The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg (5 page)

“Are you going to climb down the tree now or stay there until the police arrive?” he asked.

A big old pussycat? Not.

I threw a glance at Barnaby who snorted and rolled his red-rimmed eyes in evident delight at the professor’s words.

“Er…I think I’ll stay where I am, if that’s okay with you.”

“Are you on your own?”

I thought I saw a slight movement in the pepper-tree. Was Noah going to show his face and come clean at last?

“Well—”

The movement in the pepper-tree stopped. Froze. Seemed to be holding its breath.

Ha. Now we knew who was a wuss…

“Yes,” I said, nodding my head slowly. “Seems like I’m all alone.”

For some reason I thought of my good friend, Jack. If he’d been with me, by now, he’d probably have fallen out of the tree trying to help me, accidentally knocked the professor over and given the bull a bloody nose with his elbow.

As though his fingers didn’t work very well, the Professor picked at the rope around his middle until the knot came loose. He glared up at me again.

“Right, girl. Down you come.” He fashioned the rope into a loop and slipped it over Barnaby’s head. “The bull won’t hurt you. And what is more, you are giving me a crick in the neck with all this tedious looking up.”

“But—”

“Hurry up. I have work to do. I can’t waste time talking to a trespasser.”

“You’re sure about Barnaby?”

The Professor let his hand caress the bull’s small furry ears. “Barnaby will not be a problem.” He paused, his dark eyes growing darker. “Unless you try running away.”

Carefully I swung my leg over the branch and slid to the ground. Up close, both Barnaby and the Professor looked larger and even more frightening.

“I-I’m sorry. L-look—”

I tried to clear my throat but it felt like a lump of cement was stuck in my windpipe. Holy catfish! What was the matter with me? I was acting like a soggy marshmallow instead of a junior P.I. Straightening my shoulders, I took a deep breath. Now was my chance to ask questions, get some answers and solve the mystery of the threatening signs.

After all…solving mysteries was what I was good at.

First, I put on my Sunday-best, good-girl face and dredged up my most polite and contrite voice.

“I’m really sorry about trespassing, Professor. Truly I am. You see, someone dared me to tie the balloons to one of your trees.”

Then I changed my face to a serious, let’s-get-some-answers-going-here sort of expression.

“Now, tell me,” I said, looking him up and down and wondering again about the green stuff in his beard. “Why do you have all these ‘No Trespassing’ signs on your property? What are you trying to hide?”

Ignoring my questions, the professor leaned on his stick and turned in the direction of the house. “Follow me, girl. You can wait on the porch while I contact your parents.”

Contact my parents? On their honeymoon?

Geez. I could imagine how happy
that
would make them. Not. Perhaps, I decided, as I trudged along behind the Professor, I should stop practicing my private investigator skills and dig up some cool, Chiana Ryan charm instead.

But how? I didn’t
do
charm. That was Tayla’s specialty. Me—I rubbed people up the wrong way. If I smiled and batted my eyelashes at the professor, the way Tayla did—he’d scowl, then completely ignore me. If I told him how intelligent he was—he’d scowl, then completely ignore me. If I told him I thought he was a crook—he’d scowl—

It was about then I noticed a baby crocodile running across the professor’s foot.

“That’s a—that’s a—” I spluttered, running backwards until my body crashed against a tree-trunk.

“Oh! Botheration and damn.”

As the tiny leathery creature hissed at a curious Barnaby, the professor tut-tutted impatiently. He dug deep into his coat pocket, pulled out a sleepy, blinking Pedro and set him on the ground.

“Guard the girl,” he ordered, then bent forward and caught the hissing reptile by the back of the neck.

“You! Stay!” he growled, pointing a finger at me like I was a dog and he expected me to sit or roll over. “I will be back in a minute.”

With the baby crocodile still spitting at him, the Professor limped off toward a tumble-down shed built onto the side of the house.

Hmmm…interesting.

Could whatever was hidden inside that shed be the reason for all the ‘No Trespassing’ signs?

I took a hesitant step forward.

Pedro skipped across in front of me and barred his teeth apologetically.

Guard the girl.

“Hi little fellow. Aren’t you cute?”

