Spackled and Spooked by Jennie Bentley

messing with us.”
    I nodded, teeth chattering. He plunged into the house, and a moment later, the dining room chandelier came on. Derek stalked into the kitchen and from there into the den, lights blazing on in his wake, while I stood where I was, trying to force my feet to cooperate but failing miserably.
    A minute later he came back into the living room. “No cats.”
    “No cats? But . . . where are they?”
    “No idea,” Derek said. “They must have gotten out somehow.”
    “Oh, no.” I looked around, not knowing quite what to do or where to start looking. Then something struck me. “How could they get out? We didn’t leave any windows open, did we? And we locked the door, right?”
    “Right,” Derek said. “Seems there’s a way out we don’t know about. Either that, or someone else has a key to the place.”
    “I’m not sure I like that idea,” I said, after a beat. He looked at me.
    “I’m sure I don’t. Let’s go. We’d better see if we can find them.” He brushed past me, and headed down the stairs to the yard again. I was just about to follow, more slowly, when I heard a door slam.
    “What in blazes is going on here?”
    I minced down the stairs to the grass. Derek was halfway across the lawn by now, but he turned so we were both facing Venetia Rudolph’s house.
    It was going on eleven P.M., and the older woman must have been all tucked up and ready for bed. She was wearing plaid pajama pants under a dark dressing gown, and on her feet were mannish slippers. Her gray hair was standing out around her head, and she was obviously annoyed. “What is the meaning of this?” she added.
    I glanced at Derek, who said politely, “The meaning of what, Miss Rudolph?”
    “That . . . that . . . squealing !” She looked from one to the other of us.
    “One of the cats,” Derek said, at the same time as I asked innocently, “What squealing?”
    Venetia Rudolph snorted. “Bad enough that you’re carrying on inside the house all day, but do you have to do it outside, too? At night?”
    “We weren’t carrying on,” I said.
    “We just came back to make sure that everything’s all right,” Derek added, obviously loath to admit that we’d forgotten the cats earlier.
    “And when Derek opened the door,” I finished, “we heard a scream. It was probably one of the cats.” It hadn’t sounded like one of the cats, but they made a handy excuse. I only wished we hadn’t oiled the hinges on the door, or I could have blamed it on that instead. “It wasn’t me. I swear. I don’t squeal. Ever.”
    “Sometimes you squeal,” Derek said, his voice soft. I flushed and hoped the night was dark enough to hide it.
    “It didn’t sound like a cat,” Venetia Rudolph said. “If you didn’t squeal, who did?”
    I shrugged. “No idea. I haven’t seen anyone else around. It wasn’t you, was it?”
    She sniffed. “Certainly not. And if you are going to be insulting, young lady, I’m going back to bed.” She did, her back as straight as if she’d swallowed a broom handle.
    “Huh.” I turned to Derek, after the door had slammed on the house next door. “Do you think it was her?”
    “Could have been.” He walked up the steps to the front porch again. “I don’t suppose you could tell where the scream came from, could you? Inside or outside?”
    He was inspecting the door jamb, running his fingers over it, his nose a scant two inches from the wood in the dark.
    “I’m afraid not,” I said, hugging myself. I tried to make believe it was because the night was chilly and I wasn’t dressed warmly, but I was spooked. The darkness, the wind rustling the dry leaves on the trees, and the wispy clouds skittering across the moon like ghostly fingers—it all combined with the memory of that bone-chilling scream, which hadn’t sounded like it came from anywhere in particular; it was just all around me. . . . “Do you see anything?”
    “It’s too dark,” Derek said in disgust, straightening.