Home Sweet Motel

  “Clara!” I said, panting hard, like I’d been running all over searching for her. “There you are!”

  She looked me up and down.

  “We have an emergency in one of the rooms!”

  Clara simply arched an eyebrow. She doesn’t panic easily.

  “¿Otro inodoro obstruido?”

  “Yes,” I said, building on what Clara had just given me, “another clogged toilet!”

  Fact: when you live in a motel, you learn how to say “clogged toilet” in several different languages.

  “Do you know how many clogged toilets I have plunged in my years of service to your family, Señor P.T.?”

  “Too many!”

  “Eh?”

  “Mom and I were both just saying it isn’t fair that you’re always the one who has to unclog all the, you know, inodoros obstruidos.”

  “Only for two more years,” said Clara. “Then my daughter, she graduate medical school. University Florida. Go, Gators.”

  “Clara,” I said, “Mom and I want to make absolutely certain that you’re one hundred percent happy in your position here at the Wonderland Motel.”

  “Oh, I am, P.T. Muy, muy feliz. You know how much I love tu madre and tu abuelo and you.”

  She reached for the plunger.

  “Let me do it.”

  “No, P.T. It is my job.”

  “But your shift is over. If you lend me your plunger and a passkey, I’ll go take care of the, uh, mess myself.”

  I held out my hand.

  “¿Estás seguro?”

  “Yes, Clara. I’m sure.”

  “Gracias.”

  She slid the master key off her key ring and handed it to me.

  “You are a very sweet boy. I hope it isn’t another college boy with a watermelon.”

  “Me too. Oh, can I borrow your clipboard?”

  “My clipboard?”

  “I like to keep notes when I unclog toilets.”

  Up went that skeptical eyebrow. “You do?”

  “Sure. If we keep records and figure out which rooms are clogging their toilets on a regular basis, we can cut back on the number of toilet paper rolls we put in those bathrooms while keeping an eye out for any incoming watermelons.”

  Clara arched her eyebrow even higher.

  “It was, uh, Grandpa’s idea,” I sputtered.

  “Sí, sí.” She shook her head. “Señor Grandpa.”

  Then she tweeted like a cuckoo bird.

  Like I said, Clara has worked at the Wonderland since forever. She is very used to Grandpa and his nutty ideas.

  She handed me her clipboard. It had a list of all the rooms in the motel. She checked them off as she cleaned them. I’ve always found that carrying a clipboard makes you look more official and authorized.

  Even when what you’re really doing is sneaking into somebody’s room.

  I ran to the lobby just as Gloria was coming out.

  “Rooms 103 and 114,” she said.

  “Room 103 is closer,” I said. “We’ll start there.”

  We went to the door and knocked.

  “Housekeeping,” I announced, pretending to check Clara’s clipboard, just in case any other guests were watching us.

  No answer.

  I knocked again.

  “Housekeeping.”

  Still no response.

  “Whose room is this?” I asked.

  “Bob Jones,” said Gloria. “So that means he’s, uh…”

  “Stanley. The older brother.”

  I slid the key into the lock.

  “Don’t turn on the lights,” I told Gloria. “Just in case they finish dinner early. We don’t want them knowing somebody’s in here.”

  We tiptoed around the room, both of us using our smartphones as flashlights.

  “Bingo,” said Gloria.

  “You found it?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “ ‘Welcome to Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World.’ ”

  “I meant on the back.”

  “Oh. Right.” She flipped it over. “Ew. Gross. Some lady kissed the stamp with her grungy red lipstick.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I saw that when Stanley—I mean, ‘Bob Jones’—checked in. Seriously disgusting.”

  “Okay, it says, ‘Stanley—you think you’re such a big, big man. Always smiling! Ha! If you ask me, you’re all empty inside. Too bad you’ll never take that trip to Happy Town you’ve been planning, because I’m hiding the rocks someplace you’ll never find them. P.S. I’m calling the cops on you. You’ll be in jail long before you figure out the clue I just gave you. P.P.S. I dig Sid. Your little brother is a hunk muffin.’ ”

  Gloria and I didn’t need to be Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes to figure out why the Sneemer brothers were eyeballing Smilin’ Sam, the Wonderland’s big, empty-inside man.

