 
## The Adventures Of

## Young Elizabeth

&

## Rollo, The Wondercat*

*Who thought he was a dog?

### Volume 1: Imagine That

### By Les Cohen

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Copyright 2012 by Les Cohen, Ellicott City, Maryland.

All rights reserved.

The sketch of the cat on the cover was drawn by my favorite artist:

Copyright 2012 by A.C. Friss, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

All rights reserved.

* * *

Couple of Things...

This is a tale of adventure like no other, for young readers, both girls and boys, age 10 and older. Parents are encouraged to read it too.

Be sure to read the preface. It's short, but important.

Oh, and by the way, except for a few details, this is a true story. Hard to believe, but nonetheless true.

#

* * *

### Dedication

This is Scooter. Sad to say, he's no longer with us. He was one great cat, a different species, but nonetheless a member of our family in every respect. Smart, strong, fast, courageous, funny and loving. We miss him.

I can't be certain, but I've always suspected he was Rollo's father.

* * *

Table Of Contents

Preface

Episode 1: Better Safe Than Sorry

Episode 2: Personally, I Would Have Preferred Using The Bridge After They Finished Building It

Episode 3: One Good Deed And We're Off To The Country

Episode 4: Close Encounters Of The Furred Kind

Episode 5: And I Was So Looking Forward To That Smoothie

Episode 6: That Sinking Feeling

Episode 7: Next Cruise I Take, I'm Paying For A Better Cabin With A Larger Porthole

Episode 8: Going Down

Episode 9: Where's Rollo?

Episode 10: Not Quite As Dead As We Thought

Episode 11: As A Rule, It's Always Better To Roll Down The Window First, Before Jumping

Episode 12: After School Rain

Episode 13: Back To The Future

Epilogue: Now And Then

* * *

Preface

Hi. I'm Elizabeth, but then you probably guessed that. "Young Elizabeth" was me four years ago. I was fifteen then, in the summer before my sophomore year in high school. It was a time just before everyone had computers and cell phones, when friendships were few, but meant something more, and life wasn't so complicated or scary. I'm a freshman in college now, an aspiring writer. And the furball lying flat on his back on my bed? That's Rollo, my cat and long-time friend, a little older and a tad heavier now, but still plenty sharp and always there for me when I need him. Rollo and I, we've been through a lot together, but I've got a feeling our greatest adventures are still ahead of us.

"Mearrk!"

"Yeah, yeah," I wave at him without turning to look up from my laptop. "Hold on while I finish what I'm typing." He's so impatient. No matter how many times I tell this story, he still gets a kick out of it. "I know," I say out loud, rolling back in my chair and reaching out to wiggle my fingers on his stomach. "I'm excited too."

* * *

" **Together they were unexpectedly formidable. A strange sight at the very least. This huge housecat, eyes glowing in the reflection of the streetlight not fifty feet ahead, there on the shoulder of the young girl who kept walking. Her friend, Eleanor, at her side."**

* * *

### Episode 1:

Better Safe Than Sorry

Almost every Saturday morning during the spring and summer, one of the graduate students from the college in the town where I grew up would dress in black, paint his face white and act out, in complete silence of course, funny things for the change people gave him when they walked by. He did this at the corner, at the top of the "Main Street" that led to the harbor in our little city, just off the Chesapeake Bay. It was the corner where my dad worked, in the old four-story, red-brick building set back from the street, in his office three floors up. He had his own business as some kind of marketing and financial consultant. Beyond that, I'm not exactly sure what he did, but then neither was he. Mostly, he used to tell me whenever I asked, he did what he had to do. He would laugh when he said that, and told me I'd understand what he meant someday. I didn't tell him then, but I already did.

Well, in any case, it was an almost perfect day. Not too hot and not too sunny, with some darker clouds here and there that threatened to rain, but wouldn't dare. I was walking up the street with Rollo, my cat, who I'll tell you more about in a minute, almost thirty minutes early to meet my father for lunch, when I looked up to see the college kid doing his act, and then higher up to see a safe. That's right, a big, black safe, with a combination dial in the middle of the door, the kind you might have seen on the floor of some office in the old days, before they had drive-in banks and electronic money. There it was, dangling on its way down to the street, hanging from a portable crane someone had set up on the fire escape near my father's office window. Looked pretty rickety, I remember thinking. And just then, when it swayed in the wind, obviously too much for the rope and pulley holding it up to handle, the safe fell. I mean, it dropped from the third story, rolled on its side on its way down and fell – "Ka-boom!" – on top of you-know-who performing his act on the corner plaza below.

Needless to say, this was a considerable catastrophe for the actor, not to mention a matter of substantial interest to me, personally, given that the safe was coming, so it appeared, from my father's office. The good news about this event was that it afforded me the opportunity to begin this extraordinary story with that traditional, well, almost traditional fairytale opening.

_Once upon a mime_ , in the small, Chesapeake Bay town where I grew up, something so amazing happened to Rollo and me, I just had to write about it.

My name is Elizabeth. I'm fifteen, just barely, and my cat, Rollo, he's three. Rollo and I, but especially Rollo, are still recovering from the recent loss of our mutual good friend, Sam, the old Beagle who lived next door until the Levinsons moved away at the beginning of the summer. The Levinsons named him Sam after the private detective in an old Humphrey Bogart movie, "The Maltese Falcon," that they still show sometimes on TV, in the middle of the night, that I watch sometimes on the weekends and when my parents are out of town. They named him after Detective Sam Spade because he was so curious about everything and was always sniffing around.

You see, my parents got Rollo for me when he was just eight weeks old. Not knowing all that much about being a cat, he spent most of his time playing outside with Sam, as well-trained and sharp a hunting dog as you could imagine. Rollo went just about everywhere with Sam, sniffing at this and that, growling and barking as good as he could, doing his best to imitate Sam's every move. Well, Sam is gone now and, as far as Rollo is concerned, it's up to him to carry on the way Sam would have. So now you see why Rollo thinks he's a dog. Other than me, I think Sam was the only real family Rollo ever had.

By the time... Wait a minute. It just occurred to me that you might have the impression that Rollo is some cute little, roly-poly ball of fur, with a demure... I like saying that word, "demure." Lots of outward lip movement. As I was saying, with a demure, high-pitched, Disney "Meow." Not even close. Forget that concept entirely. Rollo _is_ the size of an adult Beagle, with a deep, often loud and sometimes-booming voice. He's huge. His head, oversized. A bulky animal with powerful forearms, and shoulder and hind leg muscles you can see rippling when he walks, through the coarse and uneven black, gray and brown hair on his back and shoulders. And vocal? You've got to be kidding. This is one talkative furry creature. And not just an occasional grunt or growl, mind you. No, no. Frequent and lengthy whole sentences. We talk all the time, although it was mostly just me for the first year after we brought him home. Not any more. I speak English and he makes noises back to me. Who knows exactly what he's trying to say, although, for the most part, I've gotten pretty good at figuring that out. And I _know_ he knows what _I'm_ talking about. No doubt about it.

As I was saying, by the time I got to the corner, it was all I could do to see between the people in the crowd that had formed around the student and the safe lying on top of him. An ambulance came and took him away. Through some miracle, he didn't seem to be all that badly hurt. (I guess the bushes around where he was performing had softened the blow.) Good news, but then his condition has nothing to do with this story. The police were there too, questioning everyone, including my father who had apparently just driven up and was parking his car when it happened. The safe having fallen from the fire escape just outside one of his office windows, the police were understandably interested in hearing what he might know about what happened.

Standing near my father on the corner, I remember him talking to the one officer in a suit, the one with a small notebook he was using to take notes – which, geez, I just realized, is probably why they call it a _note_ book. (I really need to pay more attention to things like that.) "Why don't we go upstairs, Officer, and take a look?"

"It's 'Detective.'"

"Of course. 'Detective,'" my father repeated his title respectfully. "..I know about the safe, but I haven't the slightest idea how it got outside," my father told the detective, looking up at his floor-to-ceiling office window behind the fire escape. "Sugar," my father, seeing me standing there a few feet away on the edge of the crowd, motioned for me to come closer, which I did. I always liked seeing "The Daddy," which is what I called him sometimes. "When we get upstairs, I want you to call Mommy and have her pick you up. This is going to take a while. Maybe you guys can meet me for dinner."

"Sure, Dad," I assured him, "but not until I hear what you and this policeman are going to talk about," I thought to myself. I looked at Rollo and he looked at me. "Meeeeark!" It was the odd sound he made whenever he tried to bark, but I knew that he knew exactly what I was thinking. "Me, too, Rollo."

"You mean, you weren't moving the safe into your office when this happened?"

"No, Detective. We brought it up in the elevator early this morning, although the elevator hasn't been working since then....Looks to me like someone was trying to take it _out_ of my office."

"What exactly do you keep in it? Money?"

"No, Detective," my father was quick to say, just in case one of the people milling around outside was listening, "but let's go up to my office. We'll talk about it there."

When we got upstairs, I called my mother and sat quietly with Rollo in the large room where my father had his desk, the one with the window along the fire escape where someone had tried to take out the safe. "Please sit down," my father suggested to the detective, holding out his arm, pointing to the wooden guest chair next to his desk, across the room from where we were sitting on his leather couch.

"The safe belonged to my father. Apparently, it was the property of a land development company he owned with a partner years ago, out west. It just turned up, for some reason. I don't know the precise circumstances yet, except that an attorney in Denver, who used to work for my father, sent it to me." He paused for a moment while he peered through the blinds behind his desk at the policemen and others still working around the safe on the plaza below his window. "I didn't even know it was coming until it arrived earlier this morning. ...I've got to get some people to bring it back up here," he mumbled that last sentence, talking to himself.

"And what exactly was in it, Mr. Coleman?"

"I haven't the slightest idea. It just got here a few hours ago, locked tight. There was no combination in the letter from the attorney, so I hired a locksmith to come in on Monday and open it for us."

The detective was on his feet now. Walking behind by father's desk, he pulled down on the cord to the right, raising the blinds quickly to just above his short, heavy, five-foot-something frame. Looking out the window at the safe lying on its side, he pointed out the obvious, "No need for that now. Either whoever took the safe opened it first, or the fall must have done it."

Just then, there was knock on the glass of my father's office door. Without waiting, another policeman came in. This one was wearing a uniform. "Lieutenant? Can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Go ahead, Frank. I want Mr. Coleman to hear this."

"Well, the safe was.." Just inside, standing on the Oriental rug that covered most of my father's wood floor, the policeman looked over at Rollo and me sitting on the couch. "Whoa. Is that a cat?!" He was kidding, of course, probably thinking he was being funny.

"Yes," was the only answer I gave him, wondering, for Rollo, what exactly he meant by that question.

"Big," he observed, staring while he shook his head up and down, every so slightly.

Rollo just looked up at him, mostly with his eyes, muttering "Mmuh" – which was Rollo-speak for "Duh?" – just loud enough for me to hear, wondering sarcastically if he was the first cat the officer had ever seen.

"Get to the point, Frank."

"Of course, Lieutenant."

The officer was holding a small notebook like the detective's. Personally, I preferred the full-size kind, with the spiral on the left of the page, that I already had open in my lap. "If he had a backpack," I remember thinking to myself, "he'd have been able to carry a larger notebook instead of one that had to fit in his shirt pocket. I mean, how many words can he write on a page in that thing?" In any case, he wasn't looking at it.

"It was empty," the policeman reported, "except for some loose papers and some files. From what we can tell, it had been opened and left unlocked. I think the fall did more to the brick pavement and that college kid than it did to the safe."

"Any prints?"

"All over it. Myra's working on them now. Said we could be looking at twenty or more different people. It'll take her until tomorrow to sift through them all. The good news is that we grabbed two men in a blue pickup that one of the witnesses saw blow out of here just after the safe hit the pavement. Both men were seen running out of the building and getting into the pickup truck they had parked in the loading zone out front. One witness, a man from the shoe store next door, said he thought he remembered a cream-colored panel van parked behind the truck, like they were together, but he wasn't sure."

The Lieutenant turned to my father, "You say your elevator's been out since this morning?"

"That's right," I said to myself turning to Rollo, "that's why they tried to lower the safe out the window! More to the point, they must have been in a hurry, worried that we might open it first, to have risked taking it out in broad daylight." Rollo, looked at me as if he'd already figured that out, but only for a moment, turning back quickly toward my father so as not to miss a thing he was going to say.

"It's been shutting down, on and off, for the past few weeks. I'm not sure when it broke exactly, except that it was working this morning when the delivery people arrived. ..I've started walking up the stairs. My daughter," he smiled, looking over at me, "recommended it for the exercise."

"And she's right," the detective said, looking over at me, rubbing his stomach under his tie while he walked toward the door, his shirt straining a bit around the couple of buttons above his belt. "We could all use some of that. ..Oh, Mr. Coleman, we need you to come down to the station with us, just in case you recognize either of the two men we're holding." As it turned out, they were just a couple of kids some other men had picked up at the last minute to help them move the safe. They got scared when it fell, and ran when they saw that other people were coming to help.

"What about the safe?"

The other policeman, the one in uniform, had the answer. "Your maintenance man is coming over with his keys to turn on the elevator. He says it works, but keeps breaking down so frequently, he's afraid someone might get stuck, so he's turned it off for the weekend since most of the offices here are closed until Monday. You can have it brought up as soon as my forensics team is done with it."

"I'll have them put it in our storage room." My father pointed to the door just to the right of his worktable across the room, at the other end of his suite. "What do you think? An hour or so?"

"Yeah. An hour at most."

"Good. Elizabeth, you lock up when they leave, when Mommy gets here."

"If you could look through the papers we found inside, as soon as you can," he put the originals down on my father's desk. "We made copies on your machine, for our records. Let us know what you find, and if you think it has any bearing on what's happened."

"Glad to, Officer. I'll go through them tomorrow and," looking down at the numbers on the business card the Lieutenant had given him, "fax you an inventory with my notes."

"Great. Com'on. I'll give you a ride to the station and then have someone bring you back for your car later."

"Sugar, have them put the safe against the wall on the right, just inside the door. We've already got too much junk in 'the cave.'" That's what he called it, the part of his L-shaped store room that turned left into what used to be a piece of the office next door. It was dark and crummy back there where he kept rolled up maps, boxes of old files and supplies he had no place else to keep. "Put these papers inside for me," he tapped his forefinger on the binder and loose papers too close to the edge of his overcrowded desk. "I want to keep them separate from all this other stuff. But, whatever you do," he slowed down the way he always does when he wanted to make sure I got the point, "don't let them close the door all the way, not until I get a locksmith to figure out or reset the combination. Mommy will be here in a while. You and Rollo stay inside and wait for her."

"No problem, Daddy," I responded with considerable confidence and that air of professionalism I'd heard him use when he was doing business. Besides, there wasn't much Rollo and I couldn't handle. I had my backpack with me, an absolutely essential piece of support gear for every fledgling writer and anyone who might get into trouble now and then as, inexplicably, I seemed prone to do. I had my dad's old Leatherman combo knife and tools. A Baby Ruth, which I prefer to Snickers. Two spiral pads and two pens, just in case. Miniature, high intensity flash light with an extra battery. Couple of heavy duty rubber bands, because you never can tell. A small plastic bag with the "nuggets" Rollo eats, and a plastic atomizer – I love that word, as if spraying it would cause something to disintegrate. – filled with water in case one of us gets thirsty. Rollo opens his mouth and I spray some at his face. A small pack of Kleenex that my mother gave me, and a third of a roll of toilet paper, because you should see some of the bathrooms I've had to use in an emergency. And then there's always the woods. It never hurts to be prepared.

Well, needless to say, the men who brought up the safe weren't out the door on their way back down the stairs before Rollo and I were in the storeroom. "Click." (I hit the light switch.) Hmmmm. No windows in the storeroom and the overhead light in the front part, just inside the door, was the only one that seemed to be working, but then that's where the safe was. It was a big safe, up on four wide iron wheels. I'm already five four, and still growing, but I could barely see over the top if I lifted myself up on my toes. There was a single dial in the front, with a large handle to the left of it. It had been painted, more than once maybe, covering over some writing that I could feel through the most recent layer of paint, maybe the name of the manufacturer or the company that owned it, but I couldn't make out much except what appeared to be the word "Denver." The whole surface was badly scratched and there was rust in some places where the paint was gone. Still, it was a formidable looking thing. Well worn, but just about indestructible. Three stories down to the brick pavement, and not a fresh dent I could find. (Lucky for the safe, the mime must have broken its fall. Not so lucky for the mime.)

The door to the safe was just barely open. With its hinges on the right, I had to walk past the door to open it. "Rrrrrrrrr," it creaked loudly, taking both my hands to push it back, partially blocking the storeroom doorway. Rollo jumped right in, but not all the way before I grabbed him and shoved him out. "Not so fast, Rollo." I started to set the papers down on the floor of the safe, but thought it best to look around first. Who knew? Maybe there was something the police had missed. There were no shelves or interior compartments, but you never can tell. Reaching as far as I could with my right hand, the papers under my left arm, all I could feel was the rough, cool walls of the interior. "Hm. Nothing," and so I put the papers down on the floor of the safe in front of me.

"You know, Rollo, maybe we should.."

"Murr-errk?"

"Exactly, but we have to be careful not to mess them up." Bending over, I leaned in as far as I could and still use the light coming from overhead. My knees were on the open edge of the door where it sloped down in small steps that matched the door when it would shut. By force of habit, I'd thrown my backpack ahead of me, toward the back of the safe. Peeking inside the binder on top, I pulled its contents halfway out, lifting up the first few pages until one in particular caught my attention. "'DEED OF TRUST.' Seems the man owned some property in Colorado," I commented to Rollo who was perched on my back, his neck sticking out as far as it would go, turning his head left and right as if he could read – and I wasn't entirely sure he couldn't. "And look at this. It's a letter he wrote by hand. 'January 4, 1948...'"

I had just started to read it out loud, sitting there on my knees, leaning into the safe with Rollo behind me, when I thought I heard something being dragged across the floor. When I read something, I tend to be so focused that I don't pay attention to what's happening around me which explains how it is that I miss what my mother tells me. "Honey, I'm going out," she'll say, assuming I've just been sitting there waiting for her to say something. "Be sure to..," whatever. No wonder she thinks I'm ignoring her. I am, but it's for technical reasons, not because I don't care. ..What am I talking about? (I tend to be easily distracted.) Back to the safe in my father's office.

"Meooooak!" Rollo dug his claws into my sweater – I hate it when he does that. – but not well enough to prevent him from being ripped off my back, like something had yanked him by his neck.

"Rollo!" I shouted at him, turning first to my right to see where he had gone. Then the dragging noise again to my left. Dropping the papers, I whirled back toward the other way. Looking up, blinded by the exposed bulb in the ceiling, all I could see was a large dark form. "HEY!" It was all I had the time to say before two large arms, one on my back, the other holding my leg, lifted me up – "STOP IT!!" I shouted. – and shoved me into the safe.

"ROLLLLLOOOOO!!! Go get Daddy!!" And the door of the safe slammed shut behind me, squishing me against the back interior wall and my backpack. Pitch black. No light and hardly enough space to turn around. Hearing the "chunk" of the bolt, I knew I was locked in, but I turned, which wasn't easy, and pushed with my feet against the door anyway, as hard as I could. "LET ME OUT OF HERE!!" I was sure they could hear me because I could hear them, more or less. What a racket. "MRRRRR!! Meooarkkkk!!!" Sam, the dog, would have stood his ground, and that's exactly what Rollo was doing. His instinct was to protect me, not run like most cats would have. Sam had taught him well. There were thrashing noises, and then the sound of what must have been the open metal shelves that held the supplies falling over.

Rollo wasn't all _that_ big, but he was fearless, and he could leap like crazy – and lightening fast when he had to be. From the sound of things, he was giving whoever was out there one heck of a fight. "Rollo, GO!! RUN ROLLO! GET OUT!!! YOU'VE GOT TO GO FOR HELP!" I thought, for a moment, I had heard other voices, but couldn't tell through the thick iron walls that surrounded me. "ROLLLLLOOOOO!" And then nothing. Quiet. And a moment later, that dragging sound again. Two, three and four times, before I couldn't hear it any more.

Now what? "Rollo?!" Nothing. Okay, okay. Got to be calm. Checking my watch, I pressed the light button. 1:20 PM. Couldn't be more than 10, maybe 20 minutes of air in here, 30 at best I figured, but what did I know? My mother should be here soon. Balled up the way I was, I could barely move. And all this shouting and heavy breathing hadn't helped a bit. Had to conserve on my air supply. Opening my backpack I got out my flashlight and Leatherman. "Rollo!!" Still nothing. "CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME?!!" Zero.

Shining the light on the inside of the door, I could make out a plate over almost the entire surface, held on by a dozen or so Phillips screws. Perfect! Maybe, if I unscrew these, I can get to the lock mechanism, throw the bolt. My knife has a screw driver.... Easier said than done. The safe was old, and the screws rusted and hard to turn. Just two screws later, and 8 minutes had gone by. Shoot, I don't feel well. "Rollo? Are you okay, Rollo?"

To be continued...

And so we leave our heroine and her trusty cat, Rollo, for now. Will she escape or will help come before she passes out? ...or worse?! Is help on its way? And, Heaven forbid, will this be Rollo's only episode? ...Are you kidding? Hey, they don't call him, "Rollo, _the Wondercat_ " for nothing! Besides, who do you think is telling this story?

"Sorry, Rollo, but I've got to get to class. Young Elizabeth," I liked talking about myself that way, "will just have to hold her breath until I get back." Rollo got up quickly and began to follow me out. "Not this time," I reminded him, bending over to rub his head. "You stay here and watch out for stuff. I'll give you my 'English Lit' notes when I get back." He answered, nodding his head in agreement. "Let me know if any birds show up at the window feeder."

As for the rest of you, stay tuned for another exciting installment of "The Adventures of Young Elizabeth and Rollo, the Wondercat who thought he was a dog?" Same time, same station. Be there, or... We'll just have to find out what happens together, when I get back.

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Episode 2:

Personally, I Would Have Preferred Using The Bridge _After_ They Finished Building It

Okay, I'm back. When last we left our heroes, things didn't look all that good for either Elizabeth or Rollo. If you remember, the two of them had been on their way to meet Elizabeth's father, when an old, black, iron safe someone was trying to lower to the ground from the fire escape outside her father's third story office window dropped – "Kersplat!" – onto a mime performing on the sidewalk below. Needless to say, passersby were duly impressed with the mime's performance. Some people walking by actually thought the whole thing was staged. Arms and legs flailing about, the mime's imitation of someone hit by a falling safe was flawless, and contributions tossed into his cigar box were way up.

About an hour later, after the police had gone, the safe, which had been left to Elizabeth's father by his father (Elizabeth's grandfather) when he died, had been taken upstairs and into her father's storeroom. Elizabeth, with Rollo peering over her shoulder, leaned into the open door of the old safe to read some of the papers they found inside. Suddenly, a large, dark form pulled Rollo away and pushed Elizabeth into the safe, closing the door behind her. That left Rollo outside in a fight for his life and, as if he didn't have anything more important to do at the time, to go for help while Elizabeth tried desperately to remove the screws from the panel inside the safe door before she ran out of air and... well, needless to say, that would have been it for Elizabeth. Whew!

Two screws out of eight later, Elizabeth began to feel faint. There was no noise outside, at least none that she could hear. The man who shoved her into the safe may have had a bad leg he had to pull along with him when he walked. Maybe that was it. In any case, there was no more of the dragging noise she had heard before. No more sounds of a struggle or of shelves and boxes crashing down. Worst of all, there was nothing from Rollo. Nor should there have been because, even as we speak, Rollo was squeezing his way out of the office, on his way to rescue Elizabeth.

The floor-to-ceiling window that led onto the fire escape had been left open a crack, just enough for Rollo to weasel under it. Out on the metal platform, he heard the sound of Elizabeth's father's voice, talking for a moment to the police Lieutenant on the sidewalk below. Making it down to the second story was easy enough, but Rollo was fresh out of stairs. To go the rest of the way, you needed to use the metal ladder, but he didn't weigh enough, even if he could hold on, to make it fall to the sidewalk. No luck using the ladder, but Rollo knew what he had to do. There was a railing, but the support polls were only a few inches apart. He'd never squeeze through them on the run. He looked up, the fur over his left eye rising as he spied the railing. "No sweat," he thought to himself, for a professional cat with his experience – which was only a figure of speech, of course, because we all know that cats, especially Rollo, never perspire.

Peering over the edge, Rollo saw a police car pull up and Elizabeth's father just starting to walk toward the curb. They were already maybe five or more feet from the building, and farther away every step they took. Backing up as far as he could against the brick wall behind him, Rollo got set, tensed his muscles, looked left, then right, like Sam taught him before crossing the street... "Rollo!" Elizabeth would have said, "Are you going to jump or what?!" Squinting, Rollo brought his eyebrows together and down, paused for a second to set his focus, and then leaped almost straight up onto the rail, barely an inch wide. In one smooth motion, his body stretched and then came back together as he landed, a loaded spring of fur covered muscle compressing itself for what was about to happen next. His forepaws touched down first, the rest of his body following close behind – which is what you'd expect, of course, because, well, it's attached to the front part. (Where else would it have gone?) And then, planting the toes of his powerful rear legs perfectly on the front edge of the railing, "Boiiing!!" He was airborne.

What a leap! Worried that he might miss, Rollo actually jumped too far, almost overshooting Mr. Coleman completely, landing smack on his bald spot. "MOomph." The back of Mr. Coleman's head caught Rollo right in his stomach. "Meeee-eh," was all he could manage. The wind almost knocked out of him, Rollo could barely say hello as he slumped and slid down my father's... That's right. I'm writing this myself. ...neck, clinging as best he could to Mr. Coleman's sport coat on his way down.

"Whoa!" The policeman swayed to his side, as Mr. Coleman staggered, knocked down to his knees by the force of Rollo landing on his head, barely stopping himself from rolling onto the sidewalk by extending his right hand palm down onto the brick.

"What the...?!" Elizabeth's father cried out, more surprised than frightened, reaching up and behind him with his other hand. "Something's hit me on my neck!!" Whirling around, he was just in time to see his daughter's trusty, furry companion slump to the sidewalk, looking up at him with a pathetic "Mee... urk," – a sort of cat burp, if I didn't know better – to get his attention.

"Rollo! What are you doing?!" He picked Rollo up, both his hands under the cat's powerful forearms for a face-to-face discussion. "Rollo?!" ...and then he paused, Rollo still hanging there in mid-air. Mr. Coleman looked quickly toward the building and to his left and right. "Rollo," turning back, his tone was serious now and very quick, "where's Elizabeth?"

"MeeeooaarrrrkkKK!" This time Rollo's bark meant business.

Looking up at his third story window, Mr. Coleman stuffed Rollo under his left arm, the way he did whenever they walked around the house together, Rollo's arms wrapped around Mr. Coleman's left hand. "Lieutenant, something's wrong," and they both took off toward the front door of the building. Up two flights of stairs, two steps at a time, they were inside my father's office in a minute – which, as it turns out, was just about all the time I had left.

"Elizabeth!!" Mr. Coleman shouted. No answer. "Rollo." Mr. Coleman looked right at him, nose-to-nose. "Find Elizabeth! Now!!" Dropping him to the ground, Rollo turned in his own length and bolted straight for the storage room where he reached up and pulled at the old brass lever on the safe's door as best he could, scratching at the metal around it.

"Elizabeth! Elizabeth!!" Not waiting for an answer as he ran to the front of the safe, Mr. Coleman turned the handle, taking two hands and most of his strength to do it. Fortunately, no one had spun the dial, or there would have been no opening it without the combination. Handle down, he pulled and then reached around to push the door wide open. Rollo leaped over Mr. Coleman's arms on top of Elizabeth who rolled out onto her father and the storeroom floor just barely conscious, her pocket flashlight and Swiss army knife still in her hands.

Rollo's sandpaper tongue licking her face, Elizabeth opened her eyes. "Hi Daddy," she said softly, looking up at her father. "Nick of time, Rollo," her voice getting stronger as she rolled her eyes toward the feline. "Good to see you again." She reached up to grab and rub him behind his neck, listening to Rollo make that gurgling purring sound he made whenever he was glad to see her, the sound that Elizabeth had been worried she might never hear again.

Well, I'm back. It's me, Elizabeth, breathing again and ready to continue telling this story on my own. A few minutes sitting up on the couch in my father's office, and I was feeling like my old self. The police had returned by then and were looking for fresh fingerprints in the storeroom. The man who I thought might have been dragging one of his legs had apparently entered the storeroom through a rear door that had been used when the storeroom was part of the vacant office next door.

"Looks to me, Mr. Coleman," the Lieutenant shook his head slightly up and down, "that there were at least two people here, maybe three. I don't think your cat could have caused all this ruckus. The way these shelves have been knocked over, these boxes tossed around, it looks to me like at least two _people_ fighting."

"But over what, Lieutenant? What's going on here?"

"Haven't the slightest idea other than the obvious. Got to be something about the safe or these papers," pointing to the documents still lying on the floor of the safe where Elizabeth and her backpack had been balled up together. "We'll know more when you've had time to study them."

"Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Coleman," it was one of the other policemen, a woman dressed in street clothes, "but we'll need another hour or so in here before we can let you straighten up."

"Don't worry about it. We'll get to it Monday morning."

"Hi guys. Exciting day, huh?" Elizabeth's mother, on her way through the door of her father's office, had a fondness for understatement. Stress, she taught Elizabeth, was mostly what you made of it in any difficult situation. Stay focused. Keep your problems in perspective, and use the energy of any stress you're feeling to get out of trouble. Good advice Elizabeth remembered when she'd been locked in the safe – not that it would have done any good under the circumstances, but good advice nonetheless. "Sorry I'm late," she apologized, followed by the "chunk" and rattle of the office door when she pushed it closed behind her.

"You have no idea, Mommy."

"Hi, honey. You okay? Dad left a message for me. Told me it was real close, but that I wasn't to storm over here like it was the end of the world. ...How'm I doing?" She was trying to be cool, but I knew she was worried.

"He wasn't kidding. Rollo saved me," I told her, wrapping my arm around his back to tickle Rollo's stomach while he sat there next to me on the couch."

"Com'on. Let's get out of here." It was my father talking, turning toward the Lieutenant. "Detective, how 'bout if I give you call early Monday to set up an appointment? If it's okay with you, I'd like to call it a day and get my family out of here."

"Of course Mr. Coleman. Can't say I blame you."

"Mr. Ranks, the attorney on the second floor, has a key. Just tell him or his assistant that you're leaving and he'll lock up for me. And Lieutenant," he added, extending his hand, "thanks for all your help." They shook hands and we left, two accordion binders under my father's arm, with the papers from the safe, and a third I was holding in both hands – the four of us, including Rollo of course, taking the stairs, just in case.

"Let's all go home in the wagon," my mother suggested. "I found a space just down the street. Honey," talking to my father, "you can leave your car in the garage and I'll give you a ride tomorrow morning. Okay?"

"Sure. Good idea," my father answered, and we were off, no one talking, catching our breath as we walked across the little plaza and down Main Street toward the water, past a couple of stores to where my mother had parked.

"Daddy," I asked him as my mother, behind the wheel now, pulled out of her parking space, "just before I got pushed into the safe..." I was in the back seat behind my mother, leaning forward to talk to my father who was sitting up front. Rollo had his paws on the door across from me, staring out the window. "I found a deed to some property in Colorado. What's that all about?"

"I'm not sure, Elizabeth. Years ago, when he first immigrated here and got his start in business, Grand Daddy was poor, at least until World War II when he and a partner went into real estate development, out west somewhere. I'm not sure what they did, exactly, except that they were buying or optioning vacant land, and then "flipping" it, selling it later, as soon as they could, for a quick profit. Years later, they had a falling out and broke up the business. Your grandfather came back east when I was born, but his partner didn't. Grand Daddy used go back to Denver now and then on business, but never took me with him. He said he still had some interests in property back there, but never really wanted to talk about it."

"Did Grand Daddy and his partner ever see each other again?"

"I don't think so, honey, but I don't know for sure. Grand Daddy never really trusted Manny. That was his partner's name. I've never met the guy, but there are some pictures of him around in Grand Daddy's stuff."

"Why not?"

"Why not what, honey?"

"Why didn't Grand Daddy trust him?"

"Your grandfather was a straight up guy. Totally honest. Someone you could always count on to do the right thing. Manny, I gather, didn't mind bending the truth or taking advantage of people."

"So what finally broke them up?"

"They were struggling," her father reached between the front seats with his left hand to squeeze my hand, still thinking about how close he'd come that day to losing me, "and Manny got impatient. Manny started to reach out for money from some people, Russians they had known before they came over here, that Grand Daddy didn't trust, bad guys that Manny wanted to be their partners. Grand Daddy bought out Manny's interest in some properties. Manny bought him out of some others, and they walked away."

Turning to look back at me, he could see I wanted to hear more. "Look, I'll go through these files," he said to reassure me, glancing as he did at the binders piled on the back seat between where I was sitting and where Rollo was leaning up against the door. "..over what's left of the weekend, and I'll let you know what I find. Okay?"

"Okay, Daddy," I smiled back at him.

"Meeeeoooowwwrrr." Rollo had jumped back into the "way-back" which is what we called the part of our wagon behind the back seat, his nose right up against the back window. He was making one of the long whining noises he does whenever he's sees something he thinks is important – usually another cat, a dog or raccoon prowling around our house.

"Rollo, put a lid on it," I told him, but he persisted, coming back to me twice to growl in my face and then returning to the rear window to continue his whining the way he does sometimes when he's upstairs in my bedroom and wants me to open my dormer window. "Com'on Rollo." I was beginning to get annoyed. "Cut it out. We're trying to talk up here. Get away from..," I started to say, turning back to talk to him eyeball to eyeball, but then I saw what Rollo was seeing. "Daddy. Look out the back."

My father turned to look between the front seats out the back of the car at the two men in the cream-colored van behind us. "Honey," talking to my mother now, "look in your mirror. How long has that van been behind us?"

"How should I know? Why, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong is that it could be...," he strained, as if squinting a bit could help him see better, "the same van some witness saw out in front of my office when they tried to take the safe this morning."

"Okay." I love it when Mommy takes charge. We were just outside the city now, on our way down a winding road that would soon be running along a stream that would widen as we got closer to home and to the river. "There's a grocery store just up ahead, past the new bridge construction. We'll pull in there and call the police if the van comes with us. They won't bother us there. They're too many people coming and going."

We drove into the parking lot past the front of the store where all the carts were lined up waiting for customers, where cars were stopping to pick up their groceries. The lot was full and busy with last minute Saturday afternoon shopping, so my mother pulled up, past the grocery store, along the curb in front of the dry cleaner next door. I remember that there was a kid I recognized from my neighborhood who was working at the grocery store that summer, helping a woman, holding a baby, to load groceries into her trunk. My dad got out immediately, just as our car was coming to a stop, closed the car door behind him and walked quickly into the lot where the cars were parked in front of the store, looking for the van we thought might be following us. We stayed in the car, the engine still running, my mother watching my father out the front window, Rollo and me looking out the side and back of the wagon.

A few second later, the cream-colored van pulled off the road and into the parking lot but, to our surprise, drove around the back of the grocery store. "Elizabeth," my mother turned around quickly to tell me, "you wait here. Keep the windows up, doors locked and stay in the car. No matter what, stay in the car. I'm going to talk to Daddy. Don't you move." She was talking fast, but carefully, the way she did when she wanted to make perfectly sure I understood something. (I think that technique has it's own chapter in the "Users Guide for Parents" they give people at the hospital when they have babies.) "Got it?"

"Got it," I responded, nodding my head slightly.

"Your father has his cell phone with him, and I'm leaving mine in my purse if you need it. ..We're calling the police if Daddy hasn't already." My mother got out and hurried to catch up with my father, excusing herself for almost running into an older man pushing a cart. Rollo was sitting up in the way back behind me, not laying down, but up on his rear end, front legs fully extended, and quiet too, stretching his neck and looking around the way he did whenever he could smell the scent of danger in the air. "Me too, Rollo," I thought to myself.

And then from behind me, from between the cars along the curb... It was a sound Rollo and I had heard before, the uneven gait of a person dragging one leg as he walked closer toward us. I pushed down the button on the driver's door hard to make sure all the doors were locked. Closer. "Where is he?!" I turned back to look for him again, at the people walking near the wagon, hoping it was only my imagination. And then, out from behind a car that had just coincidentally pulled up next to us, the man from the storeroom dragged his bad leg out into the open, his ruddy, weathered face turning toward us, looking me right in the eye.

His tall and stocky body seemed way too strong for a man who looked much older than I had expected. Closer to the car. "Rollo," I told him, as much for my sake as for his, "get up here with me." And he hopped over the back when I patted the seat next me, craning and turning his neck just enough to see the old man still coming behind us. I thought about yelling for help, but then the windows were up, it was noisy out – and, well, I wasn't entirely sure it was anything more than somebody with a bad leg. You can't let fear get the best of you.

Suddenly the old man stopped. Looking past the car, he took one more hesitant step with his good leg, and then turned unexpectedly and began hobbling away as fast as he could. Turning to look over my shoulder, I wondered what the old man had seen, and then back out the rear of the wagon just in time to see the old man looking at me, his eyes trying to say something, a look of fear plain on his face. "Rollo," I whispered my thoughts out loud, turning again in the direction the old man had been looking, "what's scared him away?"

Seeing nothing to worry about, I couldn't let the old man get away that easy, just in case he _was_ the one from my father's office which was seeming pretty likely under the circumstances. "Rollo..."

"Meoarrrk."

"Right. You wait here."

"MeeeeeeoarkK?"

"No. I know what Mom said, but I've got to see where he's going. Stay put." Popping the door lock, I pulled the handle, pushed open the door, and had one foot on the pavement, on my way to... Uh, oh.

"Get back in the car." Whoever he was, his voice was deep and deadly serious. It was one of the two men from the cream-colored van, had to be, his gloved hand wrapped around my left arm, while his partner went around to the other side of the car. "Do it now." Now _this_ would have been a good time to scream, but somehow that wasn't happening. I struggled for only a moment, instinctively I guess, but then did what he said. I'd always wondered how easy it was to kidnap someone. Now I knew.

