The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg (7 page)

“Wow!” I caught the glimmer of excitement in Jack’s eyes and grinned at him. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Sarah sniffed. “Yeah. And what if the world is really flat?”

Ignoring Sarah’s put-down, I felt an electric buzz start in my fingertips, race up both arms then skip in a tingling rush through the rest of my body. Hey, Jack could be onto something big here.

“What if Professor Goodenough is an egg smuggler?” he continued, his freckles dancing across his nose.

“Or even a mad scientist who’s experimenting with animals,” I added.

“What if he’s trying to clone a dinosaur by using the DNA of the fossilized egg?”

“Double wow!”

“Do you two know how crazy you sound?” Sarah coolly slipped the bottle of
Vomit Orange
into her jodhpurs’ pocket, picked up her suede riding-boots and stood up. “You saw a chicken hatching from an egg and now you’ve decided it’s a scene from Jurassic Park.”

Her comment was like a bucket of ice water over the head. Sarah was right. Jack and I were being ridiculous. I rammed my notebook back into my pocket and felt a blush creep up my neck and spread across my cheeks. Grrrrrrrr! Anyone want a step-sister for free?

Evidently satisfied with the way she’d broken up our meeting, Princess Sarah strolled to the tack room door on her newly painted feet.

“I’m off,” she said in her I’m-so-cool voice. “Unless you uncover a
real
mystery—count me out. I don’t want to be grounded like Noah. I came here to ride and that’s what I’m going to do.”

I watched Tayla get to her feet too. Gracefully, like one of those long-legged dancers from the ballet Mum had taken me to see for my twelfth birthday. I could tell Tayla agreed with Sarah because her eyes looked like Leroy’s when he’d been caught fossicking in the rubbish-bin.

“Sorry, Cha,” she said sheepishly. “I love riding Angel and I’d just die if Kate grounded me.”

Geez…what was it with Tayla and Sarah? How was I supposed to solve our latest mystery when two of my assistants had been so badly bitten by the horse-bug they’d turned into marshmallows?

I lifted an eye-brow in the direction of my last hope. “Jack?”

“I’m in.”

Tayla fidgeted with the end of one shiny blonde curl. “Cha, if you keep on with this egg mystery stuff—be careful. Don’t let Noah find out or he’ll tell his mum just to get back at you. He’s spewing ’cos he’s not allowed to ride and blames you for everything.”

Sarah’s head popped back around the doorway and caught the end of Tayla’s warning. She grinned her sly tiger-grin at me. “Talking about my sweet lovable cousin, you’d better hide, Cha. He’s mad as—”

Noah came crashing into the tack-room, his face set in a screwed-up scowl.

“Hey, you!” he yelled. “How am I supposed to teach you to ride if you don’t even show up for your lessons?”

I gave Jack a mock-frown. “Do you think he means me?”

“You? Nah. Wouldn’t talk to
you
like that. He must be talking to the wall.”

Noah’s scowl deepened. “Ha. Ha. The joke’s on you, ’cos I’d rather
teach
the wall. Get your riding helmet on Chiana and let’s go.”

That morning Noah had made me ride bareback. That’s right…no saddle. He’d lunged me on Shakespeare for half an hour of bone-grating, stomach-jolting, butt-banging torture. If you’ve ever bounced around on a horse with a backbone so hard, so sharp your rear feels like it’s on fire—you’ll know what I mean. If you haven’t—don’t go there.

“Sorry Noah, I’m too tired. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow.”

“Ooh no you don’t.” His scowl turned into a dragon-snarl as he stepped closer. “
Wuss!
”

Noah was at it again. Calling me a
wuss.
If only Jack didn’t have a death-grip on my arm I’d stick my fingers down Noah’s throat, yank out his tongue and feed it to the stable cat.

“Mum says you have to ride in our Cross-country event next week,” Noah went on, his teeth clenched so tightly I half expected a couple to snap off. “So I’m going to make sure you’re ready for that—even if it kills you!”

Of course. Noah couldn’t compete in the Junior Show jumping Championships if he didn’t have me riding well by the end of next week. I squinted, screwed up my nose and stuck out my tongue.

“Okay,” I said pushing myself off the pile of horse rugs and standing on legs that felt like mushy oatmeal.

