Chapter 40
The trip into town went pretty uneventfully. We didn’t crash into any vehicles, didn’t demolish any houses, try to mow down a row of police academy recruits, or even set off any explosions. In other words: quite a relaxing way to spend one’s time.
It certainly boded well for the rest of the Neighborhood Watch stakeout, and I hoped that our good fortune would hold up throughout the night, and we would all arrive home safe and sound with the evidence Gran was keen to collect safely recorded on her phone.
“I don’t like this,” said Mercedes, who seemed a lot less predisposed to establishing a positive mental attitude than I was. “I don’t like this one little bit.”
“What don’t you like about it, Mercedes?” asked Scarlett.
“It’s the fact that we’re doing this at night, isn’t it?
” said Gran. “You would prefer to be in bed right now, like a regular person. But I’m afraid this is the life we chose, honey.
When you’re part of the Neighborhood Watch, you give up the kind of creature comforts that others take for granted.
But in return, you get to do the best job in the world: keeping the people in those beds safe at night. ”
“It’s not that,” said Mercedes, who seemed a little moody, I thought.
“It’s just that I don’t like going after a guy who’s got nothing to do with the death of my son.
I feel we should be focusing on the investigation, not on some weirdo who has taken a fancy to your granddaughter—no offense, Vesta. ”
“None taken,” said Gran. “Well, maybe a little. I mean, my granddaughter is being hunted by this predator, and I need to make sure that he doesn’t succeed, or it will be the end of my family. You do understand how important that is to me, don’t you, Mercedes?”
“Of course I understand. But my son was murdered. He was shot in cold blood. And finding his killer is my number-one priority at the moment. Surely you can see that, Vesta.”
Gran pressed her lips together in a thin line, and I could tell that the friendship that had started to spring up between these two ladies was already fraying at the edges.
“Look, I promise that as soon as we have proven beyond a doubt that Zeke Hunkoff is a terrorist, and we have convinced Odelia of the same, we will go after the murderer of your son. We will find him and we will hand him over to the police for questioning.”
“I would like to do the questioning myself, if you don’t mind,” said Mercedes. “I would like to question the heck out of that guy. I would question him so hard that he will want to run screaming to his mommy when I’m done with him.”
“We don’t condone vigilante violence, Mercedes,” said Scarlett, just in case it wasn’t clear. “We capture the crooks and deliver them to the authorities. That’s the deal we made with Alec, and we need to stick to it, or he will forbid us from patrolling the streets at night.”
“Alec is a pretty hard-nosed individual,” said Gran. “When he tells us we can’t do a thing, he means it.”
“Is that why you’re still driving your BearCat, even though Alec has told you not to?”
Gran’s expression soured even further. “If he would give us a nice replacement vehicle, I would be all for relinquishing the BearCat. But he hasn’t made an offer yet, so we will need to keep driving this monstrosity.”
“Fair enough,” said Mercedes. She was staring out of the window and watching the streets of Hampton Cove zoom by. The lights had come on everywhere, and dog walkers had stopped walking their dogs and were all in bed, and so were their dogs. At least the ones who hadn’t gone down to dog choir.
“I miss cat choir,” said Harriet. “I mean, I keep missing cat choir. First we needed to handle that arsonist last night, and now this. When are we ever going to be able to go to cat choir again, you guys?”
“As soon as the danger to our family has been stopped,” I said, “and the killer of Mercedes’s son has been found and arrested.”
“But that could take years! You know how hard it is to find the perpetrator of any crime, Max. And even harder if the crime is particularly heinous, like in this case.”
“We will catch the killer,” Brutus assured her.
“Yes, Max will figure it out,” said Dooley. “Won’t you, Max?”
“Max’s brain has tripled in size in the past month alone,” said Brutus. “So this should be a cinch for him.”
“Tripled in size?” I asked. “But how?”
“Because your head has tripled in size,” Brutus pointed out. “And since nature abhors a vacuum, it decided to fill up all of that space with fresh brains.”
“My head hasn’t tripled in size,” I protested. “If anything, it has shrunk, since Odelia has me eating a special type of diet kibble.” Which, to be honest, tasted like cardboard. Maybe it was. It certainly wasn’t very filling. But when I told Odelia about this, she ignored me.
Looked like she had come to the end of the line when it came to buying different types of kibble.
