The Stranger Next Door (7 page)

“That’s true. But if he didn’t set the fire, what does his note mean? Why aren’t you safe?”

“I don’t think it means anything,” Rocky said. “He’s just trying to scare me.”

“Duke’s a bully,” Alex said, “and Henry is a sheep, following after him.”

“That’s right. They don’t scare me one bit.”

Although Rocky claimed not to be scared, Alex noticed that his face was pale and his hands, as he tried to wedge his feet into Alex’s too-small shoes, were trembling.

Well, who wouldn’t be upset? Alex thought. I’d be shaking, too, if my house had just burned.

“Maybe you can wear a pair of my dad’s shoes,” Alex
suggested. “They might be too big, but it would be better than going barefoot.”

Mr. Kendrill gladly supplied a pair of sneakers for Rocky.

When everyone was dressed, they all stood at the window, watching the firefighters roll up the hoses and prepare to leave.

“It’s lucky for us that you saw the fire,” Mr. Morris said. “I was sound asleep, and the smoke alarm didn’t go off. If you hadn’t pounded on the door, we may not have escaped in time.”

“Alex is the hero,” Mr. Kendrill said. “He woke us up and he called nine-one-one.”

“What woke you?” Mrs. Kendrill asked Alex.

“I heard Pete yowling.” Alex drew his breath in sharply. “Oh my gosh, I forgot: Pete’s outside, on the garage roof.”

Alex and his dad rushed to the garage and looked up.

“It’s about time,” Pete yelled. “I thought you were never coming to get me down.”

Mr. Kendrill got out a wooden ladder and held it steady while Alex climbed up. When his waist was even with the roof, he stretched his hands toward Pete.

“Come on, Pete,” Alex said. “Over here.”

Pete stayed just out of Alex’s reach. He didn’t want to appear too anxious to be rescued. After all, he could easily have jumped back through the window or climbed down the
tree trunk or leaped from the roof to the ground in a single, graceful jump, if he had wanted to.

“Here, Pete,” Alex said. “I’ll carry you down. Don’t be scared.”

“Scared!” Pete hollered. “I wasn’t scared for one second. But since you’re here, I suppose I may as well go down the ladder with you.”

“Come on, big boy,” Alex said. “Get over here so I can reach you.”

Pete crept closer. When he felt Alex’s hands on his back, he slid over the edge of the roof, put his front paws around Alex’s neck, and hung on.

Alex backed down, holding the edge of the ladder with one hand and Pete with the other. He went through the garage and in the kitchen door before setting Pete down.

“How in the world did that cat get outside?” Mrs. Kendrill said.

“I don’t know,” Alex said, “but we’re lucky he did. If he hadn’t yowled I would still be asleep. We would never have seen the fire. Pete’s a hero.”

“You can say that again,” Pete said.

There was a loud scream from upstairs, followed by footsteps pounding across the hall and down the steps.

“There’s a fire!” Benjie yelled. “Over at the Morrises’ house! A fire truck is over there and . . .”

Benjie burst into the kitchen, stopped, and looked
from his parents to Alex to the Morrises. “Why didn’t anybody wake me up?”

“We were busy,” Mrs. Kendrill said. “It was more important to wake the Morrises.”

“I missed all the excitement,” Benjie wailed. “The only reason I woke up now is because I was cold. If I hadn’t opened my window earlier I’d still be asleep. You would have let me sleep straight through till morning and I wouldn’t have seen the fire truck at all.”

“The window!” Alex said. “I opened my window, too, and I’ll bet I accidentally pushed the screen open at the same time. That happened once before, only that time it was during the day, and I realized what I had done.”

He hurried up to his room to close the window.

“You’ll need to be more careful,” Mrs. Kendrill said. “We’ve had enough excitement for one night; we don’t need a lost cat.”

“Why do you think I’ll get lost?” Pete said. “I know my way around this neighborhood as if it were the inside of the barn where I was born. Lost, indeed. Give me some credit for having a brain.”

“I wonder how long he was outside,” Alex said.

“Not nearly long enough,” Pete said. “I didn’t even catch a mouse. I came home because of the fire.”

“Thank goodness he knew enough to stay on the garage roof,” Mr. Kendrill said.

“That’s what you think,” Pete said.

“You certainly have a talkative cat,” Mr. Morris said. “Here, kitty. Nice, kitty.”

