“We can’t show that to anyone,” Mrs. Bernstein told him. “The dognapper said if we went to the police or showed that note to anybody, Bully would suffer. He told us to put two hundred dollars in a book called Old Yeller at the Elmwood library. Mr. Bernstein just got back from doing that. When you rang the doorbell we didn’t know what to think. We prayed it was somebody bringing Bully home, but we knew in our hearts that it was much too soon for that. So then we thought the dognapper might have come back to demand some other form of ransom. If he could take our Bully, that terrible person could do anything!”
“If we can’t go to the police, then what can we do?” Bruce asked.
“Nothing,” Mr. Bernstein said helplessly. “All we can do is sit by the phone and wait.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The hardest part was feeling so helpless. Although Bruce and Andi wanted desperately to stay with the Bernsteins, they had to go back to Aunt Alice’s house for dinner. Not only that, but they had to stay there all evening, as they’d promised their parents they wouldn’t leave the house after dinner.
To make matters worse, they couldn’t even phone the Bernsteins. That would tie up their line and make it impossible for the dognapper to contact them.
So they dutifully ate their chicken and their spinach salad and responded to Aunt Alice’s questions about what they had done that day and whether they had read their parents’ e-mail from Paris and did they think the white roses would look better in the blue vase or the crystal one.
“Would you like to start coming to Garden Club with me?” she asked Andi. “It’s never too early to start learning about flower arranging.”
“Maybe sometime,” Andi said, trying not to seem ungracious. “It does sound interesting, but I’m kind of busy right now.”
Aunt Alice regarded her with surprise. “What are you doing now that you’re no longer publishing a newspaper?”
“I’m writing a novel,” Andi told her. The words leapt out of her mouth of their own volition, but as soon as she heard herself say them, she knew they were true. She was going to write a novel, and she would start it immediately. Like her poems, that novel was probably already inside her, just waiting for her to pick up a pencil and release it.
“What is your novel about?” Aunt Alice asked with interest.
“About a dog,” Andi said immediately. “He vanishes from his yard, and his owners are afraid he’s been dognapped. They’re so scared of the dognapper that they start carrying baseball bats in case the criminal comes back to do something even worse.”
Bruce glared at her across the table and silently mouthed, “Shut up!”
Luckily, Aunt Alice didn’t see him.
“That sounds like an exciting story,” she said. “I hope it has a happy ending.”
“So do I,” Andi said fervently.
In the kitchen after dinner, as Bruce scraped plates and Andi loaded the dishwasher, he hissed at her, “You told! You promised you wouldn’t, and you did! You told her about Bully!”
“I did not,” Andi hissed back. “I told her about a book I’m going to write. I can’t help it if the plot is like something that’s really happened. All good plots are realistic.”
“Novels are fiction,” Bruce said. “If you put true stuff in there — one single name or detail about a real person — it won’t be just Mr. Murdock’s lawyer who’ll come after you. Every real person that you put in that book will have a lawyer.”
Since Bruce was too angry to talk to her, and she was afraid that if she stayed downstairs Aunt Alice would ask her to help arrange roses, Andi went up to the guest room, which was her bedroom while she was staying there, and got out a notebook and pencil.
She opened the notebook and sat for a moment, enjoying the empty page. The pure white paper with thin blue lines running across it, waiting to be covered with words, made her very happy. She realized that wasn’t the way most people felt about notebooks. In fact, she had never met anyone who admitted to feeling that way, although, of course, she didn’t go around asking people. But somewhere out there, there must be others like herself, hiding in their bedrooms, admiring empty pages, too afraid of being considered “weird” to admit to the joy they were feeling. She hoped that when she grew up she would marry such a person.
Chapter One, she wrote.
That was the easy part. She knew how the story should start, but she also knew that Bruce was right, a novel was supposed to be fiction. She would have to change names and details to conceal identities.
