Surviving Summer Vacation (8 page)

“So much for the wonders of nature,” I muttered to Alison as the crowd began to disperse.

She dismissed Harry with a glance. “Lewis,” she said quietly, “what are we going to do about the guys who are following us? Should we call Dad, do you think, and ask his advice?”

“And have him take time off from work and come get us before we see the rest of the park?” I asked. “He can't do anything for us from home, and he probably would have to give up his own vacation time to come. Mr. Rupe's a terrible driver, but so far he hasn't done any serious damage to anything. He'll probably get us home okay eventually.”

Her expression didn't change; it was still worried. “But what if they're dangerous?”

“There's only so much they can do when there are always so many people around. I think,” I said slowly, “maybe we ought to look for the money, if that's what it is, that's hidden in the coach. Then if it turns up, we can find a cop and report it, and let the authorities decide who it belongs to.”

About that time Billy decided he wanted an ice cream cone, and we all headed back to the stand where we could get some. Mr. Rupe paid for them all, so we didn't have to use any of our own money.

When we got back to the motor home ­Ariadne had chocolate ice cream dripping off both elbows because she'd bitten the bottom
out of her cone, so Alison hurried her off to clean her up. I hesitated long enough to look for the blue Crown Victoria.

It was gone. But I didn't think we'd seen the last of it.

Chapter 8

If it hadn't been for the Rupes, Yellowstone would have been a blast.

Of course, without the Rupes, we'd never have been there, so we made the best of it.

Harry was bored with geysers and paint pots after the first ones, Billy preferred to play with William, Ariadne listened when we showed her things and explained them and Mr. and Mrs. Rupe annoyed the other tourists by their lack of consideration and by Mrs. Rupe's cigarette butts, which she dropped throughout the park.

Harry kept demanding that we see a bear. I think partly he was teasing his little sister because she was afraid of bears, but mostly he was used to getting what he wanted without waiting for it.

Unfortunately the bears didn't cooperate. We saw elk, though—magnificent animals that grazed within a few yards of us, unperturbed. It was as if they knew they were safe within the park: they ignored us until Mrs. Rupe approached too close to snap a picture, then the bull moved off and the cows followed.

We saw literally hundreds of buffalo. Several times we got held up because one of the great shaggy beasts was ambling up the middle of a narrow road and we couldn't get past it.

I could see people in other vehicles snapping pictures and peering out in interest. ­Ariadne pressed close to Alison. “Will it bite me?” she asked.

There were a few mule deer, too. It was different seeing them in the wild than it had been watching them in a zoo. It was kind of exciting to have a wild animal come right up alongside of the coach.

“Wait until I stop,” Mr. Rupe said to Harry. “These windows, except for the windshield, are all tinted. You won't get good pictures through the darker glass.”

Harry didn't pay any attention. When an
animal came in sight, he began clicking away. Billy looked if they were really close, but mostly he was still more interested in the cat. I wondered if his folks were going to return it to the campground owners, or if they'd let him take it home with them.

Mrs. Rupe said it was too tiring to drive around the park all day, every day. So by about midafternoon, the first day and every day after, we headed back for the camp. There the little kids could swim or use the playground equipment (with Alison watching them every minute, of course) and Harry could play video games and swim. Mr. and Mrs. Rupe went over to the Nabs to play cards or watch a movie that they didn't think was suitable for Billy and Ariadne.

“I'm surprised they care,” Alison commented to me. “They don't seem to care about much else the kids do.”

“More likely,” I suggested, “they go over there just to get away from the kids. It's too noisy when they're here.”

Alison gave me a wry grin. “Are you getting cynical, Lewis?”

I thought about it and nodded. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

As much of the time as we could, Alison and I poked around in the motor home trying to find a spot that might conceal a quantity of hundred-dollar bills.

There were lots of nooks and crannies, actually. There were strange little empty spaces in the corners of cupboards and behind the couch and in the map pouches. There were lots of drawers and doors everywhere that opened onto big compartments and small ones, and some that opened on fuse boxes and had no hiding places at all. There was space in the closet, and behind the little TV that pulled out on a shelf in the bedroom and beneath the clothes basket behind one of the doors, and there was a flap of carpet in the bedroom that folded back to reveal a safe set into the floor. It was just a hiding place, really, like a can set into the floor. I got excited when I found that, but when I got it open, it was disappointingly empty.

