“Are you enjoying your visit to Hollywood?” he asked Gabby.
“Uh-huh,” Gabby answered.
“What part of it have you liked the best?” Mr. Donovan asked.
“Annie Wawar,” Gabby said.
“That’s me!” Andi gasped in delight. “The thing he liked best about being in Hollywood was me!”
“I have a request,” Mr. Donovan said. “Do you enjoy receiving requests, Gabby?”
“Uh-uh,” Gabby said.
“He means ‘uh-huh,’” Mr. Merlin translated, shooting Gabby a disapproving look. “Gabby loves requests. What would you like for him to say?”
“What about reciting the Gettysburg Address?” Mr. Donovan suggested. “He probably hasn’t memorized it, but I can recite it for him. ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation —’”
“Gabby can’t recite that, Mr. Donovan!” Andi cried, forgetting for a moment that the man on the TV screen couldn’t hear her. “Gabby can’t make the ‘s’ sound!”
“Or rore uh wenny ear awo,” Gabby began courageously. Then he sighed and lowered his head to his paws.
“Try again, Gabby!” Mr. Merlin commanded angrily. “No one respects a quitter!”
“It’s my fault,” Mr. Donovan said quickly. “I asked for too much. It’s just that the program will probably air sometime around the Fourth of July and I was hoping we might be able to include something patriotic.”
“What about the national anthem?” Mr. Merlin suggested. “Come on, Gabby, let’s sing it together!” He began to sing: “Oh, say can you see —”
“That’s not necessary,” Mr. Donovan said hastily. “Our time is up now. Thanks so much to you both for appearing on our show. This has been an experience that I’m sure our viewers will never forget.
“Our phones are now open for call-in votes. Tune in tomorrow night, and we’ll announce our winning dog. Will it be Lamb Chop Fernald from Elmwood, New Jersey? Or Gabby Merlin from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? It’s up to you, America!”
A phone number appeared at the bottom of the screen.
“Good-bye, everybody in television land!” Mr. Merlin cried, stepping in front of Mr. Donovan to beam into the camera lens. “What do you have to say to those nice people, Gabby?”
Gabby moaned, “Goowye.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They all called in to vote for Kristy’s video.
That took quite a while, because the phone lines were so busy that it was hard to get through. Then, after all five of them had managed to cast their votes, Andi called in again and voted for Gabby Talks.
“How can you vote for that dreadful Mr. Merlin?” Debbie demanded.
“I’m not voting for him,” Andi said. “I’m voting for Gabby. He’ll feel like a failure if he doesn’t receive a single vote.”
“If you were going to vote for both of them, you might as well not have voted at all,” Bruce said. “By voting for Gabby, you canceled out your vote for Kristy.”
The following evening he was even more disgusted with her when Mr. Donovan announced that the winning video was Gabby Talks.
“The vote was extremely close,” Mr. Donovan said, and Bruce glared at Andi.
“Your second vote may have sabotaged Kristy,” he told her. “If you’d stuck with one vote like the rest of us, Lamb Chop might be going to Hollywood.”
“No, she wouldn’t,” said Kristy. She had come over to the Walkers’ house to watch the contest results with them and was curled up next to Bruce on the sofa. “I’d never let Lamby become a professional actor. I’m glad I didn’t have to tell Mr. Donovan that I didn’t want the prize. That would have been so embarrassing after everything he did for us.”
“If you weren’t hoping to win, then why did you enter?” Mrs. Walker asked with sincere interest.
This was the first time that Mr. and Mrs. Walker had met Kristy, and they both seemed surprised that she was sitting with Bruce instead of Andi.
“For the same reason Bruce and Andi entered Bobby Strikes Back,” Kristy said. “I had a story I needed to tell. I’m glad I got into the finals, because now people all over the country know about therapy dogs and the valuable work they do. I just wish that Bobby Strikes Back had been shown, too. Then Red might have gone to Hollywood and become a movie star.”
