Free Surviving Summer Vacation by Willo Davis Roberts

didn’t.”
    â€œAriadne, then,” Harry said.
    â€œWhat?” Ariadne demanded.
    â€œFound the guy’s lost keys and took them into the motor home.”
    â€œNo,” Ariadne said. “I didn’t have any keys.”
    Harry swept a careless glance over their faces. “You’re compulsive liars, both of you,” he said, and jogged on ahead, leaving us to deal with the insulted denials.
    Mr. and Mrs. Rupe got back to the coach before we did, and before we reached them, we realized that several angry tourists were swarming around like bees ready to sting. They didn’t like the way the motor home was parked so they couldn’t move their cars.
    â€œIt was pretty darned inconsiderate, pinning us in like this,” one man was saying as we walked up.
    â€œWe were only gone about twenty-five minutes,” Mr. Rupe defended himself.
    â€œYeah, and we’ve been held up for twenty minutes waiting to get out. Get that thing out of the way, will you?”
    It was embarrassing. I wondered if Mr. Rupe was as inconsiderate of his customers at the bank as he’d been of people on this trip. “Watch Billy again,” I told Alison. “I’m going to walk over and check out that license plate.”
    Harry didn’t seem to be embarrassed. In fact, he said rudely to one of the protesters, “Hold your horses, mister. We have to load up everybody first.”
    I trotted past the people who were listening to the exchange over the parking, took a quick look, and returned to whisper as we climbed into the coach. “Same license number,” I said. “And that one guy sure looks familiar, but I can’t think where I saw him first. Besides in the car, I mean, coming out of the Columbia River Gorge.”
    â€œReally?” Alison moved over to peer out the window to where two men were getting into the Crown Victoria. “Hmm. He looks familiar to me, too. I think . . . maybe we saw him in a uniform, or a uniform cap or something . . .”
    That was enough to trigger my memory. “He’s the guy—” I began, but at that moment Mr. Rupe climbed in, slammed the door andpractically knocked us down getting into the driver’s seat.
    â€œSit down,” he barked at us kids, and then said to his wife, “What a bunch of soreheads. Where else was I supposed to park? There was no more room.”
    I forgot about the Rupes for the moment.
    I knew where I’d seen the man who had dropped the keys. I couldn’t wait to talk to my sister about it, and I wondered how long it would take to get her alone to do it.

Chapter 7
    Getting a few minutes alone with my sister was hard to do. None of the Rupes ever took charge of Billy and Ariadne at all. If Alison even took time to go to the bathroom, they were unsupervised and got into trouble, unless I held on to them.
    From the time we left home, we’d both caught Billy digging into other people’s luggage and purses and private belongings. He just seemed to be curious, and he didn’t actually hurt anything, but we didn’t feel as if we could let him do it. I stopped him from stuffing the cat into the map pocket on the back of the driver’s seat. I rescued the Cheerios when Ariadne tried to dump them all out for the birds. I even picked up one of Mrs. Rupe’s cigarettes after it fell out of an ash tray ontothe table, where it left a brown burn mark.
    Those things all happened before we even left the paint pot parking area. We waited for a private moment after we turned off on a side road.
    â€œWhen we get out,” Alison said softly, “let’s hang behind everybody else, okay?”
    We tried. There were shallow lakes, filled with colorful algae and with steam rising from them, and signs saying not to throw anything into the water.
    â€œHow hot is that water?” Harry asked. “I’m going to see how fast some ice cubes will melt,” and he