Forever Rocking by Gary Whitmore - HTML preview

work.”

“That’s what my coworker and I thought,” replied Cindy.

“I’ll talk to the guys, but I don’t think it would be a problem. What room are you in?” asked Sig.

“Thirty-five,” she replied.

“I’ll be in touch later, pretty lady,” said Sig, then he grabbed Cindy’s right hand and gave it a gentleman’s kiss.

He smiled at her, exited his chaise lounge chair, and walked away. Cindy watched Sig and thought he was cuter in person and had an interest in him.

The second Sig walked out of the pool area, Cindy did a little victory dance in her chair.

Cindy played it cool and waited five minutes. Then she got up with her book and left the pool area.

Danny’s head still spied out the curtains of his room as he watched Cindy.

A few minutes had passed, and Cindy knocked on Danny’s room door.

The door opened.

“I made contact with Sig. He said he will call my room later to see if we can meet with the other guys. I think we’re going to connect,” she said with a smile.

Danny tried to hide his jealousy. “Good, I guess we’ll just have to wait.”

“I better get to my room in case he calls soon,” she said, then walked off to the door.

Danny sat down on his bed and watched while Cindy left her room.

An hour had passed, and Danny was totally bored while waiting in his room. He paced back and forth.

Someone knocked on his room door.

Danny rushed over to the door, opened it, and saw Cindy outside with a huge smile. “Sig called; they want to meet us now,” she said.

Danny stepped outside his room and closed the door.

He and Cindy walked away.

A few minutes later, Cindy walked Danny to the second floor of Room 60.

She knocked on the door. The door opened, and Sig appeared in the doorway. “Welcome, Sally,” he said, motioning for them to enter his room.

Danny and Cindy stepped inside his room, and Sig closed the door.

Danny and Cindy stood in awe when they saw The Rocking Tones hanging around Sig’s room. He was speechless, knowing this was the second time he had met them in person.

“Who is your friend?” asked Sig.

“Chris Moore,” Cindy replied.

Danny removed his wallet and immediately removed his fake Cambridge Chronicle reporter’s ID card.

“Sig tells me you are both reporters and students at MIT?”

Jackie asked while he walked over to Danny.

“Yes, the Cambridge Chronicle,” Danny replied and flashed his ID.

Cindy opened up her purse and removed her ID card.

Jackie looked at Danny’s ID card and Cindy’s ID card.

“Okay,” he said. Then he looked at Danny, and something suddenly felt strange. It was a strange feeling like he knew Danny. “Have we met before?” he asked.

“No, sir. I mean, I’m a huge fan and have all of your records,” Danny replied. But while he looked at Jackie, something about him appeared familiar, but he could not place a finger on it.

“I’m also a huge fan and have all your records,” added Cindy.

“Well, I’m good with them doing a story on our band.

Lord knows we need the publicity,” said Jackie.

“Got that right,” said Delmar.

“Roger’s been dropping the ball on that important part of the job,” said Carter.

Burt nodded in agreement.

“Sig tells me that you want to write about how we got started and what it’s like to be on the road going from concert to concert,” said Jackie.

Danny looked at Cindy and was a little proud, as they forgot to work out that detail for their cover. “Yes, we were hoping to start with tonight’s concert and end it with the Ed Sullivan show.”

“That’s a good ending point, as we’re excited about getting that huge break,” Jackie said, then paused for a few seconds. I guess you can follow our bus in your car, and I can get you into the concerts as our official guests,” said Jackie.

Danny and Cindy looked at each other and smiled that their plan was working.

Danny looked a little concerned. “Ah, we have a little problem; we don’t have any transportation,” he said.

“No transportation? How did you get to Cohoes?” asked Delmar.

“We hitched a ride from Buffalo after your concert there,”

said Danny.

“The paper gave us a lousy budget, so we don’t have enough money for transportation,” Cindy added, looking at Sig.

“This is our attempt to make it as reporters. This might be the break that will give us full-time jobs,” said Danny.

“Right now, they would only hire us part-time,” added Cindy.

Jackie looked at the other members of the band. “What do you think?”

“I’m good,” said Delmar.

“Me too,” said Burt.

Carter and Sig both nodded in agreement.

“Then it’s settled. You can tag along with us. We have plenty of room on the bus,” Jackie offered.

Then Delmar’s eyes widened, and he looked a little concerned. “What about Roger?”

“I’ll take care of him,” said Jackie, and he looked confident.

“Welcome to The Rocking Tones,” Sig told Cindy while he walked over to her side.

“Thank you so very much,” Cindy said, then kissed Sig on the cheek.

“I’m in love,” Sig jokingly said.

“Again,” Delmar said with a chuckle.

There was a knock on the door.

Sig walked over and opened his door, and Roger stepped inside.

“Who are these two?” he asked the second he saw Danny and Cindy in the room.

“They’re going to tag along with us to do a story,” Jackie said. “A story? I didn’t authorize any media folks to do a story,”

replied Roger and looked a little pissed.

“We decided that we want them to tag along from now until the Ed Sullivan Show,” Jackie said, looking dead serious.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” replied Roger.

“It is becoming cold and flu season, so we just might catch a cold later in the week,” Delmar said, then faked a bad cough.

Then Jackie, Sig, Carter, and Delmar faked a bad cough.

“I feel a fever coming on,” Sig said, feeling his forehead with his hand.

“They’ll also need rooms and can ride on the bus with us,”

said Jackie.

Roger looked at the guys and knew they were serious.

“Start to get ready; we leave for the concert in an hour,” he said, then he walked off to the door, pissed he lost control over this situation.

“Okay, you heard the man. Go get ready,” Jackie told the other guys, then looked at Danny and Cindy. “Be back here in forty-five minutes.”

Danny and Cindy walked to the door with a spring in their steps.

After Danny and Cindy left Sig’s room, they waited until they were far away. Then they stopped, and they hugged to congratulate each other.

Forty-five minutes had passed, and Danny and Cindy returned to Sig’s room.

“I hope they weren’t bullshitting us,” he told Cindy while they walked closer to his room.

“I think Jackie was serious,” she replied. Then they stopped at Sig’s room, and she knocked on the door.

A few seconds passed, and Sig opened the room. Sig appeared wearing their standard golden brown suits, tanned dress shirts with dark brown ties, and brown leather ankle boots.

“Enter,” he said, then stepped aside to let Danny and Cindy inside his room.

“Are you ready for an evening of rock and roll?” asked Sig.

“We are!” Danny beamed.

There was a knock on the door. Sig walked over to answer it and

Roger stood outside. He saw Danny and Cindy inside the room and rolled his eyes. “The bus is leaving in fifteen minutes,” he informed me, then walked away.

Twenty minutes had passed, and Danny and Cindy were in their seats on the bus with The Rocking Tones. They were in heaven, but Danny still wondered how he could find out who

was behind the bomb’s installation. He had no idea what his next move would be.

Roger glanced over at Danny and Cindy with disapproving eyes while Gus drove the bus through the streets of Cohoes.

An hour later, The Rocking Tones went on stage to a small crowd of five hundred adoring fans in the Cohoes Music Hall.

Even though this was a smaller concert hall, Roger wanted to perform her for some traveling money.

While the band started playing their hit song “She’s My Only Baby,” Sig looked over to the right side of the stage. The second he saw Cindy standing next to Danny backstage, he winked at her.

Danny knew he might be in trouble, and again, he got jealous.

Cindy played the part. She had her notepad out and jotted down some notes while she glanced at the screaming girls in the audience. “I would never scream like that. It looks a little stupid,” she thought while she jotted down some notes, but she did not jot down that thought.

After The Rocking Tones completed their concert, they were rushed out the rear stage door.

Once they made it outside, they saw forty fans behind a police barricade. A few girls screamed at The Rocking Tones.

“I love you, Jackie,” screamed out one blonde teenager while she eyed her favorite band member.

The Rocking Tones waved at their fans while heading to their bus’s front.

The girls screamed the second they saw The Rocking Tones at the front of the bus, waving and blowing kisses at them.

Pastor Elmer Watson and his fifteen followers were with the fans. They held up their signs protesting rock and roll music.

Elmer held up his Bible. “Repent, you sinners!” he yelled when he saw The Rocking Tones.

Mickey and Maureen were among the fans. They saw Danny and Cindy standing behind the band members.

“They made it, Maureen,” Mickey said.

“Good for them,” she replied and waved at them Danny and Cindy saw Mickey and Maureen and waved back. Then, The Rocking Tones turned around and got on the bus with Danny and Cindy.

Gus closed the bus doors and drove away from the rear stage door.

Tom and Kenny got out of the two vans and headed to the rear stage door.

They went inside to do their routine of tearing down the instruments and drums and carting them off to the vans.

A little while later, the bus pulled back into the rear of the Holiday Inn. Everybody got out and headed back to their rooms.

“We’re leaving at ten in the morning after breakfast. So join us at nine in the dining room,” Sig told Cindy and gave her a peek at her left cheek.

“We’ll be there,” she replied with a warm smile.

The Rocking Tones headed off to their rooms to chill after their concert.

Danny and Cindy walked away from Sig’s room, with Danny discreetly mocking Sig kissing Cindy on her cheek.

Chapter 15

It was now Tuesday morning, and the sun had already risen for the start of another day.

Back in his Holiday Inn room, Danny was still asleep. He had a dream..

In Danny’s dream, he sat on his bed watching the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV show.

Then he heard Cindy moaning from the room next to his room. She loudly moaned in ecstasy.

Danny heard Cindy’s moans of ecstasy while they got louder and louder from the room next door.

Then, there was a banging on the wall by his bed.

The banging got louder, and his wall vibrated, causing his bed to shake.

“Yes, Sig, yes, yes, yes,” Cindy loudly moaned from the other room. The headboard of her bed was banging against the wall. Danny looked like he wanted to cry while the wall-banging continued.

Back to reality. .

Danny woke up from his dream in a panic. He looked upset and heard the knocking on his room door.

He got up and headed to the knocking door in his T-shirt and boxer shorts.

He cracked open the door and poked his head outside. He saw Cindy standing outside dressed. “You’re going to be late,”

she said looking concerned.

It dawned on Danny what she meant. “Give me a few minutes,” he said, closing the door. Then he ran over and quickly got dressed.

A few minutes later, Danny and Cindy walked into the closed dining room entrance.

“I’m sorry, we’re closed for a little while for some special guests,” the middle-aged, bald, tall, and lanky hotel employee said while guarding the diner’s entrance.

“We’re guests of The Rocking Tones,” Cindy told the employee.

“I’m sure you are,” the employee said, moving to ensure they did not slip past him.

“Let them in,” Jackie said while he walked up behind the employee.

The employee turned and saw Jackie behind him. He turned back around and looked back at Danny and Cindy. He motioned that it was okay for them to enter the dining room.

“I’m glad you showed up,” Jackie said while he placed a hand on Danny’s shoulder while they walked into the dining room.

Danny and Cindy saw the rest of The Rocking Tones, Roger, Gus, Tom, and Kenny sitting at a large table.

Roger rolled his eyes when he saw Danny and Cindy walk up to the table with Jackie.

Jackie stood up, “This is Chris Moore and Sally Duke,” he told Tom and Kenny.

“Those two guys are our roadies, Tom Westham and Kenny Whitestone. Without them, we would not have instruments to play for our concerts,” he said, then paused for a second. “Chris and Sally are writing an article for the Cambridge Chronicle about the band,” he added.

Tom and Kenny gave Danny and Cindy a little wave and couldn’t care less.

Sig stood up and pulled out a chair next to him. “Here you go, Sally,” he said warmly.

Danny sat in a chair next to Jackie, then gave Sig evil eyes, wishing he would stop flirting with Sally.

“All of your meals are on us,” Jackie told Danny and Cindy.

After hearing that, Roger looked like he wanted to blow a gasket but knew he would lose this battle, so he kept his mouth shut.

The waiter walked up to their table and took down their breakfast orders.

While they waited, they drank coffee and chatted about last night’s concert.

“Oh, I’m not riding the bus to Cambridge,” Roger said.

“How are you going to get there?” asked Jackie.

“I’m going into Albany to buy a car. I figured that the manager should drive separately,” said Roger, and then he had a drink of coffee.

All of The Rocking Tones looked at each other with looks of concern with Roger.

“So Sally, did you get some notes about last night’s concert for your article?” asked Jackie.

“I did, and thanks for allowing us to tag along,” she replied.

“You’re welcome, darling,” Sig replied, winking at Sally.

Danny rolled his eyes.

Then their breakfast arrived and they ate with more idle chat about last night’s concert.

Breakfast was over, and everybody headed out of the dining room.

They walked out to the front lobby and stood near the front desk.

From the front doors, the bus was visibly parked outside.

“How are you going to get to Albany without a car?” Jackie asked suspiciously.

“I have a friend that’s going to give me a ride,” Roger replied.

“Oh, well, I guess we’ll see you in Cambridge later tonight,”

said Jackie.

“Yeah,” Roger replied, then turned around and rushed back to the front doors.

“Good, well, let’s get on the road,” Jackie told everybody.

They all headed over to the door of the bus.

While they boarded the bus, they did not notice Roger. At the same time, he sat in the passenger seat of a 1963 black with a white interior shiny Cadillac.

The Cadillac pulled out onto the street and drove away down Mohawk Avenue.

Gus closed the bus doors, drove through the lot, and headed to the street.

He pulled out onto Mohawk Avenue and drove off in the opposite direction from where the Cadillac was headed.

The Rocking Tones all relaxed in their seats while Gus drove down the street.

Danny started to get a little suspicious of Roger.

A little while later, The Rocking Tones were all sound asleep while Gus drove over a bridge over the Hudson River.

Danny leaned around the seat before him and got close to Cindy’s ear while she relaxed. “There’s something about Roger that warrants checking into,” he whispered in her left ear.

“I know,” she whispered back.

Danny sat back and watched while Gus drove down a two-lane country road east of Cohoes.

Cindy glanced over at Sig while he slept in his seat. She liked him but had this strange feeling there was something odd about Sig. She could not place a finger on it at the moment.

Danny and Cindy closed their eyes and figured they might as well get some rest.

It was later that day.

Gus drove the bus down a two-lane country road in Massachusetts. He drove the bus south on Cambridge Road, which is about twenty miles north of Cambridge.

Jackie looked at Cindy, sitting in her seat. “Sally, when do you want to start gathering information for your article?” he called out.

It did not dawn on Cindy that Jackie was talking to her, as she forgot her undercover name for a few minutes. Then it dawned on her. “Oh yeah, that article. We could start now,” she said, opening her purse and removing her notepad and pen.

Danny, Cindy, Jackie, Delmar, Sig, Carter, and Burt got up and walked to the front of the bus.

They all sat in the bench seat around the table.

“We ready when you are,” Jackie said.

Cindy had her paper and pen ready. I’m ready,” she told the guys.

“I remembered that it all started on Sunday night on September ninth in fifty-six. We gathered at Burt’s house to watch Elvis Presley perform for the first time on the Ed Sullivan Show,” said Jackie.

“Burt was the only one with television at that time,” added Sig. Cindy jotted down some notes on her notepad, playing up the part of being a reporter.

“We were about fourteen years old at the time,” added Carter.

“We watched in awe while Elvis performed Love Me Tender, Don’t Be Cruel, Hound Dog, and Ready Teddy,” said Burt. “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog,” Jackie sang.

“Crying all the time,” Carter sang.

“I recalled that what impressed me the most was how all those girls in the audience screamed while Elvis performed,”

said Delmar.

“I think we all realized at that second that that’s the life we wanted,” said Carter.

“Yep, the type of life where all the girls wanted you,” Sig said while he looked at Cindy, winked at her, and gave her a smile.

Cindy smiled back at Sig while she jotted down the information on her paper pad.

Danny saw his wink and got a tad jealous.

“So in fifty-seven, we worked on our parents to buy us some musical instruments,” said Jackie.

“We really wanted to start our own band in the worst way, so we also got part-time jobs mowing grass and other mindless tasks,” said Delmar.

“We soon had enough money to buy three used Silvertone acoustic guitars and a drum set,” said Burt.

“I removed the high E and B strings on my guitar to pretend it was a bass guitar,” Carter said, then chuckled, remembering doing that.

“I bought this used five-piece Sears blue sparkle drum set from this guy that just graduated from high school and was going in the Army,” said Sig.

“I got this brown Magnus Jewel electric organ. My mom made me take piano lessons when I was able to reach the keys.

She taught piano to most of the neighbor kids back then,” said Delmar.

“So, we started our first official rehearsal in October of fifty-seven,” said Jackie.

“And we sounded like shit when we tried to play Elvis’

Hound Dog song,” admitted Burt.

“That poor hound dog would have been howling if he was in Burt’s garage that day,” added Delmar

Jackie, Carter, Sig, and Burt all chuckled.

The guys on the bus did not notice a brand new, red 1964

Corvette Stingray Coupe racing past them in the other lane.

“We used my dad’s garage for our practice room,” Burt added.

“We did sound like shit at first, but that didn’t deter us. We had the fire in our bellies to become a band,” said Jackie.

“We practiced, then got blisters on our fingers and practiced our hearts out,” said Delmar.

“Then, by the winter of fifty-nine, we finally started to sound like a really good rock and roll band,” said Carter.