“I’d have said no to that, just like you would,” Bruce said. “I’d never want Red to be under all that pressure. He’s happy just being a normal dog.”
“I predict that incredible Gabby has a great career ahead of him,” Mr. Walker said. “I can picture him in dog food commercials saying, ‘Yum! Yum! Yum!’”
“He would be great at that,” Andi agreed. “He can say ‘y’ and ‘m’ and all of the vowels. ‘Yum’ would be a cinch for him. I hope the directors are good to him and don’t make him try to say anything that has an ‘s’ in it.”
Her heart ached when she thought about Gabby’s stunned expression when Mr. Donovan had requested the Gettysburg Address.
Remember what I told you when we said good-bye, she called out silently to Gabby, hoping her thoughts would cross the miles between them and enter his mind. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that a dog who could talk might have psychic abilities as well.
The telephone rang. Since it was on a table next to where Andi was sitting, she was the one who answered it.
“I’d like to speak to Andrea Walker,” a girl’s voice said.
It wasn’t a voice Andi recognized.
“I’m Andi Walker,” she said.
The girl said, “Oh.” Then there was silence. Andi wondered if the girl might be talking very softly and was being drowned out by the noise in the Walkers’ family room. Not only was the TV still on, but Mr. and Mrs. Walker and Bruce and Kristy were involved in a spirited conversation about Gabby.
Andi carried the phone into the living room, where it was quieter.
There still was no sound from the phone except somebody’s breathing.
After pausing another moment to give the caller a chance to identify herself, Andi asked, “Who is this?”
The girl at the other end of the line drew a long breath, as if she were preparing to dive into a deep lake and didn’t know what she might find there.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” she said. “First, though, you’ve got to promise that you’ll never give my name to anybody or say where you got this information.”
“I promise,” Andi said readily. “Who are you?”
“My name is Sarah,” the girl said. “I used to be Connor Gordon’s girlfriend. He said he was crazy about me, and I believed him. Then, once he got what he wanted from me, he dropped me flat. On the night of the prom, he never came by to pick me up. I sat there, waiting and waiting, in my beautiful dress that cost me over one hundred dollars, and Connor didn’t show. I called him on his cell, and he didn’t answer. I called his house, and all I got was his mother’s voice on their voice mail. I was scared that he’d been in a car wreck on the way over, so I started calling hospitals. Connor wasn’t in any of their emergency rooms. I was out of my mind with worry!”
“I bet,” Andi said. “Did you ever find out where he was?”
“He was at the prom with somebody else,” Sarah said. “He and his date got crowned king and queen! On Monday, at school, he told me he’d forgotten he’d invited me and made me feel guilty because I hadn’t reminded him. I was so upset that I threw my prom dress in a trash bin.”
“That was dumb,” Andi said. “You should have returned it to the store.”
“I couldn’t, because I’d sewed sequins on it,” Sarah said.
“Then you should have given it to Goodwill.”
Andi always hated to see things go to waste.
“You’re right,” Sarah said. “I was dumb to throw it away. I’m the stupidest person in the world. I never should have trusted Connor.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Andi told her. “Everybody trusts Connor unt
il he stabs them in the back. I’m sorry he broke your heart, but why are you calling me? I can’t do anything about it.”
“Because he’s stabbed you in the back, too, and you don’t even know it,” Sarah said. “I was watching the Eileen Stanton Show the other night, and I learned about the contest for books about dogs. The boy who won first place looked exactly like Connor, except he was younger and didn’t have a mustache. He had the same last name, so I figured they had to be related. Then some lady phoned in and said Andrea Walker was the second-place winner and lived in Elmwood, New Jersey. That’s how I was able to find your phone number.”
“Why did you want my phone number?” Andi asked her.
“Because Jerry Gordon did not write Ruffy Dean Joins the Circus,” Sarah said. “All he did was change the name of the dog and make up the title. The book’s real title is Tuffy Bean and the One-Ring Circus. It’s a very old book. Connor found a copy in a used-book store. He told me it was his mother’s favorite book when she was a little girl and he wanted to give her a copy of the story for Mother’s Day. The book was falling apart, so he asked me to retype it. I’m a very good typist, and it seemed like such a sweet thing for him to do for his mom that I said yes. It took me three weeks to type it. It wasn’t a short book.”
