Surviving Summer Vacation (12 page)

I saw Alison swallow. Sure, that was ­probably their best bet. To dump us and the motor home in some place where we couldn't walk out in less than a few days and wouldn't be spotted in the meantime.

There were plenty of such places in Montana. Not to mention some spots where they could send us over a cliff or into a river where we might
never
be found.

“I guess they wouldn't hang up at stealing another car or two once they dump this,” Harry muttered, leaning close to me. “What we gonna do, Lewis?”

I could see the same question on my sister's face. “Maybe they'll find their money and just leave us somewhere,” I muttered.

But they didn't find the bag of cash. Ernie dumped things out of cupboards, pulled out drawers, looked among the frozen foods in the freezer, and emptied the ice maker into the sink. We could watch him in the small mirror over the credenza at the side of the aisle.

Then he came back and pawed around in the medicine cabinet and through the towels in the cabinet under the sink. When he finally turned toward the bedroom, we all sort of shrank out of his way while he pulled the drawers out of the nightstands and moved things around in the closet. Then he told us to get off the bed so he could look under the pillows and the mattress.

“The little kids are asleep,” Alison protested, but when Ernie growled deep in his throat, she picked up Ariadne without waking her, and Harry did the same with Billy, backing into the bathroom to get out of the way.

There was nothing under the bedding. There was nothing in the laundry hamper. There was nowhere else to look.

Ernie stalked back up front, fury in every line of his body. “It's not here, Syd. They must have moved it out of the coach.”

“Why would they do that?” Syd snapped. I was glad he hadn't talked while Ernie was back with us or they'd have realized there was an intercom on and that we could hear them talking. “It's too big to stick in the guy's pocket and carry to town with him. It's gotta be here somewhere.”

Alison eased Ariadne back onto the bed, then got out of Harry's way so he could do the same with Billy. The cat slid out of Billy's limp arms and dropped to the floor.

I raised a blind to look out at the night, where it was full dark now.

“I don't know where we are, but it doesn't
look as if they're going into West Yellowstone to refuel,” I said. Only a few lights showed as we passed scattered houses.

“If they don't refuel, they won't get very far. This rig only gets six miles to the gallon, and the tank was practically on empty,” Harry said, peering over my shoulder.

I thought the way Mr. Rupe drove it would have been a miracle if we'd got
four
miles to the gallon, but I didn't say it. Right that minute I'd have been happy to have him running over small trees and nudging other vehicles.

Behind us, Ariadne stirred and sat up. “I'm hungry,” she said.

“Oh, honey, I can't get you anything to eat now,” Alison told her. “How would you like to . . . to color some pictures?”

Ariadne scowled. “I don't want to color. I want a sandwich.”

“There are some nasty men up front, so we can't get at the food,” Alison said earnestly. “And we must speak very softly, so they don't hear us. Look, my supply box is here. That man knocked it on the floor and I picked it up. Here, would you like the blue crayon?”

To my surprise, Ariadne accepted the crayon and a magazine to put under her sheet of paper. “I'll draw a bear,” she offered.

“What'll we do when we stop at a service station?” Harry asked, still looking out into blackness. “Yell for help?”

I hardly heard him. I was watching my sister. She had laid out four sheets of paper together and was printing on them with a black marker. I read the printing upside down. “Help, we're being kidnapped,” I read aloud. “How's anybody going to see them in the dark, doing sixty miles an hour?”

“We'll have to stop pretty soon,” Alison said, “and this might be safer than trying to call for help when those men will certainly try to stop us. What am I going to use to stick them on the windows? Billy used up all the Scotch tape.”

“Band-Aids,”I said, and got some from the medicine cabinet. What the heck, it couldn't hurt anything to stick the signs on the windows on both sides of the coach, but I didn't really think they were going to save us.

“Let's write ‘This is a stolen vehicle,' ” I
suggested, handing Harry a piece of paper and a crayon.

“Uh,” Harry said uncertainly, “how do you spell
vehicle
?”

Once the signs were in place, with the shades closed over them, our captors wouldn't notice them if they came back here.

By this time Billy woke up again and coaxed the cat back up onto the bed. He didn't seem to be interested in anything that happened much over a couple of feet from him, which I guess was natural if he couldn't see beyond that.

He looked up at me now, though, and asked, “Are they going to kill us?”

He didn't sound very concerned. I wondered if he thought killing was like on TV cartoons, where a character got squashed flat in one episode and was miraculously recovered in the next one.

I wished I could think this was like a cartoon episode, that it wasn't really dangerous, and that we'd come out okay tomorrow.

