Home Sweet Motel

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Did you call the cops on me again, Stanley?” snarled the slightly younger one with the neck tattoo, the one who used to be Johnny Jones but was now Sid Something-or-other. “Is that why they were in the front office giving the motel manager the third degree?”

  “No, Sid, I didn’t call the fuzz. But are you trying to double-cross me again?”

  “Will you get it through your thick skull, Stanley? I didn’t double-cross you the first time. Sheila double-crossed us both.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  “Go ahead. Ask.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for what you and your girlfriend stole from me,” said Stanley.

  “Hey, you’re the one who brought her into the family business,” said Sid.

  “But then she wanted to grab the loot and run away with you.”

  The younger brother tugged at his shirt collar. He touched up his hair, which actually might’ve been a toupee.

  “A lot of chicks dug me back in the seventies, Stan. I was what they called a hunk muffin.”

  “Too bad you lost your looks in the state pen. That where you picked up that gator tat?”

  I swallowed hard. The younger brother spent time in the state penitentiary? That meant he might be a violent criminal.

  “Yeah,” said Sid. “Too bad they didn’t lock us up in the same prison.”

  Oh-kay. Stanley had also done time in prison.

  I wondered if that was what Sid had meant when he said he and his brother went their separate ways and “didn’t see each other for a minimum of thirty years.”

  “A minimum of thirty years” sounded an awful lot like a jail sentence—one a judge might give for a pretty serious crime.

  “So when’d you get out, Stanley?” Sid asked.

  “A month ago. How about you?”

  “Two weeks.”

  Sid put his hands on his bony hips. “So why the sudden interest in this Wonderland Motel?”

  “Maybe back in the day Sheila sent me a postcard from some place called Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World, which, I come to find out by watching TV, is now called the Wonderland Motel. Maybe in this postcard Sheila sent me forty-some years ago, she told me how she was ratting me out to the fuzz so you and her could run off with the ice.”

  I watch a lot of old gangster movies on cable TV. In those movies, “ice” isn’t what motel guests scoop out of our ice machines. It means diamonds!

  I was starting to piece together a theory about who these two brothers might actually be.

  I needed to do some research, but skeevy Sid and scuzzy Stan might be the answer to all our money worries.

  Of course, first we’d have to find their jewels.

  The older brother, Stanley, propped his hands on his hips.

  “Your turn, little brother. What are you doing here?”

  “I saw you on TV, shoving that postcard at the cameras. They played that clip up in Jacksonville.”

  “So?”

  “So,” said Sid, pulling a folded-over square of cardboard out of his back pocket, “maybe Sheila sent me the exact same postcard from Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World.”

  “Well, ain’t that a co-inky-dink,” said Stanley.

  “My feelings exactly,” said Sid.

  “So both of us nutted out that this here Wonderland Motel with all the gewgaws was once known as Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World—the last place Miss Sheila Bailey visited before the fuzz nabbed her.”

  “She was eating pancakes, Stanley. At an IHOP. How’d you know where the cops could find her?”

  “I didn’t. I just gave the goons who hauled me away a tip. Told them that Sheila was the one holding the goody bag from the Miami hotel heist. Every cop in the state was looking for her.”

  Sid fidgeted with his collar again. “You give them this Sheila information before or after you told them where to find me?”

  “Hey, I just did to you like your girlfriend done to me.”

  “For the last time, she wasn’t my girlfriend.”

  The two brothers weren’t yelling so loudly anymore. In fact, they sort of sounded like they were running out of gas. They sounded old.

  “I figure we have a decision to make here, Stanley.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that, Sidney?”

  “We can keep sniping at each other, hashing over the past. Or we can be smart for the first time in a long time. We can let bygones be bygones and bury the hatchet. You and me both think Sheila squirreled away the loot somewheres here on the motel property, on account of what she wrote on the back of our postcards. Am I right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, if we work together, compare notes, maybe we can finally cash in on the hotel heist. Maybe we can finally find our loot!”

  Stanley fiddled with his mustache. “Well, we know Sheila ain’t coming back for it, may she rest in peace.”

  “She didn’t last a year behind bars,” said his little brother.

  Then they both chuckled.

  “Served her right,” said Stanley. “Trying to come between us like that.”

  “Yeah,” said Sidney. “Nobody can break up the Sneemer brothers. Not forever, anyways.”

  Stanley held out his hand.

  Sidney took it.

  For the first time in over forty years, the infamous Sneemer brothers were a team again.

  Fact: I knew their last name was Sneemer before they said it, because I watch true crime shows on TV.

  I also knew that our elderly guests had to be the jewel thieves from the Miami Palm Tree Hotel heist, the guys I’d seen when I was flipping through the channels with Cheeseball.

  And they were at the Wonderland, hoping to recover the five million dollars’ worth of diamonds and jewelry they had stolen back in 1973.

  Because this was where their accomplice hid the goods!

  (See? I told you living in a motel is always exciting!)

  The brothers finally left the pool.

  “You think anybody heard us yakkin’?” asked Sidney as the two old men hobbled away.