“So in February fifty-nine, after an hour of brainstorming, we finally agreed that the name of our band would be called The Rocking Tones,” added Sig.

“Our fathers expected us to follow their father and fathers’

careers,” said Jackie.

“What was that?” asked Danny.

“All of our fathers were police officers with the Manchester Police Department,” said Carter.

“So, they expected us to follow family tradition and become cops,” Delmar said.

“But they thought this band stuff would just be a fad for us, and we would lose interest in a few months,” said Jackie.

Gus pulled the bus into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn motel.

“That’s all for now. We need some rest before the concert tonight,” Jackie said, and then everybody started to gather their belongings.

Cindy tucked away her pen and notepad back into her purse.

“Hey guys, Kent Sommers wants a little meeting on the phone later tonight. He wants to go over the upcoming events in Chicago,” Jackie told the other band members.

“What’s the story with Kent Sommers?” Cindy curiously asked.

Jackie and the other band members looked at each other to see how to answer her question.

“Ah, just a business associate,” Jackie replied with a hint of a smirk.

“Yeah, a business associate for some important business for a concert in Chicago. Music stuff,” Burt added.

Carter, Delmar, and Sig nodded in agreement, and it looked like they wanted to drop this topic.

Danny looked extremely curious about the information concerning Kent Sommers. He figured he might have something to do with their demise coming up soon.

“So Jackie, will you also see your number one fan?” Sig asked and winked at Jackie.

Danny looked curious with Sig’s comment. “Number one fan?”

“He’s seen her whenever we’re in the state,” added Carter with a smirk.

“Be nice; she’s a sweet girl and means a lot to me,” Jackie replied.

Delmar kissed the air, teasing Jackie, who couldn’t care less, as he liked this fan.

Danny got even more curious and wanted to ask more questions, but Gus stopped the bus by the office of the Holiday Inn. He opened up the door.

Everybody started gathering up their belongings.

Gus turned off the bus, opened the door, and climbed the stairs.

While everybody stepped off the bus, they saw Roger standing next to a shiny red 1964 Corvette Coupe with a red interior parked by the front of the Holiday Inn office. He grinned from ear to ear.

Everybody walked up to Roger’s Corvette.

“Whew, what a pretty car,” Burt said while he walked around and checked out the car.

“How much did she cost?” Carter asked.

“Oh, my buddy got it for me at a good price. I got her for thirty-five hundred,” Roger said and had a cocky look on his face for getting a deal on this sports car.

“Maybe your buddy can swing us a deal like that,” Delmar said while he took a peek inside the Corvette.

“Yeah, I’ll see what I can do for you guys,” Roger replied, but he did not seem interested in getting the guys their own Corvette.

“Go get some rest for tonight’s concert,” Roger told the guys. Roger handed out the room keys to everybody and hated the fact that he had to spend money on rooms for Danny and Cindy. But he decided to play along for now.

Danny and Cindy followed Jackie and the guys to their rooms.

“I still think Roger’s squandering with our money,” Delmar quietly said while he leaned over at Carter.

“Don’t worry, that will be taken care of in Chicago,” Carter quietly replied.

Danny heard their conversation, so he glanced back at Roger while he got in his Corvette.

Roger’s Corvette started with a roar, and he drove away and headed off to the street.

Chapter 16

An hour had passed, and everybody was settled in their rooms.

Tom and Kenny had previously arrived with the two Chevrolet vans. They were out like a light in their rooms from polishing off a couple of six-packs of Budweiser.

Roger was still out driving around Cambridge with his Corvette.

Danny walked out of his room.

He walked over to the room next to his and softly knocked on the door.

The door opened, and Cindy appeared inside the room.

“Let’s talk,” Danny said.

Cindy stepped inside, and Danny entered her room.

“I’ve been thinking, and something is going on with the manager, Roger,” he told Cindy the second he stepped inside her room.

“I was thinking the same thing, based on something Sig mentioned about a money issue with the band,” she replied.

“I overheard Delmar mention to Carter that he believes Roger is squandering away their money. And Delmar agreed by responding that that would be taken care of in Chicago. I believe it has something to do with this Kent Sommers guy,” he told her.

Cindy went to reply, but her phone on her bedside table rang, so she closed her mouth.

Danny had suspicions while watching her walk over and pick up the phone.

“Hi, Sig,” she answered the call and listened for a few seconds. She giggled like a schoolgirl. Sure, I’ll be right over,”

she replied, then hung up the phone.

“What did he want?”

“To chat a little. He’s lonely in his room,” Cindy replied.

“I bet he’s lonely,” Danny said under his breath.

“What did you say?”

“Oh, nothing,” replied Danny.

Cindy noticed that Danny looked jealous. And she loved that fact.

“This will work out, as I can do some fact-finding on Roger,” she replied as she walked to her room door.

Cindy opened the door and looked at Danny, ready for him to leave.

Danny walked over and stepped outside her room.

Cindy stepped outside and closed her room door.

Danny watched while Cindy walked over and knocked on a door three rooms down.

That door opened, and Cindy stepped inside.

While Danny walked away, the horrible imaginary sounds of Cindy’s moans of ecstasy and Sig potentially having sex haunted him.

Danny returned to his room, sat on his bed, and sulked.

Two hours had passed, and Danny started to doze off in his bed.

A knock was heard on his hotel room door.

Danny jumped up off his bed and rushed to the door. He opened it, saw Cindy outside, and then she stepped inside his room.

“Something is happening with Roger and his handling the band’s profits from the concerts. Sig stated they hadn’t received their share in two months. I had to promise that I won’t put this in our article,” she said while she walked over and sat down on Danny’s bed.

“It looks like Roger’s our prime suspect,” Danny said while walking over and sitting beside Cindy.

“It would appear so,” she replied.

“There’s something about him I didn’t like the second I met him,” said Danny.

Cindy nodded in agreement.

There was a few seconds of silence between them. Danny had the urge to ask her if she had sex with Sig but figured it was

none of his business. After all, they were not boyfriend and girlfriend. Even though he had that strong desire in his heart.

“I better go freshen up; the band’s heading off to Kresge Auditorium to practice for tonight’s concert. We leave in an hour,” she told Danny, then got off his bed.

Danny watched Cindy while she walked off to the door.

He lay back on his bed and thought deeply while Cindy left his room.

Later on that day, Danny’s door was knocked on while he relaxed on his bed.

He exited his bed, walked over, opened the door, and saw Cindy outside.

“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes to head off to MIT for practice,” she told him.

“I’m ready,” said Danny, stepping out of his room and closing the door.

He and Cindy walked away from their rooms.

Danny and Cindy returned to the bus with The Rocking Tones a little while later. The guys were dressed casually, and their suits were in garment bags hung in the closet in the rear of the bus.

Gus drove the bus out of the Holiday Inn parking lot and headed through the streets of Cambridge.

He eventually turned the bus onto Massachusetts Avenue and headed south.

While Gus drove down Massachusetts Avenue, Cindy and Danny looked out their windows in awe at the 1964 Cambridge.

Then Gus drove the bus onto the MIT part of Cambridge.

Danny and Cindy’s eyes were glued to their windows while they checked out the 1964 MIT campus.

Gus drove a little farther down Massachusetts Avenue.

Danny continued to glance out his window. Then his eyes widened the second he saw Dr. Youngblood, now much younger and more vibrant, walking down the street. He could not believe his eyes when he saw Dr. Youngblood now with black, unkempt hair, a black beard, and a new brown leather attaché.

“Did he ever use a comb?” Danny quietly muttered to himself while the bus went past Dr. Youngblood. He lightly chuckled.

Then Danny’s eyes widened even more the second he saw the spot where he remembered the Stratton Student Center being in 2014. But now it is a new building under construction.

He recalls how recently he sat outside that building eating his Subway Black Forest, Ham, Egg, and Cheese sandwich and a large coffee and glancing at the Kresge Auditorium.

Gus made a right turn and drove the bus down Amherst Street.

Danny and Cindy watched while the Kresge Auditorium came into view.

Cindy recalled attending a jazz concert by some MIT

students a month ago. Seeing that auditorium being built was really weird.

Gus turned the bus to the right and pulled into the parking lot west of the auditorium. He parked the bus by the two Chevrolet vans. Roadies Tom and Kenny arrived thirty minutes ago and were almost finished setting up the guitars, amplifiers, microphones, and drum sets.

Gus parked the bus by the two vans, turned off the engine, and opened the door.

The Rocking Tones got out of their seats and headed to the door.

Danny and Cindy exited their seats and were behind the guys. A little while later, The Rocking Tones, Danny, and Cindy were backstage in the Kresge Auditorium.

Kenny walked up to Jackie. “You’re all set up,” he said.

“Okay, guys, let’s warm them up,” he said.

The Rocking Tones headed off to the stage.

“Jackie,” a female’s voice came out from the back of the stage.

The Rocking Tones, Danny, and Cindy turned around.

Danny’s mouth almost dropped to the floor when he saw Diane, his grandmother, standing five feet away. She was now

in her early twenties and looked young in her Capri pants and blouse.

“Grandma,” he quietly muttered to himself.

Cindy heard him, then looked at Diane again and realized what Danny meant. She was in awe of Diane.

“Diane!” Jackie called out, excited to see her. He rushed over and gave Diane a quick kiss on her lips.

Cindy looked at Danny, who stood there with his mouth open at the sight he had just seen.

“How’s my number one fan?” Jackie asked Diane.

“Doing great, and so happy to see you again,” Diane replied with a warm smile and a twinkle in her eye.

Jackie turned to Danny and Cindy. “Diane, these are two reporters from the Cambridge Chronicle. They’re tagging along to do a story on the band,” he told her.

Diane looked at Danny and Cindy. “Hello, I’m Diane Portman. I’m the President of The Rocking Tones Massachusetts Fan Club,” she said.

“Ah, I’m Chris Moore, and this is Sally Duke,” Danny said.

Diane shook Danny’s hand, which felt really weird to him.

Diane then shook Cindy’s hand.

“We have to go practice. I’ll talk to you before the concert,” Jackie told Diane and gave her a kiss on her cheek.

Danny looked suspicious of what he saw and could not believe his eyes, especially with his grandmother being so young and attractive. Then he leaned over to Cindy’s ear. “She’s my grandmother. My young grandmother,” he whispered.

“I know, I heard you earlier,” Cindy replied and looked in awe at Diane.

Danny, Cindy, and Diane watched from the side of the stage while The Rocking Tones were positioned with their instruments. The band started with their Banging the Beat song. While The Rocking Tones rocked with their song, Danny could not help but take occasional glances at his grandmother.

An hour passed, and The Rocking Tones finished their practice. The instruments sounded awesome, and they played tight. They were ready for their concert in a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, dinner was brought to the dressing room used by The Rocking Tones. Danny, Cindy, and Diane were their guests and ate with the guys.

Diane sat beside Jackie on a couch, chatting and laughing.

Danny and Cindy sat with Sig on another couch. But Danny could care less this time about Sig and Cindy chatting.

He could not keep his eyes off Diane and was still in awe at the sight of his young grandmother.

Roger entered the dressing room. He looked displeased at the sight of Danny, Cindy, and Diane in the room with the band members.

“What’s she doing here?” Roger asked Jackie when he walked up to him.

“She’s president of our fan club in this state. You’ve met Diane Portman before,” Jackie replied to Roger.

Danny leaned over to Cindy’s ear. “She never told me she met Roger and the band before,” he whispered.

Cindy nodded that she acknowledged his comment.

“If I could have all you people, not members of this band, please leave the room. We have to prepare for the concert. You can wait and watch somewhere backstage where you’re not in the way of me or the band,” Roger told Danny, Cindy, and Diane, looking dead serious about their leaving at this exact moment. Jackie whispered in Diane’s left ear. She nodded in agreement and then stood up.

Danny, Cindy, and Diane headed to the door.

Danny opened up the door. Cindy and Diane left the room.

Danny followed behind them and closed the door.

Danny, Cindy, and Diane stood out by the dressing room door. They suddenly heard Roger yelling.

Then they heard Jackie yelling and Delmar yelling. All they could hear was yelling, and they could not determine what they were fighting about.

Danny and Cindy looked at each other.

“I heard them fighting at their concert in Philadelphia last month. There’s friction going on between Roger and the band.

Roger is such a fucking asshole,” Diane told Danny and Cindy.

Danny was shocked by the curse word Diane used. He never heard his grandmother cuss.

“Well, I’m going to my seat out in the auditorium. It was a pleasure meeting you. Good luck with your article. I hope we meet again,” said Diane.

“Me too,” replied Danny.

Diane gave them a warm smile, turned around, and walked away. Cindy and Danny then turned their sights to the dressing room door, where they could still hear Roger and The Rocking Tones arguing.

Then, the room got quiet.

The door opened, and Roger stepped outside, looking furious. He looked at Danny and Cindy. “I don’t like it one bit that you’re tagging along. So, stay out of my fucking way,” he barked at them, then stormed away.

“Grandma was right; he is a fucking asshole,” said Danny while watching Roger storm off.

Cindy nodded in agreement while she watched Roger storming away.

Danny and Cindy looked at the door of the dressing room, which was quiet again.

“Let’s get over near the stage and wait,” Danny told Cindy.

She nodded in agreement, and they walked away.

Danny and Cindy walked to the stage. They peeked out the curtains and saw that the MIT students and other Cambridge kids were starting to get into their seats. They all looked excited about tonight’s rock concert. The auditorium seats appeared to be half empty.

Danny spotted Diane sitting dead center in the front row.

“I can’t believe I saw my grandmother here in sixty-four,” he told Cindy.

“I’ll have to meet her when we get back home. I mean, when she’s your grandmother,” she replied.

Danny nodded in agreement that he would introduce her to his grandmother.

Then Tom and Kenny walked over to the instruments for some final adjustments.

Danny and Cindy walked away from the curtains and headed over to the right side of the stage.

Twenty minutes had passed, and all the auditorium seats were filled with anxious MIT and Cambridge fans of The Rocking Tones.

Tom placed a microphone in the front and center of the stage, just behind the curtains.

The audience’s chatter got louder and louder while their excitement was peaking.

Danny and Cindy saw The Rocking Tones dressed in their standard suits standing on the other side of the stage. They appeared nervous yet ready to perform.

The curtains opened, and the audience clapped and cheered.

A man walked out from the other side of the stage to the microphone.

“Hello, Cambridge. Are you ready for some rock and roll?”

the man said into the microphone.

The audience cheered and clapped.

“All right. It’s my pleasure to introduce,” he paused. “The Rocking Tones,” the man cheered into the microphone.

The audience clapped and cheered louder.

Danny and Cindy watched while The Rocking Tones rushed out to the stage and to their instruments from the other side of the stage.

Some of the girls in the audience screamed.

“I love you, Jackie!” one young girl screamed.

“Marry me, Sig,” a girl with blonde hair screamed.

“Marry me, Sig,” another girl with red hair screamed.

The second, The Rocking Tones, had their instruments ready, and they started playing their I’m a Loving Man song.

The audience went wild.

Danny looked across the stage and saw Roger standing with Tom and Kenny. Roger had his arms crossed while he watched the band play. He looked bothered, turned around, and walked away.

“I’ll be back,” Danny told Cindy.

Then he rushed off and headed back off behind the stage.

Danny rushed around behind the stage to get to the other side. When he approached the other side of the stage, he saw Roger talking into a pay phone hanging on the wall.

He tried to inch his way closer to eavesdrop on Roger’s call, but when he got closer, Roger hung up the phone and walked away. Danny turned around and headed back to Cindy.

“Where did you go?” Cindy asked Danny the second he walked up to him.

“Spying on Roger.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“No, he made a phone call but hung up when I tried to get closer,” said Danny, and he looked disappointed.

Danny and Cindy continued to watch the rest of the concert.

An hour had passed, and the concert was over.

Danny and Cindy were back on the bus with The Rocking Tones.

The bus ride back to the Holiday Inn was quiet, as the guys were exhausted from their concert.

They all left after Gus parked the bus behind the Holiday Inn. “Meet me in my room in an hour,” Jackie told the other guys as they still had to make that phone call with Kent Sommers.

The other guys nodded in agreement and then headed off to their rooms.

Danny and Cindy headed to their room, extremely curious about this phone call to Kent Sommers.

“Who is this Kent Sommers guy?” Danny said while he and Cindy headed off to their rooms.

“Don’t know. Maybe he’s FBI and might be looking into Roger for cooking the books?” she replied.

Danny thought about her theory for a few seconds.

“That’s a possibility. Maybe he’ll be arrested in Chicago?”

“That’s plausible,” she replied.

They remained quiet while they walked back and went inside their rooms.

Chapter 17

It was 7:00 on Wednesday morning.

Danny tossed and turned in bed the whole night and got only a few hours of sleep. Seeing his grandmother last night was on his mind the whole night.

Danny decided to see if he could get some coffee in the dining room, so he got dressed and headed over to his door.

He opened his door and started to step outside but stopped dead in his tracks. His mouth dropped in shock when Diane left Jackie’s hotel room. He stood there and watched her rush away from Jackie’s room with a spring in her step.

He went back into his room and closed the door.

He moped back to his bed and sat down. “My grandmother’s a slut,” he mumbled to himself and could not believe what he witnessed. He sat there in a depressed stupor while he stared down at the carpet.