  “You think Sheila Bailey really hid the diamonds inside the Muffler Man statue?” asked Gloria.

  “Maybe,” I said. “He’s a ‘big, big man.’ He’s hollow—so he’s definitely ‘empty inside.’ He’s always smiling, because he’s molded that way. Sheila might’ve found or cut a tiny hole in the statue so she could slip the bag of jewels inside.”

  “That’s probably what the Sneemer brothers think,” said Gloria. “Maybe that’s why they decided to go to dinner right after they checked out Smilin’ Sam. Maybe they saw a patched-over hole!”

  “We should check it out, too—right after we check out that other postcard.”

  “Why do we need the other one?” asked Gloria.

  “Because Sheila probably sent an even better clue to Sid. Don’t forget, back in 1973, she had a crush on the guy.”

  “Right. He was a ‘hunk muffin.’ ”

  “Besides, this might be our only chance to search his room, too. Who knows when they’ll leave the motel grounds again? Come on.”

  “P.T.?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I still think searching someone’s room without permission or, you know, a search warrant is totally illegal.”

  “Maybe it is. And I promise I’ll look it up if I ever become a cop or a lawyer. For now, I’m just a kid trying to save his family and their motel. Plus, I have a clipboard, so we look official.”

  “Okay,” said Gloria. “I can live with that. Let’s book.”

  We locked up Stanley’s room and hurried down to 114. Once again, Clara’s passkey did the trick.

  “Gross,” said Gloria.

  “Totally.”

  The room was dark except for a table lamp Sid had left on. The lamp was right next to his hairpiece, which looked like a squirrel after a truck rolls over it on the freeway.

  And the postcard was tucked under the toupee.

  “I’m not touching anything near that flattened hair mat,” said Gloria.

  “I’ve got it,” I said.

  I used one of the Wonderland pens next to the message pad on the bedside table to pry up the trampled carpet of fake hair. Carefully sliding the postcard out from under what looked like roadkill, I tried to breathe through my mouth, because the limp toupee smelled like Vicks VapoRub mixed with masking tape glue.

  The front of the Wonder World postcard was exactly the same as the one we’d found in Stanley Sneemer’s room. The note on the back, of course, was way different. Plus, Sheila had dotted all the i’s on Sid’s card with hearts.

  I read her message out loud: “ ‘Sid, Schnookums. With your blowhard brother out of the picture, the two of us can book a one-way ticket to Happy Town—if you’re not afraid of hurting the big, empty-headed man. Follow my tracks. See you soon, hunk muffin. P.S. I just gave you a clue, cutie. P.P.S. I know which rock I want on my engagement ring. The biggest one.’ ”

  “Okay,” said Gloria. “She’s definitely talking diamonds.”

  “And ‘hurting the big, empty-headed man’ means cutting into Smilin’ Sam!”

  We slapped each other a high five, something I only do when I am extremely pump
ed.

  This was huge. We’d cracked the case. All that reward money would be ours! The Wonderland was saved!

  That’s when I heard a key slide into the door lock.

  The Sneemer brothers were back!

  I quickly slipped the postcard back under the bad wig. I plucked up the clipboard.

  Fluorescent fixtures flickered on all around us.

  “What the—” said Sid, who’d just flipped up the light switch next to the door.

  “What are you two kids doing in my brother’s room?” demanded Stanley.

  Gloria looked a little like Bambi caught in a locomotive’s headlight.

  I smiled. Ticked a box on my clipboard.

  “We were just checking your minibar, sir.”

  “What?”

  “We wanted to make sure you had all the soda pop, Pringles, and M&M’S you needed in your fridge. Are you interested in some extra Dr. Brown’s sodas? Might I suggest Cel-Ray or black cherry?”

  “This room doesn’t have a fridge!” said Sid.

