The Dinosaur Mystery (7 page)
Violet gave Dr. Pettibone her sweetest smile. “Yes, I would like to give it a try. Thank you for asking me. I'll be very, very careful.”
“What can we do, Dr. Pettibone?” Henry asked. “Do you have anything heavy I can move for you? Boxes or crates or anything?”
Dr. Pettibone stared hard at Henry but didn't answer the question. Instead he said, “Come over here, and I'll show you what needs doing.” Dr. Pettibone waved Jessie and Henry over to the workbench where several white blocks were lined up. “There are some other dinosaur fossils inside these blocks. Perhaps you could drill off the plaster casts and get it down to the rock matrix.”
The children began their work and didn't even look up when the phone rang sometime later.
“Fine, Archie,” the Aldens overheard Dr. Pettibone say. “Yes, you can bring the other children down to the lab as long as you or Emma stays here with them. They can label some of the fossils with Violet's labels. I have an appointment, so just let yourself in. I'll leave the door unlocked.”
As soon as he hung up the phone, Dr. Pettibone seemed rushed again, the way he'd been in the elevator. He grabbed his coat and hat and paced up and down. As soon as he heard Mr. Diggs at the office door in back, he yelled out: “Come in, Archie. I'll talk to you later.” With that, he pulled up his coat collar, pulled down his hat, and rushed past Mr. Diggs, Benny, and Soo Lee.
“Titus! Titus!” Mr. Diggs called out, but Dr. Pettibone had disappeared out the door.
“Hey, neat pieces of rock.” Benny picked up some chips Violet had chiseled away. “What's inside that hunk anyway?”
“A dinosaur joint,” Violet answered without looking up.
“Can we watch?” Soo Lee asked, her eyes alive with curiosity. “I want to see the rock turn into a dinosaur bone.”
Mr. Diggs came over to watch Violet, too. “I knew this would be a good job for you. While you won't be able to finish such a detailed job during your short visit at the Pickering, whatever you get done will be a good start.”
With Mr. Diggs supervising, the older children worked all afternoon, carefully chipping the outer layers of plaster and rock on the fossils.
“Here, Benny and Soo Lee. Help me brush some of this protective coating on some of these fossils,” Mr. Diggs told the younger children. “Mind you, you'll have to wear these rubber gloves. We can't touch the fossils directly, or they'll get damaged.”
Benny and Soo Lee stood on step stools so they could reach the workbench.
“This is just like painting,” Benny said as he carefully brushed each fossil with a thin coating. “Hey, I just thought of something. Even if the missing dino bones show up, won't they be wrecked if someone touched them?”
Mr. Diggs looked up from what he was doing. He took off his special binocular glasses and sighed. “That's what we're all afraid of, Benny. The
Tyrannosaurus
skeleton bones are already protected with this coating, but they are still very delicate. If the person who took or disturbed the bones doesn't know how to handle them, he or she could cause a lot of damage.”
Henry put down the rock chunk he had been drilling. “Do the police have any idea yet who might have taken the bones?”
Mr. Diggs sighed again. “They've talked to the whole staff, and no one saw anything that night except the shadow you mentioned. Jessie and I heard that alarm. And Jessie saw that light. But Pete says something's wrong with the system that makes it go off. So that was a dead end, too. We wonder if someone on the construction crew might have bumped into the skeleton by mistake, broken off some of it, then tried to make the accident look like a theft. There are all kinds of theories about what happened, but nothing definite.”
Violet took a soft, dry brush to whisk away the rock chips. “Would any of these bones fit on the
Tyrannosaurus
?”
“I'm afraid not, Violet,” Mr. Diggs said. “The
Tyrannosaurus
skeleton was found complete, with every bone in place. It was a unique find. It was going to be the main attraction of Dino World. If the actual bones don't turn up, Titus and Mrs. Diggs and I are going to have to make some plastic bone models.”
Jessie put down her work glasses. “But it won't be the same, will it, Mr. Diggs?”
“No, it won't. Those bones are irreplaceable,” Mr. Diggs said. “I can't imagine why anyone would take them, though in a strange way, that's my only hope. A thief who knew the value of those bones would probably be careful with them, whereas somebody who just damaged them by accident and covered them up wouldn't know how to handle them. If that's what happened, our
T. rex
will never be the same again.”
“Would it be okay if we help search for the bones, Mr. Diggs?” Henry asked. “We're not busy tonight. Maybe we could look around.”
Mr. Diggs nodded. “It might not be a bad idea.”
The phone rang just as Mr. Diggs was about to show Benny and Soo Lee how to label the fossils. He peeled off his rubber gloves and picked up the receiver. “Oh, hello, Eve. Yes, I was just working in the fossil lab with the Aldens.” There was a pause at Mr. Diggs's end. The children could actually hear Dr. Skyler's loud voice coming through the phone. “There, there. Now calm down,” Mr. Diggs said. “I know the work crew was supposed to finish painting the ceiling. All right, I'll send them down right away. No, don't worry, they'll be there.”
