The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg (2 page)

“It was like a magician’s trick. The egg just seemed to rise in the air—then disappear.”

“Wow!” repeated Jack, his eyes wide and his feet dancing on the spot as he gazed at the ceiling.

I reached for my backpack.

“Time to take notes,” I whispered, dragging out a notebook and my favorite silver colored pen.

Excitement sizzled through me like a lightning bolt as I opened at a fresh page and jotted down the important facts so far:

CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING DINOSAUR EGG

1. Egg wobbled on its stand.

2. Rose in the air like magic.

3. Disappeared through the ceiling.

“A new mystery?” whispered Jack, eyes shining like just-minted twenty cent coins.

I nodded, feeling an excited grin spread across my face. “Yeah. And what do you know…it’s fallen right into our laps.”

TWO

It was in all the papers.

‘Valuable fossilized dinosaur egg disappears from State Museum.’

There was even a blurry picture of me standing beside the giant
Addyman Plesiosaur
. I looked stiff and dorky. Like something from the museum displays. Like something that had been dead and stuffed for a couple of centuries.

The caption underneath read:
‘Schoolgirl stands and watches while valuable egg disappears.’

Holy catfish! What did they expect me to do? Throw on my Super-Cha cape and fly through the air to save the egg?

At least with the disappearance of the dinosaur egg I had another mystery to solve. Now I could write a second true crime story about the amazing but fictitious Private Investigator, Rebecca Turnbull and her vicious Doberman, Fang.

Earlier this year I’d won a true-crime writing competition for children under fourteen and now the online
Kidlit
magazine wanted to publish more of my work.

Okay. All I had to do was solve the egg-mystery and I could write another story.

Unfortunately, a couple of things stopped me from putting on my P.I. sunnies and trench-coat.

One—there was very little in the way of clues. The police said the burglars must have lassoed the egg with a near-invisible wire then hauled it up through a small hole they’d cut in the roof. After that, both egg and thieves had disappeared without a trace.

But what really got me spitting was the second problem. As we private investigators say—I couldn’t follow up on my investigations. How could I follow up on anything? For the next two weeks I’d be spending every minute of every day either shoveling food into one end of a horse or shoveling what came out the other end.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

On arriving home from the museum, Mum was out front waiting for me. Which was unusual. Normally she’s in the kitchen getting dinner ready.
Wonder what’s up?
I thought as I shut the gate and walked up the path. Deep wrinkles ran up each side of Mum’s nose, jumped over her eyes and burrowed into her forehead. Hmm…guess she wasn’t waiting to give me a banana and fudge flavored ice-cream cone.

“Chiana Elizabeth Ryan!”

Uh! Oh! Definitely no ice-cream cone.

“What’s this about you getting involved in a burglary at the museum?”

“Hardly,” I protested as I walked past Mum and threw my back-pack on the hall table before zeroing in on the kitchen and the huge cottage-shaped biscuit jar. “I just saw the dinosaur egg disappear. That’s all.”

A delta cream biscuit half-way to my mouth, I stopped, puzzled. “Anyway, how did you know so soon? Did Ms Winters ring?”

And then I spotted my step-sister, Sarah, perched on a kitchen stool, glass of milk in one hand, vegemite sandwich in the other.

Of course!

Blabbermouth!

“Couldn’t wait, could you?”

“Nope!”

“Why didn’t you let
me
tell Mum what happened?”

Sarah shrugged—all couldn’t care less. “More fun this way,” she said then grinned this real crocodile grin and I swear her pearly white teeth looked like they’d been sharpened to vampire points.

Recently Sarah and I made a sort of truce. We’d agreed to
try
to get along.
Try
to live in the same house without blowing each other up. But six months of arguing and getting up each other’s nose made it a shaky truce.

Although the same age—
almost thirteen
—Sarah and I were way different. Sarah was chocolate. I was licorice-allsorts. Sarah’s fair hair hung smugly down her back like silvery silk. My thick reddish coppery hair, although long, often frizzed and stood on end like it had been plugged into an electric socket then turned up to high. Sarah dressed like Miss Teen Australia. I wore knee-less jeans and whatever T-shirt jumped out of the drawer into my hand each morning.