He looked at his iTravel 2 device on the bedside table. He picked it up and saw the “4 Days – 14 Hours – 22 Minutes Left on iTravel 2 Mission” message. He wondered if the mission would be a success. He had nothing concrete, so he racked his brain to figure out how to stop that bus from leaving the diner.

An hour had passed, and there was a knock on Danny’s room door.

He opened the door and saw Cindy.

“What’s wrong?” asked Cindy the second she saw his depressed look.

He motioned for Cindy to step inside his room. She did, and he immediately closed the door.

“I saw my grandmother come out of Jackie’s room an hour ago.” It took a few seconds for it to dawn on Cindy. “Oh.”

“My grandmother’s a slut.”

Cindy looked upset with his rude comment. “She’s a young woman. She’s entitled to a little fun, and you. I mean, don’t you have those same urges?”

Danny looked at Cindy, and of course, he fantasized about being alone in bed with Cindy. Countless fantasies. “I guess you’re right. But it’s still weird,” he said, but maybe he was upset because he was still a virgin.

“Let it go. The guys want us to join them for breakfast,”

she said, then grabbed Danny’s hand, and they left the room.

Danny and Cindy joined Gus, Tom, Kenny, The Rocking Tones, and Roger for breakfast a little while later.

“How many did we have last night?” Sig asked Roger.

“A little over twelve hundred,” replied Roger.

“When are you going to schedule some concert in maybe a stadium?” asked Jackie.

“We have the fan base to fill up a stadium if it’s in a large city like Philly or maybe Washington,” said Burt.

“Especially after the Ed Sullivan Show,” added Jackie, and he looked confident.

“And when will we get our next share of the profits?”

asked Delmar.

“We haven’t received anything in two months,” added Carter.

Roger looked bothered by their questions. “You’ll get your shares next week. Now, I need to go take care of some business for our next concert,” he said, then got up from the table and his half-eaten scrambled eggs.

The guys looked at each other while Roger walked away and left the dining room.

“I know we could fill a stadium. Why does he insist on these small concert halls every night?” asked Delmar.

“Maybe a stadium once a week would give us a little break,”

added Sig.

“That way, all our fans can attend our concerts,” said Jackie.

The other guys all nod in agreement.

Then something bugged Delmar. “He buys a fucking new Corvette, and we don’t get paid for two months,” Delmar said, looking pissed.

The other guys nodded their heads in agreement.

Jackie did not look concerned while he drank his cup of coffee.

Danny and Cindy glanced at each other and lightly nodded, indicating that Roger was their prime suspect.

“Well, Kenny and I are going to that local music store to get some guitar strings and extra drumsticks. Then we’ll head off to Levittown,” Tom said, then stood up.

Kenny downed the rest of his coffee. “Get some picks, too,” Burt called out. Tom and Kenny gave a little wave and then left the table. Everybody else stayed behind and finished their breakfast.

An hour passed, and Gus had the bus engine running. The door opened while he was parked at the rear of the Holiday Inn. The Rocking Tones, Danny, and Cindy walked out of one of the rear hotel exits.

They boarded the bus.

Gus closed the bus door, started the engine, and drove off through the parking lot.

Roger walked over to his Corvette, got behind the wheel, started the engine with a roar, and drove off in the opposite direction in the parking lot.

A little while later, Gus drove the bus south on Interstate 95. “Now, where did we leave off with your article?” Jackie asked Cindy.

Cindy glanced down at her notepad. “You mentioned how your fathers wanted you to become police officers,” she read the notes.

“Let’s head over to the table,” Jackie told Cindy.

Cindy, Jackie, and the other guys got up from their seats, headed over to the table, and sat on the bench seat.

“Oh yeah,” Jackie said, then paused briefly. Well, we now needed an audience after we had practiced our hearts out for a month.”

Danny remained seated and rolled his eyes. He wanted nothing to do with Jackie, as the sight of his grandmother leaving Jackie’s hotel room was still vivid.

“It was Saturday, May second in fifty- nine. That’s the day we had our first official concert,” said Delmar.

“We performed it in my dad’s garage,” said Burt.

“I recalled we had about fifteen kids from the neighborhood in the driveway,” said Carter.

Cindy jotted down that information but knew it already.

“Let’s see, we played That’ll Be the Day, Rock and Roll music, said Sig.

“Sweet Little Sixteen, Wake Up Little Suzie, and Twenty Flight Rock,” added Burt.

The rest of The Rocking Tones nodded in agreement and smiled when they remembered that day.

“The fifteen neighborhood kids loved our playing, and that’s when we realized he had what it took to make it as a band,” said Jackie.

“One of those kids was Sandy Springfield, who became Jackie’s first girlfriend,” blurted out Burt.

“We don’t need to mention girlfriends in our article,” said Jackie.

“I think she snapped a picture of that little concert,” said Delmar.

Burt and Sig nodded in agreement with Delmar’s comment.

“Anyway, for the next three weekends in that May, we performed a concert on Saturday out of Burt’s garage,” said Jackie.

“The attendance increased with every concert when word got around the neighborhood about our band,” said Delmar.

“Then on May thirtieth, we had about thirty kids crowded by Burt’s driveway and front yard to listen to us play rock and roll,” said Carter.

“Amongst those thirty kids was young Roger Beaumont,”

said Delmar.

“He lived two streets over and attended Hesser College, working on a degree in Marketing,” said Jackie.

“Roger approached us and stated he was taking the summer off from college. He wanted to manage our band for ten percent of the takes from any gigs he could muster up,” said Sig. “So after we discussed it for two days, we agreed to let Roger be our manager for the summer,” said Burt.

“We figured it wouldn’t hurt,” added Delmar.

“He said that if he failed, he would part ways and never see him again,” said Sig.

“But since we graduated from high school, our dads wanted us to join the Manchester police department,” said Jackie.

“We did not want a life of wearing a badge and carrying a gun,” said Burt.

“No fucking way,” added Carter.

“Bad guys scare me,” added Sig with a light chuckle.

“So our moms, who also did not want their sons being police officers, stepped in and convinced our dads to let us try our band deal,” said Delmar.

“Our dads reluctantly agreed and figured we would fail in six months,” said Burt.

“But we surprised the hell out of them,” Jackie said with a huge grin.

The other guys all nodded in agreement with huge smiles.

“So then, during the summer of fifty- nine, Roger got us gigs at some of the local places around Manchester,” said Sig.

“We started to make money,” smiled Burt.

“But our instruments were shit and becoming a hindrance to our growth. So, Roger used some of his money and upgraded our instruments,” said Carter.

“We finally had nice instruments for a professional band look,” said Burt.

“And drums,” added Sig.

“We looked like a rock and roll band,” said Delmar.

“Roger also bought a used fifty-three Chevy panel van to haul our instruments around that he drove,” said Burt.

Danny got up from his seat and joined everybody around the table. He figured he should let it go about his grandmother.

After all, she was a young woman in sixty-four.

“Glad you could finally join us,” Jackie told Danny while sitting on the bench seat.

“Roger drove the van to our gigs, and we had to set up our instruments,” said Carter.

“Since we were successful in the summer of fifty-nine, Roger decided to quit college and take the risk of making our band successful,” said Sig.

“And it worked. During the fall of fifty- nine, we started playing gigs in Concord, Haverhill, Portsmouth, and Nashua,”

added Jackie.

“That’s when Tom and Kenny became our roadies,” said Delmar.

“As a band, we started playing tighter and tighter,” said Delmar.

“Then the girls started drooling over the sight of us performing,” added Burt with a grin.

“Yep, that’s when Jackie dumped Sandy so he could be with other girls,” said Sig.

“That’s not true. I dumped her because she tried to talk me into quitting the band. She wanted me to join the police department and get married. I didn’t want that kind of life,”

Jackie said, looking serious.

The other members of the band did not refute his reply.

“Then we started to notice that Roger had a bit of a bad habit,” said Carter.

“What bad habit?” Danny curiously asked.

“Oh, it was nothing that interfered with being the manager. So we ignored it,” said Jackie.

Danny and Cindy noticed Delmar, Carter, and Burt rolled their eyes.

That caused them to become really curious, and they knew they had to find out what Roger’s bad habit was. It might shed some light on the placement of that bomb.

“Danny plays the guitar, and he’s really good,” Cindy told the guys.

Danny’s head quickly looked at Cindy and frowned at her for telling them.

“I would love to hear you play,” said Sig.

Jackie’s eyes widened slightly, and he got up from the table.

He headed back to the rear of the bus and went to the closet. There, he opened the closet and removed a Gibson acoustic guitar.

He walked back to the table.

“Let’s hear a song, my friend,” Jackie said while he handed Danny the guitar.

Danny hesitated while he gripped the neck of the guitar.

“Go ahead, Danny. Play a song for them,” said Cindy.

“Okay,” Danny said. Then he got up with the guitar and headed over to an empty seat. He sat down and got ready. He hesitated for a few seconds. Then he started with a little rhythm riff and started singing his We Were Forever Rocking song.

Jackie and the guys looked at each other and said they liked what they heard.

A little while later, Danny finished his song.

“I love it,” said Jackie.

All the other guys nodded in agreement they loved the song. “Which band wrote that song? It doesn’t sound familiar,”

said Delmar.

“I wrote it,” said Danny, smiling, saying they loved it.

“You got the talent,” smiled Jackie.

“I hope you’re not going to steal my song,” said Danny while he handed Jackie back his guitar.

“We won’t steal it, but I would like to collaborate with you on tweaking it a bit. Then you can play it with us at some future concert,” Jackie, who looked serious, said.

“Really? You want me to play along with The Rocking Tones?” Danny said with sparkles in his eyes.

Jackie glanced at the bus windows and saw that they were entering the city limits of Levittown, Pennsylvania. “Well, that’s all for today,” he told Cindy.

Everybody got up from behind the table and returned to their seats.

Jackie returned to the bus’s rear and placed the guitar inside the closet.

Meanwhile, that 1963 black Cadillac pulled out of the parking lot at a Holiday Inn in Levittown and headed north on Oxford Valley Road.

Gus drove the bus south on Oxford Valley Road and did not notice the black Cadillac that passed by heading north.

The two Chevrolet vans Tom and Kenny drove were eight car lengths behind the bus.

A little while later, Gus pulled the bus into the Holiday Inn parking lot off Oxford Valley Road.

The two vans pulled into the lot and followed the bus.

Gus drove the bus to the rear of the parking lot, where Roger waited by the front of his Corvette.

He parked the bus, shut off the engine, and opened the door.

The bus parked the two vans.

The Rocking Tone, Danny, and Cindy walked over to Roger.

Gus, Tom, and Kenny soon walked over.

After Roger handed out the room keys, everybody went to their rooms to relax before tonight’s concert.

Roger remained by his Corvette. He removed a cigarette from his shirt pocket, lit it, and took a drag, exhaled and looked at the bus in deep thought.

Chapter 18

An hour had passed, and Danny walked over and knocked on Cindy’s door.

He waited for a few minutes. The door didn’t open, and laughter came from Sig’s room across the hall. Cindy’s laughter.

He moped back to his room, went inside, moped over then sat on the bed.

An hour passed, and Danny’s door was knocked on.

He lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. After more knocks, he got up and headed over to the door.

He opened the door and saw Cindy standing outside.

“Dinner in the dining room in twenty minutes. I’ll meet you down there,” she smiled.

Danny looked disappointed when she turned and headed off to her room.

An hour had passed, and Danny and Cindy were backstage at Edgely Hall.

On the stage, The Rocking Tones started playing their We Will Last song to an audience of over two thousand fans, half of whom were screaming teenage girls.

Off stage, Roger stood off by the wall. He glued suspicious eyes on Danny and Cindy, watching her jot notes on her notepad.

He walked over and stood by Cindy’s left side.

Cindy sensed someone was by her, and she looked to her left. She got nervous seeing Roger standing next to her, glancing down at her notepad.

“I need to see what you’re writing about the band,” he said, extending his hand.

Cindy looked at Danny. He nodded, “I should give Roger the notepad. “She handed him the pad.

Roger looked at all the pages of her notepad and saw that she only had notes about how The Rocking Tones was started.

He was satisfied that nothing derogatory was written about him. “I insist that I proofread your article before you give it to your editor,” he said while handing her the notepad back.

“Okay.”

Roger glared at Danny and Cindy with eyes that they knew he was not happy with their presence.

Roger strutted away.

Danny and Cindy looked at each other.

“I have to find something soon,” he said while he felt Roger was not within hearing distance.

Cindy nodded in agreement.

The two continued to watch The Rocking Tones with their song. Ten minutes passed, and The Rocking Tones started with their Rocking My Baby song.

Curiosity started eating away at Danny. “I’ll be back,” he whispered to Cindy.

“Where you going?”

“Check up on Roger,” he said then left.

Danny discreetly searched all around the back of the stage.

Roger was nowhere in sight.

Then he went to one of the rear stage doors. He cracked the door and peeked outside, seeing Roger pacing by one of the Chevrolet vans, smoking a cigarette. Roger was in deep thought about something.

Danny closed the door and then walked back to Cindy.

“Did you find him?”

“Yeah, he’s outside smoking and thinking about something,” he whispered. “I wonder what?”

“Take a guess, and the first two don’t count,” Danny replied.

Cindy nodded in agreement, and then they both watched while The Rocking Tones finished their song.

Danny and Cindy watched while The Rocking Tones started playing their We Will At Last song. Half of the females in the audience started screaming louder, making it difficult to hear the band.

Thirty minutes had passed, and The Rocking Tones just finished their last song.

The audience cheered and clapped while The Rocking Tones did their standard bow to signal the end of their songs.

Then, they blew kisses at the audience, which was their way of showing them that they loved them and appreciated their attendance at their concert.

Cindy jotted down that information on her notepad.

The Rocking Tones set down their instruments and walked off the stage.

Outside at the rear of Edgely Hall, the Levittown Police put up a barricade to keep the fifty fans from rushing the bus.

Amongst the fans were Pastor Elmer Watson and his flock.

They held up their signs protesting rock and roll music.

The girls screamed when The Rocking Tones exited the rear stage door.

“Repent!” Elmer yelled out the second he saw The Rocking Tones. He held up his Bible. “Repent, you sinners!”

Roger heard Elmer and smirked while he walked behind Danny and Cindy.

While Danny and Cindy walked to the bus behind The Rocking Tones, they saw Mickey and Maureen waving at them.

Danny and Cindy waved back.

The Rocking Tones walked to the front of the bus, did their standard wave, and blew kisses at the fans behind the barricades.

The Rocking Tones, Danny, Cindy, and Roger got on the bus. Gus started up the bus, closed the door, and drove away.

Tom and Kenny exited the vans and headed to the hall to pack the instruments.

It was late at night, at two in the morning, and everybody was back in their hotel rooms.

Cindy’s room door cracked open. She poked her head outside. The coast was clear, so she quietly stepped out of her room. She tiptoed to the room across from her door, knocked

on the door, and anxiously waited. She knocked again. “Hurry up,” she quietly whispered.

The room door opened, and Sig poked his head out. He was topless and in his boxers, looking like he just woke up with hair pointing in all directions. “Cindy, is there anything wrong?”

Cindy pushed the door open, walked past Sig, and stepped inside.

Sig was surprised by her action in the middle of the night.

“Ah, it’s kinda late.”

Cindy did not say a word. She just leaned in and planted a kiss on Sig’s lips. He was unresponsive and pulled her away.

“This isn’t a good idea at the moment,” he said while he looked away from her eyes.

Cindy felt a little rejected. “What’s wrong? I thought all band guys had females in your room late at night. Unless you don’t, I’m sexy and pretty,” she said, looking upset.

Sig looked a little concerned. “No, it’s not that. I think you’re a very beautiful woman and very sexy; it’s just that,” he said, then looked a little scared to continue.

“What is it? Are you married?”

“Can you promise you won’t tell a soul?” Sig said and looked serious.

“You can trust me,” Cindy replied and looked sincere.

Sig took her left hand and walked her over to her bed.

Meanwhile, Danny stepped out of his room. He rushed over to Cindy’s room, lightly knocked on her door, and waited for a few minutes. Her door did not open.

“Sound sleeper,” he said, then rushed toward the exit.

The rear door of one of the hotel exits opened.

Danny slowly poked his head outside and looked around the parking lot. The lot was quiet. He saw the bus, the two vans, and Roger’s Corvette. The coast was clear, so he rushed out of the rear exit.

He ran over to Roger’s Corvette, quietly opened the passenger door, sat in the seat, and opened the glove box.

Danny spent a few seconds and rummaged through the glove box.

He removed a sales slip for Roger’s purchase of the Corvette from Hopper’s Chevrolet dealership in Albany. Danny thought nothing of that slip, so he tucked it away back in the glove box. He looked disappointed with not finding evidence and then closed the glove box.

He saw the rear door of the hotel open and then noticed Roger slipping outside.

“Crap,” Danny quietly said while he slowly got out of the car and quietly closed the passenger door.

He looked for a place to hide and decided the row of hedges by the parking lot was the perfect spot.

He scampered on the pavement, crawled through a hole in the hedges, and waited behind the leaves.

From between gaps in the hedges’ leaves, he watched Roger walk over and stand by the front end of his Corvette. Roger removed a Winston cigarette from his shirt pocket, lit it, and smoked while he waited.

