the tops of the trees toward the main road.

Lights, familiar lights. Blue, blinking lights.

A police car.

It wasn't very close, but there was a police car out there. Could they have followed the Hazens when they picked up the suitcase with the money? Or were they there for something else entirely?

I moved back a yard or two from the edge of the roof and shined my light at the distant car, but it was too little; I knew that at once.

Did the lights inside the cupola still work? I didn't know, we hadn't tried them, but I called back to Jeremy, who stood at the open window.

“Try the light switch, there at the top of the stairs!”

A moment later light flooded the whole top of the house. There were some excited exclamations from below; but it was too late to worry about the Hazens.

“Flick it off and on,” I said, and Jeremy obediently wiggled the switch up and down.

SOS, I thought. Was it three shorts, three
longs, or the other way around? Once you got started, what difference did it make?

The blinking blue lights were still there, though I couldn't tell if they were in the same place or not. If the car was facing this way, a driver couldn't help seeing the beacon of light streaming out from the cupola, could he?

I made a dive for the window, feet skidding momentarily on the gritty roofing, and then I was over the sill, pushing Jeremy's fingers off the light switch. Long, long, long—short, short, short. SOS.

“Oh, help, please help!” I cried.

Melissa sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes in bewilderment. “What's the matter? Aren't we home yet?”

“Here, Jeremy, keep doing this,” I said. “I have to see if that police car is still out there—”

It wasn't.

I stood at the window, disappointment almost bending me double with pain. How could they not have seen the beacon? How could they not have understood the message? Every Scout in the world knows the signal for SOS, doesn't he?

The Hazens were yelling; and then I realized that the voices weren't outside anymore. “There must be a way up from the attic!” Henry hollered, and the door slammed again. Twice.

The police car had gone, and now the kidnappers knew where we were. Jeremy was still flipping the light switch; and in a few minutes they'd find us, and there was no help on the way.

For the first time I thought I'd really cry, only how could I, with Jeremy looking so hopeful, and Melissa so scared, and Shana just waking up, too.

A moment later, we heard men's heavy feet on the attic stairs.

It would be only a matter of minutes, at most, before the kidnappers found the tiny door behind the mattress. They'd seen our signal lights; they knew we had to be up here.

I'd hoped that if they saw the light they'd take the money and run, leaving us to be rescued. If they were coming after us, instead, I figured it was for one reason, because I saw it that way on TV: they would hold us as hostages, to make sure the police wouldn't shoot at them and keep them from getting away.

The kids were looking to me for help, the fear back in their faces, even Shana's, though I'm sure she didn't know what was happening. She only knew that everyone else was afraid, so she was afraid, too.

The plastic bag was there, and a few of
the wasps had come out of the grayish globe and were crawling around. The rest of them would undoubtedly come out, too, as soon as they could.

I didn't have much time to think. “Come on, out the window, all of you,” I ordered. Only Jeremy obeyed, and I picked up first Shana and then Melissa and stuck them through the opening after their brother.

“Don't move around, lie down right there,” I instructed. The last thing I wanted was for any of them to get near the edge of the roof. With the lights blazing in the cupola, we could at least see where the edge was, but the kids were so little, Shana hardly more than a baby and still groggy from just waking up.

The men below had found the door to the cupola room. I had only seconds to spare as I slid through the window opening out onto the roof and reached back inside for the plastic bag.

Just as Henry's head appeared at the top of the stairs opposite my window, I turned the plastic bag upside down, inside the room, and tugged the window closed.

Henry had seen me, and he had no idea what I'd just done. He ran toward me, with Dan only a few steps behind him, his rage plain enough on his face to make me shudder.

And then all of a sudden, just as Henry put out his hands to raise the window again, the wasps did what they were supposed to do.

I was terrified of the men, and I guess maybe I hated them, too, for what they'd done and were trying to do. Yet I almost felt sorry for them as the wasps began to sting.

There were a dozen or more of them around Henry's head, landing on his face and his ears, before he understood what was happening.

He took his hands off the window and started yelling and beating at the wasps, which only made them madder than they already were. I hadn't even had time to flop down flat on the roof like the kids—for once they'd obeyed orders immediately, without argument—and I was staring straight into Henry's face as the wasps landed on him, all over every exposed bit of skin.

He screamed and clawed at his eyes, and then he turned and stumbled back down those steep, narrow stairs.