His words
,
‘
even if it kills you
’ echoed around in my head. If this afternoon’s lesson was half as bad as this morning’s I wanted the theme song from ‘Titanic’ to be played at my funeral.

Even if I survived, I thought, as I followed
Short Dark and Irritating
outside, I’d be sitting on a feather-cushion. Too tired to eat. Too tired to talk. And too tired to think about the new egg mystery.

I bet no other private investigator in the whole universe was ever made to ride a horse without a saddle in the middle of solving a mystery.

TEN

With only five days to C day (Cross-Country day), it hurt to sit on a wooden chair or use my legs for anything other than holding up my body. Three lessons a day, two with Noah and a group lesson with Kate, also meant I couldn’t get the smell of horse from my skin, my hair, my clothes, my mouth and even my eyelashes.

After finishing our group lesson for the day, Kate decided it was time to build the Cross-Country course. She gave Jack and me the job of building jumps along the fence-line next to Professor Goodenough’s property.

Which of course led to Jack and I discussing the egg-mystery.

“We can’t just break into the shed. That’s against the law,” I protested when Jack suggested we sneak out at night dressed all in black and try the keys from his ‘special’ key-ring to open the shed door.

Jack had been collecting different shaped keys from the age of six and now owned close to two hundred.

“Well, how else can we find out what the professor’s up to?”

I shook my head. “We need a workable plan.”

“What you got in mind?”

“It’s a bit complicated. If we wait until the professor goes out then sneak in—that’s trespassing. If we ring and ask his permission—he’ll tell us to get lost.”

We trudged along the path in silence for several more minutes. Me, pushing a rusty wheelbarrow full of paint tins, brushes, hammers, nails, buckets, a shovel and a broken toolbox. Jack, humping an elephant sized back-pack.

“What if we dress up as meter-readers?” I suggested.

I could picture myself in an official meter-reading coat, a grey wig and coke-bottle glasses. To make the picture complete I’d carry a clipboard in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.

“And do what?”

“Well, while you distract the professor by explaining how he could cut down on his electricity bill, I could see if the shed was unlocked.”

Jack’s cheeky grin set his freckles dancing. “Or what about pretending to be the Avon Lady? You could keep the Prof. at the door by selling him wrinkle cream, while I did the Sherlock Holmes bit in the shed.”

I shook my head. “Sherlock Holmes smokes a pipe. One puff and you’d choke.”

We rounded the corner and came to the site of the first of the jumps along the fence-line. “This must be the hole Noah dug yesterday,” I said, smirking at the thought of Noah getting all hot and sweaty for a change. “Kate wants us to fill the hole with water.”

“I’ll do that,” offered Jack tossing the back-pack on the ground and hunting in the wheelbarrow. “Kate says horses hate jumping into water.” He pulled a face. “So I guess this is where most of us will fall off.”

The newly dug pit was about fifty centimeters deep, ten meters long and lined with blue plastic to stop the water from soaking into the ground. In front of the pit Noah had rolled a largish log. The idea was to jump the log into the water and trot out the other side. I shuddered at the thought. I could see myself falling off over the log and sitting in the water—wet, muddy and horseless. That’s if I made it this far.

“I’ll go look for a tap while you wire the jump number to the log.” Jack unfastened the straps on his back-pack and drew out a white square with a bright red number eight painted across the middle. I took the number then handed Jack two plastic buckets from the wheel-barrow.

Jack wandered off while I stared at the professor’s fence, high chain wire, topped with three strands of barbed wire. This was totally weird. No-one built a fence like this unless they had something to hide.

Unable to make sense of the professor’s eggs or his fence, I knelt in the dirt beside the log and started work. The wire was thick and awkward. It cut into my fingers as I threaded it through the hole on top of the number then tried bending it around the log.

Gloves. I needed gloves to twist the wire. I stuck my hand in the wheelbarrow and hunted through the gear. No gloves. It was as I sucked blood from my sore finger and thought—hey, I might wait until Jack comes back, let him twist the stupid wire—that I heard the noise. A sort of faint whimpering sound. At first I thought it must be a bird but when the whimper changed to a bark, then a yelp, I scrambled to my feet. It was a dog. But where was the sound coming from?

“Hey, Cha! Come here! Quick!”

“What is it, Jack?” I raced across to where I could see Jack kneeling on the ground.

Beside him a small furry animal snarled and struggled to get free from the fence. It was caught in the wire.