Not that I was scared, mind you, although even if I was, I wasn't going to let him know, but he wasn't letting go of my arm. Grip of steel. Besides, running for my life would have entailed moving my legs which, at the time, weren't responding to messages from my brain. I got back in our car, aided in no small way by my kidnapper who stuffed me into the back seat and shoved me over, getting in next to me, never letting go of my arm. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Rollo peering over the back of the seat from the safety of the way-back, his ears almost horizontal. Low profile. Thinking about his next move. Smart. Meanwhile, I was in big trouble and would have preferred that he stop thinking so much and actually do something.

"The papers are on the back seat." It was the man in the driver's seat, the one with red hair, turning around to make sure they were there, as he closed the door behind him. "Let's get out of here. We'll drop the girl somewhere if we need a distraction to help us get away."

"Elizabeth! ELIZABETH!!!" My mother, having just turned around to see what was happening, was screaming from where she was standing next to my father, still on his phone with the police, but not for long.

Looking up to see what my mother was yelling about, he shouted, "They've got Elizabeth!" into the telephone. "Get a car over here. They're taking her in our wagon!" and he took off after my mother, just in time to hear the engine start. (My mother had left the keys in the ignition, and they tell me _I'm_ forgetful!) Lurching forward, the red haired man behind the wheel tried to peel out, but cars and shoppers crossing in front of us kept getting in his way. Looking out the window past my captor, I could see my parents running between the cars in the lot, more or less parallel to where we were driving, thinking they might cut us off, but wondering if that was really a good idea, not knowing what the men in the car might do to Rollo and me if they were trapped. And then we were clear of any foot traffic, the sound of our wheels screeching on our way out of the parking lot.

Forget the stop sign, we were gone, heading back the way we had come, tearing out onto the road to town just as a police car came speeding into the parking lot at the other end. They were headed toward my parents who were running to meet them, my father's hands hitting the hood of the police car as if it needed help stopping before it ran them over. My parents got in, pointing frantically in the direction we were going, the policeman behind the wheel not bothering to wait for the rear car doors to shut before starting after us, siren blaring, tires burning.

Coming out of the parking lot, the man at the wheel turned so sharply to our left, I was thrown across the back seat against the right side door. Papers were all over the seat and floor. And Rollo? Well he was somewhere in the way-back, rolling and sliding across the carpeting, trying to recover his balance. Me, too, when we heard a second police siren coming from in front of us, and the big man sitting next to me stuffed himself over the console between the front seats to sit next to his partner. It was the one chance I had to grab and stuff the papers that had fallen out onto the floor back into their binder, because I wasn't leaving the car without them or the two other binders that were still tied and hadn't come open. My mother's purse was on the console, and the two men weren't paying attention, so I grabbed that too.

Frightened at the thought of being caught between two police cars, the man at the wheel decided to make a sudden turn. "Good thinking," I said to myself, as if it was me driving. (What am I, rooting for the bad guys?!) "Calm down, Elizabeth," I told myself. But did they turn right, back toward the shops and homes? No. They turned left toward the water and the new bridge over the river that was nowhere near done. The bridge, that is. The river's been there forever. (You'll forgive the sloppy grammar, but I'm under a lot of pressure here.) "Hey!" I shouted, orange traffic cones flying as we made the turn, as if these two criminals were really going to pay attention to me. "This is a dead-end!" emphasis on the _dead_ part. Probably a mile or more to go. Two police cars barreling right behind us. "Plenty of time to stop," I thought to reassure myself. Right? Yes. Plenty of time. Noooooo sweat.

Well, forget the construction and dead-end signs, not to mention the wood and concrete barrier in front of us at the foot of bridge. Forget common sense. Forget everything. These two guys were driving like they'd left their brains back in their van. Just where did they think they were going? Unless, of course, they were from out of town and had no idea where they were. (I think even in Russia they must have construction cones, don't they? Did I tell you these guys were talking with accents that sounded Russian to me?)

"Rollo," I said, looking over the back of my seat, "do something!"

"Meeeeek."

"Oh fine." I was beginning to babble, a sure sign of losing it. I turned and leaned forward over the back of the seat, to talk to him without screaming. "We're in trouble, Rollo, deep trouble Rollo. We need a plan," as if the two men in the front seat behind me really couldn't hear us. The water was less than half a mile ahead.

Rollo raised one eyebrow. He's the only cat I've ever seen do that, but then he's the only cat I've ever seen that had eyebrows. Not just a few whiskers. I'm talking big, bushy eyebrows. "What?" I recognized that look. "You've already got one?" And then I realized, Rollo wasn't scrunched down, glued to the floor because he was scared. Are you kidding? Rollo doesn't know the meaning of fear. I mean that literally. He has a great vocabulary, but I don't think he actually knows what "fear" means. Okay, so I'm babbling. Of the two of us, I'm the one who's afraid of stuff. Rollo, on the other hand, was thinking, thinking what his old friend and mentor, Sam the beagle, would do. Take the initiative. That's right. Even when you're scared – especially then – take the initiative. That's what Sam would have done.

I looked forward. We weren't more than a hundred yards from the construction barriers at the foot of the bridge, and then maybe fifty yards more at most to the end of what they had finished on this side. After that, nothing but water, just some rocks and deep, crummy, scummy water. Dirt, some trees and scraggly brushes on either side, sloping downhill sharply. At the speed we were going, we'd be there in only a few seconds.

The man in the passenger seat had been looking frantically over his shoulder at the police cars closing behind us. Shouting at the driver, he pointed desperately to what was left of an old dirt road just to the right of the barriers in front of the bridge. "That way!" (He was screaming in Russian, of course, but I got the point in English just fine.)

"Uh, excuse me," I said politely, not wanting to make a negative impression, just tapping the driver on his shoulder. "Sir, that old road goes up a hill and then over... well, over a cliff actually. There used to be a house there, but the ground around it gave way years... " There I was, jabbering again, my hands flat against the seat on each side of me while our car began bumping and rocking on the broken road surface just before the bridge. At this speed, I was surprised it didn't rattle apart.

"Rollo!!" I shouted, whirling around just in time to see him crunch his eyebrows, tense his rear legs and leap, onto the top of the back seat and then go airborne.

"MeoooowwaaaarrrRRRKKK!!" Right at the driver. "Plooofff" on and over his headrest, Rollo's arms and part of his chest wrapped around the driver's eyes. "MURRK!" Even Rollo was pleased with himself.

"Oh yes! ...Oh no!!" Rollo hit him just as the driver was making a last chance, swerving turn to take the dirt road, so fast that the rear of the wagon lost its footing and hit the right edge of the concrete safety barrier. Barely a moment ago, I had reached up and grabbed the seatbelt with my right hand, bringing it across my chest just in the nick of time. It held, first on one side, and then the other as the force of our glancing off the barrier threw the rear of the car back the other way just as violently. The driver could hardly control the car as it was, but now, with Rollo's paws over his eyes, rear feet kicking at his earlobes. (Sam would have been so proud. I know I was.)

Well, the driver did, in fact, lose control and, yes friends, there went the car, sliding in the loose dirt and mud sideways up and over the crest of this old dirt road. Uh oh. "No it doesn't look good for our heroes," I thought to myself about Rollo's and my own prospects. Not this time folks.

"UrrkKKK!" Even Rollo was more than a little worried as he looked forward from his vantage point, still hanging on to the side of the driver's head, the driver's hands too busy holding on to the steering wheel to do much more than shake his head in a desperate attempt to lose the furiously furry hat he was wearing. Looking at the lack of road in front of us, ignoring an occasional swat when the driver dared to take one of his hands off the wheel, even Rollo seemed a bit tentative. (Mind you, this was all happening in just a couple of seconds, although it seemed a lot longer at the time.) Fortunately, the passenger was too engaged in holding on to the dashboard and the door for dear life to worry about Rollo. Like my mother always said, "It always pays to wear your seat belt." Perhaps I'll talk to my kidnapper about that later, assuming there is one, a "later" that is, although I remember doubting at the time that he would appreciate a lecture on vehicle safety. "Rollo, get back here!!"

"Meee." Rollo scrunched up his face to close his eyes just as the wagon began rolling on its side, rolling over once before sliding, tires down the rest of the way toward the water.

"Whoooooooooooooaaaahhhh!" Well, what else did you expect me to say under the circumstances?

To be continued...

Could this be it for Young Elizabeth and Rollo?! Can this cat swim? What about Elizabeth in the back seat? And you thought you were having a bad hair day. Not to worry. You know these serials always work out for the best. Of course, I'm stuck with this wagon – not to mention Elizabeth and Rollo in it – rolling uncontrollably over a cliff into deep water. Hmmm? Maybe I've overdone it? But then this is a true story and it's me, Elizabeth, telling it, so how bad can it be?

Standby for another installment in the exciting adventures of young Elizabeth and Rollo the Wondercat. ..Now, let's see. What exactly did happen after I lost consciousness? "Rollo!" I looked over at the cat lying on my bed. "Give me your notes. We need to talk."

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Episode 3:

One Good Deed And We're Off To The Country

"Hey, Rollo." There he was, sitting up on the bed in my room, in our house just on the edge of campus, pretending as always that he'd been up and hard at work all morning while I was in class. Not a chance. A quick look over at the bird feeder stuck to my sliding window, and I knew from the absence of all but one measly seed, even though I had filled it before I left, that Rollo had been less than intimidating to the birds who came and ate at will. "Have you been hard at work?" I asked him, grabbing his head and rubbing the sides of his cheeks with my folded fingers. He tried looking alert, but the huge yawn when I was done gave him away.

"Okay," I announced, realizing long ago that having Rollo gave me an excuse to talk out loud to myself. I flipped up the lid to my laptop and sat down, grabbing the front edge of my chair, pulling it under me and me up to my desk. "I need a break. Let's write something." Rollo, fully awake now, sprung... "Sprung"? Is that really a word. Or is it "sprang" into action? I'll check the dictionary later. (Probably much later.) Well, anyway, he leaped from the bed onto the back of my chair and neck so he could sit there, looking over my shoulder down at the screen. We were a real team, him and me. He'd certainly saved my you-know-what more times than I could count, and this wagon over the bridge situation we'd been writing about was no exception.

I started, as usual, by rubbing my palms together, and then polishing my fingers with my thumbs. Setting my fingers in place on the middle row of keys, I waited for them to start moving. Hm. "Just tell the story," I could hear my mother reminding me. And that's exactly what I did.

The wagon, still sliding down the muddy hill, had rolled over onto its side just as it pushed its way into reeds and water. Smoke? No, it must have been steam that was rising from where the cool creek had surprised the engine in my parents' car. My seatbelt had saved me from flying forward into the front seat, but I had unbuckled it after we first hit the water and gravity had taken over from there, leaving me crumbled up between the back seat and the door that was now the floor of the car.

"Meoarkk! Meoarrkkk!!" Rollo, standing on my chest, was certainly doing his best to get my attention.

"What?!" I must have been stunned and forgot for the moment where we were, thinking for a second that he was waking me up in the middle of the night the way he does every time he hears anything he thinks is important. Then it came to me. Struggling to get up, I realized that one of the two men in the front seat was moaning, holding his head, I think. The other man, the driver with red hair, was either somewhere on the passenger side where I couldn't see him, maybe under the glove compartment, or had somehow gotten out of the car.

Fortunately, the window my neck and the back of my head were pressed up against hadn't broken. Bad news was, I could see water starting to seep into the car as we continued to drift into the river.

"Okay, Rollo," I looked him right in the eye, coming to my senses, "let's get this show on the road." Our wagon was on its side. Grabbing on to the back of the console between the front seats, I pulled myself up, standing up to where I could roll down the window on the other side which was over my head. (Thank goodness my parents had decided to save a few bucks when they bought this old car and didn't spring for a newer one with power windows.) Window open, I grabbed Rollo, reached up through the window and tossed him as far as I could onto the bottom of the hill. Sam had taught him never to be afraid of getting dirty, and I knew he'd be okay. My turn.

Papers first. Quickly, but as carefully as I could, I grabbed the binders with the papers from the safe. Clutching the three binders under my left arm – I'm right handed. – I reached through the open window above me, right arm first, walking up the back seat as best I could. "Whoops!" Hmmm, more slippery than I thought it would be. With the help of my left elbow, I just managed to pull myself out the window and pushed my rear end up far enough to sit for a moment on the edge of the roof to get my bearings. Judging from the sound of the men in the front seat, yelling at each other in a foreign language while they scrambled to open the driver's side door next to me, I didn't have much time. Unfortunately for them, my weight on the roof started to roll the car over onto its back, which is exactly what happened when I pulled my legs out onto the door, leaned forward and kicked off in the direction of the hill. When I did, I think my shoes caught the railing of our roof rack. Good for me, not so much for our wagon which rolled onto its roof, water gushing in the window I had opened.

"Rolllllooooohhhh!!" I called out, as I hit the hill just at the waters edge and began sliding back down, my legs and right arm moving frantically to gain some footing. No way was I letting go of those binders. There! I grabbed a scruffy piece of something in my right hand, still rooted on the hill since before the excavation. "Okay, okay." Looking up, I could see Rollo had already made it to the top, looking down at me and then over his shoulder toward the road. "Stay there, Rollo. Get the police." Hearing their siren coming to a stop, I figured they were only a few yards away from where Rollo was doing his best to get their attention.

Calming myself down, even while I heard the gurgling sound of our wagon rolling the rest of its way into the river, I began dragging myself up the ten, maybe fifteen feet to the top. (Too bad, I loved that old car. Lots of memories, but apparently not so many as to stop me from thinking about the new one Mom and Dad might get, until I slipped again, slid back a foot or two, and came to my senses. Focus, I know, but hey, I was less than a year away from getting my driver's license.) Almost there, I could see two policemen, one holding onto what was left of the old guard railing, the other hand-in-hand with the first, reaching down to help me. Another couple of feet and he grabbed my wrist, pulling me the rest of the way to where I was safe, finally.

"Officer, there..." I started to warn him, gasping to catch my breath, almost slipping down the hill again as I turned around to point toward our car, now completely upside down, only two wheels and a piece of a third showing above the water. "There were two men in the front seat! I don't think they got out!!"

"You wait up here, Miss." It was the larger of the two policemen talking, the one who had anchored the two man rope that pulled me the last few feet up the hill. One after the other they stepped over the edge, slipping and sliding, their hands out to their sides for balance, down to the water and what was left of our car.

"Come here, Rollo." I bent down to pick him up. He was shivering like me and, under the circumstances, I thought we could both use a hug. And a bath. We had mud all over us. The binders, too, but I was pretty sure none of the papers inside had gotten wet.

Two other police cars were there now, one with my parents in the back. One of the policemen, this time it was the shorter one, actually went in and under the water next to our car which had drifted a bit into the river, but not yet to where it was so deep you couldn't stand up. A long twenty seconds later he was back up, shaking his head and wiping the water off his face with both hands as he shouted up to us.

"There's no one in there." That was all he said before the sirens of an arriving fire truck and ambulance sounded too loud for anyone to talk. His partner waved for him to come back. I found out that that police boats were already searching for the men up and down the river.

By the time we got home and cleaned up that Saturday, it was almost time for dinner, but my parents had some social thing they had to attend. They were worried, but I was okay and, anyway, I got them to spring for pizza for me, Eleanor, Bobby and MR. ("MR," in case you were wondering, stood for "Middle Ralph," but I'll explain that later.) These guys were my friends, doing the friendly thing by coming over to keep me company and inhale some free pepperoni. They would be walking over, and should be here by seven. My parents would take Bobby and MR home when they got back, and Eleanor would spend the night in my room where we could talk about stuff until one of us passed out.

I had learned even then that, in your whole life, you're only going to make a few good friends. Sure, I _knew_ lots of people. Everyone does. And I was friendly with many of them, mostly other kids I knew from school. You know what I mean. But real friends, the kind you could count on in a pinch? No, there were only three of them, plus Rollo of course, and they were coming over tonight. I didn't know then for sure, but I thought it would pretty much always be that way. Not necessarily the same few, because I would make new friends when I was older, but only a few friends at any given time and place, only a couple of which, if I was lucky, would last forever.

"Everybody going to be okay?" My father turned his head on his way out the door, pausing just long enough to look each one of the four us in the eyes, right in the eyes, his keys jingling in one hand as he slipped his arms through his sport coat.

"Com'on, honey. We're going to be late." My mother was already on her way down the path.

"Very collegiate look, Mr. Coleman." Bobby was reserved around my parents. MR had trouble talking to adults, but Eleanor always said whatever was on her mind.

"Thank you, Eleanor. Should I take that as a 'Yes'? Now he was looking right at me.

"We'll be fine, Daddy. Have a good time."

The pizza delivery car showed up just as my parents were pulling away.

"How much are you going to tip him?" MR really wanted to know.

Eleanor was busy staring out the glass panel next to our front door. Bobby was already in our family room, seeing what was on TV. Cash in hand, I was standing just inside the door waiting for the sound of our knocker.

"Heck. I was hoping for that new kid, Donny." Eleanor was a sucker for any boy with blonde, wavy hair.

"A dollar?"

"Doesn't seem like enough for two medium pizzas." MR could make such simple stuff sound so serious.

Turning to look right at him, with only seconds to spare as Pizza Delivery Boy took his first step onto our porch, I realized MR had something in mind. "What? How much would you give him?"

"Two dollars. A dollar a pizza. It only seems fair."

"Done."

Pizzas, napkins and everybody took a soda from the refrigerator, three Cokes and a Yoo-hoo. MR was a tad lactose intolerant, but liked chocolate milk (and pizza) way too much to walk past a Yoo-hoo without drinking it. We all just put up with the little noises he made now and then, because that's another thing friends do.

Sprawled out on the floor and on the poofy couch we had in the family room, we started to wolf down our dinner, not bothering even to close the lids of the pizza boxes between slices. They weren't going to be out there long enough to get cold. The pepperoni pizza was in front of the TV between Bobby and Eleanor. The one with green peppers and mushrooms that MR and I were sharing was on the coffee table. Rollo was sitting up on the floor, his head spinning to see who would be the first to offer him scraps.

"Nobody drips anything on the couch," I garbled through the wad of crust in my mouth, and all three of them stopped chewing. Sometimes I can sound exactly like my mother.

MR moved toward the edge of the cushion where he was sitting, so that the piece of pizza he was poised to slide into his mouth was at least over the floor if he missed. "You talkin' to me?" he said, doing his best Robert DeNiro. (It's from the movie "Taxi Driver," for those of you out there with no idea what I'm talking about. Hard to believe, but you can actually take courses in college that make you watch old movies for homework. I love this place.)

"So tell us more about these two 'thugs' who kidnaped you." No doubt about it, Eleanor was wishing it had happened to her.

"You just like saying the word "thugs." Bobby was right, unable to stop himself from giggling through the last swallow of Coke he'd just taken, burping slightly on his way to get the words out. He reached up with his hand to catch a drop of soda that gurgled out the corner of his mouth before it made it to his chin. I liked Bobby, and I was pretty sure he liked me back, although it wasn't something we'd ever talked about. That's the way it is with chemistry. I'd look at him. He'd look at me from across the classroom, and we'd both smile for no particular reason.

Wait a minute. I forgot to tell you about MR, about how he got that nickname. Not a big deal, but it deserves explaining. You see, MR's father is Ralph Webster, Jr., sometimes called "JR" by his friends. MR was the Webster's first son, Ralph Arnold Webster III (the third), but then they had another son and named him Ralph too. Don't ask. They just did. Apparently the plan had been to have only one Ralph kid in the family, and that way, when someone called and just asked "May I please speak to Ralph?" Mrs. Webster could ask, "Big Ralph or little Ralph?" You see, Mr. Webster, Jr. had always been "Little Ralph" when he was growing up, and I guess he figured it was his time to be "Big." See the problem coming? Sure you do.

Now there were two kids named Ralph, only two years apart at that. So, in order to do the "Big Ralph," "Little Ralph" thing, they started calling MR by his middle name, Arnold, which no one liked, especially MR. The idea was to let his younger brother be "Little Ralph," even though "Littlest Ralph" would have been proper English. In any case, realizing some years ago that MR was the Ralph in the middle and that his parents were calling him by his middle name, we, his friends, took up calling him "Middle Ralph" or just "MR" for short.

Wow. That took much longer to explain than I thought it would. "Back to the story, ay Rollo?" I said, turning my head slightly to glance at the "parrot cat" perched my shoulder. A lick of his raspy tongue on the side of my face, and I knew he was in full agreement. The less I write about him, the more antsy he gets. Sometimes I'd actually find him tapping one of his huge, rabbit feet when he became impatient with my rambling. "Where did he learn to do that?" I wondered out loud, tapping my foot while I waited for my fingers to resume typing.

"The thugs, Eleanor, were from someplace else, some other country."

"How can you be sure?" Bobby was staring at me with those clear, milk chocolate eyes... Not that the color of his eyes was important or anything.

"Because they were speaking mostly in some foreign language, Russian maybe, or in English now and then with a Russian accent. It was so thick, it almost sounded phony. ..Stay here," I told them, rising to my feet. "I want to show you something. MR."

"What?"

"You eat the last piece of pepperoni while I'm gone. I know you want it," I smiled at him. "It's okay." And off I went to my Dad's study, bringing back one of the binders and an old metal cash box my father had taken from the safe at his office before I took up temporary residence inside. Pushing back the coffee table, I sat down on the floor, leaning against the couch. MR did the same, sliding down out of his seat to get a better view.

"Take a look at these." I opened the cash box first, holding it on my lap. Rollo had hopped up on the seat of the couch behind me, and was stretching his neck to look down over my shoulder. It didn't creak much when I opened it, but there was no missing the stale odor of mildew.

"No money." MR was right.

More importantly, Bobby had come over to get a closer look and was now sitting shoulder to shoulder next to me on my right. I remember Rollo looking at him after Bobby sat down, as if he should have asked for his (Rollo's) permission.

"What we _do_ have," I announced quietly, not bothering to look up while I took inventory, "is an old document of some kind ..and a letter."

"That's it?" Eleanor was as disappointed as I was.

"That's it."

"Careful," MR warned me, pushing the nosepiece of his glasses firmly onto his face with his left hand while reaching for the document with his right. (Did I mention that MR wore glasses? If I forgot, it's because he wears contacts now.) "This looks old. We better unfold it carefully."

Bobby grabbed the coffee table and slid it almost up against MR's chest while Eleanor took charge of the empty pizza boxes and moved them onto the oval rug in front of the fireplace.

MR was right. Whatever it was, it was old, and folded in half and then half again. The paper was brown around the edges, as if it had been baked like my mother's crispy chocolate chip cookies. In fact, the teeny tip of one of the corners cracked off just as he was starting to lay it out flat.

"Watch it." Now I was the one who was worried.

"Don't press out the creases." Eleanor was pointing to a crack that had formed by one of the folds.

"I know, I know." Serious stuff like this was what MR did best. His fingers were a bit pudgy, but he had a really fine touch.

Very carefully, without pressing on the folds, he extended the single legal size page as good as anyone could have, letting it just sit there, nearly flat. "I think you'll need a professional document restorer to do any better. They've got a way of re-moisturizing the paper so that it...."

"Who cares? It's a deed." (Remember what I told you about Eleanor? How impatient she can be? Besides, we were all wiped, really tired. Rollo and me, because of my time locked up in the safe and our dip in the river. Bobby, Eleanor and MR, because they're my friends and were experiencing "Sympathetic Wipedness Syndrome," a medical condition I just invented. You know what I'm talking about. When you're tired, you go through that impatient phase when even the most ordinary thing can be annoying, followed by "Phase 2" when everything seems funnier than it really is, followed by pass-out sleep. I'm no doctor, but I know this from personal experience, namely staying up really really late studying for exams.)

"To what?" I was curious. "A deed to what?" All five of us, Rollo included, were close enough to exchange ear wax, trying to read the faded fine print.

"It's..." MR started and then stopped. "Bobby," MR was giving instructions without bothering to turn around, his eyes busy squinting to read the fine print, "write this down."

"Write it down on what?" Bobby made a scribbling motion with his finger in the air in front of him.

Earlier that day, the police had asked me to keep some paper handy in case there was anything else I remembered, but I had pretty much told them everything when they took my statement at the police station on the way home from the river. It had only taken a few minutes, and they were right about wanting me to go through it while my memory was fresh. Even so, the detective (the policeman wearing plain clothes) told me that sometimes you remember important things later, after the excitement of the moment has worn off. Later on, particularly when you're not thinking about it consciously, something, anything, can trigger an important memory. We'll see, but nothing had occurred to me yet. Just in case, I had my pad and pen, the ones I keep in my backpack, ready. "Here," I offered them to Bobby. "You can use these," and I held them up, but not out, a little trick to get him closer to me. (Is that creepy? ..Don't answer that.)

"Sure." Bobby agreed, holding onto the pad rather than taking it, waiting for me to let go. ("Sure"? The guy says one lousy word and I'm having trouble breathing.)

"It's a deed." MR thought he had our attention. "You getting this?"

"Fine. 'DEED.'" Bobby held up the pad showing MR the one word he had printed at the top. "There. Now, keep reading."

"'Deed' is a palindrome."

MR looked up and annoyed. "Thank you, Eleanor," and then continued reading. "August 14, 1947. Let's see. '..property at the end of the unpaved road known locally as Johnston's Trail, off Taylor Avenue, consisting of the land defined by the coordinates given herein... Blah, blah, blah. '..the southwestern portion of said property running along the water,'" and then he paused. "Hey, I actually know where that is."

"You do?" Eleanor always sounded surprised whenever MR knew anything, not wanting to admit how really bright he could be sometimes.

"Of course. I mean, I don't know this lot specifically, but look at the drawing..."

"It's called a 'plat.'" I said. "I remember my father showing me the one that came with the deed to our house."

"It's south of town," MR told us. "You guys know where Taylor Avenue is. We've gone down there before, on the way to South River to go waterskiing."

"Sure." Bobby was talking, but we were all beginning to remember. "It's got to be Harness Creek. We've been there, on Eleanor's uncle's boat. It's just inside the mouth of the river, on the right coming in from the bay."

"Sure, it's the creek with the island in the middle," I started the sentence, but we all finished it together, "which must be why they call it 'Harness Creek.'"

"Of course." It was like a light bulb had gone off over Eleanor's head. "The creek has two openings, one on each side of the island. From the river, the water in the creek looks like a harness." We all took a moment to look at her as if we'd been born with that information, and she was the last person on the planet to have figured it out.

"Bobby," I shoved my arm, my bare, short sleeved arm just in front of his face, pointing to the largest of the books lying flat in a pile on the lower shelf of the bookcase behind him. "Hand me that book on the bottom. ...There," I said, tapping on the air with my finger for emphasis, his head turning toward the shelf, then back to look at my arm, and all the way back to look at me.

"Right." He smiled slightly, mostly with his eyes, glancing for just a second at my arm, still suspended out there. I pulled it back slowly, unable to look away, even while he began to stand up and do what I'd asked.

Having the feeling I was being stared at, because I was, I turned in time to catch a glimpse of Eleanor looking at me, rolling her eyes. "What?" I mouthed in her direction, to which she widened her eyes and tilted her head slightly, as in "How pathetic. Why don't you just ask him out?" (Eleanor and I had been friends for a long time and we were really good at reading each other's expressions.)

Going right to the index, "Harness. Harness Creek. Page 47." The book was a big, hard-to-hold-in-your-lap history of the county which was more than three hundred years old. The county, not the book. (Our state was one of the original thirteen colonies.) "There it is, see, just inside the river off the bay. Let's see..." and I began reading the text on the opposite page out loud. Turns out, it was named for an old hermit craftsman who used to live alone on the island, making harnesses, saddles and other horse and farm stuff out of leather. "Well," not wanting Eleanor to feel bad, "it certainly looks like a harness."

"Probably why the old man moved there." Bobby was trying to sound serious, but even Eleanor thought it was funny. (It wasn't all that hysterical. Of course not. It's just that we all had a case of the gigglies and you know how that goes.) "I mean," Bobby wasn't done yet, "if I made harnesses, that's where I'd live." I was laughing too, but mostly trying not to pass out watching Bobby smile. Maybe it was the stress of that day's events, but Robert Jacob Harrison was looking unusually cute that evening. No doubt about it, I would need all my considerable powers of concentration to focus on the matters at hand. Only Rollo, upside down now on his back, knew what I was really worried about. "Mmooo." The little sarcastic cooing sound he made was ridicule enough to get me back on track.

"Who's the deed for?" Eleanor asked. "I mean, who owns the property?"

MR kept reading. "...in the name of Joseph and Manuel Zuretsky, jointly."

"Who are they?" MR was turning to me for answers.

"Uh, I'm not sure about the first names, but 'Zuretsky' was the last name of my grandfather's partner. I heard my father telling one of the police officers. One of these men must have been his partner. Sure, 'Manuel' was probably his real first name, but everyone must have called him 'Manny.'"

"So why would a deed belonging to his partner be in your grandfather's safe?"

"I don't know, Bobby."

"Sounds Polish to me." Eleanor's grandparents, on her mother's side I think, were from Poland. "Maybe the men who kidnaped you were speaking Polish?"

"Maybe, but it sounded more like that bad guy, Boris, on 'Rocky and Bullwinkle.'"

"Cartoon reruns," MR said sarcastically, "an excellent basis for a linguistic evaluation of foreign dialects." The three of us didn't know whether to be impressed whenever MR said something like that, or just ignore him.

"Between you and me," I decided to come to Eleanor's defense by changing the subject, "I've got the hots for Dudley."

"Do-Right?!" Bobby just wanted to be clear, but I fantasied that he was jealous.

"'Do-Right,' 'Do-Wrong,' what do I care? I think he's cute."

"Must be his double chin," Eleanor was smiling now, using the fingers on her left hand to pull the sides of her face together to make a crease in her chin straight up under her lips. Dudley's was much more dramatic, of course, but hers was close enough to make me laugh every time she did it. In fact, I remember thinking later, it wasn't that she was actually funny, so much as it was funny watching her try. "It'll be our secret." Eleanor and I loved talking to each other like that, like there was no one else in the room but the two of us.

"Elizabeth Sarah Do-Right," I sighed for effect. "You can hardly blame me for dreaming about him," I said in my almost southern accent, waving the vapors away from my face like some overly emotional beauty queen. And then it became obvious that neither Bobby nor MR were paying any attention.

"What about this picture?" Bobby was pointing to the really old photograph I had been holding all this time, the only thing, other than the deed, we'd found in the cash box. There were two men standing next to each other, in what must have been a black and white picture that had faded to brown. "That one," I told them, pointing to the one in the suit, "could my grandfather, 'Grand Daddy Coleman.' I'm not sure. His name was 'Joe,' but he's so much younger there than when I knew him."

"Maybe he changed it from 'Zuretsky.'?"

"Maybe so, Bobby. Lot's of immigrants did that, but I don't know. He died maybe 10 years ago in some boating accident. I was just a little kid. ...I remember the funeral, I think. People coming over to the house..." I kept staring at the photograph, but it didn't bring anything to mind.

"Are there any pictures of him around the house?" MR had gotten up and walked over to the wall were we had some family photographs.

"Not that I've seen. Maybe my father has some. I'll ask him again, but he told me once that Grand Daddy never liked having his picture taken. His wife, my grandmother died when my father was young. I've seen a picture of her, just one. She was pretty. Had eyes sort of like my Dad."

"What about the guy in the work clothes standing next to him?" Bobby had the picture now.

Shaking my head, "I don't know."

"Look at where they're standing?" Eleanor was pointing to the dirt around where the picture was taken in front of some kind of wooden office or shed. "It's outdoors, but there's no grass."

"Are you kidding?" MR had something to say, but fell off the arm of the couch before he had a chance to get it out, almost flattening Rollo in the process, his muffled "Merrrrk." barely audible, but he'd be alright. Rollo liked MR and my friends, and enjoyed being treated like one of the guys. "There's no pavement," he explained, scrambling to get up and regaining his composure as if nothing had happened. "That wood decking they're standing on is a sidewalk, the kind they used to put down when there were dirt streets so they wouldn't have to walk through the mud when it rained."

"You figure your father's what, maybe forty?" Bobby was guessing, but not that far off.

"About that. He was forty-two on his last birthday."

"And so his father might have been somewhere in his sixties if he were still alive."

"Yeah, but my father told me Grand Daddy was sixty-two when he died. He'd been more like seventy-two now. ...These guys look to be, what?"

"In their late twenties, thirty at most?" Eleanor was already ahead of us. "Which makes this picture at least forty years old."

"Clever, Sherlock..." MR was lying flat on his back, holding Rollo under his (Rollo's) armpits, at the end of his (MR's) outstretched arms. Rollo hated being held like that, but was too polite to say anything except that little choking noise he kept making. "...but so what? So it's forty years old. We knew it was an old photo just looking at it."

"It tells us something about where they were." Eleanor had a point, but it really didn't help all that much.

"Yeah, someplace desolate, without sidewalks," Bobby wasn't impressed, "which could have been anywhere. So what?"

"Maybe it wasn't a city, not a proper one anyway. Could have been a construction site, maybe one of those little towns they built for the workers when they struck oil or, even better, gold?!" We all just cocked our heads slightly, told him, "Fat chance," with our faces and sat there for a moment without saying anything. (By the way, if you don't have your own "Fat chance." expression, maybe you should stop reading for a moment and try one. It'll come in handy. Trust me. I practice expressions sometimes in front of a mirror. ..It's not as weird as it sounds.)

"Let's face it." Bobby was the first one of us to admit it, rubbing the tiredness off his face. "We got nothin'."

"So what do we do now?" I shrugged. Of the four of us, I was usually the least patient, with Eleanor a close second.

"You've got that part-time job at the paper," MR thought he had something.

He was right, I did.

"Maybe you could do some research there, go through their archives, forty years ago, try to find some record of your grandfather when he moved back here, something that says where he was from. Maybe some mention of his partner?"

"You know," Eleanor thought he MR was making sense, "he's right. 'Zuretsky' can't be that common a name."

"Are you guys kidding?" I complained. "The paper's a daily. Their archives aren't computerized. I may have go through hundreds of copies and maybe still not find anything. Besides," I was waiting for them to volunteer to help me, but no one did, "I'll have newsprint all over my hands." I did my best to sound dejected, but no one reacted.

"Tonight," to my pleasant surprise, normally quiet Bobby was taking charge, although he seemed to be looking at me for permission. "Tonight," he said again a bit more assertively, "we look through these other papers and tomorrow, we go there."

"Where?" Eleanor was up on her knees, obviously excited at the prospect of a field trip. Investigating stuff was, after all, what the four of us loved to do most.

But wait...

"Murrrk." Rollo had moved from my shoulder to sitting on his tush, front arms straight down, next to my laptop where he could watch the screen and me at the same time.

"What? I'm on a roll here. What's your problem?"

"Murr, meeork ..ork." It was a sentence, a cat sentence, but a sentence nonetheless, usually indicating that I had forgotten something.

"Hm. Oh yeah. You're right. That weekend there was an arts, crafts and food fair at the dock." I stopped to reach up to the shelf next to my desk to grab one of the mmm, mm delicious chocolate chip cookies my mother had sent me. "You're making me hungry. I used to love those fairs."

"Meek."

"You're right. It wasn't the fairs so much as it was a chance to hangout with the guys."

"Murrrk."

"Right, and flirt with Bobby. We didn't go to Harness Creek the next day, did we? ..REWRITE!"

Back to the living room...

"Where?" MR thought it was obvious. "We've got to go to..."

"Are you kidding?" I interrupted. "This weekend's the fair at the dock. Cool stuff to buy. Little crab cakes?" I was trying to get MR on board. "Those fudge coated brownies that one bakery shop always sells. I mean, aren't we going? We always go to the fairs."

"Absolutely!" Eleanor got the point, even if Bobby and MR didn't.

"What do you think, Bobby?" MR was leaving it up to him. "Maybe we could meet up there, around lunchtime maybe?"

"Yeah, uh..." Bobby didn't look over at me, not immediately, mostly because he could feel me looking at him. "Sure....Sure. You two will probably get their early to shop for stuff. MR and me, we'll leave our bikes at the rack outside," now he turned to face me, smiling a bit when he did, "outside your father's office and walk down Main Street to meet you. How's that?"

"What about our field trip?" Eleanor really wanted to go.

"Maybe Monday?" MR suggested. "We can make plans when we meet up tomorrow."

"Hey, guys." It was my mother, and my father right behind her coming through the front door. "We're back. Sorry we're late."

Bobby and MR started to get up, anticipating a ride home. "Whoa. Where are we going?"

Eleanor was asking about our field trip, but it wasn't necessarily something I wanted my parents to know about. I don't know, maybe, I wasn't sure yet, but I wanted time to think about it. "We're going to hang out at the fair tomorrow, at the dock. Maybe meet there for lunch."

"Good," my mother answered for the two of them, "It's just the break you need," she told me while Bobby and MR walked around our couch on their way to the front door, and Eleanor and I stood up waiving a simple goodbye with the flat of our hands.

On his way, behind my father and Bobby, MR turned back, my mother having walked out of the way into the kitchen and whispered, to Eleanor no less, "Call me tonight," raising his eyebrows as he did.

Eleanor was as surprised as I was, but responded with a soft, "Okay," and then looked at me as if to ask, "What's that about?"

To be continued...

"There," I turned to look at Rollo, my speech impaired by a second cookie I hadn't swallowed yet. "Happy?"

"Mrrr."

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Episode 4:

Close Encounters Of The Furred Kind

Elizabeth liked the idea of sleeping late, but never could. Most kids her age struggled to get up in the morning. Elizabeth loved the way she'd wake up just before her alarm would go off, get dressed, eat and feel the weather on her face when she rode her bike to school, arriving early for Mr. Rawlings' first period "American Lit." It was her favorite class. She'd wanted to be a writer for as long as she'd known how to read. And write she did, a trunk-full of stories she hadn't the nerve yet to show to anyone – although there was this one she'd been working on lately that Elizabeth thought had promise. Maybe this was the one she'd dare to give Mr. Rawlings for his professional opinion.

Her friend, Eleanor, on the other hand, lived to sleep. (She actually told me once that she preferred it to being awake, but I'm pretty sure she was just kidding.) This morning was no exception, particularly given that she and Elizabeth had been up late the night before watching the horror film festival on The Late Show. It was 11:08 in the morning. "Hmm," she groaned, mumbling to herself as she opened one eye to look at her watch on the night table in our guest room. "Plenty of time to get ready." There wasn't and she knew it, but that's what she said. "...Yuk." She used the corner of her pillow to wipe away some slobber that fell out when she started talking.