Then again, I do have to admit that I’m a picky eater.
We had arrived at the house where Odelia’s instructor lived.
Or was he her drill commander? I still wasn’t entirely up to date on what exactly Odelia got up to in that police academy of hers.
Possibly she learned how to defuse a nuclear bomb—always a useful skill, as James Bond has shown us on more than one occasion.
“Is this where he lives?” asked Pippy as she glanced out of the window of the BearCat. “It doesn’t look very nice.”
She was right. The home that Zeke Hunkoff had built for himself looked a little run-down, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he had given a fake address.
“No sane person would live here,” said Scarlett, proving she was of the same opinion. “Look how run-down it is, and how filthy the sidewalks are. They don’t even remove the weeds.”
She was right. Weeds were poking through the cracks in the pavement and made the whole scene feel like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. Any moment now, a horde of zombies might show up and attack us.
“Let’s go,” said Gran.
“Don’t you want to spend some time watching the house first?” asked Scarlett, who seemed as reluctant to investigate this man Zeke as the rest of us were.
“Better to rip off that Band-Aid,” said Gran, “and move out. So let’s go, people. Chop, chop!” She accompanied the last words by clapping her hands. Which had the effect of a gun on the runners in a race: we all got out of the car and headed for the place under surveillance.
“You’re not going to ring the doorbell, are you, Vesta?” asked Scarlett. “Because I don’t think it’s a good idea to announce our arrival.”
“We need to use the element of surprise,” Mercedes agreed. “Knock down that door and storm in and pin the guy to the floor while the rest search the premises.”
“We can’t do that, Mercedes,” said Gran, even though I got the impression that she would have loved to do that and more.
“Why not? You’ve got a ram on the BearCat. All you need to do is give that front door a gentle tap, and it will fly off its hinges, allowing us to access the place.”
“We’re not the police, Mercedes,” said Scarlett. “If we go barging in there, the suspect could have us charged with trespassing—or even sue us. And we definitely don’t want that.”
“We have done it in the past,” said Gran, “but it has come back to bite us in the behind, as Alec really hates it when we do that.”
“He calls it disturbing the peace,” said Scarlett with an eye roll. “I mean, really? Who is disturbing the peace? The guy we have managed to nab in the act of doing something deeply suspicious or even criminal, or the people who are bringing him to justice?”
“Um… is that a trick question?” asked Mercedes.
But since the conversation wasn’t really conducive to a pleasant atmosphere, Gran decided not to take the bait and simply ignored Mercedes.
“Let the cats go first would be my advice,” said Scarlett. “And then once the coast is clear, we will all follow and take a look around the place.”
Looked like the Watch was taking their usual approach: let us deal with the most difficult task of ensuring that the present tenant or owner was absent from the scene, or at least asleep in bed or on the couch, and then allow the human contingent to move in.
“Is this always how it goes?” asked Pippy as we crossed the road to take a closer look at the place.
“Mostly,” I confirmed. “Gran and Scarlett like to use us as scouts to make sure that the coast is clear. And then once they’re convinced that they can go in without a chance of being caught, they follow suit.”
“Seems a little… cowardly,” said Pippy.
We all looked up at this piece of criticism that the tiny doggie had leveled at Gran and Scarlett and the way they handled things in the Neighborhood Watch.
When she saw that her words had elicited a stunned silence on our parts, she quickly backpedaled.
“I didn’t want to cause offense,” she hastened to say.
“Or to hurt anyone’s feelings. Just that I don’t think it’s fair to use pets as scouts, since they’re the ones who are most exposed and put in a dangerous situation. ”
“We’re used to it by now,” Brutus assured her. “And also, we try to stay out of trouble. Mostly.”
“I think Mercedes was right, and we should focus on finding Harley’s killer,” she said, once again firing a shot across the bow and challenging Gran’s wisdom in the approach she had decided to take.
“But then I guess this is my very first stakeout, so I’m sure you guys know what you’re doing more than me. ”
“Mostly we have no idea what we’re doing,” said Harriet, “but we do it anyway.”
The house was dark and looked pretty unappealing, not to mention uninviting.
“We should have brought the Germinator along,” said Brutus. “He could have busted down that door.”
The door did indeed look pretty sturdy. And since cats don’t have the natural affinity with doors that humans do, we walked around the back to see if there wasn’t a different way to enter the property.