After a few minutes of spying on Roger from behind the hedges, Danny saw that black 1963 Cadillac drive through the parking lot with its headlight off. It was headed toward Rogers’s Corvette.

The second the Cadillac parked next to Roger’s Corvette, Roger smashed his cigarette into the pavement. He saw Victor behind the wheel, Bruno in the passenger seat, and Arnold in the rear seat.

“I remember him!” Danny said while he watched Victor Burrows get out of the Cadillac.

Danny removed his iTravel 2 device and immediately turned on the video application. He pressed the record thumbnail.

He shoved the iTravel 2 device through the hedges to record evidence.

Roger reached into his suit pants pocket and removed a thick white envelope. Danny immediately knew it contained a

large sum of cash. Roger scanned the area. Nobody was in sight, so he handed Victor the envelope.

Victor looked inside the envelope. “Trust me, it’s all there,”

said Roger. “Galvin will hunt you down if it is not,”

Victor said while he checked out the cash inside the envelope.

Victor shoved the envelope into his pants pocket. “Are you sure about this? Because once I give Galvin this initial payment, it’s a done deal. No backing out unless you wanted to be hunted down,” Victor said, dead serious.

Roger thought about it for a few seconds. “They don’t give me any other option. Just make sure it’s not traced back to us,”

he said.

“Oh yeah, that crazy religious guy who’s always hanging out outside your concerts is named Elmer Watson. He’s from Montgomery, Alabama,” said Victor, then paused. So, we’ll get a car with Alabama plates,” he added.

“That sounds good.”

“That’s good. Call me tomorrow, and I’ll have the location identified,” Victor said, then walked back to his Cadillac.

Roger returned to the hotel’s rear entrance while Victor drove off in his Cadillac.

“V eight four T B three,” Danny repeated quietly while he tried to memorize Victor’s license plate.

He continued to watch Victor’s Cadillac drive through the parking lot and then pull out onto Oxford Valley Road.

Danny waited for a few more minutes until the coast was clear. Then, he pressed the end recording thumbnail on his iTravel 2 device and shoved it into his pants pocket.

Then, he cautiously crawled out of the hedges and back to the parking lot.

“V eight four T B three,” he quietly repeated while he gingerly walked back to the rear entrance of the hotel.

Danny safely returned to his hotel room undetected by Roger a little while later. He sat on his bed and immediately grabbed the small Holiday Inn paper and pen pad. He jotted down “V84 TB3” on the paper. Then, I replayed the video. It

was too dark to distinguish Roger and Victor, but the audio was perfect. Then he looked at the iTravel 2 device. “I can’t show this to the guys. How can I explain what this is?” he said, placing the iTravel 2 device on his bedside table.

He replayed the video and jotted down their conservation on the pad of paper.

He got undressed, crawled under the covers, and was fast asleep in minutes.

Chapter 19

It was Thursday and six in the morning.

Danny woke up tossing the bed covers off his naked body.

He jumped out of bed and went into the bathroom, brushing his teeth, shaving, jumping in the tub, and taking a shower.

After drying off, he grabbed his tee shirt and boxers and hung them on a towel rack all night to dry from his hand washing.

He got dressed and rushed out of his hotel room.

Once he left his hotel room, he rushed to Cindy’s room.

He lightly knocked on her door. She did not open the door. He kept lightly knocking for a few minutes.

The door cracked open, and Cindy poked her head into view, sleepy-eyed and her hair a mess. “It’s early,” she said, then yawned.

Danny moved the door, rushed inside, and then closed the door behind him.

Once he got inside her room, he realized Cindy was naked and had her bed sheets wrapped around her body like a toga.

She also hand-washed her panties and bra last night, and they were hanging to dry in the bathroom.

His face turned red, and he blushed and became embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said, then looked away.

“What’s so important to wake me up so early?” she asked and couldn’t care less if Danny saw her bed sheets draped around her naked body.

“I recorded some evidence last night, you should see,” he said, then removed his iTravel 2 device from his pocket.

He walked over to her bed and sat on the ruffled bed covers.

Cindy sat beside Danny and looked at the iTravel 2 device in his hand. She saw the message “3 Days—15 Hours—20

Minutes Left on iTravel 2 Mission.”

Danny opened the video application and pressed a thumbnail for last night’s recording. “Unfortunately, the video is too dark,” he said while the video started playing.

“You have Roger and that Victor Burrows out by his Corvette last night in the parking lot,” Danny said while Cindy looked at the dark video and could hardly see Roger and Victor by the Corvette.

“Roger’s looking the area over, and then he handed Victor a thick envelope. It’s probably stuffed with cash,” he told Cindy while he looked at the video.

“Victor looked inside the envelope,” Danny told her.

“Trust me, it’s all there,” said Roger’s audio.

“Galvin will hunt you down if it’s not,” Victor’s video said.

“Victor was checking out the cash inside the envelope, and then he shoved it in his pants pocket,” Danny said.

“Are you sure about this? Because once I give Galvin this initial payment, it will be a done deal. No backing out unless you wanted to be hunted down,” Victor’s audit said.

“They don’t give me any other option. Just make sure it’s not traced back to us,” said Roger’s audio.

Roger thought about it for a few seconds. “They don’t give me any other option. Just make sure it’s not traced back to us,”

he said.

“Oh yeah, that crazy religious guy always hanging out outside your concerts is named Elmer Watson. He’s from Montgomery, Alabama,” said Victor’s audio, then paused. So, we’ll get a car with Alabama plates,” he added.

“That sounds good,” replied Roger’s audio.

“Good, call me tomorrow, and I’ll have the location identified,” Victor’s audio said.

“This is when Victor got back in his black Cadillac and drove away while Roger went back inside the hotel,” said Danny, then turned off the video.

“What did he mean by location identified?” Cindy asked Danny, and then she yawned.

Danny thought for a few seconds. “I would say that that’s where they installed the bomb. And I know it’s at Walter’s Diner, as I already saw them to it,” he said.

Cindy thought for a few more seconds. “What do we do now?” asked Cindy.

“I don’t know. We can’t show the guys the video as the iTravel device isn’t part of nineteen-sixties technology. We could never explain it without being locked up,” he replied.

Cindy nodded in agreement. Then she thought for a few seconds: “Hopefully, we can talk the guys out of getting on that bus after the Ed Sullivan Show.”

“That’s our only shot, but then he might try to place another bomb somewhere else,” Danny added.

Cindy nodded, knowing that it was a strong possibility.

Danny looked at Cindy, her body still wrapped in the bed sheet. “Ah, I better let you get dressed,” he said, then got off the bed. The second Danny left her room; she unwrapped the bed sheets from around her body.

She walked naked into the bathroom and started brushing her teeth.

Danny went back inside his hotel room.

He sat down on his bed and started to think about Cindy being naked under those bed sheets. He smiled at that thought and was glad he brought her inside the glass booth.

Three hours had passed, and everybody was inside the bus.

Gus drove from Levittown and headed west on Interstate 76 or the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Tom and Kenny drove the two Chevrolet vans with the instruments behind the bus.

Roger’s Corvette followed ten car lengths behind the two vans. After two hours on the highway, Jackie glanced at Cindy’s seat. “Okay, Sally, let’s work on your article,” Jackie said while he got up from his seat and walked over to the table.

The other Rocking Tones, Danny and Cindy, got up and headed to the table.

While they headed to the bench seat, Roger raced his Corvette in the left lane and passed the bus like it was standing still. “Where did we leave off yesterday?” Jackie asked Cindy while they sat on the bench seat.

Cindy opened her small notepad and looked at the last page with notes.

“Let’s see; you stopped at the fall of fifty-nine, where you started playing gigs in Concord, Haverhill, Portsmouth, and Nashua.”

“That’s right. So, two more years passed, and we were getting gigs all over New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts,” said Jackie.

“We started to establish a name for ourselves, and our fan base started growing,” said Sig.

“Remember sixty-one?” said Burt.

The other Rocking Tones glanced at each other and recalled that year.

“What happened in sixty-one?” Cindy curiously asked.

“Because of all the gigs we were doing night after night, we started stressing and fighting each other,” said Delmar.

“Yeah, I didn’t know Delmar could pack a powerful punch,” Carter said, rubbing his jaw.

“Yeah, we’re not proud of those times,” said Burt.

“Roger gave us three weeks off so we could individually take a little vacation from each other,” said Sig.

“I went to Florida and enjoyed the white sandy beach in Pensacola,” said Jackie.

“I hit the beach at Ocean City, New Jersey,” said Burt.

“l lounged around my parent’s home and slept for almost three weeks,” said Sig.

“The time off worked because Jackie wrote our first song,”

said Delmar.

“He wrote Banging the Beat, and after we returned from our vacations, we started to work on the guitar parts for our first tune,” said Carter.

“And don’t forget the keyboard part,” said Delmar.

“And drums,” added Sig.

“We then played it for Roger, and he loved it and thought it had some great potential,” said Jackie.

“We were so excited when we heard that DJ Hud Marvin from a rock station in New York City played it on his rock and roll radio show,” said Carter.

The other guy nodded in agreement.

“How was Roger doing as your manager? I mean, were you happy with his performance?” asked Danny.

The Rocking Tones all looked at each other.

“Yeah, after we finalized Banging the Beat, Roger got us a contract with Albatross Records out of New York,” said Burt.

“Our first song was number fifteen in the top one hundred, so we knew we were heading in the right direction,” said Jackie.

Gus slowed the bus and started driving down an exit in Harrisburg.

“We’ll finish this tomorrow,” Jackie said, getting up from the table and returning to his seat.

The rest of The Rocking Tones, Danny, and Cindy, got up from the table and returned to their seats.

A little while later, Gus drove the bus north on Eisenhower Blvd. The two white Chevrolet vans with Tom and Kenny drove right behind the bus.

Two hours had passed, and everybody was relaxing in their hotel rooms at the Holiday Inn, located off Keckler Road.

An hour had passed, and Danny got bored. He wanted to chat with Cindy, but she laughed inside Sig’s room. He got jealous again and decided to head to the lobby.

When Danny approached the lobby, he saw an area with eight pay phones hung on the wall with wooden stools.

At the far end of the row of phones by the corner of the wall sat Roger, depositing quarters into the slot of one of the pay phones.

Danny looked for a place to eavesdrop on Roger’s conservation. He saw the perfect spot. There was a large plant to Roger’s left by the corner of the wall in another hall.

Danny did some backtracking to get down the hall by that plant.

He removed his iTravel 2 device from his pants pocket. He turned on the video application and pressed the record thumbnail. He discreetly placed the iTravel into the dirt of the planter so it would capture Roger. He rushed away down the hallway.

Danny rushed through the lobby and went outside to kill some time.

Thirty minutes had passed, and Danny gingerly walked down that hallway.

He discreetly peeked around the corner of the wall by the plant like a spy, noticing Roger was long gone from the payphone. He looked down and saw that his iTravel2 device was still recording; he picked up the device and pressed the end recording thumbnail.

He shoved the iTravel 2 device into his pants pocket and rushed past the pay phones.

A little while later, Danny was back in his room, sitting on his bed.

He had his iTravel 2 device in his hand and pressed the play recording thumbnail.

The video showed Roger sitting on the wooden stool, talking on the phone.

“Victor, it’s me, Roger,” he said into the phone.

He listened for a few seconds.

“I got it. We’ll stop off at Walter’s Diner in Pennsylvania off Route sixteen just west of Bellwood,” Roger said while he jotted down the information on a small pad of paper provided by the Holiday Inn for the pay phone users. He listened to Victor.

“I’ll make sure nobody steps outside the diner by eleven thirty,” he said while jotting that information down while he listened.

“I can meet you briefly outside the diner with the rest of the payment,” he said, then listened.

“Okay, let me talk to Galvin,” he said, then waited a few seconds.

“Galvin put a thousand on Texas for the North Texas and Army game for this Saturday,” he said, looking excited about the potential of winning. “I know, as soon as I cash in the policy, you’ll get the rest that’s owed,” he said, then listened to Galvin’s response. He suddenly looked concerned. “I know what will happen,” he said, then listened to Galvin’s response. “I’m sure and feel lucky that North Texas will beat the Army,” he said, then listened for a few seconds. “If you want, you can keep the band’s instruments. You should be able to sell them to some grieving fans for a pretty penny,” he said, then listened to Galvin’s response. “I’ll deliver them in a couple of weeks,” he said, then listened to Galvin” s response.

Danny watched Roger on the video while he hung up the phone, then he shoved more quarters into the phone and dialed a new number. He waited for the other end to answer.

“Yes, I’m Roger Beaumont, the band The Rocking Tones manager,” he said, then waited for the other end to reply.

“I would like to inform the Harrisburg Police that the band has been having a pastor from Alabama making threats against them,” Roger said, then waited for a response.

“His name is Elmer Watson from Montgomery, Alabama, and his religious flock has been hanging outside our concerts, and I deem him a potential threat. So, could you have some of your officers watch Mister Watson and his followers? You can’t miss him, as he always has a Bible in his hand, and his flock holds up protesting types of signs,” Roger said, then waited for a response.

“Thank you,” he said, then hung up, got up off the stool, and walked away.

He stopped the video and looked happy he had more evidence against Roger. “But should he do with it?” he pondered.

He exited his bed, shoved his iTravel 2 device into his pants pocket, and headed to his door.

He left his room and walked over to Cindy’s room door.

He started to knock but heard Cindy’s laughter coming from Sig’s room.

He moped down the hallway and headed to the lobby, hoping to mope by the pool area.

An hour had passed, and Danny headed back to his room.

The second he placed his butt on his bed, there was a knock on his room door.

He walked over to the door, opened it, and saw Cindy standing outside. “Where have you been?” she asked while she stepped inside his room.

“Well, I wasn’t in Sig’s room. I can tell you that,” he said with a tone of sarcasm.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” she snapped and sounded bothered by his comment.

“I mean, we’re supposed to be trying to stop these guys from being killed in an explosion, and you’re flirting or doing whatever with the drummer. Just like Bobby, the drummer,” he snapped back.

Cindy got pissed, turned around, and stormed off to the door.

Danny knew he had gone too far while he watched her leave his room. “This is great,” he said, then sat down on the bed and moped.

Another hour had passed, and Danny relaxed on his bed.

He was too chicken to knock on Cindy’s room door.

Then his heart raced when he heard someone knock on his door. He jumped up and raced to the door.

“I’m sorry, Cindy,” he said the second he opened the door.

He was disappointed seeing Jackie standing outside his room.

“Who’s Cindy?” Jackie curiously asked.

“I, ah, I, ah,” Danny stammered while trying to devise a viable excuse. “I had a dream about an old girlfriend named Cindy,” he said.

Jackie thought about his reply. “I had those types of dreams before. So, anyway, dinner in ten minutes in the dining

room, then we’re heading out to the concert,” he said, then walked away.

A little while later, Danny sat around the large table in the Holiday Inn dining room with The Rocking Tones, Gus, Roger, Tom, Kenny, and Cindy.

Cindy and Danny did not talk or look at each other during the dinner. The entire table was quiet while they ate.

Two hours had passed, and The Rocking Tones were on stage starting their concert at the Theater Harrisburg. They started by playing their Let Me Love You song.

When Jackie sang the Let Me Love You lyrics, Danny glanced at Cindy. She glanced at him.

“Sorry,” he mouthed the words at her.

“Me too,” she mouthed the words for her reply.

Danny moved closer to Cindy and leaned over to her ear.

“I have a recording you need to hear later tonight,” Danny whispered.

“Okay,” she whispered back.

Danny felt better while they both watched The Rocking Tones play to an audience of screaming teenagers.

After the concert was over, The Rocking Tones rushed out to their bus where nearby the Harrisburg police had the fifty adoring fans barricaded.

Amongst those fans were Pastor Elmer Watson and his flock. Two Harrisburg police officers stood near Elmer, keeping a watchful eye on him and his followers.

Mickey and Maureen were up against the barricade. The second they saw Danny and Cindy behind The Rocking Tones, they waved at them as they walked to the front of the bus.

The Rocking Tones waved and blew kisses at their fans.

Roger walked over to the bus and saw the two police officers by Elmer. He smiled while he got on the bus.

Roger and The Rocking Tones all got inside the bus.

Gus started up the bus, closed the door, and drove off.

Three hours had passed, and everybody was back in their rooms at the Holiday Inn.

Danny and Cindy sat on his bed in his room. He just finished showing her the video recording of Roger at the pay phone earlier in the day.

“I promised not to tell anybody since you heard it. Sig also stated that the band was concerned about Roger’s gambling.

They are confident that Roger’s been squandering their money.

Hence why they haven’t been paid in two months,” she said.

“You know that you can’t stay here with Sig,” he said, looking concerned.

“Don’t worry, there’s nothing going on between me and Sig,” she said and looked sincere.

“No, it’s okay if there is. I mean, you’re a beautiful young woman. I can’t blame Sig, and I don’t have any right to get jealous,” Danny said, cringing, realizing he had said the wrong word.

Cindy looked at Danny. “Are you jealous of Sig?”

“Let’s talk about something else,” he replied, blushing a little. Cindy discreetly smiled, liking that Danny was jealous of her time spent with Sig. “So, what do we do next?”

“Well, I was thinking of writing an anonymous letter to the FBI in Philadelphia. Write down what we know, so in case our mission fails, maybe the FBI will focus their investigation on Roger and Victor,” he said.

