Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab

by Bob Pflugfelder

  “This house may be falling apart, but that wall’s solid as a rock,” Lily said. “You won’t be able to make that hole any bigger. And you can’t get your hand through it, either. Believe me, I’ve tried. We’re stuck in here.”

  “Little Miss Sunshine,” Tesla said. She peered out through the hole again. “That latch. It’s so close. If only we had a coat hanger or …”

  Tesla spun around, suddenly beaming. There wasn’t a shining light bulb over her head, but there might as well have been.

  She pointed at the stuff on the floor beside the blanket: the notepad, the pen, and the radio.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “Vince and Frank gave it to me so I’d have something to do,” Lily said. “I was so bored up here all day I started singing to myself, and I think it got on their nerves.”

  Tesla rushed over and practically pounced on the radio. She snatched it up, flipped it over, and popped off the plastic lid on the back.

  “Yes! Batteries! And I bet there’s some wire in here we could pull out, too.”

  “Good one, Tez!” Nick said. “But we’ll need some metal.”

  He started pacing around the room, stopping every so often to bounce up and down when he found a particularly loose floorboard.

  “A nail,” he said. “A nail. A nail. A … a-ha!”

  One of the floorboards bowed so much in the middle it practically made a U. Rusty, blackened nails protruded from each end.

  “What the heck could batteries, wire, and old nails be good for?” DeMarco asked.

  Nick and Tesla just looked at each other, smiling grimly. Then they showed him.

  TESLA AND NICK’S

  DO-IT-YOURSELF ELECTROMAGNET AND PICKER-UPPER

  THE STUFF:

  • 1 D-size battery

  • 1 strand of 24-gauge plastic-coated wire

  • 1 3- to 4-inch (7.5 to 10-cm) iron or steel nail

  • Tape

  • Wire strippers or scissors

  THE SETUP

  1. Wrap the wire around the nail, leaving about 8 inches (20.5 cm) loose at one end. Try not to let the ends of the wire overlap.

  2. If necessary, cut the wire so that about 8 inches (20.5 cm) is loose at the other end, too.

  3. Using the wire strippers or scissors, remove ½ inch (1.25 cm) of the plastic coating from both ends of the wire. Ask an adult if you have trouble with this step.

  4. Tape one exposed end of the wire to the top of the battery and the other to the bottom.

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. Once the battery’s connected, the flow of electricity through the wires creates an invisible magnetic field. The nail is now a magnet, and you should be able to pick up small metal objects with it, such as paper clips or nuts and bolts. The more times you wrap the wire around the nail, the larger the magnetic field and thus the stronger the magnetic force.

  2. Don’t forget to disconnect the wires when you’re done. The wires and nail will get very hot over extended use, so never leave the electromagnet assembled!

  Getting the nail and wires through the peephole in the wall was the easy part. The hard part was getting them to snake around to the left and unhook the latch locking the door.

  The kids knew that the electromagnet worked. They’d tested it on the other nail they’d managed to pry from the loose floorboard. But after fiddling with the wires for five minutes, the side of her face smooshed against the wall and her tongue sticking out, Tesla gave up.

  “I don’t think I’m getting the right angle,” she said. “You give it a try, Nick. But watch out. The wire’s getting—”

  Nick took the battery from his sister and immediately said, “Yipe!”

  “—hot,” Tesla finished.

  Nick tried for five minutes, but he couldn’t get the nail attached to the latch.

  DeMarco tried for five minutes, but he couldn’t get the nail attached to the latch, either.

  “I think I can do it,” said Lily. “I’m really good at Operation.”

  “You mean … the game?” DeMarco said.

  Lily nodded.

  DeMarco looked back at Nick and Tesla.

  They each gave him a “Why not?” shrug.

  “All right,” said DeMarco, letting Lily take the battery from his hand. “But this is a lot harder than taking out the funny bone without lighting up the guy’s—”

  “Got it,” Lily said.

  “Got it?” said Nick.

