Carl Hiaasen - Hoot

"Yeah," said Roy, smiling. "Maybe so."

Roy stuck to his promise. He quit searching for Beatrice Leep's stepbrother, though it required all the willpower he could muster.

One incentive to stay home was the weather. For three straight days it stormed. According to the television news, a tropical wave had stalled over southern Florida. Eight to twelve inches of precipitation was expected.

Even if the sun had been shining gloriously, Roy wasn't going anywhere. The guy at the gas station reported that the punctured bicycle tire was beyond repair.

"You folks got a pet monkey?" he'd asked Roy's father. "Because I swear it looks like teeth marks in the sidewall."

Roy's parents didn't even ask Roy what had happened. Having lived in Montana, they were accustomed to dealing with flats. A new tire had been ordered, but in the meantime Roy's bike sat idle in the garage. He spent the soggy afternoons working on homework projects and reading a cowboy novel. When he looked out the bedroom window, all he saw were puddles. He missed the mountains more than ever.

When Roy's mother picked him up after class on Thursday, she said she had some good news. "Your suspension from the school bus has been lifted!"

Roy wasn't exactly ready to turn cartwheels. "Why? What happened?"

"I guess Miss Hennepin reconsidered the situation."

"How come? Did you call her or something?"

"Actually, I've spoken to her a number of times," his mother acknowledged. "It was a fairness issue, honey. It wasn't right that you got suspended while nothing happened to the boy who started the fight."

"It wasn't a fight, Mom."

"Regardless. It looks like Miss Hennepin came around to our point of view. Starting tomorrow morning, you're back on the bus."

Yippee, thought Roy. Thanks a bunch, Mom.

He suspected she had another motive for pestering the vice-principal-she was eager to resume her early-morning yoga sessions at the community college, which she couldn't attend as long as she was driving Roy to Trace Middle.

He didn't want to be selfish, though. He couldn't depend on his parents forever. Maybe the other kids on the bus wouldn't make too big a deal out of his return.

"What's the matter, honey? I thought you'd be glad to get back on your regular routine."

"I am, Mom."

Tomorrow is as good a day as any, Roy thought. Might as well get it over with.

Leroy Branitt, the bald man who called himself Curly, was under too much pressure. His eyelids twitched from lack of sleep, and all day long he perspired like an Arkansas hog.

Supervising a construction job was a large responsibility, and every morning brought new obstacles and headaches. Thanks to the mystery intruders, the pancake-house project already was two weeks behind schedule. Delays cost money, and the big shots at the Mother Paula's corporation weren't happy.

Curly expected to be fired if anything else went wrong. He'd been told as much by a top-level executive of Mother Paula's. The man's job title was Vice-President for Corporate Relations, and his name was Chuck Muckle, which Curly thought would be more suitable for a circus clown.

Chuck Muckle wasn't a very jolly fellow, though, especially after seeing the newspaper article about the police car being spray-painted on Mother Paula's property. Among Chuck Muckle's responsibilities was to keep Mother Paula's valuable brand name out of the media, unless the company was opening a new franchise or introducing a new menu item (such as its sensational Key lime flapjacks).

In all his years of supervising construction, Curly had never gotten a phone call like the one he received from Chuck Muckle after the newspaper story appeared. He'd never before been chewed out for fifteen minutes nonstop by a company vice-president.

"Hey, it ain't my fault," Curly had finally interjected. "I ain't the one fell asleep on the job. It was the cop!"

Chuck Muckle instructed him to quit whining and take it like a man. "You're the foreman, aren't you, Mr. Branitt?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Well, you're going to be an unemployed foreman if anything like this happens again. Mother Paula's is a publicly traded company with a global reputation to protect. This is not the sort of attention that's beneficial to our image. Do you understand?"

"I do," Curly had said, though he hadn't. Serious pancake eaters wouldn't care what happened to the police car, or even about the gators in the portable potties. By the time the restaurant opened, all that weird stuff would be forgotten.

However, Chuck Muckle had been in no mood for a reasonable discussion. "Listen closely, Mr. Branitt. This nonsense is going to stop. As soon as we hang up, you're going to go out and rent the biggest, most bloodthirsty attack dogs you can find. Rottweilers are the best, but Dobermans'll do."

"Yes, sir."

"Is the site even cleared yet?"

"It's rainin'," Curly had said. "It's supposed to keep on rainin' all week." He figured Chuck Muckle would find a way to blame him for the weather, too.

"Unbelievable," the vice-president grumbled. "No more delays, you hear me? No more."

The plan was to get the site cleared before bringing in the VIPs and the media for the official gala groundbreaking ceremony. The highlight was going to be a special appearance by the woman who portrayed Mother Paula in the advertisements and TV spots.

Her name was Kimberly Lou Dixon, a runner-up in the Miss America contest in either 1987 or 1988. Afterward she became an actress, though Curly couldn't recall seeing her anywhere except in the pancake-house commercials. They dressed her up in a calico apron, a gray wig, and granny glasses to make her look like an old lady.

"Let me explain why you'll be out of a job if this project gets stalled again," Chuck Muckle said to Curly. "Miss Dixon's window of availability is extremely limited. She's due to start filming a major motion picture in a couple of weeks."

"No kiddin'. What's it called?" Curly and his wife were avid movie fans.

"Mutant Invaders from Jupiter Seven," said Chuck Muckle. "The problem is this, Mr. Branitt: If the groundbreaking gets postponed, Miss Kimberly Lou Dixon won't be able to attend. She'll be on her way to Las Cruces, New Mexico, preparing for her role as Queen of the Mutant Grasshoppers."

Wow, thought Curly. She's playing the queen!

"Without Miss Dixon's presence, we will no longer have a blockbuster event, publicity-wise. She's the company icon, Mr. Branitt. She's our Aunt Jemima, our Betty Crocker, our-"

"Tony the Tiger?" said Curly.

"I'm glad you understand what's at stake here."

"I sure do, Mr. Muckle."

"Excellent. If everything goes smoothly, you and I will never need to speak to each other again. Won't that be nice?"

"Yes, sir," Curly agreed.

The first order of business was erecting a chain-link fence around the construction site. Finding somebody to work in the rain wasn't easy, but Curly eventually hooked up with an outfit in Bonita Springs. Now the fence was finished, and it was only a matter of waiting for the guard-dog trainer to arrive.

Curly was somewhat nervous. He wasn't really a dog person. In fact, he and his wife had never owned a pet, unless you counted the stray cat that occasionally slept under the back porch. The cat didn't even have a name, which was fine with Curly. He had enough to worry about with the humans in his life.

At half-past four, a red truck with a camper top drove up to the trailer. Curly pulled a yellow poncho over his glistening head and stepped out into the endless drizzle.

The trainer was a beefy, mustached man who introduced himself as Kalo. He spoke with a foreign accent, the same accent that the German soldiers always had in World War II movies. Curly could hear the dogs barking ferociously in the camper bed, heaving themselves against the truck's tailgate.