By this time Dan was screaming and crying. He, too, headed almost blindly for the stairs; I heard him fall, still screaming.

Some of the other windows had remained open, so we heard them very plainly. A few wasps darted out into the darkness of the rooftop, but most of them buzzed and spun in the cupola room, seeking their enemies. So far none of them had come anywhere near us; they stayed in the lighted area.

From below, Pa Hazen started to yell. “Hey, what's going on up there? What's happening? Come on, we gotta get out of here!”

I doubt if Henry and Dan heard him. I could imagine them still fighting off the stinging creatures that crawled down their necks and up their sleeves and into their ears.

A new element was added about then, when the dogs began to bark furiously. I thought Pa Hazen had become alarmed enough to get out of the car—which wasn't a wise thing to do, because the Dobermans went after him, from the sound of things.

Jeremy, wide-eyed, was sitting up, tugging at my pants leg. “Darcy, look! Look!”

And when I turned away from the awful sight of the Hazen brothers and the wasps, I saw the most welcome sight in the world.

Coming fairly fast through the woods was a car with spinning blue lights that flickered in and out between the trees.

•  •  •

Things were pretty confusing for a while. Expecting to drive out immediately, the Hazens had closed the gate but not locked it. The police car came through, and before it had stopped in the yard beside the black sedan, I could hear sirens in the distance, and then we saw the lights of more emergency vehicles. There were at least four of them.

“It's the cops!” Jeremy cried. “We're saved, Darcy! We're rescued!”

It wasn't quite as simple as that, because we were on the roof three tall stories above the ground, and we couldn't go back through the cupola room because it was full of wasps, though Henry and Dan were gone. Even if they were in the attic, or downstairs, I didn't think they'd be dangerous anymore.

I dropped to my hands and knees and crept
over to the edge of the roof, staying far enough back to be sure I wouldn't fall. Two uniformed officers had gotten out of the patrol car—between their headlights, the revolving blue lights, and the headlights on the old black sedan, it was light as day down there—and they drew their guns.

Pa Hazen had gotten back into the black sedan and one of the Dobermans was on each side of it, leaping toward the windows, barking and snarling. I made a mental note never to kick a Doberman. Apparently they didn't forget easily.

I yelled when it dawned on me that the officers were going to shoot the dogs. “No! Don't shoot them, they saved our lives! Don't shoot!”

The officers looked up, and another patrol car eased through the gate. “You one of the Foster kids?” one of them called up, and relief flowed through me so strongly that I felt dizzy and pulled back from the edge of the roof.

“I'm the baby-sitter, Darcy Stevens!” I shouted, to make sure they heard me over the sound of the dogs. “Down, boys! Sit! You hear me, sit!”

To everybody's astonishment, including mine, the dogs fell back from the black sedan, their tongues hanging out, their fangs catching the light in great sharp points.

“Good boys,” I said. “Good dogs.”

“Are the Foster kids with you?” There was a circle of police officers, now, and some other men who weren't in uniform; I thought they were probably police, too. Plain clothes detectives, maybe, or FBI men.

“They're here. We're all right, but we can't get down the way we came up because the cupola is full of wasps. The other two kidnappers got stung, and they went down the stairs,” I explained.

“You stay right there, back from the edge,” the spokesman told me. “We'll get you down. We'll call for a fire department ladder truck.”

So that was how we got off the roof. Firemen carried Jeremy and Melissa and Shana, which Jeremy thought was great fun; and I climbed down by myself. I'd have felt silly being carried, as big as I was. I was glad I was wearing jeans.

The fireman had to put on special clothes
and masks because of the wasps. They didn't have any trouble with Dan and Henry, who came out of the house in a very subdued state and were put into the back of one of the police cars. Pa Hazen was in a different one, yelling to be taken to the hospital.

I decided Tim must be right about the stings being like the venom of a rattlesnake, because those kidnappers were so sick and swollen I wouldn't even have recognized them.

By the time we got down, Clancy was there with the others. He called me over to his own patrol car and stuck a mike in my face. “Here, talk to Mr. Foster.”

Mr. Foster kept asking if everybody was all right, and I kept telling him they were. Mrs./Dr. Foster was there at the police station, too, and she sounded as if she were crying. And then they let me talk to my dad, who was there with them. I had to tell it all over again for him, that nobody was hurt except the kidnappers.