Ever since Sarah found out we were spending the holidays at her Aunt Kate’s, she’d been rabbiting on—talking big. You know, about what a mega horse-rider she was. Before the age of ten—which is when she’d discovered nail-polish and Sherpa fashion statements—she’d evidently spent every holiday at her Aunt Kate’s riding school.

Probably jumping her horse over sky-scrapers and leaping swollen rivers in one bound.

All I could say was: Huh! If Sarah was a whiz at this stupid horse-riding stuff—it must be dead easy.

Mum followed me into the kitchen. She stood by the door, hands on hips, one toe tapping rhythmically on the multi-colored linoleum floor.

“Chiana, I don’t want you getting involved in any more mysteries. Last time you worried me so much I ended up with a dozen new grey hairs.”

“
Muuum
,” I began, hooking a second delta cream from the biscuit barrel then fixing her with my best imitation of a sensible grown-up daughter. “I’m not
involved
in anything! All I did was stand there and watch while a dinosaur egg disappeared through the ceiling.”

I took a bite out of my biscuit and kept talking, my voice sounding a bit muffled. “Now, about me going with Sarah to her Aunt Kate’s while you and Ken go on your honeymoon…” I locked eyes with mum, pleadingly. “Why can’t I stay here? Please…”

“Don’t be silly, Cha. I can’t leave you at home on your own.”

“I wouldn’t be on my own. I’d have Leroy to protect me.”

Sarah’s snort echoed around the kitchen like a trumpeting elephant. I sent a knife-edged glare in her direction before turning back to Mum.

“Well, what about Mrs. Potter next door? If anything happened—and it won’t—I could always call her.”

“Mrs. Potter is deaf, Chiana and she’s already looking after Cat.”

“Mum, I’m not a baby anymore. I’m
almost
thirteen.”

“Thirteen?” she scoffed. “When I was thirteen I still had to ask my parents’ permission to go to the corner shop.”

“But that was back in the olden days when—”

I caught sight of Mum’s bulldog scowl and decided not to continue.

“I can’t leave you without adult supervision, Chiana. I’d be ringing home ten times a day. Think about it…Ken and I have been married for six months and only now are we going on our honeymoon. Naturally we want to relax and enjoy some quality time together. Is that too much to ask?”

“Of course not, Mum.” I drew myself up to my full height of five foot one and seven-eighths. “You know I’m happy for you and Ken. It’s just that I’m not real keen on horses. And now there’s this new mystery with the egg to—”

“That’s it!” Mum grabbed the kitchen knife and started chopping potatoes like they were a mob of cold-eyed, nasty-looking bad-guys—all intent on kidnapping and torturing me until I told them every one of the country’s classified secrets. “You haven’t been listening, Chiana. I said you’re
not
getting involved in another mystery.”

Me and my big mouth.

I took a quick step backwards as one very large potato hurled itself off the work bench in fright, just missing Mum’s knife as it crashed downwards.

“Look what happened last time you decided to play the detective,” Mum continued, grabbing the errant potato and murdering it before throwing the evidence in the pot. “You and Sarah and your friends almost got killed. No, Chiana. There’s no way Ken and I could relax on the Gold Coast knowing you were putting your nose where it might get blown off. You’re going to Kate’s riding-school and that’s final.”

“But Mum—”

“But nothing! Tayla’s mother has kindly offered to drive the three of you to
Treehaven Stables
tomorrow morning so we can catch our plane at one. I want you packed and ready to leave when they come. Is that clear?”

Mum must have seen the anxiety in my eyes because her voice softened. “Come on, Cha. Ken and I want to enjoy our holiday—not worry about you. If you’re at Kate’s while we’re away, we’ll know you’re safe.”

“Safe?” My mother throws me to a pack of wild horses then says I’ll be safe.

I stomped up the stairs, pausing outside my bedroom door to offer half a delta cream to my roly-poly bulldog who was sprawled legs in the air, tongue dangling.

Just as his slobbering jaws opened to receive the treat, Mum’s voice crashed through the air and bounced off the walls.

