"So, where’re you going now?” Rory asked Tyler around a mouthful of Heavenly Caramel Haze ice-cream.
“Well, my family’s going to the waterpark. Want to come?”
‘Sure!” all of us shouted before Amy could interfere.
There are only two words to describe the waterpark—WICKED AMAZING. We melted into the crowd once we got there to escape Amy’s persistent warnings about standing up on waterslides, etc. As if any of us were that stupid! I mean, she wasn’t talking to VidKid here!
After spending a few great hours going down waterslides and meeting perilous waves in the wave pool (Teddy almost drowned because of a dumb rule about “no grabbing onto the sides of the pool”) Amy declared that it was time to leave the park.
“But it’s only four o’clock!” Johnny protested. “The park doesn’t close til nine!”
“You don’t want to do everything the first day,” Amy said. “Besides, look at the sky.”
We did, and got Amy’s point. Large black clouds had suddenly covered the sun.
“Hey, where are you staying, Tyler?” Johnny asked our new friend.
“At that hotel around the corner.”
“SWEET!” Johnny shrieked, causing the nearest group of people fleeing the upcoming storm to stop and look at him like he was a candidate for a crazy house.
“What?” Tyler asked.
“We’re staying there, too! Rooms 510 and 511.”
“I cannot believe this. We’re right down the hall in 530, the family suite!”
Our discourse was cut off by a sheet of rain.
“Eek!” Rory screeched, cowering protectively over the various chocolate bars, candy, and other treats he’d purchased throughout the day. “Let’s go! I don’t want my kettle corn turned into a watery mess! It was five dollars for this measly bag!”
“Four eighty-nine,” corrected Johnny. “And yeah, that’s SUCH a rip-off.”
Amy quickly put a stop to this discussion and herded us out of the park. We ran around the corner to the hotel, with Rory bringing up the tail end of our little procession because of his burden of snacks.
“So, NOW what?” Johnny asked when we were safely in room 510, out of Amy’s earshot.
“Let’s watch something,” suggested Pete. “And we can invite Tyler over and eat all those snacks Rory bought—if he hasn’t gulped them down already.”
Rory stopped stuffing cotton candy into his mouth and objected. “Hey, it was my money!”
“The Pal Club treasury will reimburse you,” Henry assured him.
Teddy and Henry were sent to fetch Tyler. They found him sitting on his bed, looking bored to death while his sisters watched some girly thing—some dumb retelling of a classic starring Barbie. He eagerly accepted our invitation.
Back in room 510, things got even better. Amy said she had to run to the grocery store with Nika and pick up some food. After pleading with her not to get Offenbach’s again, we declined her offer to take us and happily slammed the door after her. Henry locked it according to Amy’s instruction, while remarking that it was statistically improbable that anyone would randomly choose our room to break into, given that there were at least 600 rooms in the hotel.
Johnny, however, objected. “They could have cased the joint, followed us here from the park, and heard Amy say she was going to the store...”
Henry was not impressed with this theory, and thought he knew what prompted it. “You just finished reading a mystery book, right?”
“Yeah. Murder in the Hotel. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
Teddy was interested. “Whoa, nice title. Did you like it?”
“Oh, yeah! It was great...nine victims! A practice one, an accidental one, the intended victim, the poor fool who tried to blackmail the culprit, a bigger fool who didn’t learn from the first guy and tried to do the same thing, somebody who had incriminating evidence but didn’t know it, some kid who was playing detective and stumbled on the truth, one of the real detective’s partners, and lastly, the culprit himself. Oh, and a policeman or two in the final shootout, but that didn’t count. All of the murders and the shootout happened in the same hotel room.”
“Thanks, Johnny,” said Rory sarcastically.
After a bit of an argument over what movie to watch, Tyler had a ‘brilliant’ idea. “Hey, I just remembered!They made a movie version of
Murder in the Hotel!”
“Well, we don’t have it,” said Rory quickly.
But it was too late. Johnny was interested. “Sweet, Tyler! We can look it up on Netflix!”
“Yeah! I can access our family’s account on Amy’s laptop, and Henry can hook it up to the TV!” Pete exclaimed.
“Don’t you need a special cord?” was Rory’s last desperate attempt at stopping us.
“Amy keeps all the cords for her laptop in its case,” Tim informed him.
Everything went according to plan—except that it was a little hard to find the movie, because the moviemakers had changed the title to A Knock At Your Door. Appropriately creepy.
Just as it was ending, we heard it. A knock on the door, followed by a faint whisper and several more knocks.
With what Johnny later described as a ‘strangled gasp’, Rory ran into the bathroom (the only room with a lock).