After Mrs. Krantz had taken Sue Ellen to the Ratburn house to collect her belongings, and then to the hospital to visit Carla and Nigel, she drove the girl to her own modest home. The exterior painfully reminded her of the house where she had lived with her parents—the house that was now for sale. The oddest thing about the front of the house was the presence of a shabby-looking scarecrow attached to a pole, in spite of the fact that there was no garden to be seen.
"What's the scarecrow for?" Sue Ellen asked Mrs. Krantz.
"To scare away the crows," was the teacher's simple response.
"I don't see any crows," said the cat girl, who then realized she had been suckered into a joke.
The inside of the house was rather generic, with brown leather furniture, a wide-screen TV, various potted plants, and framed paintings of pastoral scenes on the walls.
"Make yourself at home, okaaaay?" said Mrs. Krantz in her usual screechy voice. As she started to putter about in the kitchen, Sue Ellen walked up to one of the larger paintings, which was identified by its inscription as a scene from the Scottish highlands.
As she tried to remember if she had ever visited the place, she heard an enthusiastic cry from another room. "Oh, yes! TOUCHDOWN!"
She walked into the room, expecting to see a man with a six-pack of beer and a bag of cheese curls enjoying a televised football game. What she saw instead was a moose man with a belly large enough to keep a six-pack cold, sitting in front of a computer screen, waving his arms triumphantly. There was no bed in the room, but an abundance of shelves with all manner of knick-knacks and electronic devices, including ham radios, old action figures, and even a scale model of the starship Enterprise.
The moose man looked down at the girl and grinned. "You must be Sue Elaine," he said in a voice almost as high-pitched and grating as his wife's. "I'm Arnold."
"Nice to meet you," said Sue Ellen. Sticking out her hand, she received a firm shake from the man. "Why did you say 'touchdown' just now?" she asked curiously.
"I'm playing Fantasy Football," the man explained. "It's an online game where you pretend to manage a football team and play against other managers."
He then stood up and showed Sue Ellen around the room. "I collect a lot of stuff," he boasted. "Gladys likes to call me a pack rat."
"You collect toys?" The cat girl reached toward a robot figure standing on a shelf, but Mr. Krantz blocked her hand.
"Don't touch that," he cautioned. "My Transmogrifier figures are worth thousands of dollars. I've had them for more than twenty years."
Sue Ellen pointed at a large poster attached to the wall, bearing the image of a shapely woman in a tight uniform, whose face appeared to have wires and circuits running across it. "Who's that?" she wondered.
"That's Eleven of Nine," Mr. Krantz told her.
"What are those things on her face?" Sue Ellen asked.
"Those are implants."
"Okay." The girl's next question was, "What are those things on her chest?"
Soon Mrs. Krantz had dinner ready—steaks and salad, ominously. Sue Ellen ate ravenously, as the sick Ratburns had been unable to provide her with lunch money. The moose couple didn't appear concerned about her table manners or lack thereof.
She finished her meal quickly, then asked to be excused from the table. "Of course," said Mr. Krantz warmly. "Why don't you go in the living room and pick a record to listen to, and when we're done, you can tell us all about the places where you've lived."
Sue Ellen had no trouble finding the record collection on the shelf containing the home entertainment system. She recalled how many of her friends had marveled at seeing an LP for the first time, thinking it was a giant CD with twice as much music. As for herself, she grew up with albums, having never seen a CD until she moved to Elwood.
She thumbed through the available selections, muttering, "Simon and Garfunkel... Simon and Garfunkel... Simon and Garfunkel..."
"If you don't like Simon and Garfunkel," called Mr. Krantz from the dining room, "we also have some James Taylor."
She finally settled on an album by Tyrone Bellows, entitled, "I Love You More Than the Girl in the Other Song".
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Having spent another afternoon skateboarding and spying in front of Mansch's house, Fern and Buster stopped in at the Sugar Bowl. The venerable ice cream shop had seen a decrease in patronage since the Muffin Man coffee house opened nearby, but it maintained its reputation as The Place to Hang Out After School.
At one of the tables, Beat was quizzing Buster and Fern about their findings. "I wish I could take part in your surveillance activities," said the British girl, looking over Fern's boyish disguise with amusement. "However, as you can see, I've passed the point where I can convincingly masquerade as a boy."
"You'd be bored anyway," said Buster. "So far nothing interesting has happened. We haven't seen any shady characters go in and out of his house."
As they discussed the situation with Binky and Molly, Beat's cell phone rang. "I've got a call," she told her friends.
"We'll talk some more later," said Fern as she and Buster rose from the table.
Once the pair had walked out of the ice cream shop, Buster glanced about suspiciously. About a block away he saw a short man standing on a corner. The man had a hippie-like mop of shaggy hair on his scalp, and what appeared to be an elephant face.
"Hmm," Buster thought aloud. "I think that guy's been following us."
"Or maybe he's just going in the same direction," Fern suggested. "Things like that happen."
Inside the Sugar Bowl, Beat was talking animatedly with Muffy over her phone. "A dress sale? Fab! Yes, I'd love to go. Thanks for bringing it to my attention."
What she didn't notice was a dark-complexioned boy with pointed ears, who stood near the ice cream bar and watched her intently. Once she ended her cell phone conversation, the boy, who appeared to be in his mid-teens, walked up to her table. "Hello," he said in a friendly tone. "Are you new?"
Beat was slightly taken aback by the boy's greeting. "New? You mean, new to the neighborhood? No, I've been here for more than a year."
"Then I wonder why I haven't seen you before," said the boy, sitting down unbidden opposite her. "My name's Alberto. Alberto Molina."
"I'm pleased to meet you," said the rabbit-aardvark girl. "I'm Beatrice Simon, but you can call me Beat."
"Are you from England?" asked Alberto.
"Yes, I am," Beat replied. "London. Where are you from?"
"I'm from Guayaquil, Ecuador."
"Really," Beat remarked with intrigue. "A friend of mine has been there. She brought back a Panama hat, and postcards from the yacht tour to the Galapagos islands."
"I never saw the Galapagos," Alberto lamented. "My family was poor. We came to the United States so my father could find a better job. He's a barber."
"Come to think of it," mused Beat, "I believe there's a new little girl at my school who comes from South America. She looks somewhat like you."
"That would be my sister, Vicita."
The conversation sailed on, as Beat and Alberto abandoned all thought of ice cream.
As they talked, a short man with shaggy hair and an elephant trunk for a nose stopped briefly at the entrance to the Sugar Bowl, and glanced inside...
----
to be continued