“And don’t feed Leroy your biscuit.”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

“The vet put him on a diet,” she continued in a voice loud enough for the entire street to hear. “He said you could have killed him with all those chocolate Tim Tams. While we’re away he’s been booked into a boarding-kennel where they’ll make sure he stays on the diet.”

Leroy curled both paws over his head and whined pitifully. Leaning down I rubbed his tummy.

“Poor Leroy,” I commiserated. “I know exactly how you feel.”

THREE

The tires on Neil’s red Monaro hummed hypnotically as we followed the grey ribbon of road on the way to
Treehaven Stables
.

Instead of Tayla’s mum driving, it was her latest dreadlocked, vegetarian boyfriend who sat behind the wheel of the car, while she, dressed in black leather, curled up in the passenger’s seat beside him. Sarah, Tayla and I shared the back seat with riding boots, horse-magazines, suede chaps, riding helmets and anything else that wouldn’t fit into our cases.

For the last half hour we’d played a dreary game of Sevens. Tayla was too wired to concentrate. Sarah was itching to start an argument. And I kept thinking about the missing dinosaur egg and kept playing the wrong card.

Bored, and wishing I was at home, I yawned and flicked a casual glance through the open car window.

My mouth still in mid-yawn…I froze in disbelief at the view.

For there, pulling out of a rutted driveway onto the roadway, grey smoke billowing around it like a winter mist, was a battered grey utility. And it was heading straight for our car.

“Look out!”

My warning was lost in a screech of tires and the clatter of boots, cards and helmets as they sprayed into the air and onto the floor.

Neil stamped on his brakes, wrenched the car sideways and let out a string of explosive four-letter words that left my eardrums ringing. The driver of the rusty grey ute with the words,
Professor T. Goodenough
, painted in heritage green on the passenger side door, also braked, then looked vaguely around, like a sheep separated from its flock.

For a couple of seconds—time stood still.

I could see this skinny old man hunched behind the wheel. He sat there, a dreamy look on his face. His white hair straggled onto his shoulders. His long beard, like tangled barbwire, rested in his lap. And then, without warning, he crunched the gears and his car leap-frogged forward again.

Neil’s ear-splitting roar broke the spell. “You stupid imbecile!” Caught in the act of taking off, Neil slammed his foot on the brake again. “The man’s a moron!”

Now tootling along in front of us, the ute stalled, coughed, spluttered, then hiccupped forward with a deafening bang.

Once more Neil’s shiny red Monaro slithered and fishtailed across the road. My fingers, now in the shape of eagle’s talons, dug into the leather upholstery as though attempting to rip the driver’s seat from the floor.

“What’s happening?” gasped Tayla her face the color of sour milk.

As our car came to rest on the verge of the road, my step-sister, Sarah, rubbed at a red mark on her forehead, where she’d been crowned by a flying missile.

“Ooowwch!” she whined, her bottom lip trembling. “That
really
hurt!”

Confused, I stared at the property Professor Goodenough’s car had come from. Grass and weeds ran riot between the trees. And the driveway was full of ruts, so deep, cows could disappear into them and never be seen again.

But what really caught my eye were the roughly painted signs. They were everywhere. Stuck in the ground—nailed to trees—wired onto fence posts. And all painted in this grisly shade of blood red.

What was it with this guy?

“Everyone okay back there?” Tayla’s mum peered over into the back seat. She must have been touching up her lipstick when the car braked because there was a vivid streak of red that ran up one side of her nose. Except for the ugly red slash, her face was whiter than her daughter’s.

“I feel sick,” moaned Tayla.

“Me too,” sniveled Sarah.

“What about you, Cha?”

My mind whirled as I studied the writing on the signs. ‘Do Not Enter’. ‘Danger’. ‘Vicious Bull—eats People’. ‘Trespassers Shot on Sight’.

“Cha?”

I blinked at Tayla’s mum then nodded my head at the bewildering signs. “That old guy seems a bit unfriendly, doesn’t he?”

“Bit crazy you mean,” Tayla grumped, winding down the window and taking great gulps of fresh air.

“He’s stark raving bonkers!” Neil started the car again. He checked the rear-vision mirror before edging back onto the road and driving slowly in the direction of
Treehaven Stable,
which was only a hundred meters further up the road
.