PART FIVE

No sooner had we gotten into the lobby of the Museum, when I discovered I’d left my purse in the van! I borrowed the keys from Carolina and jogged back to the parking lot. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a sleazy, unkempt guy with a crow-bar, trying to pry open the passenger side of our van. Hey, no one was going to steal my purse!

"You! Stop!" I shouted, stomping towards the vehicle.

He turned, brandishing the crow-bar in his right hand, an ugly expression on his grimy face. "What’s it to you?!"

I gulped in too much air and skidded to a halt. "That’s not your van."

I regretted the words the moment I spoke them. As he looked at me, unarmed and unpursed, he shrugged, a grin splitting his thin lips into a grimace. "I suppose it’s yours, huh?" It wasn’t meant as a question.

"Well..." I was speechless as I stood there with my ignorance hanging out.

"I’ll even bet that key in your hand is to this van, isn’t it!" he laughed. "Get over here and open this door before I try this crow-bar out on you."

It was as if my feet were cemented to the ground. All I could do was stutter and move my mouth, wordlessly. In two steps he was beside me, yanking my arm as he dragged me over to the van. I collapsed on the ground, but he was still able to pull me along. "Just give me that damned key and shut up!"

But I just couldn’t do that. Instead, I jammed my hand, holding the key, underneath my body, as far away from him as I could. I should have realized he would find an easier way to get it. He hauled off and kicked me in the shin, in an attempt to get me to roll over. I howled with pain. As I looked back up at him, the glint of the raised metal bar changed my mind. "Stop!" I yelled. "Go ahead and take the key."

He yanked it out of my hand and ran back to the car. But when the door flew open and he grabbed my purse, a British voice from within froze him. "Put the purse down or I’ll shoot!"

He dropped the strap and the purse plopped back on the seat. Then he backed out and looked all around. Just then, a motorcycle roared into the lot. The scruffy jerk dropped his crowbar and took off at a run. No, the rider wasn’t the guy in white—just some man with a briefcase.

I stumbled to my feet and brushed off my jeans before approaching the van. The motorcycle dude stripped off his helmet watched me as he dismounted. "Hey, lady, are you all right? Was that guy trying to rob you?"

"Yeah. Thanks for picking today to visit the Museum. I don’t think he’ll come back."

I retrieved the key, still dangling in the door lock, and snatched my purse off the seat. I’d stuffed the Tom-Tom in the front pocket and noticed it was still lit up. I looked all around, making sure nobody saw me talking to my purse. "Thanks, Thomas. I promise to take better care of you from now on."

"A pleasure Ma’am," he replied with his usual elegance. "But in the future, please do not use me unless YOU are the driver."

I laughed. "Don’t worry. I won’t."

How could I even think of giving up such a gentleman???

The End

PART FOUR

We’d come to halt in the traffic again. The man in the white helmet rapped on Carolina’s side window with his gloved hand. She looked at me and rolled her eyes before slowly cranking down the window. "Is this some kind of a joke? Did Mr. V put you up to this? Are you for real?"

"Excuse me, Ma’am. This is a very serious matter," said the man, not bothering to lift the visor from his face. He looked more like a Power Ranger than a cop. He flashed an official looking badge at us not giving us time to really read it. He’d probably picked it up in a dollar store. "The GPS Patrol has been notified that you are misusing your Tom-Tom device. If you turn it over to me with no trouble, there will be no fine or further incarceration."

The gall of this guy! "Listen Buster," I said, as calmly as possible. "I got this GPS as a Christmas gift. And if it is defective, then I will take it back to the store my husband bought it from. I will NOT be giving it to you, a person who rides up on a ridiculous white cycle, whom I’ve never met, just because he tells me to."

"I regret this." Then he leaned through the window, over Carolina, attempting to grab the device from my hand. It was a bad choice. Carolina, her hands under his body, jerked upward, whacking his helmet on the ceiling of the van. Between the two of us, we heaved him up and out of the van. He teetered for a moment on his bike before crashing to the pavement. The car ahead of us picked up some speed, so we drove merrily on, grinning at the cheering kids sitting behind us and leaving Mr. Clean to get himself and his bike out of the path of the traffic. When Carolina peered in the rear-view mirror fifty yards later, there was no sign of him in the sea of cars.

With a sigh of relief we finally arrived at the Museum and slipped into a parking space. "I think we’d better lock this van, what with this horribly valuable GPS device we have," I suggested with a touch of sarcasm.

"Oh, definitely," said Carolina. "Wouldn’t want it to get into the wrong hands, would we?"

I had to smile at that. What WOULD happen if I gave that Tom-Tom to someone else???

Check out the exciting conclusion on Saturday or Sunday of this week!!!

PART THREE

I hit the side of the GPS device, hoping it would jar it back to a normal state. "This is ridiculous! Tom-Toms can’t talk back!"

"You sure you turned that thing off? Maybe you should disconnect it from the power source too," Carolina suggested.

I ripped the cord out of the lighter plug and disconnected it from the main device as well. "That should quiet our British friend."

We crept through the traffic around a bend and under a bringe. There, above us was a sign that said, "Museum" with a left turn arrow. We all shouted a big "YES!" as Carolina elbowed our way into the far left lane.

