Luckily—at least, luckily for Chester and Howie—the Monroes were all in other parts of the house, so they didn’t see us sneaking out the pet door into the rain.
“This is so cool,” Howie yipped excitedly as we rounded the corner at the end of the block. “It’s just like FleshCrawlers number twenty-four, My Parents Are Aliens from the Planet Zorg. See, there’s this girl named Tiffani-Sue Tribellini, and she’s trying to find her mother because the person she thinks is her mother is really an alien. How the girl knows is that every time her mother goes near the microwave she glows. Which is not your normal mother thing to do. So one day—”
“Will you two get a move on?” Chester scolded.
“Chester!” I shouted back. “Do you have a clue where you’re leading us?”
“More than a clue! We’re going to the last place Bunnicula saw his mother and where I believe we will now find her, waiting for her sonny boy! The movie theater!”
“Oh, goody!” Howie cried out. “Can we get popcorn? Can I sit on the aisle? Will there be coming attractions?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Howie we weren’t actually going to see a movie. As it turned out, we never even got to the theater. With the disaster that would soon befall us, I couldn’t help thinking I’d been right in the first place. It was a perfect day for napping.
Chapter 5
Surprise Encounters
A BIT of an explanation may be useful here. Those of you whose memory, like mine, is as full of holes as a garden hose after Howie’s played Let’s-Pretend-This-Long-Green-Thing’s-a-Snake with it may not recall the exact circumstances of Bunnicula’s coming to live with us. One night a couple of years ago, the Monroes went to the movies and on one of the seats discovered a dirt-filled shoebox holding a tiny white-and-black bunny. A note in a foreign language read take good care of my baby. Because the movie Dracula was playing there that night, Mrs. Monroe had the bright idea of combining “bunny” and “Dracula” to come up with the rabbit’s name: Bunnicula. This was after she’d had the anything-but-bright ideas of naming him Fluffy or Bun-Bun. She means well, Mrs. Monroe, but sometimes her taste is decidedly Brady Bunch.
Now I was not convinced, as Chester clearly was, that Bunnicula’s mother—if she in fact had been the one to leave him at the movie theater in the first place—would still be hanging around there. After all, how long could anybody take a diet of stale popcorn and gummy bears? And if she had not stayed there, what would make her want to return? Remorse? But I did find his argument compelling that Bunnicula, for whatever reason, seemed to miss his mother and had gone on his recent rampage out of excitement over Mother’s Day So perhaps it was worth trying to find her. I didn’t let on that my motives were different from his. He may have been out to undo some vague grand plan he imagined was under way. He may have been determined to destroy vampire rabbits. I was intent on reuniting them.
Luckily the rain stopped, the sun came out, and soon the sweet smell of spring blossoms and fresh earth permeated the air. Not to mention certain other aromas of infinitely greater interest to dogs.
“Do you two have to stop at every hydrant?” Chester snapped at one point.
“We’re investigating,” I explained.
“Yeah,” said Howie, “maybe we’ll pick up Bunnicula’s mother’s scent.”
“Unless she’s a volunteer firerabbit, I don’t think that’s too likely,” Chester retorted. “Now, come on!”
“How do you know where the movie theater is?” I called out.
“I don’t!” Chester shot back.
I would have protested, but what difference would it have made? Chester never allows a minor detail like not knowing where he’s going to get in his way. Besides, it really was shaping up to be a beautiful day and, to my surprise, I was glad to be out in it. I didn’t even mind that the streets we were trotting along no longer seemed familiar.
After some time, we came to a street that was lined with stores. A new scent caught the attention of my nostrils. I lifted them to the air and sniffed.
“Pizza!” I cried. “Lunchtime!”
“No anchovies on mine,” said Howie. I doubted he knew what anchovies were. He just said it, I think, because Pete always says it when the Monroes order pizza.
“Will you two get your minds off your stomachs for once?” Chester said impatiently. “Look at those two dogs over there. They seem perfectly content just to be lying in the sun. Why can’t the two of you—”
Chester was cut off by Howie’s yipping, “It’s Bob and Linda!”
I looked closely. A caramel-colored cocker spaniel in a Mets cap. A West Highland white terrier with a lavender bandanna knotted jauntily around her neck. The bandanna may have been different, but otherwise the two looked exactly the same as when we’d last seen them.
“It is them!” I exclaimed. “Chester, it’s Bob and Linda from Chateau Bow-Wow.”
I don’t know whether it was Bob and Linda in particular or the memory of the boarding kennel where we’d met them, but Chester muttered, “Oh, no,” and rolled his eyes. If Pete was an Olympic eye-roller, Chester could have been his coach.
Howie ran on ahead of us.
“Well, look who it is,” I heard Bob saying. “Linda, it’s little Howie from that dreadful place the kids left us last summer.” “The kids” was what Bob and Linda called their owners.
Linda raised herself to her haunches. “Well, so it is!” she remarked. Looking in my direction, she called out, “Yoo-hoo, Harold, is that you?”
“And Chester,” I called back. Chester was muttering under his breath as we approached.
“Well, for heaven’s sake,” Linda went on, “whatever brings you to Upper Centerville? This is just too quaint.”
I noticed that the two dogs were tied to a parking meter in front of a coffee place called espresso yourself. Bob’s leash was bright green with the word polo printed repeatedly in purple letters along its length. Linda’s was lavender (perfectly matching her bandanna) with halston repeated on it in black. Next to them was a ceramic trough with Pour les chiens written on its side. It was filled with water with slices of lemon floating in it. I later learned that pour les chiens means “for the dogs.”
So this was Upper Centerville.
“Well,” I said, trying to come up with an answer to Linda’s question that would not immediately qualify us for the loony bin, “we’re out for a stroll, actually. We, we …”
“We’re looking for the movie theater,” Chester said.
What a relief! He wasn’t going to say …
“Because …”
Oh, no.
“… we’re looking for a vampire rabbit. Have you seen one?”
“Uh, not lately” said Bob. He looked over his shoulder as if to say, “I wonder what’s keeping the kids.”
“We don’t get many vampire rabbits in Upper Centerville,” Linda said, regarding Chester with a mixture of sympathy and distaste. “What exactly would we be looking for?”
“Black and white,” said Chester. “Red eyes. Fangs. Strange eating habits.”
They thought for a moment. “We do know a dalmatian who’s awfully fond of Tofutti,” Linda offered.
“But then who isn’t?” said Bob.
Linda nodded her head as Chester began muttering to himself again.
“I wish the kids would get out here with our cappuccino,” Bob said. Then, “Say, here’s a coincidence. We ran into two other inmates—I mean, guests—from Chateau Bow-Wow just the other day.”
Linda wrinkled her nose. “Those two cats,” she said. “No offense to you, Chester.”
“None taken,” said Chester. “I assume you’re referring to Felony and Miss Demeanor.”