"Get up," she said out loud to motivate herself, "quick shower, get dressed, grab an apple to eat along the way and walk out the front door with Elizabeth who was no doubt already ready to go." (Most of us would never talk that much to ourselves, but Eleanor was exceptional. Next to me, of course, she was, herself, her favorite person to hang out with. If you think about that for a minute or two, it'll start to make sense.) Together they would walk at a brisk pace the thirty-two minutes it would take to get downtown, cutting through people's yards, with their longstanding permission of course, and taking the runner's trail through the woods. No sweat. Eleanor was a pro. "Got to hustle," she threw off the covers and bounded out of bed on her way to the bathroom.

(Wait. I'm having a writer's moment... "What do you think, Rollo? Should I be writing about Young Elizabeth in the third person..."

"Murrk?"

"..or first person? It is, after all, me that I'm talking about. Hm. ..I think I'll go back to first person." I looked over at Rollo who just stared back at me, absent any approval or disapproval of my literary decision. "What do you know?" I said, determined to get on with my writing without or without his support.)

"Hey!" Eleanor literally landed in our kitchen, having jumped the last few feet as if she was some superhero just arriving to save the day.

"Hey yourself," I was glad to see her, greeting her from the open door of our refrigerator, holding the perfect apple I knew my best human friend would need. My backpack – an old canvas bag, the kind with a flap, like a saddle bag, that I'd picked up cheap at an Army-Navy surplus store – with Rollo peering over the edge, was already on my shoulders. "Here you go." I tossed the apple across the room, lofting it perfectly, if I do say so myself, into Eleanor's hand.

"Thanks. Let's roll," and we did. "You know," Eleanor was walking behind me down the path on our way to the sidewalk, "everybody thinks it's weird that you take your cat with you everywhere you go. It's.. It's not what ordinary people do."

"Then it makes sense," I answered without turning around, leaving it to Rollo to do the looking at Eleanor for me, "doesn't it?" (Rollo's no ordinary cat.)

"Mrrrrk." Rollo flattened out his ears, said goodbye to Eleanor and slumped below the edge of the backpack's flap, thinking he'd catch a quick nap on our way to the harbor.

It was warm that June day, almost at the beginning of the summer between middle school and high school. So far so good on what promised to be a near perfect day walking through the shops and open market downtown by the dock in the heart of the small, colonial town where our families had lived for decades, at the mouth of the river just off the bay. We'd buy lunch from one of the stands – maybe a grilled crab cake on a Kaiser roll, share some fries in a cup and definitely some ice cream made right there in front of us. My personal favorite was the vanilla with fresh pineapple made into a shake with half a banana. And it wouldn't just be the two of us. Bobby and Middle Ralph would be there, too. Bobby, to be honest, no brag intended, because he wanted to see me. MR because he was Bobby's friend.

I had talked to Bobby last night, an hour or so after my father had driven the boys home, pretending we were discussing what we would do at the fair when all we really wanted to do was hear each other's voice. It wasn't a date, not exactly, but it was something, and I liked the feeling of looking forward to it.

It was already busy by the time we'd walked past my father's office, down Main Street to the dock. All sorts, sizes and shapes of people meandered body to body along the narrow aisles that ran through the covered section of the market, and among the carts and stalls that sprawled out on the sidewalks of the streets that converged at the water. Locals and tourists were everywhere, spilling out into the streets, loitering around the carts, families with kids and old people stopping traffic in the circle when they were too slow to cross, unknowing visitors looking for parking they'd never find, the smell of the water competing for nose space with the flavors of barbeque and freshly baked pies. It was one of those days that made everything you did feel good, when nothing that didn't go perfectly seemed to matter. The locals knew better and parked blocks away, reconciling themselves, with pleasure, to walking into town. Anyway, Eleanor and I were too young to drive. Besides, walking gave us a chance to talk about stuff and check out the stores along the way. We wouldn't have driven even if we could.

I had grown up here and should have been used to it by now, but there was something about the sound of the place, of the collective voice of people on the streets, the smell of the air, the seagulls coming and going as if they lived here too, which they did, the way the old sidewalks and buildings had aged, how the houses and stores had been fixed up by everyone who had ever lived there. Something about the place made me feel good, surprised me whenever I took the time to think about it, that made me feel safe and strong. This place was my house. These people, their lives and business, the bricks and mortar it was made of.

"This is nice." Stopping at one of the carts, I picked up a necklace made by one of the local craftsmen, a one-of-a-kind I thought might go with the tan I was planning to get as soon as I could. I was thinking Bobby would like the way a tan would highlight my sun-bleached short blonde hair. ("No sun block in those days." It's me, Elizabeth, the college student. Don't you love it when I butt into my own stories?) Eleanor, on the other hand, a shoulder length brunette who claimed to be allergic to the sun, was fond of wide brimmed hats and long sleeved shirts, although she favored short short skirts thinking her legs were her best feature.

"Nice, but expensive," Eleanor warned me, turning over the small tag dangling from the clasp. Time to move on.

"Hey, Mrs. Stallings," I smiled, trying unsuccessfully to cover my clumsiness. Starting to walk away without looking where we were going, we'd turned too late and bumped into a stroller being pushed by the art teacher we had last semester, out with her husband and their not yet two-year-old son, Danny.

"Hi, girls. You know my husband, Jack."

"Of course," I responded politely, but just short of overdoing it. True or not, the last thing I needed around school was the reputation of being a suck up. "We met at homecoming when you were helping with the decorations."

To which Jack responded by smiling back a short, but pleasant, "Hi." He was nice, but preoccupied with the large cat staring at him from over my shoulder.

"Good to see you. Especially you, Eleanor. I'm going to need a baby sitter two days next week. Are you up for it?"

"Sure, Mrs. Stallings." She didn't like babysitting all that much, but Danny was a cute kid and went to bed really early, and she needed the money. "Just give me a call."

"I will....Danny, let go of Elizabeth's shorts" which he'd grabbed while we were standing there. His mother reached to pull on Danny's arm, and he let go reluctantly, giggling and saying "Later" in the process, an expression he'd learned from his father. He'd been wriggling impatiently in one failed attempt after another to escape from his stroller. There was so much everywhere he wanted to touch, my shorts being the one thing he could reach.

"Hi, Mrs. Stallings." It was Bobby who had just walked up with MR.

"Hello, boys," she responded, waving while she and her husband walked away down the aisle toward one of the crafts tables where, we found out later, she had some of her own water colors on display.

Naturally, I did my best to seem no more than casually interested, while Bobby tried to do the same. As it turns out, neither one of us was all that good an actor, but you could tell we both felt good knowing that we were faking it.

"Have you two eaten yet?" Ralph asked, not even wasting time to say, "Hey." Bobby was there to see me. Eleanor was there to talk to me and for the shopping. And MR had come for the food. (Not to worry. Four years later and almost a foot taller, a much slimmer, better looking, dare I say sexier Ralph would go to Harvard. Oh, and his fingers were no longer pudgy.) He wasn't fat, not really, but eating was his favorite thing to do. There wasn't a day anyone could remember when he didn't whip a Snickers out of his backpack before those big heavy school doors had time to close behind him on his way home.

"No. Not yet." I was answering MR, but looking at Bobby, wondering if I could really like a boy who had better hair than I did, working hard to suppress the urge to just run my fingers through it. It was hair that always looked like it needed a trim, but was never too long. "How was that possible?" I thought to myself and then, out loud this time, "We're going for crab cakes."

"Hey, guys!" Eleanor thought she had seen something out of the corner of her eye. "Did you see that?! I think there's some animal moving behind the deli counters."

"Wait," Elizabeth looked over her shoulder at the empty backpack. "Rollo's gone." Maybe paying a tad too much attention to Bobby, I hadn't noticed Rollo had escaped. (I say "escaped," but then it wasn't as if he was a prisoner. It's just that I worried about him and liked to keep him close.)

"What?!" Ralph spun his head around from trying to figure out where he was relative to The Little Tavern, home of the tiny, "buy 'em by the bag" twenty five cent hamburger, to see what Eleanor was talking about. "Maybe it was a rat? ...a really, really huge rat?"

"No, no, much bigger....There!" I pointed behind where Ralph was standing at what I thought I saw moving fast, in and out through the people milling around, but then lost it in the crowd. "It's got to be Rollo."

"Can he move that fast?" Even Eleanor was surprised and she'd known Rollo as long as Elizabeth.

"Where?" Ralph spun around again, but there was nothing.

"Probably nothing, just a shadow," Elizabeth wasn't too worried yet. "We need to find Rollo before he gets into trouble."

"Hey," Eleanor mumbled to herself, still looking around to see if she could find it again. "I know a shadow when I see one. It's his gray, black and white fur. The faster he moves, the harder he is to see."

"Sure," Ralph pretended to be interested. "Let's get some burgers."

"Go ahead," I encouraged him, taking advantage of the opportunity to push Bobby's arm in the right direction, "before MR passes out and we have to drag him somewhere."

"How 'bout if we meet you at the tables by the water?"

I smiled my response back to him, forgetting momentarily and then remembering that I should actually say something. Bobby had that effect on me, but I was desperate that he not know how much. A little bit, that was okay, even good, but I didn't want him to know how bad I had it for him, some days, like today, more than others. "Yeah. We'll spit up... No," I laughed softly, shaking my head. "We'll _split_ up, get some food, and I'll pick a table with uneven legs if you don't get there first to save me." It was a reference to how we met, Bobby walking up, seeing that I was annoyed, to squish a folded napkin under the leg of the cafeteria table where I was eating, then just smiling and walking away. ("The best pickup lines," I thought to myself, "are always the ones the guy never says.")

"Right," Bobby smiled back at me, "and we can _spit_ up _after_ we eat."

"Yeah," I was pretending to be serious, "that probably makes more sense," but couldn't help smiling when I said it.

"Com'on, Ralph." Bobby grabbed MR by his arm, and starting towing him backward, away from whatever he was talking to Eleanor about. "Let's get some food."

"I still think it was rat!" MR shouted back at her. "Whoa, what was that?!" This time he saw it too, but now moving under the tables on the other side. (Rollo had only two speeds, flat out and sleeping.) It was there, then it wasn't, little more than a shadow and then gone in just the second it took Eleanor to turn and look for herself – gone except for the telltale tuft of fur drifting to the pavement a few feet away.

"That's familiar," Eleanor recognized Rollo's fur when she saw it, having picked enough of it off her clothes whenever she hung out with Elizabeth at her house. "Elizabeth! Over here." Looking across from where they were standing, at a table covered by a cloth that didn't go all the way to the ground, she could see just the paws of the two front feet of a cat sitting upright, the rest of its unusually large body hidden from view. "Rat feet?" she nodded in the direction of where Rollo was sitting. "I don't think so."

Meanwhile, at the dock that was adjacent to the market, three boys, a year or two older than my friends and me, got out of their small outboard runabout that they tied up to one of the sailboats parked alongside the concrete bulkheads that defined the harbor. No one was onboard the sailboat which was lucky for the three boys, because, had there been, they would have minded the way the boys jumped on their boat and cut across their deck, uninvited and unwanted guests, not caring where they stepped or what they touched. One of them popped open the built-in cooler under the bench seat in the back looking for beer, slamming it shut when he discovered there was none. Double parking your boat wasn't uncommon on a crowded weekend, but helping yourself to someone else's property wasn't something you did without permission.

As hot as it was out, all three of the boys were wearing jeans and worn out Nikes. The Nikes I get, given they were coming off a boat, but jeans? And t-shirts. They were all three wearing t-shirts for older generation metal bands that had stopped performing before they were born. (Does anybody normal, our age, like metal? I don't think so. You can tell a lot about someone by the t-shirt he or she wears, which is precisely why they're so hard to pick out. When you meet someone, before you get to know them, everything counts, especially what they're wearing.)

Two of the three of them looked enough alike to be brothers, maybe a year apart, two at most. They were the ones wearing Led Zeppelin and Motörhead shirts, like they were huge fans. The third kid, their leader judging from the way they deferred to him, was wearing a Kiss shirt with the guy whose tongue is always sticking out. (Yuk.) For the sake of keeping track of these three, we'll call the younger one of the maybe-brothers "Pink." He was fair-skinned and had a touch of sunburn on his face and arms. And the other, apparently older one? We'll call him "Floyd," like the two of them together were the band. As for their leader, how about "Gene"? Just "Gene" as in "Gene Simmons" (aka, "The Demon") whose on-stage Kiss persona he, the head kid, seemed hell-bent on living for real. Gene's an ordinary name that I'm picking so you don't think there was anything exceptional, larger than life about this boy, other than his being a colossal jerk.

By now, Rollo back inside my backpack, Eleanor and I had made it to the front of the line at the grill selling crab cakes. At this time of day, lunch was on everyone's mind, and there were rows of crab cakes already cooked on both sides and ready to sell. "Don't worry," I said to Rollo, reaching back without looking to rub his head. "I'll get you something. ...Rollo?" Nuts. He'd slipped out again when I wasn't paying attention. (Geez, he was good at that.)

"What?!" the man behind the counter snapped at us. Mr. Zeller, who owned the concession, was never known for his light touch with his customers. Big and overweight, a well-stained butcher's apron, his tendency to wipe the back of his right hand across his nose and the short, but snarly black and white beard that framed his large and uneven mouth did nothing to make him seem more friendly, but his "Cakes" and fries were delicious. (The "Crab" portion of his old-style neon sign had flickered out at least two summers ago, but it didn't affect his business, and he wasn't fixing it until it did.)

"We'll have two, please, separate plates, and a large cup of fries, no salt." Eleanor respected Mr. Zeller's style and spoke up assertively. And then I elbowed her. "Plus three of those mini-crab cakes on the toothpicks for our furry friend. Those you should put in a bag, please." The kid that worked for Mr. Zeller slipped his spatula under two that were done, placed them off center on two open Kaiser rolls already on the plastic plates he would hand us. ("A little precision wouldn't hurt," I mumbled, my borderline obsessive compulsive disorder kicking in.) Eleanor took the sandwiches, and two little cups of tarter sauce. I paid and took the large cup of fries and the bag of mini-cakes for Rollo, who I fully expected to show up as soon as he realized the smell of me and the mini-crab cakes where coming from one in the same place.

Walking away, we passed the stand that sold those great kosher hot dogs, wrapped in grilled bologna, on the poppy seed rolls that were soooo good with mustard and onions. Both of us paused for a moment, looking and smelling the dogs cooking on the racks, turned to each other and said to ourselves, telepathically the way close friends do, "Maybe next time? Yes, definitely next time."

Down the aisle a bit, we turned left on our way to the tables where Bobby and MR would be meeting us. "Keep an eye for Rollo, will you?" I asked Eleanor for her help. "I should have kept in him in my backp..."

"What?" Eleanor knew something was up when I stopped suddenly and knocked on her shoulder twice with the back of my hand.

"Take a look at that." My eyes, and now hers, were on Mrs. Stallings stroller. Our teacher, one hand still on the stroller's handle, was on automatic, pushing it back and forth a couple of inches, while she and her husband were caught up in the conversation they were having with another teacher we recognized – but that wasn't what caught our attention. In the midst of all the distractions around them – including some pretty good live music by two women with acoustic guitars – the Stalling's son, Danny, had just managed, right as they watched, to slip out of his seatbelt and start toddling toward the street, just a few feet away.

"Mrs. Stallings!!" I shouted, but they were too far away, and there was too much noise for her or her husband, Jack, to hear. Dropping my fries and mini-cakes on the nearest table, I was off, dodging stands and displays as quickly as possible, my arms out front pushing through the people moving in front of me.

"Nuts." Reluctantly, Eleanor turned to the lady selling jewelry on the table next to her. "Here," she said hurriedly. "You eat these. My treat," and started running to catch up with me.

"Mrs. Stallings!" I shouted again. Still nothing, and they had to be pretty much the only people in the vicinity that _didn't_ hear me. Everyone was turning around, but looking at me, not Danny.

They hadn't been all that far away, but by now Danny was almost at the curb. Unbelievably, no one else was paying attention or seemed to care that there was a little kid, no parents in sight, heading out into the street – at least nobody human, as they were about to realize.

"Mrs. Stallings!!" This time was different. I was only twenty feet away now, pointing frantically toward the curb, locals and tourists still in my way, and Danny's parents were finally paying attention. Realizing immediately what had happened, they started running too, while I took a shortcut between two tables, almost knocking over an old lady in a chair sewing a needlework she planned to sell later that day. Eleanor, less polite and now only a step behind, nearly finished the job.

Now well on his way across the sidewalk, Danny giggled to himself, oblivious to the cars, so many cars coming around the corner of the market off the circle at the bottom of Main Street. There were cars everywhere, and people crossing the street between them and walking past him on the sidewalk. And still nobody was paying attention when the little kid stumbled over the curb and into the street, nobody except our hero, the one with fur.

This time, no one noticed the blur of a creature flying low, in leaps and bounds, careening off tables and counter tops, swerving at flash speeds between the legs of the people milling about. Out of nowhere, and in the nick of time, a huge cat – Who could that be? – landed in front of Danny, between him and oncoming traffic – skidding as his rear claws took hold in the old, rough brick pavement.

"Mearrrkkk!! Mearrkk!!!" Literally flying into the street and risking being run over, Rollo was barking in his own way, not at Danny who was behind him, but at the cars coming around the corner, rubbernecking the fair, not expecting a little kid, playing with his fingers, squatting down to pick up something shiny he saw on the street. Luckily for Danny, the spectacle of a large barking cat got their attention. The "errrrpp!!" of two cars stopping, slamming on their brakes just a few feet away, while a third almost hit one of the two from behind, confirmed how close a call it had been.

"Hi hi, cat." Danny, for one, was having a ball, reaching over to pet the huge cat's tail that was swishing slowly back and forth in front of him.

Turning quickly, Rollo grabbed the cuff of Danny's little shorts in his mouth, and began dragging the kid back toward the curb.

Panic-stricken, the Stallings shouted at their son, "Danny!! Danny!!!" as they finally made it to the sidewalk, two steps behind me and then Eleanor, with Bobby and MR, who came running when they heard me screaming, just a few feet back.

Into the street, just by the curb, I knelt down to be closer to eye level with Danny, "Danny!" and then, calming down so as not to frighten the little boy, putting my hands on his shoulders to make sure he didn't go anywhere, I tried again. "Hey, Danny." This time he smiled back. "You okay?" I asked, catching my breath.

"For sure," the little kid responded, still unbelievably cute despite the circumstances.

Turning to my left, I made eye contact with Rollo who was looking up at me. I smiled and then picked him up, holding him to my chest. "You okay, babe?" I asked Rollo, squeezing him tight while I turned back to watch Mr. Stallings bending over to pick up his son.

"Wow," Bobby knelt down on one knee where I was sitting on the curb, Rollo butt down on the street between my feet. The Stallings, having thanked me – should have been Rollo, but then he's always underappreciated – more times than I could count, had left to take Danny home. "That was close." Bobby's voice was calm and comforting.

"Yeah. ..So are you going to help me up?" I didn't need it, but jumped at any chance to hold his hand. Reaching back with my left arm, I pulled open the flap of my backpack. "Rollo, get up here." Rising quickly, Rollo climbed up my arm, then onto my shoulder and into my backpack, headfirst, rolling around inside until he was head up in the bag so he could see out the top.

"Sure," Bobby stood up, reaching down to grab my hand, neither of us wanting to let go after I got up, but unable to think of an excuse why we shouldn't.

Together, Bobby, Eleanor, Rollo and I headed off to the homemade ice cream stand, while Ralph took a detour to the nearest men's room.

To be continued...

"Wait."

"Mur?"

"I know, we're not done yet. Tinkle-time." I rolled back from my desk, in a hurry not to lose my train of thought and blow the storyline. " I shouldn't have chugged that last bottle of water."

"Meekk."

"Save it. You know I don't get to go in a box like you, except in an emergency of course."

"MurrrkK!"

"Don't panic. I was just kidding. Right back." And I hustled off, out of my room and up one half flight to use whichever one of our two bathrooms was available.

Three minutes and change later, "I'm back."

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Episode 5:

And I Was So Looking Forward To That Smoothie

The crowd dispersed, little Danny and his parents having called it a day, but the three older teenagers from the runabout (Pink, Floyd and their hero, Gene) were slow to leave. "Quite the kitty," Gene said sarcastically to his buddies. They had been only a few feet away and saw the whole thing, but helping Danny, maybe saving his life, never occurred to them. For them, they would have just been spoiling something that might have turned out really cool.

"Let's get him," Pink was the one with the big idea, "and take him home with us. See if he can hold his own with old man Eyring's Sheppard."

"Yeah," Floyd chimed in, "...the one he never feeds." And they laughed, sort of, not because it was funny, but because they were proud of the little plan they'd hatched, their version of sport, entertainment for a Sunday afternoon.

"The tall chick's not so bad either," Gene commented quietly, turning to see where I'd gone. ("Thanks, but no thanks," I, college girl Elizabeth, thought out loud. It was one of those times when I was both flattered and creeped out at the same time.) Pink and Floyd smiled, but said nothing, acknowledging that I was his to play with.

A couple of minutes later, MR found us and took off with Bobby to check out a pair of used water skis they were thinking about buying together, while Eleanor and I continued in search of the perfect milkshake and some homemade jewelry we liked and could afford.

"Hey, I'm starving." I'd finally cleared my head and remembered we hadn't had any lunch.

"Me, too, but I don't have it in me to deal with Mr. Zeller twice in the same day."

I laughed back at my friend. "I say we get a couple of smoothies, and talk Bobby and MR into buying us dinner."

"I didn't know you cared so much about Ralph," Eleanor wondered, pretending her confusion was serious.

"Myyy, my my," I fanned myself with my hand as if I had a case of what the fine ladies of another time and place used to call "the vapors." "Ah didn't know," I replied with a fake southern accent, "ah had no i-de-uh it was so obvious." And then I followed up in my own voice, turning to make eye contact while we continued walking, "What is it about this guy," talking about Bobby of course, "that I can't get out of my head?" Just ahead, we could see the sign to "Everybody's Favorite."

"The way he eats hamburgers by the bag?" a reference to MR, when she knew it was Bobby I was talking about.

"You know, come to think about it," I screwed up my face to make it look puzzled, "have we ever seen MR eat with utensils?"

"Hey, com'on..." Eleanor started to make a comment just as they walked up to the counter.

"I know, I know. Ralph's a really good guy. I've got to stop kidding about... Wait a minute," I interrupted myself, which is something I do way too often. "Are you and MR...?"

"Hi, Jane." Eleanor pretended she hadn't heard the question.

"Hey, Eleanor. Good to see you. What can I get for you?"

"I'd like a chocolate shake with Oreo pieces, please."

"And 'the usual' for you, Elizabeth?" Jane never forgot a shake or smoothie. "Vanilla yogurt with fresh pineapple and a banana?"

"Yeah, thanks." Some napkins and a couple of fat straws, and we were on our way to meet Bobby and MR.

(Rollo was sacked out in my backpack if you're wondering why he wasn't nudging me for something to eat.)

"That one. There. The one the lady's holding up," I said, pointing at the table in the opening up ahead. "Can't have too many t-shirts."

"Words to live by. You take a look. ...I need some earrings." Eleanor's voice trailed off as she walked away, across the aisle toward the jewelry table next to the "Wry Bread" deli counter. "Wry Bread," according to the handwritten lettering below the big sign, home of "Esoterically Delicious Sandwiches Made to Order for Smart People with Good Taste, Not to Mention our Secret, Mind-Blowing Sauce." Makes you want one, doesn't it?

The t-shirt and jewelry tables were across from each other where the aisle split in two directions ahead of us. We were at the point where the three aisles came together to create a small clearing. There was the t-shirt stall, the jewelry table, the deli counter with angled glass shelves and a high counter, but also a few other tables and carts making it a busy intersection of people coming and going and stopping to shop.

Putting my vanilla, pineapple, banana smoothie down on the table, I remember smiling at the young married woman who sold her t-shirts at the market. I didn't know her, but read the "Call me Lisa." sleeveless shirt she was wearing. "Hi, Lisa. Do you have the blue one with the crab cake sandwich," she pointed to one of the shirts on display, "in a small?"

"Sure. Just a second, but you may need a medium. I'll get it for you," she said, turning to step behind the huge t-shirt hanging on a wire that defined the back of her stall.

Bobby, who had passed on the water skis, and MR, working through his second bag of Little Tavern mini-burgers, were on their way, but not quite in view, having stopped to argue about Ralph's insisting on onions which Bobby was trying to scrape off the one burger he was eating.

"Here." Lisa handed Elizabeth the medium.

Holding the shirt in front of her to check the size, Elizabeth confirmed what the smile on Lisa's face already told her. "It's perfect."

"Sure is." It was a voice I didn't recognize coming from Gene, leader of the three runabout boys standing behind me, uncomfortably close – close enough to smell the beer on his breath. (The stalls weren't supposed to sell beer to minors, of course, but there was no carding and an older teenager could either fake it or get someone to buy beer for him. Sometimes kids would even steal a beer when someone put it down for a minute and wasn't paying attention. I'd had a couple of beers, but hadn't decided yet if I liked the way they tasted, except that I thought the draft kind was better, probably because of the foam. I like foam, the way it explodes when you pour coke or root beer on cold vanilla ice cream to make a float.) "Why don't you try it on?" he suggested. His two friends, Pink and Floyd, were only a few feet away.

As was my way whenever I felt threatened, which wasn't often, I turned my head slowly to look my problem directly in his eyes. I turned my head, but kept my back to him, the front of my body still facing Jane and the t-shirt table. The slow turn was instinctive, my natural way of buying the extra few seconds I needed to stay calm and plan my next move. Extending my left hand forward – I'm right handed. – I picked up my smoothie that I'd set on the table, just in case I needed something to throw at him. Throwing anything at anybody is serious business, a last resort, but a smoothie in the face – You can tell I'd thought about this before. – wouldn't hurt him. What it would do is get his hands off me and give me the chance I might need to get away. That said, I decided to keep it simple, make eye contact and then ignore him, buy the shirt and get out of there – with Eleanor, who was busy shopping across the aisle and seemed, when I glanced over at her, to be having her own problem.

Turning back, I noticed the serious look on Lisa's face, aimed at the boy behind me as if to warn him away, but then she relaxed and asked me, "So what do you think?" pretending to ignore the boy.

"It's great. I'll take it." I loved the shirt, but the usual enthusiasm in my voice whenever I bought something was missing.

"Actually, I think I like this one better," Gene interrupted, not talking about the one I was buying, but the one I was wearing, rubbing the material along the hem of my right short sleeve, on the back of my right arm, between his left thumb and first two fingers.

Instinctively, I recoiled, jerking my arm forward, turning and bumping into the edge of Lisa's table. The move made me seem nervous which wasn't what I wanted to do. Any sign of weakness, of fear, would just encourage him. "Bullies feed off that kind of stuff," a girl I'd had gym with told me once. It was the kind of advice that stayed with you.

"So where's your cat?"

And just then I realized that Rollo must have hopped out. (Rollo was very keen on preparedness. It would be one thing to launch himself from my shoulder, but curled up inside a canvas backpack, he'd be vulnerable.) "He's around," I told him, not having the slightest idea where Rollo was. Slowly, once again, I turned to face him and said, slowly and with remarkable calm, if I do say so myself, "Keep your hands off me." I was tall for fifteen and almost at eye level with Gene, who I'm guessing was sixteen or seventeen. When he first came up to the table, he was playing with a key chain in his left hand, twirling it around one of his fingers the way some boys do when they first get their licenses.

He stopped smiling, but didn't move, choosing instead to reach for my t-shirt a second time.

"I really don't think you want to do that," I warned him, never taking my eyes off his. Making threats like this is risky business, I know, but what did I have to lose? I had to stay focused, and it beat letting him know I was scared.

"Or what?" he responded, taking a purposely long, unsettling look at my chest which was, at the time, a bit more developed than most for a girl my age – but then something distracted him. "What was.. ?" It was something moving fast behind the cloth that covered Lisa's table.

Eleanor, thinking she'd ask my advice, had borrowed two pair of earrings from the vendor and turned to walk back to the t-shirt stand, but then stopped suddenly the moment she saw Gene standing next to me, fondling the sleeve of my shirt.

"Hey," Floyd called out to Eleanor from only a few feet away, walking up with Pink, both of them carrying chocolate dipped soft-serve cones, trying hard to be cool. "You're that other girl's friend?" Floyd asked, having seen the two of us walking around together.

Eleanor didn't respond, or move.

"I don't suppose," Pink couldn't think of anything more clever to say, "you two would like to share a... a pizza?" At least they were relatively harmless. It was a vibe, the harmless thing, I wasn't getting from Gene.

"You've got to be kidding?" she thought to herself, not wanting to risk offending whoever these guys were. "It's too hot for pizza," Eleanor told him, avoiding eye contact, in her best, "we couldn't be less interested" tone. "Thanks anyway," she told him while refocusing her attention on me, thinking, more like hoping, Pink and Floyd would go away if she ignored them, not realizing the three of them, Gene included, were together.

"Maybe you didn't hear me," I decided to take the initiative, knowing for certain that he had. My voice was calm, not at all loud, but steady and firm, at least that was the idea. "Take your hand," which was just an inch or so away from me, poised to grab my shirt again, "away from me, and do it now." I thought about swatting Gene's arm away, but didn't want to touch, let alone hit him.

"Miss," it was Lisa from behind the counter, "do you need me to call someone?" looking at the boy while she waited for me to answer.

And still Gene didn't move, glancing briefly and smiling at his friends walking over toward them, from where Eleanor was standing. He may have wanted to back down, but not now, not with the other two boys watching. And then the two of them – Pink and Floyd – both looked to their right for a moment, without really knowing why.

Eleanor saw it too, but she knew what it was. ..And there, again, behind the next table. And now, out on the floor in the clearing where the three aisles came together, he slowed to a full stop.

The slanted glass front of the "Wry Bread" deli counter was to his left, Eleanor a bit to the right of that. Of the two brothers, Pink was closest to Eleanor, maybe three feet from her, with Floyd a couple or so feet further away into the aisle. Both of them were licking their ice cream cones, almost in unison, with way too much enthusiasm if you ask me. Gene, their leader was another five feet or so further, across the aisle. And then there was me, almost right up against the creep, pinned between him and the t-shirt table behind me, with no room for me to back up.

There we were, laid out in a shallow semi-circle maybe ten feet in front of him. (Just in case you're not following this, the "him" I'm talking about, there in the clearing, was Rollo, as fearless and, pound for pound, as dangerous a being as there has ever been. If cats had "special forces" – you know, the soldiers with no necks who can eat dirt, hold their breath forever underwater and singlehandedly take out a company of bad guys without so much as breaking a sweat – Rollo would have been their leader.) Bobby and MR, still a good distance away down the aisle, were meandering their way in no particular hurry, unaware that anything was up.

Like a world-class pool player, the kind who brings his own cue stick to every match, the cat instinctively knew the angles he would play, each one setting up his next move. He wasn't a shooter you'd want to bet against, but then the runabout boys didn't know that, did they?

There in the middle of the clearing, the large gray, black and white cat stood his ground. Rollo lowered his rear end slightly, the muscles of his powerful rear legs tensing for action. His front legs were spread, one forward of the other, neck down, his shoulder blades rising above the plane of his back, his huge head angled upward slightly, staring from under protruding eyebrows right at, and only at the face of the boy in front of me. "Murrrrrrrr," he growled softly, his cat voice surprisingly deep, not so much to scare anyone, but as my backup, even though he was certain I could handle myself. "You heard her," he seemed to be saying. "Back off."

"Well, hello kitty." Gene recognized the cat he'd seen save Danny. "Come over here," he summoned the animal, taking his hand away from Elizabeth to make a rubbing motion with his fingers while he made a chirping, sort of kissing noise with his mouth – and then lurching his head forward suddenly in a silly attempt to frighten the cat who never took his eyes off of him. "Hey!!" he shouted at Rollo, only to be surprised that nothing seemed to phase him.

All the while, people continued to walk through, in and about the intersection, an occasional "Excuse me" coming from the more polite pedestrians, but most of them oblivious to what was going on. One couple had a retriever on a leash who saw Rollo – a cat who didn't even bother to look at the dog more than twice his size – and pulled the woman holding the leash to the side, giving Rollo the widest possible berth the aisle would allow, and then picking up his pace, almost trotting until he was clear of the area, his owner in toe behind him.

And then Rollo rolled his huge head to his right, then back to his left as if relaxing his neck. Instead of running, the way most cats would have, hiding behind this or under that, Rollo not only held his ground, he actually took a step forward, re-assuming that wolf-like stance, with one leg forward, neck down, eyes up under protruding eyebrows, dead on his opponent, once again making the surprisingly deep "Mmurrrrrr" sound that was his version of a growl.

"Whoa," Gene couldn't check his reaction to such a bold countermove for a small furry animal. He pulled his neck and shoulders back in surprise, but still didn't take Rollo seriously.

By now, all eyes were on Rollo, except mine which were already focused on Gene's face when he turned back to confront me. There was no smile on Gene's face now, and nothing, so I was told, but strength on mine – exactly the impression I was trying to make, by the way – as we looked directly at each other, way too close, barely a foot, well less than an arm's length apart. Seeing not the slightest hint of intimidation, but only a threatening look he didn't want to deal with now, Gene dropped his shoulders and pulled back slightly. For at least a moment, I had the upper hand.

"Having a problem with the little kitty?" Pink smirked from across the clearing, him and Floyd smiling between the licks of their chocolate dipped soft serve cones, taunting their friend.

"Anything we can do to help?" Floyd asked sarcastically.

Rollo turned his head, very slowly, reconfirming the precise position of the three boys, and started backing up. He'd go in high onto the deli counter to avoid sliding down its glass front, take out the two boys near Eleanor, using them to gain altitude on his way to his primary target, the boy threatening me.

"Hey. Looks like you scared him, like he's finally come to his senses," Pink said, starting to laugh, but no one else did, so he stopped talking and went back to sucking the ice cream in his cone into a point.

Just then, Rollo stopped, rolling his neck to one side, back to the other and then centering it. Extending his left front leg forward, he slid his right front leg outward, pushing his paw against the ground once, and then a second time as if to make sure he had the traction he needed. Shoulders down, head up slightly, the muscles of his rear legs were tense. Rollo was good to go.

"Eleanor," I called to her in a calm voice, "could you," I wanted Eleanor out of the way, "come over here for a second?" And then, without taking my eyes off Gene, "Lisa, would you mind saving it, the shirt, for me? I'll stop back later."

"Sure." Lisa was glad to help.

"Thanks." I figured, if I just walked away, this incident would be over. And that's what I started to do, turning to my left to walk across the aisle, thinking Eleanor and I would leave together. "We'll be okay," I told myself, but it was more the sound of wishful thinking than reality that I was hearing.

Just then, Gene grabbed my right arm, unwilling to give up that easily with his friends watching. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked me, more as a command than a question.

This time, there was nothing slow about my reaction. Pulling back, I ripped my arm out of his grip and threw my favorite smoothie in his face, which was hard to miss as close as we were standing together.

Gene jumped back, startled by the strength and quickness of my move, barely noticing that Lisa had rushed behind the backdrop of her stall.

"Hey!!" Gene shouted at me. I had caught him off guard, both his hands going to his face to wipe off the shake. Pink and Floyd just stood there, wanting to laugh at him, but afraid to do it, and otherwise useless without their leader telling them what to do.

That moment the boys were distracted? It was all our small hero needed. In a flash so quick it hardly attracted anyone's attention, he was off and running – not away, not from, but at the problem, launching himself toward the angled front of the deli counter to his left, onto the corner of it closest to where he left the ground.

For Eleanor and me, it was one of those high adrenalin moments, not the kind when your chest is pounding. No. Beyond that, when your brain speeds up and everything starts happening in slow motion.

So powerful was his leap that he easily cleared the glass, his forearms and then his rear feet landing on the wooden counter where customers came to place their orders, his rear claws catching just as he re-tensed his muscles, his head and eyes already turning right, locked on to his first target. Banking off the deli counter, Rollo gained altitude, landing on and then jumping off Pink's back before he could duck the rocket of fur flashing past him. He was the one standing nearest to Eleanor who spun around to follow Rollo's trajectory. From there, from Pink's shoulders, Rollo leaped three more feet on his way to Floyd's face, the force of his kick off shoving Pink back and off balance.

"Whoa!" an older woman with shopping bags ducked while Rollo cruised over her head, and then turned back, still hunched over, to see what in the world it was. Never in any danger, she was short and Rollo cleared her by a good foot before he landed this time on the side of Floyd's face and neck. Trying to get out of the way, Floyd had actually turned toward Rollo and the, when Rollo hit him, he lost his balance. Falling forward, Floyd hit the concrete hard with one knee and the palm of one of his hands, knocking over a rack of vintage comic books on his way down – taking Rollo down with him.

While Floyd tried to right himself, Rollo kept moving, doing his best to stay clear of the Floyd's flailing arms while he (Rollo) calculated his next move. Unfortunately, Rollo lost altitude when Floyd bit the dust. The good news is that it was just then that a couple walked by engrossed in whatever they'd been talking about. The man, who was over six foot tall, hadn't been paying attention and didn't realize he was about to be part of the action.

Pushing off Floyd's shoulder, Rollo decided to borrow the tall man's chest. I'm mean, why not? No one improvises better than Rollo. Hitting the man's chest dead center, Rollo counted on him being big enough to stay put, although he did reel back a bit. The man's eyebrows rising, his eyes extra-wide open, he was more than a bit surprised by what he thought was a wild animal attacking him.

Without hurting the man, although he did tear the guy's shirt, Rollo looked him in his eyes – but only for a fraction of a second when he banked off the man's upper chest. Upside down, his back to the ground, Rollo rolled 180 degrees in mid-air on his way to Gene who was still busy wiping milkshake off his face. Even so, when he saw Rollo coming, Gene managed to swing his arm and catch Rollo hard on his right side and chest, slapping him down onto the pavement.

A smaller, less muscular cat would have been badly hurt, or worse. As it was, the blow hurled Rollo a good ten feet, tumbling to the pavement past where I was standing. His rear legs trying to regain control, his front claws finally took hold in the grouting between two of the concrete floor panels and, in a flash, he was on his way back when I held up the flat of my hand, signaling him to hold.

