The Genius Files #4 (2 page)

“No!” Coke shouted. “I'll do anything you want! Anything! Just let me go!”

“Too late for negotiations,” Dr. Warsaw said. “It's the real thing, Coke.”

“Good one, boss,” said the bowler dudes.

“Shut up!” Dr. Warsaw barked at them. “Help me throw him over this railing.”

“No!” Coke protested as they swung his body backward, and then forward.

“One! Two!” the bowler dudes counted off.

The four of them swung Coke's body back once more, and this time they let go, heaving him over the railing and off the bridge.

He was falling.

He was helpless.

It was all over.

“C
oke!” Pep shouted. “Wake up!”

“I don't want to die!” Coke shouted. “I don't want to die!”

“You're not gonna die!” his sister insisted.

Coke looked around. He was no longer on a bridge. He was sitting on the bench in the RV park across the street from Graceland, just as he had been before he nodded off.

“Huh? What? You're alive!”

“You must have been having a bad dream,” Pep told him. “How could you
possibly
fall asleep at a time like
this? You were snoring and shouting and slobbering all over me.”

Coke shook his head and snapped out of it. He could see and smell the smoldering ruins of the RV, and he instantly remembered everything that had happened.

“Aunt Judy,” he whispered. “She's dead.”

“We killed her,” Pep said, choking back tears. “I'm responsible for the death of another human being.”

“She killed
herself
,” Coke said quietly. “We had nothing to do with it.”

It certainly wasn't their fault, but even so the twins had played a part in the accident. And it was their own aunt who was the victim. This was after they had already been involved in
another
accidental death back in Washington, when Archie Clone tried to drop them on the Washington Monument. They were beginning to think they were not entirely innocent in these tragedies. And bad news, it is said, comes in threes.

“What do you think happened to her?” Pep asked. “I mean, why did she go crazy like that?”

“Who knows?” Coke replied. “She was in love with Dr. Warsaw. I guess she would do anything for him.”

The police had not arrived on the scene yet. There was nothing left of the RV, except for the charred remains of the vehicle's chassis. A crowd of gawkers
had gathered around to watch it melt and take cell phone pictures of the carnage. This was the most exciting thing to happen around Graceland since the days when Elvis—the
real
Elvis—used to live there.

“Somebody was probably smoking in bed,” a lady said.

“Coulda been a propane tank,” said a man in overalls. “I never trust them things.”

Only Coke and Pep knew what really happened. Pep covered her nose to avoid inhaling the noxious fumes, and scanned the crowd. There were several suspicious-looking characters walking around, but at least none of them looked like Mrs. Higgins, Dr. Warsaw, or the bowler dudes.

“What do we tell Mom and Dad?” Pep asked her brother.

“I don't know,” Coke replied. “But we can't tell Mom about Aunt Judy. Knowing that her sister was an assassin would be too painful.”

Soon their parents returned from their tour of Graceland.

“What's that smell?” Dr. McDonald asked Coke and Pep as he walked through the gate at the Graceland RV Park & Campground. “It smells like burning tires.”

Yes—burning tires, a burning engine, a burning transmission, a burning radiator, and every other part of an RV that can burn. When Dr. and Mrs. McDonald
realized which RV it was, they stopped in their tracks.

“Honey, is that where we parked our . . . ,” Mrs. McDonald said.

“I'd better call the insurance company,” said Dr. McDonald.

It had been a good vehicle, all in all. It took them over four thousand miles without any problems. It never needed any serious maintenance. But now all that was left was a pile of twisted metal.

“I can't believe it,” Mrs. McDonald said, stunned. She repeated it over and over again, as if that would change what had happened. “Everything's gone.”

“It's all my fault,” Coke admitted. “I'm really sorry.”

“
You
blew up the RV?” his mother asked.

“Not exactly,” Pep explained.

“It's like this,” Coke said, and then he proceeded to tell his parents the whole story. He explained how they met Evil Elvis back in New Bern, North Carolina, and how The King had terrorized Pep at the Birthplace of Pepsi and almost shredded him at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. He told his parents how Evil Elvis had pulled a gun on them at the grave site of Elvis, and how he chased them into the RV, grabbed the backpack filled with explosives, and accidentally ignited it and detonated the fireworks inside.

Dr. McDonald took a long look into Coke's eyes, as if he was trying to peer inside his son's soul. Mrs.
McDonald just shook her head. Coke fully expected to be grounded for the rest of his life, if not longer. He deserved it.

Instead, Dr. McDonald leaned back his head and burst out laughing.

“Oh man, that is a
great
story!” he said, clapping each of the twins on the back. “If only I had your imagination. It makes me wish I was a kid again.”

“You're not mad?” Pep asked.

“Mad?” said Dr. McDonald, pulling the twins close to him. “How could I be mad at you two? It wasn't your fault. The RV must have spontaneously combusted. It had a full tank of gas. One little spark from somebody's campfire or cigarette could have set it off.”

“I never trusted that thing,” said Mrs. McDonald. “You read about crazy things like this happening all the time, but you just assume they'll never happen to
you
. And then, boom, it happens to you. It was just bad luck. Luckily, we paid for the insurance.”

Mrs. McDonald moved in closer and threw her arms around the twins so they were in a big group hug.