  “Yeah. Got it. At least I think I got it. I felt a tug, as if the nail had suddenly moved itself. Then I gave a little pull, and something seemed to shift.”

  “That sure was fast,” DeMarco said, looking unconvinced.

  “That’s how I work,” Lily said.

  Nick stepped to the door and reached for the knob.

  “Well, there’s an easy way to find out if the latch is still in the hook or not,” he said.

  He turned the knob and pushed.

  The door swung open.

  “Oh,” said DeMarco. “Good one.”

  He held up his hand toward Lily, and they high-fived.

  “So what do we do now?” Lily said.

  Tesla stretched out an arm toward the dark hallway. “We leave.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” Nick said.

  “Maybe it will be.”

  Nick gave his sister a glum deadpan glare.

  “Come on,” she said.

  She started down the hall with slow, soft steps.

  They reached the top of the staircase without hearing anyone or (so far as they could tell) being heard themselves.

  “They’re probably still out searching the grounds for other kids,” Lily whispered.

  “Let’s hope they don’t find any,” said Nick.

  They’d need a lot of luck just to escape. But to escape and rescue Silas? That would require more luck than you need to win the lottery.

  Tesla led the way down the stairs and then across the dusty, musty foyer to the front door. There were narrow floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the door, and the kids wiped the grime off the glass just enough to peek outside.

  The front gate to the Landrigan estate was about forty yards away, at the bottom of a gently sloping hill overgrown with weeds and waist-high grass.

  Vince and Frank and Jaws and Claws were nowhere in sight.

  “So, now we just run for it?” Nick said.

  “Would you rather walk?” said Tesla.

  Nick nodded. “Right. Run it is.”

  “On the count of three?” Tesla said.

  DeMarco and Lily nodded, too.

  “Okay,” said Tesla. “One. Two. Three!”

  Tesla threw open the door, and all four kids rocketed out of the house and onto the lawn.

  They weren’t a dozen strides onto the grass before they heard a gruff voice off to the far left call out “Hey!” Then, just a few strides later, there was more to hear—barking and growling and the sound of huge bodies moving fast through the grass. The kids looked toward the noise and saw what they expected. And dreaded.

  Jaws and Claws were charging their way, covering the ground between them with terrifying speed.

  The kids weren’t fast enough. They wouldn’t make it to the gate.

  Lily screamed. Nick might have, too. He wasn’t sure. He was too scared.

  Instinctively, all four kids turned their backs to the big dogs, veering off to the right.

  They were running for the fence now. Maybe—maybe—one or two of them could climb up and over and get away. But there was no way all of them would.

  The Rottweilers were finally going to use the jaws and claws they’d been named for.

  The fence was just twenty yards away. Then ten. Then five. Then Nick and Tesla and DeMarco and Lily were lined up against it, all of them looking back to see why they were alive.

  Jaws and Claws were still closing in on them. But slowly now, heads down, snarling, frothing. When they were a little less than a dozen feet from the kids, the
y stopped and just stood there.

  “Why don’t they finish us?” DeMarco said. “What are they waiting for?”

  “The signal,” Tesla said. “From them.”

  Vince and Frank came striding up behind the dogs.

  “Un-be-lievable,” Vince grated out through gritted teeth. “On the last day. The last day.” He jabbed a finger at Lily. “You. Move away from the others.”

  Lily just blinked at him, still panting from her dash across the yard.

  “I said move!” Vince barked.

  “Why?” Lily asked.

  “Because he needs you on the phone one more time before he gets his money,” Tesla said. “Right, Vince? Me and Nick and DeMarco you can get rid of now, but Lily you need … for another hour or so.”

  Vince looked like he wanted to chomp into Tesla and rip her to shreds without any help from his dogs.

  “Shut up.”

  “We gotta hurry it up, Vince,” Frank said nervously. “If we’re gonna do something out in the open like this, we gotta get it over with, know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. I sure do.”

  For the second time, Nick saw Vince smile. This one wasn’t an I’m-trying-to-look-nice smile, though. It was an I’m-going-to-enjoy-this smile. And this time, he seemed to mean it.

