Socks

Chapter 3

"So that proves it!" Charlotte cries triumphantly. "The dogs did do it!"

"Well, I suppose all the evidence points towards them - except for the hair color," I admit.

"Well, I just want to find out where those dogs hid my socks. You only found one?" Marcy says quickly.

I nodded, holding up the dirty, crumpled up sock. "I don't know where the others would be."

"Well, let's go look!" Charlotte suggests.

So that's what we do. But between the three of us, after searching the laundry room and the entire house for nearly an hour, we meet up empty-handed. Marcy and Charlotte are growing agitated.

"Where are my socks?!" Charlotte growls. "My feet are cold!"

"Yeah, my Halloween socks were a gift!" Marcy complains.

I just stand there silently, still thinking. I wasn't quite ready to believe that Salt and Pepper were the culprits. Suddenly, I had a eureka moment.

"I've got it!" I yelled happily.

"What?!" Charlotte exclaims. "Do you know where our socks are?"

"No, but I know who stole them!"

"Um, yeah, your dogs did!" Marcy said, as if this was totally obvious. But I shook my head.

"No they didn't. Remember that lost cat poster you saw?" Marcy nods. "What color was it?"

"Uh... gray?"

"And what color were the hairs in my room?"

"THE CAT DID IT!" Charlotte shrieks, thrilled.

"And that's what Salt and Pepper were barking at in the garage!" I told her, nodding my head vigorously. "And it was strong enough to push through the doggy-door."

"You figured it out, Eleanor!" Marcy says happily. "But now we just have one problem."

"What's that?"

"That cat is lost. We have no clue where it is. And we're out of socks to steal, so it won't be coming back."

My spirits crash and Charlotte's smile disappears. We look at each other hopelessly.

"Well, what else can we do?" Charlotte says desperately.

"We have to go look for it," I say confidently.

"Look for it?! Eleanor, it could be anywhere," Marcy says incredulously.

"It has to be around here somewhere," I say, trying to keep up the 'you've gotta do what you've gotta do' attitude.

"So we better get going," Charlotte announces, pulling on her boots. Marcy still looks skeptical, but she pulls on her hoodie and follows us out the door.

~ ~ ~

An hour later, we're still walking around our subdivision, looking through areas heavy with trees and knocking on people's doors to ask if they've seen a stray cat around lately. I've brought a can of tuna, hoping that perhaps the scent would attract it, but haven't had any luck.

"How much longer do we have to keep doing this?" Marcy asks after knocking on the door of yet another neighbor unable to help.

"Dinner is at six o'clock, and we're going to keep going until then," I inform her, checking my watch. It's four o'clock. Marcy groans, and Charlotte sighs.

But an hour later, I see that if we go any longer Marcy and Charlotte will collapse from either boredom, hopelessness or both, so we head back early. We use the nearest entrance, through the garage. When I approach the door, I see that it's already cracked open. I tell myself that somebody must not have shut it all the way when letting the dogs out, but I'm still suspicious. Frowning, I slowly open it all the way and peer around it. Salt and Pepper are sitting there, wagging their tails at me, but nothing else is there. Marcy and Charlotte push the door all the way open and sneak inside quietly, pressing themselves against the wall like spies. I roll my eyes and tiptoe after them. We make our way upstairs and stop outside of my bedroom. I hear scratching noises. Without warning I swing the door open forcefully and scan the room.

A gray cat is sitting on top of Charlotte's suitcase. We stare at each other for a minute, neither one of us moving, until Marcy and Charlotte burst in and gasp. The cat hops down and sprints out the door between our legs, bolting down the stairs faster than I thought possible.

"Come on!" I call, and start chasing the cat through the living room, kitchen and laundry room and out the garage door. Marcy and Charlotte quickly catch up with me, and we chase the dull blur all the way down our street and two blocks farther.

Finally the cat takes a sharp left and disappears underneath the porch of an old abandoned, peeling yellow house. I drop to my knees and try to see through the inky black darkness. I can just barely make out two intensely glowing green eyes, but nothing else.

Marcy fishes into her pocket, pulled out her phone and activated the flashlight app, silently handing it to me. I sweep the light across the ground. I find the cat crouched next to a pile of socks. I see a pair with hamburgers on them, my French fry socks - all of our socks were there.

The cat growls at me before zipping out from underneath the porch and starts to make for the street, but Charlotte is too quick for him. She grabs him and picks him up, stroking him gently. Eventually he stops growling and hangs limply in her arms. Marcy crawls underneath the porch to retrieve our socks while I hold her phone to light the way. And so we parade home, finally successful.

Epilogue: We return the cat to its teary-eyed owner and split the reward between the three of us. We give the extra two dollars to the donation jar at the grocery store for the animal shelter. The next week Marcy and Charlotte return to their own homes, and I finally get the peaceful night of sleep I wanted.