“I'm just glad neither of you was inside the thing when it blew up,” she said. “We're all alive, and that's what matters. Our stuff can be replaced. I don't know what I would do if something ever happened to you kids.”

Coke and Pep looked at each other, and they each knew what the other one was thinking.
They
were the ones who bought all those fireworks back in South Carolina.
They
were the ones who stored them in the backpack.
They
were the ones who ran back to hide in the RV. It never would have exploded if it hadn't been for
them
. Aunt Judy would still be alive if it hadn't been for
them
. And they would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of their lives.

There was a lot that needed to be done. Mrs. McDonald, luckily, had her laptop and camera with her when the RV exploded. But everything the McDonalds had inside the RV was gone. They had no clothes, except for what they were wearing. They would have to get new toothbrushes and toiletries. Coke did a mental inventory of all the souvenirs and trinkets they had accumulated in their travels—Silly String, Frisbee, bars of soap, a harmonica, duct tape. All gone.

There were a lot of phone calls that needed to be made, police reports to fill out, statements to be given. They would have to rent a car to get back to California.

“Can we get a
cool
car this time?” Coke asked. “Like a Ferrari?”

“We're not going to rent a Ferrari,” Dr. McDonald said firmly.

“Maybe we should just fly home,” Pep suggested. “Then we could put this whole thing behind us.”

“Fly home? No way!” her mother replied. “We said we were going to drive across the United States and back. We're almost three-quarters of the way there. It wouldn't be right to fly home now. Besides, the readers of
Amazing but True
are depending on me to send back reports.”

The sun was sinking below the horizon, and most of the work that needed to be done could wait until tomorrow. For now, the immediate priority was finding somewhere to spend the night.

Fortunately, there was a nice place directly across the street from Graceland and next door to the campground—the obviously named Heartbreak Hotel.

As they walked toward it, Coke and Pep turned around to take one last look at the smoldering wreckage of the RV. Nobody could
ever
find out that Aunt Judy—disguised as Evil Elvis—had been inside.

T
he Heartbreak Hotel in Memphis has an Elvis Presley theme, of course. There are pictures of Elvis all over the walls. Elvis songs blare out of hidden speakers. There's a TV in the lobby that
always
has an Elvis movie playing on it. From the looks of the place, you would never know that The King died back in 1977. It looks as though he's still alive.

Everywhere Coke and Pep turned, there were constant reminders of Evil Elvis. It made it hard to forget what happened with Aunt Judy just a few hours earlier.

Still, the twins slept soundly. It was nice to be in a regular bed for a change. After a few weeks, the RV
had begun to feel like a rolling jail.

In the morning, everyone was famished. The food in the RV had been incinerated in the explosion, of course. The McDonalds came downstairs at nine o'clock and took a table in the hotel restaurant. Apart from a few lonely Elvis impersonators, the place was almost empty. A giant-screen TV on the wall was showing the young Elvis dancing with Ann-Margret in the movie
Viva Las Vegas
. The waitress took everyone's order and went to the kitchen.

“Family meeting!” Dr. McDonald announced. “I've been thinking—”

“Uh-oh,” Coke muttered.

“You know I've been trying to come up with a topic for my next book,” Dr. McDonald continued. “I've decided that I don't want to do an Elvis Presley biography after all.”

“Good idea, Dad,” Pep said, visibly relieved.

“Yeah, there are probably a
thousand
books about Elvis,” Dr. McDonald told them. “I was thinking that maybe for my next book I might try a novel.”

“A
novel
?!” Pep said, almost spitting out her orange juice.

“Ben,” said Mrs. McDonald, “you're a respected scholar, a university professor!”

“That book about coal and the Industrial Revolution
was awesome, Dad,” Coke said. “I couldn't put it down.”

“See?” Mrs. McDonald said. “And you tackled an important subject. And now you want to write . . . a
novel
?”

“What, you don't think I can do it?”

“You can do anything you put your mind to,” Pep told her father. “That's what you always say to us, right?”

It was obvious that Dr. McDonald's feelings had been hurt. It may have been the 21st century, but he was still insecure over the fact that his wife was more successful than he was. It didn't seem fair to him that a million people visited her silly website every day to find out about ridiculous museums, giant balls of twine, and the like.

Meanwhile, his book had been a flop. Sadly, not a lot of people care about the impact of coal on the Industrial Revolution. The book sold less than three thousand copies. He wanted to write something that
everybody
would read and talk about. He wanted to see his name on the bestseller list.

“All I need to do is write a nonfiction book and add a story to it,” Dr. McDonald said. “Throw in some action. Some adventure. Some conflict. How hard could that be?”

“Do you have an idea for a novel, Dad?” Coke asked.

“No. I'm just thinking about it.”

The family looked at him skeptically, and Dr. McDonald decided it would be best to drop the subject for now. He pulled out his trusty Rand McNally road atlas and opened it to the big map of the United States. Leaning over it like a general planning an invasion, he stabbed his finger at Memphis, Tennessee.

“Okay, gang, here's how we're going to get home,” he said.

Dr. McDonald traced a southern route west with his finger sliding across the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Then they would drive up to Las Vegas in the southwestern corner of Nevada, and up through California until they got back to the San Francisco area.