“How are we going to get around in Los Angeles?” asked Amanda.
“I have been looking up the neighborhood on the internet, and there are buses everywhere, said Peter.
“We are going to ride on a bus!” replied Amanda.
“We are going to ditch this RV as soon as we are in Los Angeles. I worked out everything with Cyrus before we left,” said Michael. “And we won’t have enough time to get a car since we will only be in town for ten days. I will ask my Dad if he thinks it would be safe to use my new driver’s license and credit card to rent a car, but I bet the answer will be no. ”
“There are a lot of little restaurants around where we will be living. If you walk a few blocks and go to the University, there is lots of stuff,” said Peter.
“I am just glad we will be able to be outside for a change. You know what we should do is check into a hotel at Disneyland and stay there for ten days. No one would ever find us there,” replied Thibodeaux who had gone to Disney World with Solange and her mother when he was six.
“We need to stick with our plan and stay in Miss Gaby’s friend’s home,” said Solange.
“I know. I know. But don’t you think we can go to Disneyland just one day while we are in Los Angeles?” asked Thibodeaux.
“No,” replied Amanda. “I would be too scared to be around that many people.”
“You think terrorists go to Disneyland?” asked Thibodeaux.
“Hey, enough of the philosophy,” replied Solange.
Michael turned off Interstate 40 onto 15 and then drove until he exited onto Interstate 10 and headed West into Los Angeles. He drove for awhile and then pulled off into a Walmart parking lot where he saw other RV’s and parked at the back of the lot. Michael then went inside to ask the store manager if it would be okay if he parked there for a couple of days. Everyone had packed up everything they owned the night before and they were ready to get out. Peter had searched the internet and had the phone numbers of several cab companies. First Michael called and asked for a cab to pick him up in front of the Walmart and then Solange called a different cab company using a different cell phone. Michael took Thibodeaux and Peter with him and Solange and Amanda stayed together and they all got into cabs. Solange told her cab driver to take them to a random strip shopping center that Peter had found on the internet and Michael had his cab driver take him to another random location (they both had a lot of cash with them). Once they were dropped off by their cabs, they walked about a block away and called a different cab company to take them to Lafayette Loomis’s home in the West Adams area of Los Angeles which was right next to the University of Southern California.
Solange and Amanda arrived at the house first. It was huge; an enormous two story Craftsman wood and stone house with a big porch around the front and an old pool surrounded by a stone fence in the back. Solange paid the cab driver and then Amanda and Solange unloaded their luggage and quickly walked to the back of the house and, following the instructions Miss Gaby gave them before they left Louisiana, she reached under a stepping stone, pulled out a key and unlocked the gate to the backyard. Once inside the fence and out of sight of the street, Solange used her hand to dig under the first flower in the bed next to the garage and came up with a small metal box that housed six house keys and instructions on how to disarm and arm the security system. There was also a letter and a floor plan in the box.
By then Michael and the boys had arrived and Michael took one of the keys and the security system instructions and opened the back door which went into the kitchen of the house.
Michael quickly disarmed the alarm and they were in.
Amanda walked in the door and put down her bags. She was in a museum to bad taste. The kitchen did not look like it had ever been updated. Everything in the kitchen including the electric coffee pot, the stove, the refrigerator looked to be about fifty years old. The only recent appliance was the microwave and it looked like it was over twenty years old. There was some kind of old black and white flooring that was chipped and marked and a dinette set with ripped red upholstered vinyl chairs and a metal table with a red plastic top. Kitschy little decorations were all over the counters and the walls were covered with plastic clocks, none of which showed the same time.
“Wow!” said Thibodeaux. “This would make a great background for a fashion shoot.”
Thibodeaux saw how Solange was looking at him and said, “I know. I know. We can’t do anything like that until those guys are convicted.”
They all walked through the kitchen into the living room and here again nothing had been touched for fifty years. There were lots of old sofas and chairs (it was a very large house), a TV that looked to be about twenty years old, and a console record player with a bunch of old vinyl records stacked next to it on the floor. Miss Gaby’s house had been old and the furniture was very old, but everything in her house was lovely. Whoever had decorated this place had a bizarre sense of style and had been collecting inexpensive knick-knacks for what seemed to be a century.
The living room was a little stuffy even for March. Amanda saw that there was an old window air conditioner in one of the windows which were all covered with security bars. Miss Gaby had told her that the neighborhood was in the process of being gentrified, but Amanda was still glad to see the window bars.
“Okay, so let’s go upstairs and see what the bedroom situation is like,” said Solange.
They climbed the stairs and Amanda walked into the first room to see two twin beds. All the furniture in this bedroom was white French provincial and the walls and bedspreads were dark purple. The dresser was covered in so many Avon perfume bottles that you could not see the top. And the walls were covered in oil paintings from a variety of different styles, none of which looked like something Amanda’s mother would buy.
Amanda put down her bag. Regardless of what any of the other rooms looked like, she knew she would never talk Peter, Thibodeaux, or Michael into staying in such a girly room.