Cindy thought about his suggestion. “That sounds good.

Let’s start writing,” she said, then grabbed the pad of Holiday Inn paper and pen off the bedside table.

Danny replayed the two videos, and Cindy started writing the letter.

Chapter 20

Friday morning arrived with a hint of rain in the gray, overcast skies.

After everybody had breakfast in the dining room, they all headed off to the bus parked at the rear of the hotel.

Danny backtracked when nobody was looking and stopped at the Front Desk where a middle-aged male clerk worked.

“Do you have any postage stamps?” he asked the clerk.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, I need to get this letter in the mail. It’s for a story I’m writing for the Cambridge Chronicle,” Danny lied while removing the letter from his back pants pocket. He placed it on the counter.

The clerk picked up the letter and looked at it. “That’ll be five cents, sir,” he said.

Danny reached into his pants pocket and removed a dime.

He handed the clerk a dime dated 2010.

The clerk dropped the time in his cash drawer with the other dimes and returned Danny a nickel. He closed the cash drawer, unaware of the date on the dime.

“Thank you,” Danny said, then rushed off and headed down the hallway leading to the rear of the hotel.

After two hours, Gus drove the bus east on Interstate 76, heading toward Philadelphia.

It was quiet on the bus, and Jackie got out of his seat and walked over to Cindy’s seat. “Let’s finish,” he said, then walked away and headed over to the table.

A few minutes later, The Rocking Tones, Danny, and Cindy sat on the bench seat around the table.

Cindy looked at her notepad. “You left off yesterday with the Banging the Beat being number fifteen in the top one hundred, and you knew your band was heading in the right direction,” she read from her notes.

“Okay. We became more popular with the fans, and then Burt and Carter started writing songs. We completed three more songs,” Jackie said.

“We wrote She’s My Only Baby, I’m a Loving Man, and Let Me Love You,” stated Carter.

“They all made it to the fifty-hit list with She’s My Only Baby making it to Number 1,” Burt added, looking proud.

“Yep, The Rocking Tones was making their way to the top,”

said Sig, then pointed to the bus’s ceiling.

“So we started working on more songs for our first album,”

said Burt.

“We had it done by the spring of sixty- two and it was called Rocking Tones a Rollin,” said Jackie.

“I’m the one that came up with that title,” said Sig, and he looked proud.

The guys did not notice while Roger’s Corvette raced past the bus in the left lane and roared ahead of them.

“Rocking Tones a Rollin was a success but did not reach the gold or platinum sales levels we hoped for,” said Jackie.

“So the next year rolled around and we played more concerts across the eastern part of the country,” said Delmar.

“By December sixty-three, we had our second album completed,” said Jackie.

“Don’t put this in the article, but we started to have some issues with Roger,” said Sig.

The other guys looked at Sig with disapproving eyes for mentioning that.

“Please don’t put that in your article,” Jackie said while he looked at Danny and Cindy.

“We won’t cross my heart,” Danny replied, crossing his heart with his right index finger.

“He started having discreet meetings with some mysterious man,” said Carter.

“We still don’t know who,” added Burt.

“But that’s okay because we have our own mysterious man in Chicago,” Sig replied with a smirk.

The other guys frowned at Sig for stating that.

“I know, we won’t mention that in our article,” replied Cindy, but she and Danny were extremely curious about Kent Sommers. They were itching to find out more about this guy but decided to wait.

“And then in July of this year, as you may well know, our second album titled Rock, Rock and More Rock went platinum,”

said Jackie.

Jackie and the guys high-fived each other.

“I was the one that came up with that title,” said Delmar with a proud smile.

“We were on our way to becoming as popular as The Beatles,” Jackie said, and he looked confident they would achieve that goal.

The other guys nodded in agreement, and they looked confident.

Danny and Cindy looked at each other and knew the guys’

days might be numbered. Three, to be exact, if their plan failed.

“Well, the only thing I can add is how all this success has brought us to perform at the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night. That’s the big boost we need to start touring all across America,” said Jackie.

“And then we want to do our own little invasion of England and hit the Brits New England style rock,” added Delmar.

Delmar and Carter high-fived each other.

Everybody returned to their seats and relaxed while Gus drove the bus north on Interstate 95, near Levittown, heading north to New York City.

Then, the sounds of the bus driving down the highway put the guys of the band to sleep in their seats Danny and Cindy remained awake and watched the countryside go by.

Danny reached into his pants pocket and removed his iTravel 2 device. He discreetly looked at the device and saw it read “2 Days – 10 Hours – 9 Minutes Left on iTravel 2 Mission”

message. “Two days,” he quietly muttered, still wondering how

he would save their lives. He shoved the iTravel 2 device back in his pants pocket and closed his eyes.

Gus drove off Interstate 95, then headed north on US 1.

Meanwhile, Victor drove a black 1960 Buick LeSabre south down a two-lane country road in northern Georgia. Bruno sat in the passenger seat while Arnold sat in the rear seat. It was quiet while they listened to Dean Martin’s song Everybody Loves Somebody on the radio.

“Everybody loves somebody sometimes. Everybody falls in love somehow,” Bruno and Arnold sang out in unison with Dean Martin.

Victor rolled his eyes as he hated when Bruno and Arnold sang along with Dean Martin.

They continued to sing along with Dean Martin while Bruno drove down the road.

Later that day, Gus drove the bus north on Interstate 95

and entered the city limits of New York City.

Everybody on the bus was awake and looked out their windows. They saw the skyline of tall skyscrapers, which meant a lot to them.

Gus hated this part of driving a bus, but he had to navigate through the hectic streets of New York City to arrive at the hotel.

It took an hour, but he finally drove the bus to the Warrick Hotel in Manhattan.

But this time, everybody had to share a room with someone else.

Jackie and Burt settled in their room. Sig and Delmar settled in their room. Carter and Gus settled in their room. Tom and Kenny settled in their room. Cindy had a room all to herself.

Danny had to share a room with Roger. Roger requested Danny to be a roommate so he could keep a watchful eye on him.

After dinner in the Warrick Hotel’s dining room, everybody returned to their rooms for the evening.

Danny was extremely awkward in the same room as Roger.

The air was tense in the room while they lay on their beds watching Rawhide on the TV.

Roger glanced over at Danny. He stared for a few seconds.

Danny could sense Roger’s eyes glaring, so he got nervous.

“How’s the article about the band coming along?” asked Roger.

“Ah, good so far,” said Danny, keeping his eyes on the TV.

“I have something I want you to add,” said Roger.

“What’s that?”

“We’ve been having this religious nut named Elmer Watson from Montgomery, Alabama, following us around to the concerts during the past two weeks. I just hope he doesn’t do any harm to the band. So print that,” said Roger.

“Ah, Elmer Watson from Montgomery, Alabama. Got it,”

Danny said while he knew this was part of Roger’s plan to set up Elmer.

Danny felt awkward staying in the hotel room with Roger.

They watched TV and remained quiet for the remainder of the night.

Then, while Danny slept, he slid the iTravel 2 device under his pillow. He was so nervous about being in the same room as Roger that he only slept for one hour.

Saturday morning arrived.

At 7:00 that morning, someone knocked on Danny and Roger’s door.

Roger snored in bed.

Danny woke up to the knocking and got out in his tee shirt and boxers from under the covers.

He approached the door, cracked it open, and peeked outside.

“Get showered and dressed; we’re going on a little tour of NYC in thirty minutes,” said Jackie.

Danny nodded, said he was okay with their plan, and closed the door.

Roger was asleep while Danny took a quick shower and dressed.

He tiptoed out of the room and met Cindy and The Rocking Tones in the hallway.

“What about Roger?” he said.

“Fuck him,” glared Carter.

“Let him sweat for once,” smirked Delmar.

“Come, the limo should be waiting downstairs,” said Jackie.

They all rushed away.

“Roger will shit when he gets the bill for the limo,” said Sig with a smile while they all rushed down the hallway.

So, during the next three hours, Danny, Cindy, and The Rocking Tones were driven around in a 1964 black Cadillac limo, seeing the sights of New York City.

Later that day, the limo driver dropped them off at the rear entrance of the Warrick Hotel.

A little while later, they walked down the hallway and headed to their rooms. They chatted and laughed and had a blast, and this was a break the band guys needed.

They did not notice that the door to Roger and Danny’s room was cracked open.

Then Roger stepped out of his room and was furious.

“Where the fuck were you?” he snapped at the guys.

“Cool it, Roger. We decided to relax and take a tour of New York City,” said Sig.

“Tour? I didn’t authorize a tour,” he yelled.

“Listen, we haven’t been paid in two months now. And we’ve been doing concerts almost every night for the past months. We deserve a fucking break,” Jackie said in a raised voice, was pissed and ready to take on Roger.

“I said that you’ll get paid when we get to Chicago,” said Roger looking sincere.

“I hope we do,” said Burt.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get paid, I promise,” smirked Roger.

Danny and Cindy looked at each other, knowing Roger was lying through his teeth.

“Now, go freshen up. We have rehearsal for the Ed Sullivan Show in an hour,” he said, then went back inside his room and slammed the door.

The guys looked at each other and thought the same thing: They could not wait until they got to Chicago.

Danny and Cindy headed to the Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan with The Rocking Tones.

They watched backstage while The Rocking Tones started their first song for the show.

Danny looked around the stage and audience seating.

“This is the same stage David Letterman uses for his shows,” he told Cindy.

Not far behind them stood Roger, who looked suspicious.

He walked over.“ Who is David Letterman?” Roger asked Danny the second he stood by his side.

Danny jumped a little as Roger’s presence startled him.

“Ah, he’s a, ah,” “He’s a small-time comedian in Cambridge. He said he wants to make it big and perform on the Ed Sullivan Show,” Cindy blurted out.

“Oh,” Roger said, and then he saw Ed Sullivan standing twenty feet away.“ Excuse me,” he said, then rushed off.

Danny and Cindy watched Roger rush away, and then they stared in awe at the sight of Ed Sullivan alive and in the flesh.

After rehearsal was over, The Rocking Tones, Danny, Cindy, and Roger headed back to the Warrick Hotel.

The second night of sleeping in the same hotel room with Roger also had Danny on edge. He had two hours of sleep.

Roger snored the whole night.

Chapter 21

Sunday morning arrived, and the sun started to peek over the horizon.

Arnold drove a black 1952 four-door Bel-Air car in northern Virginia down a two-lane country road.

Four car lengths behind the Bel-Air was that 1960 Buick LeSabre driven by Bruno with Victor in the passenger seat.

They both were heading north to Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, back in NYC, Danny got out of his hotel bed and had to leave that room.

He quickly showered, removed his clothes from the hotel cleaner’s bag, and dressed.

He then rushed out of the room.

He walked over to Cindy’s room, lightly knocked on her door, waited a few seconds, knocked again, and then waited.

A few seconds passed, and the door cracked open. Cindy poked her head outside and looked sleepy. “What?” she said, looking like she wanted to sleep while standing up.

“I just had to get out of Roger’s room. Can I wait inside your room?” he asked.

Cindy yawned and opened the door up some more.

Danny stepped inside her room, and she closed the door.

Once Danny was inside, he noticed Cindy was in her bra and panties.

“You can have the chair,” she said while she moped back over to the bed and got under the covers.

She went back to sleep while Danny sat down in the chair of her room.

Danny reached inside his pants pocket and removed his iTravel 2 device. He looked at it and saw the “0 Days – 22

Hours – 30 Minutes Left on iTravel 2 Mission” message. He started to have serious doubts that he was going to be successful. While he looked down at his iTravel 2 device, his

eyes started to drift closed. He was soon sound asleep with the device in his hand.

Two and a half hours had passed.

Danny was slumped in that chair, sound asleep. His iTravel device was on the floor.

Cindy woke up and headed off to the bathroom. She went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and shower.

After showering, she removed her clothes from the hotel dry cleaners bag.

She got dressed.

She walked out of the bathroom and headed over to Danny. She saw the iTravel device on the floor. She picked it up and saw the “0 Days – 20 Hours – 0 Minutes Left on iTravel 2 Mission” message.

She stared at the iTravel 2 device and doubted this mission would succeed.

She leaned down and lightly shook Danny.

He stirred a little. She lightly shook him again.

He stirred more then his eyes slowly opened. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said without thinking.

Cindy smiled over his morning greeting.

Then it dawned on Danny what he had said. “I’m sorry,”

he said, then stood up straight and became red with embarrassment.

“That’s okay. We better head downstairs for breakfast with the guys,” she said.

Danny got up from the chair.

Cindy handed him the iTravel 2 device.

He looked at it and looked worried while he shoved it back into his pants pocket.

“We” ’re getting closer,” said Cindy. “I know.”

“They need to stay off that bus,” she said.

“I can’t show them the iTravel device without them thinking we’re nuts. They’ll never believe we traveled in time from two thousand and fourteen.”

“I know.”

Danny thought for a few seconds. “Maybe I can do something before the bus leaves the hotel. You know, delay the bomb installation at Walter’s diner.”

“It’s worth a shot,” she replied. There was a knock on her door. Cindy went over and opened it, seeing Jackie standing outside. “Breakfast in ten minutes,” said Jackie then walked off down the hall. Danny and Cindy left her room and headed off down the hallway.

A little while later, The Rocking Tones, Roger, Tom, Kenny, Gus, Danny, and Cindy sat around a table eating a nice pancake breakfast.

“I was thinking Chris and Sally, we would love it if you both came with us to Chicago for more stuff for your article,”

he said.

Roger looked at Jackie, then at Danny and Cindy. He smirked. “I think that’s a grand idea.”

Danny and Cindy looked at each other.

Danny swallowed a little hard, knowing he was cutting it too close for comfort.

Cindy also got a little nervous, knowing it was cutting it too close for comfort.

Afterward, they had breakfast with The Rocking Tones on the bus to the Ed Sullivan Theater.

It was a quiet ride through Manhattan’s streets while the butterflies fluttered in the guys’ stomachs. They were nervous about this historic performance. Sig even had dry heaves a couple of times.

Later that day, the Rocking Tones, dressed in golden brown suits, waited in the theater’s dressing room.

Sig and Delmar paced back and forth.

Jackie sat in a chair with his eyes closed while he tried to relax.

Carter and Burt sat on a couch, trying to mentally organize their entire playlist. A couple of times, they started to forget the songs.

Roger was outside the dressing room, pacing back and forth while he smoked a cigarette. He was nervous about what would happen hours from now.

Then, a guy with a clipboard in hand walked up to Roger.

“They’re on in ten minutes,” he said, then opened the door of the dressing room. “You’re on in ten minutes,” he told the guys the second he poked his head inside the room.

The guy closed the door and then walked away.

The dressing room door opened, and The Rocking Tones stepped out.

They walked past Roger without making eye contact.

Danny and Cindy followed The Rocking Tones while they headed over to the staging area for them to wait to go on stage.

It was show time.

The signal was given for The Rocking Tones to get on the stage and get with their instruments.

Danny and Cindy watched while the guys were ready on the stage with their instruments.

Danny and Cindy saw Ed Sullivan on the other side of the stage in his normal stance.

Danny and Cindy looked at the audience and saw many young women and teenage girls. They looked but could not see Mickey or Maureen, but they knew they were somewhere in the audience.

“And here are The Rocking Tones,” Ed Sullivan said, then looked at the guys.

The Rocking Tones started up playing their Rockers at Heart song.

The seating area erupted into many screaming girls while the band played.

The Rocking Tones continued to play their song through the screams.

Off to the side of the stage, Roger still looked a little concerned. He glanced over at The Rocking Tones, and they rocked their adoring fans.

Danny glanced at the stage exit doors and saw that each door had two security officers guarding them.

“I can’t slip outside,” he leaned over and whispered in Cindy’s ear.

Cindy looked at the exit doors and nodded in agreement with Danny.

Outside the Ed Sullivan Theater, the NYPD set up barricades to prevent the sixty fans from rushing the bus of The Rocking Tones.

One of those sixty fans was Kimberly Stein, a beautiful young blonde woman.

Again, among those fans were Elmer Watson and his flock, with their “The Rocking Tones Are Pure Evil,” “Sinners!” “Rock and Roll is Music of the Devil,” and “Rot in Hell!” signs.

Eight other NYPD officers watched the rear of the GMC

Coach bus, Roger’s Corvette, and the two Chevrolet vans.

Inside the Ed Sullivan Theater, The Rocking Tones played their song “She Loves to Rock. “This was their last song, and the girls were still screaming and jumping in their seats.

The Rocking Tones ended their song by doing their standard bow to signal the end of their songs. They then blew kisses at the audience.

The Rocking Tones rushed off the stage, all excited about their performance. Four security officers escorted Them to one of the rear stage exit doors.

The rear stage exit door opened. Jackie, Burt, Carter, and Sig rushed out, with Roger, Danny, and Cindy following behind them.

The female spectators at the barricade screamed at the sight of The Rocking Toners while they walked over to the front of the bus.

The Rocking Toners waved and blew kisses at their screaming fans.

Danny and Cindy looked at the cheering and screaming fans. Cindy’s eyes lit up. “There’s my grandma,” she told Danny while she pointed at Kimberly Stein, one of the screaming girls.

“She’s screaming; I never knew,” she said, then chuckled.

Danny and Cindy looked and suddenly noticed that The Rocking Tones had all arrived on the bus.