Billy walked in before I got it closed. “What's that?” he asked.

“A hiding place. I'm trying to find some more of that money you found, Billy. Maybe you can help me.”

An expression crossed his face that I couldn't describe, but it sent a prickle up my back. “You probably don't remember where you got it, though, right?”

“Right,” Billy said. Another disappointment. But somehow I was convinced he
did
know where the hundred-dollar bill had come from.

“Were there a whole lot of bills where you found the other one?”

It was no use. Billy shrugged. “I don't know,” he said.

If money had been hidden in one of the compartments under the coach, I was out of luck. They could be opened only from outside the motor home, and I didn't have the keys. And from what I remembered when we were loading, I thought they were just big open areas where there weren't any hiding places. Besides, I didn't see how Billy would have had access to them. The money had to have been hidden inside the coach.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be a large place. If the money was all in hundreds, quite a few would fit into a small space. But we couldn't find it.

We kept seeing the blue car. It was even easier to spot now because it had a crumpled fender. The men in it never seemed to be paying any attention to us, but every time we looked around, there they were. Once we were close enough to hear them talking, and we learned the second man's name was Ernie. He had a bushy mustache, and he had even less interest in geysers and colored lakes than the Rupes did.

They were there our second day in the park when we watched a geyser spouting up from the middle of a lake, and when Mrs. Rupe was taking pictures of Gibbon Falls, again at the Grand Geyser where the hot water spouted without warning into a crystal fan several hundred feet high, and at the ­Sapphire Pool where the water was a gorgeous shade of deep blue.

The men were always there, but they weren't looking at the scenery. They were
hovering around the motor home, and I kept wondering how brave they'd be about getting into it if it was left unlocked and unattended for a few minutes.

Mr. Rupe usually locked it up, though, unless we were standing right within sight of it. It must have been pretty frustrating for Syd and Ernie because they probably wouldn't have needed long to get what they wanted and get away with it.

“If these guys know where the money is hidden,” I said thoughtfully to Alison in one of the few times we got to talk privately, “I wonder why they didn't get it when the one dropped his keys. And why did he drop the keys? He must have heard them land, even on the carpet.”

“Maybe he got surprised and was afraid of being caught, so he didn't take time to pick them up but just ran. Lewis, we really ought to talk to an adult about this. It could be quite serious.”

We even discussed whether we had learned enough to try to explain it to Mr. Rupe. We hadn't decided yet when he did the most
stupid thing of all, which made the decision for us.

Harry was the one who yelped in excitement when we came upon about a dozen buffalo grazing right at the edge of the road, above a small stream. “Hey, stop, Dad! I should be able to get some good pictures of these!”

He jumped out of the motor home almost before it had stopped, and we watched through the window as he raised the camera to look into it, only about twenty feet from a big old bull. It was easy to believe that he weighed a ton.

The yellow warning sheet was lying right on the end of the couch where Harry had been sitting, but he had forgotten all about it. “Hey, Dad, aren't you going to get some pictures, too?”

“I'm coming,” Mr. Rupe said, and armed with his own camera he followed after Harry.

“Be careful, Milton,” Mrs. Rupe called out the open window. “Don't get too close.”

“Ah, these babies are used to having their pictures taken,” her husband assured her. “They're tame, all the animals in this place
are, because they know they're safe. Billy, stay in the coach.”

My mouth had gone dry. According to the yellow warning sheet, the animals weren't tame at all. They just weren't afraid of people or cars, so they didn't run away, but they'd been known to attack tourists who bothered them.

So far Mr. Rupe and Harry didn't seem to be bothering these buffalo; they kept on grazing. Harry ran out of film about then. He always took a lot of pictures before he got into a position to get the best ones and then had to reload about the time he could have taken the best shot.

He had just jumped back into the motor home when Mrs. Rupe said sharply through the open window, “Milton, be careful!”

The big bull had suddenly raised its massive head and was staring right at Mr. Rupe, who had walked up to about ten feet from the bull. He was closer to the bull than to the open door of the coach.

He didn't take the camera away from his eye. “Oh, this ought to make a terrific shot,” he said, and clicked away.

I could see the bull's eyes, kind of reddish looking and mean. I definitely thought he looked mean.

I heard Alison's near-whisper right alongside me. “He's crazy. That thing could kill him.”