“He won’t let me touch him,” complained Jack. Blood dripped from his hand onto his shirt. “Every time I try to untangle his leg from the wire, he bites me.”

I moved closer and gasped in surprise. “It’s Pedro! Oooh, what happened, darling?”

“Who in the name of Zorro is Pedro?”

“It’s the professor’s guard-dog,” I answered, kneeling down to stroke the little Chihuahua’s head. “Quick, go get the wire-cutters from the wheelbarrow. Every time he struggles the wire digs deeper into his leg. And look—it’s bleeding.”

“So’s my hand,” muttered Jack.

While Jack went off to get the wire-cutters, I tried to calm Pedro. I told him he was a big brave dog, the wire was a nasty wicked monster, and I’d give him one of Leroy’s black jelly beans if he was a good boy. His eyes, wide with fear and pain, never left my face. His whimpers grew louder. If he could speak human I’m sure he’d be saying, ‘It hurts, Cha—please help me.’

“Hang on big guy,” I sniffed, as his long raspy tongue licked its way up my hand. “We’ll have you out in no time.”

The wire from the fence had wrapped itself around the dog’s back leg and I guess the more he pulled, the tighter the wire pulled back.

“Ooh…be careful, Jack,” I said when he returned with the wire-cutters and knelt down ready to cut the wire. I couldn’t watch. With one hand over Pedro’s eyes and the other holding the dog still, I sucked in a deep breath and turned my head away.

“Okay, you can both look now.”

“Thanks, Jack.” With Pedro’s hot smothering kisses making it hard to see what I was doing, I gently unwound the piece of wire from his leg. “There you go, boy. All free now.” I scooped the little dog up and tucked him under one arm. “Now, let’s take you home.”

Then it hit me.

“Hey, Jack. We
do
have a plan.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “We just walk up to the professor’s door and knock.”

“Check.”

“And it’s not like we’ll be trespassing.”

“Check.”

“Because we have a good reason for being on the professor’s property.”

“Check again.”

Jack scrambled to his feet and grinned like a three-year-old at a birthday party.

“And do you know the best part of this plan?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t even have to smoke a pipe!”

ELEVEN

I snuggled the little dog closer to my chest. “Okay, Pedro, let’s go see if
Uncle Tad
can fix your leg.”

Jack and I wriggled under the razor-sharp fence at the front of the property, brushed off the dirt and marched up the path toward the professor’s front door.

All long legs and clumping boots, Jack was striding along in front of me, when suddenly he stopped. He turned around, his eyes wide, his mouth slack. When he spoke, his voice was all croaky and breathless.

“Wh-what about the b-bull?”

Like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, I produced two carrots from my pocket. “Da Da!” I grinned. “Don’t worry, Jack. I grabbed these carrots for us to munch on while we were building the jumps. If Barnaby shows up, I guess you won’t mind giving him you carrot.”

Jack whooshed out his breath in relief. “Barnaby’s welcome to mine. I hate carrots. They taste like orange dirt.”

Tired from his fight with the fence, Pedro lay quietly in my arms, his black eyes blinking owlishly up at me.

It was about then I spotted the professor’s two-ton guard-bull. He was trotting toward us, snorting, tossing his head, springing from hoof to hoof. And he looked even bigger than the last time I’d met him

Jack and I froze.

Who did I think I was? I must be going soft in the head. Why did I think a couple of carrots would stop Barnaby from killing us and tossing bits of our bodies all over the paddock, like confetti?

Pedro lifted his head and whined. He’d seen Barnaby too.

Please be telling your big mate we’re friends
, I prayed.
And please, God, don’t let me wet my pants
.

The bull trotted closer. A few inches from becoming mincemeat, I jerked my arms out in front of me and showed Pedro to Barnaby. “L-look, Barnaby, it’s your mate, Pedro! He’s been hurt. We’re taking him to your boss. Okay?”

Immediately Barnaby’s eyes went soft. He nuzzled Pedro gently. Pedro yapped and whined in reply. Still shaking, I tucked the little dog under my arm and held out a carrot.

“Yum! Yum! Carrots, Barnaby.”

At the first bite the bull looked like a little kid being fed his first chocolate Easter-egg. All gooey eyed and slobbery. I dropped the two carrots on the ground and whispered to Jack, “Let’s go!”