The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg (5 page)

D for Dungeon?

The second the doors cracked open, Hooligan shot
through, dragging me so fast my shoulders bumped one after the other—
Ouch! ouch!
—and before I even blinked, we were galloping top speed down what I think was a corridor, but I'm not sure because it was pitch-black and I couldn't see a thing!

Can dogs see in the dark the way cats can? Why, oh, why, had I never looked this up?

I don't know how long we ran or where we went, but just when my legs were ready to quit, Hooligan put on a burst of speed, the leash slipped out of my hand and I flew headlong into something big and solid and . . . 
furry
?

Still blind, I backed up and hit another hard, furry something, turned left and . . . 
Ouch!
—something sharp! A claw? A tooth?—then right and . . . 
bump, tumble, somersault
—I was suddenly sitting on the cold, hard floor and trapped for sure, with big, furry, sharp-clawed somethings closing in around me.

What did I do?

I screamed!

And then the lights came on. Now it was glare that blinded me, but I could still hear—the
click-click-clickety
of galloping doggy toenails, and then a man's voice: “What is going on in here?”

I blinked; my eyes focused, and here came my faithful dog on a mission to rescue me not only from this grumpy man but from a room full of life-size lions and tigers and bears—oh, my!

They were everywhere, each one stiff and staring just like the big African elephant in the rotunda upstairs.

Hooligan plowed into me a second later—
Oof!
—and licked my face—
Ewww!
—and for a few moments I just sat there breathing while the grumpy man sputtered about “unauthorized kids” and “trespassing” and “valuable exhibits.”

Then he got a good look at me. “Y-y-you're Cameron Parks!”

I nodded. “Yes, I am. And I'm very sorry to be trespassing. And if you'll give me a second, I'll explain.”

By the time Malik, Nate, Tessa and Professor Rexington arrived, Mr. Clark had introduced himself, and I had told him how Hooligan was tracking a wooden crate that used to contain an ostrich egg. Level D was not the dungeon. It was a subbasement storage area for old museum exhibits like these stuffed hunting trophies.

Hooligan wasn't done tracking yet, and now, trotting at a reasonable speed, he led us out of the storage room and down a corridor to a battered old desk by a set of double garage-type doors. Mr. Clark explained that the desk was his and that this part of the building was a loading dock.

Meanwhile, Hooligan sat himself down and looked up expectantly. As far as he was concerned, this was
the finish line, he had won the race and now he wanted his prize.

I said, “Good puppy!” and pulled a doggy treat from my pocket and gave it to him.

Mr. Clark said, “There's a driveway and a ramp outside for delivery trucks, but it's not as big as the new one, so it's not used much anymore. Sometimes I think everybody upstairs”—he looked at Professor Rexington—“has forgotten us.”

Tessa folded her arms across her chest like she always does when she's interviewing a witness. “Mr. Clark, do you keep track of what's delivered here?”

Mr. Clark looked offended. “That's my job.” He pulled a fat black binder out of his desk. “What day are you interested in?”

Tessa said Friday morning, and Mr. Clark turned a couple of pages. “Is it this one?” he asked. “One of my coworkers entered it. I don't work Friday mornings.”

The entry read: “Received 11:55 a.m., from Red Heart Delivery, one wooden crate weighing 15 pounds, 4 ounces. Destination 8th floor, office of Professor Rexington.”

“Jackpot, Cammie!” Tessa said.

“Yeah, whaddya know?” Nate said. “Your plan actually worked.”

“It's Hooligan who should get the credit,” I said modestly. But actually I was pretty proud. Now all we had to do was phone Red Heart Delivery, find out who had sent the crate and bingo—we had cracked the case of the missing dinosaur egg!

We thanked Mr. Clark and Professor Rexington and said good-bye. Then Malik drove us back to the White House. On the way, I slipped our secret weapon one more doggy treat. He deserved it.

At home, we wanted to look up Red Heart Delivery right away and call, but we were already late for dinner. Mom, Dad and Aunt Jen were busy, so we kids were supposed to eat with Granny in the Family Kitchen—and she likes to eat at six-thirty sharp.

We had tuna casserole with noodles and peas, which maybe doesn't sound that delicious, but there were fried bread crumbs on top, and homemade applesauce, too. When Granny gets sick of being waited on by the White House staff, she likes to cook for us.

While we ate, we took turns telling her what had happened at the museum. When we were done, she said, “I just have one question. You found the crumpled newspaper the egg was packed in—”

“It was dated Thursday, April sixth,” said Nate. “We made sure to check.”

Granny nodded. “Good . . . and what newspaper was it?”

Tessa, Nate and I looked at each other. None of us had noticed—and we should have—
duh
. The town the newspaper came from might tell us the town the ostrich egg came from!

