“I insist.”
“I guess I am a little hungry.”
“After you, dear. To your left.”
I walked through the formal dining room and into the kitchen, which was decorated in a country theme, rooster figurines and Jersey cow kitchen doodads and a red and white checkered tablecloth on the table.
The pie was sitting on the sill over the sink, and steam still rose from its golden brown lace crust. My stomach rumbled. I was starving.
“Please sit down, Alfred,” she said, waving me toward the table. “A few more minutes to cool and it’s ready to slice. A la mode, dear?”
I cleared my throat. “Just the pie, ma’am. That’s fine.”
I wondered where Op Nine was. Probably scrambling around outside, looking for me, though I wondered how I missed him. Most likely he was beside himself, while I sat in Mama Arnold’s kitchen, eating pie.
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
“Michael’s told me all about you.”
“Where is Mike?”
“I have no idea, dear.”
She pulled a gallon of milk from the refrigerator and poured a big frosty glass. She set it on the table in front of me. She smelled of vanilla.
“Somebody told us you were on a cruise,” I said.
“Mike made up that story. He wanted me to leave, of course, but why would I leave? I may be old, dear, but I can take care of myself. I go for target practice twice a month.”
“Well,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. “Everybody needs a hobby.”
Right by the litter box stood another gnome. And there were gnome refrigerator door magnets and gnome figurines standing like little guards around the pie pan on the sill.
“You like gnomes,” I said.
“Gnomes keep evil spirits away.”
“You’re worried about evil spirits?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Mike’s told you what happened?”
She was standing on her tiptoes by the sink—she was only about five feet tall—sticking her nose near the pie.
“I had to know why he was so desperate to get me out of this house.”
She put on another oven mitt and picked up the pie. She set it on the counter and shook off the mitts. Her hands were very small, but her knuckles were big, from arthritis, I guessed, and mottled with age spots. She grabbed a big knife and cut a fat slice that she slid onto a little plate with a picture of a gnome painted in the middle.
“He’s a good boy, but he associates with the wrong sort of people—not you, Alfred. You’re a wonderful child with great potential. I hate to see you squander it on people like those Mike used to work with.”
She cocked her round little head and her voice dropped.
“Listen to that!”
It was the freezing rain, the little pellets smacking against the roof and the kitchen window.
“I do hope something can be done soon,” she said. “I’m worried about my spring bulbs.”
“That’s why it’s real important we find Mike, ma’am,” I said. “We can’t do anything about it till we find him.”
She placed the pie in front of me and stood back, folding her arms across her chest and just beaming down at me.
“Taste it, Alfred,” she said. “I am the best baker in the tri-counties.”
“Maybe just a bite,” I said. “But then I have to go. Op— my friend’s probably wondering what happened to me.”
But I figured I might be able to worm some clues out of this old lady. I didn’t believe she didn’t know where Mike was. Maybe if I was nice and ate some of her pie she would let down her guard some and tell me where he was hiding.
I took a big bite of pie as she stood over me, smiling sweetly, and I have to admit there was a little pain in my heart because everything seemed so normal. You don’t realize how much normal, boring things like eating pie late at night in a warm kitchen matter until those things are taken from you.
Something crunched in my mouth. Thinking I must have bitten into a piece of stem, I reached in and pulled out a long gray stick. It didn’t look like wood, though. It was jagged on one end and dangling from the other by a glistening piece of tissue was a partially chewed eyeball.
I dropped the small bone onto the table and shoved myself away, knocking the chair over, my stomach heaving as I spat and gagged and tears burned in my eyes. My tongue was covered with fuzz and I frantically scraped it with my fingernail, bringing out tufts of orange and white fur.
“What’s the matter, Alfred?” she asked. “Don’t you like cats?”
There wasn’t time to indulge myself in nausea. I ripped the mini-3XD from my pocket and took aim at her round, doll-shaped head.
“Where is he?” I demanded in a loud, high-pitched voice. “Where’s Op Nine?”
“Why, he went upstairs, dear.”
I started to back out of the room, keeping the gun pointed at her. “You’re not Mike Arnold’s mom,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. Her blue eyes danced and behind those eyes I recognized something. Something I had seen in the Sahara. Something that knew me.
“There are many rooms upstairs, Alfred,” she whispered. “One door but many rooms. A person should be careful which room he enters.”
She made no move to stop me. I turned and ran through the formal dining room, whipping around the corner toward the stairs where the yard gnome still kept guard. I kicked it as hard as I could and started up the stairs. Then something grabbed my pants leg. I felt long claws or nails sinking into my ankle, and I didn’t have to look to know it was the gnome or something posing as a gnome, and I thought that was particularly fiendish and nasty, posing as something that was supposed to protect people from evil spirits.
Op Nine had told me back in the desert that if you looked into their eyes they would know what you feared and loved.
I was about to find out exactly what he meant.
38
I took the stairs two at a time, hardly feeling the gnome’s claws digging into my flesh. I stopped about halfway up and, holding my breath, aimed at the little grayish green cap near my leg. I fired the 3XD, certain I was going to lame myself. But my shot was true—the muzzle was only a few inches from its head—and the thing blew apart into flecks of black and orange and gold.
I started back up. At the top of the landing the very thing I expected to find was there: another yard gnome.
I didn’t hesitate. I pointed the barrel of the demon blaster right at its enigmatic little smile and wasted it.