Pete rubbed against Mr. Morris’s shoe, which was really Mr. Kendrill’s shoe, and allowed Mr. Morris to pet him.

“My, he’s a big fat cat,” Mr. Morris said.

“Solid muscle,” Pete said. “Not an ounce of fat on me.”

“I understand some of the diet cat foods work well,” Mr. Morris said.

Pete stomped indignantly away. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “I know who set the fire, but if you’re going to insult me, I’ll keep what I know to myself.”

“Check his food dish, Alex,” said Mrs. Kendrill. “The way he’s complaining, it must be empty again.”

The dish was full, but Alex opened a can of tuna and scraped some of it onto a plate for Pete. He stroked the cat’s fur as Pete ate.

“Pete’s my best friend,” he told Rocky. “He’s really a smart, good cat.”

“You can say that again,” Pete said. “How about some more tuna?”

Two firefighters came to the door to talk to Mr. Morris. “I wish we could have put the fire out faster,” one of them said. “Since we’re not a city out here, we’re a volunteer department. We only have two trucks, and the other one had already responded to an alarm.”

Mrs. Kendrill offered them coffee. When everyone was seated, the fireman said, “An investigator will check the house tomorrow, but we suspect arson.”

Mrs. Kendrill gasped.

“How can you tell?” Mr. Morris asked.

“The fire started simultaneously in more than one place. It appears that an accelerant was used across the entire back side. Do you know of anyone who would deliberately want to set fire to your house?”

“No,” Mr. Morris said, but Alex was watching Rocky, and he saw a flicker of fear cross Rocky’s face. He wondered if Rocky would tell the firefighter about Duke’s note.

Although Rocky said nothing, he looked worried.

“The house is new,” Mr. Morris said. “We moved in last weekend.”

“That’s rotten luck,” the firefighter said. “A fire is terrible anytime, but when you’ve just bought a new house it’s really bad.”

“We don’t own the house,” Mr. Morris said. “We’re renting.”

“You should call your landlord,” the chief said. “He needs to know about the fire. He’ll want to notify his insurance company.”

“You’re welcome to use our phone,” Mr. Kendrill said.

“By any chance do you have the number for Alicia
Woolsey?” Mr. Morris asked. “That’s who we’re renting from. Her husband built our house, and I think he built this one, also.”

Mr. Kendrill found the number. Mr. Morris dialed.

“Don’t let that man come here!” Pete cried. “He’s a mean, terrible person. He hates cats. He hates children. He—”

Pete’s conversation was cut short by Mrs. Kendrill, who picked up the cat and shut him in the downstairs bathroom.

“You’ll regret this!” Pete howled. “1 have information that you need. I know who set the fire!”

The humans, as usual, ignored him.

“Mr. Woolsey sounded really upset about the fire,” Mr. Morris said, “especially when I told him we barely got out in time. He thought we were moving in next Saturday. He had not yet put batteries in the smoke alarms.”

The firefighters left.

“I need to make another call,” Mr. Morris said.

Alex heard him ask for Gus Franklin, then tell about the fire.

Alex hoped Mr. Morris would accept his parents’ invitation to sleep at the Kendrill home that night. Rocky could bunk in his room. Rocky had talked to Alex more in the few minutes while he was getting dressed than he had in the entire week since he moved next door. Maybe now they would finally become friends.

However, when Mr. Morris hung up, he said, “Thanks for the offer, but a friend is coming to get us.”

Alex glanced at Rocky, to see if he was disappointed, too. Rocky had his head down, staring at the floor.

Within half an hour, Mr. Franklin arrived to get Mr. Morris and Rocky.

When they had left, Alex lay in bed with Pete beside him, thinking about the fire. In particular, he wondered why Rocky had looked so scared when the fireman asked if they knew of anyone who might have deliberately set the fire.

Rocky had said he didn’t think Duke was responsible. Did he suspect someone else? Did the Morris family have an enemy? Or had Rocky himself started the fire, then pretended to be asleep? Did Rocky look fearful because he was afraid of being caught?

Alex didn’t want to think that. He liked the way Rocky had stood up to Duke; he wanted Rocky to be his friend. Yet he could not deny the fact that Rocky Morris had lived next door for less than a week, and in that time there were vandalized street signs and an arson fire.