All the ruckus finally attracted Bobby's and MR's attention, now only 25 or 30 feet away, sharing their second bag of mini-burgers Ralph that was holding. Seeing there was a problem, they stopped stuffing their faces and picked up the pace, Bobby running ahead while Middle Ralph chewed faster to swallow the cheek-full he'd been working on. (Bad grammar, I know, ending with a preposition like that, but I'm in a hurry to get this out.) Excusing himself between people in front of him, Bobby stretched his neck to stay focused on Elizabeth in the now crowded aisle between the shops ahead of him. He could see Eleanor, but the aisle was slightly curved, and the t-shirt table was around the bend, still out of sight.

While Gene moved to help Floyd, who was bleeding slightly from his neck from when Rollo had landed, claws out, on his face, I seized the opening and walked quickly toward Eleanor, doing my best to seem composed, like I had this whole thing under control from the beginning.

"So, uh" Eleanor tried to lighten the moment, "how's _your_ afternoon going?" I could always count on Eleanor to be there for me.

Looking down at Eleanor, who was a good three inches shorter, even I was surprised by the nervous humor of her response. "I'm still dying for something to eat. How 'bout you?" Eleanor asked. "..I'll buy?" Those were the magic words.

"I'm in."

Even with the help of his friends, Gene and Pink, Floyd fumbled his first attempt to get up, almost falling again, slipping on what was left of his ice cream cone while he wiped blood from the scratches on the side of his shoulder where Rollo's powerful rear feet had taken hold. And now Gene could turn his attention to more pressing business, something relatively small, with fur.

Rollo was still there on the pavement, still not going anywhere, looking up at me, waiting to make sure I was safe. Now it was my turn to take care of him, and right now that meant stepping up in front of Gene who was on his way to deal with Rollo.

"Stay where you are," I warned him.

"Or what?" Gene responded, stopping for a moment. "You think that cat's going to save you?" he threatened, his eyes on the furry creature behind her.

"Mearrkkkk!!...Murrrrrrrr."

"You know, that's the second time you've asked me that question."

"What?"

"The 'Or what?' question. And you know, the first time you asked was one too many. As for the second time, just now.. Well, I'm beginning to think you really, really don't get the point." Turning to look over my shoulder, I bent my knees slightly. Extending my arm down, the top of my hand facing up, I called to the animal behind me. "Up, Rollo!" Onto my arm in an effortless jump, he glided quickly up to my shoulder and then perched there, his left paw around the back of my neck for balance, his head leaning forward in the direction of our enemy, Rollo's eyes flickering gold in the on and off shade from a banner flapping just outside the canopy over the market. If Gene was going to deal with either one of us, he was going to have to deal with us both. Now, as to what precisely we were going to do now, other then standing there looking cool and as tall and menacing as we could, we hadn't a clue.

"Everything okay here?" Thank goodness. It was the usually soft voice of the young police officer who had walked up behind the three boys, stepping between Bobby and MR on his way to help us. "...Lisa?" he said to the woman who sold the t-shirts. "You set off the silent alarm?"

"Yes. Good to see you," she offered a relieved smile to accompany her words. He was one of the policemen who worked the downtown on weekends, and they'd talked before when he made his rounds in the morning, just before the fair opened for business. They'd talked then about the silent alarms strategically placed behind the stalls in the market, just in case.

"No problem, Officer," Gene piped in contritely. "Just a misunderstanding." Suddenly he was nice. "We were just leaving." Pink and Floyd were quiet, looking down, this way and that, anywhere except at the policeman. Floyd was still holding a napkin on his neck to stop the bleeding that was obvious, but not at all serious. Their cones, on the ground where they fell during the scuffle, were already being cleaned up by one of the city employees.

"I'll tell you what," the officer suggested, as if they had any choice, "why don't the four of us..." This time he was looking at Pink and Floyd, his demeanor and proximity demanding they make eye contact and pay attention. "...grab a table across the street and talk for a few minutes," which they did.

As Lisa would tell me later, he got Gene's and Floyd's drivers' licenses and walked them back to their runabout with a stern (no boat pun intended) warning about any future visits they might make to his city. Just in case, he'd follow up with the local police where they lived and, hopefully, that would be that. "They're bullies, especially the one that grabbed you, and not very good one's at that," the officer reassured me when I saw him later. "I don't think they'll be a problem." And, to this day, I still don't know their real names.

A few minutes later, I was walking with Bobby, Rollo trotting along side of us, sniffing this and that, and MR with Eleanor a few feet back. We'd stepped out from under the covered area of the open market, with fresh designer smoothies – pineapple banana being my favorite, as you know. It was still a beautiful afternoon. Why not enjoy it by walking past the flowering azaleas that lined the harbor bulkhead? It was a moment and time we would remember, fortunately undisturbed by the unseen glare of the three boys, staring back at the five of us from their runabout, slow motoring out of the harbor and out of sight, for now.

"You know," Bobby told me, "I'm beginning to think I can't leave you alone without your getting into trouble. Maybe.."

"Maybe you shouldn't leave me alone," I finished his thought, just in case that wasn't what he was going to say.

No question about it, we were flirting, Bobby walking in the direction we were going, with me in front of him – I'd practiced walking backwards for just such a moment. – turning to face him until I got worried about walking off the bulkhead into the water. Pausing for a moment, he bent down to pull the perfect red flower from one of the bushes, took a step forward and reached up to slide it into the hair above my ear. (There was a little stabbing pain on the side of my head, but I ignored it rather than spoil the mood.)

My first instinct was to put him off, even though I didn't mean to. I was nervous, but in a good way, not like when that creep was grabbing my shirt. Raising my right hand, as if I wanted him to keep his distance, I touched his chest, and then let it stay there. "I'm not pretty enough. It's not like me to wear a flower in my hair."

"Are you kidding?" Bobby smiled back. "You'd be doing the flower a favor." It wouldn't have worked if it had been rehearsed, but it wasn't, and it did.

It was a great line and a wonderful gesture I couldn't resist. I looked him in the eyes, finally remembered to blink, and turned away to continue our walk, his hand reaching out to touch, but just short of holding mine.

"Excuse me."

No response.

"Excuse me." It was MR, followed by Eleanor, trotting to catch up. "Guys? Com'on. Are we doing the field trip tomorrow or what?"

Bobby and I stopped and looked at each other, and Eleanor caught up, just a little out of breath. "Will someone puh-leeze tell me where we're going?"

To be continued...

"Ahhh." That was me, sighing. "I miss those days. Don't you, Rollo? That night was the first time Bobby kissed me, the first time I kissed him," I said, smiling at how I could remember every detail of the moment, at how I could still feel that kiss four years later. "Wow, that was great. You were there too, Rollo. Do you remember? ..Rollo?" Pushing back and spinning around twice in my chair – a move I'd been practicing for the desk chair football we play in the hallways – I stopped to look at my bed at the only cat I know that sleeps spread out, stomach down, arms and legs going in different directions, face down in my pillow – and snores.

"Mrrrr. ..Mrrrr. ..Mrrr. ..Mr-r-rrrrr. ..Mrrr."

"Hm. Just as well. I've got to study."

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Episode 6:

That Sinking Feeling

"Where are we going?" MR couldn't believe Eleanor still didn't get it. "To Harness Creek. We'll meet at my place tomorrow, early, let's say 10 o'clock," which was early for MR and Bobby, although I was used to getting up, usually by no later than seven, to have breakfast with my parents. "We'll bike downtown to where they keep the records and old maps and find this place exactly, and then go there."

"It's too far to bike." Eleanor was right. "Besides, we'll get killed going out Forest Drive. I'll get my sister to take us. My mother wants her driving every day for at least an hour, for practice, now that she's got her license. She's got Connie running errands for her all over town."

"Let's just be sure to stop for fries and gravy at Murdock's Marina." MR tended to plan our excursions by the food we were going to eat...

"Meooarkk!!" Food was one of the reasons Rollo put up with his roughhousing, and MR sitting on him now and then. Rollo loved table scraps.

"Don't tell me you think he..." Bobby looked up at me in disbelief, reaching over to scratch Rollo's stomach, "Tell me you don't think the furball actually understands what MR just said?"

"Hey, I don't always understand exactly what MR's talking about, but I still get the point."

"Thank you, Eleanor." MR appreciated the compliment, such as it was.

"You're welcome," she responded, puckering up to make a fake kissing sound – for MR, but in Bobby's direction?!

"I can tell you one thing," and this was something Elizabeth knew for sure, "he knows what f-r-i-e-s and g-r-a-v-y mean."

"Mrrrr."

"And what? ...He can spell?!" Ooo, there was that Bobby smile again.

Later that afternoon at my house, we looked through the papers in the folders I took with the cash box from her father's study, made some popcorn and talked about stuff until about seven when we all went out for dinner.

(It was after dinner when Bobby walked me home, stopped at a gazebo in the little park near our house and kissed me goodnight. It was romantic, being there when the sun was just going down, and I don't think Bobby wanted to run into my parents, which means he'd thought about it. We were standing when it happened. It started with a simple kiss, then another a little bit longer and then the first serious kiss of my life. His too, I think. Four years later, I still can't get it out of my head. Neither of us said anything the next few blocks to my driveway. We'd been holding hands and he pulled my arm up and kissed the back of my hand, told me "I'll see you tomorrow," and stood there, watching until I was inside. I'd left Rollo home that night, and I remember him watching us from the sill on our bay window. And I could tell he was happy for me, even though cats can't smile.)

In one of the folders, before we left to get something to eat, we saw some old bills for hardware and garden tools. Shovels. That kind of thing. And some letters, one or two of which had been written from my grandfather to my father, but apparently never mailed. I wondered why.

No trouble falling asleep that night. Like a rock, and it was morning before I knew it.

Rollo slept late that morning. He wouldn't admit it, but I suspect he was up all night at my bedroom dormer, watching out the window for anyone who might have thought about breaking into the house, worried about those two men who kidnapped us and then crashed my mother's car, with us in it, into the river. We'd talked about it last night, about the men who kidnaped Rollo and me. The police never found them, but didn't think they had drowned. Some witnesses thought they saw two men coming out of the river about a quarter mile down from where we went in. Anyway, we thought they might come back for the folders my father had removed from the safe. The police said they'd have a car drive by our house during the night. Big deal. Other than the two minutes the police car would be out front, what was going to protect us the rest of the time? So we just kept the doors and windows locked, and hoped for the best. Rollo'd remember what they smelled like and would know they were coming a block or more upwind if they tried anything. It was like the old days when Rollo and Sam would be worried about something and stay up all night on their version of a "stakeout." Mostly, I think they were _out_ looking for what was left of a perfectly grilled _steak_ one of our neighbors might have tossed in the trash. Either way, it was good training that Rollo and I knew would come in handy one day.

Rollo was sleeping when I got up, but he had time – It doesn't take him long to get ready. – and would probably need the sleep for what we had planned that day. I got dressed, made myself some scrambled eggs and skillet potatoes for breakfast – Very tasty, if I do say so myself and, if I don't who will? – and hung out until about 9:30 when I woke up Rollo. I wanted to make sure he'd have a chance to get something to eat before we left.

"Okay, furry. Here's the deal." I told him, sitting down on the kitchen floor next to his bowl while he ate. I rubbed the top of his head and scratched the end of his back by his tail, and he looked up now and then, which was his way of acknowledging the more important elements of our plan. "We're taking our bikes downtown to make sure we know exactly where we're going. That'll take maybe an hour. Then we'll meet back here where Connie's going to pick us up. You be ready."

"Meoorrk."

"Roger that." Rollo went back to eating full-time, and I stood up and walked toward the door out to the garage to get my bike, a solid English three speed, nothing like the double geared eighteen speed model I have now. It was just then that Bobby, MR and Eleanor rang our front door bell. I'd already talked to my mother, so my parents knew what was up. And we were off, up and down a few side streets to the county records office downtown in maybe ten minutes, door to door.

Turned out the property we were looking for wasn't all that hard to find and was now off a newly paved street that had been put in just a few years ago when some river front houses were built further down. Just in case, on the way back to my house we stopped at O'Riley's Service Center to pick up a county map to make sure we didn't get lost – and for Eleanor to say "Hey." to Jake, the new kid who was working there for the summer.

Connie didn't look a bit like Eleanor. Eleanor looked like her father. Same mouth and chin exactly, less the five o'clock shadow, thank goodness, coal black hair and unexpected light blue eyes. Eleanor was attractive, but Connie was more... Well, to be honest, she was prettier than her younger sister, technically prettier, but not as "good looking." She didn't attract boys the way Eleanor did. My father always told me that being attractive was more important than being beautiful, if you cared about such things. At first I thought he was just being nice, given that I'm no professional model. ("Not yet, anyway," I laughed to myself.) But he was right. Beauty is a kind of perfect, rare something you stare at maybe, but not all that interesting. "Attractive," on the other hand, is a combination of looks, smile, attitude, personality, intelligence and chemistry. "It's the whole package," my father told me, "that people find compelling, that makes you unique. It's everything. The way you move, the sound of your voice and the intelligence and fire people can see in your eyes." Connie was beautiful, but Eleanor... I saw the way the guys looked at her when we walked the hallways at school. Connie could have been a model, but Eleanor was "neat," an expression my mother uses now and then, something from the sixties I think, which is close to being "cool," only better.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah... Connie, who didn't look a bit like Eleanor, was right on time. She wasn't as bright as Eleanor, either, but she was really nice and, driver's license or not, always took care of her little sister. She had her mother's new Chevy. Eleanor sat in the front with the map. Bobby, MR, Rollo and me sat in the back. Me, in the middle, with the hump in the floor because I was the smallest of the three of us, width-wise, not including Rollo who was one big cat, but he sat up on my lap, stretching his neck so that he could peer over the front seat and look out the windshield. Bobby and I were smashed up against each other – even though he had some room between him and the door.

Finding Creekside Drive, the new road off Taylor Avenue, was easy enough, but we passed the driveway to the Harness Creek property twice before realizing exactly where it was. At one time it had probably been nice, but now the gravel driveway to the creek was overgrown with weeds and bushes that hadn't been cut back for years. We drove in only a few yards before we got worried about Eleanor's mother's car getting scratched by the unkempt brush on both sides. "Let's not go any further." Connie was right to be concerned. "Look at the thorns on these bushes. Honeysuckle maybe?"

"They smell great, don't they?" Bobby inhaled while he did a slow blink. He was talking about the bushes, flush with little flowers, but looking at me, a light smile beginning to break on the corners of his mouth.

"No sweat." MR didn't like riding in the back seat anyway and was the first to get out, although there wasn't much room on either side of the car. None of us could open our doors the whole way, so we squeezed out. I put Rollo in my backpack, with the top open, of course. It kept him tight up against me, without getting in my way, with just enough wiggle room for him to look over my shoulder to see where we were going. Sure, I was worried about him going off on his own into the woods around the house we found in the clearing. But then I had my own selfish reason, too. Sometimes he would warn me about something coming from behind, like having eyes in the back of my head.

The "house," and I'm using the term loosely, was a single story shack, the kind with the cheap wood siding with wavy bottoms that nobody's used forever, not since they invented aluminum. The house was on our left, a clearing to our right where there was what was left of an old cinderblock barbeque and a picnic table made out of two by fours. In front of us, past the house, were some steps that led down a short hill to the water. The narrow dirt road that brought us there sort of became part of the clearing, turning left around the front of the house, running along the other side and then back out the way we came.

When I called the place a "shack" before, I was being kind. It might have been someone's weekend house ages ago, but now.. Now it was bulldozer food waiting to be eaten by the next housing development or condo some developer would build – a reality I'd learned listening to my parents talk around the dinner table. There wasn't a piece of the place or the property that didn't need serious work. There was a back door near the corner, not far from where we were standing, in a section of the house that, for some reason, wasn't quite as wide as the rest of the place. Farther up, toward the water, there were two windows on this side of the house, one of them over a shed that had its own little roof for a lid, with a bucket, an old cork life preserver and other boat stuff inside, so we found out later.

The front of the house was a used-to-be completely screened in porch that faced the water. Nobody had worked on it for years, and some of the staples that held the screens to their two-by-fours had rusted away to nothing, leaving plenty of room for an occasional bird, and who knows what else, to come and go through openings where the screen was no longer attached. Some pieces of slate, cracked and overgrown with weeds, led down the hill in front of the house to a flat, sandy area to the left of which was a rickety pier, its uneven boards extending maybe thirty feet into the creek where it became T-shaped, with an old wooden fishing boat tied up across the end.

That boat was what they call a "Chesapeake Bay deadrise," like the ones, mostly larger, that brought fish and crabs into the dock downtown to sell through the market and to the local restaurants. I think the term, "deadrise" had to do with the flat angle of the hull across the stern. (Aren't you impressed that I know this stuff? It's just that I grew up near the water and paid attention. "If I write murder mysteries someday," I remember thinking to myself, "'Deadrise'" would make a great title." Little did I know at the time how prophetic that title might be.) The flat hull helped the fishermen work shallow waters, the characteristically low stern making it easier to work their crab pots and other fishing gear. In its day, it might have been a working boat – mostly open, with a small uncomfortable cabin. Too small to be a commercial vessel by today's standards, and too slow to be fun, it was probably just a boat someone used to troll for Rockfish out in the bay around the lighthouse at Thomas Point.

I don't remember it all that well, but my grandfather and his friends, with my father sometimes, would go out for the day in a boat a lot like this one, talk about stuff between beers and bring back some fish we'd clean and grill that night. It was good, especially the watermelon we'd always have for dessert. Smashing our mouths into the sweet red mush, not caring about the juice running down our faces onto our shirts and then spitting out the seeds into the yard only to wonder for a whole year if we'd have water melon plants growing there the next summer, but that almost never happened. I remember laughter, and how, when the sun had gone down, I would lie there in the hammock between the trees, falling asleep while I watched the fireflies and listened to the adults sitting around the table and in the lawn chairs nearby.

Both the house and the boat had been white with dark green trim, as if someone had painted them to match, or maybe just had some paint leftover, but the white had turned light gray, and the green was chipping off, sometimes down to the wood. I couldn't help myself and picked one of the loose pieces of green paint off a shutter next to the window we looked through to see if there was anybody home.

"Hey, what are you doing?" MR grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back. "Suppose there's someone in there, with a gun or something. You want to scare them by peeping through their window?"

"Did it occur to either of you Einsteins to just knock on the door?" A rare comment from Connie was unexpected and got our attention.

"Good idea." Bobby decided to give it a shot, knocking on the back door to see what happened.

"There's no one here." Eleanor was more hopeful sounding than sure of herself, looking around for any signs of life.

"Maybe not now..." Bobby had given up knocking, but did turn the door knob a couple of times in case it was open. It wasn't. He was just standing there now, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, looking down at what he'd just realized, "...but someone's been taking out the garbage."

"Maybe we should look through it?" MR was quick with the good idea, slow on the follow through.

"You go through it." Eleanor had her arms folded, keeping her hands a safe, extra few inches from the two plastic bags leaning up against the notch in the back of the house next to the small concrete slab in front of the door.

"This is all too neat." MR was back by the door with Bobby. "Look at this plant." He was pointing to the small, ordinary red pot in the corner. "Those... What are those?"

"Petunias." Connie knew her flowers.

"Whatever, someone's been watering them." He bent over, touching the soil. "It's moist, and it hasn't rained in a couple of days."

"Maybe someone's in there and they're just not answering the door?" Bobby wondered out loud.

"Okay, okay." This was getting way too tense for me. "Let's stop _playing_ detective and try to find out something really important. We get it. Someone's living here. Let's stay together..."

Eleanor interrupted me. "You're absolutely right. It's always when they split up in those scary movies that someone gets stabbed to death, or worse, one at a time."

"Hey, dead is dead," MR was nervous, but tried to cover it up by making a point. "What difference does it make how..."

"I think the point is," I don't think I'd ever heard Connie talk this much, "there's safety in numbers."

"MR..." Bobby could tell we were all a bit shaky and was asking his friend, nicely, to give it a rest. "Com'on. Let's check out the porch. Maybe the screen door's open."

And it was. The front porch was half the size of the house. Nothing fancy. Quite to the contrary. Just some two-by-four studs – I help my father build stuff now and then, which is how I know these things. – supporting an extended roof with screening that was held on, where it wasn't torn open here and there, with rusted staples, really "brads," you know, the staples you hammer into the wood. The door had one of those old fashioned black rubber balls that would swing in a bit so that, when the spring on the door brought it back from wide open, it would hit the ball and not bang into the frame. Apparently, it hadn't worked that well and the ball was stuck there, instead of rolling out of the way, keeping the door open. And so the four, no, make that five of us, opened it all the way and walked onto the worn and warped boards that made up the floor. There was a badly frayed cane chair and, on the other side, an indoor couch that didn't belong outside, an unfolded army surplus blanket lying rumpled at one end.

"It's probably hot inside," MR was thinking out loud. "I'm guessing someone's been sleeping out here."

Bobby on the left, and me on the right holding Rollo who had climbed out of my backpack and over my shoulder, tried looking in the windows on either side of the door to the house, the door inside the screened-in porch, but there were curtains drawn on the inside and we couldn't make out anything through them.

"What's wrong with him?" Connie had come onto the porch just in time to hear Rollo start to go nuts. He'd been pretty quiet up until now. Thinking. Sniffing around. But as soon as we got near the door, the one inside the porch into the house, it was all I could do to hold on to him.

"Mrrrrr. MrrrrRRR!!" He was growling, and squirming like crazy.

"I'm taking him out of here." And I headed back out the screen door onto the crest of the hill where the path led down to the water.

"What was that?!" Connie was the first to hear it.

"Someone's going out the back door!" MR was shouting, pushing Eleanor out of the way, running with Bobby – and Connie running a step ahead of him? Now that was a surprise. I had no idea where they thought they were going. I mean what were they going to do if they actually caught someone? Those guys who kidnapped me were BIG!

"Meoarrrkkkkk!" Rollo wasn't kidding this time. Bolting out of my hands, he kicked off my chest, and now Eleanor and I were in motion, running to catch up. Seconds later we were all huddled together a few yards down the driveway, back to back in sort of reverse huddle. We'd stopped because none of us knew which way to go. It was all quiet now. No running sounds. No rustling of brush in the woods on either side of the drive. Each of us was looking in a different direction, but none of us saw anything. Nothing.

"You guys," Connie was talking to Eleanor and me, "wait here. Bobby, you and MR come with me to make sure the car's okay." Very impressive. Eleanor and I turned to each other, the way friends do when you're thinking the same thing at the same time.

"You know," Eleanor was always the first to say something, "sometimes I don't have any idea who she is."

"Com'on. Let's make ourselves useful." I reached behind to lift up the top of my backpack, and then bent down on one knee. "Rollo, back!" I did a quick thumb point over my shoulder and a second later he was sliding his furry butt into the pouch, his forearms on either side of my neck. "Let's go down and check out the boat."

"What about Rollo?"

"Meoarkkk!"

"He'll be fine, won't you, furry?" I turned and reached over my shoulder, rubbing his huge head to reassure both of us. "You going to stay put?"

"Merrrroook!"

"Good. "Let's go."

"Watch it." Eleanor was in front of me and hadn't made it more than a couple of feet down the hill when she lost her footing. "Careful. These stones..." which we could hardly see between the weeds that had grown around them, "aren't that steady." Hands out from our sides for balance, we made it the rest of the way down with no problem, turning left at the bottom of the hill to follow the path along the edge of the water to the pier.

The pier itself wasn't all that bad, considering its age and lack of care. It was close to the water, but then it was high tide. The boards were uneven, and the pilings not too straight, but it seemed sturdy enough and we weren't worried, although we probably should have been, but you don't grow up near the water to be afraid of old piers. A little, tubby, brown bird squatted at the top of one of the pilings to my right, staring at me, but not concerned enough to fly away. Rollo hardly noticed. A lesser feline would have been all over that bird, but not this Jedi cat. ("Furry-Wan," like "Obi-Wan" with fur. Get it? I loved that movie.) He was way too focused on the boat to be distracted. Instead, he turned left, his powerful forearms pressing down on the back of my neck to give him the extra height he needed.

"Mrrrrrrr," Rollo whispered to get my attention, extending his left arm straight out and down toward the water. (I was the one who taught him to point.) Tied up on the left, below where we could see it from the house, was a dingy, like a small rowboat with two short oars.

Eleanor was kneeling at the end of the pier, doing her best to look past the cabin door which kept flopping open and banging shut with the motion of the boat. The only window to the cabin we could see was a single porthole, its brass rim and hardware badly tarnished, almost green. There would be another one on the other side, and maybe even one in the front. Rollo and I felt a light breeze at our backs that kept both boats away from pier, at the end of their ropes – pretty much the way I felt when I was locked in the safe.

"Somebody's been here," we both said in unison. "Recently," we did it again. "How do you know?" and again, smirking back at each other.

Eleanor, standing now, held up both hands, palms out, to stop us and take charge of the conversation. "You go."

"Because there's no water in the boat."

"This boat?" she asked, pointing down at the cabin.

"No," I answered, pointing with a nod of my head. "This one." I pointed to the dingy. "It hasn't rained in the past couple of days, but that thunderstorm we had Wednesday would have sunk this for sure."

"Forget that." Eleanor had bigger news. "I think someone's living in this one. ...Com'on," she waved me over the last few feet to the edge of the pier.

"Why are you whispering?"

"Why are _you_ whispering?"

"I'm whispering b e c a u s e _you're_ whispering"

"Oh, who cares who's whispering. Just follow me." Eleanor, sitting down on the edge of the pier, pulled on the line holding the stern, bringing the rear of the boat up against the piece of old fire hose that was nailed to the piling as a bumper. (You always wondered where old fire hoses go when they retire? Now you know.) Eleanor went first. Stepping onto the edge of the boat pushed it down almost to the water, but that didn't stop her from following through with enough momentum to make it into the open area in the stern around the engine box. It was either go forward, or fall back into the water. A moment later, we were both on board.

I'd say the whole boat was maybe twenty five feet long, hanging over both sides of the end of the pier. Boats like this one have "gunnels," narrow walkways where you can walk around the boat. Bordering these gunnels in the back, around the sides and back of the open portion of the boat, there were boards, maybe six inches higher that you need to step over when you get on and off. They were there to keep water out when the waves were rough, and Eleanor had done a good job jumping over them. Instinctively, she'd gone to the other side of the boat to use her weight to offset mine when I followed her onboard.

There was a cabin, from the looks of it, barely tall enough for someone standing up straight. The back of the boat, where we were standing, was open, like I said, with a box in the center covering a single inboard engine. The steering wheel, the kind made of wood with handles at the end of spokes, and engine controls were to the right of the door to the cabin, covered by a short canopy to keep the sun and rain off the pilot. Someone had put a wooden bar stool there to sit on while he steered. With the door open, we could see that it was pretty dark inside, except for the light through the portholes on either side, and a small one in the front of the cabin that looked out onto the bow.

"Bang!!" Rollo and I spun around to where Eleanor was standing by the bench at the rear of the boat.

"Sorrrrreee," she apologized. "I was just looking underneath the seat and the lid got away from me."

"What's in there?"

"Couple of life preservers. The gas tank. An extra can of gas, maybe half full." She'd tried lifting it and could feel the liquid sloshing around. "A small tool box, and one of those plugs.... You know."

"Yeah, for sucking water out of the boat." Unsnap the plug at the bottom of the hull, while you were underway, and the motion of the boat would suck out any rain or river water that came in over the side – as long as you remembered to put it back before you stopped. Otherwise, you'd have an open whole in the bottom of the boat, with water coming in rather than out.

"All of it very neat. And the tools are clean. No rust." We paused, just standing there for a moment before we looked at each other.

"Well?" Eleanor knew exactly what I was asking.

"What the heck."

I was closest to the cabin door, so Rollo and I went first, down the first and then the second of two shallow steps I could barely make out, my arms out to hold on to whatever I could find to keep me from falling. I couldn't see the floor of the cabin and just had to assume it was there, with nothing on it I'd trip over. On the way inside, I noticed that there was a place for a padlock on the outside edge of the cabin door – a metal ring for the lock, made to go through a matching slot on another piece hinged on the outside of the frame. Even without the padlock, you could put the piece from the door through the slot in the other one, and then twist it to keep the door shut, the way latches work on some pocketbooks. It seemed new, the hardware on the door. I looked over my shoulder, and from the way Eleanor touched it on the way down, I figured she was thinking the same as me. Maybe there was something inside someone wanted to protect. So why wasn't it locked?

"Think maybe someone left in a hurry when we showed up?"

I didn't answer. "Let's just look around and get out of here."

On the right, there was a simple galley. A little sink, with a pump for fresh water from the tank in the cabinet below, although I don't think I'd want to drink any of it, and a new or at least very clean single gas burner. Some knives and a couple of forks and spoons in the one drawer. A roll of paper towels attached to the wall, next to a small pan and a single pot. There was an ice box below, but it was empty. No ice. No food, although there was a large coffee mug and a box of Earl Grey tea bags in the corner on the counter next to the sink. And a small table on the left, with a single bench seat wide enough for two people at most.

The ceiling of the cabin was low, barely a few inches above our heads, with small beams running left and right that we felt like ducking under. Overhead, in the center between two of the beams, there was a single light bulb screwed sideways into an old brass fixture no one had polished lately, but we couldn't figure out how to turn it on. The only switch on the wall didn't seem to do anything, but then maybe it had to be plugged into electricity from the pier.

"No bathroom." Eleanor needed to get out on the water more.

"It's called a 'head.'"

"Sorry. I don't speak 'boat.'"

On the left there was a counter, sticking out from the wall under the porthole on that side, with a double door mostly empty cabinet underneath it. The rest of the cabin was hard to see. The flashlight I kept in my backpack was all the extra light we had, but it was enough. Along the left side, from the cabinet forward, there was a bunk, just a plywood shelf with a cushion on it, half of it under the deck from where the cabin ended to the bow, barely wide or long enough for someone to sleep. What was left of the hull on the right was open except for a couple of open cardboard boxes that had boat and fishing stuff. Nothing personal. Nothing that would tell us who'd been using the boat, because someone obviously had been, or why.

"What's under here?" Eleanor lifted up a separate piece of cushion to the right of where the counter stopped.

"Ah, ha!" As I suspected, it was the missing toilet. Nothing impressive. Stainless steel, maybe, and a pump on the side for when you were done. "Gotta go?"

"Thanks, but I'll wait."

"I don't know, it looks pretty cl...

"Shhh!" We'd been standing next to each other in the center of the cabin, under the light that wouldn't work, facing the galley side. (In fact, except for a couple of feet back to the door or forward the bow, it was pretty much the only place you could stand.) Hearing something outside, Eleanor raised her hand to put a finger over her lips, the international symbol for no talking when, just then, we where both thrown forward by the sudden movement of the boat, rocked by someone jumping onto the back. Pretty much frozen in place, we turned our heads slowly to look through the partially open door toward the stern, but couldn't see anyone.

"Mm..!" I raised my right hand, palm facing back over my shoulder to signal Rollo to be quiet, and then turned to make sure he was paying attention. I looked at him, and he squirmed in my backpack to look up at me, those huge eyes as wide open as I'd ever seen them.

"Boom!" The door to the cabin, which had been moving with the motion of the boat, slammed shut, taking away most of our light. Then the screeching sound of metal against metal as someone turned the latch, and we knew what that meant. Locked in.

"No way whoever did that didn't know we were in here." For some reason, I was whispering, and that made sense, but talking much faster than usual. "The door was wide open. He had to have seen us!"

"Now where are MR and Bobby, not to mention Connie, when you need them?" Eleanor sounded awfully calm for someone with both hands leaving squeeze marks in my arm.

"For sure," I mocked her, whispering the best Valley Girl imitation I could muster under the circumstances, although I have absolutely no idea why I said that. I don't normally do Valley Girl imitations. "You can let go of my arm now....How about it?" But why was I so cool? (I think sometimes you sort of go into denial in situations like these, when something first starts to go very wrong. It's probably nature's way of delaying the onset of panic, but I think being calm is way overrated. I much prefer doing something dramatic that I'm likely to regret later than meaningless babbling like I'm doing now.)

Then there were sounds of people running along the path, and then on the pier, coming in our direction! Too much noise and creaking for just one person. "Bobby!!!" I shouted as loud as I could, in my head. But the voices I was hearing had Russian accents, so we both thought it best to keep quiet.

"It's them!" I whispered way too loud. "The two guys that kidnapped Rollo and me."

"Keep quiet. Maybe they don't know we're in here.

"Are you kidding, dead fish in Georgia know we're in here! ...And just who do you think locked us in?"

"Alright," Eleanor tilted her head and gave me that you've-got-to-be-kidding look. "Exactly how many 'dead fish in Georgia' do you actually know?"

"On a first name basis?!" Why was I getting mad at Eleanor? (Frivolous argument is no doubt one of the more basic psychological mechanisms for distracting you from your real problems but, in retrospect, it wasn't working for either of us.)

The boat was unsteady, rolling erratically, particularly now that we were pretty sure the other two had jumped onto the back from the pier. Eleanor fell over onto the floor, "Oooo!" hitting her head on the door to the cabinet under the sink, but she was okay. Reaching to help her up, I turned to look through one of the portholes. Something had caught my eye and, for the first time, if only for a second, I saw the face of the man with one bad leg. You could hear him dragging it as he hobbled around the side of the cabin toward the bow, pausing just long enough to make eye contact. He was old, with uncombed wavy white hair and a few days stubble. He looked into my eyes – His were light brown, almost golden. – pausing for just a moment, and then he was gone, leaving us with only the loud splash of a bad dive.

One down, two to go. "Bobby. MR. Where are you guys?" I whispered to myself. Rollo was out now, pushing off my chest, flying across the cabin onto the counter, sneaking up to take a look out the other porthole.

"You understand any of that?" Eleanor was right up against my ear, both of us listening to the voices of the two men.

"Of course not," I whispered back, "but you're right, I don't think they know we're here."

Good news? Bad news. Whatever they were saying to each other in Russian, it would only be a few moments before I would know exactly what they had been talking about.

"What was that?" The "that" Eleanor was asking about sounded familiar.

"The lid to the bench in the back of the boat." And then the boat moved again as the two men climbed back onto the pier, did something – They untied the boat, that's what. – and pushed us on our way out into the creek while they ran off.

"Ploit."

"And that?" Eleanor asked, knowing full well it was the sound of something hitting the water. Maybe just a fish jumping out the way they do sometimes, but it didn't sound right.

"Okay, okay." It was me talking. "Let's get out of here."

Eleanor tried to open the cabin door. No luck, so she started pounding on it. It was rattling, but stayed in place. I was standing now, looking out through the porthole by Rollo, wondering...

"No way." Eleanor was less than encouraging. "I read somewhere that you need your head and one shoulder to fit through, or you're not going to make it."

I could see that we were already a good ten or fifteen yards away from the pier, into the creek.

"MEEEEEOOOOOORRRRKKK!!!"

"What is it now?!! Rollo, I need to concentrate. I need to think." But he was pointing, pointing down... and that's when I figured out what the two Russian guys had been saying. "Pull the plug. Sink the boat." Words to that effect.

Eleanor and I both looked down and saw it together. Water. Lots of it, coming up over the cabin floor boards.

"They pulled the plug." And that was what they threw into the creek. Had to be.

"But why?"

"I don't know. I think they're just scuttling the boat, maybe to prevent the old guy from using it."

"Who cares?" Eleanor was right. "What are we going to do?! This boat was already low enough in the water when it was floating.

"You're right. When the back goes under, we've had it. You work on the door. I'll try opening one of these portholes so maybe someone can hear us... and start shouting!"

"BOBBBBBEEEEEE!!!!" And that wasn't just in my head, not this time.

To be continued...

"Well, here we go again, Rollo." Did we drown? Will this be the end of Young Elizabeth and Rollo the Wondercat?! ..Uhhhh, I don't think so.

"Mchh." Rollo made a little sound, planting his nose into the side of my face, sitting parrot-like, on the top edge of my chair and shoulder.

I puckered up and returned the gesture. "Back at you, furry babe. And you're right. These thugs have absolutely no idea who they're dealing with. .. Let's go." I closed the top of my computer, just as Rollo landed there. Time to make something to eat, study, e-mail... maybe take a call from somebody special."

"Meoarrkkch!" That's Rollo-speak for "Give me a break."

"You know, Rollo," I explained carefully, so as not to hurt his feelings, playing with the hair on both sides of his face. "You can't be the only man in my life, but you'll always be the furriest.... Wellll, let's hope so. Furry guys tend to creep me out....Wwwuh." I shuddered, only half kidding, got up and left for the kitchen.

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

Episode 7:

Next Cruise I Take, I'm Paying For A Better Cabin With A Larger Porthole

"Er-errrr-rr." The creaking of the hinges on the door to my room, just when I was about to type my first words for the evening, "gave proof through the night that my cat was still there." (Thank you, Francis Scott Key, sort of.) His otherwise stealth movements would have never given him away. "Where you been, Rollo?" To the bathroom, was my guess, given that lighter than usual gait I had come to recognize years ago. Pushing his unusually large head, nose first, through the half inch or so opening I had left for him, he liked to look around, left then right, just to make sure the coast was clear. "Oh, no," I warned him, seeing that he was poised to jump up on the bed. "First, get the chips," I reminded him, pointing toward my open closet door. "We've got work to do."

What's that? _Your_ cat doesn't fetch things? Well, Rollo's no ordinary feline, and are you just beginning to realize that?

"rrrark!... Rrrraaarrrrkkk!!"

"What?... Okay, okay. We'll share the guacamole." He could smell the container I'd just opened on my desk. "But if you never get here with the chips, neither one of us will have any."

"Rrr," which, under the circumstances, meant "Deal." So, it's really more like I'm his human, than he's my cat. Which is fine. I like to think of us as a team. I can type. He has fur. We're happy with that, and that sound you would be hearing if you were here is the noise a large bag of chips makes being dragged in his teeth across the rug next to my desk. Can he fetch? Count on it.

"Give me that! ...Com'on. Let go. We'll share. ..I promise."

Open the bag. Chips spread out on the desk next to my laptop. Some guacamole, stuck to the plastic lid from the container, that I could have wiped off for myself, but left there for the Wondercat who was now sitting behind my screen, peering over at me between licks. "Time to type, furry," I told him, rubbing my hands together, cracking my knuckles and polishing the tips of my digits with my thumbs, like I was about to open a safe, in the air over the keyboard. "It's all in the fingers."

"Merrk."

"Yeah, yeah. One for the road," I popped a whole chip in my mouth, "and I'm typing."

