Patches Read Free

asked. “I remember once a friend of my mom’s had to give up her dog because she was allergic. She brought him to one of these places. They promised to find him a good home.”
    Charles felt a knot in his stomach. He hated to think about people giving up their dogs. He would
never
give up Buddy, no matter how sneezy or itchy he got! But he knew that bringing a dog to a shelter was the responsible thing to do if you really couldn’t take care of it anymore. It was way,
way
better than leaving it somewhere like a gas station. That was where Snowball had been left. Snowball was one of the cutest puppies the Petersons had ever fostered. He was a fluffy white terrier who now lived a very happy and comfortable life with a lady named Mrs. Peabody.
    Charles led the way into the shelter. The barking got louder as soon as they entered the main lobby. His sister was standing behind the counter.
    “Hey!” Lizzie looked up and smiled. “What are you guys doing here?” She put down the marker she was using to make name tags for the dog cages. “Is everything okay?” Lizzie stopped smiling when she saw the serious looks on the boys’ faces. “Charles, what is it? Is Buddy all right?”
    “Buddy’s fine,” Charles said. “It’s another dog that’s in trouble.”
    “A beagle,” Sammy added. “Just a little puppy.”
    Lizzie came out from behind the counter. “What are you talking about? What beagle puppy? Where?”
    “He was all tangled up in his leash!”
    “He was crying!”
    “His name is Patches!”
    “The people were
home!”
    Sammy and Charles were both talking at once.
    Lizzie held up both hands. “Hold on, hold on!” She made the boys sit down. “Wait here,” she said. “I have a feeling Ms. Dobbins should hear this.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    “All right, now. Tell me
exactly
what you saw.” Ms. Dobbins uncapped her pen. She was the director of Caring Paws, and she was
crazy
about animals. Charles sometimes thought Ms. Dobbins liked dogs better than people. The director had told Lizzie to bring the boys right into her office when she heard about what they had seen. Now she wanted a full report.
    Charles, Sammy, and Lizzie sat across from Ms. Dobbins. She had pulled a form out of a folder and she was ready to fill it in. “We keep track of things like this,” she said. “If someone reports that an animal is being mistreated, we make a file for that animal and we follow up. If we discover that the animal needs our help, we get intouch with the police. In some cases, we even end up taking the animal away from its owners.”
    Charles was shocked. “Really? So if I didn’t treat Buddy right, you could take him away?”
    Ms. Dobbins smiled. “From what I hear from Lizzie, Buddy gets treated like a king. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” Her smile disappeared. “But not every dog is so lucky. Tell me about this beagle you saw.”
    First she asked for the exact address of the house where Patches lived.
    “It’s on Ferndale Drive,” Sammy told her. He looked at Sammy. “But we don’t know the house number.” He described the house and the garage.
    “It’s next door to the haunted house,” Sammy added.
    Ms. Dobbins raised her eyebrows. “Haunted house?” Then she laughed. “Oh, I know exactly which house you mean. The old Turner place. It’s been abandoned for years.” She made a note onher form. “Okay, now we know
where.
So, tell me
what.
What did you see?”
    Charles and Sammy described the howling they’d heard, and how they thought it was a ghost, and how they had discovered Patches all tangled up in his leash.
    Ms. Dobbins kept nodding and saying, “I see,” and “uh-huh,” as she wrote everything down. Once in a while she shook her head and made a
tsk
sound. And she sighed when she heard about the man in the red sweater who was home the whole time.
    When the boys finished their story, she sighed again. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know how upsetting it is to