Pet Shop Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

path with Jessie. “I thought we were going to be that dog’s dinner.”
    Jessie walked under the streetlight to see better. She flipped through the order slips. Finally she found the one she was looking for. “Right here. It says right here that One-twenty Maple Street gets a ten-pound bag of Diet Meow Chow.”
    “Well, I’m not going to argue with a mean man and a mean dog. Besides, I’m so hungry, I could almost eat some Meow Chow myself. We’d better ask Mr. Fowler about it. Somebody might be waiting for this order.”
    Jessie nodded. “We have to go back to the pet shop anyway. We need to get a dog flea collar for Cody at Seventy-one Maple instead of the cat collar that was marked on the order slip.”
    “I’d rather face Brutus again than ask Mr. Fowler about these mistakes,” Henry said. “But I guess he’s the only one who can help us figure out these deliveries.”
    The younger children were chilly and tired. Henry explained that the deliveries weren’t over yet. “Tell you what. No need for all of us to go back. Jessie can take you home. I’ll get the deliveries straightened out.”
    “But we want to come,” Benny said. “That’s our job. Besides, I’m not hungry anymore.”
    Everyone laughed at Benny’s remark.
    “Those aren’t words we hear too often from Benny,” Henry said to Soo Lee. “Let’s get going, then. Maybe Mr. Fowler is at the shop finishing the paperwork he talked about.”
    The Pretty Bird Pet Shop was dark when the Aldens returned. All they could see inside were the dim lights of the aquariums. The bird cages were covered. The small animals seemed to be curled up, asleep in their dark cages.
    “Mr. Fowler is gone,” Jessie said. “I guess we can’t straighten out those orders after all.”
    Henry waved the children toward the back. “Let’s check the storage building before we leave.”
    The Aldens didn’t mean to be sneaky, but they were very quiet children. That’s how they happened to hear Mr. Fowler before he heard them.
    “Just in time,” Mr. Fowler said to someone the children couldn’t see. “I’ll be done with them a couple of days from now when Mrs. Tweedy is gone again.”
    The children stiffened when they heard the flapping of heavy wings and a terrible squawking.
    “Get her in the cage,” a second man’s voice said. “And hurry up about it. I didn’t have time to clip her wings. She wouldn’t last long in this weather if she flew away. Open the cage door.”
    The Aldens heard a chattering sound, then Mr. Fowler’s voice. “Is that monkey tied up? The last thing I need is a monkey running all over the place. I’m telling you, these people had better be telling the truth about wanting it. This macaw parrot I can unload easy. But a monkey? Who’d buy it?”
    “Yip, yip, yip,” the Aldens heard coming from the storage building.
    “Awk, awk, awk,” the children heard when one of the men slammed the cage door shut. “Awk, awk, awk.”
    Jessie straightened up. “Come on, Henry. We’ll find out what’s going on. The rest of you stay here,” she whispered. She raised her voice. “Mr. Fowler? Mr. Fowler? Are you back there?”
    “Those kids again!” Jessie and Henry overheard Mr. Fowler say as he came out of the storage building. “I told you the shop was closing at five o’clock. What about your deliveries?”
    Henry stepped forward to explain. “That’s why we came back, Mr. Fowler. One of the slips said to deliver a cat flea collar, but the customer needs one for her dog. And another slip had the wrong address.”
    Jessie thought she noticed a small smile pass over Mr. Fowler’s face.
    “Oh, and where was that?” Mr. Fowler asked, hiding the smile now.
    “Nowhere special,” Henry said. He wasn’t about to let Mr. Fowler know about Brutus. “All we want to do is get the right orders to the right customers.”
    That’s when Henry nearly jumped out of his sneakers. “Hey, hey! What’s this?” he asked, when he felt