“It sure wasn’t,” Andi agreed, recalling the hefty manuscript that she had worked on for so long. She was beginning to catch the drift of where this conversation was headed, and was both excited and nervous. “So you gave your typed transcript to Connor?”
“I gave him the disk,” Sarah said. “He seemed so grateful! I honestly thought he was in love with me.”
“Then he dumped you,” Andi said in disgust. “On the night of the prom.”
“I sat there waiting all evening in my beautiful dress,” Sarah said, her voice quivering at the memory. “And my beautiful shoes. Did I tell you about my shoes? They’re pink with purple sequins. I glued those on myself to go with the dress.”
“Did you throw those away?” Andi asked.
This time she hoped that the answer would be yes. The shoes sounded awful.
“No,” Sarah said. “I have other outfits they go with.”
Andi restrained herself from pursuing the subject. She didn’t want to know about the rest of Sarah’s wardrobe.
“So Connor tricked you into copying the story,” she said, summing things up. “Then he changed the title and sent the file to Jerry to print out and enter in the contest. Connor couldn’t enter it himself, because he’s over the age limit. Send me the book! That will give me the evidence to nail them!”
“I don’t have the book,” Sarah said. “Connor took it back. I don’t even remember who the author was. I was concentrating so hard on the typing — all that old-fashioned wording —”
She started to sob.
“Don’t cry,” Andi said. “You were brave and honest to call me. I respect you, Sarah. I think you’re terrific. Really.”
“You do?” Sarah sounded amazed. “Nobody’s ever called me terrific before. Only Connor, when I gave him that disk.”
“I’m not like Connor,” Andi said. “I fib a little, but I never do it to hurt people. I know that’s a fault of mine, and I’m going to correct it. I promised you that I wouldn’t tell anyone you called me, but can we make one exception to that promise? I’d like to discuss this with my private investigator.”
“You have a private investigator?” Sarah asked in astonishment. “I thought you were eleven years old!”
“I was eleven when I wrote my novel,” Andi told her. “I’ve now turned twelve and am much more mature, and I do have a private investigator. She’s totally trustworthy and keeps everything I tell her confidential. Please give me permission to tell her. We’re in this together, aren’t we, Sarah? You and I are partners on a quest for justice?”
Sarah was quiet for so long that Andi began to worry that she might have fainted from the stress of making this decision.
But Sarah surprised her.
“Go for it, Andi!” she said suddenly. “Tell your private investigator! I don’t want that two-faced slimeball to get away with this! I just wish Connor had gotten arrested when Jerry did.”
“Jerry got arrested?” Andi asked in surprise.
“When he and Connor were in New York together,” Sarah said. “They used fake IDs to try to get into a nightclub. The bouncer recognized Jerry from the Eileen Stanton Show, so of course he knew his real age. Jerry’s dad had to drive to New York to bail him out. Connor told everybody about it when he got home. He was so proud that he wasn’t the one who got caught.”
“Connor seems to be able to get away with anything,” Andi said.
“That’s why I don’t want you leaking my name,” Sarah told her. “He’ll twist things around so people will think I’m the one who stole that story.”
“Connor will never know you’re a snitch,” Andi promised. “Thank you for calling me, and I hope you enjoy your shoes. Purple sequins sound beautiful.”
Andi swore to herself that this would be the last lie she would ever tell.
She clicked off the phone, clicked it on again, and punched in Aunt Alice’s number. The phone rang eight times before she remembered that this was bingo night.
When Andi returned to the family room, the TV was off, and Bruce was helping Kristy get up from the sofa. That sight was surprising, since the sofa didn’t sag, and Kristy normally bounced onto and off chairs like a rubber ball. Now, however, she let Bruce take her hand and pull her gently to her feet as if she were the heroine in an old-fashioned movie.