I was all smiles now as I cradled the Tom-Tom in my hands. "I guess Church Street wasn’t such a bad choice after all! At least we managed to avoid that dreadful Freeway."

Suddenly, the GPS device vibrated in my hands, kind of like a cell phone. "You will regret this breach of contract," came Thomas’ voice from the dark screen. His voice seemed to almost plead with us. "Please do as you’re told and turn around. I’d hate to see you get into trouble with the GPSP."

Carolina stared at the thing in my hand. "How does he do that??? It must be some hidden signal with a satellite somewhere. How do we shut him up?!"

"Madam, there is no way you can, as you put it, ‘shut me up.’ This device can run on its own battery power for up to an hour—time enough for the GPSP to arrive," insisted Thomas. "I suggest you comply with my demands."

"But we are on the right track for the Museum. Can’t you see that? The signs all indicate it. There is no reason to turn around now," I heard myself plead.

"Do you realize you are arguing with a machine," piped up the boy sitting behind me.

I looked over my shoulder at the kid, "Well, he’s wrong and I can’t stand it when people won’t admit when they’re wrong."

"But..." started the boy.

Thomas interrupted. "Ah, according to my superiors, there IS another way to get to the Museum. You can reach it from the Freeway, but it is not the shortest route and you indicated you wanted the shortest route."

"To hell with the shorted route," Carolina replied. "And if you think we’re getting back on that Freeway in this traffic, well, it just ain’t gonna happen."

"No need to get testy, Madam," said Thomas.

"You try driving an over-sized van full of kids in this traffic mess and see how calm you are!" sputtered Carolina. "We’re going to get there MY way, not yours, so just shut up!"

Thomas’ voice was indignant. "I warned you. Now you’ve gone too bloody far. Just remember you brought this on yourself!"

Sirens whined in the distance. Just what we needed, I thought, an accident to slow traffic even more! The scream grew louder as the seconds ticked by until flashing lights could be seen behind us among the sea of cars. The lights seemed to weave in and out of the traffic like a drunken firefly until they were close enough to identify as a motorcycle. The driver, dressed all in white and on a matching snow-white cycle, pulled in behind us. The next thing I knew, he swerved out, and pulled up to Carolina’s side, motioning her to lower the window. I gasped at the bold black letters on the side of his bike: GPSP!

PART TWO

"Who said that?" shouted a girl near the back of the van.

"Yeah, sounded like some Brit," commented a boy.

Carolina looked in her inside rear-view mirror at the kids at the back. "If one of you thinks this is a joke..."

A voice at the back piped up, "Hey, maybe it was the radio."

I looked down at the time displayed on the radio. "The radio’s off," I said. Glancing back at the Tom-Tom on the dashboard, the little arrow (which represented our vehicle) was blinking red instead of green. The words, "You have reached your destination," shown across the screen.

"I thought you said this thing would find an alternate route if you just ignored it," said Carolina. "It seems to be stuck back at the Museum gate."

The voice coming from the Tom-Tom cleared its throat. "Ahem. Please turn your vehicle around and go back to your destination or reprogram it for another address."

I couldn’t help but blurt, "But the gate is closed and locked. We can’t get in that way."

"There is no other entrance to this Museum. Please turn your vehicle around NOW," insisted Thomas.

"Will you turn that thing off?" asked Carolina.

I pushed the off button and held it down and the lights went out. The screen was dark. Then, I grabbed up the page of Google directions that our fearless leader had handed me when we had met at lunch. "Listen, if we go back to Church Street, we may be able to follow these instructions."

The Church Street sign magically appeared at the side of the road with a left-turn arrow. Carolina pulled the van into the turn lane. The traffic coming towards us was so dense, it looked like we’d never be able to turn. We both sighed and waited.

A girl’s voice from the back cut through the kids’ talking, "Hey, I got Mr. V. on the phone. They’re already at the Museum. You wanna talk to him?"

Someone passed the phone up to me. It was a relief to know that SOMEONE finally was able to find the museum entrance. Unfortunately, his first words were like a slap in the face, "Those Google directions I gave you are all wrong. You need to get back on the Freeway and follow the signs to the Museum." I looked out the window at the six lanes of stopped traffic on the nearby freeway and shook my head. "You’ve got to be kidding. The traffic is deadly here." I explained where we were and what had happened with the bogus instructions from the Tom-Tom. Just then, Carolina had a break in the traffic and wheeled around the corner onto Church Street. Mr V. inquired of the Museum staff about getting to the museum from Church Street and nobody seemed to know how to do that. I told him we’d make it somehow, sometime... within the next year. I clicked the phone off and handed it to the kid behind me.

No sooner had Carolina turned the corner into the almost stopped three lanes of traffic, when that ever-so-proper voice of Thomas filled the air. "Bring your vehicle to a halt and turn it around. You are going the wrong direction. This is a violation of the agreement you signed with the company for this GPS device. If you refuse to comply, you will be fined and relieved of your device by the GPSP, that’s the GPS Patrol."

Carolina and I again stared at the dark-screened supposedly-off Tom-Tom. GPS Patrol? Who was this guy and where was he hiding in our van?