Free Who Stole Halloween? by Martha Freeman

She’s making a unicorn out of play dough at preschool. Her favorite song is ‘The Cat Came Back.’ ” Mom shook herhead and laughed. “Yah-yak-yak—gosh, a kid like that can get on your nerves!”
    Shoot, I thought. Was my mom as bad as Officer Krichels? People who are little and annoying are not necessarily dumb, too. Mom pulled her notebook out of her back pocket and flipped through the pages.
    â€œHere it is,” Mom said. “According to Cammie, Kyle
tortured
the poor cat.” She read from the notebook: “ ‘He always went around yanking Halloween’s ears and pouring poison in them.’ ”
    â€œWhat?” I tried to picture pale, sad-faced Kyle hurting a fly, let alone his own cat.
    Mom laughed, which wasn’t precisely what I expected when she had just told me about a kid torturing a cat. “Alex,” she said, “haven’t you ever yanked on Luau’s ears and poured poison in them?”
    I was shocked. “Of course not. Luau’s my buddy!”
    â€œOh yes?” She was still smiling. “Let me ask you something else. Do the words
ear mites
ring a bell?”
    Ohhhh
. Now I got it. Ear mites are tiny, itchy bugs. If your cat gets them, it goes crazy trying to scratch, so the vet gives you a bottle of eardrops. When I gave them to Luau, he hated it—kept trying to wriggle away while I held tight.
    â€œCammie must have seen Kyle treating the ear mites and thought he was torturing his cat,” I said.
    Mom nodded. “Plus she’s a typical kid, loved tattling on her big brother. I double-checked with his parents. They even showed me the bottle from the vet.”
    Good old Mom. She had solved one mystery, at least. Kyle did love his cat. You would never go to the trouble of “yanking its ears and pouring poison in them” if you didn’t.

Chapter Twenty

    The next day turned out to be one of those unusual ones where everything we did in school actually required the use of my brain. That meant I didn’t have a chance to think about who stole Halloween—not to mention five other cats—till Yasmeen and I were on our way home.
    As we turned the corner onto Chickadee Court my stomach rumbled. Dad hadn’t made it to the grocery store yesterday, so instead of a sandwich there was a Ziploc bag of Pirate Berry Crunch in my lunch. And Pirate Berry Crunch just doesn’t stick with you.
    Thinking of soup, I said, “What if we talk to Bub again?”
    Yasmeen was hungry, too. “Good idea.”
    Bub had another guest in his living room when we walked in. This one was curled up on the recliner with his head resting on the remote. On TV was a black-and-white movie with the sound turned down. In it a pretty lady on scaffolding was trying to fix a big dinosaur skeleton.
    Bub nodded at the set. “
Bringing Up Baby
,” he said. “ ‘Baby’ is a leopard—and from the feline point of view, a dish. Luau purrs every time she comes on.”
    Luau heard his name, stretched, and rolled over, exposing his tummy. I tickled him, and he
mrrrrow
ed and batted at my hand, which meant,
Please, Alex, not in front of the neighbors!
    Bub served us lentil soup and sat down at the head of the table. “How’s the other guy look?” he asked me.
    It took me a second to realize he was talking about the Band-Aid on my forehead. “The other guy was a tree,” I said.
    Bub nodded thoughtfully. “There’s been a lotta that lately,” he said, “trees attacking innocent kids. I saw it on Fox.”
    Bub tried to keep his face straight but couldn’t. He laughed and laughed, which made me laugh, too. Yasmeen shook her head like we were a couple of kindergartners. Finally Bub wiped the tears from his face with a paper towel and asked us how the case was going.
    â€œWe’re kind of at a dead end,” Yasmeen said. Then she told him about the missing cats with their