By Carmen Wright
Chapter One
It never fails. I try to do a perfectly normal thing, like walk the dog and all of a sudden, I’m in the middle of a mystery.
Buster, my dog, loves to go for walks. Jamie and I take him for a walk every day after school. Exercise for us, and exercise for the dog, that’s what my mom says. Everybody wins.
Like I said before, it was a perfectly normal walk. And then we saw the cat.
I’m sure you’ve seen orange tabby cats. They’re that soft orange colour mixed with creamy white stripes. This cat wasn’t orange or striped. It had scarlet red fur.
The cat walked around like a regular cat, but I thought it looked more like an elegant wild cat, with long legs and a strong body. I had never seen a cat like that before. There was only one thing to do.
“Let’s go check out that cat.”
“Um, Caitlyn, aren’t you worried about Buster?” Jamie asked, studying Buster through his glasses.
“What are you talking about? Buster loves cats,” I said.
We followed the cat. It walked along the sidewalk at edge of the bushes. We kept our distance and tried to be quiet.
“Buster! Slow down!” I said in a loud whisper.
What was I thinking? Buster hardly ever listens to me. Instead, he strained at the leash, sniffing all along the sidewalk.
Buster is a big, black, Labrador retriever. It’s hard for him to be sneaky. When the cat saw him, it arched its back and hissed. Buster barked like crazy. The cat raced away around the corner.
“Oh great, Caitlyn,” Jamie said. “I thought you said Buster liked cats.”
“He does!” I said. “My guess is that he doesn’t like red.”
Jamie rolled his eyes.
“Well, how else do I explain this?” I pulled back on Buster’s leash with both hands and dug my heels into the pavement. “Sit! Buster, sit! SIT! Good boy!”
By the time Buster sat down, I thought the cat would be long gone.
“Hey! Look!” Jamie pointed towards some bushes at the corner. The scarlet cat peeked around the bushes to spy on us. Big ears perked up high on its tiny head.
“I think it wants us to follow,” I said.
After we reached the corner, we saw the cat ahead of us. It tiptoed alongside a picket fence with pretty yellow flowers poking out and past an overgrown green hedge. Then, it disappeared up the front walkway to a big, old house.
The house seemed spooky, with boards on the windows and grass that hadn’t been cut in years. Even the rose bush near the front gate had evil looking thorns.
Suddenly, a voice boomed behind us. “What are you kids doing here?”
… end chapter one