The Genius Files #4 (4 page)

“Please, Dad, not that,” advised Coke, with an eye roll to the left.

“
Mississippi Queeeeeeeeeen!
” belted Dr. McDonald. “
If you know what I mean
. . .”

“Please stop singing, Dad,” advised Pep, with an eye roll to the right.

“Do you kids know
anything
about the Mississippi River?” asked Mrs. McDonald. She, of course, knew that her son had a photographic memory and recalled just about everything he had ever seen, read, heard, smelled, or tasted.

“The name Mississippi comes from the Ojibwe Indians,” Coke informed the others. “They called the river Misi-zibi, which means ‘Father of Waters.'”

“Here we go again,” Pep muttered, clearly annoyed.

It's not easy living with somebody who has total recall, and especially when he's your twin brother. Pep's teachers always seemed a little disappointed that she didn't have her brother's incredible ability to remember information.

Coke had read about the Ojibwe Indians on the back of a cereal box five years earlier, and couldn't resist sharing the information.

“You probably know that a raindrop falling into Lake Itasca in Minnesota will travel the length of the Mississippi and arrive at the Gulf of Mexico about
ninety days later,” he said.

Now he was just showing off.

“Thank you, Mr. Boring!” Pep muttered, unable to restrain herself. “You probably just made that up.”

There was still a long way to go before the McDonald family would be home, but the Mississippi River seemed like a sort of symbolic dividing line between east and west. Pep turned around to glance out the back window and see the Memphis skyline getting smaller in the distance. They were finally on their way back to California. Like the Memphis skyline, their troubles seemed to be fading from view.

As soon as they crossed the Hernando De Soto Bridge, this sign appeared at the side of the highway:

“Woo-hoo!”
Coke shouted. “Arkansas! The Natural State! The birthplace of Walmart! Did you know that in Arkansas it's against the law to push a live moose out of a moving plane? That's a fact!”

“Ah reckon I won't be pushin' no live mooses outta no air-o-planes then, pardner,” said Dr. McDonald.

“That accent is lame, Dad,” Coke remarked.

“It's also insulting to the good people of Arkansas,” said Mrs. McDonald. “They don't speak like that.”

“Then ah reckon ah better shut mah cakehole,” her husband replied. “Don't wanna get no Arkansasians all riled up or nothin'.”

“So I guess there's some weird Arkansas museum or tacky tourist trap you'll be taking us to,” said Coke, to change the subject. “Maybe the largest peanut in the world?”

“No, that's in Oklahoma,” Mrs. McDonald said as she picked up her Arkansas travel guide, which was conveniently titled
Arkansas Travel Guide
. “But they do have the world's largest wind chimes, in Eureka Springs. Hmmm, let's see. The town of Alma, Arkansas, calls itself the Spinach Capital of the World. In Mountain View, they have their Annual Bean Fest and Outhouse Races. And once a year in Yellville, they have a turkey drop. They toss live turkeys out of airplanes. That would be pretty interesting to see, don't
you think? But Yellville is pretty far north of here.”

“There's just so much to see and do in Arkansas,” Pep said sarcastically. “How will we ever decide?”

“How about we let Dad decide for a change?” suggested Mrs. McDonald.

“Y'know, after what we've been through with the RV, I just want to
relax
,” said Dr. McDonald. “Is there a nice place in Arkansas where we can go and just kick back for a day? Maybe do a little swimming or water sports?”

“Yes!” shouted Mrs. McDonald, as she looked through the book. “Hot Springs! It's two and a half hours from here, and west.”

“Yee-ha!”
Dr. McDonald exclaimed. “Ah reckon I'm fit to be tied after falling in the hog wallow!”

“That doesn't even mean anything, Dad,” Pep said.

Everyone was laughing and having a fun old time. The kids would never forget what had happened to Aunt Judy in Memphis, of course. But for the moment, she was not on their minds.

Mrs. McDonald was punching “Hot Springs, Arkansas” into the GPS when her cell phone rang.

“Hello?” she said. “Oh, hi! Nice to hear from you. How are you doing? What?! For
how
long? Are you joking? No, I have no idea. Okay, thanks.”

When she hung up, she had a worried look on her face.

“Who was that?” everybody asked.

“It was Hermy,” Mrs. McDonald told them. “You know, my sister's new husband, Dr. Herman Warsaw. He said Judy is missing. He hasn't seen her in a couple of days. Gee, I hope she's okay.”

“I thought they were on their honeymoon,” said Dr. McDonald. “Where could she be?”

Coke and Pep looked at each other. They knew exactly where Aunt Judy was. Or what was left of her, anyway.

I
n the backseat, Coke and Pep sat stunned and silent. On the inside, the twins both knew the right thing to do—come clean and tell their parents what had happened to Aunt Judy in the RV. But they couldn't bring themselves to do it.

How do you break the news to your mother that her sister was a psychopath and pyromaniac who tried to kill you? How do you tell her that her sister blew herself up? It's impossible. Besides, every time the twins tried to be honest and tell their parents the truth, they didn't believe it.

Coke and Pep kept their mouths shut. What happened to Aunt Judy in the RV would be their secret, at least for the time being.

Awkward silence filled the car as the Ferrari headed west through Arkansas, passing Dagmar State Wildlife Management Area and Wattensaw State Game Area. Unless you were a nature lover, there wasn't a whole lot to look at outside the window.

“Hey, let's play the spy game!” Dr. McDonald blurted out enthusiastically.