Amanda walked out into the hall. There were two more bedrooms, but they all were furnished with white French provincial furniture—in one, the walls were painted bright pink (even more girly than the purple room) and in the other, the walls were sea foam green. Michael had grabbed the sea foam green room, leaving the bright pink room to Peter and Thibodeaux. So much for the guys not wanting to stay in a girly room. Peter was standing in the middle of his new room where the walls were covered with so many mismatched paintings and knick-knacks that you could barely see the pink. He stood very still; he was speechless.
Amanda walked into the upstairs bathroom closest to her room. It was enormous. The walls were covered in dark pink tile with a sea foam green border. There was a huge pink square bathtub and a shower that was tiled in pink and green. Someone had put a post-it on the mirror that said “The Joan Crawford Memorial Bathroom,” Amanda looked around and started to laugh. She just might like it here.
Chapter V
Michael asked everyone to go downstairs so they could read the letter that Lafayette Loomis had left in the buried lock box. Once they were together, Michael began reading, “Welcome to Los Angeles. Sorry about the condition of the house, but I did not have time to do very much before I had to leave for New Zealand. I did have cable and internet installed for you. The TV’s in the house are very old, but they are usable. When I bought the house, I had an engineer do an inspection and everything actually works so you should feel free to run the air conditioners, cook and swim in the pool etc., without fear of being electrocuted.”
Michael continued reading, “Now for the fun part. You are living in a Disneyland ride. This house was built during the Prohibition era and there is a secret room in the attic that can be accessed from a hidden door in the kitchen. The door is located on the wall next to the kitchen and if you count four planks away from the stove and then push on the edge of the plank in the middle, it will open. When you open the door, you will find a flight of stairs going up to the secret room but also another flight o
f stairs leading to a tunnel. The tunnel goes to the garage where it exits into the storeroom which has a door to the back alley. This was built so people would be able to escape if the house was raided by the police. And it could have been raided because the man who owned the house before Miss Abingdon, the lady’s whose estate sold the house to me, ran a speakeasy bar in the attic. There are some boxes hiding the trap door in the garage storeroom, but if you move them, you will have access to the tunnel from the garage. I had the tunnel inspected by a structural engineer and it is sound.”
Everyone immediately got up and ran to the kitchen and started pressing on the paneling and sure enough it opened and there was a stairway with concrete steps. It was very dark because there were no windows in the stairwell, but there was a chain hanging down from the ceiling, which Michael pulled and turned on a light. They climbed up two flights of stairs, leaving the door open just in case and at the top of the second flight was a door. They opened the door, flipped the light switch, and walked in and stopped to stare. They were in a bar. The walls were painted dark red, the flooring was black and covered with low lying couches and tables, and against the wall was a fully equipped bar. Someone had even installed a disco lamp.
Michael still had the letter in his hand so he continued reading. “If you go behind the bar in the hidden room and push on the wall between the shelves, the door will open to a stairway to the back upstairs bedrooms.”
They immediately pushed on the door, climbed down the stairs pushed open the door and walked into the closet of the room that Thibodeaux and Peter had chosen. They then climbed back up the stairs to the secret room. Whoever had built this room had certainly thought it through. There were actually windows and one of them had a window air conditioner, but the window did not give any light because it was hidden from both the sun and any outside view by a roof overhang.
“Did the old lady who used to live here have parties up here?” asked Peter.
“Most of this furniture looks old enough to have been here for almost a hundred years. The only things that look like they are just thirty or forty years old are the couches and the air conditioner, so maybe she did have parties,” replied Michael.
“Wow,” said Thibodeaux. “Is there anything else special about this house?”
“Well, not according to the letter but a secret room’s pretty special all by itself,” replied Michael. “Let me go out to the garage and check out the tunnel.”
They all followed Michael down the stairs to Thibodeaux and Peter’s room and then downstairs and outside to the free standing garage in the backyard next to the pool. Michael opened the garage door using one of the keys from the box and everyone walked in. The garage was made of stone and it had a dirt floor but there was a door in the back that led to a storeroom with a wood floor. They went inside the storeroom which was filled with set pieces from old movie sets. The walls were covered in old movie posters. Michael moved a group of boxes that were in the middle of the floor and saw a trap door. He then opened the trap door to see a flight of stairs leading to a tunnel.
“Let me go first to be sure it is safe,” said Michael.
Amanda quickly said, “I am going to go back into the house and look for him to come through the tunnel.”
Thibodeaux quickly chimed in with, “I’ll go with you.”
“Peter and I will stay here so we can help Michael if he runs into any trouble,” said Solange.
Peter looked very pleased that Solange thought he could help with something that did not involve a computer.
Michael climbed down the stairs into the tunnel using a flashlight he found on a shelf in the storeroom.
Amanda and Thibodeaux ran back into the house and opened the secret door again.
Amanda called down the stairs to the tunnel, “Michael, can you hear me?”
“I sure can,” called Michael from the tunnel. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Here, let’s practice kissing,” said Thibodeaux as he quickly kissed Amanda on her lips.
“What are you…?” Amanda shut up as Michael entered the kitchen from the tunnel stairs.