  “Nah,” said Stanley. “Ain’t nobody around. They all ran away the first time you said, ‘Scram, this could get ugly.’ ”

  “And you said, ‘Not as ugly as you!’ ”

  Both brothers laughed again. They even slapped each other on the back.

  I clung to the side of Freddy the Frog. Good thing the Sneemer brothers were walking away from the waterslide, toward a unit on the first floor.

  “You show me your postcard,” I heard Stanley say. “I’ll show you mine.”

  “Fine,” said Sid. “Two heads are better than one. Two postcards, too.”

  Finally, their voices faded.

  I waited another ten seconds, then bounded up the steps. I needed to talk to Gloria about this.

  Okay, I could’ve talked to Mom or even Grandpa, but I was pretty sure they’d make me do the safe and responsible thing. You know—stay out of it. Call the police. Let the grown-ups handle it.

  But the Wilkie family needed those diamonds and jewels even more than the Sneemer brothers did. Sidney and Stanley didn’t have a motel with a one-hundred-thousand-dollar balloon loan all set to blow up in their faces.

  Of course, I really didn’t want the stolen jewels. What I wanted was the reward for finding them. At least, I hoped there would still be some kind of a reward.

  I hurried down the second-floor terrace to room 233 and knocked on the door.

  Gloria opened it.

  I must’ve looked pretty excited, because the first thing she said when she saw me was “What? What’s going on?”

  “Forget the stock portfolio. Forget the dinosaur egg hunt. There might be five million dollars hidden somewhere on the Wonderland property!”

  “This is your new idea?” said Gloria. “To hide a suitcase stuffed with five million dollars somewhere on the motel grounds?”

  “No. Those two brothers. T
he old guys. Johnny and Bob Jones. They’re really Sid and Stanley Sneemer. And I’m ninety-nine percent sure they’re also notorious jewel thieves.”

  “And you think this because…?”

  “They were down at the pool talking about the ice they stole.”

  “Maybe they filled their whole coolers with ice from the machine. That’s against posted motel rules. You’re only supposed to take enough to fill a bucket.”

  I shook my head. “ ‘Ice’ is gangster-speak for ‘diamonds.’ ”

  “Really?” This time, Gloria rolled her eyes to the right, like she wanted someone else (even though there was nobody there) to see what a nutjob I was. “I think you’re taking this whole ‘marvels to behold and stories to be told’ thing a little too far, P.T. Seriously. Diamonds?”

  “This is the truth. I’m just giving you cold, hard facts. Go on. Google them.” I gestured toward her open laptop. “I saw a true crime TV show about what those two did back in the seventies.”

  Gloria hovered her fingers over the keyboard.

  “Who am I looking for again? Stanley Steemer?”

  “No, not Stanley Steemer! The Sneemer brothers. Sid and Stanley. Jewel thieves. Miami hotel heist. In 1970-something.”

  She typed in the search information.

  Google took, like, half a second to show her half a million results.

  “Wow,” was all Gloria said. “Okay. I take back all my snarky remarks. You’re actually right.”

  “I knew it!”

  Gloria read chunks of a Web page out loud. “ ‘Sidney and Stanley Sneemer burglarized the posh Miami Palm Tree Hotel in June 1973. They stole approximately five million dollars’ worth of diamond-, emerald-, and ruby-encrusted jewelry from the motel safe.’ ”

  Gloria stopped reading.

  “That was five million dollars in 1973,” she said.

  “How much would that be worth today?”

  Gloria twiddled her fingers in the air like she was using a calculator. “Approximately twenty-seven million.”

  We both whistled.

  Then Gloria went back to the Web page.

  “ ‘Stanley Sneemer, the older brother and brains of the operation, was arrested two weeks after the burglary, thanks to a tip police received from an anonymous caller.’ ”

  “Sheila Bailey,” I said. “Grandpa’s angel with the red polka-dot scarf. She was the one who told the police about Stanley.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep. I think Sheila was crushing on his little brother, Sid. Apparently, ‘chicks dug’ him.”

  Gloria tapped her laptop screen. “Must be why hours after Stanley was arrested, he gave up his younger brother, Sidney, to the police. And he told them about Sid’s accomplice, a ‘beautiful blond bombshell’ named Sheila ‘Boom-Boom’ Bailey.”

  “Boom-Boom? Grandpa’s angel had a middle name and it was Boom-Boom?”

  “Yep.” Gloria read more details. “Stanley Sneemer gave the cops a picture of Ms. Bailey, who was ‘on the lam’ and lying low.”

  “She was hiding right here,” I said. “At Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World. She stayed here for nearly a week and sent postcards to both of the brothers. Then somebody must’ve spotted her.”

  Gloria nodded. “It says two police officers were sipping coffee at the International House of Pancakes on Gulf Boulevard when Sheila Bailey walked in and ordered a stack of flapjacks for supper.”

  “Sheila was the one who actually had the jewels,” I said. “The brothers think she brought the loot here and hid it somewhere on the grounds.”