Bobby, the old basset hound, sat by the high iron wall. The next-door neighbors built that wall because they didn’t want Bobby to see his sweetheart, Juliet. Juliet was ravishingly beautiful. She was a
Andi paused to consider what Juliet should be. She couldn’t make her an Airedale, because that would be too much like Ginger. She considered making her a greyhound, since greyhounds had springy legs and could jump over walls, but it was hard to imagine Bobby falling in love with a dog with such a strangely shaped body. She decided to make Juliet a poodle. Then she could fashion her looks on Snowflake Swanson.
She was a poodle. She was very exotic and won a lot of beauty contests. Every week her owners took her to have her toenails painted. Now, as he sat in his yard, Bobby could hear her on the other side of the wall, making little whining sounds. He pictured her glamorous purple toenails. He made little whining sounds back.
Andi paused again. How could she get the lovers together if Juliet couldn’t jump the wall? Bobby the Basset certainly couldn’t do it, especially since she’d made him old. The only way to get Bobby out of his yard was through the back gate like the real Bully Bernstein. Bruce had suggested that the Bernsteins’ gate might have swung open accidentally. That seemed as good a solution as any.
Bobby glanced at the gate, and he couldn’t believe his good fortune. His master had forgotten to close the latch when he took out the garbage. Bobby rushed to the gate and shoved it open. In an instant he was galloping down the alley to the gate to Juliet’s yard. Sad to say, that gate was latched. Bobby made a whining sound. Juliet raced right over and started hurling her slender body against the gate with all her might. Bobby jumped against it from his side. Maybe, between the two of them, they could knock that gate down!
Then, all of a sudden, Bobby heard a thunderous voice. It was Juliet’s owner, Mr. Rinkle. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. He threw the gate open and grabbed Bobby and yanked him inside. “This will teach your owners to keep their gate shut!” he bellowed. He hauled Bobby over to the toolshed and shoved him in on top of the lawn mower. “Ha, ha, ha!” He laughed wickedly.
Andi reviewed the words she had written. She was pleased with the story so far, but what should she write next? It was in character for somebody as cruel as Mr. Rinkle to want to punish Bobby’s owners by giving them a scare. But, after shutting the dog in the toolshed, what would he do? He couldn’t keep him there forever.
The answer leapt into her mind as if somebody was dictating it: Mr. Rinkle would ask Bobby’s owners for ransom!
Andi dropped the notebook onto her bed and raced down to the den, where Bruce was watching television.
“Where’s Aunt Alice?” she asked him.
“Gone to bingo,” Bruce said.
“I know what happened to Bully!” Andi announced excitedly. “The Tinkles dognapped him!”
“Give me a break!” Bruce said. “I don’t like Mr. Tinkle any more than you do, but he wouldn’t do that.”
“How do you know?” Andi demanded. “You know how the Tinkles hate Bully and how mad they get at the thought of his being with Ginger. What if Bully’s gate swung open, just like you thought? Wouldn’t he rush down the alley and go straight to Ginger? What if he managed to get into the yard, and Mr. Rinkle — I mean, Mr. Tinkle — caught the two dogs together? What if he realized Ginger was still in love with Bully? What if he got so mad that he locked Bully in their toolshed?”
“Do the Tinkles have a toolshed?” Bruce was
beginning to become intrigued despite himself.
“If they don’t, they must have someplace else they could put him,” Andi said. “Like a storage closet in the garage.”
“But what about the ransom note?” Bruce asked. “If Bully got out of his yard on his own, how would the ransom note have gotten stuck in the sand castle?”
“After he locked Bully up, Mr. Tinkle went in through the Bernsteins’ back gate and planted the note,” Andi said, continuing the story. “Nobody was there to see him. Mr. Bernstein was inside on the phone with Mrs. Bernstein.”
“Why would Mr. Tinkle do that?” Bruce asked skeptically. “The Tinkles have plenty of money. They don’t need two hundred dollars.”
“He didn’t do it for the money,” Andi said. “He wanted to punish the Bernsteins for letting Bully run loose. Mr. Tinkle probably won’t even pick up the ransom. In the morning he’ll let Bully back out into the alley, and Bully will run home. Mr. Tinkle will have gotten his revenge, and Bully will never visit Ginger again.”
“It’s possible it might have happened that way,” Bruce conceded. “If so, we can’t let the Bernsteins spend the whole night worrying. We’ve got to find out if Bully is in the toolshed.”