They rushed to the door and entered the bus while Gus started the engine.

When The Rocking Tones got inside the bus, they immediately removed their suit coats and ties. They walked them back to the bus’s rear and got to a closet.

Jackie opened the closet, and the guys hung up their suit coats.

They then returned and relaxed in their seats with Danny and Cindy.

“That was fucking great. Now I know how The Beatles felt the first time they appeared on the show earlier this year,”

Jackie said the second he sat down in his seat.

Back behind the Ed Sullivan Theater, Tom and Kenny exited the two vans while Roger walked over to them.

“I want you to drive straight to Chicago,” he told Tom and Kenny.

Tom and Kenny looked at each other in a little disbelief.

“We’re not following the bus?” asked Kenny.

“No, I really need you in Chicago as soon as you can get there so you can set up the equipment. The concert time got moved up three hours,” he told them.

Tom and Kenny thought that was odd, but they always followed orders.

They walked off to the theater stage doors to gather the instruments.

Roger headed to his Corvette, got inside, and started its engine.

The bus and Corvette drove off after the police opened the barricade and provided safe passage to the street.

Inside the bus, everybody looked out their windows and saw the sixty fans behind the police barricade.

Gus turned the bus to the left onto the street. Then, suddenly, tomatoes pelted the right side of the bus.

Then, everybody on the bus saw Elmer Watson while he held up his Bible. “You sinners will burn in hell!” Elmer yelled out with fire in his voice while the bus passed by him.

“What a kook,” Delmar said.

“I know, this nut seems to follow us all over the place,” said Carter.

“Roger needs to get some police action on his butt,” Jackie added.

Burt and Sig nodded in agreement.

Roger’s Corvette followed behind the bus, and some of those rotten tomatoes pelted the windows of his sports car. He was pissed.

The bus and Roger’s Corvette continued their drive down the street.

Elmer watched while The Rocking Tones bus drove off down the street with piercing eyes. “Sinners will all go to hell,”

he mutters to himself. A few of his followers heard him and nodded in agreement.

It was quiet inside the bus while Gus drove the bus through the streets of New York City. The Rocking Tones were exhausted from their historical performance.

“What’s with Roger having us eat dinner so late?” asked Burt. “This is a first,” said Carter.

“That guy is off his rocker,” said Delmar.

“Just play along, guys. It will get better once we get to Chicago,” said Jackie.

The guys closed their eyes to get some rest.

Danny and Cindy sat in their seats and started to get nervous. They knew that their time was getting shorter and shorter by the minute.

After fifteen minutes, Danny felt the guys were asleep, so he got up and walked over to Cindy’s seat. He whispered into her ear, and she nodded that she agreed.

Chapter 22

Walter’s Diner was again empty except for Walter and his cook.

The 1955 rusty Ford sedan and 1962 Ford Galaxy convertible were again parked at the far end of the lot.

The front doors of the Diner again had the “Closed” sign and the “Private Party” signs hanging in the door window.

Walter and Harvey sat again on stools at the food counter.

They each had a cup of coffee in front of them to help pass the time. It was still quiet outside the Diner.

Then, air brakes and a Corvette engine were heard as the two vehicles slowed down and pulled into the restaurant’s gravel parking lot.

The Rocking Tones bus drove over the right side of the Diner and backed up to the right side, where its rear was again not visible from the Diner’s front windows.

Roger’s Corvette was parked on the other side of the bus, and it was again out of view of the Diner’s windows.

The engine of the bus turned off. The Corvette engine turned off.

The front door of the bus opened.

Gus walked down the small steps and out of the bus. The second his feet hit the ground, he stretched.

Roger walked over to the front of the bus while The Rocking Tones started getting out.

“I’m fucking starving,” Carter said the second he stepped on the gravel parking lot.

“Me too,” added Jackie after he stepped off the bus.

Sig, Burt, and then Delmar all stepped off the bus.

Then Danny and Cindy stepped off the bus and looked at each other. They were worried about the upcoming hours and how they could alter time.

“They’re waiting for us inside,” Roger told them while he kept a discreet eye on the other entrance into the lot at the far end of the property. Then Roger gave a disapproving look while he glanced at Cindy and Danny. He still hated them being on the trip.

Roger, Gus, The Rocking Tones, Danny, and Cindy walked to the Diner’s front doors.

When they reached the door, Walter was already at the front door, unlocking it for his special guests.

They all went inside the Diner.

Once inside the Diner, Walter took them to their booths at the left end of the building.

Sig sat with Cindy while Danny and Jackie sat on the other side in the same booth.

Delmar, Carter, and Burt sat in their own booth while Roger and Gus sat in the booth behind them.

Walter handed them some menus, returned to the counter, and sat with Harvey. They drank their coffee while they waited for everybody to decide on their orders.

“I’m going to go get my cigarettes out of my car,” Roger told Gus. Then he got out of his booth. Danny watched while Roger walked to the front doors and stepped outside.

Once outside the Diner, Roger stepped into the shadows by the right corner of the building. He waited, staring at the front of the bus.

Then, a few seconds later, he saw Victor walk over to the front of the bus.

Roger reached into his suit coat and removed an envelope tucked away inside.

He dropped the envelope to the ground.

“Texas beat Army, seventeen to six. You owe Galvin,”

Victor said from the front of the bus.

Roger turned. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath while he headed back inside the Diner.

Fifteen minutes had passed.

Harvey had cooked nine Rib-Eye Black Angus steak dinners with mashed potatoes, green beans, and iced tea. After

placing the plates in front of his guests, he returned to the counter.

“I hate that fucking rock and roll music,” Walter said the second Harvey sat down next to him.

Harvey nodded in agreement. “Just like those hairy fagot English guys that are running amok in our country.”

“Yeah. I can’t stand The Beatles or those Rolling Stones.

They’re nothing but a bunch of pussies,” Walter said, then he took a drink of his coffee.

“They say I want to hold your hand. They’re probably thinking, I want to hold your prick,” Harvey jokingly said.

“Now Dean Martin, there’s one of our great singers,” said Walter.

Harvey nodded in agreement.

Walter chuckled and then smiled. “But what the hell? Their manager is paying me good money for this private part. Thanks to my cousin in New York.”

While Danny ate his steak dinner, he watched Roger’s two booths over. He knew that a bomb was installed. Roger must have previously stepped outside to get a visual confirmation that it was at work.

Danny looked at Cindy. “I’m going to the restroom,” he said, leaving the booth.

Nobody paid attention to Danny while he got up and walked over to the counter.

“Where’s the restroom?” he asked Walter.

“Right, where that sign restroom states,” Walter said while he pointed at the other end of the Diner.

Danny saw the sign and headed off to the restrooms.

“Too stupid to read signs,” Walter whispered to Harvey.

“The effects of listening to that rock and roll,” Harvey replied.

Walter nodded in agreement.

While Walter and Harvey drank their coffee and kept an eye on their guests, they did not notice Danny make a discreet detour and went out the back door.

“Please excuse me; I need to go powder my nose,” Cindy told Jackie and Sig. Jackie and Sig smiled at Cindy while she got out of the booth.

Cindy headed off in the direction of the restrooms.

Roger glanced over his shoulder and got suspicious of Danny and Cindy heading to the bathroom.

“I need a smoke,” he told Gus while he reached inside his suit and removed his pack of Winston’s from his shirt pocket.

He got out of his booth and headed off to the front doors.

Danny managed to slip outside to the rear of the Diner.

He waited in the night’s shadows behind the building’s rear.

Then Cindy walked out the rear door of the Diner.

“I did it,” she said while walking over to Danny.

“I hope this works,” he told Cindy, and held her right hand.

Danny rushed Cindy over to the bus’s rear but did not hear the sound of car tires driving over the gravel parking lot.

Danny immediately opened up the rear engine compartment door of the bus.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Cindy asked Danny while he looked at the engine.

“I thought if I just start yanking out wires, that should disable the engine from starting. I’ll throw the wires under the bus. Then maybe Gus will notice the bomb under the bus while he tries to figure out why it won’t start,” Danny replied while he looked inside the dark engine compartment.

The second Danny reached his right hand into the engine compartment, footsteps were heard behind them.

Danny and Cindy glanced back and saw Bruno towering over them. “What the fuck are you two doing to the bus?” he asked and snarled his teeth at them to let them know that he was pissed.

Then Arnold walked over. “Victor said you might need a flashlight?” he said the second he walked up next to Bruno.

“Who are these two?” he asked the second he spotted Danny and Cindy.

“These two were snooping around the engine,” Bruno told Arnold.

“Better take them to Victor,” Arnold replied.

Bruno nodded in agreement, then he reached down and grabbed Danny by the collar of his shirt. He yanked him up to his feet.

Arnold grabbed Cindy’s left arm.

Bruno and Arnold escorted their prisoners over to Victor’s 1952 Bel-Air.

“What the hell is this?” Victor asked while he opened his car door and stepped outside.

“We caught these two trying to mess with the bus’s engine,”

Bruno replied. “Fuck,” Victor called out and was pissed.

“What” ’s going on?” Roger asked the second he walked over to the Bel-Air with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

“Caught these two trying to mess with the bus’s engine,”

Victor told them.

“I knew I couldn’t trust these two. But Jackie insisted they tag along. Why? I can’t figure that out,” Roger said, and he was furious while he looked at Danny and Cindy.

Danny and Cindy started to get scared, not knowing what they would do with them.

Victor removed his 38 Special tucked behind his back in his pants. “Want me to take them out in the woods and silence them forever?” he asked Roger.

Danny and Cindy looked at Victor’s revolver and knew they would be dead in a matter of minutes. They now regretted going on this mission.

Roger thought about Victor’s offer for a few seconds. “No, everybody in the diner will hear the gunshots,” he said, then pondered for another solution for a few seconds. His eyes widened. “There’s a closet in the rear of the bus. Tie them up, and we’ll shove them in there. They’ll be silenced later this morning with the rest of them,” he told Victor.

“Search them for knives or weapons,” Victor told Bruno and Arnold. Bruno started searching Danny’s pants pockets while Arnold searched Cindy’s purse.

Arnold saw Cindy’s pad of paper with the notes she had taken about the story of The Rocking Tones. He shoved it back in her purse and closed it.

Bruno removed the iTravel 2 device from Danny’s pants pocket and looked at it. “I found something really strange,” he said while he held it up.

Roger snatched it out of Bruno’s hand and looked it over.

“This looks weird,” he said, then looked at Danny. What is this?”

Danny looked at Roger. “It’s my, ah, it’s,” he fumbled his response while trying to come up with an answer.

“It’s a time-traveling device,” Cindy blurted out, taking a gamble.

Roger looked at it along with Victor, Bruno, and Arnold.

They all laughed.

“A time-traveling device. That’s a good one,” Roger said while he shoved it in the coat pocket of his left suit, figuring he would check it out later. “Get them in the bus,” he told Victor.

“I’ll get the duct tape from the trunk of my car,” Victor said, then rushed off to the rear of the Bel-Air.

Roger glared at Danny and Cindy while he waited for Victor.

Victor rushed back with a roll of silver duct tape in hand.

“You just had to stick your noses where it did not belong.

Now you’re going to pay the ultimate price,” Roger told Danny and Cindy.

“You’ll never get it,” said Danny, and then Victor slapped a piece of duct tape over Danny’s mouth. “Away with it,” Danny mumbled behind the tape covering his mouth.

Victor then slapped a piece of duct tape over Cindy’s mouth.

Roger walked off and headed back to the front of the Diner while Bruno and Arnold bounded Danny and Cindy’s arms behind their backs with duct tape.

Bruno Arnold, Danny, and Cindy went to the front of the bus and then walked them up the steps.

Once they got inside the bus, Bruno and Arnold escorted Danny and Cindy to the rear.

They stopped by the closet, and then they started to bind Danny and Cindy’s ankles with duct tape.

Then Bruno and Arnold removed their 38 Specials from their suit coats. They immediately whacked Danny and Cindy on the back of their heads with the grip of their revolvers.

Danny and Cindy dropped to the floor of the bus, out cold. “That will make sure they’re not detected,” said Arnold.

Bruno nodded in agreement, and then he shoved Danny into the closet

Arnold shoved Cindy into the closet.

They closed the closet door and walked back to the front of the bus.

Once they left the bus, they rushed back over to the Bel-Air. Victor slowly drove through the parking lot and returned to the road.

Fifteen minutes had passed, and everybody was finished with their steak dinners.

However, they got concerned when Danny and Cindy did not return to their booths.

So they went off in different directions and searched every room in the Diner.

Sig poked his head into the Ladies’ Room and saw two toilet stall doors open. No feet were on the floor, indicating she was in the toilet.

“Sally,” he called out in the Ladies Room. Nothing but silence. He closed the door and left.

“Chris,” Jackie called out while he checked out the kitchen.

He even looked inside the walk-in freezer. Nothing but frozen meats and other foods were found inside. He closed the door and left the kitchen.

After they searched the entire Diner but could not find Danny and Cindy, The Rocking Tones, Roger, and Gus exited it.

“Where the hell could they have gone?” Jackie said while he looked around the parking lot for signs of Danny and Cindy.

“Maybe they took off and hitched a ride to the nearest town,” Roger replied.

“That’s just way too weird for them to suddenly take off like that,” Sig replied.

Gus and the other Rocking Tones all nodded in agreement.

“I wonder if they’ll publish that article about us in the Cambridge Chronicle?” asked Burt.

Jackie and the other guys had their doubts now that Danny and Cindy simply vanished.

“That’s too bad, but we better get back on the road and head to Chicago,” said Roger, then paused for a few seconds.

“And get some sleep; I got word while in the Ed Sullivan Theater that your concert in Chicago got moved up to noon. So you’ll be performing as soon as we get there,” said Roger.

“Noon? What kind of bullshit is that?” asked Delmar.

“Sorry, but that’s showbiz,” Roger said, then looked at Walter. Thanks for using your Diner,” he said, then shook Walter’s hand.

“Thank you,” said Walter, liking the extra cash he earned.

Gus and The Rocking Tones all headed off to the bus, hating moments like these with this business.

Walter watched while Roger turned around and headed off to his Corvette.

He went back inside his Diner and locked the front doors.

Roger opened his Corvette door and sat inside while he eyed the side of the bus. “I’m sorry guys, but you left me no choice, you fucking bastards,” he said, then up his car.

The engine of the bus started up, and the front door closed.

The bus drove off through the parking lot and headed to the other exit to the road.

Roger’s Corvette drove off after the bus through the lot.

Chapter 23

Time had passed, and it was Monday at 2:45 in the morning.

Gus drove the bus west down Interstate 80, maintaining a speed of fifty-five miles per hour. They were halfway across the state of Pennsylvania. The highway was quiet, with few cars since it was four in the morning.

Inside the closet in the rear of the bus, Danny and Cindy were still out cold from being whacked on the back of their heads by Victor.

Danny’s eyelids slowly opened. He looked around the dark closet, then cringed in pain as he had a splitting headache from that 38 Special. He was dazed and confused as to where he was and what happened.

He felt the bus sway slightly while Gus drove it down the Interstate. He heard the bus’s engine. It dawned on him where he was and what had happened.

He should feel Cindy’s body leaning against him.

Danny squirmed to free his hands from the bonds of the duct tape.

“Ah,” Cindy moaned out from behind the duct tape. She opened her eyes and was a little dazed and confused. Then she cringed in pain from that 38 Special.

Danny and Cindy squirmed to get freed from their duct tape bonds. They could not.

Suddenly, Danny could feel the Gibson Acoustic guitar by his right side. His eyes widened with an idea. He leaned over and ran his mouth across the strings on the fretboard. The strings sang out, and then he kept on running his mouth across the strings.

Over by the seats, The Rocking Tones were asleep.

Then Jackie’s eyes opened as if he was a light sleeper. He heard the sound of the Gibson guitar strings ringing out from the closet. “That’s odd,” he said while he got out of his seat.

Jackie walked down the aisle, heading to the rear of the bus. He walked to the closet, where he still heard the strings of the acoustic guitar ringing. He got curious and opened the closet door. “What the hell?” he said the second he saw Danny and Cindy sitting on the floor bound by duct tape.

Danny and Cindy were relieved when they saw Jackie looking down at them.

Jackie leaned down and ripped off the tape from Danny’s mouth.

“Ah,” Danny cried out in a little pain.

“Who did this?” Jackie asked.

“Roger,” Danny replied while Jackie slowly pulled the tape from Cindy’s mouth.

“I need a knife,” Jackie called out, then looked at Danny and Cindy. “I need a knife,” he yelled out a little louder.

A few seconds passed, and Delmar walked over to Jackie after he woke up. “Why do you need a knife?” he asked. Then, he saw Danny and Cindy bound in the closet. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Something strange is going on with Roger,” Jackie told Delmar.

Delmar reached into his pants pocket and removed a pocketknife. He opened it and started cutting the duct tape away from Danny’s hands.

Carter, Burt, and Sig walked up to Jackie and Delmar.

“What is going on back here?” asked Sig.

“Roger,” Jackie replied.

Then Sig, Carter, and Burt saw Delmar removing the duct tape bonds from Danny’s ankles.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Sig.

Jackie helped Danny out of the closet.

“Roger had some guys plant a bomb under the bus,”

Danny said while Delmar started cutting away the duct tape bonds from Cindy’s hands.

