The campers liked the sound of that.
As the ovation died down, one of the junior counselors rushed up onstage and whispered in Wendy’s ear. A moment later, Mr. Worling, the camp director, appeared in the company of none other than E. J. Smith.
In the back row, Logan and Melissa held their collective breath.
Mr. Worling stepped forward, his face grave. “I have a serious matter that can’t wait. One or more of our campers was where they shouldn’t have been yesterday. The woods are off-limits beyond camp property, but this goes deeper than that. This goes to the level of breaking and entering and trespassing on private property.”
“Don’t worry,” Melissa whispered to Logan, who was draining of all color. “He never saw us. There’s no way anybody could know who it was.”
E. J. Smith joined the camp director. “The culprit left this on the floor behind my couch.” He held up what looked like a colorful fat shoestring.
All the air came out of Melissa and Logan. It was a gummy caterpillar.
“A piece of candy?” Wendy exclaimed. “That could have come from anybody. Who knows how long it’s been there?”
“Oh! Oh!” Mary Catherine’s hand shot up. “That’s one of the caterpillars Timon and Pumbaa eat during ‘Hakuna Matata’!”
“Well, it couldn’t have been Timon,” Wendy reasoned. “Bobby was sitting right next to me for the videos yesterday. Who plays Pumbaa?”
Mary Catherine was on her feet, pointing. “Logan! Logan did it! It was Logan!”
“Don’t admit anything!” Melissa hissed. “They have no proof!”
But it would have taken a lot more than that to settle Logan down. A cornered animal will either attack or play dead. Not Logan Kellerman. He could be counted upon to launch into a dramatic scene.
“All right, I did it! And I’m proud! That man is not who he says he is! E. J. Smith went down with the Titanic a hundred years ago!”
There was a buzz of confusion. What did the Titanic have to do with gummy caterpillars?
“We were protecting the poor man’s privacy!” Wendy tried to explain.
But Logan was not to be stopped. “He’s no ‘poor man’!” he thundered. “He’s a ruthless, low-down, slimy dognapper!”
To the crowd, this made even less sense than the Titanic. Why would there be a dognapper in the middle of the woods, where there were no dogs?
Wendy’s eyes bulged. “What dog?”
Logan opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment, Melissa tackled him to the ground.
Mr. Worling’s face was a thundercloud. “Have you all lost your minds? This is no dognapper, and he’s certainly not the captain of the Titanic! Take a good look at him! He’s Mickey Bonaventure, the famous actor, and every year he summers in these woods! And to show the kind of good neighbor he is, he’s volunteered to be the judge of the Showdown!”
Melissa squinted at the bearded man. No wonder he was so familiar! Mickey Bonaventure had been a major movie star back in the ’80s. His movies were still on TV, if you stayed up after midnight. The person before them was thirty years older now, and the beard covered part of his face. But there was no question that this was the same guy.
The “Aaaahhh!” of recognition from the campers soon faded as the pleasant surprise of meeting a celebrity turned sour. Mickey Bonaventure had the power to decide the winner of tomorrow’s contest — and Logan had broken into his house and called him a low-down, slimy dognapper. What if that cost them the Showdown? Dozens of angry faces sought out the guilty party, who was lying face-first in the dirt, where Melissa had leveled him.
Logan could feel the hostility roiling around him. All actors, he knew, had to suffer for their art.
But this was ridiculous.
* * *
The infirmary was a small white building next to the mess hall. Logan lay on one of the cots, a cold cloth on his forehead and a hot water bottle under his feet. He had taken this treatment upon himself. The nurse had not done anything for him. She was not talking to him, like everyone else in the camp. He had prejudiced the judge against Ta-da!, spoiling their best chance ever to snap the Showdown losing streak. He was not a camper anymore. He wasn’t even a human being. He was something to be put out with the trash.
The only person who stuck by him was Melissa. “Maybe it’ll be okay,” she told him, trying to cheer him up.