“I could call Tiffany,” Andi said.
“As if she would tell you!”
“I could tell her we already know because a tipster called us,” Andi said. “I could say I’m calling to warn her that the police are on their way and she needs to get Bully back to the Bernsteins immediately.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything to lose,” Bruce said. “If the Tinkles aren’t guilty, the worst they can do is laugh at you.”
“And if they are guilty, they’ll set Bully free,” Andi said. “Can’t you picture the Bernsteins’ faces when Bully comes racing in through his dog door! I wish we could be there to see it!”
“Okay, I’m with you,” Bruce said. “Go ahead and call Tiffany.”
Andi dialed the Tinkles’ number, hoping against hope that it would be Tiffany who answered and not her father.
It turned out to be neither. It was Mrs. Tinkle.
“Who are you and what do you want?” she demanded.
Andi was taken aback by the abruptness of the question.
“I’m a friend of Tiffany’s,” she said, “or, at least, I used to be. May I speak to her, please?”
“Tiffany can’t come to the phone,” said Mrs. Tinkle. “What are you calling her about?”
Now that she was faced with the question, Andi discovered that she didn’t have the nerve to tell a complete lie. If she’d been talking to Tiffany, she might have been able to, but not to Mrs. Tinkle.
“I just wondered if Ginger’s had any visitors lately,” she said lamely.
She was not prepared for the resounding shriek that followed.
“What do you know about Ginger’s visitors?” Mrs. Tinkle screamed. “What have you done with Ginger?”
“Nothing,” Andi said shakily. “I haven’t seen Ginger in months. I was just calling to see if Bully Bernstein was over there and maybe ended up in your toolshed. By accident, of course.”
But Mrs. Tinkle was too hysterical to respond to her. Then, apparently, the receiver was snatched from her hand and a man’s voice shouted, “What do you want from us now? I left the money in the Howliday Inn book two hours ago. Why isn’t Ginger back yet?”
Andi hastily hung up.
“I got Mrs. Tinkle,” she said.
“I guessed that much,” Bruce said. “I could hear her screaming all the way across the room. Then I heard Mr. Tinkle yelling, too, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.”
“I think Ginger’s been dognapped,” Andi said. “The Tinkles thought I was the dognapper. Mr. Tinkle said he put the money in the Howliday Inn book. That’s a book about dogs, and so is Old Yeller. I’ve read both of them. Bruce, this is getting crazy. What’s going on?”
“Obviously Mr. Tinkle is innocent,” Bruce said. “There’s a dognapper loose in Elmwood. He’s taken two dogs that we know of, and who knows how many others? Maybe dozens!”
“Maybe hundreds!” Andi said. “When Debbie and I were at the Doggie Park, there were hardly any dogs there. Trixie used to go there all the time, and so did Fifi and Curly and Frisky and all the other dogs Debbie wrote about in her gossip column. But they weren’t there yesterday. Debbie couldn’t understand it.”
“Maybe the owners caught on to where Debbie was getting her gossip,” Bruce suggested. But Andi could tell by his voice that he didn’t believe that. He was just trying to make her feel better.
“I’m going to phone the Larkins,” she said. “Mrs. Larkin loved our story about ‘Trixie the Hero Dog.’ I know she’ll be willing to talk to me.”
When she dialed the Larkins’ number, Mrs. Larkin answered immediately, just as Mrs. Tinkle had.
“It’s Andi Walker,” Andi said quickly so as not to alarm her. “I’m not calling with information or anything. I just got thinking about Trixie and was wondering how she was.”
“Trixie is — away from home — right now,” Mrs. Larkin said nervously. “We’re hoping she’ll be back soon.”
Andi said, “Mrs. Larkin, I hate to ask you this, but is it possible Trixie’s been dognapped?”
Mrs. Larkin started to cry.
“You mustn’t tell anyone,” she sobbed. “The ransom note said that if we tell, something terrible will happen to Trixie.”
“Did the dognapper tell you to leave money in a book?” Andi asked her.
