“Bullshit,” spat Gran, but returned to her desk and started typing anyway. She knew very well that the only thing Scarlett wanted was to get a rise out of her, and she wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. She was going to handle herself like a true professional.
She took a sausage out of her drawer and took a big bite.
A small gasp had her look up. Scarlett had risen from her seat and was standing at the desk.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m typing, I’m typing,” said Gran. “See?” She turned the screen so Scarlett could follow. “’Here to get a prescription filled for the contraceptive pill, even though she’s obviously way too old.’” She noticed Scarlett wasn’t listening but intently staringat her sausage. “What?” she asked, annoyed by the woman’s weird behavior.
“Is that… a Duffer you got there?” asked Scarlett.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” said Gran distractedly. “How do you spell biatch?”
“Lemme have a bite,” said Scarlett, licking her lips.
“No, you can’t have a bite. That’s my damn sausage and you’re not coming anywhere near it with that filthy mouth of yours. Who knows where those blowfish lips have been. So is it B-Y-A-T-C-H or B-I-A-T-C-H? Lemme check The Google. The Google knows.”
“They’re all out of Duffers.”
“Who is?”
“Everyone! There are no more Duffers, and they’re not coming in until next week.”
“So? Wait a week or buy a different brand. Plenty of sausages in the sea. And you should know. You’re something of a sausage connoisseur, aren’t you? At least that’s what you say.”
“Oh, you stupid old bat,” said Scarlett. “Don’t you know the Duffer is the king of saucisse? The tip of the top—top of the heap? There’s no saucisse like it. And I have to have a bite. Right now!” And then she grabbed Gran’s sausage and put it to her lips!
“Hey, you crazy woman!” Gran yelled, and tried to pry the sausage from Scarlett’s lips. It was like pulling a candy cane from a kid.
“One bite!” Scarlett yelled. “I haven’t had a Duffer for days!”
“Gimme back my sausage!”
And then Scarlett actually took the sausage and whacked Gran across the head with it.“Never! Call! The! Duffer! A! Sausage!” she screamed. “It’s a saucisse!”
“My saucisse!” Gran yelled, and then lunged across the desk for Scarlett.
When Tex stepped out of his office moments later, attracted by the sounds of a scuffle, he found Scarlett and Vesta on the floor of his waiting room, grappling like a couple of aged wrestlers, and Scarlett beating Vesta with what looked like a sausage.
Shaking his head, he took possession of the object of contention, his gesture drawing howls of rage from both women.
He then took a tentative bite and nodded appreciatively.“Great little sausage.”
The next moment something was biting him in the ankle. When he looked down, he saw that it was Scarlett, and then she was screaming.“It’s not a sausage! It’s a saucisse!”
Chapter 20
“We have to get out of here,” said Harriet.
“No shit, Sherlock,” said Clarice.
“You don’t think this is the pound?” asked Dooley.
“No, this is not the pound, Dooley,” said Clarice. “And I should know. I’ve been a frequent resident of that place more times than I care to remember. This is a prison.”
“Yeah, this doesn’t look like the pound at all,” I agreed.
“More like one of those creepy dungeons where serial killers like to collect their victims before they go off and fillet them alive,” said Brutus, glancing around.
Harriet shot him a censorious glance.“Nice,” she said.
“What?”
“Can’t you see that Dooley is terrified?”
We all looked at Dooley, but far from looking terrified he actually seemed excited. He was standing near the far wall, listening intently. We all joined him.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Listen here, Max,” said Dooley, and pointed to a small crack in the wall, where the cement between two bricks had fallen out. So I put my ear to the crack and listened.
“Hey, that sounds a lot like… Uncle Alec!” I said, glancing up at Dooley in surprise.
“I was checking out this wall when suddenly I thought I heard his voice. He must have found this place and come here to get us out. So you see, Max? You were right. Everything is going to be all right after all.”
I smiled at Dooley, listening in the meantime, and then my smile disappeared.
“We have to get out of here,” Uncle Alec was saying, echoing Harriet’s words exactly. “I don’t care how, but I have a feeling if we don’t escape now, it’s going to be too late.”
And then another male voice piped up,“You’re right, Alec. They’re going to kill us if we don’t escape.”
I abruptly removed my ear from the crack and stared at the others.“Uncle Alec isn’t here to save us,” I said after a moment. “He’s also a prisoner, and is talking about getting killed if he can’t escape!”
My statement was met with wails of dismay, and then Harriet was next to press her ear to the wall and listen. After a moment, she nodded.“Max is right. Uncle Alec is a prisoner here, along with a couple of other people whose voices I don’t recognize.”
“Looks like you were right,” Harriet told Clarice. “This is some kind of prison.”
“Of course I’m right,” Clarice growled. “I’ve seen enough prisons to know I’m in one, princess.”
Harriet frowned, for she hates to be called a princess, except by Brutus. She bit back a sharp retort. This wasn’t the time to bicker and fight amongst ourselves. We needed to figure out how to escape this place, or else we might perish, just like Uncle Alec!
So we moved back to the entrance through which we’d dropped down, but as no light came in through there, it was obvious it had been sealed shut by now. And there was still that dog to contend with. There were no windows or other entrances except the one door, but that wasn’t a potential avenue of escape either, as it looked very sturdy. I directed my gaze upwards. That red-brick arched ceiling was high and out of reach, although there was a small opening… And that’s when an idea struck me.
“Have you ever seen those human pyramids?” I asked.
“The ones where a bunch of people all stand on top of each other?” asked Dooley.
“That’s the one. Why don’t we try the same, and then one of us slips through that opening up there, and runs home to warn Odelia?”
“Hey, that’s a great idea, Max,” said Brutus.
I’d recently pulled the same stunt when Dooley and I were locked up in Leonidas Flake’s big house, and Dooley had managed to reach an air vent. We’d used plush animals that time. This time we had something even better: real live animals!
“So you go stand over there, Max,” said Harriet, immediately taking charge.
“Why do I have to be at the bottom?” I asked. I’d secretly hoped I’d be the one to escape through that hole up there.
“Because you’re fat, Max,” said Brutus, with his customary lack of tact. “And big fat cats need to be at the bottom, with the lightest ones near the top of the pyramid.”
“I’m not fat,” I said. “I’m—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Clarice. “We’ve heard it all before. Stop arguing, will ya? We don’t have time for this nonsense. All fat cats gather over here!” she shouted, and compelled by the sheer force of her personality everyone did as they were told. Soon she and Harriet were working together, herding the others, constructing the pyramid with word and gesture. I was at the lowest rung, as indicated, and even though I said I wasn’t feeling well, and had recently undergone an invasive medical procedure, no one paid any mind to my protestations. On top of me stood Brutus, who wasn’t big but strong, paws pressing painfully into my neck, and then layer after layer other cats piled on top of that.
I have to say that cats are the perfect creatures to form a pyramid. Humans may be flexible and strong, but cats are even more so. Of course I couldn’t see what went on above my head, but as far as I could ascertain things were going swimmingly, as at some point loud cheers rang out and apparently some lucky bastard had managed to reach the top and had escaped through that hole I’d found. I would have pointed out that the credit was all mine, but no one was listening, and besides, by then the weight on my shoulders was such that I was starting to know what a bottom pancake feels like, all the other lucky pancakes piled on top and pushing it down onto its plate. Not a very pleasant sensation!