The Goatnappers Page 5

  By the end of the week Justin still didn’t have a clue what he was going to do about Little Billy. But when ball practice ended Friday afternoon, at least there was something to take his mind off the problem. His dad was waiting at the field, as he had said he would be.

  “Hey, Dad,” Justin called. His teammates watched as he ran toward his young-looking dad standing beside the sexy sports car. As usual, Charlie had the little red car’s top down.

  “You’ve waxed her,” Justin said. “Looks great.”

  “She’s a honey, all right.” Charlie dangled the keys in front of Justin. “Want to drive her?”

  “Me? Drive?” Justin couldn’t believe he had heard right.

  “You do drive, don’t you?”

  “Well, uh, sort of,” Justin stammered, eyeing the sleek red car.

  “Know how to drive a manual?”

  “Yeah, I learned on our pickup. Mom’s been letting me drive it on the farm roads around our place for awhile. And I did get my learner’s permit when I turned fifteen last month.” Justin paused, wondering if his dad would remember that his birthday was February 19. “By the time I’m sixteen—”

  “Sixteen?” Charlie interrupted. “Why, you don’t want to wait that long!”

  “It’s just that I wasn’t able to go out in traffic, you know, on regular roads, until I had a learner’s permit. Now that I do—”

  “You must be rarin’ to go!” Charlie slapped him on the back. “How about I drive out of town, and then you can take over?”

  “Really? Oh, man!” Up to now, the most exciting thing Justin had ever done was to hit the occasional home run. Driving a car, this car in particular, was going to be way more fun than that!

  Once they got out on a country road, Charlie pulled over so they could switch seats. Justin looked around for a place to put his ball glove.

  Charlie took it from him like it was something that came from the dump. “That’s about the most beat-up baseball glove I ever saw. How about I get you a new one—late birthday present?”

  “Oh no,” Justin said quickly. “I wouldn’t part with this glove for anything. Booker Wilson gave it to me for Christmas. It’s the same one he played with all through high school and Triple A.”

  “That a fact?” Charlie said sharply. “What’d he give your mom?”

  Justin didn’t answer. In the first place, it was a weird question, and in the second place, he didn’t think Booker gave Mom anything except a box of Ruby’s chocolates, which they all ate on Christmas Day.

  He waited for his dad to suggest something else for a birthday present, but he didn’t. Instead, he settled down to giving Justin some serious driving lessons, which, as far as Justin was concerned, was the best present Charlie could have given him.

  Charlie was a terrific teacher, so enthusiastic that he made the hardest parts of driving seem both easy and fun. First he gave Justin tips on shifting smoothly, then had him try it out. Justin ground the gears a few times, causing Charlie to wince, but his dad didn’t say anything. When Justin seemed to get the hang of shifting gears, his dad moved on to parallel parking, something his mom hadn’t showed him yet. Charlie took one thing at a time, instead of telling him everything at once and expecting him to remember it all.

  The little red sports car was actually a lot easier to handle than Mom’s pickup. Within a couple of hours Justin was able to stop on a dime, back up, pass other cars, and even whip a U-turn in the middle of the road.

  “You definitely have a feel for how a car’s supposed to handle,” Charlie said, sounding pleased.

  “Can I drive it again sometime?”

  “Anytime, long as I’m here.”

  Justin stopped at an intersection. “How long will that be?” he asked.

  “Till April. Then I’m off to Arizona. And after that,” Charlie said, grinning over at Justin, “it’ll be the granddaddy of all races, the Indy 500.”

  Justin put the car into gear and inched forward to get a better view of oncoming traffic. He could see what was coming from the right, but not from the left.

  “If you came with me, we’d have to get you your own set of wheels.”

  Stunned, Justin forgot the car was still moving forward. His head swiveled toward Charlie. Was he serious?

  “Watch it!” Charlie yelled.

  Justin slammed his foot on the brake and the car lurched to a stop and the engine died. A truck roared by on the highway just inches away. Justin had almost pulled right into its path. No way a truck that big, traveling that fast, could have stopped!

  “Oh, man!” Justin whispered. His whole body was shaking.

  Charlie started laughing.

  Then Justin started laughing, too. It wasn’t because what almost happened was funny, it was because—well, because they were both still alive!

  8

  THE OLD PLACE

  Justin was barely out of bed the next morning—in fact, he wasn’t out of bed—when he opened his eyes and found Chip standing there. “What?” Justin asked.

  “When’re you getting up?” Chip asked.

  “It’s Saturday, mutt. Sleep-in day.”

  “We gotta go somewhere.”

  Justin groaned. “Why don’t you go without me, and tell me about it when you get back?”

  “You have to come,” Chip insisted. “Now, while Mom’s at work so she won’t wonder where we all went.”

  “All?” Justin sat up and reached for his jeans. “Who’s all?”

  “Just you and me. And Luther and Lily. And Kate.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Little Billy?” Justin asked, pulling on a T-shirt.

  “Maybe. It depends on what you think after our secret meeting.”

  “Secret meeting, huh?” Justin yawned. “Can I have breakfast first?”

  “Okay. But hurry.”