By now, the boat was at a pretty good angle, so low in the back that water was just about coming over the stern – and when that happened, we were done for. Bad grammar to end a sentence like that, I know but, under the circumstances, I really wasn't concerned about being remembered for using an occasional dangling preposition. The cabin was already half full and tilting to the left, low on the port side which I'm throwing in just in case these are more or less the last words I ever say. At least you'll know I knew something about boats. Funny, the things you think about when you think you might not be thinking much longer, and while you're pounding for your life, thigh deep in rising water, on the inside of a cabin door. You'd think we could have just knocked the door down, karate style, with a couple of swift kicks. So did we, but we couldn't. After all, if it had been that easy, I wouldn't be writing about this, would I?

"HELLLLLLLPP!!!!!" Eleanor was doing her best to get anyone to hear her. We had drifted up creek a bit, but weren't more than ten yards from the dirt and sand that passed for a little beach in the front of the house.

And Rollo? What was Rollo doing? Among the three of us, he was the calm one. At first, I thought he was hiding up front, under the bow deck, on the cushions that hadn't gotten wet yet, but then I realized he was pushing against the porthole in the center across the front of the cabin. "Hey," I called out to Eleanor, "..that porthole's open!"

"You work on it," Eleanor could see I needed a change of pace. "I'll try the door again." And so I sloshed my way to the front and up on the cushions. It wasn't easy, but I pushed it open. "Hellllllp!! BOBBEEEE! ...Rollo!" I grabbed his head in both my hands to make absolutely sure I had his attention. "Get help. You understand? Find Bobby! No foolin' around now. Go get help. ..Now, Rollo!."

"MEEAARKK!!" He literally screamed at me, shaking his head out of my hands, the fur above his eyes coming together. I couldn't fit out that porthole, but he sure could. Rising up, in one smooth motion he turned and twisted his body, reached forward with both arms onto the rim of the porthole, ears back, and pulled his head through, while I picked up and pushed his furry butt the rest of the way, and that wasn't easy. Not because he's got an exceptionally big butt, mind you, although he does eat a tad too much from the table and probably should exercise more. (Hey, I'm telling you all this while Rollo licks the guacamole off his paw with that "What?" look in his eyes when he catches me watching him.) It's just that this front porthole was even smaller than the two on the sides, and _all_ cats are, shall we say, "back-end loaded." Rollo's real power, the strength of his forearms notwithstanding, was in those chunky, no, "muscular" rear legs and rabbit-like feet I'd seen launch him from the floor to the top of our refrigerator. No kidding. I wouldn't have believed it either, if I hadn't seen it myself.

On to the bow, he skid to a stop just in front of the anchor which was tied there, looked over his shoulder around the side of the cabin, turned, patched-out until his rear claws dug in to make contact with the deck, and bolted back up and over the roof of the cabin. "Where's he going?" Eleanor looked up toward the sound of Rollo running above them, but only for a second and then...

"Ladies and gentlemen, put your tray tables and seatbacks in their upright positions, this cat is preparing for TAKEOFF!!" Apparently, seeing that the boat had turned about so that the shack was directly behind us, over the stern, Rollo had decided to dive into the water as far out the back as he could. On to the roof of the cabin, up onto the roof over the pilot's wheel, and "We have liftoff!" He was flying all right. I figure it was about ten feet from there to the back edge of the boat, now almost completely under water, and Rollo cleared that point by, had to be, a good three to five feet before he hit the water, head down, both arms out, just like a taught him. At that point, it wasn't maybe twenty, twenty-five feet more to the edge of the cabin property at the bottom of the hill. Under the water for only a moment and back up to...

Wait a minute. It's me again. Future Elizabeth. You're probably saying to yourself, "Don't be ridiculous. Cats can't swim. Dogs, yes. Cats, no." Now that is a common misconception. All cats.. Well, most cats.. I don't know about _all_ cats. There's probably some cat out there that can't, but most cats can swim fine. They just don't like to, which is why there are no swimming events in the cat summer Olympics. Just kidding, but they really can swim and Rollo was no exception. No breast stroke, mind you, but he paddled well and had a great forward kick with those big rabbit feet of his I mentioned only a moment ago.

No more than a minute or two later – while Eleanor and I continued to scream, the water already up to our armpits and coming in the portholes soon! – Rollo hit the beach. "Lock that one on your side!" I told her, pointing with a nod of my head. I didn't mean to be shouting, but it just sounded that way in the limited air space we had left. "I'll do this one and the one on my side."

Not even pausing to shake himself dry, or waste a moment looking back over his shoulder, Rollo blew up the hill through the tall grass at full speed, his head down for minimum wind resistance. It was like something out of one those National Geographic specials they have on TV. "Chee-tah," I mumbled out loud, rooting him on, hoping some ancient ancestral bloodline would get him to help in time. Pressing my face up against the porthole, he was out of sight now, and I was beginning to wonder if we weren't out of luck. "Funny," I thought to myself, "how what started out to be such a good day might end so badly." It was like I was watching this happen to someone else on the six o'clock news, except that it was me, and Eleanor trying desperately to pry open the cabin door with a cheap stainless steel knife she'd found, but that kept bending and clearly didn't have what it takes.

We couldn't hear or smell them, of course, but apparently Bobby, MR and Connie were still around the back of the house out of earshot of our screaming for help. Well, I wasn't there to see it, but apparently, the three of them were there talking and turned when they heard Rollo reach the grass by the porch at the front of the house, leap onto the stump of an old fallen tree and _Blastoff!!_ Rollo was up and still rising, catching Bobby in the face, his wet belly fur – I'm talking about Rollo's, of course. – smacking a startled Bobby in the mouth, pushing him back into Connie who fell back into MR and like dominos they were down.

"What's wrong with you?!" Bobby, scrambling quickly off the yard to get back on his feet, pulled Rollo off his chest and held him at arms length, his hands under Rollo's armpits, Rollo's furry arms sticking straight out to either side – but only for a moment.

"He's all wet!?" MR was so observant.

"Hheeee!!" It was loud, and threatening. Rollo's mouth was wide open, his large incisor teeth, top and bottom, clearly in view. Scary stuff. Lots of saliva. You get the point? So did Bobby. Startled, he jerked his hands away, and let the cat go. On his own now, Rollo did a one eighty as he landed, leaving a small cloud of dust on his way back to the water. Zero to whatever in no time at all.

MR looked at Connie, Connie at MR and Bobby, and Bobby back at both of them, and then they started running as fast as they could, which was good because, remember that "water over the stern" point I made earlier? Well, that was starting to happen just about when the three of them made it to the top of the hill. Seconds later, with Rollo – "Mearrk! Mearkkk!!" – leading the way along the edge of the water, all three of them ran into the creek and began swimming toward the boat, not a whole lot of which was still showing.

Connie, a Red Cross trained lifeguard, got here first and easily pulled herself over the already submerged rear of the boat. Unfortunately, the pressure of her weight just made it worse and she began to slide back into the water until Bobby and MR showed up and grabbed onto the deck around the sides of the boat, to keep it steady.

"Unlock the door!" MR was shouting at Connie, pointing again and again, as he scrambled up onto the deck, toward the engine compartment that Connie was using to steady herself, waist deep in water, but only a good arms length short of the cabin. "Take out the screwdriver," the one somebody had used to lock us in, "before the cabin goes under water!!" The end of its yellow plastic handle was almost completely submerged. Yes, friends, what they could see, but we didn't know then, was that someone had stuck the business end of a screwdriver into the hole in the latch where a lock would have gone, making sure we were trapped inside. Too bad it was lost, the police would tell us later. There might have been some interesting fingerprints on it.

"MR!" Bobby was shouting at him from the starboard, the right side of the hull, where Bobby was just touching the side of boat, having given up trying to keep it from sinking any faster. "You've got to let go! WE'RE JUST MAKING IT WORSE!!" which was exactly what MR did, slipping down into the water, but staying close, treading water while Connie did her job. The boat was sinking, and there was nothing they could do about it.

By now, Eleanor and I were sucking air from the space between the beams that held up the cabin. It would be close, but we would make it. Closing the portholes turned out to have been a really good idea, trapping a pocket of air against the inside of the cabin ceiling.

"Should one us," MR shouted over to Bobby, "swim back and call an ambulance? ..just in case?!" It was a good, smart question, but Connie didn't think it would be necessary.

"No," Connie answered just as she helped Eleanor swim through the cabin door, Elizabeth right behind her. Getting away from the boat was no problem, now that most of it was underwater, and swimming to the beach was easy. We could have almost walked there were it not for the sharp drop off only a few feet into the creek. Even so, by the time we had made it those relatively few feet back to safety, the boat was all gone, only the tip of its running light still visible, like a buoy marking the site.

We sat there in the dirt and sand for a moment, catching our breath. "Good work guys," I thanked them, holding Rollo in my lap while we caught our breath.

"Yeah," Eleanor did her best to say it with the sincerity it deserved, coughing slightly to clear some creek water out of her throat. "Way to go. No kidding guys."

"Let's get out of here." Connie, the first of us to stand up, was right. We had no idea where those men had gone or what they might do next, so leaving made really good sense. Walking quickly up the broken steps past the house, back to the car, we were still shivering a bit from the cold water, but glad to be getting out of there. Our clothes would have to finish drying in the car, on Connie's mother's new car upholstery. Too bad. We weren't hanging around at the creek until they did.

A couple of hours later, we – just the five of us, including Rollo – were sitting down again, this time in the family room at my house. Connie had dropped us off and left, after talking briefly to the police, to go out somewhere with her boyfriend. I lent her some towels for the seats in her car, and told her to keep the windows rolled down for a while to help the seats dry out. It was getting dark soon, and we all agreed to meet the following morning at ten, back at the shack on Harness Creek, to give the police as much more information as we could. We were wiped, not so much from the day's excitement or the time, because it was still early, but from having ordered more Chinese take-out than anyone in their right mind would have thought we could eat. But we did, eat it all that is, as if we had something to prove by doing it. Actually, MR still had half an egg roll in his hand, holding it up by his face, looking at it as if it was either it or him.

"You can do it." Eleanor whispered in MR's direction. And, opening his mouth as wide as any of us had ever seen, he did, smashing the entire piece against his face with the palm of his hand still stuck there for a moment while he started moving his jaw.

"So, what now?" Bobby was looking straight at me, while Eleanor and I were secretly rehearsing our plans for doing a Heimlich Maneuver – which my cousin, Mark, tried to tell me, when I was a kid, was something boys did when they put their arms around you in the movies – just in case MR had popped more than he could chew.

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I've had more than my share of near death experiences these past few days."

"Yeah." Eleanor was agreeing with me. Middle Ralph, too, but all he could do was shake his head, his cheeks still bulging a bit from the egg roll that had given its all to make him happy.

"Thanks, guys. I'm sorry you've been caught up in all this, but it's really me they're after."

"Hey," Bobby was smiling to reassure me, "whatever happened to 'All for one, one for all.'?"

"What's the name of that candy bar?" MR mumbled through what was left of his egg roll that he hadn't swallowed yet.

"Three Musketeers," Bobby told him, matter-of-factly, but then, looking around, "There's four of us, just like in the book."

"Five. Five of us." (Rollo was passed out, upside down, on "his chair," the one with so much fur stuck to it that nobody else would sit there.) For just a moment, I could see Bobby fencing his way up the marble stairs of some French mansion to save me from the razor sharp blade being held at my neck by the evil lord of the manor. "Thanks for the sentiment, D'Artagnan." Smiling back at him, my voice sounded so different, so much nicer than usual, I almost didn't realize that it was me talking. Even Rollo rolled over from his nap to see if Bobby had anything else to say. As it turns out, Bobby never had the chance.

"Are you kidding?" Eleanor was exhausted, mostly from over-eating. "We're not even the 'Mouseketeers'." She looked and sounded sincerely disappointed, but no one was paying attention.

One awkward moment later, "If you two could stop staring at each other for a second," MR, his egg roll having gone south, so to speak, to a "better place," had started talking again, "you'd realize that it's not Elizabeth they've been after." Bobby and I ignored him, the part about us staring at each other that is, and got back into the conversation.

"What do you mean?" Eleanor asked, sounding awfully serious. "I was on that boat, too, you know."

"Think about it." MR loved counting out points with his hands. "One. Elizabeth..."

"Meeek!"

"Sorry. ... _and Rollo_ ," MR said it slowly, enunciating more carefully in the direction of the fabulous feline who had awaken and had been leering at him from under my chin, "get in trouble in the car, but that's also where the papers were that you found in the safe."

"No, you're right, but that wasn't the first time." It was an important oversight I had to correct. "The first time was in the office when someone pushed me into the safe."

"Maybe," Eleanor could be right, "whoever pushed you into the safe with the papers.. Maybe he wasn't trying to hurt you, but to protect you from the other two men?"

"Hey," she _was_ right, "the old man was actually running away from the other two when he closed the cabin door and jumped off the boat! ..and before, in the grocery store parking lot where we were kidnaped. For all we know, he may have wanted to come back and help us, but maybe he couldn't. ..Maybe," I just realized, "he didn't make it," feeling sad about that I might never get to meet him.

"Sure, but what does the old man have to do with the papers?"

"Exactly, Bobby." MR clearly thought we were on to something. "I don't think it was about any of us. I think it's all..."

Eleanor interrupted to finish the thought for him, "...about whatever was in the safe."

"Unless..." MR paused, stroking his chin for dramatic effect, "it's the safe itself."

We all turned to look at MR together.

"Well, think about it. It's got to be something valuable they're after. And, so far as we know, there's nothing valuable _in_ the safe. Not the papers we've seen. Maybe, just maybe, it's the safe itself that's valuable."

"You got to be kidding." I don't know why Eleanor bothered to say anything. When MR was in his analytical mode, he was dead serious.

"So why follow the papers we had in the wagon," it didn't make sense, "or go down to Harness Creek when the safe is still in my father's office?"

"Because," Eleanor snapped her head suddenly in my direction, "maybe they don't know it. Maybe they don't know _what_ they're looking for."

"It's heavy, isn't it." MR loved figuring things out like this. Maybe it's not made out of iron. Maybe, just maybe, it's..."

And we all said out loud, but softly to ourselves, "...gold?"

"Precisely," Bobby finished the thought, "but, like Eleanor says, the bad buys with the Russian accents haven't figured that out yet, which is why they're still looking for the papers that were inside."

"Of course," MR was on a roll, and talking fast, his glasses vibrating down the bridge of his nose. "Your grandfather figured that everyone would think what was locked in the safe had to be valuable. I mean, why go to so much trouble to lock it up if it wasn't, when what he was really protecting was the safe itself."

"Good ..point," Eleanor said, one word at a time, jabbing her forefinger at MR to poke his glasses back up against his face. "Let's go," and suddenly Eleanor was up on her feet.

"Where?" I asked, as if I didn't know.

"To you father's office. Where else?"

"She's right," Bobby reached over the coffee table to help me up. (Now, wasn't that nice? Another chance to hold my hand.) We've got to get a closer look at that safe."

"What about the old man?" I asked.

"Look," Bobby touched the side of my arm for effect, and it _was_ effective, "we don't even know if he's still alive. All we know for sure is that he and the Russians don't get along."

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Eleanor reminded us of the old adage, "or something like that."

"You know," MR was being overly analytical, "that's not technically true," but no one cared and Eleanor got full credit for using the expression correctly.

"I'll get the accordion binder with the papers, and leave my parents a note. Eleanor, you call your mother and tell her we're walking down to Main Street and then call her later, after we've been there for a while, so she won't worry, but it'll be too late for her to tell us not to touch anything. ..Rollo, let's get this show on the road." Leaping from the couch, off the table and onto the ottoman where MR had been sitting, Rollo was on top of my backpack which was next to the couch, waiting to get inside, before I made it to my father's study. In the meantime, Bobby had grabbed the trashcan from under the sink and was picking up leftover bait boxes from the Chinese food we'd ordered, paper plates and empty cans of soda. "My god," I thought to myself, "he's gorgeous _and_ he cleans up. He's like the perfect guy." Eleanor, who was watching and knew what I was thinking, looked over at me and agreed, telepathically.

"I'm going to the bathroom." MR must have felt that he had to be doing something.

My father's study was about the size of an ordinary bedroom, but the floor to ceiling bookcases on every wall, even over the door and around the windows, made it seem barely large enough for the old wood desk in the middle. There were hardwood floors, almost entirely covered by a mostly burgundy oriental rug that my mother never liked. The only other furniture was an old wooden, swiveling office chair on wheels that belonged to his father and, in front of his desk, a floor lamp next to a nice wooden chair, with spindles and a red corduroy cushion tied to the spindles in the back. That was where I sat when he was there, when I stopped by to ask him something and talk about stuff. Nothing in particular. Just stuff. And there were papers, old magazines and folders piled here and there. Sometimes, when my parents were out for a while, I would come in here, sit at my father's desk and write, mostly fiction, in a journal I kept. Next to writing in my bedroom, and sometimes out in the backyard, on the grass among the trees, it was my favorite place in the house.

My father had apparently been looking through the same papers which were spread about, encroaching on the bills and other things he had pushed aside to make room. Their empty folder was on the floor to the left of his desk, the frayed ribbon that had held it closed for who knows how long lying limp beside it. Moving quickly to collect it all together, I stopped when I touched the old picture of the two men, standing on the wooden sidewalk, somewhere out west.

"We're ready." It was Eleanor standing in the doorway, MR and Bobby looking over her shoulders, left and right.

"It's him, Eleanor. Take a look."

While they came forward to the front edge of the desk, I moved the photograph under the lamp so they could see its fading images more clearly. "It's him, isn't it?" I said, pointing at the man on the right. "The old man with the bad leg."

"It's hard to tell. They're both much younger than the man you saw, and I never got a look at his face."

"That's right. You had just fallen down when he came by outside my porthole, but that's him all right. He's much older now, but it's the same face. I'm sure of it." I had only seen the old man for a couple of seconds, but his face seemed instantly familiar, in a way that age couldn't disguise and I was sure I would never forget.

"Com'on." MR was getting anxious. "Let's go."

"Yeah," I was worried the men with the Russian accents might have the same idea. "We don't want to get there too late."

Papers in the binder. Tie the bow. Back to the hallway. Put the binder carefully inside my trusty green canvas knapsack I bought at Sunny's Surplus, making sure my flashlight, Leatherman multifunction knife and other emergency items were already in place, and look for my keys to the office. "Got 'em. Rollo, ..." was all I had to say. Opening the big flap, I barely had time to get my arms through the straps. He was up and in there in a second, almost choking me with his forearms until his butt was settled on top of the papers from my father's safe lying flat against my back. (It was heavy, but I could handle it.) And we were out the front door.

"Wait!" I had forgotten to leave my parents a note.

"I left them a note for you."

"Thanks," I told Eleanor, thinking how great it was to have at least one really, really good friend, and we were off, through Mrs. Gomez' yard, past her dog, Ollie, who knew Rollo and me too well for him to bother to get up, and on to the first of only a few streets that would take us downtown to my father's building on the circle, at the top of Main Street.

Two more shortcuts and, about twenty minutes later, we were coming around the back of the old hospital, on the dark side near Spa Creek, when MR got the bright idea that he wanted to go down Prince George Street and cut over to Main Street to pick up the new copy of Popular Science at Read's – or so he said. It was really Mad Magazine he was after but, for some reason, he wouldn't ever admit it, as if we wouldn't ever take him seriously again. If only he knew that we didn't take him seriously now, maybe he'd realize that it didn't make any difference.

"Alright, you guys. Eleanor and I are cutting on up to the Circle," in the direction I was pointing with a jerk of my head. "We'll meet you there, outside my father's building."

"Are you sure you don't..." Bobby actually seemed to be worried, but I cut him off.

"Yeah. We'll be okay. No one even knows we're out here." I told him over my shoulder, already a few steps on my way up the street, with Eleanor walking on the curbside, weaving in and out of the parking meters.

"We'll be fine," she piped in, swinging completely around one of the poles to face them. "I'm guessin' you're the scared ones," she giggled, never even trying to keep a straight face. "Couple of cute guys, alone, at night in the big city. I don't know? I'd be worried if I were you." And she laughed at MR, rolling his eyes while I caught the smile on Bobby's face. Eleanor was a natural flirt, who just couldn't help herself.

"Com'on. You're falling behind." She was two meters in back of me now, parking meters that is, but caught up quickly and we started talking, about nothing in particular, while the boys disappeared around the corner.

It was dark out, but hadn't been that way for long, with some clouds, but not much chance of rain and hardly any moon. In two blocks, there would be plenty of street light with more than a few people coming and going to and from the movie and restaurants that were still open nearby. I was excited, but tried not to show it, and couldn't wait to take a good look at the safe for the first time since I'd seen it up close from the inside. Two blocks and we'd be back out in the open. In the meantime, these old narrow streets, cars parked along both sides as closely together as they could, these streets that I had walked so many times seemed strange and creepy. Usually, it was the colors and textures, the flowers in a pot here and there and lights that would catch my eye, but tonight it was the shadows I kept seeing, in and about the odd assortment of townhouse porches, stoops and telephone polls, and the air felt heavy and unseasonably cool.

"Let's get off the sidewalk." Eleanor felt it, too.

"Sure." There were no cars coming or going and more light in the street, compared to the sidewalk where we had been walking. Being careful, in the dark, not to trip on the cracked and uneven sections, we'd been dodging trash cans – Tomorrow was garbage day. – and brushing up against parked cars when steps from a house came out too far for us to walk side by side. The street would be an easier walk.

"What is it, Rollo?" He'd been quiet, but moving, shifting his position so much it was becoming uncomfortable for me to carry him, struggling to get out. There was less room in there than usual what with the folder I'd brought with us. Maybe that was the problem.

I turned to Eleanor, not wanting to take off my pack. "Help him get out," which she did, and Rollo was down on the badly worn brick that had replaced the cobblestone a century or more ago. "You stay close, Rollo," I told him, looking down to make sure he'd heard me, but he was busy. Something was distracting him up ahead to the left where an even smaller side street, an alley really, with houses, came in on an angle. I was on Eleanor's left, walking with Rollo on my right, between us, when two shapes appeared at the far corner. They were men, we guessed from their size, but too far away, with only the glow of a lone streetlight behind them, for us to make out their faces.

We almost paused, almost stopped there in the middle of the street, but that would have been admitting that we were spooked. "Look familiar?" Eleanor wanted to know, wondering if they could be the two I had met at the grocery store and got to know until they rolled my parent's wagon into the river, the same two who might have locked us in the cabin and pulled the plug to lose us in Harness Creek.

"It's nobody. Nobody knows we're here."

"Maybe they were following us?"

"I doubt it." The thin one on the right was smoking, finishing up the one cigarette he was holding and throwing it to the sidewalk without even bothering to step on it. It wasn't a big deal, but not the kind of thing I thought someone who lived around here would have done, and then they started to cross the street, taking advantage of a driveway between the parked cars on their side to move on the diagonal toward us. The memory of the smell of stale cigarette smoke on the one, shorter kidnapper's clothes came back to me, and I wondered if it was better to stare at the two of them, or pretend as if we weren't paying any attention.

"Rollo," I remember almost whispering his name. Turning slightly to my right, lowering my shoulder and pointing to him, the back of my hand facing up and flat out, a foot above the pavement, I called to him again. "Up, Rollo," and, in a flash, he moved up my arm onto my shoulder, steadied by his powerful left forearm laying across the back and left side of my neck, his body to the right of my face, so close I could feel him breathing. His head down below the plane of his own shoulders, neck extended, Rollo looked as far as his golden eyes could see, his razor sharp sense of smell sniffing the air wafting toward us.

(They did this, Elizabeth and Rollo, now and then, but it was never clear which one of them was protecting the other. On the street, he could have escaped almost any threat, going places where no person could follow him. But running from a fight wasn't his style. She knew that, and thought he'd stand a better chance if she kept him close at hand. On her shoulder, he had the high ground from which he could leap to challenge any threat, giving her that extra moment to escape. They were perfect for each other.

What he lacked in size, he more than made up by his speed, extraordinary senses, his courage and cunning. Although still young and inexperienced – Her instincts were good, although still a work in progress. – she compensated with determination and resourcefulness which were nothing short of exceptional. These traits, in and of themselves, were impressive, but it was their commitment to each other that made them better than either would have been alone.

Together, they were unexpectedly formidable, a strange sight at the very least, this huge housecat, eyes glowing in the reflection of the streetlight not fifty feet ahead, there on the shoulder of the young girl who kept walking, her friend, Eleanor, at her side. And the men gave them wide berth as they crossed to the other side and went, between two cars, onto the steps of one of the houses, the larger one of the two taking out his keys. Rollo looked back at them, his head turning slowly to his left as the three of them cleared the rise in the street and, at the corner, could see the lights of Church Circle, people on the sidewalks and cars waiting for the traffic lights to change in their favor at the top of Main and Prince George.)

"Hey." Bobby shouted up to them as he and MR came up past the tree next to Elizabeth's father building. Coming around the corner, the two girls looked past their friends to see the lights reflecting in the water at the dock way at the bottom of the Main Street hill while Rollo jumped down onto a bench they were walking past and from there onto the plaza.

There were two keys to the office. One opened the outside door to the building which was supposed to be locked after eight o'clock on weekdays, and after five on Saturdays and Sundays when very few of the tenants came into work. The tenants there were professionals – a couple of lawyers, an architect, an advertising agency, an insurance company (the one with the umbrella logo) and my father. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what he did for a living, except that it seemed to change from time to time.

It was eight thirty-five when we got there, well after the building should have been closed for the night.

"The door's open," MR was the first to point out. "I mean, it's not only unlocked, it's actually open a little."

"No kidding." Eleanor couldn't help herself. MR was always stating the obvious and Eleanor was always calling him on it. It was sort of a game with the two of them, but tonight MR wasn't interested in playing.

"Shouldn't it be locked?" MR asked while he read the building hours sign through the glass panel next to the door.

"Sometimes someone will leave it open if they're just running out for a minute, you know, to pick up a sandwich." That was the truth, but it didn't sound all that reassuring. "I've done it myself, on the weekends when I'm doin' stuff for my father and I leave to go on an errand for him without my key."

Bobby, standing a few feet away from the wide steps to the front of the building, had been looking up and shook his head from side to side. "Nothing." Except for the lights in the center hallways, inside the door and on every floor above it, he couldn't see any of the office lights you'd expect if someone were working late.

"Hey, guys. Let's not let our imaginations get the better of us." Well, someone had to take charge and, given a choice, I picked me. With that, I opened the door all the way and stepped into the hall, cat in my backpack again and the other Musketeers close behind. Bobby was the last one through and turned to pull the door shut, "Chunk," pushing hard against it, just to make sure it was closed. Pausing there in the entry, the five of us looked left, then right, and down the short hallways on either side that led to the corner offices. I don't know what we were expecting, but it wasn't there, and we moved on out, from the spot of light under the ceiling fixture just above us, to the next one a few feet down the cracked marble floor. It was clean and made those squeaky noises sneakers make on the basketball court at school.

MR was first to the elevator on our left, pressing the old-style, spring-loaded button below the up arrow. "No," I warned them. "That thing hasn't been doing too well lately. It's an old building. Mr. Cavanaugh, the man in the coveralls they hired a few months ago to take care of the place, tells me stuff is always breaking down. Let's take the stairs, just in case." And so we kept going, went through the frosted glass door at the far end and up two flights to my father's floor. (Going down would have taken us to the basement and out the fire exit into the alley behind the building.) From there, we went up the hallway, back toward the front of the building to the door on our left with the stenciled letters saying "Coleman" and then "& Associates" on the line below. (Dad told me once that the "Associates" where Mommy, Rollo and me.)

I was the first inside and threw all three switches to my right, on the wall behind the coat rack, to turn on the lights in the main office where my father worked and in the storage area in the back where the safe was. MR plopped down on the leather-covered couch against the far wall. Eleanor walked toward the storeroom to be first to look at the safe. They'd all been in my father's office many times before, stopping by to use the phone or bathrooms, or take a soda from my father's little refrigerator, or get a ride home whenever they were downtown even when I wasn't with them, and so they pretty much knew where everything was. Bobby walked over to the windows to look down at the street where we'd come into the building, and Rollo wriggled out of my backpack onto my back and leaped from there to the floor to begin looking around.

"Now what?" I asked for anyone having a good suggestion.

MR raised his hand. "I recommend..." he began, trying to be serious, but having real trouble suppressing a giggle that was working on the corners of his mouth. "I recommend... pizza!!" And then he laughed out loud, and so did the three of us. Thank goodness, because it had been getting a bit tense.

"Finally," Eleanor rewarded him with her approval, "a good idea." Having fully recovered from all the Chinese food they'd had for dinner, it was time for a snack. Besides, it's a well known psychological fact that eating calms you down.

"I'll call," Bobby was volunteering from the phone on my father's desk. "What do we want? Wait... Large, regular crust, pepperoni on half, green peppers on the other, and make sure you cut all the way through the crust?" I nodded, Eleanor formed a kiss with her lips, and MR just smiled. Bobby made the call, gave the pizza place our address and phone number, and hung up, telling us "twenty, maybe thirty minutes."

Given a choice between nervous-serious, and nervous-stupid giggling, always take the second one. Sure, we had just finished eating too much Chinese food a couple of hours ago, but this building could be creepy at night, particularly under the circumstances, and we needed to do something normal to break the tension. No matter what the situation, pizza almost always works. Think of it as a snack, but it really wasn't about the food. Eating pizza together made us feel good, and that was why we ordered it.

"Hey, guys!" Cupping her hand around her mouth to sound a bit like she was talking with a megaphone, there was a hint of urgency in her voice. Eleanor, on her knees, her head and shoulders inside the open safe – Been there, done that. – had found something. "Get a look at this."

Rollo got there first, his front paws on the bottom rim of the safe, which was off the ground by maybe six inches on top of heavy, rusted iron casters.

"Ouch!" Eleanor bumped her head, trying to make room for the three of us. "Back up. Hey, back up, you're blocking the light," which wasn't all that good to begin with. The ceilings were high in this old building, and the fixtures dim, their globes having yellowed with age and far above from what we were trying to see.

Taking off my backpack, I turned on and gave her my flashlight. "Try this."

"Here, see these scratches around these screws, near the hinges."

"They're new." MR rubbed his finger along one of them, feeling the scratches still sharp edges.

"Sure. I must have made them when I was trapped inside, trying to unscrew my way out. It was cramped in there, and I was nervous and couldn't see well. The screwdriver kept slipping."

"What color is that, under the paint?" Bobby wanted someone else to agree with what he was seeing. The safe had been painted black, but along the lines where the screwdriver blade on my Leatherman had slipped, the color we were all seeing was clearly... gold?!

To be continued...

"Gold? ..I like gold." Rollo was sleeping on my desk, on top of my Urban History paper. It was only a draft, so I didn't mind him getting fur on it. Anyway, he was sleeping and didn't respond. I like gold. He likes shiny things in general, but then who doesn't.

"So," I said to myself out loud, "what happens next?" I paused for a moment, lightly tapping the letters across the middle row of my keyboard, waiting to be inspired. "Wait a minute." I shrugged, realizing I didn't need to be struck by lighting, heaven forbid, to know how this turns out. "This is a true story. I'll just write what actually happened. ..But first, a quick trip to the bathroom. ..Rollo, I'll be right.." But then I realized he wasn't paying attention.

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Episode 8:

Going Down

Nobody moved. We just stayed there, stuffed in front of the open safe, the spot from my flashlight overcoming the shadows on the scratch marks we had discovered, staring at them as if there had to be something more they could tell us, and then MR was first to speak up. "If that's gold, just how much do you think this safe weighs?"

"Bobby, my father's got today's paper on his desk." He was up on his feet before I finished, almost running through the backroom door, across the carpet to the other side of the room. He couldn't miss it, there, folded in half in my father's in-basket because he hadn't had time to read it that morning. Bobby opened it up, taking out the business section, laying it flat out on my father's desk, pulled the chain to turn on the banker's light to his left, bent over a bit to see better and began turning the pages, not waiting for the first to lie flat before grabbing the next one.

"It took three men to bring it in, and they were struggling. My father said the shipping papers put it at almost five hundred pounds."

Bobby, his back to us while he was leaning over the paper, spun around. "Geez! It's over seven hundred dollars an ounce! (Actually, it's way more now, but remember, this story takes place a few years ago.)

I'd gotten up and grabbed one of the magnets from the side of one of my father's file cabinets, leaving one of the drawings I'd made for him in elementary school to swing back and forth. Running back to press it against the outside wall of the safe, I paused for a moment before I let go. "Hey, look!" It slid off, again and a third time, in rapid succession. It would have stuck to iron, but gold isn't magnetic.

"How many ounces is that?" Eleanor wasn't fooling around this time, and turned right to MR. Whatever she said about MR in public, for other people to hear, she knew how smart he was.

"Sixteen ounces per pound. Sixteen times five hundred pounds is eight thousand ounces, times seven hundred dollars is.. is.."

"IS WHAT?!" we all asked at the same time.

"Five point six."

"Five point six what?" Bobby was the only one of us, other than MR of course, who wasn't too excited to talk.

"Million dollars. ..Five million, six hundred thousand dollars."

We were quiet. For some reason, we all turned around in place and sat on the floor, our backs up against the open safe, each of us looking in a different direction, dumbfounded by the revelation that the safe might be worth millions of dollars. Only Rollo was doing anything, still inside the safe, sniffing at the scratch marks.

"Wait a minute." Bobby sounded disappointed, but sure of himself. "That's not gold."

"Of course not." MR had just figured it out, too. You could tell from the expression on his face.

"It's brass, isn't it?" Eleanor's voice was flat.

"Of course." Even I got it. "It's either brass or brass plated to keep the body of the safe from rusting, painted black to.. to.. Why do suppose they painted it?"

"So how are we sure it isn't gold?" Eleanor was still clinging to the faint hope that it might have been worth something.

"Because," I was afraid MR had the answer, "pure gold is a soft metal. You barely scratched off the paint."

"Got a hammer," Bobby stood up and started looking around the shelves in the back."

"Yeah," I told him, pointing, halfheartedly, toward the corner. "Look in the tool kit underneath the work table." A moment later and he was back.

"Here," he said, pushing me gently out of the way. "Watch out," he warned us, just as he pulled his arm back, and then " **Bang! Bang!! Bang!!** " Three head-pounding whacks later to the inside of the safe, right on top of the scratches I had made, and nothing. No effect. "The color's not even right. It's too dark, as if it's tarnished. I don't think gold does that."

"Okay, so we're guilty of wishful thinking..." I started to say.

"Not to mention an overactive imagination." MR was feeling stupid, but it wasn't the first time for any of us, and certainly not the last.

The fact was, none of us really knew what we were talking about. It had been a long shot at best. "I'll ask my dad to check it out, just in case," but we all knew it wasn't going to be that simple. If we could have figured it out that easily, the bad guys would have too.

"So, if it's not the safe, and maybe not the papers either, at least not so far as we can tell," Eleanor was thinking out loud again. "So what are they looking for?"

"Com'on." Bobby moved to wedge himself between the wall and the back of the safe, one hand on the top, the other on its side. "Let's move this thing out into the middle of the room and take a better look." MR was up next, on the other side and, on the count of three, it took everything the four of us had, and some serious wheel screeching, to push it maybe three feet away from the wall.

"MR," Bobby was in charge for the time being, "you take the back and your side. I'll take my side and the top. Elizabeth, see if you can find a mirror so we can look underneath, and Eleanor, you check the door, both sides, in and out." The safe itself was completely empty, with no shelves or compartments.

"I'll do the inside too," Eleanor volunteered, knowing she was the smallest.

"I'll give you my flashlight in a minute." In the meantime, I needed it to reflect off the mirror my father kept around for when he needed a quick shave before taking my mother out to dinner, which was something they liked to do when one or both of them had been working late. I usually got to go with them. Nothing fancy. Just one of the less expensive restaurants around the dock, or at the other end of West Street, toward the Mall. As long as I had my homework done, or when it was summer and I wasn't out with my friends.

"And everybody," Bobby already had his hands on the side where he was standing, "do it slowly, carefully, inch by inch so we don't miss anything."

A few minutes later, "Nothing on my side," MR was the first to speak up. "I'm doing the back now."

"Bizzzzzz!!"

"Mm!" Wow. I couldn't believe I actually flinched. It was only the delivery guy with our pizza, trying to get our attention, pressing the buzzer next to our suite number on the panel just outside the front door. It was an old building, set up as if the offices were apartments that might have visitors after hours when the front door was locked.

Eleanor had to see for herself, "I'll check it out," and went to the other side of my father's desk where she leaned up against the window, cupping her hands around her face to block out the reflection of the light coming from behind her. She waved when she recognized Paul, the cute delivery guy that was reason enough to order something even if you weren't hungry. I think I told you before that Eleanor had this thing for blonde guys with wavy hair. MR had wavy hair, but it was brown. Dark brown. Close enough, if you ask me. "I'll be right down," she shouted, but there was no way he could hear her. Rapping on the window was what got his attention.

Bobby knew she had a crush on Paul, a student, a year older, at the other high school for kids who lived a few miles north of town. "I'm going with you."

"No you're not." She smiled and poked Bobby with her index finger in his ribs, just to make him smile, which he did, and I thought to myself, "You can have Paul."

"Take the money out of my wallet," I told her. "I owe you guys for saving us." Then the sound of the office door closing behind her reminded me, "DON'T TAKE THE ELEVATOR!"

"I KNOW, I know, " she yelled back, getting harder to hear as she walked quickly down the hallway toward the stairs.

MR didn't even bother to look up. "Thanks, Elizabeth," he mumbled, preferring to pay attention to something he'd found.

"What's that?"

"A serial number, I think. Almost seems new, like it was stamped _after_ they painted the safe. I'm not sure."

"Hey," Bobby knelt and then sat down next to me where I was leaning up against the wall across from the open door to the safe, no doubt wondering why I had a sort of glazed look.

"Hey." I turned, not realizing how close we would be to each other, way inside the personal space people usually reserve for themselves. He smiled, and I returned the favor, mostly with the look in my eyes.

"So tell me.." Bobby was talking, but I wasn't really paying attention. I could barely smell what was left of the aftershave or cologne he must have put on that morning, but it was enough to pretty much leave me speechless. Bobby and MR seemed to have more hair on their faces than most of the other boys their age. Sometimes I would look at those hairs, when I knew they weren't watching of course, liking the fact that I was watching them grow into men.

It took me a few seconds to respond. "Tell me what?" Okay, so I meant to say, "Tell _you_ what?" but he got the point.