Once she was up, Bruce still didn’t let go of her hand.
“Red and I are going to walk Kristy home,” he said. “I’ll be back in about an hour.”
“An hour!” Mr. Walker exclaimed. “Where in the world does Kristy live — Florida?”
“Now, John,” Mrs. Walker said soothingly. “It’s a beautiful moonlit night and it’s good for them to walk slowly. We wouldn’t want them running and tripping over curbs, would we? We enjoyed meeting you, Kristy. I’m sorry your video didn’t win, but you seem to be handling the disappointment with maturity.”
“I’m not disappointed,” Kristy told her. “I’m happy for Gabby. This has been a really great evening.”
“You can say that again!” Andi said with so much enthusiasm that everyone turned to stare at her.
She wished she could tell them about the phone call from Sarah.
She couldn’t wait until morning, when she could tell Aunt Alice!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Tuffy Bean!” Aunt Alice exclaimed. “That’s a name I haven’t heard for a long time. No wonder the name Ruffy Dean sounded so familiar. How silly of Connor to have stuck so closely to the original! Those Gordon boys are so arrogant that they don’t even make the effort to cover their tracks.”
“You mean you’ve heard of the Tuffy Bean circus book?” Andi asked her.
“There was a whole series of books about Tuffy,” Aunt Alice said. “They were favorites of mine when I was a child. Let’s see what we can find out about them on the Internet.”
She switched on her computer and accessed her favorite search engine. Then she typed in the name Tuffy Bean. A page sprang up with a pen-and-ink drawing of a little black and white dog with a long skinny tail. He was dressed like a clown and was sitting on a barrel.
“There he is!” Aunt Alice said triumphantly. “That’s Tuffy! Mr. Bean named him that because he was so tough. He never even yelped when he swallowed a bumblebee.”
“That scene was in Jerry’s manuscript!” Andi said. “I don’t think Jerry even bothered to read the manuscript before he submitted it to the contest. He thought there were elephants in it, but it was only a traveling dog show.”
“‘Tuffy Bean and the One-Ring Circus by Leo Edwards was published in 1931,’” Aunt Alice read from the caption beneath the drawing. “That means the book is probably a collector’s item. It was a fluke that Connor found a copy in a
used-book store. I doubt very much that we’ll find another one anywhere.”
She started clicking links to online bookstores and typing in “Tuffy Bean.” She got no hits.
The doorbell rang.
“Now, who could that be at ten in the morning?” Aunt Alice asked irritably. “Don’t people realize they shouldn’t come calling until noon? Here I am in my housecoat. How humiliating!”
She switched off the computer and hauled herself up from her chair. Followed closely by Andi, she went downstairs to the entrance hall and peered out through the peephole in the door.
“Oh, my!” she gasped. “Andi, please run and get my face mask. It’s in the refrigerator. I like to keep it cold for when I wear it on hot days.”
“Is somebody here with a dog?” Andi asked in surprise. She couldn’t imagine anyone bringing a dog to visit Aunt Alice. All her friends were aware that she was allergic to them.
“It’s a very nice dog,” Aunt Alice responded as the bell chimed again. “But that doesn’t make him less toxic. Hurry up, dear. His dander’s wafting in through the keyhole.”
Andi rushed to the kitchen and returned with the huge black mask, which had been resting next to a bowl of leftover salad. It smelled a little of onion.
The bell chimed insistently a third time, and Aunt Alice strapped on the mask. Then she pulled her dressing gown more tightly about her and opened the door.
There, on the doorstep, were Maynard Merlin and Gabby.
“What a surprise!” Aunt Alice exclaimed, although of course she wasn’t surprised at all, because she’d already seen them. “What are the two of you doing here in Elmwood?”
“Actually, I drove here just to see you,” Mr. Merlin said. “The time we spent together in Hollywood was so memorable that I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind. I got here last night and immediately tried to call you, but there was no answer, so I stayed at a motel. I waited to come over this morning until I was sure you would be up and about.”