Home Sweet Motel Page 8

  “How much is it going to cost to rent it for a day?” I asked, because we had already spent close to two hundred dollars to pick up an Xbox for our grand prize.

  “No charge,” said Grandpa as we pulled into Heckerman’s. “But we have to put a sign on the egg: Courtesy of Heckerman’s Garden Center.”

  “Done,” said Gloria.

  I didn’t disagree. Fact: you don’t have to be a business genius like Gloria to know that free is always a good price.

  We drove back to the Wonderland and stowed the egg and the Xbox in Grandpa’s workshop.

  We started filling the smaller plastic eggs with smaller prizes and lining them up on Grandpa’s workbench.

  “So where are you thinking about hiding it?” asked Gloria.

  “Maybe inside that municipal garbage can on the beach.”

  Gloria cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously? A garbage can? What if the garbage truck comes along and dumps it out? Buh-bye, egg. Buh-bye, Xbox.”

  “The garbage guys always come between six and seven a.m. They’re my morning alarm clock. If we do the trash can, we can make this a mapless treasure hunt and just sell clue cards. You know, stuff like ‘A surly green puppet calls this hiding place home.’ ”

  “That’s an extremely easy clue,” said Gloria. “Every kid in America knows Oscar the Grouch lives in a trash can.”

  “True. But which trash can are we talking about? The one in the lobby? The ones by the pool? The next clue will let you know it’s outside….”

  “And clue number two costs another five bucks?”

  “Yep. We don’t give away the beach location till maybe clue six.”

  “P.T., we cannot charge thirty bucks to find the answer, or only rich kids will be able to play. Do you know any rich kids?”

  “No. Not really. Okay. I’ll go scout out a better location and work on the riddles. You work on your dad.”

  “My dad? Um, why?”

  “We need to be on TV again.”

  “He can’t do another report about the Wonderland.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he already did one. One is all anybody ever gets.”

  “What do you mean? The president of the United States is on TV almost every day.”

  “We’re not the president. We’re a dinosaur egg hunt.”

  “Dinosaurs are extremely rare,” I insisted.

  “So are plastic dinosaur eggs!”

  I guess we were both getting a little cranky. It can be stressful trying to come up with a scheme that will make lightning strike twice. It was hard to guarantee a repeat of our wildly successful pirate treasure hunt.

  We decided to step outside and grab some fresh air and maybe come up with some fresher ideas for our riddles.

  Near Freddy the Frog, Grandpa was talking to an elderly gentleman with a mustache who looked a lot like that other guy, Bob Jones—the senior citizen who had booked our last room.

  “P.T.? Gloria?” Grandpa waved at us to come over. “You won’t believe this. This is Johnny Jones. He’s Bob’s little brother. And guess what? Sheila—my angel in the red polka-dot scarf—she’s their sister!”

  With a bigger smile than I’d ever seen on his face before, Grandpa gazed at a faded color photograph of a glamorous woman in mysterious ant-eye sunglasses and a red scarf with white polka dots.

  Grandpa held on to the picture like he never wanted to let it go.

  “That’s Sheila,” he said. “Just like I remember her.”

  “Yeah,” said the new Mr. Jones. “She sent me a postcard from here. Just like the one my brother flashed at the camera when he was talking to that reporter on TV. Still have it.” He tapped the back pocket of his cargo pants. “I thought, hey, maybe Sheila’s over at this Wonderland Motel place, too. Maybe she liked your motel so much back when it was called Wonder World she invited Bob to join her here so they could, you know, catch up on old times. Thought I’d get in on the fun. Figured we could have us a nice little family-reunion-type situation.”

  I raised my hand. “Um, your brother, Bob, he said Sheila here was his ‘lady friend,’ not his sister.”

  I’m not sure, but I think Johnny Jones’s left eyeball twitched a little when I said that.

  “Sure, sure,” the old man said with a nervous chuckle. “That’s what Bobby always called Sissy. His ‘lady friend.’ ”

  “Isn’t that kind of creepy?” said Gloria.