He was inconsolable. “Nothing is ever going to be okay again. Mickey Bonaventure! Why didn’t I know? I should have felt the aura of a fellow actor!”
“Maybe it was the beard that threw you off,” she suggested lamely. “He looks pretty different now.”
“He’s the only person I’ve ever met who’s got connections in Hollywood! Someone who could have recognized my talent, taken me under his wing, introduced me to the right people! And what did I do? I called him a low-down dognapper!”
“A low-down, slimy dognapper,” Melissa amended.
“He’ll never work with me now!” Logan lamented. “He hates me. I mean, everybody hates me, but I only care about him! He’s probably already phoned all the big movie studios and warned them never to hire me!”
“That’s okay,” Melissa reasoned. “Because he thinks your name is Ferris Atwater, Jr. Logan Kellerman is still clean.”
“My life is over.”
“It is not,” Melissa said stoutly. “You have plenty to be thankful for. You’re not kicked out of camp. You’re not even kicked out of the Showdown.”
“Only because it’s too late to train a new warthog,” Logan mourned.
“There’s only one thing that bothers me,” Melissa mused.
“You’re lucky,” Logan moaned. “There are about six hundred that bother me.”
“Believe it or not, Logan Kellerman, this isn’t all about you. Think! If Mickey Bonaventure is innocent, we could still have a dognapper on the loose. And whoever it is has had all the time in the world while we focused on the wrong person.”
From: Melissa
To: Griffin
E. J. Smith not dognapper. We blew it.
Over the years, Melissa Dukakis had sent tens of thousands of texts, e-mails, IMs, tweets, and electronic communications of every possible variety. But this one was the hardest by far.
She had let down her friends.
The banner stretched between two trees high across the dirt drive that led into Ta-da! Campers lined both sides of the road, cheering and calling greetings as the buses roared into the compound.
Logan could barely raise his head high enough to get a look at the arriving competition. This should have been the greatest day of his life, the day that he’d prove his talent in front of a real Hollywood insider. But now the Showdown was already lost, thanks to him, and he was Public Enemy Number One. How could it be any worse?
Over the excited shouts, he distinctly heard the muffled sound of a dog howling.
His head snapped up, and he looked at Melissa. “Was that what I think it was?”
She nodded gravely. “The counselors were patrolling the compound last night. I couldn’t get Luthor any food or take him for his walk.”
“He won’t starve up there, will he?”
“I checked some online dog sites this morning,” Melissa replied. “He’s okay for now. The problem is that, the hungrier he gets, the louder he’s going to be. And it’s only a matter of time until someone figures out where all that howling is coming from.”
The buses unloaded, and the host campers greeted the competition and began to escort them toward the main compound, where burgers and hot dogs already sizzled on charcoal grills.
One of the drivers approached the Spotlight head counselor. “Hey, lady, we’re done here, right? You don’t need us till it’s time to leave?”
The woman said something about the drivers being invited for lunch, but Melissa’s whirling mind missed all that.
“Logan!” she hissed. “That bus driver — he doesn’t know the name of his own boss!”
Logan glar
ed at her. “My career is ruined, and you expect me to care that some total stranger is a little forgetful?”
“Think of the Ta-da! drivers,” she persisted. “Most of them have been working here for years. They not only know all the counselors’ names, they remember most of ours!”
Logan shrugged. “So the regular driver got sick, and they had to hire a new guy. Happens all the time.”
The driver brushed past them, and it was all Melissa and Logan could do to keep from crying out. Folded in the man’s shirt pocket was a newspaper clipping they both recognized instantly. Logan had a copy of it taped to his bedroom mirror; Melissa used it as wallpaper for several of her computers and mobile devices. It was an article about the Global Kennel Society Dog Show, and the picture was of Luthor.
“It’s him!” Melissa breathed. “The dognapper!”
The fact that the enemy was upon them for real jolted Logan out of his funk. “We’ve got to keep him from finding out Luthor’s here!”