Michael, Amanda, and Thibodeaux started to walk back to the garage. Amanda pulled Thibodeaux back and said, “Why did you kiss me?”
“Because I want to. But we need to start kissing. Back home, everyone in eighth grade is kissing and we are missing out,” replied Thibodeaux.
“What?” asked Amanda.
“You know it’s true. They are spinning those bottles as fast as they can. Why, there’s an app for that,” said Thibodeaux.
“What bottles? What are you talking about?” asked Amanda.
“Do you want to be the only girl in eighth grade who hasn’t kissed a boy?” asked Thibodeaux.
“Well, no,” said Amanda.
“So now you aren’t. I just did you a big favor,” replied Thibodeaux.
“Right…”
“It’s bad enough that we are going to be behind on our schoolwork. We don’t want to miss out on our social development,” replied Thibodeaux.
“Well, that was really romantic,” replied Amanda but then she shut up because they were all the way to the garage storeroom.
Solange was talking to Michael, “There is a back door from the storeroom to the alleyway. Why don’t we hide a key outside so we can get in the tunnel to hide if we ever need to. I will bury one under the first garbage can on the right side of the door.”
Solange walked outside and nonchalantly bent down as though she was checking the trash can for holes on the bottom. Then using the sharp edge of the key to break the ground, she slipped the key into the earth.
Amanda thought about how much they had all changed since the bombings. They always had to think a few steps ahead about what they should do if this happened or if that happened. Their lives had become a chess game. And now it was a chess game with kissing.
By then everyone was back in the garage. Solange told everyone where she had placed the key and since they were going to lock the garage back up (hiding another key back under the first flower in the flower bed), Michael decided to not put the boxes over the trap door. What good was an escape hatch that was blocked.
As they all walked back to the house, Amanda pulled Thibodeaux back with her and said, “We need to talk about what you just did.”
Thibodeaux quickly said, “This?” and kissed Amanda again.
Amanda saw Solange turn around to see Thibodeaux kissing her. Solange quickly turned back and pretended that she had not seen anything.
“I will talk with you later,” said Amanda to Thibodeaux in her best stern voice.
Thibodeaux looked at Amanda and smiled, “You do that.”
“You can’t just kiss me every time you see me,” hissed Amanda.
“Okay, so I won’t do it every time,” said Thibodeaux giving her a quick kiss.
“You know that’s….” but Amanda’s voice trailed off. Thibodeaux had walked away.
Amanda walked back into the house and went into her room and opened her duffle bag. Now was time for more important things than eighth grade kissing lessons. She took out the shotgun her grandfather had given her, loaded it, and put the safety on. She then did the same thing with the handgun and then walked into Thibodeaux and Peter’s room and opened the door and climbed up the stairs to the secret room. Once she was upstairs, she opened the door to a closet and put her guns on the top shelf. She then left to tell everyone where she had hidden her guns and how she better not catch any of them touching it, especially not Peter or Thibodeaux who were pretty perturbed to hear that Amanda thought they were foolish enough to shoot themselves.
Solange piped in, “Hey boys. Kids in New Orleans are always shooting themselves because they stumble upon a gun. Now I know you two boys are smart, but please remember that you both look much more handsome without a hole in your head. ”
Peter and Thibodeaux looked even more perturbed to hear that Solange thought they were dumb enough to shoot themselves.
But then it was down to everyday business. Solange had found a New York style wheeled shopping cart in the kitchen and she had seen a local (as in non-chain) grocery store close by when they were in the cab. “Come on Amanda, we need to go buy groceries.”
Amanda did not argue; she simply followed Solange out to the street. She was actually thrilled to be outside after being cooped up in the RV for the last four days and she certainly did not want to spend more time with Thibodeaux until she figured out what the thought about the kissing. It was a beautiful day in Los Angeles—the sun was shining and it was about 80 degrees outside so they did not need a jacket. Amanda looked around the neighborhood. She saw Hispanic families, loads of students, and a lot of what looked to be aging hippies. Before the bombing she would have considered this neighborhood to be a dump, but now it looked interesting.
Solange and Amanda walked a couple blocks and entered the grocery store. It was a local store, a sort of down-in-the-dumps local store, but it was filled with food. Solange was thrilled to be back in charge of the food now that they were no longer stuck with whatever they could find to eat on an interstate highway. The first aisle she entered was the fresh produce section. Solange quickly filled their shopping cart with vegetables, fruit, and tofu.
Amanda looked at the cart and asked, “Don’t you think we need to buy something to eat also?”
Solange gave Amanda a stern look and said, “We will buy some chicken and fish in a minute. I wonder where they keep the soy milk?”
Amanda just rolled her eyes, but she did not object. She knew she would both lose the battle and have to listen to an impromptu lecture about nutrition.
Solange bought enough groceries to fill their wheeled cart. They left the store and started to walk back. In front of them on the sidewalk was a nun dressed in a below the knee black dress with a short wimple on her head. The nun was carrying four grocery bags that looked pretty heavy. Solange walked up to her and said, “Hi. May we help you carry your bags?”
The Big Apple Posse Trilogy Page 35