  Justin poured a bowl of cereal. “Where are the others? Why don’t we have the meeting here?”

  “Lily already went to Luther’s house to get him. They’re going to meet us there. Kate’s in her room. She’s ready to go when you are.”

  “Where’s there? Not far, I hope.”

  “Not too far. Just down Lost Goat Lane, and off on a side road. Sort of between here and the Wilsons’. It’s our hideout.”

  Justin, Kate, and Chip hadn’t walked very far down Lost Goat Lane, which ran between their house and the Wilsons’ farm, before they saw Luther and Lily coming from the other direction. Chip ran to join them, and they veered off onto another dirt road.

  Justin had already guessed where they were headed. “How long have the little kids had a hideout at the Old Place?” he asked Kate.

  “I don’t know. A month or two maybe.”

  The Old Place stood out from the cornfields surrounding it because it was the only place in the entire area where there were any trees, apart from the ones in people’s yards and those along the big canal. The original house burned down ages ago, before Justin was born. All that was left of it was a brick chimney and a crumbled foundation. A little way off was a barn with a caved-in roof, and next to it a pen where the original owner might have kept a pig or a cow.

  Behind that was what used to be a pasture, now overgrown with thorn bushes that grabbed at your skin and clothes if you tried to walk through them. Beyond the weed-filled pasture was maybe ten acres of woods. It wasn’t an inviting forest. It was a place that, in contrast to the well-tended fields, looked dark and spooky. Justin had actually ventured into those woods once by himself. He had returned scratched and bleeding from the thorns in the pasture, figuring he was lucky not to have stepped on a snake or run into something scarier in the thick underbrush among the trees. After that he’d stuck to the area around the barn and the old cow pen, which had grown up in sweet grass.

  “It used to be my hideout, too.” Justin smiled, remembering how when you were in the loft you had to walk carefully on the beams to keep from breaking through the mostly rotten floor. “Back when I was in grade school.”


  Kate had said hardly a word since they started walking. Instead of paying attention to what he had just told her, she said, totally off the subject, “You think Dad likes Chip?”

  “I guess. Why?”

  “He barely spent any time with him,” Kate said, then added in a kind of bragging way, “He took me to the movies.”

  “He let me drive his car.”

  Kate stared. “By yourself?”

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t even have a driver’s license!”

  “I have a learner’s permit.”

  “You’re supposed to have a grown-up in the car with you!”

  “So? Dad’s an adult.”

  “You know what I mean. What if you had an accident?”

  “He says I’m a natural with cars. Like him.”

  “Mom would be mad if she knew,” Kate said.

  “So don’t tell her!” Justin shot back, angry with himself for bringing it up.

  “I won’t!” Kate said indignantly, as if she wouldn’t think of such a thing. Justin could have pointed out that she’d gotten him into trouble several times, but he kept his mouth shut.

  By then they could see the chimney of the Old Place. It was so covered in morning glory vines gone wild that the faded red bricks were barely visible. The crepe myrtle and hibiscus bushes around the foundation of the burned-down house were as big as trees. Unpruned dead branches stuck out like claws between clusters of pink and red flowers. Mom had never forbidden them to go there, but she had warned them to be extra careful if they played there. Rats lived in old barns, she’d told them, and snakes went in to eat the rats.

  Chip, Luther, and Lily were in the pen by the barn, arguing about a lizard. Chip had a rusty can, and wanted to catch it.

  “No,” Luther said, trying to take the can away from Chip. “Lizards like to lie in the sun. He doesn’t want to be shut up in a dark old can.”

  Lily gave the can a whack that knocked it out of both of their hands. “Justin’s here,” she said, and that put an end to the lizard discussion.

  Justin smiled to himself. He had often wondered why Chip and Luther, who were so tight, put up with Lily. Now he understood. She was sort of like a referee who kept them from fighting over things that didn’t matter that much.

  “Okay, I’m here,” Justin said. “What’s this all about?”

  “This place.” Kate waved her arm around the weedy area. “Think it’ll do?”

  Justin didn’t have to ask what for. He had guessed what they had in mind. He looked at the rickety barn, thinking it was probably just about ready to collapse. He went inside anyway. The others followed. They stood there looking up at the sky, which could be seen clearly through a hole in the roof.

  “It’s better than where he is now,” Luther said. “At least there’s light.”

  Justin walked out of the barn and looked at the rail fence around what had once been a cow pen. Some of the wooden rails had fallen down. With a hammer and nails, he could probably make a pen that would hold a goat—at least a small one.

  “It might do,” he said finally. “With a little fixing up.”

  “How would we get Little Billy out of the garage?” Chip asked.

  “How would we get him here without being seen?” Kate asked.

  “What if we get caught?” Luther asked.

  Everybody had questions. Nobody had answers. Except Lily, sort of.

  Lily was upside down, hanging by her knees from the top rail of the corral fence. “We need a plan,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Justin said. “One plan is to stop swinging on that old rail before it breaks and you fall on your head.”