"Why are we sitting here staring at Rollo's butt?"

"What?"

"If I'm not mistaken," Bobby pointed toward the open door to the safe, where Rollo was standing, his tail straight up and curled at the top, "that's the butt-end of your cat." To my surprise, Rollo, who is usually sensitive to remarks about his person, had kept his nose glued to the area where he'd been sniffing, come to think about it, for the better part of a few minutes.

"Rollo," I asked without bothering to get up, "what are you doing? Did you find something?"

"Mrrrrrrk..."

"Meaning what, exactly?" Hanging around me, Bobby had learned to take Rollo seriously.

"Meaning that he's on to something," and both of us rolled away from the wall onto our knees, taking positions on either side of Rollo so that we could see what he was smelling.

Rollo looked at me, then at Bobby, and back to me. "Meaark," he barked softly, taking two big sniffs. Was that to tell me that he smelled something suspicious, or that he wasn't as crazy as I was about Bobby's cologne? "Mrrrrrr," he said again, this time reaching out his right forearm to touch the bottom edge of the safe door.

The door itself was as thick, as you'd expect, with three bolts protruding from its vertical edge that turning the handle on the outside would extend and retract, to lock and unlock the safe. "There," I pointed to the upper left corner on the inside wall of the door. "That's one of the screws I tried to get out when I was trapped inside. I thought maybe I could take off this back panel and open the door from the inside."

"You probably could have, if you'd had enough air and light to do it."

"Hey," MR had gotten a sheet of typing paper out of my father's desk. He was thinking he would press it against the safe, and rub a pencil over it to make a crude negative copy of the serial number he'd found, but he held up, taking a moment to wonder out loud, "Shouldn't Eleanor be back by now?"

"Are you hungry..." Bobby started to ask, knowing full well that wasn't why he was asking.

"...or do you miss her?" I giggled to finish Bobby's question for him.

"Trust me," MR reassured us. "It's _all_ about the pizza. Cold pizza is disgusting."

"She's probably just talking to Paul." Bobby advised him, turning to look at me as if she might be serious about the guy.

"Paul?" I agreed, in my most matter-of-fact tone, my eyebrows rising for just the right studious look as if I hadn't noticed. "Sure, I guess, if you like the 'Surf's up, Dude' look."

Putting his paper and pencil down on top of the safe, MR walked across the office to look down from the window at where Paul would have hit the buzzer. Seeing nothing, he headed out the door. "I'm going to see where she is." And then, to let us know he knew we were kidding him – He liked Eleanor, but would never admit it. – advised us, pushing his glasses back up all the way onto his nose, "Try not to lock yourselves in the safe while I'm gone," which was his way of telling us we were helpless without him.

"Let's get this panel off." Bobby was right. The inside of the door was the one part of the safe we hadn't looked at."

"You get the tool box from the back," I told him as we both stood up, "while I call to see if my pants are home yet... if my _parents_ are home yet." (Great. So I was a little off my game. At least Bobby was nice enough not to say anything, although he did start to crack a smile, but held it back because he loves me. ..I didn't say that out loud, did I? ..No. Thank goodness. Besides, what's a little _faux pas_ between friends?) "I know I'd left a note, Eleanor left it actually, but I want them to know I could be running later than I thought."

But Rollo wasn't letting us get away. "Mrrrrachhh." He looked up at us and again at the lower center section of the inside of the door. Putting his face up against the paint, he made two dramatic sniffs in the direction of something, and then turned back to us for help.

Without saying anything, we got back down on our knees, bending over to get closer to where Rollo had been sniffing. "Look," I pointed out to Bobby, my fingers rubbing over the metal, "there's some kind of plaque that's been painted over. Picking up my flashlight from where it was lying just inside the safe, I moved it around to help us make out impressions of the lettering under the paint. "Looks like 'Henry McCombs & Sons.' Then maybe an address. Something, something, 'San Francisco.'" I couldn't make it out, "and then a number."

"A phone number?" Bobby didn't have the angle I had, and couldn't see the lettering as clearly.

"No. I don't think so. If McCombs is the manufacturer, maybe it's the serial number we're looking for."

"Then what's the number MR found?"

"I don't know. Let's see if we can contact McCombs, and they'll tell us. ...and give us the combination, while we're at it."

"If they're still in business after all these years."

"Good work, Rollo. ..I'm calling my father, and telling him what we're up to." So I stood up again and walked over to pick up the phone on his desk, while Bobby went to find a screwdriver to take off the inside of the door I couldn't remove before, when I was trapped inside.

"Hey, Mom." There was no one there, so I waited for the answering machine to give me a tone. It was my mother's voice on the recording. "I'm still at the office. Give me a call when you get in," and I hung up.

"Okay, let's eat!" It was Eleanor coming through the front door in a hurry, the box of pizza over her head, resting precariously in the palm of her right hand, like the waiter at the Greek diner out on the highway. (Actually, I've always been more impressed the way they do it at Clyde's, with one dinner plate on top of the next, up to five lined up along the waiter's arm. I need to try that myself at home. Maybe get a job waiting tables next summer when I can drive.) "What's wrong?" Eleanor stopped just inside the door, seeing that Bobby, holding my dad's toolbox, and me, just putting the phone down, were both looking at her, and then at each other.

"Where's Ralph?" I always called him by his proper name when I was serious. It was a little habit I picked up from my mother who always called me "Sugar" or "Honey," unless, of course, I'd done something she needed to talk about, and suddenly I was her _other_ daughter, 'Elizabeth.' I'd thought about having people call me 'Liza' or maybe 'Beth,' like 'Bobby' instead of 'Robert,' but nothing shorter than my full name ever seemed to fit. 'Elizabeth Sarah Coleman' had a certain sound to it, and I wondered sometimes if what I accomplished in life would live up to its potential.

"What do you mean?"

"When you didn't come right back, he went down to find you."

"I was talking to Paul. The building super let him in. He was just sitting there in the lobby, looking so.. so.."

"So what already?" I really wasn't that interested in Eleanor's endless hunt for the perfect boyfriend, and she tended to exaggerate. "What really took so long?"

"Whatever, and then I stopped to go to the bathroom."

"Com'on." Bobby cut in. "Put the pizza down on the big table and I'll go get him. He must have just missed you when you were in the ladies' room."

Of course "going to get him" to Bobby meant standing just outside the door and shouting "RALLLLLLPHHHH!!" at the top of his lungs. No answer. "Ralph," he said again, this time much more softly. "You two stay here." He said it to both of us, but looked only at me. "I'll go get him."

"Try the men's room," Eleanor suggested and then turned back to open the pizza box on her way to the smallest slice with pepperoni. "Well," she mumbled hopefully, "maybe he stopped to go to the bathroom too."

I listened for Bobby's footsteps for as long as I could hear them heading down the hall toward the stairwell, while Eleanor wolfed down her first piece of pizza and started on a second.

"Aren't you going to have any?" Stuffing her face was always something she felt bad about doing alone, so I walked over to help her out, picking up a piece with green peppers on it.

"So how's Paul?" I asked, savoring the oregano and other spices they had sprinkled over the cheese, not waiting for her response. "Mm. God, this is good pizza." Either that, or I was way more hungry than I thought.

"He's okay, but he's got a girlfriend and it's not me. Someone he met working on their school paper."

"Wipe your mouth. You've got tomato sauce on your face."

"Thanks," Eleanor reached for one of the paper napkins that came with our order, "but I was saving that for later." Wiping, no, polishing her face with her entire napkin, she opened her eyes and sensed something was wrong. "Why aren't you eating?"

Without realizing it, I was just standing there, my slightly folded slice of pizza barely holding its own horizontally, waiting patiently for my mouth to do something about it. "Where are the guys? ...The entire building's empty. All the offices are locked, but ours. They should be back by now.

"You wanna call..."

"I already left my parents a message. They're not..."

"We could call my parents."

"No. It's probably nothing." I took a large bite of the slice I was holding, for courage, and put the rest of it down on top of the box. "Com'on. Let's take a look. Rollo!" His huge head spun sharply in my direction. "Up!!" I called for him, patting the center of my chest. From across the room, he ran no more than half the way before his powerful rear legs exploded, propelling him airborne to where I caught him with both hands against my chest, without breaking stride on my way to the door. I was used to the force of his landing and braced myself just before he hit. Holding him with my right forearm up against my shirt, he was almost too heavy for me.

"Should we lock it?" Eleanor asked me just as I got to the door. Turning back toward her, my hand on the knob, I thought, "No, but leave them a note on the floor, where they're sure to..." Finally, we both heard them coming down the hallway. What a relief. Even Eleanor was virtually hopping across the floor to meet them. Time to get this evening back on track.

"Hey," I couldn't help smiling, I was so relieved, "where were..." I started to talk even as I turned the knob to beat them to the punch, seeing their silhouettes through the frosted glass door. "...you guys?" It wasn't Bobby and MR. No. Standing there in front of us, just inside the hallway, were the two men who'd kidnapped Rollo and me, the two Russian guys. It was the first time I had a chance to look at them carefully. You know how, sometimes when you're startled by something dangerous, like losing control on your bike riding over wet leaves, things seem to be happening in slow motion? Well, this was another one those times. I wasn't nervous. No heart pounding in my chest. No panic, but I could barely hear Eleanor shouting behind me.

"Close the door! _ELIZABETH!!_ " Eleanor had been shouting in a loud whisper, but not any more. " _CLOSE THE DOOORRRRR!!!_ " she screamed, her fists clenched, her arms waving up and down by her sides.

Standing there in front of these two, I seemed to have all the time in the world to study their faces. Rollo and I just stood there and stared. The one on my left was maybe six one, taller than my father by an inch or two, and clean shaven. I had to look up into his unusually dark brown eyes. The skin on his face, from what I could see of it above and through his short, scraggly beard, was smooth and unwrinkled, probably that of a man in his twenties. Big body, thick brown hair, unevenly cut, almost as if he'd done it himself in the mirror. The bottom of his face was completely relaxed. No smile or any other expression, for that matter. He was wearing a short-sleeve shirt, dark blue. I looked at him first, probably because he was the biggest of the two, but then allowed my eyes to take the lead, my head turning slowly to face his partner standing next to him, to my right.

What was he smiling about, the shorter, thin one, wearing the yellow t-shirt, some creepy chest hair just showing at the bottom of his neck? He had red hair on his head that hadn't been combed coming out of the shower, last time he took one, and a close, perfectly cut moustache that came around to the slightly darker beard on his chin. He might have actually been handsome, if there hadn't been something so sinister about the slight curl of his lips. What could have been cool, had turned out to be creepy. A simple smile would have made all the difference in the world. Odd, I thought to myself, that I would be thinking in these terms under the circumstances. Fair, but weathered skin, as if he'd spent too much time out in the sun, and he was definitely the older one of the two. His eyes were blue, like Bobby's, but lighter and without the brightness. His face seemed to be trying to fake it, but wasn't really the least bit friendly. "..What was that?" I began thinking to myself. "What's that nois..."

" _ELIZABETH!! CLOSE THE DOOR!!!_ " The intensity of Eleanor's no longer whispered shouting was finally getting through to me.

"Right." I said with calm determination and a slight, almost imperceptible nod of my head. Dropping Rollo to the floor, " _Whammm!_ " I slammed the door and turned the deadbolt latch above the knob in almost a single motion. "Out the back," and we started running, past the safe toward the emergency exit in the rear of the office, through the storage room. On the way, I closed the door to the storeroom behind me, and stuffed my father's oversized doorstop hard under it, thinking it might buy us the time we needed to make it out the back and down the stairs – just as the two men got tired of fooling around with the outer office door and kicked it open.

Rollo had been on the ground ever since we started running, his ears back to listen for whatever might be coming after us and head down, as usual, to reduce wind resistance. Even losing traction on the tile floor when he turned the corner around the metal shelves, he was still the first to get to the exit, but with enough sense to wait for us on the right so he wouldn't be in the way when we opened the door. I'd only gone out this back door a couple of times. It led to a narrow interior hallway perpendicular to the main one where the elevator was located in the middle of the building. Past the elevator, at the front of the building, was the stairwell that would take us down to the street. That's where we were going, to the stairwell – even if though it meant running past the door to my father's office. With luck, the Russians would still be inside, preoccupied with the safe and its secrets that had alluded them so far.

At the back door to my father's office, it took two hands for me to turn the bolt and the knob, but we were outside into the hallway in a second, and there were no sounds of anyone coming behind us. They must have decided not to, follow us that is. Good news, or bad news? I wasn't sure yet.

In the hallway, our momentum carried into the wall across from the door, pushing off of it with our hands as we went to our left toward the center. There was a small window at the end of the hallway to our right, but no fire escape and we were three stories up, so going right was our only choice. We stopped at the opening to the main hallway and peeked around the corner. "All clear," I whispered. The elevator was ahead on the right, the door to my father's office, what was left of it, farther down the hall on the left and the stairway way at the end. Checking again, just to make sure, we started walking quickly down the hallway toward the stairs. We should have been running, but for some reason, I don't know why, walking is what we did, Eleanor, Rollo and me.

So far, so good. We were already almost at the elevator and the two men were nowhere in sight, and that was because? ..Whoops. Perhaps my estimates of our good fortunate were a tad premature because, just when I was beginning to feel good about our chances of making it to the stairs, the two Russians walked out of my father's office, the sound of broken glass crunching under their feet, laughing to each other, the red headed one pushing the big one in fun, saying something in Russian to each other. They were playing with us.

"Geez," Eleanor said, "it's always something. ...What now?"

"Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated."

"We could go back?"

"What good would that do?" I asked her without taking my eyes off the Russians. Nowadays, I'd have used my cell phone to call for help. Four years ago, when I was 15 and fresh out of Middle School, I didn't have one and neither did Eleanor.

"Buy us some time?" Eleanor wasn't looking at me either.

Meanwhile, Rollo was on the ground in front of us, taking his wolf-like defensive stance, showing his large Saber-Tooth Tiger teeth, but he was too small to intimidate either of them. Thing is, they'd never really seen this cat in action – except that one time when our wagon went into the water – and should have been a lot more worried.

"Time for what?" I asked, thinking it was better for us to hold our ground, maybe talk to them, try to negotiate something that didn't involve them hitting us, or worse, but then the red haired one, who was obviously in charge, said something and they both started walking toward us. "You know," I reconsidered as the two of us started to back up, "maybe that buying us some time thing you suggested isn't all that bad an ide.." But then they stopped, the expressions on their faces suddenly worried about something. Was it Rollo? No. I didn't think so, and I was right. Taking advantage of the moment, we turned to run toward the back of the building, to what end we had no idea, but confronting these men physically, even with Rollo, wasn't an option. The thing is, we didn't take a first step in that direction before we saw someone else, a man coming into the glare of the overhead light at the end of the hall. He was old and dragging one leg. It was the man I'd seen on the boat.

"Where did he come from?" Eleanor was asking for both of us.

"He must have been hiding out in one of the other offices."

He had been strong once, you could tell, but his age had made him no match for the much younger men behind us, although the baseball bat he held in his right hand looked determined to make up the difference. He had good hair, white, uncombed, but plenty of it for a man that old. He had to be in his late sixties, maybe even seventy, his eyes deep set, well protected beneath plush white brows. I don't think he'd shaved for the past few days. This was definitely the old man from the boat, and from the parking lot – of course! – in front of the grocery store when Rollo and I were kidnapped. His skin, what I could make out on his forehead and through the white stubble on his face, was smooth, but reddened recently from having been outside in the sun. This was the one all right, the man who pushed me into the safe, so why wasn't I afraid?

"You two," his strong, clear voice called out to us? "You girls, you're coming with me."

"And exactly where would we be going?" I thought to myself.

"They're in no danger, old man," the red haired Russian spoke up, his smugness unmistakable even through his heavy accent. "It's been you we're after all along." And the two Russians, their bravado back, took a quick look at each other and then started walking toward us, and so did the old man coming from the other direction.

"What's going on?!" Eleanor was sounding frantic.

"I haven't the slightest... Rollo, get back here!!" For some reason, Rollo had run down to meet the old man, who was looking down at him, wondering why Rollo was walking around his legs, rubbing up against him as he started walking down the hallway. "ROLLO!!!" I shouted again, wondering what he knew that I didn't, but instead of coming, he tensed his frame, walked ahead of the old man by a few feet, stopped and assumed his attack stance, one forearm (his left) extended and centered in front of him, the other (his right) back and bent slightly on his right, his powerful rear legs tensed and poised to move in a hurry. (Battle stations!) Head down, ears flat, Rollo was ready for a fight, but why?

"Need a ride, ladies?"

"Bobby?!!" Huddled together, facing different problems at opposite ends of the hallway, neither of us noticed the door to the elevator opening behind us. It was Bobby and MR. Before we could move, or even think about it, two arms – one was Bobby's, the other MR's – reached out and grabbed ours, dragging us off our feet and onto the elevator.

"ROLLLOOO!!! Get in here!!" I shouted, poking my head out the door just as MR pressed the "Close" button. "What are you doing?!"

"I'm closing the door. What do think I'm doing?"

"ROLLLOOO!!" I reached out to push the edge of the elevator door to keep it open for him, but he didn't budge or even look in my direction, his eyes riveted on the two men at the other end of the hallway. His back to the old man with the one bad leg.

"Gotcha!" Now that expression can be kind of cute, but said with a Russian accent when there's some strange hairy hand under your armpit pulling you back into the hallway? Well, that's another story altogether. Bobby grabbed me around the waist, just in the nick of time, pulling me back into the elevator, while MR and Eleanor tried to pry the Russian's hand lose, only to find all three of us being dragged back into the hallway with me. This guy was strong! Bobby was the only one of us he hadn't managed to grab.

"ROLLO!! I need..." But this time, before I could say it, he was up on the big Russian's shoulder, biting for real into the back of his neck. And when his hands let loose while he reached back to pull Rollo off, the door, which had been banging against us, trying to shut, finally closed and the elevator dropped slowly to the floor below us.

"We made it!" MR was ecstatic, but only for a moment while I pinned him to the elevator wall, my hands grabbing his shirt close under his neck.

" _We left Rollo up there, you nincompoop!!"_ And then I calmed down, a bit, realizing it wasn't really anyone's fault. "We left my cat up there with two goons and an old man with a baseball bat! Bobby, press the 'Stop' button. We're going back up!"

"He'll be okay, Elizabeth."

"Bobby," I let go of MR and turned to face him, standing between me and the elevator door. "He's only a cat, Bobby. He's big, smart and plenty tough, but he's still only a cat. Please, Bobby... That guy was huge. We've got to go back for him."

"What?!" Eleanor must have thought I'd lost my mind.

"...besides," I looked her right in the eye, "I think the old man may have been trying to help us. He's no match for the other two."

"We can go for help."

"There's no time, MR." Bobby was on my side now. "She's right," he told MR, turning quickly to reach past Eleanor to press the emergency "Stop" button. And that's is exactly what we did, with a jerk that almost knocked us to the floor.

"Press the up button," I shouted to Eleanor who was standing, playing with the control panel.

"I am! I am!!"

"Nuts. Mr. Cavanaugh told us not to take the elevator! Something about the motor overheating and circuits shutting it down. ..Keep trying."

"What's that?"

"What?

"That smell!"

"Oh, God. Look at the vents by the floor. It's smoke!!"

To be continued...

"Wow, Rollo, I'm beat." It was 2 AM and I was tired. "Rollo?" I clicked on the save icon and closed the lid to my laptop. Turning around, there was "The Rollo," sacked out like no other cat in the world. Most cats curl up to sleep, or stretch out on their sides. My Rollo liked to lay flat on his stomach, face down in the pillow, his arms and legs stretched out left and right, like he'd done a really bad belly whopper that knocked him unconscious.

I got up and sat next to him, my back up against my pillow and the painted cinder block wall under the window at the head of my bed. I stroked his head, rubbed his neck while I started to fade. "So, what do you think, Rollo?" I wondered out loud, my eyes too heavy to keep open. "Will our hero – That would be me, of course. – and her friends, not to mention her faithful feline companion, survive? Will they come to your rescue and, maybe, the old man's too?"

I laid the back of my hand on his back. "You've saved me so many times. ..'Night, buddy. Sleep tight, and may the fur be with you ..wherever you go in your dreams. I took a deep breath, more like a sigh actually. "..Me too," and I was done for the night.

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Episode 9:

Where's Rollo?

So there we were, the four of us – Bobby, MR, Eleanor and me – huddled together in the center of the floor in that little elevator, watching smoke coming up all around us. It didn't look good. For the moment at least, we couldn't go up, or down.

"I thought it was against the law to smoke in elevators." Eleanor was trying, unsuccessfully, to break the tension with a little humor.

MR just looked at her. "You think that's funny? Maybe you'll do twenty minutes of stand-up at my funeral."

"You know, I often thought I'd be good at stan.."

"Ralph! ..Nobody's having a funeral. Not today. ..And Eleanor, standup comedians have to, well, stand up. I've never seen you stand for more than twenty-two minutes and that was only because there were no seats on the bus and you only made it that long because you were holding on to the strap with both hands!" I paused for a moment to catch my breath.

"True." Eleanor knew I was right.

It was bold talk meant to rally the troops but, I have to admit, it didn't look good. Being trapped in the elevator would have been bad enough, mostly annoying, but smoke was something else altogether. It wasn't heavy, not yet, but we had to do something fast. It could be the fire below us was just getting started. "Wait a minute."

"What," Bobby asked me.

"There's smoke, but no heat."

"You're right," MR agreed, but then wondered what difference it made. "Good news? So maybe the building's not on fire. Bad news," he was talking unusually fast, "we're going to suffocate anyway!"

No doubt about it, it didn't look good, but does it ever, look good, that is? All my life I've always believed that, no matter how much trouble I got into, somehow I'd figure my way out of it. Which is pretty much what happens I suppose, until one time you don't. Fortunately, back then in the elevator, I was way too busy to think about failing. Rollo, sitting up next to my laptop, shook his head, up and down, in agreement. At the time, of course, he had been three floors up in my father's office building with the old man, fighting for his life – for both their lives, for all I knew – with the two thugs with Russian accents. ..I wondered sometimes, watching him stare so intently at the screen while I typed, if he really could read. Mostly, I think he sat there to keep an eye on the birdhouse I had stuck with a big sucker on the outside of my window.

Meanwhile, while the rest of us were just standing there thinking, Eleanor was trying the "3" button again and again, and then the "Open" button. No luck. "I think we've stopped between floors," she said, but nobody was paying attention. Bobby had moved to the door, doing his best to pry it open with his fingers, each hand pulling in opposite directions.

"Hit the emergency button, the big red one," Bobby pointed.

"I did. ..See, it's not going in."

"No," MR reached around her to the panel. "Try pulling it out," which he did, and that worked. It probably worked that way to prevent people from setting it off accidentally. But then MR just stood there staring at it, at the red button. "Why isn't it going off? We should be hearing an alarm. ..I don't hear an alarm," he said, turning to Eleanor. "Do you he.."

"Of course not, Bozo! You're not deaf. If there was an alarm going off, you'd hear it too."

"Hey!" I interrupted, holding out my palms "Everybody just.. just focus." And then I looked up. "How about it?" I asked Bobby, pointing to the plate over my head, to the left of the light in the ceiling.

The smoke was beginning to burn everyone's eyes, and Bobby coughed as he bent down a bit to give me a leg up. This was serious. The fooling around part was just because we were nervous. Actually, scared out of our minds was more like it. It's just that none of us wanted any of the others of us to know. I put my hands on Bobby's shoulders – which was very nice, but a distraction neither of us needed – and my right foot on the platform of his interlocked fingers that he'd made for me. "Go!" I told him, and he lifted his arms at precisely the moment I stood up, reaching as high as I could to touch the high metal ceiling directly above me. My right palm pounded flush against the plate, but it didn't budge. "No screws. Nothing. It's just stuck." And I was back on the floor again, just as fast as I'd gone up. "But it's cold."

"So?" Eleanor, and MR too, had been watching what we'd been doing.

"At least we know there's no fire above us," MR understood. "If there's a fire, it's under the elevator, maybe even in the basement. We've got to go up. Even if Rollo wasn't in trouble, we can't just sit here until we pass out!"

"I'll keep tryi..." she couldn't finish, stopping to cover her mouth while she choked on the smoke she'd inhaled, but this time, "Chawaahhh," and the elevator stared moving up, slow, but steady, leaving the smoke behind us as it rose past the second floor and then slowed to stop at the third. The exhaust fan in the elevator ceiling was doing its job, pulling out what was left of the stink we had been breathing. The door opened slowly, the four of us hesitant to move into the hallway, choosing instead to listen for the sound of a fight, of any ruckus. ..Nothing. Just quiet.

With Eleanor's finger on the "Open" button so the doors didn't keep trying to close, all four of us slowly extended our heads into the hallway. Eleanor and MR looked to the right, Bobby and I, to the left. ..Nothing.

"Now what?" MR needed to know.

Bobby took a moment to look over his shoulder, sniffing to smell what was left of the fumes. "What about the fire, whatever, that was causing the smoke? Who's going to put that out?"

"Awfully quiet, don't you think?" Eleanor was right, but none of us was sure what that meant. At least there wasn't anyone on the floor we had to deal with. Unfortunately, no Rollo either.

"Oh, yeah?" MR tiptoed, for some reason – which was a really weird look for him – across the hallway to the fire alarm, "I can fix that." He pulled it, breaking the little glass bar, but nothing went off. No raucous wake-the-dead noise. We all looked up. The bell was right there, attached to the wall above the alarm, but it wasn't going off.

"What are you doing?" Eleanor asked, this time without thinking.

"Are you kidding?" I was impressed. "It's a great idea. The building could be on fire. ..And besides, even if it it's not, the alarm will bring the Fire Department, people we can trust to..."

"If it was working," Bobby interrupted, reaching up to flick the bell with his finger to the sound of a barely audible "dink." "..Maybe it's a silent alarm."

"Silent?" MR asked. "You're making a joke. Aren't you?" Sometimes MR could be easily confused, an affectation which turned out to be the sign of a uniquely brilliant mind. "I don't think so. What good does it do the people in the building if they can't _hear_ the alarm going off?! I think we should..."

"What?" Bobby cocked his head slightly to the right, like we really didn't have time for the obvious right now, "What? Oh," he was being sarcastic. "I have an idea. Why don't we _c_ _all_ the Fire Department?" The fact was, for all we knew, the building was on fire even though the smoke had stopped coming through the floor. In any case, we were all spooked by the fact that there was no one around.

"Why _isn't_ the fire alarm working?" I asked myself out loud.

"Maybe someone," Bobby said what we were all thinking, "disabled it, just in case guys like us tried to use it to call for help?"

"Com'on." MR thought Bobby's point was more than a little far-fetched.

"Are you kidding?" Bobby snapped back. "The elevator doesn't work. The emergency button doesn't work. The building fire alarms don't work, and we're been chased by Russian hit men for all we know. You think this is all a coinky-dink?"

Eleanor just looked at him. "Did you just say, 'coinky-dink'?" Any other time, it would have been funny.

"Yeah, yeah," I agreed, "but the Russians, they're thugs. You don't really think they disabled the fire alarm system, do you?"

"The emergency button?" MR added to the list. "Even if the smoke was just an accident, a problem with the motor or something, someone's been playing with the wiring. ..No. Now that I think about it. The emergency button could just be broken. It's the fire alarm not going off that really bothers me."

"Wait a minute." I was on to something. "How did they know we were here?"

"I thought it was a coincidence."

"Sure, Bobby. One time maybe, but think about it. Go back to the beginning. How did they know when the safe arrived?"

"Maybe they found out when and where it was shipped and were waiting for it." MR had a point.

"Okay, maybe. They were in a hurry to steal it, so much so they took it in broad daylight and would have gotten away with it if their cable hadn't snapped. How did they know my father was out that morning?"

"Maybe they didn't." MR was challenging every one of my assumptions, which was actually a good thing. "Maybe they just got lucky. Maybe if your father had been there, they would have waited until he left."

"Okay, so how did they know we were here tonight?" Eleanor wanted to know.

"Maybe we were followed?" Bobby suggested.

"No. Nobody followed us. ..I mean, I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. ..Who else," I looked at Bobby, MR and Eleanor one at a time, "who else knew we'd be here? My parents don't count. We get here, and then they show up. Unless they were already hiding out in the building, how did they know? And why not wait until we left?"

"Maybe they didn't know we were coming." It was Bobby again. "Look, it could still be coincidental. We're both chasing the same clues. It only figures we'll run into each other."

(This is me, college student Elizabeth again. Have you noticed yet how complicated and confusing something simple can get? It's not like TV where the writers make sure all the details fit perfectly. In real life, they don't. Trust me. This is a true story. I was there. I know what I'm talking about. Just to be clear, we were worried. ..No, "scared" is more like it, but we were trying to be mature which, until you are, turns out to be easier said than done. Under the circumstances, I've been impressed to this day at how well we handled ourselves. Had we been alone, anyone of the four of us by ourselves, I'm not so sure. But together.. Together we were able to play off each other's strengths and keep our wits about us.)

"Sure." Bobby had a point. It just wasn't the point I was trying to make. "But why confront us? Why risk the mess? ..Why not just hide out until we're gone?"

"I don't know. Maybe they're idiots." Bobby was reaching. "Maybe they just don't care."

"No. She's right,.."

"Thanks, Ralph." I smiled at him, but only with my lips. No teeth.

"..but not for the reasons you're thinking. I think they think we've found something or, I don't know, that we've figured something out. ..Think about it. They kidnapped you in front of the grocery store probably by mistake. I think they were after the files. The deal on the boat at Harness Creek wasn't about you, it was about the old man. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been willing to let you drown."

"I was going to drown too," Eleanor wanted to make sure she got full credit.

"And tonight?? Tonight, they actually knocked on your father's door.. I mean, how bold is that? ..and then chased you into the hallway. Tonight, they either wanted to kidnap you or.. or worse."

"So what?" Eleanor had been listening intently, as intently as she listens to anything, but now she had something to say. "We don't really have any idea what they're doing, do we? All we know for sure is that someone disabled the emergency button on the elevator and the fire alarms in the building."

"I don't understand." Bobby didn't get it, not yet anyway, but I did.

"Bobby," I explained, "her point is that those two Russians had no idea we'd be getting on the elevator until you two grabbed us. Heck, we were headed for the stairs when you and MR showed up. When would they have had the time, let alone know how to disable the fire alarms? The panel, I know because I've seen it, is in the basement, where the.." I stopped, because that was the moment when all four of us finally got it.

"It's the super," Bobby said carefully, "isn't it? The super who let the pizza guy, what's his name.."

"Paul." As a rule, Eleanor never forgot the names of guys with blonde wavy hair.

"Paul, whatever," Bobby continued. "He knew we were here, called his buddies and had them come over."

"Exactly," I agreed. "It just stands to reason that there's a third guy, someone who's in a position to watch the building, to get into my father's office because he has a key and knows when we're all coming and going."

"What do you wanna bet," Eleanor extended her arms out to her side, like we were about to have a group hug, ushering all of us out of the elevator into the third floor hallway, "he's turned off phone service to the building, or at least to your father's office?" (Remember, none of us had cell phones back then, and there was no pay phone in the building or even out in the little plaza in front of us.

"Well," MR was having another wave of nervousness, fumbling to think of something cool or at least important to say, but couldn't think of anything. "Yeah. Let's find out," was all he could come up with.

"They could still be in my father's office." I was worried, and just realized that I was holding onto Bobby's arm with both hands. I let go so quickly it startled him, and he turned to look at me. "Just keep talking," I told myself, and I did... "They could be anywhere, hiding out in someone else's office or even the stairwell, waiting for us. They could..."

"We just need to find a phone, any phone, and call the police." Good idea, Eleanor. "Let's go to your father's office. ..Com'on, I think they're gone, Rollo and the old man with them." And so the four us, huddled together not six inches apart, like some gangly, uncoordinated spider, moved quickly from the elevator to the broken front door of my father's office, stopping just at the edge of the broken glass still on the floor.

"Wow." What I saw caught me by surprise.

"The place has been trashed," Eleanor stated the obvious. Papers, files, books everywhere.

"We were only in the elevator for, what, twenty minutes tops." MR was right. "In twenty minutes, everybody's gone and they had time to do all this," he nodded in the direction of the mess.

"Wait here," in the hallway, I told them. "I'm going to see if the phone works," which is what I started to do.

"No." Bobby grabbed my arm. "I mean, I'll go with you in case they're in the back.

Stepping over the glass as best I could, I walked over to my father's desk and picked up the phone. "There's no tone." I pressed one of the hang up buttons a couple of times. Still nothing.

"And where's the phone box?" Eleanor already knew, but asked the question anyway.

MR, standing next to her in the doorway, answered for all of us. "And I'm guessing it's in the basement, where the super hangs out."

"Okay, let's go into the back room, just in case." I was worried someone, maybe Rollo, might be back there, and hurt."

"You two," Bobby was talking to MR and Eleanor, "go up and down the hall, together, to see if any of the offices are open." It was after nine, pushing ten and plenty dark out even with the street lights. "All the stores and restaurants on the street are closed by now. Besides, for all we know, the super and his crew could be waiting for us to leave."

"I don't want to go out anyway." Eleanor wasn't the only one.

"Right," Bobby agreed. "Try to find us a phone in one of the offices."

"Guys," MR had thought of something, "don't touch anything. The police will want to see the place, check things exactly the way we found it.

"Right," Bobby agreed, and we split up. Turned out there was no one in the back. No sign of Rollo or the old man. Zero. The place was a mess. Back at the front door, we stepped into the hallway to see Eleanor waiving at us to join them in front of one of the offices a few doors down.

"They're all locked," MR told us when we got there.

"So what's so special about this one?" I asked, noting the "Ronald Stevens, Esq., Attorney at Law" gold letter decals on the wooden door.

"The thing is," MR wrapped on the glass with his finger tips, "I know this guy. He did some work for my parents."

"Was that when they wrote you out of their will?"

"Cute, Bobby." MR rolled his eyes and sighed slightly, too nervous to smile.

"Guys!" Eleanor seemed on the verge of losing it, but I knew better. "We need to do something. It's late. Are parents are wondering where we are and if Mr. Coleman calls Elizabeth, she's not going to answer, is she?!"

I got the point. Of all the offices on the floor, Mr. Stevens' was the only one other than my father that had glass in the hallway. My father's door was, well, used to be glass framed by wood, before they kicked it in, but his phone lines were out. Mr. Stevens door was wood like all the others, but he had panes of glass on the side, I guess to make it to see who might be out there before letting them in. "Give me your jacket, MR."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not wearing one. Just give it to me. Com'on." Seeing I meant business, he took off the light weight, dirty orange jacket he wore everywhere, no matter how hot it was. I think he did it for the extra Kleenex and Snickers-es – "Rollo, what's the plural of 'Snickers'? I'll look it up later." – he could carry in its pockets. "Get back."

"Oh yeah, I've seen this on TV." Eleanor was right. Rolling the jacket around my right arm, I looked away, eyes shut, and gave one of the glass panes a swift elbow to its stomach.

"Hey, that's my..." he paused long enough to turn away as the glass shattered, most of it falling inside, "...jacket."

"Here. You can have it back now."

"Thanks." Looking it over carefully, it may have been the first time I'd ever seen MR that concerned about anything.

Being careful to avoid the jagged pieces of glass still holding their own around the inside edge of the door, Bobby reached through and turned the deadbolt, and then the outside knob with his other hand, pushing the door inward, shoveling some of the glass that was on the floor out of the way.

"Aren't we, like, breaking and entering?" Eleanor had a right to be concerned.

"I did it," I told her and looked at Bobby and MR. "I did it, not you. It's an emergency and we need to use the phone. ..MR, do it now. If the phone's are working," and it turned out they were, "call 911 for the police and fire department from that front desk. I'll find another extension and call my parents. Then Bobby, you'll call yours and Eleanor, yours. ..Go, Ralph. Do it."

"Careful," MR warned us, mostly me actually, as he led the way inside. "Somebody get the lights," which I did, although you could see pretty well from light coming in from the windows along the alley.

Eleanor was the first to reach a phone, the one on the receptionist's desk. "No dial tone."

"This one's dead, too." MR had gone inside what had to be Mr. Steven's office.

"They must have turned off service for the entire building." Eleanor was sounding level again. We were beginning to click. (I love that feeling.. Don't you? ..when you and someone or people you're with start really working together, playing off each other perfectly. There's that rhythm. What a feeling.)

"Com'on, we'll take the fire escape outside the hallway window," which I'd wished I thought of _before_ I broke into Mr. Stevens' office."

"I thought," Eleanor reminded us, "we didn't want to go outside."

"We don't," Bobby agreed, "but we're out of options. We'll stay together."

"I have to go to the bathroom," MR almost raised his hand for permission, but caught himself.

"Me too." It had been a while and the excitement just made me have to go more.. Too much information, but you get the point.

"Okay." Bobby had a plan. "We'll all go, first to the mens room with you two," referring to Eleanor and me, "waiting outside the door. Then the reverse, to the ladies room."

"And nobody starts doing anything until you say, 'Clear,' the way the do it on TV." The three of us just looked at Eleanor, but then realized it was actually a good idea just in case someone was waiting in there for us. It wasn't likely, but make us feel better, like we knew what we were doing.

So we all went to the bathroom, and then headed back to my father's office and his fire escape, worried that it might not be safe to walk down the stairs and out the front door.

"What if we see them, Rollo, the old man or those other two?" I really didn't know what we would do.

"We'll.." MR was talking softly, suddenly worried that someone might hear us. "..we'll just have to wing it."

"Let's go," Eleanor knew we didn't have any choice.

We started out, walking quickly from Mr. Stevens' office, down the hallway. "I'm worried about Rollo."

"Listen to me," Bobby stopped for a second, grabbing me with both his hands on my arms to make sure he had my attention, as if he needed help getting it. "Enough about your cat. He can take care of himself."

"Are you kidding," Eleanor had seen Rollo in action, "he can take care of himself and the four of us."

"As I was saying," Bobby continued, "he'll be fine and right now we've got to worry about getting ourselves out of here in one piece." He wasn't even trying to reassure me. "...Have you forgotten about the smoke?! For all we know, there's at least a smoldering if not flat out fire in the building. ..Now, com'on. We've all been to the bathroom. Let's get our butts out of here."

"Just the same," we started running to catch up with the others, to the window at the end of the hallway along the front, the window they'd used to take the safe out of my father's office, "if I see him.. If I see Rollo, I'm going to do something."