Just then a car pulled in right ahead of us, and a uniformed ranger got out. The small herd of buffalo, including the big bull, began to move off down the slope toward the stream.

“Sir, I'll have to ask you to get back into your vehicle,” the ranger said. “It isn't safe to get that close to an animal.”

Mrs. Rupe closed the window, so we couldn't hear what they said after that. But I watched as a red stain crept up Mr. Rupe's face while the ranger lectured him. Mr. Rupe was angry and embarrassed when he finally got back into the driver's seat and we moved on.

Nobody said anything, but instead of going on, we went back to the campground. The Nabakowskis had returned to camp early, too, and the adults gathered around their picnic table and got out some game. As far as I could tell, the Rupes never even glanced over toward
their kids. No wonder they'd wanted Alison to come along and take care of them.

We ate a late lunch and then we all swam for a while. On the way back, Harry stopped and fell into conversation with the girl in the red shorts, whose name was Peggy. Alison and I settled the kids in at the table to color. Alison had brought a shoe box with art supplies, scissors and crayons. She went to put the top back on the box, then frowned.

“What happened to my Scotch tape? Have you kids been in my box?”

“Gone, gone, gone,” Ariadne said in a singsong voice.

“Gone where? Ariadne, did you take my Scotch tape?”

Ariadne smiled sweetly. “Gone,” she repeated.

“What did you do with it?” Alison demanded.

The little girl shook her head. “I don't know.”

Alison's eyes met mine. “That phrase seems to get them off the hook for practically anything. I need the tape, kids. If you know where it is, please give it back.”

Billy had the cat draped over his shoulder again. It must have been used to little kids or
it wouldn't have tolerated the things he did with it. “I need the red,” he said, and took that crayon away from his sister.

Alison left them at the table and started picking up odds and ends that had been left lying around. There was a book on Mrs. Rupe's copilot's seat, and when she picked it up to set it on the console, she made a sound of disgust.

“What's the matter?” I asked. I gathered all the park information and debated leaving the yellow sheet warning about the dangerous buffalo on top, then decided I'd better hide it in the middle. I didn't want Mr. Rupe to stay in a bad mood forever.

She held up the book so I could see it.
Mrs. Rupe had marked her place with a lighted cigarette. It had gone out, but not before it had scorched the edges of quite a few pages.

“Mom and Dad would have a fit if they knew what the Rupes are really like,” she murmured. “I know Mom felt she knew them, but she didn't, really. She only saw them at church and for a few minutes when they came over to borrow something.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “And Dad only saw Mr. Rupe
at the bank and the bowling alley. He never saw him drive. I just hope we get home in one piece.” I glanced over to where Billy had lowered ­William onto his lap, where the cat seemed to have dozed off in comfort even though it hung off his legs on both sides. I kept my voice low. “Alison, we're going to have to tell somebody about that car that's following us, and that we think there may be a lot of money hidden in this thing. For all we know, we might be in the middle of a situation that's as dangerous as the one Mr. Rupe was in with that buffalo.”

“Maybe we could talk to a ranger,” Alison said, almost whispering. “They're the closest thing there is to cops here in the park.”

“Not too bad an idea,” I agreed, “except how do we catch one of them? There haven't been many around, except in cars that don't stop unless you're doing something stupid or you jump in the middle of the road and flag them down. I can imagine trying to talk to that one this morning with Mr. Rupe listening. He'd want to know why we hadn't told him first, and I still think he probably wouldn't take us seriously.”

“And if he acted like we were nuts, the ranger would think so too.”

“But what if somebody gets hurt if we don't tell?”

Alison bit her lip. “It could happen, couldn't it? If Syd and Ernie are desperate enough, they could be nasty.” She sighed. “Maybe we should just get away from the motor home, make sure it's unlocked, and let them get what they want, and forget it. Except if there's something illegal going on, Dad would say we have a responsibility to see that they don't get away with it.”

“He might,” I began, and then forgot what I was going to say when William the cat exploded, yowling and snarling as he spilled off Billy's lap.

It sounded like he was being killed, and for a few seconds I was too chicken to dive after him when he spurted between us and tried frantically to hide under one of the seats.

Then it registered what I'd seen, and I turned and glared at Billy. He was staring after William, half-excited, half-scared, and I knew what had happened to Alison's Scotch tape.