The kidnappers were all too real, though, and things hadn't worked out the way Ernie
and Syd had planned. When they couldn't get Mr. Rupe to trade motor homes, they thought it would be easy to follow us and slip into this one when nobody was looking and retrieve their loot. Only that hadn't worked, and then we'd surprised them as much as they'd surprised us when they'd gotten hold of the door key. They were in a bad mood.

They couldn't afford to let us stick around to identify them.

“I wonder how much money they hid,” Harry said, slumping onto the edge of the bed beside Billy. “I'd like to know how much my life is worth.”

“A lot,” Billy said.

I stared at him. I didn't think he'd meant that Harry's life was worth a lot. “How much money, Billy?” I asked.

He looked confused. I decided he'd spoken without thinking and was now reluctant to go on with that line of thought. He buried his face in William's fur.

I was totally convinced that Billy was the one who had moved that money. And I knew I didn't want to hand it over to the thieves
unless that was the only way to save our lives. Well, I couldn't hand over anything I couldn't find.

“We've got to make our move when we stop for fuel,” I said. Escaping was our first priority. After we were safe, we'd coax the information out of Billy. “That's probably the only chance we'll get. While we're moving we haven't got a hope of escaping, or even anyone noticing us in the dark.”

“So what's our move?” Harry asked eagerly. “You have a plan, Lewis?”

I wished I did. “Nothing foolproof,” I had to admit. “But we put up signs on the windows, and we need to do anything we can to attract attention when we stop. Maybe there'll be other customers, but at least there'll be an attendant inside.” I sure hoped there would be.

“Maybe we could climb out the windows,” Harry said thoughtfully. “We could get one of them open and be ready to run the minute we stop.”

“Without them catching us?” Alison asked. “If we could lock a door between us it might work, but they'd stop us before more than one or two of
us made it. And it's a long way to the ground, especially for the little kids. Nobody could even reach up high enough to lift them down.”

“Maybe we wouldn't all have to escape through a window,” I said. “Maybe if one of us got out and ran for a phone the police would come and save everybody else.”

Harry was chewing on his lip. “If only we had a weapon of some kind to slow them down if they came after us. But short of grabbing a butcher knife, there's no kind of weapon.”

“They're not going to let us walk out in the other room and get a knife,” Alison said. “And they're so much bigger and stronger, they'd take it away before we could do anything with it.”

We hadn't looked at Billy for a few minutes, and all of a sudden the cat bolted away from him and fled to hide in the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of William and only realized what was peculiar when I saw what Billy was holding.

“Did you squeeze all that toothpaste out onto the cat?” I demanded, taking the tube away from him.

“He likes it,” Billy said, smiling.

“No, he doesn't like it. Now what are people going to use to brush their teeth?”

Billy smiled wider and shrugged.

I wasn't sure where he'd found the ­toothpaste—probably Ernie had thrown it out of a cupboard when he was searching—but I went to put it into the medicine cabinet, which was too high up for Billy to reach.

And I stopped with the door wide open as the idea hit me.

“Hey, maybe we do have a weapon or two,” I said, just as Alison spoke excitedly from behind me.

“Lewis! There's a police car passing us! Maybe they'll see our signs!”

Chapter 12

I got to the window in time to see the police cruiser sail right on by us. Nobody saw our signs calling for help.

Alison bit her lip. Harry said the kind of word my mom would chew me out for using.

“I keep looking at that two-way radio up front,” Harry said in frustration, “but I don't know how to use it.”

“I know how to use it,” I told him, “but there's no way they're going to let us get close enough to do it. But I thought of something else. It may not be as effective as a gun against these guys, but it might help slow them down enough so at least one of us can get away to call for help when we stop.”

Right that minute we felt the coach slowing down, and within seconds we were turning off
the highway. We made enough space between the slats of the blinds to see that we were pulling into a service station, which meant we only had seconds to get ready. I explained quickly.

Our ammunition wasn't great, but it was the best we could manage. While Harry ­struggled to get one of the big side windows open—there was no window in the back because it was covered with a closet—I jerked the tops off the cans I found in the medicine cabinet.

“Who's going out the window?” Harry asked, jerking on the cord to make sure the shade stayed up. “You want me to do it?”

“Lewis is a fast runner,” Alison said. “Let him go. Don't sprain an ankle when you land, Lewis.”

“I'll try not to.” My heart was pounding as we rolled slowly into the lighted area. There was only one other car at the pumps, an old pickup with two big shaggy dogs in the back of it. “Anybody see a phone?”