We'd opened the window and stepped out onto the fire escape platform after carefully looking up, down and out onto the little plaza, but we didn't see anyone.

"Ouch!" I looked over to see Eleanor sucking on the crease to her left hand by her thumb.

"Watch your hands on the railings. They're old and some of the paint's sharp where it's flaking off."

"Now you tell me?"

"Shhhh," I responded, looking down the hallway from the outside on the third floor grating. ..Empty, just the way I like it.

"Where do suppose they all went?" Bobby wondered.

"Hey, for all we know they're still in the building somewhere." Eleanor was right.

"Let's just get to the street and go for some help." MR was already on his way down to the bottom platform.

"Wait up," I went next, "I'll steady the ladder for you."

"Elizabeth!!" It was my mother, getting out of our wagon – the new used one my parents had bought after the other one sank – pulling up on, not in front of, but actually _on_ the brick plaza below us. One police car with flashing lights, but no siren, I guess so not to scare anyone away, was coming up Main Street from the dock, and then a second from around the circle at the top of the block. The two of them drove up, stopping on each side of our car. My mother hadn't bothered to wait for our car to stop lurching as it came to a sudden stop, and almost stumbled on the uneven brick as she got out of the passenger side. My father, who had been driving, was right behind her, both of them running up to the building where we were on our way down the fire escape.

"Careful, honey!" The ladder was normally about a full story off the ground, too high for anyone to reach, even if they jumped for it. No problem for MR whose weight took it down quickly enough, bouncing as it hit the pavement. He stepped off onto the brick and then held it steady for the rest of us.

"Elizabeth!" My mother grabbed me by both shoulders as soon as I was down, leaving it to my father and one of the policemen to help Eleanor and Bobby. Do I look like I need to be grabbed? Am I wearing a sign? First Bobby, which was nice even under the circumstances, and now my.. "Are you alright?"

"How did you guys know to.." I was so glad to see them I was almost shaking.

"You didn't pick up Daddy's phone. None of the other parents had heard anything and, what with the past few days, we had to do something."

"Right. Of course. Look, you've got to get the Fire Department," I told her, looking back at the building for any sign of flames. By then, one of the policemen had walked up next to where we were standing, and I touched him on his arm to get his attention. "Officer, there's smoke coming in the elevator on the first floor. We pulled one of the alarms, but it didn't work. It may just be a motor thing, but.." Without waiting for me to finish, he was on the radio he was carrying, calling for help.

"Guys," I turned to my friends, "look around for Rollo. ...Please."

"Officer," my father, seeing how concerned I was, asked the policeman we'd been talking to for help. "Can you and your men..."

"Sure, Mr. Coleman," he'd overheard us talking. "What does your son look like?"

"No, no. ..He's a cat. A large cat."

"Mr. Coleman, we've got another unit on its way." For a thin man who seemed to be trim, the Officer sounded a bit out of breath. "Wait here for them to arrive. In the meantime, we're going inside to look around. ..And do me a favor," he said, turning as an afterthought, backpedaling on his way to the front door. "Use the pay phone by the alley to call your super and get him over here to unlock the back door, all these offices and anywhere we have to go in the basement."

"Right away," and off my father went.

"No. Dad!" I shouted at him on my way to catch up. He stopped and the two of us stood there, Bobby, MR and Eleanor waiting near my mother, while I brought my father up to date.

"Okay, okay," was all he had to say, taking a moment to take it all in. "Alright," he took a quick breath. "I'll call the detective we met here when the safe fell. I've got his card with me. ..I'll tell him what you told me and leave it to him figure out what to do next. He may still want me to give him a call. ..You know," my father cautioned me, "you don't really know our super's involved. It's easy to get into the basement and, even assuming there was a third man, or woman, it could have been someone else. You understand that, right? ..You need to be careful, and smart, but careful not to accuse people of things until you're sure."

"I know, Daddy."

Maybe forty-five minutes later, after midnight by then, we had looked everywhere. My parents and I had gone back to look inside while my friends went out with the police for a block in every direction – not just looking for Rollo, of course, but also for any sign of the old man and the two Russians. Nothing. None of the few people they ran into had seen anything, least of all a large, stocky cat or an old man with a bad leg who might have taken him. Turns out the fire in the elevator never really got started. It was some motor, belt, something problem that the maintenance man had been planning to get fixed. Dangerous to breathe, but, you know how they say, "Where there's smoke, there's fire."? Well, lucky for us, not this time.

My parents took us home. They almost had to drag me away from the plaza. Bobby even volunteered to stay up all night with me, hanging out in front of the building, hoping that Rollo would come back – I told you Bobby's crazy about me. – but my parents wouldn't hear of it. Neither would his. I knew they were right. It was late. We were way beyond tired, and agreed to meet at my place in the morning for a late breakfast and figure out what to do next. We were quiet in the car. Eleanor was falling asleep on MR's shoulder in the "way back" seat that faced out the rear of our wagon. Bobby put his hand on top of mine on the back seat between us, while I stared out the window looking for any sign of fur.

To be continued...

"You know, Rollo," I reached under his chin to make sure we were eyeball to eyeball.

"Mrr?"

"To be honest, I thought you were done for. I thought that would be the last time.. That seeing you in the hallway, protecting that old man.. It's just that I've always thought, as long as we were together, the two of us would be okay."

"Mrrrrrr." Rollo pushed up on his front legs to bury his head in the palm of my hand.

"Yeah. That was scary for both of us, wasn't it? Not so much when it was all happening, but later, after we left Main Street without you. I have a feeling that's the way it is. We lose someone we love, to illness, danger,..."

"Murrk."

"It doesn't make any difference. We don't really get it until after it's happened, when ordinary words become the last things we've said and there's nothing we can do about it. ..I felt weak going home that night without you, Rollo, like I imagine what it's like to be dying. Weak and desperate. I felt like crying, Rollo, but crying would have meant giving up. Promise me.." But then I stopped, because it occurred to me that was too much to ask.

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

Episode 10:

Not Quite As Dead As We Thought

Eleanor stayed over, but called her sister to be on standby with the car the next morning, just in case we figured out someplace to go. Missing cat or not, we were both out before our heads hit our pillows, but not before I opened my dormer window in case Rollo made his way back to the roof during the night. But he didn't.

"I'm guessing he stayed with the old man to take care of him." Eleanor, up earlier than I would have expected, was trying to make me feel better, but it wasn't working.

"Sure," I agreed half-heartedly. "Let's get dressed before the guys show up for breakfast. You shower first."

"Hey, Mrs. Coleman."

"Good morning, Eleanor. When Elizabeth comes down..."

"I'm right here, Mom." I'd stepped into my closet to pick out something to wear.

"Good. Your father and I are going out to get some bagels and a paper. Go ahead and make breakfast for your friends, if you like, or you can wait for us to get back. We won't be long. Just don't go anywhere without us."

"Right, Mom. See you guys later."

As it turned out, Bobby and MR were walking across the yard together just as my parents were driving out."

"Hey," I opened the door for them even before they got there. "We're having scrambled eggs with bacon pieces, toast, juice and then we're out of here."

"Where we going?" Bobby was the first to ask.

"MR, you make the best eggs. Do it. You're a way better cook than I am. ..Bobby, you help him. Eleanor, you call your sister. Tell her to get over here and then get juice for everybody..."

"I want some chocolate milk. ..And didn't your mother just tell you not to.." Eleanor was right, but I ignored her. I was finding Rollo today or.. or.. I don't know. I finding him today, period.

"And make MR some chocolate milk while I set the table. Use the skim milk. It'll be better for him."

"So... ?" It was Bobby again.

"Harness Creek." They all stopped for a moment, but no one was surprised. "We're going back to that shack and see what we can find. I think the old man was living there."

"Your parents said to wait."

"I know, but..."

"Let's just eat, guys," Eleanor interrupted. "Mr. and Mrs. Coleman will probably be back before we're ready to leave anyway." And that's what we did, talking to each other about this and that, nothing particularly important, but it was just the change of pace we needed.

"Hey," Bobby was pushing the curtains aside over the sink, "you've got a police car pulling up out front. One guy in uniform, the other in a suit."

"Short blonde hair?" I was thinking about the detective that had interviewed us before.

"Yeah, it's the same guy. He's got a file with him. Looks like the one from your father's desk."

So I got up from the table and opened the door. "Hi."

"Hello, Elizabeth. Can we talk to you and your parents?"

"Sure, Detective. Come on in. My parents should be back in few minutes."

Just as the door was closing behind them, Eleanor's sister Connie pushed it back open. "Hi, everyone," and then, seeing that I was starting to clear the table, "thanks for waiting."

"Don't worry," I told her, pointing to the plate, glass and silverware neatly arranged on the kitchen island, "we saved you some. Go ahead, while we get ready. Make yourself some toast. There's English muffins in the cupboard if you want one."

"Thanks."

"While we're waiting for your parents, would you mind taking a look at some pictures, in case you and your friends recognize anyone? Okay if I lay them out here on the table?"

"Sure," I gave him permission and he did, putting down some head shots that he must have had in his police files, and the picture of the two men we'd found among the papers in the safe.

"If you could gather around, those of you who were at the your father's office building last night, just make a mental note of anyone who looks familiar, but don't point or say anything until I ask you."

"Doesn't want us influencing each other's opinion," MR mumbled under his breath to Eleanor, tapping with his fingers on the checkered tablecloth.

"That's it exactly," the detective smiled as MR looked up.

No more than two minutes later, we were just standing there, pretty obviously all done.

"Okay, let's start with you, Bobby. Tell me if you see anyone familiar looking, and no body changes his or her mind, no matter what he says, or doesn't say. ...How about it, Bobby?"

One at a time, Bobby, Eleanor, MR and I told the detective what we saw. MR and Eleanor thought they recognized one of the men with the Russian accents, although he had a beard now. His eyes looked right, but I couldn't be sure. None of us could find the shorter man, the one with the red hair, although a couple of faces looked familiar. It would have helped if the pictures had been in color, instead of black and white. But all of us recognized the old man from the picture that came from the safe. Especially Eleanor and me, from the night before and from when I saw him on the boat in Harness Creek.

"Officer.. Detective, I'm sorry, if we're done, my friends and I..."

"Of course, Elizabeth, but I really need to talk to your parents."

"Look, they'll be back in a minute. Eleanor," I wasn't about to hang out at the house waiting for my parents while Rollo was lost in space, "you stay here with MR until my parents get back, tell them what's up and then ask them to drive you to the creek to meet us."

"What?!"

"Eleanor, please. I've got to get out there."

"Yeah, yeah. Before they tell you not to.." she said quietly, out of earshot from the detective and policeman who were talking to each other about something. (Wait. Of course they were talking about 'something.' Why else would they be talking to each other? If I want to be a writer, I need to be more careful about things like that. Back to the story..) "Okay. I get it."

"Elizabeth?"

"Yes, Detective."

"Our people haven't been back out there. How about if you just wait and we'll all go together."

"Thanks, Detective, but you'll be right behind us," I told him, turning to look out the window toward the familiar sound of our car's engine. That's my parents pulling up now. We'll be okay. ..Bobby. Let's go, Connie."

"Wait," Connie gulped down half a glass of orange juice, wiped her mouth on a folded paper napkin, and we were off.

"Hey, Mom. We're out of here. Eleanor will bring you up to date."

"Wait a minute," my mother turned, always desperate to get in that last question or say something while I was walking out the door.

"Talk to Eleanor, and the detective," I shouted back to her as Bobby opened the door to Connie's car for me. (He's so, polite. Sure, I could have opened the door for myself, of course, but somehow it seemed nicer this way, like he wanted to make sure nothing happened to me. ..Maybe I should occasionally open the door for him.)

"Hi, Mrs. Coleman." I could always count on Eleanor to cover for me.

My parents didn't recognize the other men. Why should they? Rollo and I, and now Bobby and MR, but only for a second when the elevator door opened in the third floor hallway, were the only ones who had seen them. Obviously, the police wouldn't have had the picture of that one guy if he didn't have some criminal record. "And all four of them," the detective, talking to my parents, held up the picture of my grandfather and his partner, "recognized the old man."

My father nodded.

"Apparently," the detective continued, "he hasn't changed all that much over the years. This picture's got to be 30 years, maybe older."

"Well, Detective, I've only met the man once, I think, when I was kid and he was visiting my father." Extending his hand, my father pointed to the man in the photo on the left. "I really don't know much about him. His name is 'Manny,' Manuel... something," he paused, trying to remember a last name he hadn't heard in years. "It's been a long time. I can remember my father meeting with him at our old house on..." And then he got it, "Spe-dar-i-kov, I think. Something like that. I'm not sure about the spelling. Besides, I'm pretty sure they both changed their names. My father's, from 'Zuretsky' to 'Coleman,' but I don't know about Manny. He was my father's partner. They came over together from Russia, a long time ago."

"You got to be kidding, Mr. Coleman, that guy _on the left_ is your father's partner?" MR had hardly been paying attention, but he was now, and Eleanor knew why.

"That's right, MR. I only met him once or twice when I was kid. He and my father didn't..."

"That's not the point, Mr. Coleman," Eleanor took over where MR left off, "the guy _we_ saw is the man on the _right_!"

"That can't be. ...That's my father, Elizabeth's grandfather. She probably can't remember what he looked like. He's been dead for almost ten years. Died in a boating accident on South River..."

"Not far from Harness Creek?" This guy wasn't a detective for nothing. "Never found the body, did they?"

"Well, he used to own that shack. Kept his boat there, the one that sunk the other day."

"Your name isn't 'Coleman'?" MR had just figured that out.

"It is now." My father didn't want to take the time to talk about it now, but didn't want to blow MR off either. "Look, I'll explain later. Right now we'.."

"Let's go. Mr. and Mrs. Coleman, you follow me in your car with Ralph and Eleanor. ...Ray," he was talking to the uniformed Officer while he, the detective, shuffled up his pictures from the table, "you call for another car to meet us there." And they were out the door in a second, fifteen, maybe twenty minutes tops behind Connie, Bobby and me.

"Let's park here, on the shoulder across from the entrance." Connie was right. The dirt and rock covered road to the creek was barely big enough for one car. Getting back out in a hurry might not be easy. Better to leave the car here and walk, or run if we had to, back to it. Besides, if there was somebody at the shack, they would more likely hear us coming by car than on foot.

Out of the car, we crossed the road and began walking toward the water, staying near the trees and brush on our right, instead of down the middle, thinking our approach would be a little less obvious that way. It was, I'm guessing, twenty, maybe thirty yards or so before we came into the open area where we could see the shack ahead of us, and the water behind it. The dirt road made a right, past some trees, and then came into the clearing where not one, but two cars were parked. From there, the road continued around in front of the porch, between it and the rusty chain link fence at the top of the small hill that led down to the water. The driveway, barely wide enough for a small car, then completed its circle on the other side of the house before heading back out again to the main road, where we were parked.

"Get down," I motioned to Bobby and Connie as soon as we saw the cars, and we ducked behind a couple of small bushes and a tree, peering through the leaves while we figured out our next move. At that point we were only fifty feet from the cars, and another twenty or so from the house.

"We need to get closer," Bobby was whispering, but sounded remarkably cool. I was nervous and looked over at Connie. She was older, but had the same intense look on her face that I was feeling in my chest. From where we were, if there was anyone on the screened porch, it wasn't likely they would have seen us coming. "We've got to get up against the side there where we can get a look through those windows."

"There," I pointed into the woods behind us. "We'll go straight back into the trees, work our way toward the water and come up the hill on the other side of the cars. The only exposure we'll have will be between that one car," the one that was parked closest to where we were hiding, "if we use it for cover, and the house."

"And if we stay low," Connie had been following my plan with her eyes on the terrain, "there's not much chance they'll see us out the windows, even if they're looking."

"Okay," Bobby started to go first, "Let's do it, but take it slow and avoid stepping on dry brush, if you can. The faster we go, the more noise we'll make, and the more likely they are to hear us."

"Wow," I was so impressed, honestly. "When did you become a Boy Scout?"

"You've obviously never seen me in my uniform," Bobby took the time to smile back at me. He wasn't a Boy Scout. Just playing with me, which, under the circumstances, was exactly what I needed. "And I prefer 'Man Scout,' if you don't mind." (My gosh, he's so cute. Remind me to have that smile licensed with the state Department of Wow. It was just the distraction I needed to keep my mind off what might really happen if we were discovered.)

"Stay low," Connie warned us, making a downward motion with her open hand.

Saying nothing, the three of us did exactly what we had planned. Although it seemed pretty noisy to us, it had rained a bit the day before and the leaves didn't crackle under our feet all that much. Slow and steady, chances were we weren't noticeable what with the sound from the light breeze coming in off South River, and the other noises the woods always make on their own.

"Eleanor," it was my father asking as he drove faster to stay up with the police car he was following on their way to the creek, "did the detective tell you how he happened to have a picture of that one guy, one of the two who kidnapped Elizabeth and were threatening you last night?"

"Yeah, he said he was a 'hired hand,' with a minor criminal record."

"That's right, Mr. Coleman," MR leaned forward, grabbing onto the side of my father's bucket seat. "He made the point that someone was probably paying that guy to take care of business for him."

"Did he say who?"

"No, Mrs. Coleman," Eleanor finished up. "Could have been the other man that was there, but he wasn't sure."

From the one of the cars that was closest to the shack, the three of us crunched down almost onto our hands and knees to cover the last few feet to the windows on that side of the house. Carefully, we stood up, our backs just barely rubbing up against the siding around this one particular window. Bobby was on one side. Connie and me, on the other. He looked at us, and we at him, and then ever so slowly we rolled our faces to look inside. Connie went high, with me below her, just a few inches above the sill.

While the light wasn't all that good, we could still see well enough to make out what was important. Either the place had been trashed, or whoever had been living there pretty much stunk as a housekeeper. My guess is, someone was looking for something, and hadn't found it yet. (I've always wondered why people in the movies seem to mess a room up so much when they're searching it. You'd think making the mess would make it harder to find anything. "I need to remember that," I made a mental note, "if I ever write about all this.") For a moment, I thought we could hear the voices of the two men who'd kidnapped me, talking in Russian to each other, but from somewhere else in the room where we couldn't see them.

And there, in the dimly lit middle of the floor, as much of it as we could see, was the old man from last night sitting in a chair, his white hair mussed and fallen down over his forehead, a small trickle of dried blood coming from his nose, as if he'd been in a fight. To my surprise, far from being scared, I was relieved and felt my confidence returning. There, sitting beside the old man was the only one in the room who turned to look at me. The slow motion of his head almost indiscernible, not even his eyes shifted their direction toward the window for long enough that anyone would have noticed. And then his head did move, once, then again to his right, and back again, all the way left. What was he trying to tell me? Were there two, even three other men in the room? It was Rollo, his unusually large frame bringing his head even with the old man's thighs. Any other cat or dog would have made a move in our direction, running over to the window, giving us a way. Not this cat. He looked at me, the dim gold glow of his eyes hard to miss, but only for a moment for fear of giving their captors a clue.

"Mmmmmmm." I could hear his deep-throated rumbling from the outside, through the screen window. The windows were open on the other side of the house. A quick turn, and easy leap onto one of the window sills, he could have been outside and safe in a flash, before whoever was keeping them had time to react. Instead, he was holding his position. But why? What was it about the old man that Rollo had figured out, but my friends and I couldn't fathom?

"Care to join us?"

To be continued...

"Who said that?!" Have Young Elizabeth and her friends been discovered? If so, to what end?! ..Well, you'll just have to wait until I get back from class to find out. ..Right Rollo? ..Rollo? Man, when you take a nap, you don't fool around, do you?

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Episode 11:

As A Rule, It's Always Helpful To Roll The Window Down First _,_ _Before_ Jumping

Whoa! I've never turned around so quickly. The voice was familiar, but seemed so out of place, I almost forgot for the moment where we were. It was deep, raspy and far more menacing than the few times I'd heard it before. It was – I couldn't remember his name to save me. – the "super," the maintenance man from my father's building, his short, black and white beard looking more gnarly, like a pirate, than I remembered. I'd hardly seen him before. Except for a few polite greetings in the lobby or hallways of the building where my father worked, he'd been largely invisible. I'd missed the well-worn desperation in his eyes, and the slight accent in his voice, almost Americanized away over decades of living here.

We were standing now, against the house with Mr. Cavanaugh – Right, that was his name! – four or five feet away. Five will get you ten, an expression I'd picked up from.. I don't know, from someone when I was a little kid. ..Well, five will get you ten, "Cavanaugh" wasn't his real name. "If he's here," I thought quickly to myself, "he's up to no good and probably wouldn't have used his real name when he'd been hired."

"We were just leaving. You'll ride in the other car with Pietro."

Wait a minute, "Why should we? There's three of us, one of you..." I'd forgotten for the moment about the other two guys. "...and my parents and the police are on the way." And then it occurred to me, "You got a gun or something?" (I have no idea why I wasn't too scared to ask.)

"No gun. I don't need one. Even better, I've got, ...."

"He's going to hurt Rollo," I gave my brain advance notice of what I thought we were about to hear, "if we don't go with him."

"...your grandfather."

And then, for a moment at least, I came completely back down to earth. "What are you talking about?" My voice was suddenly calm. I wasn't afraid or nervous. I was.. I was in control. I know it doesn't make any sense, but that's the best way to describe it. "My grandfather's been dead for..."

"Dead soon, maybe, Miss, but not yet." It was the smaller of the two Russians, the one with red hair on his head and face, walking up on my right, his buddy dragging the old man who was barely able to walk on his own. I'm pretty sure he'd been beaten. The sound of the rear door to the shack banging shut behind them hung in the air longer than it should have.

"Let me make it simple. Either you – just you Elizabeth – come with me or I'm going to beat your grandfather 'to a pulp,' as you say, whatever that means, and dump him off the side of one of your oh so scenic bridges."

The old man started to speak up. "No, honey, they just want to use..." but, before he could finish, the big one holding him up smashed a powerful right fist into the old man's gut. He didn't pass out, although I almost did just watching it, but it sure cut short whatever he was about to say. Grandfather or not, I wasn't going to let this happen. Besides, I wasn't kidding about the police. In fact, I was surprised, and more than a bit disappointed under the circumstances, that they weren't here already.

"That's enough!" Mr. Cavanaugh stepped forward and grabbed me hard by the arm.

"Let her alone, Manny," the old man struggled to reach for Cavanaugh. "She's...," but he started coughing and Mr. Cavanaugh cut him off.

"You always did talk too much, Joe." And then he turned to me, tightening his grip on my arm. "Besides, if she's nice, and you tell me what I want to know, no one's getting hurt." Now, why didn't I believe him?

Apparently, neither did Bobby... believe him, that is. Lunging forward to help me, Bobby wedged himself between the two of us, but only for a second until the red-haired man pulled him off and slung him into Connie and both of them back against the house. (This guy was way stronger, and a whole lot meaner than he looked, and he looked plenty mean enough just standing there.)

"Get the old man into the back seat of my car. He's not going anywhere. I'll drive him myself. And you two and the girl," Cavanaugh said to the large man, "ride together in your car. ..Move! We've got to hurry."

The red-haired man took over, dragging me, faster than I could walk at first, around to the other car, his huge friend going to the driver's side and getting behind the wheel. Both cars were angled toward the water and would drive around the front of the cabin on their way back to the main road. "You two," Cavanaugh barked at Bobby and Connie, pointing at them with as threatening a forefinger as I'd ever seen, "stay right where you are." They got the point, looking around, and then at each other, for any idea that might help.

Bobbie and I looked at each other, neither of us knowing what to say or do, but then, turning to look into the window next to where he was standing, a noise _inside_ the shack caught Bobby's attention. "Take a look at that!" he whispered to Connie, pointing with a nod of his head while the men got into their cars. It was Rollo, up on hind legs, trying to turn the knob of the cabin door that his captors had closed behind them on their way out, but he couldn't. Unable to follow them, he took one quick look around, which was all the time he needed, until something at the other end of the room caught his eye, the torn top screen panel of the door to the porch behind him. The windows across from us were still open, but he didn't know for sure where an escape that way would take him. Besides, even though he couldn't see us, he could hear and smell for sure that we were outside, on the side of the cabin across from the window where Bobbie and Connie were standing.

Without a moment's hesitation, he was off the ground, banking off the wall in front of him, to the right of the door, and then rolling to his left in mid-air to land upright on the bench under the windows across the room. (I got to tell you, Rollo's "bank and roll" has always been one of my favorite moves. To be honest, if it was me, I'd have just turned, run across the room and leaped up at the door, but not Rollo. He needed to gain altitude. Besides, would Superman be as cool if he took the train, instead of flying beside it, or the elevator when he can "leap tall buildings with a single bound"? I don't think so. No, Rollo knew what he could do, and I think he wanted to make sure he had the height to hit the top of the door with the force he needed to go through it.) His rear claws scratching into the wood for traction, up onto the dresser to the left of the screen door, and then, still climbing and without a second's hesitation, in a move only a cat of this speed and power could accomplish, pushing off the edge of that dresser, climbing still higher to catch the upper screen just where it had peeled back. The force of his impact ripped through what was left of the door, and sent him tumbling out of view... only for a second.

"Chunk. Chunk, chunk," and the doors to both cars were shut, engines starting up in unison. I struggled to get out, but against the overwhelming strength of the man in the back seat, looked out the driver's window to see, back on his feet, Rollo tearing out the front of the porch and coming back toward us, just as the lead car with Mr. Cavanaugh and "Is he really my Grandfather?" pulled away. Fearing he'd be run over, Bobby and Connie both started shouting, "ROLLLLOOOO!!!" but the cat was too busy to listen. Up on the hood of the first car as it moved under him, on to its roof, and then down and off the trunk, there he was, dust swirling around him, left arm out, right arm back, with the nerve to challenge the second car in which I was riding in the back.

"Guh-smeek." Rollo sneezed to clear the dust from his nose. Head down, his eyes were dead on the big Russian behind the wheel.

"Let's get out of here," the red-haired man told his driver, looking through the windshield from the back seat at the animal that dared to stand in their way. "And while your at it," he said, softly at first, "RUN OVER THAT F**KIN' CAT!!" He was shouting this time, thrusting his arm and the pointed finger at the end of it in the direction of you know who. ("Personally, I don't think it's ever necessary or helpful to use profanity, but only a poor excuse for a lack of vocabulary and descriptive skills – a sure sign of dull-wittedness, if you ask me." At least that's what one of my elementary school teachers, Miss Brewer, used to tell us. As for me, to honest, I've been known to drop the "s" bomb now and then, but only for effect when it really counted, so I like to tell myself.)

Bobby and Connie were still screaming as loud as they could, but with the noise and dust from both cars leaving so quickly, there was no telling what was happening. " _BOOM, ka-BUMP!_ " The dirt road was uneven, with ruts and holes, and their car bounced as if it had hit or run over something, but they couldn't tell what for sure.

"Got him!" The driver seemed proud of himself.

Fearing the worse, I spun around desperately, looking out the side and then rear windows, my mouth mostly covered by the large hand of my adversary, his other arm around my waist. ..And there, as their car began the left turn around the corner of the porch to circle around the cabin, there in the confusion I caught a glimpse of a familiar form I could barely make out – a flash of gray and brown fur moving in the dust. Somehow, I managed to pry the man's disgusting hand away from my face, just at the moment I made eye contact with the furry creature now running beside us, lunging to shout to him through the open rear window on the passenger side, " _Rollo! Roof! Window!!! NOWWW!!_ "

Connie and Bobbie looked at each other. They'd heard it, too, but what did it mean? They knew I was always working with Rollo on his vocabulary, but what was that?? Whatever I was talking about, he got the point. Not even waiting for our car to go by, Rollo dug his front legs into the turf, lowered his left shoulder almost to the ground, and let the momentum of his rear end continue forward, pulling his body around 180 degrees from the direction he had been running. Barely missing the car's rear bumper, he was well on his way toward the back of the house while both cars headed across the front and began their turn around the other side, the narrow space and rough surface slowing their pace. Up, onto the shed and then up again to the roof, he climbed its gradual slope at full speed while Connie and Bobby ran toward the back to see what they could do. Making it to the top of the roof, Rollo slowed just barely until he caught sight of both cars coming around the front from his right.

Meanwhile, I knew what I had to do. Turning, to his surprise, to face the man next to me in the back seat, I grabbed his head, locking my fingers behind it, and shoved it face down with all the strength I had, throwing myself over onto his back, and him under me. It was just the move I needed to reach the window handle on the other side and begin turning it, as fast as I could, to lower the glass. Meanwhile, on the roof, bits of shingle tore away beneath Rollo's paws as he made his final turn. Sparks flew as the claws of his left rear foot scraped a nail head here and there where the shingles were missing. And then "Oh!" Elizabeth winced as she caught sight of him losing his footing, a piece of bent flashing catching the side of his rear leg as he ran along the edge of the roof, the blood obvious even from her distance.

"Look!!" Bobby had just spotted the detective's police car, still well down the dirt road, but coming fast and on a collision course with the first of the two cars.

"Watch out!!!" Connie shouted, both of them now running straight out of the clearing, their arms waiving the police car out of the way – but then blocking Mr. Cavanaugh's, whatever his real name was, escape was the whole idea.

Racing along the roof, the first car was just passing below him, a few feet away from the shack, but that wasn't his target. Turning to his right to look down, but never slowing his acceleration, Rollo saw me looking up at him for just an instant as I fought to keep lowering the window. Open, or not, Rollo was coming. He'd have to lead this jump just right, and the one look back at her car would be the only fix he'd have. Locked on target, he slipped for a moment as one shingle slid out from under him, but still he continued to gain speed, head down, looking straight ahead. The car would just have to be there. Out of time, and out of roof, his rear paws catching the edge perfectly, Rollo was airborne.

One again, it was one of those weird times – I sure have a lot of moments like this. Way too many, if you ask me. – in your life, when something's about to happen and your brain speeds up, making everything around you seem like its happening in slow motion, like when I opened the door to my father's office to find the two Russians waiting for us. Well, this was another one, this time for both Rollo (I'm guessing) and me. Risky? Sure, but then I knew even then that there are instants in life when there are no second chances, no holding back. It was one of those things you would never try if you took the time to think about it, and couldn't do twice even if you did.

" **Boom!** " Made it! ..Well, almost. Rollo banged into the last couple of inches of glass I hadn't rolled down yet and against the rear door, but he held on. (You know, it was one of those cars where the rear glass doesn't go all the way down in the back. "Now you tell me?!" Rollo would have said.) If he hadn't had his forearm strength, Rollo would have hit the ground for sure, probably to be crushed under the rear wheel on that side. Meanwhile, I was upside down fighting and kicking the red haired man in the back, but somehow managed to extend one arm to the window that Rollo was able to reach and pull him into the car.

"MearrrkkkKK!!" Rollo went right for the head of the driver, his rapier sharp teeth drawing blood from the large man's neck. It was just the distraction we both, Rollo and I, needed. Taking his hands off the wheel for only a moment, their car swerved out of control into the woods and banged to a stop into the remains of a fallen tree.

The first car, the one with Mr. Cavanaugh and my grandfather (Really?) had gotten past the police and my parents who had swerved to their right just as they made the clearing to avoid a head-on collision. With luck, the other police car, still on its way, would head them off. Meanwhile, the detective, the police officer with him, and my parents, Eleanor and MR all ran to meet Bobby and Connie who were already at the second car helping Rollo and me out. Fortunately, I walked away in pretty good shape, the violence of the crash cushioned by the man I'd been struggling with in the back seat. He, on the other hand, had seriously hurt his back and wasn't going anywhere. The large man in the front seat was dazed, nearly unconscious and taken into custody without a struggle. Both the Russians were handcuffed and put into two other police cars that arrived just moments later. And Rollo, well he was fine, although it would take him almost a week to get that "What was I thinking?" look off his face.

As for the car with my grandfather, it never made it to the end of the road and back onto the highway. There was another police car on its way, not far behind my parents, that Mr. Cavanaugh drove into the woods to avoid. Police followed it on foot where they found it, abandoned. No sign of either Cavanaugh or my grandfather anywhere.

There would be court stuff to do as a witness for the case against the two Russian men the police arrested. Other than that, it seemed we were pretty much done, except for the lingering "Why?" All the two Russians would tell us was that it was about money. How much and where exactly all this money might be, they hadn't been able to find out. Mr. Cavanaugh may have hired them, but didn't trust them enough ("Who would?") to tell them.

Rollo got two stitches from the vet to close the cut on his rear leg. Other than that, we'd all come through it okay, all the better for a badly needed good night's sleep. The following afternoon, the five of us found ourselves hanging out at my place, on our way to getting back to normal. My mother was in the kitchen making brownies to cheer us up, but the fact was, we were feeling pretty good, all things considered. My father, who was coming and going from his study seemed unsettled, and wondered, as I did too, if we'd ever see my grandfather again. It was strange for me, not really being able to remember him, thinking he'd died and then finding out he was still alive. I couldn't image how it was for my Dad. He told me once that, since his father died years ago, it was sometimes as if it had never happened and, at other times, as if it were only yesterday. Mostly, it was something he thought about more than he would admit. So now what?

My father, who had been on the phone for a while, came back in to our family room carrying one of the folders from the safe and clearly excited about something. "Hey guys. Honey," he turned toward my mother, "come over here. Wait 'til you see what I found out." Plopping down on the couch, right in the middle where we were sitting, he reached inside the folder and took out the old brown and white picture of the two men. My mother came over and sat on the coffee table in front of him. "See this guy standing next to your grandfather?" Of course we did. "Well, it's Mr. Cavanaugh. It's also my father's brother, my uncle Manny!" We already knew that. "Forty years and a beard later, I didn't recognize him. Absolutely, never occurred to me that it was him, working as the maintenance guy at the office these past few months."

"The police aren't entirely sure how all this fits together, but apparently he was your grandfather's partner in some business years ago that didn't amount to much. They had a falling out, and Granddaddy bought him out by taking over the payments on some land they'd been trying to develop out west, and they went their separate ways. Manny got into more and more trouble, while your grandfather came back here when I was born and bought that first little seafood restaurant, the one he's standing in front of in the picture on the wall upstairs."

We sat there listening to this story, apparently less impressed with all this than he was. He was my father, so I had to be the one to ask, "Soooo?"

"Okay," my father continued, leaning forward to the edge of his seat, "here's where it gets interesting."

"Let's hope so," I said to myself.

"About eight years ago, a year before your grandfather 'died'..."

"I thought he died _ten_ years ago?" I reminded him. "You always say 'ten' years when you talk about it."

"No, honey. I don't know, I'm just rounding off. ...You were, what, seven, maybe eight years old?"

"Stay with your point, dear." Thanks, Mom. My friends and I weren't getting any younger listening to all this.

"Sure. ..About eight years ago, over 30 years _after_ my father bought the property he once owned with his brother, Manny, he sells it. Your grandfather sells it. What had originally been in the middle of nowhere outside Denver, after all this time, was now prime, world class suburban commercial property. Selling price? Get this... Over twelve million!"

"Dollars?!" (What else, MR?)

"Whoa," was all I or any of us could manage to say. And then quiet.

"Hey... We're rich!" It took a second, but Eleanor had finally gotten the point.

"No way, good buddy," I rubbed her shoulder, smiling at her, but thinking how nice it would be if she really was my sister. "Who adopted you?!"

"Besides, guys," Bobby was right, "it's your grandfather's money. He's still alive, remember?" At least I hoped he was.

"You remember, honey..." He was talking to my mother. "...how we never understood what happened to so much of my father's savings? Well, he was protecting the property, to make sure taxes would be paid on it until it could be sold. The police have found the attorney in Denver that handled it for him all these years, and who took care of the sale. He hadn't been in touch with my father since then, and had no way of knowing...," my father turned back to me. Talking more slowly now, his voice taking on a more somber tone, "...that your grandfather had died, so we thought. No reason for the attorney to contact family which is why we didn't find out about the property when your grandfather disapp.."

"So," Eleanor was a little reluctant to ask, "why did he do it? Why would anybody fake his own..."

"Well, some of this is conjecture, but I've talked to the detective and it makes sense. ..When his brother, Manny, heard about the sale, in trouble with what amounts to the Russian mob and desperate for money, he told the Russians about your grandfather, and they threatened to hurt us if he didn't cooperate. Sure, he should have gone to the police but, knowing your grandfather, he probably didn't think they could protect him, or us. I know it's extreme, but he must have thought that faking his death was the only way to make absolutely sure we'd be okay. With him dead, that should have ended it, and it did. Even so, Manny kept track of us, just in case we started acting like we had money which he was pretty sure we did."

"And Grand Daddy's been hiding ever since?" I couldn't believe it, couldn't believe that he would have cared so much to do this, and so little that he would have left me without my grandfather all these years. And my father without his.

"Apparently, he's been coming and going, the police aren't sure how many times, but he actually had an apartment someplace not far from here where he would stay and keep in touch with what was happening to us."

"To be honest," and my mother always was, "It's a little creepy, don't you think?"

"Hey," my father wasn't in the mood for making excuses, "what do you want me to say? ...Unfortunately, Manny's associates had been watching the attorney in Denver all these years. When he shipped us the safe, Manny figured that it was his (your grandfather's) way of getting the money to us – even if he was dead."

"Why now, Mr. Coleman?" Bobby was wondering the same thing we'd all been thinking. "I mean, shipping the safe after all this time?"

"Actually, he didn't mean to. That was a mistake. Apparently, the company that had been storing the safe and some other papers left over from their business together, your grandfather's and Manny's, went out of business and tried contacting your grandfather through his attorney to come pick up his stuff. The attorney tried to reach him, but in the meantime, his office had the safe sent to me, thinking he was following instructions that my father had given his law firm years earlier in case something happened to him.

"So Mr. Cavanaugh.. So _Manny_ knew Grand Daddy was alive?"

"I don't think so, honey. I think it was as much a surprise to him, as it was to us. Anyway, he moved into a motel out on the highway, and got a temporary job as the maintenance man in our building to keep track of me and the safe. The two Russian guys were hired by Russian mobsters to help Manny out, and to make sure they got paid. What he didn't count on was that your grandfather was still alive and was going to do his best to make sure nothing happened to any of us – and you, especially, Elizabeth."

"Not to be tacky, Mr. Coleman," MR, clearing his throat, got right to the point, "but where's the twelve million? It certainly wasn't in the safe."

"Or was it?!" I had an idea, maybe, but first, before I said anything about it out loud, "What did the lawyer in Denver do with the money when Grand Daddy sold the property?"

