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Barbara's Scripts The dismal prospect of an uneventful summer in Austin, Texas for ten-year-old Lottie changes when she receives a first class ticket to Chicago to visit Mrs. Harrolton, a grandmother that she hardly knows. In Oklahoma City, ten-year-old Charles Ray scampers off a bus and faces Waitland, a smiling friendly man, who says he’s a cousin sent by Charles Ray’s grandmother to pick him up. When Charles Ray sees the police radio in Waitland’s car, he gets in. A few days later in the Oklahoma City airport, as Lottie heads for her connecting flight, she darts away from the attendant and runs to examine a poster/picture about a missing boy. Hours later, in Chicago, Lottie sits on an ornate antique bed in a room larger than her mom’s whole duplex and studies the servant, dutifully serving her a bedtime snack. Across town in an abandoned house with boarded-up windows, Charles Ray crouches on a cot, as Waitland tells him that he is his real father, not the man living in his home acting like his father, and that no one will help him because he’s the main policeman in all of Chicago. Fate brings these two children together in a downtown department store. Lottie recognizes Charles Ray from the poster and runs in the dressing room after him, where they hatch a rescue plot. Through daring and cunning, Lottie succeeds in getting Charles Ray out of the abandoned house and into an unused section of her grandmother’s mansion. However, Waitland, being an ace detective, is hot on their trail, and soon, they have to leave the mansion. They hide out in an old bus inhabited by a an aged hippie, and then move on to a downtown cathedral, the streets, and a fishing boat on Lake Michigan. But Waitland is always one step behind them, keeping them on the run. Carmen, Lottie’s mother, and Charles Ray’s parents gather at Mrs. Harrolton’s mansion and together they follow a trail of clues that Lottie has left for them. When Charles Ray’s mother sees a sketch of Waitland, she recalls that he is the same person who had wanted to date her while they were in high school. He wouldn’t leave her alone until her father had threatened him. The family, along with the police, go on the hunt for Waitland. The pursuit climaxes in a scary boat chase when the children outsmart Waitland one last time, resulting in his arrest and the reunion of the families. To celebrate and to show her love for her newly found granddaughter, Grandmother Harrolton throws a big party at the mansion.
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