CRASH! WENT THE mayor’s baby into an elaborate edible sculpture in the entrance of Hayseed’s Fruit and Vegetable Emporium. A rainbow of zucchini and squash, green peppers and eggplant soared into the air. For a split second, a large, plump, glistening tomato hovered like Mars above John’s head. Then . . . SPLAT! It exploded on his nose.
John plucked the seeds from his eyes and eyebrows. By some miracle of machinery, he’d managed to plow the vehicle into the deserted shop without damaging the passengers. His sister scrambled out of her seat.
“Quick, Johnny, behind the counter!”
Over the bench they flew. Boz was already there, his hair crowned with a ring of garlic.
“Have you noticed, my dear boy, that we seem to spend a disproportionate amount of our leisure time in sequestration?”
“Shhh!”
“I don’t give a flying fig for your piddly festival!” blared a depressingly familiar voice. “I want my property back!”
There was an odd creaking noise, like the gasp of a dehydrated water wheel. On his hands and knees, John crawled to the far end of the counter and peeked around.
There was his Great-Aunt Beauregard, in all her vole-coated, slab-faced glory. Her dress was irreproachable, her posture impeccable, and her expression one of righteous fury. Thanks to a grisly hawk perched on the edge of her sunbonnet, she towered over the man in the white cowboy hat beside her.
Overall, she looked pretty good for a woman strapped to an upright gurney.
John dropped behind the counter in panic.
And there was Page, disappearing into the floor.
Boz put his left finger to his lips and pointed with his right finger toward the hole. Then he too vanished.
Swift and silent, John followed, grabbing hold of the rope handle and pulling the trapdoor shut as he went.
The root cellar smelled of rat urine, but it was relatively safe. For the moment.
“Johnny.” Page’s voice tickled his ear. “What are we going to do?”
John pinched her to be quiet.
Clomp, rumble, clomp, rumble. The vibrations from above sent a shower of dirt trickling through a knothole in the floorboards. Cautiously, John peered through it.
The man in the white hat had pushed Great-Aunt Beauregard farther into the room and was now down on his knees, fishing turnips out from the wheels of the mayor’s baby.
“They’re not in there, you dolt-headed dimwit! They’re not anywhere in this room!”
Great-Aunt Beauregard’s eyes roamed toward the floor. John ducked reflexively.
“Look, lady,” a voice drawled. “If you hadn’t insisted on holding me up, I would’ve had your kids safely in hand. As it is, I’ve got a guard posted on the front door and my men on the alert. We got ’em locked up tight. It’d be a lot easier if you weren’t here to help.”
John risked another glance through the knothole. The two figures had faced off like heavyweight boxers.
“It’s not my fault some fool of a surveyor didn’t know how to orient a road sign!” his great-aunt rejoined. “As it is, I’m in remarkable condition for a woman who fell into a bog and disconnected my peritonia! Do you realize I was forced to spend three months in traction before I was able to leave Pludgett and trace that thing they call Boz? You’re lucky that I have the strength to address you.”
The sheriff didn’t look like he thought himself particularly lucky.
“Okay, then I’ll search the store,” he countered. “And you stay with the guard outside.”
“Fine!” Great-Aunt Beauregard replied. “But remember, my great-niece and -nephew are unwilling accessories in this automotive debacle. Your job is to release the Coggins into my custody and prosecute their carrot-topped kidnapper to the full extent of the law.”
“Don’t tell me my job, lady!”
“And don’t think I won’t be reporting your insolence to the mayor!”
Another burst of dirt exploded through the knothole. The stomp and rumble faded into silence.
“Johnny!” Page hissed, yanking at his shirt. “They’re going to find us!”
John shook her off.
“I know!” he hissed back. “Boz?”
A comet of red flashed amid the gloom at the back of the cellar.
“Boz, wait!”
The two siblings chased the comet to a flight of stairs, emerging in a passageway between the store and an outbuilding.
“Boz!”
Boz paused halfway up a fence.
“Where are you going?” John demanded.
“I’m afraid the time has come, the optimist said, to wish you a fond farewell. I have an appointment in Lombardo with a chiropodist, and it may require a thorough reconfiguration of the kidneys. Do look me up if you’re ever in the area.”
And with that, he was off along the rooftops.
“Where’s he going?” asked Page.
“He’s running away.”
“He’s leaving us?”
“Seems so.” John watched the last of Boz’s locks vanish over an outhouse. Somehow he wasn’t particularly surprised.
“What do we do?”
A piercing whistle filled the air.
“It’s the acrobat from the circus! The kidnapper!”
“After him!”
“Now, Page!”
Grabbing his sister by the hand, John streaked to the end of the passageway and, once again, cautiously peered around the corner.
Like a spring river in flood, the entire town appeared to be surging past the sunlit gap. Tightening his grip even further, John dragged Page up the side street and toward the crowd.
The town was a maelstrom. Drunks, dogs, and teens were seeping out of every door, swelling the wave of pursuers. There was a rush of hooves and barks and shouts and feet, all concentrated toward the end of town. Apparently Boz’s stealthy escape hadn’t gone exactly as planned.
“Quick!” John said to his sister. Fighting against the tide of pursuers, he headed for the closest hitching post. Seizing the only horse left available—a bay mare—he pushed Page onto the saddle and jumped up behind her. With a yank of the reins, he charged down the road from which they had come.
When he looked back at Hayseed, the town had been drained of every drop of human life save one. A lone, lonely figure standing stiff as a palace guard outside the vegetable emporium. His practically apoplectic and completely immobile great-aunt.