"Gave it to your Grand Daddy in person, in a cashier's check."

"And to protect it, he would have..." Eleanor was right on target.

"Not to mention earn some interest." MR had already done the math. "At only 5%, that's $600,000 a year! ...$50,000 a month for, what, eight years. That's another $5 million!! – plus the compounding! Yikes!!"

"...he would have banked it."

"Right, Daddy, but not at some ordinary bank down the street. He was from Russia. He would have put it in one of those fancy European banks, the ones with the secret, numbered accounts."

"Okay, let's assume he did. We'd need to know the name of the bank, the account number and a password, and it could be anywhere, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands..."

"No! It's Switzerland. Here," I got up quickly from where I had been sitting on the floor and scrunched in next to my father on the couch. Grabbing the folder from the table, I lifted the flap and began fumbling through the papers for something I'd remembered. "Got it! Listen to this..." What I had was one of the letters my grandfather had written to my father. "Here it is... 'You've got to give those Swiss credit, they make a hell of a safe.'"

"But that safe was made in San Francisco." An excited MR began shuffling over on his knees from where he was sitting on the rug to my right. "Bobby told me about the label you found on the door."

"Mrrrk." Rollo wanted to set the record straight, and looked over at MR, asking him to be more precise.

"What?!" MR looked back at him, but didn't get it.

"Sure," Bobby had been quiet, thinking to himself until then, "he's telling us it's a Swiss bank, and..."

"Not just any Swiss bank," my father had done some deals involving funds transferred from foreign banks. "I bet he means 'Credit Suisse,' one of the largest, most prestigious banks in the world."

"Of course," Bobby had a point to make. You could hear it in the pace of his voice. "'...You've got to give those Swiss credit...' and I bet MR can tell you the account number, or at least where to find it."

MR looked puzzled, but it was my mother who asked the question, "What do you mean?"

"Of course," MR had just realized what Bobby was talking about. "At your office, when Bobby and I were examining the safe, we found a number on the back of the safe that hadn't been stamped into the metal not all that long ago. The safe has been repainted a couple of times, at least, but this number was stamped _through_ paint. It had to have been done more recently."

"So...," Eleanor knew what we were all thinking. Why not say it out loud? "What are we waiting for?" And we all got up, ran outside and stuffed ourselves in the wagon.

"Rollo!" I called out to him, patting my chest as I did, "but he was already outside, running for the open rear door and scrambling to his favor place in the middle of the back seat. He liked looking through the split between the bucket seats, where he could jump into the front, if necessary, or get a better look at what was going on outside.

"Keys," my father looked at my mother, "I don't have the keys." Fortunately, my mother had them, and we were off.

Less than fifteen minutes later, including the time it took to park, we were at my father's office, huddled around the safe.

"Eleanor, do me favor and get that yellow pad and a pen off my desk."

"Sure, Mr. Coleman."

"Here." Bobby was pointing to the plate with the name of the manufacturer – "Henry McCombs & Son," something, and then "San Francisco" – that Rollo had discovered the other night. An old safe like this had been painted more that once. That was to be expected, but whoever painted it last was either sloppy or in hurry. It wasn't easy to read, but we could still make it out. "It looks like serial number 17..."

"Forget that one," Eleanor interrupted, anxious to find the real thing. "Unless the entire plate is a fake, it's the real thing. We're looking for a bank account number."

"Where's the other one," I started looking on the side of the safe where I was standing, "the one that MR found, that hasn't been painted over?"

"Here," Bobby had scrunched down behind the back of the safe and was pointing to the left edge. We all huddled around while Bobby read what he saw out loud, "2-1-5-8-1-0-9-7."

Quiet. ..And then my father stood up and headed for his desk. "I'm calling Credit Swiss in New York." It took a few minutes to find the right number and the right person. "Hi. My name is Robert Coleman. My father, Joseph Coleman, passed away recently." He was making that part up, and waved his hand left and right, as if to tell us all, "Don't worry about it," when he saw my mother and me making faces at him and flopping our arms. Well, at least my mother was flopping _her_ arms.

I just turned my head and mouthed the words "What are you doing?" at him.

"Yes, thank you." The person on the other end was offering her condolences. "..As I was saying, we've found papers indicating that he had an account with you. Would you mind checking this account number for me to confirm that it is, in fact, one of yours. ..Yes, it's 2-1-5, 8-1-0, 9-7. ..Uh, I'd say he'd had to have opened it around eight years ago. ..I see. Could there be any lead or trailing zeros I might have omitted? ..All right, thank you. I'll check our papers and call you back."

He put the phone down and looked up, shaking his head just a bit from side to side. "It's not one of their numbers. They need ten digits. This is only eight."

"Does this mean we're not going to be rich?" MR could sound so pathetic, but I knew he was only kidding, although I think Rollo took him seriously, jumping up onto my chest for me to hold him. I suspect he was trying to make me feel better, and not the other way around. After all, that's what friends do.

Turned out that the Henry McCombs & Son label was the fake after all, painted over to make it look authentic, or at least less obvious. The other number was probably just a diversion. My mother remembered that 'McCombs & Son' was the name of a fresh-made ice cream shop on Maryland Avenue where my grandfather used to take me now and then when I was little. It really was Credit Swiss, and the fake serial number had ten digits. Just the right ones, at that. The bank needed a password, but I guessed and got it right the first time. "Notes." My grandfather used to call me that because, even when I was little... He gave me this pad, the kind with the big spaces between the lines, and a cheap ball point pen. Even then, I'd write everything down. Things he told me. Things I saw. Things we talked about, and that I thought about on my own. Expressions he taught me, like "Five will get you ten." He called me "Notes" sometimes, and told me I'd be a writer some day. It was just between him and me, and I'd almost forgotten, but I remembered now.

As for the money, the original twelve million dollars, plus interest, lots and lots of interest? All gone. Withdrawn, all but enough to keep the account open, wired out the day before by someone. The bank couldn't be sure who, and wouldn't tell us where it went, not without my father going to New York with papers confirming that my grandfather had died. I'm surprised they told us as much as they did over the phone. Too bad about the money, but I'd rather have had a chance to talk to my grandfather, just one more time. ..Although, the money would have been nice too.

To be continued...

"Boop." It was the diminutive tone of my computer interrupting to give me the news.

"Hey, I've got mail! ..I love e-mail."

"Mearrkk. Murrrkk."

"Hold on, let me read this. ..Great. He's coming up late tonight instead waiting until Saturday. 'Can't wait to see you,' I typed back, and signed it 'E.' Yea, me!"

"Murrrr..."

"Oh, don't look so depressed." I swiveled around, reached over to where he was sitting on my bed, grabbed his head in both my hands and massaged his furry cheeks. "We'll still find time to hang out together."

"Meeeeeiaiak!"

"Okay, okay. I'll get you something to eat. Com'on. I could use something myself." For a tough guy, he could look so pathetic sometime. "Microwave, or would you prefer to order some takeout?"

Rolling his eyes, he scratched himself under his chin. "Okay, you let me know. I'm going to walk next door and see what they're doing for dinner."

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

Episode 12:

After School Rain

A few minutes later, and I was back. Rollo was right where I left him. "Darla," one of my housemates, "is ordering Italian from 'Joe's' so I got us some lasagna, some garlic bread – and I'm going to breathe all over you – and a cannoli for dessert. ..How's that?"

"Mk."

"Okay. So Italian isn't your favorite. I've got a special dinner for you in the closet."

"Murk?"

"You wait. We'll eat together when the delivery guy gets here. ..Darla got the mail on the way in and LOOK HERE! There's a letter for me. ..I love getting letters, especially.." I stopped for a moment to rub my finger over the handwritten address and then stare at the simple cursive "B." in the upper left corner where the return address belonged. Inside there were four typed pages folded in thirds. I took them out and then ran my thumb against the creases so the pages would lie flat.

Leaning back in my chair, I took the pages in my left hand, closed the lid of my lap top and pushed it aside, and then dragged Rollo to the front edge of my desk, laying my hand on his upper back. I played with his fur while I started to read.

"Hi." One word, one simple word and I "bliggled" – my scientific term for blushing and giggling at the same time. "He's sooo romantic." Rollo lifted his head off my desk and looked at me as if I was nuts. "Hey. Give me a break. I was talking about the whole letter thing. Besides, did I laugh when you walked off our stoop into the bushes when that calico ran across the yard? No. No I didn't." Rollo put his head down and I kept reading and rubbing his fur.

I'll start over... "Hi. I know it's no special occasion or anything, but I thought you might appreciate how I remember the first time I realized I was crazy about you. You being a writer, what better way to let you know than to write a story. I hope you like it. I'm not much of a writer, certainly not like you, but sometimes it really is the thought that counts. –B. ..Oh, P.S., I've written it in the third person, like I was someone else telling it."

"Rollo? Isn't this amazing. He wrote me.. Rollo?" He opened one eye, barely, to be nice, but I don't think he was paying attention. ..I liked reading the stuff I read out loud, sometimes with different voices for different characters. It makes the stories, especially the dialogue, seem more real.

It was the spring of her fifteenth year. Elizabeth was tall, thin, but not overly so, and pretty in a fresh, unkempt way, her short blonde hair looking like she never did more to dry it off than riding on her bike the less than a mile she lived from school. She could have walked, and usually did in the winter months, but liked having her bike there in case she wanted to go downtown after classes. She'd stop by her father's office sometimes, at the top of Main St. just off the circle, leave her bike there, and walk to the campus of the local college where she'd camp out under a tree, watch the students, dream of going to college herself someday and write in the spiral notebook she always kept in her backpack.

Her smile was contagious but, most of all, it was the light in her eyes that made boys desperate to talk to her, and made it hard for Bobby, as extremely bright as he was, ..

"Hah! ..You know, he's really pretty good at this."

...to concentrate when she talked. Just hearing her say "Hey" in the hallway pretty much blew anything else he might have been thinking about for the next 20 minutes or so. What he didn't know was that he had the same effect on her.

"Yeah," I sighed, remembering how I would wait by my locker, sometimes five, ten minutes for him to come up the stairs and start walking down the hallway to our first period class. ..Back to the story. I'm interrupting too much.

They had grown up together and gone to the same schools, which wasn't hard to do in the small town where they lived, on the river, just off the bay. They'd always been friendly toward each other, but lately, in their sophomore year of high school, there was something else going on, a nervousness that made them both comfortable and uneasy, at the same time, whenever they were together. Bobby was cute, "so cute" according to the girls who would talk about him after he walked by, smiling whenever he said "Hey" even to girls he didn't know, flirting without meaning to, his dark brown hair forever falling across his forehead into his eyes, followed immediately by a reflex combing it back with the fingers of his left hand.

I couldn't stop myself from laughing. If I'd been drinking something, it would have dribbled out my nose. He was so playing with me. Bobby was cute alright, "so cute," but he never knew it. Still doesn't. ..Rollo looked up. "Okay, I'll stop interrupting. I promise. ..He's so cute. ..Bobby. I was talking about Bobby."

"Murrr?"

"You too, babe. You too."

She was running late that particular day, but not by much, having stopped for an unexpected conversation with someone on her way out of the front of the old building that used to be the high school before they built the new one. She had hoped to beat the rain you could smell coming, in the clouds that were beginning to win their argument with the sunlight behind them. The weatherman had predicted afternoon rain, so she'd brought a plastic cover for her backpack, just in case. Picking up the pace, she hustled down the path that led to the bike rack on the side of the school where they all had to park.

It was sprinkling by the time she turned the corner, not so badly that she'd need to call her mother for a ride, but too much to be riding on the streets that might be slippery. It wasn't far to her house, but she didn't want to leave her bike there overnight and not be able to ride it to school in the morning. She'd walk it home if the streets seemed too slick to be riding, although there'd be no real traffic for her to worry about, she could still fall.

"Hey, Bobby." She was surprised, pleasantly, to see him leaning up against the empty section of the rack next to her familiar red three speed, waiting for her in the rain, no less.

"Hi," he started to explain, reading the question on Elizabeth's face. "I thought I'd walk you home."

"Sure," she responded, having not the least idea why he'd want to do that, but too pleased that he did to question him about it. She'd find out soon enough. Her house was nowhere near where he lived which was basically in the other direction. Clearly, he had something in mind.

And walk they did, down and about the innocent streets of the neighborhood that surrounded their school, in the oddly bright sunshine of a light rain. Elizabeth carrying her backpack, Bobby doing the same over just the one shoulder, pushing Elizabeth's bike for her while they talked and laughed about nothing in particular.

"Hey, Mrs. Hutchins!" Elizabeth shouted, laughing with Bobby as the rain on her face fell into her mouth, her tongue reaching out to grab a few drops on its own. A few blocks later, Elizabeth had taken charge of the bike, pedaling wobbly circles around Bobby who was walking in the middle of the street, avoiding the surface puddles the rain was still forming. It was her friend, Eleanor's mother stopping until they were out of the way, before turning into the Hutchin's driveway. Mrs. Hutchins waved back with the fingers of her right hand still on the steering wheel, smiling while she remembered what it had been like when she was that young.

"Tell Eleanor we said, 'Hey'," we shouted at her so she could hear us through the rolled up windows of her car.

"Sure thing," and she waved back at us.

The half an hour or so it took to get to Elizabeth's house on the corner went quickly. They were both getting soaked, but neither one of them cared. Her house almost in sight just a block away, Bobby purposely slowed the pace of their walk, Elizabeth hopping down to walk her bike the rest of the way. Worried that he was running out of time, Bobby finally got up the nerve, it wasn't easy, to get to the reason he wanted to talk to her.

"You know, next Friday's the "Better Luck Next Year" dance."

"Yeah," she looked up and at him, and then away so as not to make Bobby any more nervous than he already was.

"..It's our last one, our last dance before high school."

She looked up again, smiling at him, but didn't say anything this time. Not at first, but then he was quiet, busy thinking way too hard about what he would say next.

"I was wondering..," he started to say, but didn't finish before she interrupted.

"Linda's... You know Linda, right?"

"Sure. We have Spanish together," he answered, relieved to have a moment to calm down before asking her out.

"Well, Linda's having a party for some of her friends Saturday. I'm going and she told me I could bring someone."

"Actually, I... I told Susanne I'd stop by her place." And then seeing just the hint of disappointment around Elizabeth's mouth, to make sure there was no confusion, "It's not really a date, you know. I think she just needed a few extra bodies." No response from Elizabeth, so he kept talking, "...Something about too many girls coming, not enough guys."

"Yeah," Elizabeth forced a smile, "I hate it when that happens." But she knew better. Susanne had been talking about Bobby for a month.

"I don't suppose you'd have time to..."

"No. No, I can't. Eleanor and I promised Linda we'd help her out. "It's at her grandparents house on the water. Her brother's home from college. He makes spending money as a DJ, and promised to give her a freebee on their patio."

"Should be nice." Only a couple of houses to go. He was running out of time. "Look," he blurted out louder than he'd expected, both of them laughing at the rain he spit in her direction. "Look, uh, I was hoping you'd go to the dance with me."

Stopping at the end of the driveway where her mother had left the garage door up for her, Elizabeth turned her bike to face Bobby, just now realizing what she'd done. "Bobby, I... I just told Rick.. He came up to me on my way out after chemistry. I just told Rick I'd go with him. That's why I was late getting to my bike, he stopped me on my way through the lobby."

"Great," he replied quickly, trying to cover his disappointment. "Rick's a good guy," a comment he immediately regretted.

But she didn't stop explaining. "Besides, don't you work for your father on Fridays?" In fact he did, at least three afternoons a week, helping his father with his carpentry business – finishing people's basements, remodeling jobs, that kind of thing. Bobby was good with his hands, and he was saving for a car, nothing new or too spectacular, just something he could drive next year when he got his license in the fall.

"I do, usually, but he was going to give me the afternoon off."

And for a moment it seemed as if neither of them had anything to say.

"Well, thanks for walking me home," she told him, with a smile that was meant to make him feel better.

"Yeah," he recovered well, smiling back at her, instinctively brushing his wet hair back, off his forehead. "I'll see tomorrow."

Disappointed, they started to go their separate ways, Elizabeth up their driveway, Bobby, pulling his jacket up around his neck, starting to walk away. It was still raining, but not hard.

"Hey," Elizabeth turned to shout at him, just as she was at their garage. Bobby turned his head to look over his shoulder, both his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

"About the dance, how 'bout a rain check?" she smiled knowing there was no way he could say, "No."

He laughed. "That's funny," Spring rain dripping off his face, but then he stopped smiling and told her, "Sure. We'll check out the rain together as soon as we can."

And then I took pity on him, standing there soaking wet. "Com'on. It's still raining. My mom will give you a ride."

Inside the garage, putting her bike up against the wall on her father's side, "You know," she turned to face him, the two of them standing only a few inches apart, "El and I are going to spend Saturday hanging out around the dock. Maybe you'll be there."

"Great." All signs of disappointment were suddenly gone from his face. "I'll see what I can do. ..Maybe we can meet for lunch?" He smiled back at her, and Elizabeth returned the favor, water still dripping off her face, and from her short blonde hair. It wasn't a date, not exactly, but it was something, and she liked the feeling of looking forward to it.

"And ever since then," the handwritten words said at the bottom of the page, "I've been crazy about you. Never since then have I been able to get your smile and rain drenched hair out of my head. ..See you later. –Bobby"

I sat there for a moment, staring at what Bobby had written. "Crazy about you too," I whispered. ..And then the doorbell rang and Darla's shouting blew it for me.

"It's the delivery guy from Joe's. I'm in the bathroom! Can you get it?!"

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

Episode 13:

Back To The Future

Two days later... "Hey, guys." I had walked out the front door of our campus townhouse, down the stoop and into the quad out front and to my left, past the picnic bench that wasn't even close to level, to the unit where my friends were living this semester. It was after seven. I had been writing – but then, you know that – and had almost forgotten about dinner. With luck, Debbie and Allison hadn't eaten yet, and I could talk them into ordering something. The townhouses had kitchens which we used to make breakfast, lunch sometimes and snacks, of course, but dinners were too big a deal and nobody wanted to clean up. And none of us had a car or lots of money, so going out to eat was limited to the fast food joints within walking distance. Ordering delivery was the highlight of our culinary day. There was an on-campus diner for students without a meal pass, but the food there was.. was edible at best.

I thought about knocking, but decided to wave at them through the picture window on my way up their steps. "You know, guys, we've really got to start locking the door," Allison, laying on their couch with one arm supporting her head, looked up at me and then rolled her eyes toward Hank. Henry, "Please call me 'Hank'," was one of her roommates, a somewhat dorky, but nice guy who had been desperate to have a nickname ever since he was a little kid. Henry was sitting in the well worn easy chair at the end of the couch, his feet just making the ottoman that was too far out in front of him to be comfortable, but that he was too lazy to sit up and bring any closer.

"My," I smiled back at them, "what a nice thing to say." They were serious, but it wasn't about me.

"Hey, there've been two break-ins in just the past two weeks." Debbie was coming up from kitchen on the lower level, shoveling her favorite Frosted Flakes into her mouth from the bowl she was carrying under her chin. At that range, who needed a spoon? Eating cereal and milk while you walk isn't all that easy, and she was making a mess, most of it on her face, but didn't seem to care. What she didn't say was that it wasn't the break-ins that really bothered us so much, although losing our computers or stereos, especially our computers, would have been huge. The fact is, nothing was ever taken, not really, some food, but snacks mostly, like he was hungry, not like he was homeless, which didn't make any sense unless he, the burglar that is, had been frightened off before he had time to steal anything he could sell. (Just in case, I had started backing up everything I wrote on the campus mainframe, which was a good idea anyway in case my head went south on me.) In both cases when there had been break-ins, the girls had been in their houses when the intruder showed up, and were attacked. Not sexually. And not seriously hurt. Not yet at least. Maybe that was the whole idea. I didn't really know the girls. We had class together, but I only knew them well enough to say "Hi" the occasional time I'd run into them walking across campus.

"I know. You're right. I should have locked my own door, but it's still light out, sort of, and I've got Rollo watching the place. ..So, you guys want to order anything for dinner?"

"I've got a date." Debbie had just started seeing some new guy I hadn't met yet. "I've got a feeling this," she said, holding up her bowl, "is going to be dinner. He's taking me to open mic night at some comedy club downtown."

"Yeah, well I'd go for some Chinese." Paulo, the other guy who lived with them, had heard us talking and walked downstairs to see what was up.

"I'm sold," Allison sat up and reached for the phone on their coffee table. She was good with numbers and remembered the one for The Original Wah Kee. No menu, but then we always ordered the same things. "One egg roll and you'll share my cashew chicken?" She didn't bother to even look at me, she was that sure of herself.

"Yeah, but this time let's get the combo fried rice. I'm going to be up late," meaning that I wanted some leftovers I could eat later.

"And fried wantons, and beef with broccoli?" she looked up at Paulo who nodded back in agreement, figuring that would be his entire consumption of vegetables for the next several days. Paulo professed to believe that his body always knew instinctively what to order to maintain the precise balance of nutrients necessary for perfect health, which would have been marginally believable, if he didn't treat Krispy Creme chocolate covered donuts like they were their own food group. He actually tried putting two of them in the blender – with some milk, I'll grant you that – in a failed attempt to originate his own brand of health food shakes. I think he was dating a Phys. Ed. major at the time, and wanted to impress her.

"..And extra sauce for the fried wanton." Allison was listening to the person on the other end of the phone read back our order. "Right. No, deliver it here." And she gave them our address.

"Here's my money," I took a ten dollar bill out of the tiny wad of bills stuffed in my jeans pocket, mostly ones, and handed it to Paulo who had walked over to his bike, just inside the door next to where I was standing. (There'd be room in his backpack for the food, just barely. It'd be a little squished, but okay to eat – and still warm, he was that fast.) "Call me when you get back. I'm starved." I smiled and wiggled my fingers at Hank, who smiled and waved at me on my way out the door back to my place. I wanted to make sure Rollo was okay, and tell him I'd be eating with Allison.

Paulo sighed, smiling as he watched me moving quickly down their steps and back into the courtyard. "What a babe."

"I heard that Paulo," I told him without turning around.

"Why don't you just ask her out, bozo, and get it over with?" Debbie had known he had the hots for me ever since he'd moved in and she introduced us. Strangely, a lot of guys did. It wasn't so much that I was good looking, I'd say average on the attractive side at best. I'm not bragging, just an honest self-appraisal. It was the smile, too, and especially the eyes and lightning fast mind.. "Hah! Don't you get it? I'm talking about myself like a character I'd write. Do it all the time." .. the lightening fast mind that shown through them to excite everything I talked about, and everyone I touched. "Impressive, isn't it," I was talking to myself out loud. I'm a figment of my own imagination."

"Not a chance," Henry and I were good friends. "She's been glued to that guy from Yale, 'Bobby something,' since they were kids. They grew up together."

Paulo laughed. "Are you kidding? Him I can deal with. That mangy cat, or whatever that thing is that lives with her, looks at me like he's going to rip my face off whenever I get close to her. ..I'd swear that thing was part wolf, if I didn't know better."

"You should know," Henry commented without looking up from what he was reading. "You were raised by wolves."

"Elizabeth says it's a 'dat'." Allison couldn't help herself. "Part dog, part cat. Get it?" Allison plainly thought it was hysterical. The two of us thought up the "dat" idea one night during a laughing fit. We were both tired and couldn't stop pointing at Rollo and asking each other, "What is 'dat'?" Well, like so many things in life, it seemed a lot funnier at the time.

"Oh, you're such a baby," Debbie loved rubbing Rollo as much as he liked being rubbed. "He's a nice cat."

"Nice to you, maybe."

"You're just intimidated," Henry refused to let up, "because his forearms are bigger than yours."

Paulo smiled and shook his head. "Yeah, so are his teeth."

Walking over to the campus newspaper box at the corner of the quad, I was developing my own theory about the break-ins. The campus police, according to the paper, thought it was probably someone from town, which was the easy explanation, the one that tended to make everyone's parents feel more comfortable under the circumstances. Heaven forbid it turned out to be a student. For my money, it had to be student, someone who could move easily about the campus without being noticed, but not someone too many people would recognize. Maybe a commuter that most of the students wouldn't see except during class, because he didn't hang out at the dorms. The quads where I lived and the girls who were attacked were sophomores – but there were only two, not enough to draw conclusions. Since neither of them recognized the guy who did it, I'm thinking he's an upperclassman, probably a senior, or maybe a student in one of the smaller departments, someone most of us wouldn't have met in class. Maybe Dramatic Arts, or how about Criminology? Those guys pretty much keep to themselves for some reason. Wouldn't that be a kick? "Interesting combination," I thought to myself. "I wonder how many male junior or senior commuters there were enrolled in both of those programs?"

The main thing that didn't make any sense was that nothing in particular, nothing valuable was ever taken. Some money, when it was lying out or from a wallet if it was easy, but that was about it. And the beatings? You were probably thinking 'sexual.' No. Not even life threatening, not yet anyway. Just enough to.. Maybe just enough to make the only witness useless. "Wait a minute." I actually said that out loud, stopping just fifty feet from my house, more or less straight ahead through the trees in the courtyard. (I have trouble sometimes thinking and walking at the same time.) I turned to page three to continue reading the story about the break-ins that began on the front page. "Rumors about missing stereo equipment and computers to the contrary, nothing other than small amounts of cash and a few food items was taken from either student's house." I was right. These weren't 'break-ins.' Nobody broke anything. ...Either he went there to hurt the girls, because he knew them or at least knew they'd be home alone, or he's done this before, at other times when no one was there. He didn't kill or rape anyone, and he didn't steal anything. Maybe he went there just to see if he could, to come and go without being caught? Nah. And then it occurred to me, "On the other hand," I mumbled out loud, "maybe he broke in to leave something behind?" Thinking about what that might be was beginning to creep me out.

Picking up speed, I hustled back to my house, almost jogging the last few feet, taking the three outside steps all at once. Done perfectly, I can reach out, turn the doorknob and throw open the door without ever breaking my stride. I had an idea. Two more steps across the living room and up the half flight of stairs to the door to my room. Rollo and I had some research to do before dinner and then later, until Bobby showed up. (After that, I planned to be busy, _reeallly_ busy. Rollo would have to keep working without me.)

"Hi." It was friendly, but not a voice or face I recognized.

"Who are you?" I asked, coming to a sudden stop just inside our front door, and working hard to keep my composure. "...and what are you doing in my house?" To my surprise, Rollo was nowhere to been seen or heard. That was either a good sign, or a bad sign. I couldn't tell. In the meantime, I was still standing with the front door open, my left hand on the outside knob. I decided to leave it that way for now.

"Take it easy." He could see I was tense. "See the chicken?" He was pointing to the cartoon bird patch ironed onto his jacket, and then slowly, with his other hand, to the bucket and two bags, neatly folded shut, on the table half a flight down behind him in the kitchen. "I've got an order for 'Ambach.' I was told to leave it on the kitchen table if they weren't home."

"What about money?"

"Credit card, I guess."

"There's no 'Ambach' that lives here," and no last name sounding anything like that.

Reaching inside his right jacket pocket, he took out a small, crumbled piece of paper and read from it. "Building 2, second unit from the right."

"This is Building 3. ..They start counting from the parking lot, right to left. The architect was an Israeli. You want the one next door," I pointed in that direction, through the wall in my living room. "That way."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." He turned, hustled down the stairs, picked up his chicken from the kitchen table and came back up, heading toward the front door, and me.

It was still a little bit light out, and even if it hadn't been, I thought in best to go outside, where people could see me, and wait on the pavement for him to leave, rather than have him squeeze past me in the living room by the door. As soon as he turned toward the next building, I started back up the stairs.

"You sure you're okay?" The delivery guy stopped and turned back, obviously feeling bad about having frightened me, although honestly, I had been more startled than scared. (I need to stop mincing words. He was right, "scared" was more like it.)

"Sure, I'm fi.."

"Look, uh, I knocked and called out when I opened the door, and the guy upstairs said it was okay."

What a relief. I hadn't been alone in there after all, although I'm not sure what difference it would have made. That was Mike, the voice from upstairs, the guy next door on my level who never paid attention to anything that wasn't either on his screen or naked, or both. I thought he'd gone home already for the weekend, but apparently not. Too bad. (I was hoping Bobby and I would have the entire house to ourselves.) Mike was nice enough to talk to now and then, but kept mostly to himself and seemed to prefer it that way. "It's okay. I'm fine, really. It was an easy mistake." I smiled politely, making my last few mental notes about his face and clothing, just in case, and then I went inside. Listening for the familiar "chunk" of the door closing behind me, I stopped and reached back to turn the knob, throwing the deadbolt into the frame of the door. For a moment, I had a flashback to when I was locked in that safe years ago. I could almost feel myself running out of air, worried that I was breathing too heavily, and that I couldn't catch my breath. My chest tightened, but it was nothing. Only my imagination getting the best of me. "...You know," I told myself as I continued across the living room, "I think sometimes I need to write less, and get out more."

"Rollooo?" Where was he, I wondered, quick-stepping my way up to the door to my room at the top of the stairs. We lived in a split level townhouse with an open core running all the way to a skylight in the roof, built on campus as student housing. No real world townhouse would have been chopped up like this, or have this many bedrooms. My room was a short flight up, just half a dozen steps. There were two rooms on that level. Mine was on the left. Mike's, next door to the right. In front of Mike's door, another six steps led up to the bathrooms on both sides on the next level, and two more rooms where Darla and Whitney, who were hardly ever there, lived – at least that's what their parents thought. Both were juniors and had off campus boyfriends, preferring to spend most of their time at their apartments.) Another half flight up to "the penthouse" where my friends Anna and Zack lived. All in all, the six of us lived there on five levels.

I'd left the door to my room open a bit, but was careful not to push it the rest of the way too suddenly. I'd squished Rollo in the corner once, and promised him I'd never do it again. "Rollo! I've got an ide.. Rollo?" I looked around quickly. He was nowhere. On my knees, looking under the bed. Nothing. "Hmm..." So I turned back onto the landing and decided I'd run up enough stairs for the day. " **Rolllloooo!!** ," I screamed, standing with my back to Mike's door and one foot on the first stair up in front of me. "Where are you?!!" Maybe he's downstairs?

Hearing the door open behind, I turned thinking maybe he was just busy visiting my next door neighbor. "Mike, have you seen..." I'd stopped talking, and for good reason. "Where's Mike?"

He just stood there, expressionless, doing and saying nothing.

"Who are you?"

It was another one of those seconds that takes way too long. Elizabeth and the stranger stared at each other, his arms by his sides, her left hand on the newel post where the railing along the stairs stopped to run along the hallway on her level. A quick move to her left, while he was still standing just inside Mike's doorway, she might make it down the stairs and open the front door before he could grab her. In a second more, she thought through exactly how she would do it. Three steps at a time down the stairs to the living room. Full stride to the front door. Knock the floor lamp over behind her to block his way, but be sure to reach out and grab the front door with her right hand, because it would open to her right. That way, she thought, she wouldn't have to stop and get out of its way.

"Go!" she said to herself, pulling on the post with her left arm as suddenly as she could, hoping to catch him by surprise – but she just wasn't quick enough. Reaching out the moment she made her move, he wrapped his hand around her upper left arm, just as she made the turn. He was strong, and his grip held long enough to spin her around, letting her fall backward down the stairs. The pain from their hardwood edges cracked into her upper back, leaving her wincing and stunned. Her head snapping back to hit the landing carpet, she looked up, struggling in vain to get up, but couldn't focus on the face of the man staring down at her. "Rollo!" she called out too softly, barely able to say his name.

<Table Of Contents>

* * *

### Epilogue:

Now And Then

"Look at her out there." Elizabeth's mother pushed back the curtains along the bay window in their family room, gesturing to her husband with a slight movement of her head toward their daughter sitting on the gently sloping grass among the trees in their back yard. The two of them, Elizabeth's parents, hadn't been getting along well for some time now. For years, in fact, but it had been worse lately. No one had moved out yet, but they were thinking about it. Sitting there next to each other, on the bench that faced out back, was one of the rare times in recent weeks when they'd had something, anything in common to talk about.

She sat there on the lawn, in her favorite white cotton top and jeans, her legs crossed to make a table for her to write in the spiral notebook she took with her everywhere. Lying on his back beside her, the cat that thought he was a dog. Frail and a bit taller than other girls her age, she was gangly. Her hair was cut short, but not stylishly, its blonde color the most striking thing about it. She wrote, pausing only, every few minutes, to push back the wire-rimmed glasses that never seemed to hold onto the bridge of her nose. Alone, except for the company of the strange street cat she had befriended, she let her mind go to find the Elizabeth she wanted to be, and might someday become.

"She's always writing," her father commented. "We really need to get her a computer, maybe a laptop she can take to college."

"When we can afford it," her mother answered back, not taking her eyes off the two of them out back. "She's been saving the money she makes working part-time at the newspaper – filing, going for sandwiches, looking up stuff for some of the reporters. She may just buy it for herself, before we get around to it."

"What do make of that cat?"

"Oh, he's okay." Her mother was actually glad Elizabeth had someone, or something watching over her. "Oddly large," she smiled, "don't you think?"

"...with almost canine behavior. Actually holds his ground. Have you ever seen him do that?" her father asked. "It's really.. unexpected."

"Sure I have, like a wolf, spreading his stance for balance, growling and barking, not as loud, but plenty intimidating." She smiled again, turning toward her husband's face to see him still looking out the window at their daughter and her friend.

"Whenever they go somewhere, have you noticed, he's always at her side, sometimes even walking in front, never clinging or hiding behind her like most cats would." He'd seen Rollo other times, too, flying from Elizabeth's upstairs window, across their roof and into the trees in the yard. "And he's fast. Like lightening, with fur."

"I suppose it's good to have a friend," her mother worried about their daughter, "whatever the species." They both thought that was funny for some reason, and giggled, mostly because of the awkwardness of their moment together, because sharing a lighter moment wasn't something they'd done for a while.

Just then, Rollo rolled over. Even from the house, Elizabeth's parents could see an almost bleeding fresh tear and missing fur on his side, probably from a recent fight with another animal, or from crawling under a fence somewhere. No comment. To them, "Rollo," which is what she called him, was an odd thing, of no particular value. A mangy, but low maintenance pet to entertain their daughter. To Elizabeth, he was courageous and deserving of her respect for surviving on his own, and for the unspoken commitment they had made to each other.

She had no other friends really, no close ones for sure. She liked Bobby, the good looking boy down the street, not attracted to her plain looks, and put off by her awkwardness. Bobby and his friends would walk by every so often, one of them riding slow on his bike, another sometimes spinning or dribbling the basketball he took with him everywhere. The Coleman's had a corner lot and she could see them from their yard, looking up from what she was writing. She would wave a quick "Hi" and smile at him, only to see him almost ignore her, when the other boys were watching, or hear his friends mocking her and him not coming to her defense.

Still, she had a surprisingly pleasant smile and green eyes that disguised a fierce determination that her parents and acquaintances never suspected. The nerdy, stuttering Ralph who lived around the corner would stop over now and then, but didn't talk much, at least not when her parents were around. And there was the old man from the house on the corner who walked with a cane – and his granddaughter, Eleanor, who visited him now and then. Elizabeth would go over there occasionally. She liked talking to the old man, a Russian immigrant years ago who had made his money out west before moving back to be closer to his family.

"All this writing she does in those notebooks, is any of it any good?" Her father regretted not spending more time with her. It was a question he knew he should have been able to answer for himself.

"She's read a couple of things to me. Highly imaginative, adventurous stuff, some of it about a future when she's in college." Her mother paused for a moment to stretch her back, rubbing the bottom of it with her right hand. "At least her English teacher thinks she's got potential, enough to give her some catalogs for state schools that we might be able to afford, schools with good creative writing programs. As bright as she is, she might even be able to get a scholarship."

"Good." And he meant it, hoping they could help their daughter become whatever she could and wanted for herself. "It's early, but..."

"I know. It gives her something to dream about. Something she can look forward to doing in a few years."

"Yeah, that'll be good. A new place, lots of new people to meet." He was feeling optimistic, for Elizabeth of course but, inexplicably, also for the two of them there on the bench. Turning toward his wife, he saw her smile and say what they had both been thinking.

"...and 'an adventure around every corner for me to write about.' Isn't that what's she's always telling us?"

They sat there, both of them quiet for a while, watching their daughter write, and the cat lying on his back next to her, swatting playfully at gnats that wandered by now and then.

"I wonder where she and that cat go all day," her father smiled lovingly at the vision of the two of them, out there in the light coming through an opening in the trees. He was so proud of her, without really knowing why, certain only that he didn't tell her often enough.

"I suppose," her mother had the answer, "it's wherever her imagination takes her."

<Table Of Contents>

# # #

"So, how 'bout them apples?"

"What apples?"

"Are you kidding? It's an expression. ...As I was saying, did you get it, the ending? Did you like it? Do you feel like you got your money's worth?"

"It was free book. How could I not have..."

"Right. I'll take that as a 'Yes.' If you did, enjoy reading _YE &R_ that is, tell your friends..."

An unintelligible, mumbled reply.

"What? You don't have any friends? Hmm. ...Okay, tell other people, boys, girls at school you'd like to get to know, anyone who will listen. Use it as a conversation starter... 'Excuse me, but have you read _Young Elizabeth and Rollo, the..._ ' Something like that. Try to look intelligent, but also friendly. ...What's that?"

"I'm not sure I can do both."

"Really? ...Okay, to be honest, I have the same problem. Friendly I can do, although I still have a slight, nervous giggle when I'm around girls. (Actually, it's more like a tic.) It's the looking intelligent part I have trouble getting just right. ...And don't hesitate to go to my website and write a wildly favorable a review. While you're there, be sure to let me know if you'd like to read more about _Young Elizabeth_ and find out what's going on with her, Rollo of course, their friends and Elizabeth when she's in college."

Yet another barely audible response.

"Listen, I'm sure you'll make friends eventually, but let's focus on me right now. (I don't have any friends either and you don't hear me complaining.) ...On the other hand, if you didn't like it, reading _Young Elizabeth_ , don't bother with the review....Just kidding. No, seriously. Favorable reviews only....Just kidding, really. Say whatever you like... as long as it's good. By 'good' I mean really impressive, jaw-dropping favorable. 'On a scale of one to 10, this book is a 12. Maybe a 13.' Something like that."

"No matter what, thanks for reading my book."

Les Cohen

Elizabeth's Dad

<Table Of Contents>