Groans came out of the backseat.

“Come on, it'll be fun!” he said. “See if you can find the letters of the alphabet outside the car. I'll start. Look! The
A
for ‘Arkansas' is on that license plate right in front of us.”

“B,”
said Mrs. McDonald. “The sign on that building to the right.”

“C,”
Dr. McDonald said. “On that billboard. How about one of you kids take a turn?”

“We don't want to play, Dad,” Pep replied.

“You kids are no fun at all,” he said.

The game ended right there. The twins went back to their private thoughts. As the Ferrari cruised west along I-40, signs started to appear for Little Rock, the state capital.

“I wonder why it's called Little Rock?” asked Dr. McDonald.

“They probably have a bunch of little rocks,” Pep guessed.

“Actually, Little Rock gets its name from a rock formation on the south bank of the Arkansas River,” Coke informed the rest of the family. “It was called ‘la Petite Roche,' which means ‘the little rock' in French. I saw that—”

“Shut up!” Pep shouted at her brother. “Nobody cares!”

“Don't tell your brother to shut up,” Dr. McDonald told Pep. “It's not his fault that he knows a lot of things.”

“I can't take it anymore!” Pep shouted. She picked up a magazine and whacked Coke on the shoulder with it.

“Ow! Knock it off!”

At this point, Dr. McDonald made an executive decision. Everyone's nerves suddenly seemed to be on edge. The stress of seeing the RV explode had clearly gotten to Pep. Everybody needed to calm down a little.

“I'm starved,” he said as he pulled off the highway at the Little Rock exit and crossed the Arkansas River.

One block off the riverbank was a bustling street
with a convention center, the Little Rock River Market, and some restaurants.

“How about this joint?” Mrs. McDonald said as they approached a place called Flying Fish.

Dr. McDonald pulled into the parking lot. Flying Fish, needless to say, specializes in seafood. The family slid into a booth and ordered an assortment of catfish, shrimp, oysters, crab, and gumbo for everyone to share.

“You think they have grits?” Coke asked. “I always wanted to try grits.”

“Grits sound gross,” Pep said.

“Well, you don't listen to them,” Coke told his sister. “You eat them.”

One wall of the restaurant was an unusual sight—row upon row of wooden plaques, each one with a fish mounted on it. There were more than three hundred of them, and all of them looked the same. Upon closer examination, it was obvious that the fish were made out of rubber. At the top of the wall was a sign:
BILLY BASS ADOPTION CENTER
.

“What the heck?” Coke asked.

“This will be great for
Amazing but True
!” Mrs. McDonald said as she grabbed her camera.

Dr. McDonald explained to the kids that, around the turn of the century, millions of people bought
these silly novelty gifts called Big Mouth Billy Bass. The head and the tail of the fish would wiggle back and forth while the fish sang songs like “Don't Worry, Be Happy” and “Take Me to the River.” The fish's mouth even moved while it sang.

Don't believe me? YouTube it. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Anyway, Big Mouth Billy Bass was really annoying, and when the fad ended, people were stuck with the silly toys. A lot of the fish ended up in the garbage or at garage sales. Some of them, apparently, ended up at Flying Fish Restaurant in Little Rock, Arkansas.

“Do you like our little museum?” asked the waitress when she brought the food. “If you donate a Big Mouth Billy Bass to our collection, you get a free catfish basket.”

Mrs. McDonald took notes for her website. She seemed to have an uncanny knack for stumbling upon the kind of oddball tourist spots that don't appear in any guidebooks.

As they were finishing their food, a couple of flannel-shirted, heavyset, bearded truckers slid into the booth next to them. Dr. McDonald and Mrs. McDonald went to pay the check while Coke and Pep eavesdropped on the truckers' conversation.

“So I was comin' in loud and proud, doing the double nickel on I-95 when this meat wagon on my left hit the mix-master,” said the first trucker.

“What did you do?” asked the other trucker.

“Well, I backed off the hammer,” he replied. “So this wiggle wagon was in the granny lane and wearing my bumper out. So I put the pedal to the metal and the next thing I know, there's a bear in the air. And that's how I ended up here at the Pickle Park.”

“Looks like you're gonna need a dragon wagon,” said the first trucker.

“Reckon so. Catch ya on the flip-flop.”

Coke and Pep had no idea what the truckers were talking about, but they were mesmerized by them.

“
Pssssst!
Hey, kids,” the first trucker suddenly whispered.

“I'm sorry, but we don't talk to strangers,” Pep informed him.

The second trucker winked and carefully peeled off the corner of his beard. Or, I should say,
her
beard. Because he was a she.

“Mya!” exclaimed Pep.

“Bones!” exclaimed Coke. “Nice disguises!”

“Shhhhh!”
whispered Mya. “You'll blow our cover.”

Now, if you've been following The Genius Files books, you know who Bones and Mya are. They are kindly grown-ups who once worked for Dr. Warsaw to start The Genius Files project, but quit when he lost his mind and became determined to kill off all the children. At that point, Bones and Mya made it their mission to help Coke, Pep, and any other Genius Filers who were being pursued by Dr. Warsaw and his evil henchman. They had already saved the twins' lives several times.

“What are
you
doing here?” Pep asked as she hugged them. “And why are you dressed up like truckers?”

“We heard about the good work you did at Graceland,” said Mya. “The way you took out Evil Elvis was beautiful. It was almost like a work of art.”