  “Huh,” I said with a dumb nod. “No wonder we couldn’t find it.”

  “It might’ve helped if you turned on the lights.”

  “Good point, Mr. Jones.” I scribbled on my clipboard. “We’ll make a note of that. Turn…on…lights….”

  “You’re the kid what was on TV, right?” said Stanley.

  “Yes, sir. P. T. Wilkie. My mother is the manager of this motel, and, well, frankly, we’re a little short-staffed right now. Jimmy Joe Bob, the guy who usually restocks the minibars, took the week off. Mom handed me his clipboard and asked me to fill in. Gloria here is auditioning to become my summer intern.”

  “That means if I land the job, I won’t get paid,” said Gloria.

  “I told you kids,” said Sid, “this room ain’t got no minibar!”

  “I guess that’s why they say, ‘You learn something new every day.’ For instance, did you know that my grandfather called this place Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World back in the 1970s?”

  “Yeah,” said Stanley. “We’ve seen the postcards. Our sister stayed here.”

  “Right,” I said. “I remember you mentioning that.”

  Suddenly, I got an idea.

  “Her name was Sheila, right?”

  “What’s it to you, kid?”

  “Well, did Grandpa tell you about the map she gave him?”

  “Map?”

  Yep. I was already cooking up a new scheme.

  “That’s right. A map. Grandpa forgot all about it until he talked to you, Mr. Jones. But then, just seeing that photo of your sister triggered a memory. Right before she left and never came back, your sister, Sheila, gave my grandfather some kind of map thingy.”

  The two brothers looked at each other. I think they were thinking what I hoped they’d be thinking.

  “ ‘Follow my tracks,’ ” mumbled Sid, obviously recalling that phrase from the back of his postcard.

  “The map might be our ticket to Happy Town,” Stanley muttered in reply.

  “What are you guys talking about?” I asked.

  “Nothin’, kid,” snapped Sid. “Nothin’.”

  “So, where is this here map?” asked Stanley, hiking up his baggy pants like the tough guy he used to be, even though his belt was already above his belly button.

  “I’m keeping the map safe in my room,” I told them. “Grandpa gave it to me because I think it’s such a neat souvenir from 1973. I thought I’d take it to school for show-and-tell on Monday, because we’re studying 1973 in class and—”

  Sid started shaking his head. “You’re not taking our sister’s map to no school, kid. You’re giving it to us.”

  Stanley hiked up his pants even higher and made the most threatening look he could still make. “And you’re doing it right now!”

  “Sir, you are correct,” I said.

  “I know I am,” said Sidney.

  “Your sister drew the map, so it definitely belongs to you guys. Those have been the map rules since way back in pirate days. If one pirate drew a map to the spot where, let’s say, he had buried his treasure, and then, let’s also say, he caught a cannonball in the belly and croaked, then the map would go to his next of kin.”

  “I read about that, too,” said Gloria, trying to help me out. “It was in this pirate almanac they had in the school library and—”

  “Just fork over the map,” snarled Stanley.

  “I have to go get it first,” I said.

  “Then go!” said Sid. “And bring it back. Chop-chop.”

  I shot him a jolly thumbs-up. “You’ve got it, sir. Back in a flash.”

  Gloria and I bolted out the door.

  “That was close,” said Gloria.

  “Yeah. But it was also exciting.”

  “Exciting? Those two are convicted felons, P.T. Plus, they were given extra prison time for bad behavior. I think they might have anger-management issues.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m kind of counting on.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s all part of my master plan.”

  “Really? You have a plan?”

  “Every story has a plan, Gloria. You have to sort of know where you’re going before you start, or you’ll never make it to the end.”

  “So what exactly are you going to give those two thugs? Their so-called sister, Sheila, didn’t really leave your grandfather a treasure map, or we would’ve been using it to find the jewels, correct?”

  “Yep. I’m going to give them the second map we used the other day for our Pirate Chest Treasure Quest. The old-fashioned parchment paper makes it look kind of old, like it’s been around since 1973.”