  Vince glanced to the right, obviously looking for potential witnesses in the field on the other side of the fence. When he didn’t see any, he glanced to the left, toward the street.

  His smile disappeared.

  “What in the—”

  There was a roar and a squeal and a crash, and something smashed through the Landrigans’ front gate and zoomed up the drive.

  It was a big black SUV.

  As it swerved toward Nick, Tesla, DeMarco, and Lily, they could do nothing but press back against the fence behind them and stare in shock. Jaws and Claws went darting away whimpering, and Frank stumbled backward, tripped over his own feet, and ended up flat on his back. Only Vince stood his ground as the SUV bore down on them.

  At the last second, it screeched to a halt.

  The driver’s side door flew open, and a red-haired woman in a dark pantsuit and sunglasses popped out. She had a gun in her hand.

  She pointed it at Vince.

  “Down on the ground!”

  Vince stole a peek at his dogs. They were trotting back toward the SUV now, growling uncertainly.

  “Keep those dogs back and get yourself flat on the ground now!” the woman snapped.

  Vince stared down the barrel of the woman’s gun for a moment, then heaved a heavy sigh.

  “Jaws. Claws. Sit. Stay,” he said.

  The dogs obeyed.

  Vince went down to his knees and then stretched out flat on the grass.

  “The last day,” he was muttering. “The last day.”

  The woman shifted her steely gaze to Frank. “You. Roll over on your face like your friend. Hands and feet apart.”

  Frank was as obedient as Jaws and Claws.

  Lily ran toward the woman, tears in her eyes.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she cried. “I knew the police would find me sooner or later!”

  There was a whirring sound from the SUV. Someone was rolling down the window behind the driver’s seat.

  A grinning Silas poked out his head.

  “Oh, she’s not a cop,” he said to Lily. “And she wasn’t looking for you. She was looking for them.”

  He pointed at Nick and Tesla.

  “Wait,” Nick said. “Looking for us? Why?”

  The red-headed woman snaked her left hand into one of her pockets. Without taking her eyes (or gun) off Vince and Frank, she pulled out a necklace and tossed it to Tesla.

  “My pendant!” Tesla said.

  She immediately put the necklace back on.

  “Don’t lose it again,” the woman said. Her short hair and clenched jaw and narrowed eyes made her look stern, but there might have been a hint of a smile twisting her thin lips.

  “I’ve got your rocket, too. But you probably don’t want it back. It’s pretty much just chewed-up plastic and dog slobber.”

  Nick looked back and forth between the woman and his sister. “But how …? When …? Who …?”

  “Your mother and father are friends of mine,” the woman said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “But … but … but.…”

  In the distance, sirens wailed. Lots of them.

  Jaws—or maybe it was Claws—began howling along.

  Vince and Frank popped their faces up out of the grass.

  “The last day,” Vince groaned as the sirens grew louder. “The last day.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Frank snapped.

  It was unclear whether he was talking to Vince or the dog.

  “But … I don’t understand,” Nick said to the woman. He looked at her gun. “You’re not a cop?”

  “No, I’m not,” the woman said. “But I am … associated with the police, in a way. I called them before I drove in here.” She jerked her head sideways, at Silas. “You can thank your friend for filling me in on what you’ve been up to. Until I talked to him, I had no idea just how much trouble you were in. I think your mom and dad are going to be a little disappointed in all of us.”

  “But why would …? How did you …? Have you been …?”

  “That’s all I can tell you,” the woman said again. Her voice was firm but not harsh, and she looked at Nick with a twinkle in her eyes that seemed to say, “Maybe next time, kid.”

  Three San Mateo County Sheriff’s cruisers came whooshing through the Landrigans’ busted gate. Not far behind were a pair of California Highway Patrol motorcycles, an Animal Control truck, an ambulance, and, bringing up the rear, a dinky three-wheeled meter reader’s car.

  “Whoa!” said Silas.

  “It’s everyone but the National Guard,” said DeMarco.

