“No, for Harriet not to sing anymore,” he said.
Harriet gave him a poke in the ribs. “Dooley! How can you say that!”
“It hurts my ears when you sing, Harriet!” he cried. “I know I’ve never said it before, but it does! My ears bleed when you sing! There, I’ve said it!”
“But Dooley! I thought you loved my singing! Max, you love my singing, don’t you?”
“Well…”
“These are our final moments, Max,” Dooley reminded me. “You should be honest and tell Harriet the truth.”
He was right. If you can’t tell the truth in your final moments before you face certain death, when can you? And so I steeled myself. “Okay, so I don’t really enjoy your singing either, Harriet. Like Dooley says, it hurts my ears. A lot.”
“But Max!” Harriet cried. “You never said! How about you, pookie?”
“Um….” said Pookie.
“Not you, too! I don’t believe this! You’ve all been lying to me all this time?”
“We haven’t been lying,” I said. “We just haven’t told you the truth. There’s a difference.”
“Max is right,” said Brutus. “We would never lie to you, buttercup. But sometimes we don’t tell you the truth—just to spare your feelings, you know.”
“Oh. My. God! This is the worst day of my life!”
“Yeah, it’s not the greatest day of my life either,” I said. All I could think about was that either I was going to have my throat slit or I was about to drown. Neither option held a lot of appeal to me.
The bag was swinging from side to side as Johnny carried us on his back. Moments later we were put down on a hard surface, and I thought this was the moment. The moment he was going to take out his big knife and do his worst. But instead we heard a door slam and a car engine turning over. Before long, we were mobile again, rocking and bumping over uneven terrain, just like before.
“I don’t understand,” said Brutus. “Where is he taking us?”
“Maybe he wants to drown us in the lake?” I suggested.
“But I don’t want to drown in the lake!” said Dooley.
“I don’t want to drown, period,” said Brutus dryly.
The trip seemed endless, and then all of a sudden it ended. The van pulled to a stop and the door was opened, and the bag grabbed again before being placed down. There was a sort of scratchy noise and then the bag fell away, and we found ourselves blinking. Johnny stared down at us and gave us a smile. Then he waved. “See you around, little buddies.”
When we looked around, we saw that he had dropped us off in front of our own home! And then he got back into the van and took off in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes—not a fan of electric vehicles, this one, but of sturdy old diesel.
“But… I thought he was going to murder us,” said Harriet.
Instead, we watched him take off at a fast clip, and turn the corner at the end of the street with screeching tires before disappearing from view. We all yipped in jubilation, but then all of a sudden I became aware of Harriet looking at us in a not-so-friendly way, tapping the tarmac with her front paw.
“So you don’t like my singing, huh!” she said in a snappish sort of tone.
Uh-oh!
CHAPTER 24
As we stood there, wondering how to escape Harriet’s ire, a fleet of police vehicles came driving up and parked in front of the house next door. We watched as Chase got out of one of the vehicles, accompanied by Uncle Alec, Odelia, and several officers. They hurried up to the Trapper place and applied their fingers to the buzzer.
“Why are they calling on the Trappers in the middle of the night?” asked Brutus. “Don’t they know they’re fast asleep?”
“Maybe they want to ask them an urgent question?” Dooley suggested.
“Or maybe Ted has been a naughty boy,” Brutus said. “And now they’ve come to arrest him.”
“Ted may not be a very nice man sometimes,” I said, “but I can’t imagine he would ever knowingly break the law.”
“No, he definitely is the epitome of the law-abiding citizen,” Brutus agreed.
“Look, you can try and distract my attention all you want,” said Harriet. “But it won’t work, you know. You’ve all been busted. You don’t like my singing and yet you pretended all this time that you did! So who else doesn’t like my singing? Tell me!”
When the ringing of the bell didn’t work, Chase used his fist to bang on the door, while Uncle Alec used his fist to bang on the front window. And when that didn’t produce the desired effect, Odelia started yelling, “Police! Open the door!”
“Looks like it’s really urgent,” said Brutus.
“Must be important,” said Dooley.
“Maybe they urgently need an accountant?” I suggested.
Brutus laughed. “An accountancy emergency. Good one, Max.”
We saw that another car had driven up. It was Gran’s little red Peugeot, and as the old lady parked behind the fleet of police vehicles, she and Scarlett got out and joined the growing throng of people on the Trappers’ doorstep desiring to speak with the couple.
