Chapter 41
Vesta was getting sick and tired of having to wait outside with her cohort while her cats did the dirty work. After they had been in there for five minutes, she was already regretting her decision.
“This isn’t right,” she told her colleagues of the Watch. “We shouldn’t take this cowardly approach and let the cats deal with the most dangerous part of the job. I mean, this is simply inhuman!”
“My thoughts exactly,” grunted Mercedes. “Let’s get in there and get this over with.”
And before Vesta could stop her, the woman was already making a beeline for the house.
Both she and Scarlett stared after her, and Scarlett put it well when she said, “Looks like she is even more gung-ho than you, Vesta. What a great addition to the Watch!”
They hurried after Mercedes and had arrived in the backyard when she thought she saw a light at the back of the yard.
“Let’s check it out,” she suggested, pointing to where the light was on.
“Are you sure you don’t want to check out the house first?” asked Mercedes.
“Light first, house later,” said Vesta, determined not to let Mercedes challenge her leadership. What were things coming to if Mercedes was going to start calling the shots? She might as well not have a Neighborhood Watch at all. Mercedes could patrol the neighborhood all on her own.
As they approached the source of the light, she saw that it was a simple garden house, of the kind that her son-in-law was so nuts about.
She relaxed. “Tex has one exactly like this,” she said as she tried the door.
The light was on inside, she saw, and as she inspected her new surroundings, fully expecting a lawnmower and the usual paraphernalia of the avid amateur gardener, instead she saw boxes loaded onto shelves spread out across the small wooden structure.
“What are these?” she asked as she picked one of the boxes from the shelf and opened it.
The three ladies looked inside and were surprised to find that the box was filled with… bullets.
“Huh,” said Vesta. “Will you look at that.”
“Are these bullets?” asked Scarlett, who had picked one out of the box and held it up to the single light bulb that hung suspended from a naked electric wire.
“Looks like it,” said Mercedes. “And plenty of them, apparently.”
There were dozens of boxes, and they all looked the same.
“Now why would a man have so many bullets in his garden house?” asked Scarlett.
“Because he is a terrorist, of course,” said Vesta. “Haven’t I told you from the start? He’s probably planning some major operation, and he needs plenty of ammo to pull it off.”
“Or maybe he’s selling this stuff on,” Mercedes suggested. “Ammo is expensive, after all, and if he sells it, he’ll make lots and lots of money.”
“What is that?” asked Scarlett as she pointed to what looked like a trapdoor in the floor.
“Oh, Tex has one exactly like that, too,” said Vesta. “He uses it to store his paintings and stuff.” And his god-awful gnomes, since Marge had told him that she didn’t want to see them lying around the house anymore—or dotted around the backyard.
It took the three of them to open the hatch, and as they peered down, it was a little hard to make out what was down below.
Vesta took out her phone and used it to light up the space.
“More boxes,” said Mercedes. “More ammo?”
“Maybe not,” said Vesta as she carefully lowered herself into the space. As she inspected one of the boxes, she read, “TNT.” She frowned. Why did that word sound so familiar? Looking around, she saw a lot of the stuff. TNT everywhere, and also a wooden crate stacked on top of other wooden crates.
“Be careful, Vesta,” said Scarlett.
“I’ve looked it up,” said Mercedes, “and TNT is a sort of explosive. It’s used to make bombs.”
“See?” said Vesta. “A terrorist, just like I told you guys!”
She had managed to pry open the crate and found herself staring down at a box of grenades. Lots and lots of them.
“There are grenades here,” she announced. “Several boxes full of grenades.”
“You’d better get out of there, Vesta,” said Scarlett. “We need to call the police.”
“And the bomb squad,” said Mercedes. “Again.”
Just then, there was a loud scream that seemed to come from the other side of the backyard. As they looked up, a small troupe of cats and one dog came scrambling out of the house and moving in their direction.
“Oh, look,” said Scarlett. “It’s the cats.”
“Looks like something spooked them,” said Mercedes. “Do you think it’s the terrorist?”
“I hope not,” said Vesta. She was starting to get a little nervous, seeing as she was surrounded on all sides by explosives and grenades. If something set off one of these devices, she would probably be blown sky-high. And she did not like that prospect.
The cats had discovered that they were inside the garden house and crowded in there, looking quite overwrought.