  The woman might have only been “associated” with the police “in a way,” but obviously when she called, they listened.

  A small swarm of police officers rushed past her SUV, and Vince and Frank were quickly surrounded and handcuffed.

  The woman lowered her gun, and one of the cops—a balding, sixtyish man in a rumpled suit who’d climbed out of the meter reader three-wheeler—turned to her and said, “Thank you, Agent McIntyre. We’ll take it from here.”

  The woman threw a sly look at Nick and Tesla.

  “Pretend you didn’t hear that,” she said to them.

  A moment later, all five kids—Nick, Tesla, DeMarco, Lily, and Silas—were being herded into squad cars for what the balding cop called “a little trip downtown.”

  “You’re taking us to jail?” DeMarco wailed.

  “What?” the cop said. “No! No, no, no!” He paused to think it over. “Well, technically, yes.”

  DeMarco moaned.

  “Just so I can get your statements,” the cop said. “Don’t worry. I’ll call your moms and dads and tell them where you are.”

  “Call … our…moms?” DeMarco croaked.

  He and Silas turned to each other, their eyes wide.

  “It’s been nice knowin’ ya, bro,” Silas said.

  “Right back at ya, dude,” said DeMarco.

  They hugged, looking like they were about to cry.

  Nick and Tesla barely noticed. They were both watching the black SUV drive off up the street.

  The balding cop was named Sergeant Feiffer, and he brought each of the kids watery hot chocolate as he interviewed them one by one in a meeting room at Half Moon Bay police headquarters. All the other cops had left after dropping off Vince and Frank in the little building’s one holding cell.

  It turned out that Sergeant Feiffer pretty much was the Half Moon Bay police force. The other cops had been on loan from the county sheriff and the Highway Patrol. The only other person in the office after they were gone was an ancient administrative assistant named Yvonne who pecked at her computer keyboard at a pace somewhere around a letter a minute and wo
re her hair in a big beehive that looked like a giant white swirl of vanilla ice cream on her head.

  When Sergeant Feiffer seemed to be wrapping up his interview with her, Tesla asked if he was really the town’s only cop.

  “These days, yeah,” he said ruefully. “We used to have a chief, two uniforms, and a meter reader, but then the economy went”—he turned a thumb downward and blew a raspberry. “Oh, well. It’s not like we have much crime around here, anyway. Even Hutchings and Garratt were from out of town.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s the guys you caught. Vince Hutchings and Frank Garratt. Couple two-bit lowlifes out of Sacramento. I guess this was supposed to be their shot at the big time.”

  “Sacramento. Of course,” Tesla said, speaking to herself as much as to Sergeant Feiffer. “Where Siringo Bros. Home Renovators are located.”

  Sergeant Feiffer nodded, looking impressed. “Exactly. And they’ll be glad to get their van back. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m stealing all the credit, by the way. If the town council thought they could let kids solve every crime for free, why would they need me, am I right?”

  When Tesla didn’t laugh at his joke, Sergeant Feiffer laughed for her.

  “Anywho,” he said, looking back down at the forms he’d been filling out, “it seems Mr. Hutchings and Mr. Garratt aren’t the only lawbreakers in town today. You do know that trespassing is illegal, don’t you?”

  “Oh. Yes. I’m sorry. We didn’t really think about that.”

  The sergeant looked back up at Tesla and smiled. “Don’t worry. I think it can be overlooked this once.”

  “Did Agent McIntyre put in a good word for us?”

  “Who?”

  “Agent McIntyre. The woman who saved our lives.”

  Sergeant Feiffer scratched his bald head.

  “McIntyre, McIntyre, McIntyre,” he said. “Nope. Don’t know anyone named McIntyre. We did get a tip about a disturbance on the Landrigan estate, but it was phoned in anonymously.”

  “But I definitely heard you call that woman—”

  “Well, I’d say we’re done here,” Sergeant Feiffer cut in. “Thank you for all your help.”

  He gave Tesla a McGruff the Crime Dog coloring book and held out a hand toward the door.