Granny saw we felt dumb, so she tried an easier question. “Was the newspaper written in English?”

I thought for a second. “Yes, because I could read the date.”

Granny nodded. “In that case, it didn't come from a certain nearby nation. They don't speak English there.”

“So President Manfred Alfredo-Chin couldn't have packed the ostrich egg,” I said. “He must not be the thief . . . unless he has helpers in an English-speaking place.”

“We already know Professor Bohn is the thief, Cammie,” Tessa said. “And when we call Red Heart Delivery, we're going to find out that Professor Bohn's the one who sent the egg.”

I didn't think so.

And I was right.

But for all the wrong reasons.

After we put the dishes in the dishwasher, we went up to Nate's room on the third floor to use his computer. He looked all over the Web, but he couldn't find Red Heart Delivery anywhere.

So we trooped back downstairs to find Granny, who was reading in the West Sitting Hall, and she got up and looked till she found an old paper phone book in a drawer in the Family Kitchen.

There was no Red Heart Delivery there, either.

“Maybe they don't want publicity,” Tessa said.

“All businesses want publicity,” Granny said. “Otherwise, how do they get customers?”

“Then why can't we find them?” Nate asked.

“Only one reason I can think of,” said Granny. “Because they don't exist.”

“Well,
that's
disappointing!” Tessa said.

“A dead end.” I sighed. “What do we do now?”

Granny shrugged. “When you come to a dead end, you try another direction.”

And the next day, Monday, that's just what I did.

I'm in fifth grade, and Monday is the day fifth graders have library after lunch.

For our investigation, this turned out to be lucky, because Mr. Brackbill, the school librarian, likes to give us Internet research assignments.

That day the assignment was: Find five dinosaur facts from five reliable websites.

Dinosaur facts—
yes!

Even better, we were allowed to pick our own partners, and right away I looked around for Evgenia. She is one of those quiet kinds of people you don't notice till one day she says something that is seriously smart.

“I have an idea for what to research,” I said as soon as we sat down at the computer table. “Not that long ago, a dinosaur egg fossil was found in a certain nearby nation. Let's look that up. I mean”—I suddenly realized that might sound bossy—“unless you have a better idea.”

Evgenia grinned as she logged us in to the computer. “You're detecting again, aren't you? When Jan
and Larry talked about that missing egg last week? I thought, ‘That sounds exactly like a job for the First Kids!'”

We started by searching “dinosaur egg” and the name of the certain nearby nation. Bingo—we got lots of results from science magazines, newspapers, museums and TV stations. One of them included both Professor Rexington and Professor Bohn, so we tried that one first, and . . . guess what?

We found out the two paleontologists don't like each other at all!

It's not because of personal stuff. It's because of science. I didn't understand everything in the article, but basically they disagree about whether the dinosaur that laid the missing egg is a close relative of birds that live today. Professor Bohn thinks it is, and Professor Rexington thinks it's not.

I guess if you're a scientist, you think this kind of stuff is worth fighting about.

Anyway, the reason the dinosaur egg was coming to the United States at all was so Professor Rexington and Professor Bohn could study the shell. Each one thought its structure would prove he—or she—was right.

Evgenia and I looked at some more websites and found a picture of the missing dinosaur egg. I couldn't help thinking the scientists who found it had to have been pretty smart even to have recognized that a gray, oval-shaped rock was really an egg fossil.

Mr. Brackbill would give us extra credit for having
a picture, so I copied and pasted it into my document. Then I typed these facts:

• The egg was found last fall by Professor Rexington, Professor Bohn and a team of scientists from the nearby nation.

• It probably came from a dinosaur called Unenlagia that was probably about six feet tall and had feathers.

• The Unenlagia dinosaur could flap its front legs the way birds flap their wings.

• “Unenlagia” means “half-bird” in a South American language.

We still needed another fact, and Evgenia saw that there was an article about the egg on the website of a certain nearby nation. Luckily, it was written in English, but what it said was totally different from the other ones:

The American scientists who found this so-called dinosaur egg are mistaken. Their ignorance can be seen very easily by the fact that they recently mistook an ostrich egg for a dinosaur egg at a presentation at an important museum in the capital of the United States of America
.

In fact, the so-called dinosaur egg discovered in our nation last year belonged to a large bird that has been extinct for one century only. As every schoolchild in our nation knows, no animal or
plant life lived within our borders until long after the time of the dinosaurs
.

Evgenia's eyes got big. “This is totally the opposite of everything else we've been reading!”

“And it isn't very nice about Professor Bohn and Professor Rexington, either,” I said.

“Mr. Brackbill says just because you find something on the Internet doesn't make it true,” Evgenia said. “You have to cross-check and consider sources.”