Beatrice said nothing.

"Or the gators in the portable potties?" Roy asked.

He knew the answer, but Beatrice's expression said It all: Mind your own business.

Despite the fever and the raging infection, her stepbrother had beaten them to the pancake-house construction site.

"Lemme have that," he said, snatching the package of meat from Roy's hands.

Roy grabbed it back. "Not till you tell me what for."

The kid looked to Beatrice for assistance, but she shook her head. "Get it over with," she told him. "Come on, we haven't got all day."

His injured arm hanging limply, Mullet Fingers clambered up one side of the fence and down the other. Beatrice followed, effortlessly swinging her long legs over the top.

"What're you waiting for?" she barked at Roy, still standing on the other side.

"What about those dogs?"

"The dogs," said Mullet Fingers, "are long gone."

More confused than ever, Roy scaled the fence. He followed Beatrice and her stepbrother to a parked bulldozer. They huddled in the shaded cup of the blade, safely out of sight from the road. Roy sat in the middle position, with Beatrice on his left side and Mullet Fingers on his right.

Roy held the package of meat on his lap, covering it with both arms like a fullback protecting a football.

"Did you paint that cop car?" he bluntly asked the boy.

"No comment."

"And hide those alligators in the toilets?"

Mullet Fingers stared straight ahead, his eyes narrowing.

"I don't get it," Roy said. "Why would you try crazy stuff like that? Who cares if they build a stupid pancake house here?"

The boy's head snapped around and he froze Roy with a cold look.

Beatrice spoke up. "My stepbrother got bit by the dogs because his arm got stuck when he reached through the fence. Now ask me why he was reaching through the fence."

"Okay. Why?" Roy said.

"He was putting out snakes."

"The same snakes from the golf course? The cottonmouths!" Roy exclaimed. "But why? You trying to kill somebody?"

Mullet Fingers smiled knowingly. "They couldn't hurt a flea, them snakes. I taped their mouths shut."

"I'm so sure," Roy said.

"Plus I glued sparkles on the tails," the boy added, "so they'd be easy to spot."

Beatrice said, "He's telling the truth, Eberhardt."

Indeed, Roy had seen the sparkling tails for himself. "But come on," he said, "how do you tape a snake's mouth closed?"

"Real carefully," said Beatrice, with a dry laugh.

"Aw, it ain't so hard," Mullet Fingers added, "if you know what you're doin'. See, I wasn't tryin' to hurt them dogs-just rile 'em up."

"Dogs do not like snakes," Beatrice explained.

"Makes 'em freak out. Bark and howl and run around in circles," her stepbrother said. "I knew the trainer would drag 'em outta here soon as he saw the cottonmouths. Those Rottweilers ain't cheap."

It was the wildest plan Roy had ever heard.

"The only part I didn't count on," said Mullet Fingers, eyeing his bandaged arm, "was gettin' bit."

Roy said, "I'm almost afraid to ask, but what happened to your snakes?"

"Oh, they're fine," the boy reported. "I came back and got 'em all. Took 'em to a safe place and let 'em go free."

"But first he had to peel the tape off their mouths," said Beatrice, chuckling.

"Stop!" Roy was completely exasperated. "Hold on right there."

Mullet Fingers and Beatrice looked at him matter-of-factly. Roy's head was spinning with questions. These kids must be from another world.

"Would one of you please tell me," he begged, "what's all this got to do with pancakes? Maybe I'm dense, but I really don't get it."

Grimacing, the boy rubbed his bloated arm. "It's simple, man," he said to Roy. "They can't put a Mother Paula's here for the same reason they can't have big ole nasty Rottweilers runnin' loose."

"Show him why," Beatrice said to her stepbrother.

"Okay. Gimme the hamburger."

Roy handed over the package. Mullet Fingers peeled off the plastic wrapper and scooped out a handful of ground beef, which he carefully rolled into six perfect little meatballs.

"Follow me," he said. "But try and be quiet."

The boy led Roy to a hole in a grassy patch of ground. At the entrance of the hole, Mullet Fingers placed two hamburger balls.

Next he walked to an identical-looking hole on the other side of the lot and left two more meatballs there. He followed the same ritual at another hole in a far corner of the property.

Peeking into one of the dark tunnels, Roy asked, "What's down there?"

In Montana, the only animals that dug holes like that were gophers and badgers, and Roy was positive there weren't many of those in Florida.

"Hush," the boy said.

Roy trailed him back to the bulldozer, where Beatrice remained perched on the blade, cleaning her eyeglasses.

"Well?" she said to Roy.

"Well, what?"

Mullet Fingers tapped him on the arm. "Listen."

Roy heard a short high-pitched coo-coo. Then, from across the open lot, came another. Beatrice's stepbrother rose stealthily, tugged off his new sneakers, and crept forward. Roy followed closely.

The boy was grinning through his fever when he signaled for them to stop. "Look!"

He pointed toward the first burrow.

"Wow," Roy said, under his breath.

There, standing by the hole and peering curiously at one of the meatballs, was the smallest owl that he had ever seen.

Mullet Fingers chucked him gently on the shoulder. "Okay-now do you get it?"

"Yeah," said Roy. "I get it."

ELEVEN

Officer David Delinko had made a habit of driving past the construction site every morning on the way to the police station, and again every afternoon on his way home. Sometimes he even cruised by late at night if he went out for a snack; conveniently, there was a minimart only a few blocks away.

So far, the policeman hadn't seen much out of the ordinary except for the scene earlier that day: a wild-eyed man waving a red umbrella and chasing several giant black dogs around the property. The foreman of the Mother Paula's project had said it was a K-9 training exercise, nothing to be alarmed about. Officer Delinko had no reason to doubt it.

Even though he'd hoped to capture the vandals himself, the policeman agreed it was an excellent idea for the pancake-house company to put up a fence and post some guard dogs-surely that would scare off potential intruders.

That afternoon, after another eight dull hours of desk duty, Officer Delinko decided to swing by the Mother Paula's site once more. Two hours of daylight remained, and he was eager to see those attack dogs in action.

He got there expecting a mad chorus of barking, but the place was strangely silent; no sign of the dogs. Walking the outer perimeter of the fence, the patrolman clapped his hands and shouted, in case the animals were hiding under Curly's trailer or snoozing in the shade of the bulldozing equipment.

"Boo!" yelled Officer Delinko. "Yo, Fido!"

Nothing.

He picked up a two-by-four and clanged it against a metal fence post. Again, nothing.

Officer Delinko returned to the gate and checked the padlock, which was secure.

He tried whistling, and this time he got an unexpected response: Coo-coo, coo-coo.

Definitely not a Rottweiler.

The policeman saw something move inside the enclosure, and he strained to see what it was. At first he thought it was a rabbit, because of its sandy brown coloring, but then it suddenly lifted off the ground and swooped from one corner of the property to another, finally landing on the cowling of a bulldozer.

Officer Delinko smiled-it was one of those stubborn little burrowing owls that Curly had complained about.