Page 88 of Monster Daddies
Chapter Three
With a light work schedule, Ellie had plenty of free time on her hands. She used it to consider elaborate plots to uncover who the laundry thief was. Luckily, she had a childhood full of mystery books to draw from. If Harriet, Nancy, and all four Alden siblings couldn’t help her solve the mystery then no one could.
Of course, none ofthemhad ever been searching for missing underwear, but what was stolen probably didn’t matter all that much. For the next two weeks she kept a close count of how many items of clothing went out, and how many came back in. She tried, when possible, to keep an eye out while there were clothes on the line, but watching laundry dry was incredibly boring.
It didn’t help anyway. Things continued to disappear, but she did notice it happened mostly when they were left out overnight. The thief probably assumed she wouldn’t be watching then, and they were right. The items that vanished were almost always… somehow… favorites. Her favorite bra, worn and ragged but completely comfortable, was the last straw.
“I don’t believe this! Why would anyone steal an old bra? This is insane!”
The rant had started in the yard, but when her neighbor’s head had popped over the fence to see what was going on, Ellie had quickly taken it inside. Rumors about her sanity were going to start flying around the neighborhood soon, if she wasn’t careful.
This had to stop. She needed to figure out a solution before she ran out of things to wear.
The most obvious way to catch whoever was doing it was to install motion detecting cameras in the yard, but she couldn’t afford those, any more than she could afford a new dryer. But years of reading about kids solving mysteries had prepared her with some low-budget ideas.
The next time she hung out the laundry, she added some accessories. Dozens of tin cans on a string were pinned behind the clothes. Removing anything from the line would set them all off. She tested it a couple of times and the clatter it produced was good and loud. Loud enough to wake her, she hoped.
Once true night fell, she let herself out the sliding-glass door onto the back patio. She was dressed in a thin pair of cotton pajamas, and a thick coating of bug spray, when she settled herself on the old lounge chair to wait.
She tried to stay awake, but sitting in the muggy darkness made her sleepy. Despite the mosquitoes, who seemed to actually enjoy the bug spray, and the sweat running down the back of her neck, her eyes kept sliding shut, and finally she stopped fighting it and drifted off.
She sat up, heart racing. Her mind was sleep-fuddled, and she couldn’t figure out why she was outside or what had woken her. Just as she was starting to pull it together there was a sound, a slight tinkling of metal tapping against metal. The cans. The trap. Her laundry—it all came rushing back.
She held her breath, tense and listening. The yard was too dark to see a thing and the sound had been faint. Maybe a breezehad taken pity on the sweaty town and decided to blow through. Maybe a raccoon was doing a highwire act on the laundry line. She wasn’t ready to make a move yet. All she could do was wait for the next noise, and that’s when she realized the night had gone silent.
Dead silent.
Moving to a small town, she’d thought, would mean quiet peaceful nights. That hadn’t turned out to be the case. The wildlife, mostly bugs and frogs, was incredibly and continuously loud. It had taken her a while to get used to the different nocturnal soundtrack. Now the silence… was jarring.
A raccoon wouldn’t have quieted all those horny frogs. A breeze wouldn’t have shut up the incessant cricket song. Something was out there, in the dark, waiting. She felt a cold chill crawling up her back and every muscle in her body tensed as she strained to see.
And then there was a crash. Her college English professor would have called it a cacophony. In the quiet world, it sounded as loud as a marching band. Her heart lurched in her chest and began to pound as she snapped her phone up, pointing it out at the yard with a trembling hand.
Earlier she’d taken the time to program in a one-word command to engage the flashlight. She’d had the chance to choose something fun and nerdy, but she couldn’t think of anything at the time, so it was simply, “Light!”
Her phone was fully charged and the light was bright. It illuminated the entire yard. Including…
Including…
“What the fuck?” she blurted. A dark shape, human-sized and definitelynota raccoon, was half-hidden behind her clothes. “W-who’s there?” she demanded.
Project confidence. Don’t sound scared.Those were lessons she’d learned from city life, where predators, of the humanvariety, would sense fear and pounce, but this wasn’t some purse snatcher she could scare off by acting tough.
The shadowy shape was large and felt distinctly masculine, though it was hard to be sure. She slowly tilted the beam higher, until it reflected off a set of huge red eyes. Her mind tried to make them fit into a familiar context, but they were too big and too round to be human.
Her hands shook so hard she almost dropped the phone. “Hey, you b-better get out of here! The cops are already on their way!”
And then that dark shape came rushing out of the shadows, straight at her, and the last of her bravery fled. The way it moved was impossible; leaping, swooping as it crossed the yard in seconds. The last thing she saw were those eyes, as it crouched over the lounge chair and leaned down. Terror rushed up and she fainted for the first time in her life.
Chapter Four
Ellie woke up groggy and disoriented, but still immediately aware that something was wrong. The queasy anxious feeling twisting in her stomach warned her that she was in trouble, and a second later her brain filled in the details. Something large had rushed out of the shadows and… that’s all she remembered.
But now she was someplace she’d never been before, so it wasn’t hard to guess that she’d been stolen out of her yard. She fought down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She didn’t move at first, unwilling to draw attention to herself, as she slowly scanned the room.
The rough-hewn walls were unpainted, but covered with nature sketches, and odd random items. Dried flowers and plants hung down from the high ceiling and swayed gently from time to time. She could barely see the logs and beams through the clutter. It was chaotic but oddly beautiful.
At one end of the room there was a stone fireplace, cold now, but obviously used recently. And a rustic kitchen at the other end. The only light came from an oil lamp on the table, and it flickered, casting shadows on the walls. There was no one else in the room. No place for someone to hide, but there were two closed doors.