  “Um, P.T.?” said Gloria. “That map will take them from the swimming pool to the fence behind Mrs. Frumpkes’s house. Mr. Frumpkes doesn’t want people digging up his mother’s ‘backyard,’ remember?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “He put in all those alarms and security lights. If those two old coots start digging up Mrs. Frumpkes’s sand, Mr. Frumpkes will call the cops on them.”

  I was grinning from ear to ear. “Exactly!”

  I delivered a copy of our second treasure-hunt map to Sidney’s room (after crumpling it into a ball, uncrumpling it, stomping on it in the sand, spilling some iced tea on it, and generally trying to “age” it).

  “Thanks, kid,” said Sidney. “Now scram!”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I even saluted.

  Gloria was waiting for me outside the room. We put our ears against the closed door so we could eavesdrop.

  “We should check out the big smiling-man statue first,” said Stanley.

  “Nah,” said Sidney. “This map is more Sheila’s style. She was sort of a freaky-deaky doofus. Spent too much time disco dancing. The mirror ball messed with her mind, you know what I mean, man?”

  “Fine,” we heard Stanley say. “We weren’t going to cut open the big bozo till two or three in the morning anyways. If this map don’t pan out, we’ll come back and slice open the giant galoot.”

  They’d taken the bait.

  Gloria and I raced back to our rooms and changed into our best spy clothes. You know: black on black on black. The sun had set, and we wanted to disappear into the darkness while we tailed the Sneemer brothers.

  “Tell me again why we’re doing this?” whispered Gloria as we hid behind a palm tree.

  “To make sure Mr. Frumpkes takes them off the game board.”

  “Why don’t we just go check out the Smilin’ Sam statue while they’re off on their wild-goose chase?”

  “Because we don’t want them coming back before we’re done and catching us cutting open the holes they want to cut open. Like you said, they have those anger-management issues. Who knows? They might also have guns.”

  The two brothers were talking loudly in the distance. They seemed like the kind of stubborn old people who refuse to wear hearing aids even though they know they need them.

  “This is crazy, Sid,” Stanley y
elled at his brother. “If Sheila buried the jewels right here on the beach, some yahoo with a metal detector probably found them years ago. A lot of them diamonds and rubies were on gold rings.”

  “Then how come we ain’t never read about anybody digging up our loot?” said Sid. “We’re talking five million dollars’ worth of ice and rocks. That woulda made the news.”

  The two brothers followed the map, made all the correct turns, shuffled across the sand, and, finally, reached the fence behind Mrs. Frumpkes’s house.

  Leaning against the railings for support, the two creaky crooks hunkered down and started shoveling with their hands like dogs with a bone they needed to bury in a hurry.

  Sand went flying everywhere. In fact, Sid and Stanley were kicking up such a dust storm it triggered the newly installed motion detectors mounted to Mrs. Frumpkes’s back fence.

  Bright halogen floodlights thumped on, accompanied by a twirling red light, a whoop-whooping siren, and a computerized voice that kept repeating, “Intruder alert. Intruder alert.”

  “Stop!” whined a nasal voice. “Cease and desist. The police have been summoned.”

  It was Mr. Frumpkes. He was shining a ginormous flashlight at the Sneemer brothers, who instinctively raised their hands high over their heads.

  “The cops?” Sidney turned to his brother. “You set me up? Again? You lousy chump!”

  “Who you calling a chump, chump?”

  The two old men started whaling on each other.

  Fists pounded into ribs.

  Legs kicked at the sand and shins.

  The Sneemer brothers tumbled down the beach, using all sorts of words I probably shouldn’t repeat.

  That’s when we heard another siren.

  A police car, with its light bar flashing, screeched to a stop in the driveway at Mrs. Frumpkes’s house.

  Sidney and Stanley Sneemer kept fighting as hard as two out-of-shape, ancient ex-cons can.

  A pair of police officers burst onto the beach.

  It only took them a couple of minutes to pry Stanley and Sidney apart. They slapped them in handcuffs and led them around the fence to their cop car.