We had the shades on both sides out of the way now, but we couldn't get the second window open. It was stuck. So I knew which one I
had to get out of, and it was on the same side as the door up front, so when one of our captors got out he'd see me immediately.

The station building itself was lit up, and there had to be a telephone in there, I thought. So if I didn't spot one anywhere else, I'd make a dash for that open door. As far as I could tell, there was only one man on duty, talking to the driver from the old pickup alongside of us. Like the building, they were on the far side of the lot from us.

From the front of the coach Syd yelled, “You kids stay put and keep quiet and you won't get hurt!”

“Yeah, sure,” Harry muttered. And then to me, “Go for it, Lewis!”

A yell from up front told me I'd been spotted bailing out. I landed on the balls of my feet, no sprained ankle, and headed for the back of the motor home.

I heard Ernie come out the front door, feet pounding on the pavement behind me, and I felt as if his hot breath was on the back of my neck.

I didn't see what happened then, just heard
about it later. At the moment I expected a big hand to grab the neck of my shirt and jerk me off my feet, Harry leaned out the window with a full can of shaving cream and sprayed it directly into Ernie's eyes.

I didn't know why Ernie was yelling and swearing, but the dogs in the old pickup started barking ferociously at this activity only a few yards from them. I was running for the station, where the two men in the lighted area turned to see what all the commotion was.

Inside the coach, Syd headed for the bedroom to see what was going on. Alison hit him in the face with hair spray, and while he was practically blinded and bent over, she clobbered him on the head with the heavy-duty flashlight Mr. Rupe had kept beside the bed. It didn't do any serious damage, but by the time he'd recovered enough to lift his head, she'd shaken up the hair spray again for another burst.

I heard the ruckus behind me and ran for all I was worth, hoping none of the kids was getting hurt. Ariadne was screaming as if she was being killed, but Ariadne could screech that way just in excitement.

“What the heck's going on?” the service man asked, coming toward me wiping his hands on a rag. The pickup driver was right after him, alarmed about his dogs.

“Don't nobody hurt my dogs!” he yelled. “Rags! Jumper! Come 'ere!”

“The cops!” I gasped, nearly going to my knees in front of them. “Call the cops!”

They were close enough now to read our signs. The pickup man, whose dogs (according to Harry, later) had literally run over Ernie and knocked him flat as they leaped out of the truck bed, gaped at the signs. “Kidnapped?” he said. “This ain't a joke? That rig's been stolen?” His dogs were leaping up on him and only subsided when he commanded them to sit.

“Call the cops before they drive away!” I begged. “There are four more kids in there!”

I didn't know yet that Ernie and Syd were in no shape to drive away. Between the shaving cream and the hair spray, neither of them could see very well for a few minutes.

And then I spotted the greatest sight of my life. A police cruiser pulled onto the lot and cut across in front of the motor home.

A very tall, very sturdy-looking police officer got out and sauntered over to look closely at the signs in our rear windows. Then he turned toward the three of us standing there in the open.

He sort of rested one hand on the gun he had holstered on his hip, casual-like. “Any of you belong with the motor home?” he asked.

I was getting my breath back. “Yes, sir. The two men driving it stole it, back at the campground outside of Yellowstone. My sister and three other kids are trapped in there. These guys stole a lot of money and hid it in there, in a furnace vent. It's gone, and they can't find it, which is why they stole the coach. But I think Billy probably knows where the money is.”

I'd run out of breath again by that time. The officer was looking at me, evaluating what I was saying, and I suddenly got really nervous. What if he decided I was just some smart aleck trying to play a joke on him? I was afraid I'd sounded like one.

He lifted off his uniform cap and scratched his head. “Hmm.”

About then Ernie came around the front of
the coach. He'd wiped off most of the shaving lotion, and his eyes were red and irritated-looking. He acted like he didn't even see the cop or the other two men and glared at me.

“I told you not to get out of the motor home,” he said. “I got a notion to lick you good.”

He finally looked at the cop. “He done something, officer? This boy, he don't always mind me the way he ought to.”

“He's not my dad,” I said quickly. “Check his ID. He's from an outfit that rents RVs, back in Marysville, Washington. He can't prove he rented this motor home, because it was rented to Mr. Rupe. Three of the kids with us are Rupe kids; the other one's my sister. Don't let him drive away with us.”

The officer hardly acted like he heard me, but he said to Ernie, “Could I see your driver's license, sir?”

“Uh, it's in the coach. I need to fuel up,” Ernie said to the attendant. “Maybe you can do that while I get the papers the officer needs. I'll be right back, sir.”

