Beatrice Leep lived with her father, a former professional basketball player with gimpy knees, a beer gut, and not much enthusiasm for steady work. Leon "Lurch" Leep had been a high-scoring point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers and later for the Miami Heat, but twelve years after retiring from the NBA he still hadn't decided what to do with the rest of his life.

Beatrice's mother was not an impatient woman, but she had eventually divorced Leon to pursue her own career as a cockatoo trainer at Parrot Jungle, a tourist attraction in Miami. Beatrice had chosen to remain with her father, partly because she was allergic to parrots and partly because she doubted that Leon Leep could survive on his own. He had basically turned into a lump.

Yet less than two years after Mrs. Leep left him, Leon surprised everyone by getting engaged to a woman he met at a celebrity pro-am golf tournament. Lonna was one of the waitresses in bathing suits who drove electric carts around the golf course, serving beer and other beverages to the players. Beatrice didn't even learn Lonna's last name until the day of the wedding. It was the same day Beatrice found out she was going to have a stepbrother.

Lonna arrived at the church towing a somber, bony-shouldered boy with sun-bleached hair and a deep tan. He looked miserable in a coat and necktie, and he didn't hang around for the reception. No sooner had Leon placed the wedding ring on Lonna's finger than the boy kicked off his shiny black shoes and ran away. This was to become a recurring scene in the Leep family chronicles.

Lonna didn't get along with her son and nagged at him constantly. To Beatrice, it appeared as if Lonna was afraid that the boy's quirky behavior might annoy her new husband, though Leon Leep seemed not to notice. Occasionally he'd make a halfhearted attempt to bond with the kid, but the two had little in common. The boy held no interest in Leon's prime passions-sports, junk food, and cable television-and spent all his free time roaming the woods and swamps. As for Leon, he wasn't much of an outdoorsman, and was leery of any critter that wasn't wearing a collar and a rabies tag.

One night, Lonna's son brought home an orphaned baby raccoon, which promptly crawled into one of Leon's favorite moleskin slippers and relieved itself. Leon seemed more puzzled than upset, but Lonna went totally ballistic. Without consulting her husband, she arranged for her son to be shipped off to a military prep school-the first of several failed attempts to "normalize" the boy.

He seldom lasted more than two weeks before running away or being expelled. The last time it happened, Lonna purposely didn't tell Leon. Instead she continued to pretend that her son was doing fine, that his grades were good and his conduct was improving.

The truth was, Lonna didn't know where the boy had gone and didn't intend to go looking for him. She was "fed up with the little monster," or so Beatrice overheard her say on the telephone. As for Leon Leep, he displayed no curiosity beyond what his wife had told him about her wayward offspring. Leon didn't even notice when the tuition bills from the military school stopped coming.

Long before his mother sent him away for the last time, the boy and his stepsister had forged a quiet alliance. After Lonna's son made his way back to Coconut Cove, the first and only person he contacted was Beatrice. She agreed to keep his whereabouts a secret, knowing that Lonna would call the juvenile authorities if she ever found out.

That concern was what had prompted Beatrice Leep to confront Roy Eberhardt after she saw him chasing her stepbrother that first day. She did what any big sister would have done.

On the bicycle ride, Beatrice shared enough bits and pieces of her family's story with Roy that he understood the difficult situation. And after seeing her stepbrother's wounds, he knew why Beatrice had run for help after she'd found him moaning inside the old Jo-Jo's ice-cream truck.

It was the first time Roy had been permitted to see the running boy up close and face to face. The kid was stretched out, a crumpled cardboard box serving as a pillow. His straw-blond hair was matted from perspiration, and his forehead felt hot to the touch. In the boy's eyes was a restless, darting, animal flicker that Roy had seen before.

"Does it hurt bad?" Roy asked.

"Nope."

"Liar," Beatrice said.

The boy's left arm was purple and swollen. At first Roy thought it was from a snakebite, and worriedly glanced around. Fortunately, the bag of cottonmouths was nowhere in sight.

"I stopped by on the way to the bus stop this morning and found him like this," Beatrice explained to Roy. Then, to her stepbrother: "Go on. Tell cowgirl what happened."

"Dog got me." The boy turned his arm over and pointed to several angry red holes in the skin.

The bites were nasty, but Roy had seen worse. One time his father had taken him to a state fair where a rodeo clown got chomped by a panicky horse. The clown was bleeding so badly that he was rushed to the hospital in a helicopter.

Roy unzipped his backpack and removed the medical supplies. He knew a little about treating puncture wounds from a first-aid course he'd taken at a summer camp in Bozeman. Beatrice had already cleansed her stepbrother's arm with soda water, so Roy lathered antibiotic ointment on a panel of gauze and taped it firmly around the boy's arm.

"You need a tetanus shot," Roy said.

Mullet Fingers shook his head. "I'll be okay."

"Is the dog still running around here?"

The boy turned inquiringly to Beatrice, who said, "Go ahead and tell him."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, he's all right." She shot an appraising glance at Roy. "Besides, he owes me. He almost got squashed in a closet today-isn't that right, cowgirl?"

Roy's cheeks flushed. "Never mind that. What about this dog?"

"Actually, there was four of 'em," Mullet Fingers said, "behind a chain fence."

"So how'd you get bit?" Roy asked.

"Arm got stuck."

"Doing what?"

"It's no big deal," said the boy. "Beatrice, did you get some hamburger?"

"Yeah. Roy's mom gave it to us."

The kid sat up. "Then we better roll."

Roy said, "No, you need to rest."

"Later. Come on-they'll be gettin' hungry soon."

Roy looked at Beatrice Leep, who offered no explanation.

They followed Mullet Fingers down the steps of the icecream truck and out of the junkyard. "Meet you there," he said, and broke into a full run. Roy couldn't imagine the strength it must have taken, considering his painful injury.

As Mullet Fingers scampered off, Roy noticed with some satisfaction that he was wearing shoes-the same sneakers Roy had brought for him a few days earlier.

Beatrice mounted the bicycle and pointed at the handlebars. "Hop aboard."

"No way," Roy said.

"Don't be a wuss."

"Hey, I don't want any part of this. Not if he's going to hurt those dogs."

"What are you talking about?"

"That's why he wanted the meat, right?"

Roy thought he'd figured it out. He thought the kid meant to take revenge on the dogs by spiking the hamburger with something harmful, maybe even poisonous.

Beatrice laughed and rolled her eyes. "He's not that kind of crazy. Now let's go."

Fifteen minutes later, Roy found himself on East Oriole Avenue, at the same trailer where the foreman had hollered at him a few days before. It was nearly five o'clock, and the construction site looked deserted.

Roy noticed that a chain-link fence had been erected to enclose the lot. He recalled that the cranky foreman had threatened to unleash vicious guard dogs, and he assumed they were the ones that bit Mullet Fingers.

Jumping off the bike, Roy said to Beatrice: "Does this have anything to do with that cop car that got spray-painted?"