  “No,” said Johnny Jones. “They both liked that cartoon. You know, Lady and the Tramp—the one with the dogs eating spaghetti. Bob just meant Sissy liked spaghetti.”

  Ew. I was with Gloria. The Jones family was definitely creepy.

  “Well,” said Grandpa, “I wish I could say your sister was here, Johnny. But she isn’t. I haven’t seen her since 1973.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Mr. Jones. “I ain’t seen her since then, neither.”

  “Seriously?” said Gloria. “You guys don’t do Thanksgiving or Christmas together?”

  “No,” said Mr. Jones, shaking his head. “We have what you might call certain family issues.”

  “How’d that happen?” I asked, because like Gloria, I was curious about what could be so bad that it tore a family apart for more than four decades.

  Mr. Jones fixed me with a stare. It wasn’t a very friendly stare, either. In fact, for a split second, it was so fierce his other eyeball started twitching, too. Fact: the old man was extremely twitchy.

  Then his mustache started kangarooing. He had an alligator tattoo crawling up the side of his neck, and while his face quivered, the gator’s jaws throbbed.

  “How do these things always happen?” he said, forcing himself to smile. “My sister and my brother had a big fight. Who remembers what it was about?”

  He tugged on his shirt collar to cover up everything but the snarling tattoo’s very angry eyes.

  “Anyways, after they had their fight, my brother turned on me. Our fight was even worse. We all decided it might be best if we, you know, went our separate ways and didn’t see each other for a minimum of thirty years, which became more like forty-five with time added for bad behavior.”

  “So,” I said, “you haven’t seen your sister or your brother since 1970-something?”

  “That’s right, kid. Not till I saw him and you on the TV news up in Jacksonville. So, where is he? Where’s my big brother, Bob?”

  He rudely snatched the photograph out of Grandpa’s hands. I say rudely because Grandpa was still gazing at it. He had the same dreamy look in his eyes that Mom has whenever she talks to Mr. Ortega.

  “What room, old-timer?” he asked Grandpa.

  “I don’t really—”

  He didn’t wait for Grandpa to finish. He turned to me.

  “What room, kid?”

  “Well,” I said, “we really can’t give out that information. You see, here at the Wonderland, we try to protect all our guests’ privacy.”

  “They do,” added Gloria. “It’s like a hotel law.”

  “Fine,” said the new Mr. Jones. “I’ll just hang around till I bump into him.”

  He pulled out a motel room key and started twirling it around his finger. Mom must’ve just checked him in.

  Yep. Our No Vacancy sign was lit again.

  As much as the new Mr. Jones was skeeving us both out, Gloria and I needed to focus on the dinosaur egg hunt.

  “I have an idea,” said Gloria.

  “Does it involve me getting an alligator tattooed on my neck?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  Gloria held up her hands like she was framing a picture. “Two words, P.T.: corporate sponsorship.”

  I nodded even though I had absolutely no idea what those two words meant.

  “The garden center gave us the big egg in exchange for a little advertising blurb. Other merchants will do the same.” Gloria tucked her hands behind her back and paced in front of Dino’s plump plastic legs. “So, for the other prizes, the smaller eggs, we don’t j
ust fill them with candy and trinkets.”

  “We don’t?”

  “No. We put in coupons from local stores—like a free ice-cream cone at Twistee Treat. We ask the IHOP down the block to give away a stack of Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruity pancakes. We hit up the Suncoast Surf Shop for a boogie board. And get this: we charge them all a fee.”

  “Really?” This wasn’t making much sense. “They’re giving us a bunch of free stuff and we’re charging them to do it?”

  “Correct. They become sponsors, P.T. We plaster their names all over the place.”

  “You mean like all those patches on a NASCAR driver’s racing suit?”

  “Exactly!”

  “We’re not going to stick them all over Dino, are we?”

  “No,” said Gloria. “But we could hang a few signs and banners off the balcony railings. List the sponsors on the back of every clue card. Stuff like that.”