“There is a monster in the house!” said Dooley, the most impressionable of the bunch. “And he’s coming after us!”
“It’s Zeke,” said Max, the more intelligent of the cats. “He’s wearing one of those masks.”
“A sleep-apnea mask,” said Harriet. “I think we woke him up when we rifled through his closets. Which are full of guns, by the way.”
“Guns everywhere,” said Brutus. “And also bazookas.”
“This guy is either a massive collector of weapons of every kind,” said Max, “or a terrorist, just as you said, Gran.”
Even though it was certainly gratifying to be proven right, it didn’t alter the fact that they were trespassing in the house of a very dangerous man.
And as she lifted herself out of that hole, with the assistance of Scarlett and Mercedes, she decided that maybe now would be a good time to skedaddle.
But just as they were about to leave the garden house, Dooley cried, “The monster! It’s here!”
They looked where he was pointing and saw that a guy dressed in one of those apnea masks was walking over to them, and he didn’t look happy at all.
He was babbling something that was hard to understand because of the mask, and since she saw no alternative, she quickly shut the door and locked it from the inside.
“Vesta! What did you do!” Scarlett cried.
“I’m protecting us from that maniac, that’s what I’m doing,” she said as she leaned against the door to make sure he couldn’t get inside.
“You locked us in with a ton of explosives!” said Scarlett. “If he throws a grenade in here, we’re all toast!”
She hadn’t really thought that far, and now that she considered it, she had to admit that there was some truth to what her friend said.
“I guess I didn’t consider the consequences,” she admitted. “We should have locked him in here, with us on the outside.”
“Too late now,” said Mercedes as she pointed to the window, where the man’s face had appeared. He had removed the apnea mask and was glaring at them in quite a hostile fashion.
“Trespassers will be shot,” he announced. “And burned at the stake.”
“Why do you keep all of that ammo in here, sir?” asked Mercedes, who wasn’t intimidated even the slightest. “And those grenades? And that TNT?”
“None of your business,” said the man as he yanked open the window and pulled a gun from the recesses of his robe. “I’m calling the cops, and you’re all going to jail, and that includes you, Vesta Muffin!” he stressed, pointing an irate finger at Vesta.
Looked like he had recognized her as easily as she had recognized him.
“If you call the cops, we will be forced to tell them about the bazookas in your bedroom,” said Mercedes, “and the guns. Not to mention all the ammo in here, and the TNT and the grenades.”
The man hesitated, then said as he lifted his chin, “I have every right to keep those stocked here.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” said Mercedes, who was proving herself to be quite the addition to the Watch. “Keeping a ton of TNT in the middle of a residential area is strictly forbidden. What if it all blows up?”
“It’s just for show,” said the guy, who was scrambling now, Vesta saw. “It’s not real. None of it is real. They’re just props. Props that I use in my lessons at the academy.”
“So if we pull the pin from one of those grenades, nothing will happen?” asked Mercedes. “Is that what you’re telling us?”
“Absolutely,” said the man, but he didn’t seem as belligerent as he had been.
“Look, you’re going down, buster,” said Vesta. “For the ammo, and for the rest of it. But first tell me, what were you doing this afternoon at the police academy?”
“Yeah, did you set fire to that armory?” asked Scarlett. “Did you set the fire on purpose?”
“Was it you that caused that explosion?” asked Mercedes.
The guy eyed them quite darkly for a moment, his eyes traveling from face to face, then finally a strange grin traveled up his face.
“You know, you are just a little too nosy for my taste. Snooping around where you’re not supposed to.
I think I’m going to give you a taste of your own medicine for a change. ”
And with these words, he slammed the window shut and locked it from the outside.
“Oh, dear,” said Scarlett. “Looks like we have made him mad.”
“What can he do?” asked Vesta. “Let’s call the cops and have this terrorist arrested.”
“Gran, I think he’s setting fire to the garden house,” said Max as he sniffed the air.
At that moment, she saw smoke wafting from underneath the door and knew that Max was right.
Uh-oh!
“Open that door,” said Scarlett. “Open it now!”
But try as they might, the door wouldn’t budge.
Zeke must have blocked it from the outside, and he was determined to see them burn alive, just so he could ‘give them a taste of their own medicine,’ whatever that meant.
Looked like they were in some real trouble now!