Above the phone numbers, the card said:

"You can call me anytime," advised Officer Delinko. "Just keep your eyes and your ears open, okay?"

"Right," Roy said, not too eagerly. The policeman was asking him to be an informant: a snitch on his own classmates. It seemed like a steep price to pay for a ride home.

Not that Roy wasn't appreciative, but he didn't feel like he owed the officer anything besides a sincere thank-you. Wasn't it part of a policeman's job to help people?

Roy got out of the car and waved to his parents, who were standing on the front steps. Officer Delinko removed Roy's bicycle from the trunk and set it upright, on its kickstand. "There you go," he said.

"Thanks," said Roy.

"They'll patch that tire for you at the Exxon. Was it a nail that got you?"

"Something like that."

Roy's father came up and thanked the policeman for bringing his son home. Roy overheard the two men exchanging law-enforcement chitchat, so Roy figured his father had told the officer he worked for the Justice Department.

When Mr. Eberhardt went to put Roy's bicycle in the garage, Officer Delinko lowered his voice and said, "Hey, young man."

What now? Roy thought.

"Think your dad would mind writing a letter to the police chief? Or even to my sergeant? No biggie, just a nice note about what happened tonight. Something they could put in my permanent file," Officer Delinko said. "The little things help, they really do. They add up."

Roy nodded in a noncommittal way. "I'll ask him."

"Terrific. You're a solid young fellow."

Officer Delinko got back in his car. Mrs. Eberhardt, who had gone inside to get a towel, came up and pumped the patrolman's hand. "We were worried out of our minds. Thank you so much."

"Oh, it was nothing." Officer Delinko shot a wink at Roy.

"You've restored my faith in the police," Roy's mother went on. "Honestly, I didn't know what to think after reading that outrageous story in the paper. The one about that policeman who had his windows painted black!"

It was Roy's impression that Officer Delinko suddenly looked queasy. "You all have a good night," he told the Eberhardts, and turned the key in the ignition.

"Do you happen to know that fellow?" Roy's mother asked innocently. "The one who fell asleep inside his car. What's going to happen to him? Will he be fired?"

With a screech of rubber, Officer Delinko backed out of the driveway and drove off.

"Maybe there was an emergency," Mrs. Eberhardt said, watching the patrol car's taillights disappear into the night.

"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.