But the cop didn't wait where he was; he went along and stood in the doorway while
Ernie looked for papers, or pretended to. Syd was at the kitchen sink, washing his eyes out under the faucet. I'd heard hair spray could knock flies and other insects out of the air if you hit them with it, and even kill them. I hoped Syd's eyes were stinging like crazy, so he'd have to behave.

Spray cans weren't the ideal weapons, but they'd helped a lot. If Harry hadn't slowed Ernie down with shaving cream, I might never have gotten away from the motor home to let anybody know we were in trouble.

Ernie came back with some papers. “To tell you the truth, officer, my eyes are bothering me so much I can't tell for sure what I got. I think these are the rental papers, just like the boy said. Made out to Milton Rupe. I seem to have mislaid my wallet, but it's here somewhere. Soon as my eyes quit hurting I'll find it for you.”

The officer appraised his watering eyes, and then glanced toward the man at the sink.

“I'll have to ask everybody to step out of the vehicle,” he said. “Including whoever's in the rear.”

“That's only my kids,” Ernie said. “They been
put to bed. No need to wake them up, is there?”

“They're not his kids,” I said quickly. “He kidnapped all of us.”

“Out of the coach, please,” the officer said, stepping aside to clear the doorway. “Everyone. Including the children.”

They tried to bluff long enough to get away, but the cop wasn't buying their story. It wasn't until a backup unit had arrived that we found out the first cop was the one who had passed us earlier. He
had
seen our signs, and at first he'd thought it was a hoax. When he thought about it, though, he decided he'd better check it out.

Boy, were we glad he did.

As they made our kidnappers get into the back of one of the police cars, Syd looked at me and said, “Okay, I give up. What did you do with it?”

I didn't answer.

While we were waiting in the motor home for one of the officers to get Mr. and Mrs. Rupe, though, I went over and over in my head all the places everybody had already looked for the money without finding it. There
had
to be
at least one place they hadn't looked, I thought.

The little kids got hungry, and Harry got out another big bag of chips and divided them up on paper plates. “I want a candy bar,” Billy said, and he went to the refrigerator and got one out of one of the crispers at the bottom. Mrs. Rupe had stored one of them completely full of Snickers and Hershey bars and peanut butter cups. She hadn't brought any fruit to put in that one, only a little bit of salad stuff in the second bin. She hadn't really cooked a meal since we'd left home, so most of it had rotted, untouched.

And that's when the idea hit me. “Billy,” I said, “is the money in the refrigerator?”

He stared at me and said, “It's mine. ­Finders keepers.”

“They looked in the refrigerator,” Alison said.

They had, but I had a hunch. I pulled out the second crisper and poked through the wilted lettuce, a cucumber that had gone soft and squishy, and a few tomatoes with yucky spots on them. All the stuff for the salads we never got to eat.

And there it was, under the rotting ­vegetables. The bag was wrapped in a piece of
crumpled foil—how had Billy been clever enough to think of that, or was it just a fluke that he'd hidden it so it looked like leftover lunch meat or something?

Billy started to cry when I pulled it out and unwrapped it. “It's mine,” he said, but I think he already knew it wasn't.

We thought the Rupes were pretty casual about their kids, but when they got back to the campground and found the motor home and all of us gone, they came unglued.

Mr. Rupe might be arrogant and sometimes rude to strangers, but he was used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He had the county sheriff's department and the state patrol in high gear within minutes. Other units were already looking for us by the time our patrolmen called in to say they'd found us, so we'd have been rescued before long even if we hadn't stuck the signs on the windows and even if I hadn't leaped out a window to get help. But everybody thought we'd been very brave and clever; even Mr. Rupe nodded approval of our pressurized can weapons.

Mrs. Rupe praised us while she hugged Billy and Ariadne; she was really impressed with our responsible reactions to the situation. I figured Alison had a lifetime job as a sitter if she wanted it.

Harry and I took turns explaining the scam Syd and Ernie had been involved in, and I was glad we'd found the money to back it up, because it sounded pretty wild. Billy kept insisting that he'd found the cash and it should be his, but his father gave him a long look.

“Don't be silly, son. It's stolen money. It has to go back to the people it belongs to . . . after the police have held it for evidence in the trial when they send the two of them to jail for a long time.”

“But you always said ‘finders keepers,' ” Billy protested tearfully.

“Not with thousands of other people's dollars,” Mr. Rupe said firmly, putting an end to the discussion.

Billy finally stopped fussing about it when they promised him that as soon as we got home, they'd get him some glasses like mine so he could see what was going on around him.