Mrs. Larkin sounded startled by the question. “How did you know?”
“It’s what dognappers do,” Andi said. “And the books are often about dogs.”
“Where the Red Fern Grows,” said Mrs. Larkin. “At the Elmwood library. I had to get the money from an ATM machine, so I didn’t get to the library until just as it was closing. That means we can’t possibly get Trixie back tonight. I’m not going to sleep a wink, knowing Trixie’s not here to protect us.”
“Don’t you think you should call the police?” Andi asked her.
“No!” Mrs. Larkin cried frantically. “We can’t risk endangering Trixie. We’re not a well-to-do family, but money means nothing compared to Trixie! Promise you won’t call the police!”
“I promise,” Andi said. “I’m going to hang up now so you can keep your line open. I’ll call you tomorrow to see if Trixie’s back, which I’m certain she will be.”
But she wasn’t certain at all.
When she hung up the phone, Bruce said, “Well, that makes the third one. I don’t want to call Mr. Murdock, but I guess I’ll have to. If Barkley’s gone, he’ll try to blame that on us.”
He dialed the Murdocks’ number, listened, and hung up.
“What happened?” Andi asked. “Did you get the answering machine?”
“No,” Bruce said. “I got Mr. Murdock in person, and I couldn’t think of what to say to him. The good news is, Barkley hasn’t been dognapped. I could hear him yapping in the background. It’s your turn now. We need to check on Snowflake.”
Mrs. Swanson seemed delighted to hear from Andi and wasn’t at all opposed to tying up the line.
“Snowflake was in another beauty contest today,” she said. “She only got honorable mention, which was a bit of a letdown, but, of course, the poor thing is getting older. Youth means so much in show business. Please, don’t mention that in your newspaper. We wouldn’t want people to think that Snowflake’s a has-been.”
“We won’t put a thing in The Bow-Wow News,” Andi assured her. It was the easiest promise she’d ever made.
“Snowflake is safe,” she told Bruce when she hung up the phone. “What can we do now? We’ve promised we won’t call the police, but we’ve got to find some way to stop this.”
“Mrs. Larkin said she delivered the ransom to the library at closing time,” Bruce said. “That means the dognapper hasn’t had a chance to pick it up yet. One of us needs to be at the library as soon as it opens
and keep an eye on that book. Whoever picks up that money is going to be the dognapper.”
“You and I can do that together,” Andi said eagerly.
“I wish we could,” Bruce told her, “but we’re too well-known. The missing dogs — at least, the ones we’re aware of — all were featured in The Bow-Wow News. It’s possible that’s why the dognappers chose them to dognap — our newspaper made them famous. You and I might be recognized if we stake out the library. Much as I hate to give this assignment to a ding-a-ling, I’m afraid it’s got to be Debbie. Nobody knows what she looks like because she wears disguises.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Debbie didn’t return from the library until late in the morning. The others had been at the Walker house, waiting for her to turn up, ever since the library opened. Andi was on the sofa in the den, reading to Bebe and Friday. Tim and MacTavish were sprawled on the carpet, and Tim was restlessly surfing TV channels.
Bruce had spent most of the morning in the backyard, working off nervous energy by tussling with Red Rover. Now he came into the house to check the wall clock to make sure that his watch hadn’t stopped. It didn’t seem possible that time could be passing so slowly. Bruce was not accustomed to inactivity, and it was almost more than he could bear to have Debbie out solving the mystery while the rest of them just sat there.
“What do you bet she forgot to go?” Bruce said. “Maybe she’s at home, reading a magazine.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Andi said. “I’m sure she’s at the library. Maybe she’s late because she’s made a citizen’s arrest and captured the dognapper herself.”
When Debbie finally did arrive, Andi jumped to her feet so quickly that Bebe and Friday went tumbling into the hollow that she had left in the sofa cushion. Debbie was wearing the disguise she used when she went out with MacTavish — black jeans, black T-shirt, black baseball cap. Bruce thought she looked like a character in a cartoon. But MacTavish leapt up from the rug and rushed to greet her. He apparently expected to be taken to the Doggie Park.
“So what happened?” Tim asked Debbie.