  “How much do we charge?”

  Gloria smiled. “As much as they’re willing to pay!”

  Our first stop was the Twistee Treat on Gulf Boulevard. What can I say? It was another scorchingly hot day. Twistee Treat was an easy walk, just up the street, serving sixty-six kinds of cold and refreshing ice cream.

  The ice-cream shop actually looked like it belonged on the grounds of the Wonderland: the building resembled a gigantic swirl cone.

  The manager was a nice man who agreed to, as Gloria put it, “take a meeting” with us. We sat at a circular picnic table and Gloria made her pitch.

  “Sir,” she said, “how’d you like to get in on something even sweeter than your ice cream? My partner, P.T. Wilkie, and I are offering a limited number of local retailers exclusive access to our next big event. P.T.? Tell him about it.”

  “Sir, we at the Wonderland Motel have put together a very fun follow-up to our extremely successful and wildly popular Pirate Chest Treasure Quest promotion.”

  “Oh, right,” said the Twistee Treat manager. “I saw you on TV. You’re Walt Wilkie’s grandson.”

  I grinned. TV is a marvelous thing. It makes you famous wherever you go.

  “That’s right. Well, this time—”

  “I lost half my business that day.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your treasure hunt was such a big deal nobody wanted to buy any ice cream. Couple of college kids told me you people were selling green ice cream even though it wasn’t Saint Patrick’s Day. Plus, traffic was backed up all the way to the Corey Causeway. Nobody wanted to drive to St. Pete Beach except your crazed treasure hunters. About thirty of them parked their cars in my lot because yours was jammed full. You’re not really planning on doing some kind of crazy stunt like that again, are you?”

  I looked to Gloria. She just blinked and smiled.

  “We’ll get back to you on that, sir,” she said. “Come on, P.T.”

  The manager at the IHOP asked us to leave the second I told him who I was.

  “I saw you on TV! I also saw those college kids tear up the beach! They scared away half my customers!”

  There would be no Rooty Tooty Fresh ’N Fruity anything in our dinosaur eggs.

  We received the same not-so-warm welcome at all the beach boutiques. Nobody wanted anything to do with us. Our big plans were nothing but big pains in their patooties.

  We hiked back to the Wonderland.

  And it looked like one of our local retail establishments had called the cops.

  Because a police cruiser was parked right in front of the motel office.

  The police car was sitting in the spot where you’re only supposed to park for five minutes while you check in.

  There’s even a sign that says so.

  I figured the cops might have to give themselves a ticket, unless, of course, they were checking in.

  They weren’t.

  They were walking out.

  And Mr. Frumpkes was right behind them.

  “There they are,” said Mr. Frumpkes, waggling his bony finger at Gloria and me. “Those are the two juvenile delinquents whose lawless antics ruined my mother’s quality of life and had a negative environmental impact on our precious beach sand and fragile seashells. The boy’s not very good at history, either!”

  One of the cops shot Mr. Frumpkes a raised-eyebrows look. I had a feeling he was just about as tired of spending time with Mr. Grumpface as most of his students were.

  “You two should head inside and talk to the motel manager,” said the other cop, a lady who seemed to really enjoy popping her chewing gum.

  “The manager is my mom,” I said.

  “Good. She’ll fill you in.”

  “On what?” asked Gloria.

  “Basically, we need to ask you folks to limit any future promotional activities to your own property.”

  “That means stay off the beach, Mr. Wilkie!” shouted Mr. Frumpkes.

  “No, it doesn’t, sir,” said the second cop. “The beach is public property. These two can go there anytime they want. Just no more buried pirate chests or treasure hunts.”

  “How about if we have an Easter egg hunt?” I asked.

  “As long as you keep it confined to the grounds of the Wonderland Motel, we won’t have a problem,” said the first cop.

  “And don’t invite too many people,” said his partner. “Anybody who wants to hunt for your Easter eggs should park here in your parking lot—not up the boulevard at the IHOP or Twistee Treat.”

