-Not much to say this time, I know the plot isn't going very far now but it will, don't worry. Please Review!
"Tell me again what happened?" Roy asked as he dabbed disinfectant on Mullet Finger's wounds.
"Alright, I stopped in to visit the owls as I was running by, like I always do, what I was jumped by a big fox." Explained Mullet Fingers.
"How do you know it was a fox?" Roy asked.
Mullet Fingers winced as Roy dabbed the disinfectant on. Both boys were hoping the scratches weren't infected.
"The thing was attacking me, man, I'm pretty sure I could tell what it was. So anyways, I knew it had been set loose by Muckle, cause I saw him carrying a cage into his house the other night, so I rounded up all the owls and ran back here." Mullet Fingers said.
Roy quickly finished cleaning up Mullet Finger's wounds. As they left the washroom, Mullet Fingers began to go towards the front door.
"Where're you going?" Roy demanded.
"Relax, I'm just going to get my stuff, I left it in the woods at the golf course and I don't want it to get soaked." Said Mullet Fingers.
Roy debated letting him go out again for a moment. He couldn't exactly put the kid under house arrest.
"Okay, but you aren't going to Muckle's house," said Roy.
"Fine."
", or taking any detours,"
"Alright!"
"And could you at lease put some runners on? You could get really sick running around barefoot in this weather." Said Roy.
Mullet Fingers smiled and shook his head. "Honestly, man, sometimes you sound so much like my sister, it's scary." He said as he walked out the door.
Chuck Muckle sat in his office, looking angrily at his trashed house. Officer Delinko had been no help at all, Muckle could tell he wasn't really writing anything down when he was supposed to be taking notes. He was awaiting the arrival of a large Boa Constrictor, which he planned to release in the owl sanctuary if the fox didn't take care of everything. Suddenly, his telephone rang. He answered.
"Hello?" He said.
"Can the small talk, Muckle, are those owls dead yet?" Snapped a voice on the other end.
The man Chuck Muckle was talking to was the vice-president of the entire Mother Paula's company. His name was James Howan and Muckle found him to be much worse than he ever was when he worked for Mother Paula's.
"I don't know yet, sir, I haven't been over since the other night." Said Muckle, trying to contain his anger. He finally realized that it wasn't fun being on the receiving of any angry Mother Paula's big shot.
"Why not? Am I not having you paid to rid Coconut Cove of those wretched owls? Why aren't you answering me Mr Muckle?" Sneered Howan.
"Please, Mr Howan, don't worry about a thing. I'm having the owls taken care of as we speak." Said Muckle, trying very hard to keep his voice steady.
"Mr Muckle, I called you over two weeks ago to ask you if you would get rid of those owls. You accepted. You know what is on the line here, Mr Muckle. Now tell me, why is it taking so damn long?" Snapped Howan furiously.
"There aren't any problems, Mr Howan, just that stupid kid messing around again." Said Muckle.
"What's the boy's name?" Demanded Howan.
Muckle picked up and old newspaper article off his desk and read the name out. "Leep. Napoleon Bridger Leep." Muckle recited.
"Leep. Alright. Let us at Mother Paula's take care of the delinquent. You work on getting rid of those owls. Allow me to remind you, Mr Muckle, that if this goes smoothly you'll have your job back before you can say key-lime pancake." Said Howan before hanging up.
"Easier said than done." Muttered Muckle as he put the phone back on the receiver.
"...yeah mom, everything's going fine." Roy waved at Mullet Fingers who had just opened the front door and crept inside.
"I know, I'll make sure to eat a big dinner." Said Roy into the telephone "No, I'm not planning on going out, not in this weather. Alright, bye."
Roy hung up the phone as Mullet Fingers put his bag of clothes down. "Who was that?" He asked.
"My mom. Their flight's been delayed because of the weather." Said Roy.
Mullet Fingers suddenly looked worried. "They aren't coming home are they?" He asked, his voice suddenly turning to that worried and serious tone.
"No, course not. When my dad is going on a trip he gets there no matter how long he has to wait." Said Roy calmly.
Mullet Fingers looked slightly relieved. "How're the owls?" He asked.
"Fine, I found some meat in the fridge that I gave them, though I think they'd prefer bugs." Said Roy.
Beatrice's stepbrother proceeded towards the front door. "I'll go catch them some." He said.
Roy leapt up and pulled him back inside. "They'll be fine until the rain lets up. Why don't you got freshen up? There's a shower in the bathroom upstairs." Said Roy.
He knew that, to Mullet Fingers, a shower was irresistible. He ran his hand through his grimy blond hair and looked down at his extremely muddy feet. "Yeah, I guess I could use a shower." He said.