I knelt down on one knee and tickled the Chihuahua behind the ears. The little dog rolled over on his back, kicked his legs and dribbled dreamily, while I rubbed his stomach. When I stood up he began jumping up and down on my leg like a tennis ball, yapping in delight.

Now for the bull.

In my pocket was a carrot. Kate had told me to give it to Shakespeare when I’d finished brushing him but what with Noah and his stupid double-dare, I’d completely forgotten about it.

Until now.

“Here you go, Barnaby, old buddy.”

Eyes closed, face screwed up in anticipation of losing several fingers, I held the carrot out on the flat of my hand. Please…
please
let the bull prefer carrots to fingers.

As I felt his warm, leathery sandpapery tongue tickle the palm of my hand, I held my breath. Finally, running out of air, I opened my eyes and checked my hand. Yep! All five fingers still attached and wriggling.

“Good boy, Barnaby.”

He’d not only eaten the carrot but if his goofy face was anything to go by he’d enjoyed the treat.

Now…should I escape or check out the shed?

I knew I should escape while the Professor was busy. Sneak down the path, find my bike, high-tail it back to the stables and get Kate to come back and rescue Noah. But how could I leave without first taking a peek in the shed? My P.I. instincts insisted I find out what the professor was up to.

One eye on Barnaby, I tiptoed past the trees then ran softly in the direction of the rusty galvanized iron shed. Why did the professor object to trespassers sniffing around his property? Was the shed full of illegal crocodiles? Escaped convicts? Dead bodies?

I pressed my nose against the dirty window pane. This was it. Once again, Chiana Ryan, famous junior P.I. was about to solve a baffling and complicated mystery.

At first, I couldn’t see a thing through the dirt-streaked window. And then I blinked in disbelief. The professor’s shed hid no dead bodies—no escaped convicts—no snapping, snarling crocodiles…

Instead…the professor’s shed was full of eggs.

SEVEN

Eggs.

There must have been at least a hundred of them inside the professor’s tumble-down shed.

Big eggs, little eggs, white eggs, blue eggs, spotted eggs. All resting in boxes or baskets filled with straw. All with heat-lamps keeping them warm and snug. I squashed my nose hard against the dirty glass window. Was that a crack in one of the eggs? Was the egg nearest the window breaking open?

Yesssss!

Whatever was inside was about to hatch. I held my breath. Felt my heart quicken. And then it happened. Part of the shell fell away and out popped something small, jellybean pink and with dark bulges where the eyes should be. This was no fluffy baby chicken. So what was it? Was the professor hatching some alien species from another planet?

Just then, the professor shuffled from a room at the back of the shed, shaking his head. I could hear what sounded like muffled squawks and cheeps from behind the door as he closed it behind him. Then he straightened his bent shoulders, lifted his drooping head and looked around the shed. His eyes lit up and he ka-thumped across the cement floor toward the broken egg, his wooden walking-stick tap-tapping in his hurry.

“Oh how sweet,” he cooed, a warm smile lighting up his wrinkled old face as he gazed down at the ugly pink baby. “Your mother isn’t around, my darling, but Uncle Tad will look after you.”

Uncle Tad?

He looked up and his eyes met mine through the murky glass.

Immediately he changed from sweet caring
Uncle Tad
back into the steely-eyed stern professor who set his two-ton bull on anyone foolish enough to ignore the ‘No Trespassing’ signs on his property.

Time to split.

Little Pedro had become my best friend but there was no way Barnaby would let me escape without a chase.

A chase I had as much chance of winning as the lottery
.

But what if I wasn’t on foot?

The professor had parked his battered ute only meters from the shed door. I glanced through the car window. There were the keys—just begging to be used. My heart hammered against my chest as I tugged on the door-handle. The car wasn’t locked. If I drove to the front gate, jumped out and wriggled under the barbwire—there was a chance I’d beat the bull.

But could I drive a car? I’d seen my mum behind the wheel, working the gear stick and the foot pedals. It looked easy enough. Scooping Pedro up under my arm in case he accidentally got under the car wheels, I wrenched the door open and threw myself on the seat.

Pedro snuggled up beside me and went to sleep. Barnaby bunted the car door with his horns and bellowed at me. The professor burst through the shed door waving his stick and hollering, “Come back here, girl-child!”