“What?” Jackie asked, as this sounded way too weird.

“Roger had Victor Burrows plant a bomb under the bus.

It’s going to explode any minute,” Danny said while Delmar cut away the duct tape from Cindy’s ankles.

“He’s telling the truth,” Cindy said while Delmar helped her out of the closet.

“Who is Victor Burrows?” asked Sig.

“Must be one of Roger’s criminal friends,” replied Jackie.

The rest of The Rockers nodded in agreement.

“What time is it?” asked Danny.

Sig looked at this watch. “Three in the morning.”

“We need to get off the bus now!” Danny sternly replied, then grabbed Cindy’s hand.

He rushed her down the aisle and headed to the front of the bus.

“What the hell is going on?” asked Carter while they watched Danny and Cindy head toward Gus.

Danny rushed up to Gus while he drove with his mind on the road.

“What is going on back there?” Gus asked, thinking Danny was one of The Rocking Tones.

“Gus, you have to stop this bus. Roger had a bomb planted under the engine,” said Danny.

Gus was surprised at the sight of Danny and Cindy while he glanced over his right shoulder. “How did you get on this bus?”

“Stop the bus! There’s a bomb underneath it!” Danny cried out in a panic.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” said Gus, then he got a strange deja-vu feeling. “Why does this sound so familiar?”

“It’s going to kill everybody in less than fifteen minutes,”

Danny yelled. Then he pondered his next move. Then he had an idea—a stupid one, but his only choice.

Danny opened up the bus door and rushed down the stairs.

“What the fuck are you doing,” Gus asked while he saw Danny at the bottom step by the opened door. He slowed the bus down.

“We don’t have a choice, Cindy,” Danny said, and then he jumped out of the moving bus. “What a dumbass!” Gus yelled, then slammed on the brakes.

Danny tumbled in the grass of the shoulder as the bus tires screeched, laying rubber on the road.

Cindy rushed to the bottom of the steps and watched while Danny stopped tumbling in the grass on the side of the highway.

She jumped off the bus the second the bus stopped.

“What the fuck is wrong with those kids?” Gus said.

Jackie rushed up to the front of the bus. “What happened?”

“Those two reporters’ kids jumped off the bus. The one kid yelled out something about a bomb on the bus,” Gus said.

Burt, Delmar, Carter, and Sig appeared behind Jackie.

“Where’s Chris and Sally?” asked Sig.

“They jumped off the bus,” replied Jackie while Gus slowly pulled the bus off to the shoulder of the road.

“He must be serious about that bomb,” Delmar said.

Then the guys looked at each other, and they all had the same feeling. They did not want to take a chance, so they all tried to squeeze down the stairs at the same time. Once they knew that would not work, they took turns running down the stairs and jumped off the bus.

Once they exited the bus, they spotted Danny and Cindy running toward Roger’s parked Corvette down the highway at a safe distance.

“What is going on here?” Jackie asked, then rushed off the bus and headed to Roger’s Corvette.

Gus, Burt, Delmar, Sig, and Carter ran after Jackie.

Roger stepped out of his Corvette when he saw the bus was stopped, and everybody was out running after his Corvette.

He rushed over to the front of his car. “Get back on that bus. We’ll be late getting to Chicago,” he barked.

“Give it back to me,” Danny yelled while he ran closer to Roger.

Then, to Roger’s surprise, Danny lunged at him. They tumbled to the pavement.

Roger straddled over Danny and began squeezing his neck with hatred in his eyes. Danny gasped for air with eyes widened in fear.

Cindy took a running start and tackled Roger, knocking him off Danny. They tumbled to the pavement.

Danny sat up and rubbed his neck. “He stole something very important to me,” he said, his voice a little strained from being choked choked.

“What the fuck is going on here, Roger?” asked Jackie, and they started to get suspicious of Roger.

“Nothing is going on here. We should never have let these two nut cases tag along with the band; that’s all. Now, get back on the bus. We have to be in Chicago for a noon concert,”

yelled Roger.

“Roger had a mobster named Victor Burrows place a bomb under the bus!” Danny blurted out.

Then Roger felt the iTravel 2 device start to buzz in his suit coat pocket. He got curious, reached into his pocket, removed the device, and stared at it.

Danny jumped and quickly snatched the iTravel 2 device from Roger’s hand.

Cindy knew what would happen next, so she jumped off Roger and jumped on Danny, sending him on his back.

Danny immediately wrapped his arms around Cindy’s body and hugged her tight with the iTravel 2 device in his hand.

Roger started to lunge after Danny but stopped when he saw psychedelic colors shooting from the iTravel 2 device. Blue, red, orange, yellow, lime green and blue appeared in abstract shapes.

The colors slowly circled around Danny and Cindy’s body.

Roger, Gus, Walter, Harvey, Jackie, Delmar, Sig, Carter, and Burt watched in awe. They stepped away, a little scared of those lights.

“What’s with those wild colors?” asked Sig.

They all watched while the psychedelic colors in abstract shapes engulfed Danny and Cindy’s body.

“What a crazy show,” Burt said.

“What the hell’s going on?” asked Gus.

“That’s totally amazing,” added Jackie.

Then everybody watched while those psychedelic colors spun around Danny and Cindy at supersonic speeds.

Then they watched Danny and Cindy suddenly disappear, and the psychedelic colors vanished in a trail of light that dissipated into the sky in a flash.

“What the hell just happened?” asked Burt.

“Man, I never had sex like that with a chick,” Sig replied.

“Go figure,” said Delmar. Carter and Burt chuckled.

Sig shrugged off their snide comment.

They saw that the spot where they vanished was now a four-foot circle of glowing psychedelic colors in the road.

While they looked at the glowing psychedelic-colored circle, they did not notice while Roger gingerly headed back to his Corvette.

Sig bent down to grab one of the rocks.

“I wouldn’t do that; you might burn the tips of your fingers clean off,” said Jackie while he was leery of that circle and stepped away.

“How can he just vanish into thin air?” Delmar asked while he looked up in the night sky.

“Do you think he was some type of Alien? And a spaceship beamed him back?” asked Burt while scanning the sky for an Alien spaceship.

Jackie looked like he had a déjà-vu feeling. “Why does this seem so familiar?

Carter, Burt, and Sig glanced over at Jackie. They all had that same déjà vu feeling.

Then they all looked confused while they stared at the empty spot where Danny and Cindy were once alive.

Then, the sound of Rogers’s Corvette racing in reverse was heard.

“Where’s he going?” Jackie asked while they all watched Roger’s Corvette to a screeching one hundred eighty turn.

They all watched while Roger’s Corvette raced away down the highway in the wrong direction in the right lane.

The bus exploded into a huge fireball, ruining the silence of the night air. The shock waves sent Gus and The Rocking Tones flying into the air and slamming on the pavement with a painful thud.

Meanwhile, Harvey was cleaning up the kitchen at Walter’s Diner.

The door of the Ladies’ Room opened, and Walters stepped inside with a mop in hand.

He went inside the stall to the left. Then his eyes widened the second he stepped inside and saw “Tell the FBI that Roger planted a bomb on the bus of The Rocking Tones” written with red lipstick on the stall wall.

“Nothing but bullshit,” he said, then he grabbed his mop and began washing off Cindy’s message.

Chapter 24

It was 2014.

The basement of Dr. Youngblood’s house was quiet except for the low hum from the bank of computers.

Then, the whirling sound from the booth filled the basement air.

Bright light filled the booth like fireworks.

The booth vibrated.

Psychedelic colors illuminated the glass booth. Blue, red, orange, yellow, lime green and blue appeared in abstract shapes.

The colors slowly started twirling around.

Then, they started twirling around at supersonic speed.

The booth spun around at supersonic speeds.

The booth stopped spinning.

The psychedelic colors dissipated in a flash.

The booth stopped vibrating.

The bright lights and fireworks dissipated. The whirling sound whined down. Danny and Cindy appear in the booth in pain, with her still on top of him and him hugging her tight.

Danny and Cindy cringed in pain. They gazed into each other’s eyes. “Thank you for getting Roger off me,” Danny said, gazing into her eyes.

“You’re welcome,” Cindy replied, her pain dissipating.

Then Danny could not resist. He leaned forward and let his lips lightly touch her lips. Cindy did not pull back. They kissed. The kiss turned heated, with their arms wrapped around each other, and they pressed their bodies hard against each other. They stopped kissing, and Cindy got off Danny’s body.

They stood up and looked out the booth and saw the empty basement.

He opened the door of the glass booth, and they stepped out.

Danny and Cindy walked over to the computer console and saw the “iTravel 2 Mission Compete” message flashing on the screen. He also noticed that the time remaining message for the mission with the iTravel 1 device was gone.

He became concerned. “This doesn’t look good,” he said while placing the iTravel 2 device on the computer console.

“What doesn’t look good?” asked Cindy while she looked at Danny” s concerned look.

“The time remaining for Doctor Youngblood’s mission is gone,” he said while sitting at the console. He stared at the monitor while he tried to figure out what happened. “I hope nothing happened and Dr. Youngblood isn’t stuck in nineteen twenty-eight,” he said. At the same time, he grabbed the operations manual and started flipping through the pages.

Then, the sound of the wooden floor above their heads creaked, indicating someone walked across the floor.

Danny looked concerned while he stared at the ceiling.

“What’s wrong?” asked Cindy, concerned.

“Someone’s in the house,” Danny replied, then glanced back at the computer monitor.

Then they heard the sound of footsteps walking down the creaky wooden stairs.

Danny and Cindy glanced at the stairs and saw Dr.

Youngblood walk to the bottom of them.

Dr. Youngblood stopped at the bottom of the stairs. He looked furious while staring at Danny and Cindy. “Danny, where were you?”

“Ah, I, ah,” Danny replied and wondered if he could bullshit Dr. Youngblood.

Dr. Youngblood approached Danny and saw the iTravel 2

device on the computer console. Then he looked back at the computer monitor. “Why?”

“There was something I really had to do. I couldn’t let it go,” Danny replied.

“You can’t alter time, Danny. I told you about that. You can only go back to observe and record history,” he scolded Danny.

“I had to try. I don’t know if it worked. But I had to try.”

“Let’s hope you didn’t alter time for the worst,” Dr.

Youngblood said while he walked over and picked up the iTravel 2 device. He shoved it into his pants pocket.

“I’m going to install a new password for this device and my program,” Dr. Youngblood said, shoved the device in his pants pocket, and looked at Cindy. You’re Miss Adamson, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You cannot tell anybody about this time machine,” he said, then chuckled. But if you did, they might think you’re nuts anyway. Now go, you two.”

Dr. Youngblood sat down at the console. He banged away on the keyboard, changing the password.

Then, the floor above them creaked again, indicating someone else was in the house.

“Is someone else upstairs?” Danny asked Dr. Youngblood.

Dr. Youngblood looked caught. “Ah, I ah, I decided,” he stuttered.

Then, the wooden steps creaked while someone walked down the stairs.

Dr. Youngblood got nervous.

Danny’s eyes widened with a little shock, and then he saw this individual standing at the bottom of the stairs. “I thought you warned me about altering time?” he asked Dr. Youngblood.

Cindy looked, but she had to do a double-take. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Thomas Edison, meet two friends and fellow time travelers,” Dr. Youngblood said. At the same time, Thomas Edison stood at the bottom of the stairs wearing his 1928 suit.

“He’s just here to observe and see how mankind advanced,” Dr. Youngblood said.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, and don’t worry, I won’t alter my life at all. My curiosity got the best of me, and I had to see the future,” Thomas Edison said while he shook hands with Danny and Cindy.

“Well, we’re off to show him more interesting historical sights,” Dr. Youngblood told Danny and Cindy.

“Well, it’s nice meeting you, Mr. Edison, but we should be on our way,” Danny said, holding Cindy’s hand.

Danny and Cindy smiled and rushed off to the stairs.

Thomas Edison watched while Danny and Cindy ran up the stairs.

“Where do you want to go next?” Dr. Youngblood asked Thomas Edison.

Thomas Edison thought for a few more seconds about something interesting to witness. “I know, Milan, Ohio, on February eleventh, eighteen forty-seven. I want to witness my birth,” he replied with a smile.

While Danny and Cindy rushed out of the house, Dr.

Youngblood sat at his computer console and started configuring the time machine for his next trip back to 1887.

Danny and Cindy drove in his Corolla through the streets of Cambridge.

“Ah, listen, about Sig,” said Cindy.

Danny glanced over at her. “No, it was none of my business. Whatever happens between you two is your business.

Not mine,” he said.

“About Sig. He’s gay,” she said.

It took a few seconds for it to sink into his head. “Did you say gay?”

“Yeah, he couldn’t tell anybody. You know, people in the early sixties were not very compassionate toward gays.”

“I, ah, I, ah, wow,” he said.

He drove his car down Massachusetts Avenue and had a grin, knowing that Cindy and Sig did not have sex.

He drove his car through the MIT campus.

Meanwhile, Dr. Youngblood and Thomas Edison arrived in Milan, Ohio, on February 11th, 1847. They immediately headed to Thomas Edison’s red-brick birthplace.

Back in 2014, Danny and Cindy walked down a sidewalk amongst other students. They still received stares and snide comments about their attire, but Danny and Cindy could care less, as they had a wild trip to 1964.

“Do you think it worked?” Cindy asked while they walked toward the front entrance of his dorm building.

“I sure hope so, as I don’t want to go through that again,”

he said while opening one of the front entrance doors for Cindy.

Danny and Cindy went inside the dorm building and up the stairs to the second floor.

Danny and Cindy rushed down the second-floor hallway.

They rushed inside his room. Bobby was not there, as he had another date with a new girl.

Danny and Cindy headed over to his bed. He sat down and immediately grabbed his laptop off his bedside table.

He opened up his laptop and powered it up.

Cindy sat down next to him.

It appeared to take forever for his MacBook Pro laptop to power up.

“I swear that these computers can sense when you’re in a hurry, and they intentionally slow down,” he said.

Cindy got a light chuckle out of his comment because she sometimes felt the same way.

Then, his laptop powered up, and he immediately opened the Safari program.

He typed “The Rocking Tones Bus Explosion” in the search block.

He clicked on The Rocking Tones website. As he looked at the site, his eyes widened with joy.

“On September twenty-eighth nineteen sixty-four, The Rocking Tones received minor injuries when their bus exploded on Interstate eighty in Pennsylvania. The band members stated that they stopped for a quick bathroom break off the shoulder of the highway. Then the bus exploded into a huge fireball,”

Danny read the website.

Danny jumped up joyfully and danced a little dorky victory around his room.

Cindy chuckled at that sight.

He victory danced back to his bed and sat down next to Cindy. They went back to looking at his laptop.

Cindy looked at the site. “An investigation by the FBI in Philadelphia revealed that they received an anonymous letter that was mailed from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The letter claimed that the manager of The Rocking Tones, Roger Beaumont, was involved with the placement of a bomb on the bus. The letter also claimed that the manager was involved with mobster Victor Burrows. After an intense interrogation by the FBI, Roger Beaumont finally caved and confessed to his involvement with the placement of the bomb,” Cindy read from the website.

“Click on that link,” Danny told her.

She clicked on that link, and a scanned copy of the anonymous letter that Danny and Cindy wrote in Cindy’s hand appeared.

“Wow, there it is,” she said while they stared at the letter they wrote the other day.

Cindy closed out that letter, and they returned to reading the website.

“It was discovered that Mister Beaumont had a gambling addiction that started when he was in college. So to get The Rocking Tones gigs, he hooked up with Galvin Hopper, a known bookie and loan shark with strong connections to the NYC mob,” Danny read from the website.

“Galvin Hopper would use his mob connections to get the gigs for Roger and charged twenty percent of the profits. Roger was able to keep this fact hidden from the band guys since they just wanted to play music,” Cindy read from the website.

“A lot of those rockers back then got taken by their managers,” Danny said.

“Yeah, I read they were only interested in playing music and placed too much trust into guys like Roger,” Cindy added.

They both returned to reading the website.

“Once the guys of the band learned of Mister Beaumont’s gambling debts, his failure to pay them their profits, and the fact that he was not providing them with large concert venues, they had plans to terminate his managerial services. They hooked up with Kent Sommers and planned to terminate Roger after their

concert in Chicago on October fifth, nineteen sixty- four,”

Danny read from the website.

“Then, after Roger noticed Elmer Watson protesting at their concerts, he started scheming. So he schemed with Galvin Hopper to get a life insurance policy for the band members through a mob-connected insurance agency. They schemed to install a bomb on the bus. Roger Beaumont and Galvin Hopper both received a thirty-year prison sentence for attempted murder,” Cindy read off the website.

“It was also discovered that Walter Sampson, the owner of Walter”’ Diner, was the cousin of Victor Burrows. After intense interrogation, it would not be determined if Walter was aware of Victor and Roger’s plans on placing the bomb on the bus,”

Danny read off the website.

“Victor Burrows and his two associates Bruno Lorenzo and Arnold Galion were arrested for installing the bomb. They were associates with Galvin Hopper. Roger also bought a nineteen sixty-four Corvette from Galvin’s brother’s Chevrolet dealership in Albany, New York, the week before the bomb was placed on the bus. Mister Lorenzo, Mister Galion, and Mister Burrows were tried, convicted, and sent to thirty years in prison for attempted murder,” Cindy read off the website.