A mournful canine howl wafted on the air.
The man stiffened, trying to pinpoint the direction of the sound. The other driver rushed over, and they held a whispered conference, scanning the various buildings.
“I’ll bet he’s in on it, too,” Logan concluded. “Swindle couldn’t get Luthor with one dognapper, so he sent two guys this time.”
“We have to stop them,” Melissa said with determination.
They joined the barbecue, socking away as many burgers as they ate. Luthor was going to be extra hungry today. But their eyes never left the two bus drivers. On the surface, the men were eating lunch, helping themselves to hot dogs and drinks. But it was obvious that they were scouting out Camp Ta-da!, wandering on the periphery of the party, peering into cabins and other buildings. Every now and then, one of them would drop a napkin and stoop to pick it up, checking the crawl spaces under the structures. And, Melissa noted with a sinking heart, they were working their way closer and closer to the performance center. Sooner or later they’d get to a place where the dog’s barking would betray his location in the barn.
“Ferris — can I have a word?”
Logan had been so wrapped up following today’s dognappers that he hadn’t given a thought to yesterday’s. He turned to find himself staring into the famous features of Mickey Bonaventure.
Face-to-face with the Hollywood connection he’d let slip away, Logan just started babbling uncontrollably. “Mr. Bonaventure, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to call you slimy! I mean, I meant to call you slimy, but in a good way! Not that it’s good to be slimy! And anyway, you’re not slimy anymore, not that you ever were —”
The Hollywood star looked impatient. “I’ve heard a rumor that Camp Ta-da! thinks I’m going to decide against them because of what you did. I want you to know that nothing could be further from the truth.”
Logan wanted to pay attention, but the bus drivers were right outside the barn now. And — was that a bark?
“I take my judging very seriously,” Bonaventure went on. “And I intend to be fair and impartial . . . Are you even listening to me?”
“Fer-ris,” Melissa prompted meaningfully.
“Not now!” Logan hissed.
The dognappers stepped through the rear door of the performance center, and Melissa broke into a run after them.
“I would never let a personal bias interfere with my responsibilities,” the actor droned on. “I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.” He held out his hand.
Logan barely noticed it. All his attention was focused on the barn, and the fact that Luthor was trapped there with two dognappers. “I — ” he stammered. “I — I gotta go!” He turned his back on his only Hollywood connection and sprinted for the performance center.
He ran into the barn, and was about to burst into the main theater section when he heard soft footsteps creeping up the back staircase. Melissa. And another sound — the growling of a dog. He caught up with his partner on the stairs, and a knowing glance passed between them: Maybe Luthor could take care of himself.
Then a voice from above said, “Hold still, mutt. You won’t feel a thing.”
Logan remembered Griffin’s description of the incident at Ebony Lake. Tranquilizer darts! No one could take on Luthor straight-up. But if the dog was out cold . . .
They blasted up the stairs and arrived in the hayloft to behold a horrible sight. The two bus drivers were trying to corner a nervous Luthor. The younger man with the spiky hair waved a dart gun, struggling to get a bead on the pacing Doberman.
“Get away from our dog!” Logan ordered in his most commanding tone.
“Your dog? This dog belongs to a man named Palomino!” growled the older man. “Now get lost! This is none of your business.”
Melissa picked up Luthor’s water dish and wielded it like a Frisbee.
Spiky Hair laughed. “What are you going to do — knock us out with a plastic bowl?”
In answer, Melissa flung the dish, not at the drivers, but at the upstairs control for the electric lift mechanism.
The spinning dish bounced off the wall switch. With a click, followed by a loud hum, the trap door began to descend, lowering the two shocked men down to the theater below. To them, it seemed as if the very floor beneath their feet was falling away. Spiky Hair, struggling to maintain his balance, fired one shot from the tranquilizer gun. The dart nicked Luthor on the neck and sailed beyond him, burying itself in a crossbeam.
Luthor stood, barking through the hole in the floor at his attackers as Melissa and Logan rushed over.