  “And not in front of my mother’s house!” added Mr. Frumpkes. “One of those hooligan treasure hunters nearly gave her a heart attack when his parrot started squawking like a pirate! She’s so terrified I had to install burglar alarms, motion detectors, and floodlights all around her house. I wanted to add a vat of boiling oil, but Mother wouldn’t let me!”

  Now both of the police officers were arching their eyebrows at Mr. Frumpkes.

  “Thank you, officers,” I said.

  “We’re sorry if we caused any trouble, officers,” said Gloria. “But we were just trying to pursue the American dream. To prove that our lives could be richer, better, and fuller if we worked harder, faster, and smarter.”

  “Ha!” scoffed Mr. Frumpkes. “Good luck with that!”

  Now the two police officers were squinting at him.

  “Did you just make fun of the American dream, Mr. Frumpkes?” asked the gum-popping cop.

  “No, I—I—I…”

  “Kids?” said the other officer. “Go inside. Have a chat with Ms. Wilkie. We need to have a little talk with Mr. Frumpkes.”

  Gloria and I did as we were told, even though I really wanted to stay in the parking lot with the cops and watch them chew out Mr. Frumpkes. We definitely could’ve sold tickets to that.

  Probably could’ve raised a ton of money, too.

  Half the kids at Ponce de León Middle School would’ve paid double whatever price we asked.

  And even though I’d have been the one selling the tickets, I would’ve paid triple.

  We checked in with Mom.

  She told us the same thing the cops had. Except she used the words “cease and desist,” because those were the words the cops had used when they talked to her.

  “Mr. Frumpkes and his mother complained,” she said. “So did a bunch of businesses up and down the boulevard. I think we have to knock off the extra attractions and events, P.T.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what ‘cease and desist’ means,” explained Gloria.

  “But they said we could do stuff on our own property.”

  “Ms. Wilkie, how many spare parking spaces do you have?” asked Gloria.

  “You mean ones that aren’t reserved for our registered guests?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe five. Maybe six.”

  Gloria turned to me. “So the only people who can participate in our dinosaur egg hunt will be your registered guests plus five, maybe six, other carloads of contestants.”

  “Well,” I said, “what abo
ut walk-in traffic?”

  “This is Florida. When was the last time you saw anybody walking anywhere?”

  “You guys?” said Mom. “I appreciate everything the two of you have done. Honestly, I do. Our rooms are fully booked. You’ve raised an extra twelve thousand dollars. You guys have been great.”

  “But what about the one hundred thousand dollars we owe the bank?” I asked.

  She sighed before she spoke. “Grandpa and I have a plan. You two just keep entertaining our current guests. We’ll take care of finding the rest of the money.”

  Mom tried her best to put on a cheery face, but I could tell she was faking it.

  Gloria and I left the lobby feeling defeated.

  She headed up to her room to play with her make-believe stock portfolio.

  “If my buy-sell strategy holds up,” she said, “maybe we can take that twelve thousand dollars we earned and have your grandfather actually invest it for us.”

  “You mean gamble with it?”

  “There would be some risk involved, yes, but the rewards could be astronomical.”

  “Fine. You go work on that. I want to check in with Grandpa, see if he can do a dinosaur voice. I think our guests are totally bored with Freddy the Frog.”

  “Okay. Catch up with you later.”

  “Later.”

  I headed toward the pool and Grandpa’s work-shop.

  I wanted to find out what his and Mom’s big plan was. How did they expect to raise all that money in less than three weeks?

  When I reached the pool, the place was deserted. And I could see why.

  Johnny and Bob Jones were holding their family reunion poolside, and the only activity seemed to be Yelling at Each Other Very, Very Loudly.

  By the way: they weren’t calling each other Johnny and Bob, either.

  Once again, it paid to be a semi-invisible kid.

  Even though “Johnny” and “Bob” were too busy screaming at each other to even notice me, I hid behind Freddy the Frog. I didn’t have to strain to hear what the two old guys were saying. Both Jones brothers were definitely using their “outdoor voices.”