“The Rocking Tones still played their concert in Chicago on October fifth, nineteen sixty-four, with Kent Sommers being their new manager. The music continued with greater success,”

Danny read off the website.

He continued to navigate through the website and looked at the individual pages for the band members. Then, the second he read Sig’s page, his eyes widened.

“Sig announced in nineteen seventy-eight that he was gay.

The other members of the band suspected that all along since they could never determine if Sig actually had sex with the women he took into his hotel rooms or kissed a girl on the lips,”

Danny read the website.

“I wonder if Roger’s alive and out of prison by now?”

Cindy asked, and then she typed in Roger Beaumont, manager of The Rocking Tones, in the search block.

Some results appeared, and one of them was a Wikipedia article about Roger’s life. She immediately clicked on that link.

Roger’s Wikipedia article appeared, and Danny and Cindy started checking it out.

They noticed that Roger died on June 2, 1972, while in the Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania. They looked down at the end of that article.

“Roger Beaumont was stabbed to death by a fellow prisoner who was a huge fan of The Rocking Tones. It was also speculated, but could not be proven that that prisoner might have killed Mister Beaumont per the direction of Galvin Hopper. Galvin was furious that Roger told the FBI about his involvement,” Danny read the article.

“I can’t feel sorry for him,” said Cindy.

“I know what you mean. He got what he deserved,” Danny replied. Then, he closed out all the websites. Then he felt really good about their time-traveling mission. He jumped off the bed, grabbed Cindy by her hand, and pulled her off his bed.

He then danced her around the room to celebrate. “We did it! We saved their lives!” he sang, dancing her around the room.

They stopped in the middle of the room, gazed into each other’s eyes, and kissed. Danny was surprised that she had accepted his lips again. He was in heaven.

The room door opened, and Bobby entered with three textbooks in hand. He saw Danny and Cindy’s kissing in the middle of the room.

Danny and Cindy separated their lips when they saw Bobby and looked caught.

“The next time, remember the code and put a sock on the door handle,” Bobby said, dropping his books on his bed. He winked at Danny and Cindy and then headed off to the door. I’ll leave you two lovers alone,” he said, opening the door and leaving the room.

“Lovers?” Danny and Cindy said in unison while they looked at each other.

Danny’s cell phone rang from his bedside table.

He walked over and looked at the caller. “Hi, Grandma,” he answered the call.

“You’re late,” Diane replied from his cell phone.

“Late for what?” Danny asked and was lost.

“You and Cindy were planning on coming over for dinner.

Everybody will be here,” Diane replied.”

Danny still looked a little lost. “Ah, we got involved in studies. We’re on our way,” he replied, then disconnected the call. “We’re apparently late for dinner at my grandmother’s,” he told her.

“We’re late? For dinner?” Cindy replied and looked lost.

“That’s what she said. We’re late for dinner,” Danny said, and he was trying to figure out what was going on. Then he remembered his trip back to the past. “I forgot grandma was a slut,” Danny added.

“Now, now, be nice, Danny. She was a young woman once and had urges just like you,” she said.

Danny thought about what Cindy said for a few seconds.

“You’re right again.”

Then something got Cindy curious. “What did Bobby mean when he said we’re lovers?” asked Cindy.

Danny and Cindy looked at each other, and then the past few months of their altered life flooded their minds.

“We’re really lovers,” Danny replied. Then, he did not hesitate and kissed Cindy on her lips.

Cindy accepted his lips, and then it dawned on her that they had been lovers for a month.

Then, after their lips had separated, Danny noticed a paperback book on his bedside table. It was a paperback book he did not recall buying. He got curious and walked over and grabbed the book. He opened it up and saw the following:

“This book is dedicated to a lost couple named Chris and Sally.

We lost them back in nineteen sixty- four.”

Danny showed Cindy the dedication written in that book.

“Is that us?” she curiously asked.

“The book was written by Mickey Hanson and published in nineteen sixty-seven. Remember Mickey and Maureen?” Danny said it took a few seconds to recall buying that book two years ago. “Wow. I can’t believe it. That was the author. We met him back in sixty-four when he was young like us,” she said while he pointed at Mickey’s picture on the back of the book. “We did alter time. Now, I hope we didn’t alter time for the worst for us,” Cindy replied, looking concerned.

Danny also nodded in agreement that she hoped they did not screw up their present day.

Chapter 25

It was a quiet ride to Diane’s house, and Danny wondered what had changed since he had altered his time. They changed back into their 2014 clothing so as not to look like they were back in 1964.

After he parked his Corolla along the curb by the street, he and Cindy got out.

They held hands while they walked to the driveway. Then Danny’s eyes saw a pristine red with red interior 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air convertible parked in the driveway. “Whoa! I love the fifty-seven Chevys. I wonder who it belongs to?” he said while walking up to that car’s rear.

He walked around and admired the shiny classic car.

“She is a beautiful reminder of a long-gone past,” Cindy replied. At the same time, she walks around with Danny, admiring the car.

“Let’s go inside and see what’s in store for us,” he told Cindy, then grabbed her hand.

They headed over to the front door, and he rang the doorbell.

Danny’s heart raced a little, not knowing what to expect.

A few seconds pass, and the door opens. Diane appears and looks the same as she did in 2014.

“Look at you with a crew cut,” she said, motioning for Danny and Cindy to come inside her house.

Danny and Cindy stepped inside the house.

Danny stood with Cindy while Diane closed the front door.

“And you, Cindy, I remember wearing my hair like that in the early sixties. Why the sudden change in appearance?” she curiously asked. “Are you going to a costume party?”

Danny and Cindy looked at each other and wondered how they should explain their appearance.

“Ah, we just decided to try something different,” said Danny.

Cindy nodded in agreement with his response.

Then, the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway diverted their attention.

Jackie Burrows, now seventy-two years old, entered the living room. “Danny. Cindy. You’re late.”

“I know. We’ve been studying,” Danny replied, not knowing that that was Jackie. He then wondered who he was and why he was in his grandmother’s house. Then Danny looked at the old man with short, thinning white hair. It took a few seconds but hit him like a brick wall. “Jackie Burrows? Is that you?”

“Of course,” Jackie replied, wondering if Danny would say such a thing.

“What are you doing here?” Danny said, and he looked confused.

Cindy stared in awe at the sight of Jackie, who saw him back in nineteen sixty-four as a young man just a few hours ago.

Diane and Jackie looked concerned with Danny.

“Danny, I’m your grandfather. You’ve always called me granddad; that’s what I’m doing here. Are you feeling alright?”

he asked, getting concerned.

“We’ve been studying extra hard for the past week,” said Cindy as an excuse for Danny.

“What have you been studying?” Diane curiously asked.

Danny and Cindy looked at each other.

“History. We’ve been studying history. Mainly the sixties,”

replied Danny.

“The sixties were a grand time,” said Jackie while he recalled those days. Then he looked at Danny and Cindy. “I never knew that students would really dress the part of the sixties when studying it,” he said while running over Danny’s crewcut’s bristles. Then Jackie got a strange deja-vu feeling. A strange yet wonderful deja-vu feeling. He smiled. “Well, don’t dress the part if you study cavemen times,” he chuckled.

Danny looked at Jackie and started to get a deja vu feeling.

He suddenly knew Jackie all of his life. “We won’t,” he said.

Then, the sound of more footsteps coming from the hallway caught Danny’s attention.

Jack and Heather Dakota, both in their late forties, entered the living room.

They both smiled the second they saw Danny and Cindy.

Danny looked at Jack and Heather, clueless about who they were for a few minutes.

Danny’s mouth opened in disbelief, doing a double-take.

“Mom? Dad?”

“Of course, it’s us, son,” said Jack. Then he walked over and gave Danny a little hug.

While Jack’s arms were around Danny, his mind was suddenly flooded with new memories of his parents. Memories he had never experienced before he time-traveled back to 1964.

Heather walked over to Danny. She kissed him on the cheek the second Jack and Danny separated. “I like your hairstyles. So sixties,” she added when she looked at Danny and Cindy.

Jack nodded in agreement.

Danny stared in disbelief at everybody.

Cindy fought back her tears while watching this happy moment for Danny.

Jackie walked over to Danny and placed his arm around his shoulder. “So Danny, are you ready for next week?”

“Next week? What’s going on next week?” Danny asked and was clueless.

“The start of our Grand Reunion tour with the guys.”

Danny looked lost. “Grand Reunion tour?”

“Yeah, with The Rocking Tones. You’re coming along with us. Remember?” It took a few seconds, and then it dawned on Danny. “Oh yeah, The Rocking Tones Grand Reunion tour.

Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Then Jackie looked like an idea popped into his head.

“That’s Good because I have a huge surprise for you.”

Danny looked curious.

“Let’s eat before dinner gets cold,” said Diane. Then he motioned that everybody should head to the dining room.

They all headed off to the dining room, where Diane had spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and red wine.

Dinner was great for Danny while they all chatted, and memories of a new past life with Jackie and his mom and dad suddenly flooded his head.

After dinner at Diane’s, Danny and Cindy headed back to campus.

They walked hand in hand down the dimly lighted campus.

“I can’t believe how my mom and dad are still alive. They died in that car accident caused by that drunk,” he said.

“I think that’s just wonderful,” Cindy replied.

“And to think that maybe Diane and Jackie were actually falling in love back in sixty-four. They weren’t just fooling around,” he said.

“And you called her a slut,” said Cindy.

Danny felt ashamed for saying that about his grandmother.

Then Cindy’s eyes widened. “I just remembered something,” she told Danny.

“What’s that?”

“My roommate won’t be in my room tonight, so why don’t we?” she said, lightly biting her lower lip.

It took a few seconds for it to dawn on Danny, but when it did, his heart raced while he had thoughts of being naked with Cindy, the love of his life.

Thirty minutes had passed, and Danny and Cindy were naked and under the covers in her dorm room bed. Danny was no longer a virgin.

They fell asleep in her bed.

Then Sunday morning arrived, and Danny and Cindy woke up from cuddling in each other’s arms.

“Good morning,” he said, then kissed Cindy’s forehead.

“Good morning,” she replied, then got out of bed.

Danny watched her naked body while she went into her bathroom.

“You can turn on the TV if you want,” she said while she peed in the toilet.

Danny grabbed the remote from her bedside table and turned on the 36-inch HDTV on her dresser, which was mounted on the wall by the end of the bed.

A religious TV show appeared. It was Pastor Elmer Watson’s Bible Revival. An old but healthy, lanky Elmer Watson appeared on the stage of a huge church in Montgomery, Alabama, decked in an expensive suit.

“Cindy, check this out,” he called out.

Cindy rushed out of the bathroom naked with a toothbrush in hand. “What?”

He pointed to the TV.

Cindy saw Elmer starting his televised Bible Revival show.

“Well, I guess we also saved his life,” she said.

“I guess we did, and he was framed back then,” Danny replied, feeling good about their time-traveling mission.

“Enough of him. Let’s get freshened up and go get some breakfast at Subway,” she said, then went back inside the bathroom.

Danny turned off the TV and went inside the bathroom.

Danny and Cindy spent the whole Sunday being a loving couple around campus.

Epilogue

The Manchester Arena was packed tonight for a very special concert. This was the first concert for The Rocking Tones of their Grand Reunion Tour across America. It was scheduled to last four months.

The inside of the arena was packed with anxious fans of all ages. But this time, there were not any screaming young girls.

The vast majority of the ladies were now mature. But the majority of these ladies were, at one time, some of those screaming girls from the 1960s.

The entire front row was reserved for the families of The Rocking Tones. Delmar, Carter, and Burt’s wives, children, and some grandchildren were there. Sig’s partner, Carl Boone, was also in the front row.

The audience’s eyes were on the stage, where a set of drums, two electric guitars, an electric bass, and a keyboard were in position.

Then Hud Marvin, an old Disc Jockey, slowly walked out of the microphone in the middle of the stage by the front. He was well-known in the sixties for a popular rock and roll radio station in Manchester.

The audience clapped and whistled.

“Thank you for coming out for this special event. I’m Hud Marvin, and most of you might remember me from my radio show in the sixties,” he said to the audience.

The vast majority of the audience of mature folks clapped, whistled, and gave small cheers as they remembered listening to him as teenagers.

“Thank you. I’m here to introduce our rock and roll performers,” he said into the microphone.

There were more claps and whistles from the audience as they knew this moment they had waited for years to happen was minutes away.

“So, are you ready for some rock and roll?” he yelled into the microphone.

The audience clapped louder with more whistles and yells.

“So let’s get this awesome reunion tour started. Okay, all you rockers and rollers, here’s Jackie!” Hud said into the microphone.

Jackie walked out on stage wearing blue jeans and a golf shirt. He waved at the cheering audience while he walked over to his standard black and white Rickenbacker electric guitar. He placed the strap around his neck and belted a sweet rock riff.

“And here’s Burt!” Hud said into the microphone.

Burt walked out on stage. He was heavier now, with balding white hair and a white goatee. He waved at the cheering audience while he walked over to his black Les Paul electric guitar. He placed the strap around his neck and immediately strummed out some chords.

“And here’s Carter!” Hud said into the microphone.

Carter walked out on stage. He was about the same size as in the past but with a head full of white hair and a white mustache. He waved at the cheering audience while he walked over to his Fender bass electric guitar. He placed the strap around his neck and immediately belted out a booming bass riff. “And here’s Delmar,” Hud said into the microphone.

Delmar walked out on stage. He was a little heavier, had a shaved head, and had a white goatee. He waved at the cheering audience while he walked over to his Roland keyboard. He sat down on the stool, and his fingers gave the audience a little tune. “And finally, here’s Sig!” Hud said into the microphone.

Sig walked out on stage. He was also heavier, with cropped white hair and a white beard. He waved at the cheering audience while he walked over to his drums. He sat on his stool, grabbed his drumsticks, and pounded on the drums.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you The Rocking Tones!” Hud said into the microphone.

He grabbed the microphone and rushed off the stage.

Jackie walked over to his microphone. “Thanks for coming out, Manchester. As many of you know, this is where we got our start so many years ago,” he said, then stopped and glanced over to the right side of the stage.

Off to the right side of the stage, Danny watched the band. He looked happy while he glanced at the audience.

Jackie looked back at the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, I want my grandson Danny to come on stage. Because for our first song, we would like to perform one he wrote called Forever Rocking,” he said into the microphone.

Danny’s eyes widened in surprise when all eyes of the band were on him. He shook his head that he would not go out there on the stage.

“My grandson is nervous. How about some

encouragement,” Jackie said into the microphone.

“Danny. Danny. Danny,” the audience chanted in unison.

All of The Rocking Tones members motioned for Danny to come out on stage.

A stagehand approached Danny with a Sunburst Les Paul guitar in hand.

Danny looked apprehensive about taking the guitar.

“Danny. Danny. Danny,” the audience continued to chant in unison, and the chant started to get louder.

All of The Rocking Tones members motioned again for Danny to come out on stage.

I’m a dumbass if I don’t. Danny said in his mind. He took a breath of courage and grabbed Les Paul from the stagehand.

He placed the strap around his neck and walked out onstage.

The audience gave Danny a loud clap and cheer.

Danny walked over to Jackie and leaned in close to him. “I don’t know if I dare to do this? I get sick and pass out when in front of an audience,” he whispered to Jackie.

Jackie leaned in close to Danny. “I know of this special guy that dared to save the lives of five guys back in sixty-four. So I know he dares to perform in front of a live audience,” Jackie whispered back.

“When did you know?” Danny whispered back.

“It suddenly came to me a few days ago for some strange reason. Then I did some research, and the Cambridge Chronicle never had any reporters named Chris Moore or Sally Duke. Plus, they never published an article about our band. Now, let’s jam, thanks to Doctor Youngblood,” Jackie whispered back, then winked at Danny.

Danny looked at the hundreds of audience eyes staring at him. He started to feel a little sick, and his knees started to shake.

He fought it off and took a deep breath. He looked brave.

“Let’s jam.”

Jackie nodded at the other band members and said they should start playing the song.

The Rocking Tones started playing the Forever Rocking song with Danny, who performed a great lead riff.

Jackie looked proud of Danny, and then he started singing the lyrics.

The audience loved the song.

While Danny played his Les Paul, he saw two familiar faces in the second row about the center stage. He struggled to figure out why this middle-aged couple looked so familiar. Then it dawned on him. It was Mickey Hanson and Maureen Abner.

They have been married for forty-six years now. Mickey had thinning hair and a white beard, but his crooked nose was a giveaway giveaway. Then Maureen looked good for her age with minimal wrinkles, but the mole above her upper lip was a giveaway.

Down in the front row, Maureen leaned over to Mickey.

“Doesn’t that kid up there look just like that kid and his girlfriend that we gave a ride to back in sixty-four in Buffalo?”

she whispered in his ear.

Mickey looked at Danny, and it took a few seconds for it to sink in. “You know, you’re right. Isn’t that bizarre,” he whispered back.

They shrugged it off and continued to enjoy the show from their favorite rock band.

Mickey, Maureen, Jack, Heather, Diane, and Cindy were also in the front row. They were proud of Danny as he played his Les Paul with the band.

Cindy blew Danny a kiss, which he saw while on stage. He blew her a kiss back at her while he played his Les Paul.

He was in heaven for finally playing in a rock band in front of a large audience without passing out.