“Good thing Chase was there to storm into that basement, guns blazing, saving you from financial ruin,” I said.
She smiled as she petted me. “I wouldn’t say he saved me from financial ruin, but he did save me from being burgled, which is a terrible feeling I never hope to experience again.”
“Being saved, you mean?” asked Dooley, confused.
“Being burgled. People crawling all over your private space, and picking through your private stuff. It feels horrible, let me tell you.”
“What’s going to happen to those crooks now?” I asked.
“Oh, they’ll be charged, and appear before the judge in the morning. I hope they’ll go away for a long time. Did you say they fired off a shot?”
“Yes, to scare away the mice,” said Brutus.
“And did it work?”
“It did,”’ said Harriet. “Though now I wonder where they all ran off to.”
Suddenly a piercing cry rent the air. It seemed to come from underneath us, and as we all ran down the stairs and into the basement, I saw that a sizable hole had been dug by the bullet one of the thugs had fired. Through the hole we could clearly see Marge, standing in her own basement next door, and screaming her head off.
The fact that she was surrounded by a swirling sea of rodents probably had something to do with that.
Chapter 23
When the commotion next door had died down a little, Marge decided to clear the table. No one was going to finish dinner now, and she liked to run a tight and especially a clean ship. And she’d just turned on the dishwasher and moved into the living room when she thought she heard a strange sound. Almost as if some animal was screaming up a storm in the basement. So she’d taken the broom and had pulled the little string that worked the light, and had moved down into the basement one step at a time. At first she didn’t see a thing, but then, as she looked around, suddenly she saw that what she thought was the floor was actually a carpet consisting entirely of mice!
The carpet was undulating, and seemed to cover the whole basement floor!
And that’s when she started screaming her head off.
“Mom!” Odelia called out.
Marge searched for the source of the sound, and saw that there was now a new hole in the basement wall, opposite the one where Boyd Baker’s body had been found. This hole connected to Odelia’s basement, and her daughter was saying something that she couldn’t quite catch, as the mice were screeching up a violent storm at her feet.
So she added to the chorus and screamed some more.
Then two things happened: her mother came stomping down, carrying what looked like an old shotgun, and fired off a shot. The shot went wide and hit the wall, creating yet another hole.
“Mom! Stop shooting!” Marge yelled over the noise of the screeching mice.
And then her husband Tex followed in his mother-in-law’s footsteps and when he saw the spectacle went a little white around the nostrils and said, “Oh, my Lord!”
“This is the first stage, Tex,” said Mom. “See? It’s always the rats that show the way. And they’re showing us we need to build a bunker down here.”
“It’s not rats!” Marge yelled. “It’s mice!”
“Same difference,” said Mom. “Mice lead the way. Noah knew it, and so did Hitler.”
What Hitler had to do with anything, Marge didn’t know, but what she did know was that if someone didn’t make these mice behave, she was going to freak out to such an extent it would be as if a nuclear bomb had exploded right then and there!
Tex, who’d disappeared, now returned carrying a spray can. He directed the nozzle at the mice and pressed the button. The smell of lavender filled the air.
“Is that my deodorant?” asked Marge.
“I didn’t find anything else!”
“Mice love deodorant,” said Mom. “Just look at those little buggers enjoying the heck out of that scent of lavender and pine.”
Odelia, who’d made the trip through the hedge in record time, now also joined the party.
“I don’t believe this,” said Marge. “With four cats between us you would think the house would be completely mouse-free, right?”
“The mice tricked them,” said Odelia as she studied the horror scene with fascination.
“They did what?”
“Harriet and Brutus tried to reason with them and they tricked Harriet into sticking her head in one of their holes and she got stuck. She had her head stuck inside that wall all afternoon and part of the evening.”
“Poor thing,” said Mom.
“Poor thing! She should have killed that mouse, not try to reason with it!” Marge cried.
“Mice are God’s creatures, too, and they have every right to live and thrive.”
“They can live and thrive someplace else.”
“So what do we do now?” asked Tex, whose bright idea of using deodorant on the mice had fizzled out. “How do we get rid of these critters in a humane and efficient way?”
“Humane, my ass!”’ said Marge. “I want them out of here. Now!”
Four cats now descended on the scene: Max, Dooley, Harriet and Brutus, and stopped to stare at the seething mass of mouse.
“Why didn’t the gunshot scare them off this time?” asked Brutus.
“They’re quick learners,” said Max. “They’re probably used to gunshots already.”
“Oh, dear,” said Harriet. One of the mice said something that Marge couldn’t understand and Harriet snapped, “I told you to beat it, and now look what you’ve done. They’re going to massacre the whole lot of you, and it’ll all be your fault!”
The mouse said something else that escaped Marge, and then Brutus said, “It’s out of our paws now, Molly. I’m sorry. You brought this on yourself.”
It all sounded very ominous, Marge thought, and when Mom raised her shotgun to check if there was another round in the chamber, the mouse called Molly seemed to make a plea.
“Yeah, that’s a shotgun,” said Harriet. “And you don’t want to know what happens when that thing goes off and wipes out your entire family. It’s going to be a bloodbath.”
More pleading from the mouse, and finally Brutus said, “I know she missed that time, but that was just a warning shot. Next time she’ll shoot to kill.”
There seemed to be a lull in the proceedings, as the mice all gathered around the mouse called Molly and another, equally large mouse. Then the mice all looked up at Mom, their little noses twitching, and finally bowed their little heads. And before Marge’s very eyes, the entire troupe suddenly moved off, like a military parade, towards the hole where Boyd Baker had been buried all these years, and moments later they’d cleared out and the basement was mouse-free once more.
No one spoke for a moment, then Harriet said, “I think we did it, Brutus. I think we scared them off.”
“We did!” cried Brutus. “Can you imagine? They believed Gran would actually shoot them!”
“And you better believe it,” said Mom, raising her shotgun, her finger itching on the trigger.
“No, Ma,” said Marge, and quickly took the shotgun away from the old lady. “I can’t believe we still have that thing,” she muttered, directing a scornful look at her husband.
“It was in the tool shed,” said Gran. “Kept it there all this time. It used to belong to my late husband,” she explained for the sake of Odelia. “He brought it home from the war.”
“The big war?” asked Tex.
“Hey, I’m not that old,” she said, shooting an indignant glance at Marge’s husband.
“Looks like they’re gone now,” said Tex, still holding on to his can of deodorant.
“And good riddance, too,” said Marge.
“Well done, you guys,” said Odelia, patting Harriet and Brutus on the head.
“See? I told you those cats would do their job sooner or later,” said Mom.
“Let’s go to bed, you guys,” said Odelia, stifling a yawn. “It’s been one hell of a day.”
“It certainly has,” said Tex as they all moved back up the stairs. Before following the others, Marge darted one final look around, just to make sure all the mice had gone, and that’s when she saw that the hole Mom had made with the shotgun had revealed something stuck inside the wall. For a moment she feared it was another body, but when she moved closer she saw it was actually a small, leather-bound book. She lifted it out of its hiding place and saw that it was a diary, and that it was locked. Telling herself to give it to Odelia, she slipped it into the pocket of her apron, and promptly forgot all about it.