  “Well, if she did, she never told the police or the Amalgamated Insurance Company, which offered a reward of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for ‘any information leading to the safe return of the stolen jewels.’ It says she told the police she’d ‘just blown into St. Pete that morning.’ ”

  “The cops didn’t know she’d been staying at Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World for, like, a week?”

  “Nope. Not according to this old news story.”

  “So,” I said, “that means nobody’s ever searched the motel grounds.”

  Gloria kept reading off her computer screen.

  “ ‘Sheila Bailey was charged as an accomplice, sent to prison, and, ten months later, died in her cell, taking any secrets about where she might have hidden the stolen jewelry to the grave with her.’ ”

  “So now the two brothers are finally out of jail,” I said. “They want to search our property for the stolen jewels because they both have postcards Sheila sent them from Walt Wilkie’s Wonder World, a place that technically doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “But then you flashed that old postcard on TV. You gave them the exact address!”

  Yep. I did. Just like Gloria told me to.

  We called a number we found for the Amalgamated Insurance Company down in Miami.

  “Yes,” said a very helpful customer service representative after we listened to hold music (extremely annoying violins) for nearly fifteen minutes, “that one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar reward is still being offered. Do you have information you would like to share with Big Irv Investigators?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Big Irv Investigators,” replied the telephone lady. We had her on speaker so Gloria and I could both hear her. “It is the private detective firm that has recently taken over the investigation into the Miami Palm Tree Hotel burglary case for Amalgamated Insurance.”

  “Do, uh, we get the reward if we tell Big Irv what we think we know?”

  “Yes, you will receive a percentage of Big Irv’s payout if your information helps him locate the missing jewels. However, you sound like children….”

  “Is that a problem?” I asked. “Doesn’t Big Irv give rewards to kids?”

  “Well, yes. He has told us any informants would, as I stated, receive a percentage of what Big Irv earns from Amalgamated.”

  Gloria leaned in closer to the phone. “How much?” she asked.

  “It is my understanding that Big Irv is offering up to one percent for information that leads to his finding the stolen items.”

  Gloria made a stinky face. “Up to one percent?”

  “That is correct.”

  “So this Big Irv would give us fifteen hundred dollars from his one hundred and fifty thousand—or maybe less—even if we’re the ones who crack the case?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have any more specific information. Might I suggest you contact Big Irv Investigators in Boca Raton?”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll do that.”

  Gloria was shaking her head and mouthing, “No, we will not do that.”

  “And,” I asked the phone, “if we find the missing jewelry all by ourselves, do we just call you guys again to collect our one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Yes. However, it is my duty to inform you that trying to recover stolen goods on your own, without the assistance of adults and expert professionals, could prove dangerous and potentially lethal.”

  “Right,” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  I hung up the phone.

  “ ‘Lethal’ means deadly, right?” I asked Gloria.

  “Correct.”

  “Right. Just thought I’d double-check that.”

  If we could find the jewels, we could pay off the loan and have fifty thousand dollars left over. Mom could square things with the bank and we’d all live happily ever after—if, of course, our detective work didn’t turn out to be lethal.

  “You ready to do some snooping?” I asked Gloria.

  “Sure. What’ve we got to lose? I mean, besides our lives?”

  The rest of the day, we pretended like we were still setting up the dinosaur egg hunt on the motel grounds.

  That gave us an excuse to slink around the property, hide behind shrubberies, and, basically, tail Sid and Stanley Sneemer while they went on a walking tour of the Wonderland grounds. Both brothers were wearing baseball caps, probably to shield
their eyes and shadow their faces.

  They came to the big Muffler Man statue.

  “We need to open him up,” said Stanley. “Take a peek inside.”

  “I got a hacksaw and a drill.”

  “Good. We do it after dark. Two or three in the morning. When all these tourists and collegiate types are asleep.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Sid. “You hungry?”

  “Yeah. Stack of pancakes would sure hit the spot.”

  Both brothers laughed again.

  “Sheila’s last supper,” said Sid.

  “Let’s head over to that IHOP where the cops grabbed her,” said Stanley. “It seems like the perfect thing to do.”

  “Poetic justice,” added Sidney.

  The Sneemer brothers snickered some more and drifted out of the parking lot.

  “We need to see their postcards,” I whispered to Gloria. “From what they were saying out by the pool, there’s some kind of clue on them.”

  “Well, where are these postcards?”

  “Not sure. But their rooms would be a good place to start looking. We should do it right now—while they’re off eating dinner.”

  “Um, isn’t it against the law to enter motel rooms without a guest’s permission?”

  “Only if they’re not jewel thieves.”

  “Oh. Okay. But how, exactly, are we going to get into their rooms?”

  I grinned. “Don’t worry. I know people with a master key to every single door in the motel!”

  Clara has been a housekeeper at the Wonderland Motel for as long as I can remember.

  She was just finishing her shift when I caught up with her on the first floor, near the laundry room.

  Gloria had gone to the lobby to find out what rooms the “Jones” brothers were staying in. (I told her to tell Mom that the two brothers had both won extreme shuffleboard, a game we’d invented using grapefruits instead of shuffle pucks, and we needed to deliver their prizes to their rooms.)