So Mullet Fingers went upstairs to take a shower while Roy sat down on the couch again, unsure of what to do, dreading the moment the rain stopped. For as soon as it did, he knew Mullet Fingers would try to take revenge on Chuck Muckle for letting the fox loose at the owl sanctuary. Roy suddenly wondered if Beatrice was back from camp yet. He was sure she would've called by now if she was. For a moment, Roy considered calling the Leep household and asking for her, then thought logically. The first thing Beatrice would do upon getting back would be to go see her stepbrother. And when she couldn't find him, she'd ask Roy if he knew where he was. Therefore, Beatrice could not be back yet, seeing as she hadn't called Roy at all. Roy flipped on the TV again, but still found nothing of interest. He turned the TV off and went to check up on th owls. All ten of them were nestled tightly together on Roy's bed. They had eaten all the meat he had left out for them. As he watched the burrowing owls sleep, he started to really think about what was going on. Why would Chuck Muckle be trying to kill the owls. Wasn't that the very reason he'd los t his job at Mother Paula's in the first place? Roy went back downstairs and found that the bag of clothes Mullet Fingers had brought back had fallen from the table he'd put it on and the clothes were all over the floor. Roy was picking them up and putting them back in the bag. He took noticed to several things. One, all the clothes were exceedingly dirty and didn't look very healthy to wear. Two, Mullet Fingers only had one pair of long pants, and they were his torn up pair of blue jeans that certainly wouldn't keep him warm in the rain. And three, there were still no shoes or socks at all. Roy would've put Mullet Finger's clothes in the washing machine, the only problem was, he didn't know how to work it and would likely end up ruining the clothes completely. Roy took the clothes into the guest room, which was mainly a storage room with a bed and some boxes. Hey took the boxes off the bed and stacked them in the corner, then put some bed sheets on the bed and made it up for Mullet Fingers. He then proceeded to going through one of the boxes he'd stacked in the corner and found an old dog bed for a dog the Eberhardts had once owned. He took it upstairs to his room and carefully picked up each of the owls and put them neatly in the bed. The owls were not to impressed, not that they didn't like the bed but owls don't generally like being picked up and moved twice in one day.
"Sorry guys." Roy said to the angry owls as he put the last one in the bed.
Coo-coo! Exclaimed the largest one.
It was clearly trying to frighten Roy off. Roy made himself look frightened and backed slowly out of the room. The large owl looked very triumphant. A few minutes later, Mullet Fingers emerged from the shower and went down to the guest room where he put on his torn up blue jeans and his red jersey. Roy noticed that Mullet Finger's hair looked much different when it was combed back.
"When's Beatrice going to be back?" Roy asked as he made lunch.
Roy had never been a very good cook.. He had tried making chicken noodle soup using his mother's recipe but that turned into a disaster so Roy decided to clean out the pot and make Macaroni and Cheese instead. Mullet Fingers devoured the mac and cheese as though he hadn't eaten in years. He had three helpings.
"I dunno, sometime this week I think. Lonna made her go to it, some kind of special anger management course. Bea was furious. You shoulda been there." Said Mullet Fingers, cramming his mouth with a fourth helping of mac and cheese.
"Were you there?" Roy asked.
"Yeah, she practically begged me not to come and interfere when Lonna was taking her. I did anyways though. After Lonna came back, I hijacked her car and drove it into a lamppost." Mullet Fingers said as though this was something that people often did.
"Didn't you get hurt?" Roy asked,
"Nah, I jumped out at the last minute." Said Mullet Fingers.
He wanted a fifth helping of macaroni but unfortunately Roy didn't make enough. It was late afternoon now and the rain still showed no sign of letting up. At one point, the door began knocking. Mullet Fingers went and hid in the guest room while Roy answered it. It none other than Officer Delinko whose patrol car had just happened to break down right outside of Roy's house.
"Gee that was a stroke of luck, eh? Of all the places my car could break down." He said as Roy offered him a seat while he went to get the phone so that Officer Delinko could call a tow-truck.
"So, I hear your parents are out of town this weekend." He said conversationally as Roy brought the phone to him.
"Yeah." Said Roy unenthusiastically.
Roy assumed that his father must have mentioned to Officer Delinko that they would be out of town for the weekend and asked him to check up on Roy.
After calling for a tow-truck, Officer Delinko hung up the phone and started making unwanted conversation again.
"So I guess you haven't heard from that friend of yours, then? Napoleon Bridger? No, I thought not, seeing as your father's in law enforcement. Here I was thinking that kid was all right, then he goes and starts vandalizing property again." Said Officer Delinko.
At that moment, there was a loud thump coming from the guest room. Officer Delinko jumped up and had his hand on his gun when Roy said quickly "That's uh, that cat! He usually knocks things over. Calm down in there - uh- Fluffy!" Roy added, banging on the wall.
"You sure?" The police officer asked.
"Yeah, it's fine, don't worry. Oh look, isn't that the tow-truck?" Said Roy, pointing out the living room window.
"Oh, so it is. Well, thanks for letting me use your phone Roy. Feel free to give me a call if you have any trouble, you know where to reach me, right?" He asked.
"911?" Roy guessed.
"You got it." Said Officer Delinko before departing.
Roy closed the door behind him and let out a great sigh. Mullet Fingers came out of his room. "What were you doing in there?" Hissed Roy.
Mullet Fingers looked angry. "He was saying I messed up Muckle's house!" He exclaimed.
"You did mess up Muckle's house." Roy pointed out.
"Yeah but I had a good reason! Ah well, it doesn't matter. The cop bought your story, eh? Ya know, maybe I should just take the owls and go. I shouldn't have gotten you involved again." He said darkly.
"Wait, just tell me what's going on, okay? What's the real reason you've been messing with Muckle's house?" Roy asked quickly.
Mullet Fingers looked frustrated. "I told ya, Tex, Muckle's been trying to hurt the owls! What else do you want me to tell you?" He snapped.
Roy opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment a loud rapping came from the door. Mullet Fingers ran upstairs as Roy went to answer it. Maybe Officer Delinko was back. He opened it to find Beatrice Leep standing in the doorway.
"Hiya cowgirl. You seen my brother lately?" She asked, showing herself in.
"Uh, yeah he's upstairs with the owls." Said Roy.
"He's what?" Beatrice snapped.
"It's a long story." Said Roy, taking Beatrice upstairs.