Melissa immediately noticed a red scratch by Luthor’s collar. “He’s hit!”
“He seems okay to me!” Logan observed, hauling on the leash to urge the Doberman away from the opening, toward the back stairs.
“No, he doesn’t!” Melissa exclaimed. “He isn’t fighting — he isn’t even growling at us! That’s not Luthor!”
Sure enough, the big dog’s eyes were glazed, his movements slowed.
“Well, I like him better this way!” Logan said feelingly. “Call me crazy, but I’ve got a thing about having my head bitten off!”
They could hear the lift mechanism still laboring, but knew there wasn’t much time before the two drivers hopped down and came around to intercept them. The only way out was the steps. The dog had refused those before, but now he did not balk at the staircase, even though his legs buckled a little. The glancing blow from the dart had delivered some of the dose of the tranquilizer, but not all of it. It did not put him to sleep, yet it was affecting him, making him drowsy and docile.
They reached the bottom of the stairs just in time to see the two drivers charging up the central aisle of the theater toward them. Logan hauled Luthor outside and Melissa slammed the door shut behind them, jamming a fallen tree limb where the bar had once been.
There was a crash from inside, followed by loud pounding. The branch shook but held firm.
“Let’s get out of here!” urged Melissa.
“Yeah, but to where?” Logan demanded, breaking into a jog, leading the sluggish dog. “What hiding place could ever be good enough? Once the Showdown starts, we’ll be tied up, and those two guys will be free to search the camp one blade of grass at a time!”
“Keep moving!” Melissa panted. He had a point, but there was no time to think the matter through. Pretty soon, the bus drivers would give up on the back door and exit through the front. When that happened, Luthor had to be gone.
Desperately, she looked around. They could try to stash Luthor in the maintenance shed or equipment shack, or stuff him under a bunk in one of the cabins. What was the least likely place the dognappers would check? Would Luthor stay put there? What if one of the counselors walked in on him? It left a lot up to chance.
No, they needed more control. They had to be able to keep an eye on the Doberman every minute. But how?
The barbecue was winding down. Soon it would be time to break into teams for the Showdown, but right now the campers stood in clusters
, chatting, joking — anything to suppress preperformance jitters. One of the larger groups included Mary Catherine, Athena, Bobby, and several other key players in the Ta-da! revue. Melissa took the leash from Logan and headed toward them, Luthor stumbling drowsily behind.
“You can’t let anybody see him!” Logan hissed after her. When he realized her destination, his whisper became even more urgent. “You can’t let the Klingon see him! She’s the enemy!”
She led Luthor right into their midst and gestured urgently for them to form a circle around him. “We have to hide this poor dog!” she begged.
Mary Catherine’s eyes bulged. “Are you crazy? There are no dogs allowed at camp! Where did you get it?”
“He’s from one of the farms around here,” Melissa explained, inventing rapidly. “And the farmer is cruel to him!” Okay, it was a lie. But if the dognappers got hold of Luthor, they’d bring him to Swindle, who’d be every bit as cruel as her imaginary farmer. So there was truth at the core of the fiction.
“Dog abusers, dognappers,” Mary Catherine scoffed. “What is it with you two and dogs?”
“We thought Mickey Bonaventure was working for the farmer,” Logan put in. “That’s why I called him a dognapper. I thought he was after this poor little guy — okay, big guy.”
The circle tightened protectively around Luthor. Over her shoulder, Melissa spied the two bus drivers bursting out the front entrance of the performance center. This group of campers was all that stood between the Doberman and capture. Somehow, they had to make it work.
“If we get caught hiding a dog,” Mary Catherine argued, “we could be kicked out of camp. Not to mention that it’s not our dog, and we have no right to keep it from its rightful owner.”
“Have a heart, Mary Catherine,” put in Athena. “Look how sad he is. He can barely hold up his head.”
“You can tell he’s got a mean owner,” added Bobby.