As if.

Heart still thumping madly I turned the key in the key-hole thingy and held my breath. From under the bonnet of the car came this loud growling noise like a vacuum cleaner with a bad case of the flu. Okay—we had lift-off. Stretching my legs forward at full-stretch I pushed down on one of the pedals and crunched the gear stick. The ute back-fired like an explosive fart, bunny-hopped forward, then took off straight toward the shed. My breath got stuck somewhere between my lungs and my throat. Barnaby and the professor stood frozen to the spot, their eyes bigger and rounder than prize-winning pumpkins.

Hands fisted around the ancient leather on the steering-wheel I yanked hard left and heard a rasping crunch. Oh! Oh! I bit my bottom lip and hung on to the wheel. The car had missed the professor and the bull, scraped the corner of the shed and was bucketing along the track.

“Noah,” I yelled, slamming my foot on the brake when I reached the big pepper tree. “You have two seconds to get out of that tree and into the car. Or I go without you.”

Through the rear-vision mirror I could see Barnaby and the professor. The professor was shuffling awfully fast for an old guy on a stick and the bull looked angry enough to eat tin cans.

Out of the tree like a bag of spuds, dropped
Short Dark and Irritating.

“You don’t know how to drive!” he accused glaring at me as if I’d kidnapped the Pope.

No
sorry.
No
thanks.
No
great stuff, Cha
. Just a typical boy-remark. I wanted to stuff him in a rubbish bin and jam the lid on tight.

“Get in or get gored,” I snapped, taking my foot off the brake and lurching forward again in two giant bunny-hops.

“Hang on!” Noah shouted, his voice cracking in his hurry. He flung himself into the car and sprawled face-first on the seat beside me.

“Look out for the dog!”

“Oooowch!”

Too late…

I ignored Noah’s painful howl and glanced over my shoulder. Barnaby was only two car lengths away.

“Get ready to run!”

“That rotten dog bit me.”

“I would too if you landed on top of me. Poor Pedro. I bet you tasted disgusting.”

Bouncing in and out of the deep holes in the driveway was like clinging to a rowboat in stormy seas. I screeched to a halt at the gate, threw Pedro a last kiss, then dived head first out the car door and hit the ground rolling.

And I kept rolling—right under the barbed wire fence.

My breath chugging in my throat, I sat up and shook my head. Whew…I’d made it! But what about Noah?

Another yell shattered the air. Uh! Oh! I looked up just in time to see Barnaby’s horns graze the seat of Noah’s pants as he scrabbled and clawed his way under the rolls of barbed wire.

“Come on, Noah,” I said, smothering a giggle as I stood up and dragged my bike out of the dirt. “Stop playing games.”

“Ha. Ha.” Noah glared at me before clambering on his bike. “Tell anyone about what just happened and you’re history.”

We biked in silence for a couple of minutes. No way could I confide in Noah about the eggs. He’d blab for sure. And somehow I knew it was important to keep what I’d discovered in the professor’s shed a secret. Okay, Professor Goodenough was scary-looking and really weird, but the expression on his face when he saw the egg hatching showed another side to the man. A softer side. It reminded me of my mum when she spotted Mrs. Teagle’s new baby from down the street. All gooey and smiley and honey-sweet. Sort of sick, actually.

But what animal baby is jelly-bean pink with no eyes?

“And don’t tell mum about us going to the Professor’s place.” It was Noah, breaking into my thoughts again as we cycled up the driveway to
Treehaven
.

I shook my head in disbelief.

As if.

“’Cos if you do—I can make things real ugly for you here.”

“Whatever.”

Geez…under which rock did Kate find this creep? No wonder Sarah was a pain in butt. Must run in the family.

“I mean it!”

“I know you do, Noah. What else would I expect from a cowardly creep?”

“Take that back!”

“Why should I? You didn’t even show your face when the professor found me up the tree.”

“So? You were the one doing the double dare—not me.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, the stupid double dare was your stupid idea
.”

By the time we reached the bike-shed I felt like hurling the bike at Noah’s head. Instead, I gritted my teeth and gave him one of my frostiest glares. Noah Peterson wasn’t worth getting all sweaty about. And anyway, real P.I.’s didn’t lose their cool.