Maybe Benjie was right; maybe Rocky was the troublemaker. He certainly kept to himself and talked only when necessary. Still, that didn’t mean he was a hoodlum. Maybe he was shy.

Alex didn’t know what to think.

When Pete lay down on Alex’s chest and started to purr, Alex let him stay. The low rumbling purr was comforting.

Alex petted the cat. “It’s been quite a night, hasn’t it, Pete?” he said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Pete replied.

R
ocky got in
the backseat of Mr. Franklin’s car.

“There’s a Holiday Inn about ten minutes away,”
Mr. Franklin said. “You can stay there tonight.”

“Do you think they’ve found us?” Rocky asked as they drove away from Valley View Estates.

“A fire is not the mob’s usual style,” Mr. Franklin said. “If they knew where you were, they would use a method that leaves you no possible escape.”

“How comforting,” said Blake.

“There’s always a chance that this was a warning, a form of harassment,” Mr. Franklin said, “but we don’t think so.”

Rocky chewed on the inside of his lip. He wished his mother were in the backseat with him, instead of in Washington, D.C.

“I have alerted the program,” Mr. Franklin said. “I told them where you’ll be staying tonight. Someone will notify Ginny.”

“Can we call her?” Rocky asked. Even though he and Blake were unhurt, it seemed imperative to talk to his mother right away.

“She’ll call you,” Mr. Franklin said, “as soon as she can. I know she’ll be upset when she learns what happened, but right now her safety, and yours, is our first concern.”

Rocky folded his arms across his chest, rubbing on the sleeves of Alex’s sweatshirt, trying to get warm. Why did Mother have to be in Washington, D.C., tonight? Why did she have to go there at all? Why couldn’t someone else testify during the trial?

Mother and Blake had explained the whole situation, but Rocky still didn’t totally understand it all. Something about their explanation bothered him, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong.

He closed his eyes and thought back to that first night, more than a month ago, when they had moved so suddenly. After Mr. Valdez took them to a hotel room, the three adults had finally explained the situation to him.

“We are moving,” Mother had told him, “because I’m going to be a witness for the United States government in a major drug trial. The defendant in the case has made millions of dollars selling illegal drugs, and he will do anything to prevent me from testifying against him.”

Rocky was dumbfounded. How could his mother, who didn’t smoke and who didn’t drink—not even beer or
wine—be involved with a drug dealer? It just seemed impossible.

“When she says the defendant will do anything to keep her from testifying,” Mr. Valdez said, “that includes murder. He couldn’t do it himself, of course, since he is in custody, awaiting trial, but he has a network of henchmen who will gladly follow orders if the price is right.”

“How did this happen? When?” Rocky stammered, not knowing which of his questions to ask first. He had to move—to change his name and go into hiding—because someone wanted to murder his mother? It was unthinkable!

“This man often uses old cars to smuggle drugs into the country,” Blake said. “He buys cars that have been in accidents, then has them towed to one of his contacts in Mexico, where packets of drugs, usually cocaine, are hidden in the cars. Sometimes the upholstery is split and small packages of drugs are sewn inside. Sometimes a secret compartment is drilled in the dashboard or under the floor. More than once, cocaine was inside a spare tire in the trunk, or in a fake muffler. The cars are repaired enough so that they can be driven across the border. The drivers choose busy times when the customs agents are harried, and they take along their wives and children, to give the appearance of a family on vacation.”

“Once the car is in the United States,” Mother continued,
“it goes to one of several auto-repair shops in Southern California. Someone at the shop—usually the owner—is in on the deal. He gets a tip when such a car is brought in so that he can remove the drugs when nobody else is there. He does this as quickly as possible, then calls an anonymous contact person who comes to pick up the packages of drugs.”

“So A-One Auto Repair was one of the places the drug dealer used?” Rocky asked.

“It’s one that he wanted to use,” Blake said. “He called and offered us a chance to cooperate with him. If we agreed, we would get ten thousand dollars each time a pickup was made.”

“Only instead of saying yes,” Rocky guessed, “you called the police.”

“That’s right,” his mother said. “When he made the offer, I said I needed to think about it. Then we notified the police, and that same day someone from the FBI asked us if we would be willing to cooperate with the government in trying to catch the drug smuggler. We said yes. When the drug smuggler called back the next day, I did as the FBI instructed: I told him we wanted the money and would do what he asked.”