  Lily turned right side up and straddled the rail. “I mean a game plan. Like in soccer, where everybody plays a position.” She pointed at Justin. “You and Kate have to get him out, because you’re the only ones tall enough to reach through the window. We’ll keep watch and let you know if Mr. Grimsted is coming.”

  Justin kicked at the dirt, considering what all of them were thinking—and what nobody had said.

  “It would be stealing,” he said finally.

  Chip put on his stubborn face. “We can’t leave him there.”

  “We have to rescue him,” Luther insisted.

  Lily climbed off the fence and stood next to Chip and Luther. “We can do it.”

  Kate looked at Justin. “They’re right, you know. We got Little Billy into this mess. We have to get him out.”

  Only later did Justin realize how nice it was of Kate to put it that way. Because they weren’t the ones who got Little Billy into that mess.

  He was.

  9

  THE PLAN

  After half an hour of arguing with them, Justin weakened. When Lily mentioned that Little Billy’s bleats had sounded a lot fainter the last time they listened at the garage door, Justin finally gave in.

  For the next few days, the others took turns sidling up to Justin to whisper their latest ideas for rescuing Little Billy. The first ideas were pretty ridiculous. Kate suggested that Justin go to Grimsted’s at night and saw the lock off the garage door. She’d overlooked the fact that sawing off a metal lock would make a lot of noise and would probably take forever. Besides, how would Justin get out of the house and to town in the middle of the night anyway? Chip’s idea was even sillier. He suggested dyeing Little Billy black and walking off with him in broad daylight, pretending he was a different goat.

  But they came up with a few good suggestions, too. By Thursday, using everybody’s best ideas, Justin had a plan. The thing that worried him most was that there were so many people involved. And it didn’t help that three of them were so young. There was nothing he could do about that, though, except hope that even seven-year-olds understood how much trouble they would be in if anybody found out what they were about to do.

  Remembering what Lily had said at the beginning, Justin told them, “We’re like a ball team. Everybody will have an important position to play. If one person messes up, the whole team will suffer.”

  The least cooperative member of the team turned out to be Lily. “I won’t wear a dress!” she yelled when she heard Justin’s plan. Pointing to Kate, she said, “You wear the dumb dress.”

  “I can’t,” Kate explained. “It has to be a long dress, and I don’t have one that’s long enough. Besides, I have to climb through the window, which I couldn’t do in a dress. I don’t know how I’m going to get through it anyway, it’s so high.”

  “With steps,” Chip suggested.

  Justin gave him a look. “And where are we going to get steps?”

  “What about milk crates?” asked Luther. “You know, the orange plastic kind that they use to deliver cartons of milk.”

  “And where are we going to get—?”

  “There’s always a stack of them behind that store,” Luther interrupted.

  “What store?”

  “The one on the other side of the vacant lot.”

  “We can pile them up outside the garage, high enough for Kate to climb through the window,” Chip explained. “She can jump down on the inside, and we’ll pass the crates through to her so she can use them to climb out again.”

  Justin was quiet for a minute, trying to picture exactly how it would work: The boys piling up the crates, Kate climbing up high enough to squeeze through the window, then dropping down into the dark interior of the garage. Handing the crates through to her so she could pile them up the same way inside. Kate picking up Little Billy, carrying him up the steps, and passing him through the window to Justin, who would be waiting to take him.

  Justin was amazed. He didn’t think much about Chip and Luther at all, but when he did, he mostly thought of them as minor annoyances. It had never occurred to him that they had the ability to solve problems without being told how by somebody older.

  “I am not going to wear a dress!” Lily hooked her knees over the top rail again and flopped over backwards to glare at them upside down.

  “L
isten!” Justin yelled. “You’re the one who said we needed a plan. Now we have a plan, and you don’t want to play your part.”

  “So why don’t you just go home?” Chip said, shaking the rail so that Lily had to catch it with her hands to keep from falling.

  “We’ll rescue Little Billy without you,” Luther threatened.

  Lily climbed down from the rail. Ignoring the boys, she looked at Kate. “Okay,” she said. “Just this once. Do I have to wear silly shoes, too?”

  “No,” Kate told her. “Your sneakers will be fine.”

  At supper the next night Mom asked what they planned to do on the weekend. She had some chores in mind—cleaning the goat pen, for one.

  “We already did it,” Chip said quickly. “Luther and Lily helped.”

  “Good boy!” Mom smiled at Chip, then at Kate. “That reminds me, Kate. Mrs. Hashimoto said it was sweet of you to invite Lily to go to town with you tomorrow. Not only that, but Lily wants to wear a dress. Mr. Hashimoto said Lily hasn’t let her mother put a dress on her since she was three years old. They think you’re a really good influence on her.”

  Kate blushed and looked at Justin. He got up and went to the fridge to pour himself another glass of milk—not because he wanted more milk, but because he didn’t want anybody to guess his thoughts. He didn’t want them to see how scared he was. If they got caught stealing Little Billy—or more to the point, if Lily got caught with them—the Hashimotos wouldn’t think they had been such a good influence on their daughter. Mom might even lose her job because of it.

  “Brad invited me to his house on Saturday,” Justin said, still facing the refrigerator. “I haven’t had much of a chance to see him since baseball season started.”