Mr. Diggs hung up the phone and turned to the children. “Sorry to interrupt you children, but Eve needs a hand. It seems when the painters carried their scaffolding through the planetarium, they scraped the walls and ceiling and left nicks and scratches,” Mr. Diggs explained. “The marks interfere with the sky show, and Eve is quite upset about it.”
Benny said, “She was yelling at the big men just like they were babies when we came here. Dr. Skyler sure gets angry a lot.”
Mr. Diggs had to laugh. “Well, Benny, she just gave me a good scolding, too. Not that I blame her. The work people are sometimes careless with their equipment. We certainly can't have scrapes and marks on the ceiling, or we'll be projecting things in the sky that aren't really there! That's what's got Eve madder than a hornet right now! I guess the best thing is to get over there right away.”
“Don't worry Mr. Diggs, I can touch up the marks,” Henry said. “We've painted lots of things before and made them good as new.”
“Good,” Mr. Diggs said. “Let's clean off these instruments and put them away.”
The children took off their work glasses, peeled away their rubber gloves, and went over to the sink to wash up.
“Eeew, what's this messy bucket of white stuff?” Jessie asked when she went to turn on the hot water. “It's so heavy.”
Mr. Diggs came over to see what Jessie was talking about. He stuck his finger into the bucket and swirled up something wet and sniffed it. “Goodness, it's plaster of Paris,” he said.
“Plaster from Paris?” Benny asked. “It came all the way from France?”
Smiling, Mr. Diggs shook his head. Then he took a scraper and tried to scrape the white stuff away from the sides of the bucket. It was much too thick and hard to handle. He moved the bucket under the faucet and ran hot water into it. “There, that will make some of it dissolve so we can get rid of it. Was Titus showing you how to make plaster of Paris?” Mr. Diggs asked, looking very puzzled.
Violet shook her head. “He only told us it's used to protect fossils after they dig them up.”
Jessie pointed to the block of plaster and rock she had been working on. “He did show us how to drill away the plaster to get to the rock but not how to make it.”
Mr. Diggs scratched his head. “Plaster of Paris is something we use at the sites where we find the fossils. It beats me why Titus would have to mix up any here at the lab. And I certainly can't understand why he would leave it all sloppy like this. It's the devil to clean up once it starts to harden. I'll just let the bucket soak and talk to Titus about it later.”
“I'm sorry we have to leave so soon,” Violet said. “Dr. Pettibone said I could help him make fossil sketches.”
The phone rang again. Dr. Skyler wanted the Aldens down at the planetarium. On the double.
D
r. Skyler was pacing up and down the hall outside the planetarium when the Aldens arrived. “It's about time,” she said, checking her watch. “Half the museum is working on Dino World, and nobody pays any attention to my planetarium. The stars and planets are just as important as those dusty old bones!”
“Mr. Diggs said you needed some painting done,” Henry said.
“Yes,” Dr. Skyler snapped. “If you get started now, the ceiling will be dry by morning. I don't want to miss any more shows. Do you know that during the shows today, everyone kept asking about the scratch marks that showed through?”
The Aldens went straight to work. Violet helped Benny and Soo Lee spread drop cloths across all the planetarium seats. Dr. Skyler wrapped the star projector in plastic to protect it from paint drips. Henry and Jessie set up the ladders, stirred the paint, and prepared the brushes and rollers.
The Aldens were relieved to see Dr. Skyler leave.
“In a way I can't blame her,” Henry said as he climbed the ladder, “Look at this.”
Even from down below, the other children could see that the lower sections of the dome ceiling of the planetarium were scuffed and scratched, just as Dr. Skyler had said.
“We'll make it a nice smooth sky again,” Jessie said.
“We'll clean up more,” said Benny. He and Soo Lee went to work.
Slowly and carefully, Henry began painting over all the little marks. After his neck and shoulders got cramped from looking up, Jessie took over the job.
Finally, two hours later, they were done.
“The dome looks completely smooth now,” Violet said. “I wish we could try out the projector to see how it looks with stars on it.”
“We'd better wait until tomorrow,” Henry said. “Let's just clean up.”
“I can't wait to take a shower and wash my face and hair,” Jessie said. “I'm covered with paint speckles.”
“Paint
freckles
!”
Soo Lee said with a laugh.
The children neatly folded up the drop cloths, unwrapped the star projector, and rinsed out the brushes in the storage room sink. Henry and Jessie hammered down the paint can lids and wiped down the cans so there wouldn't be any paint drips.
“Benny, reach in the cabinet under the sink and hand me another packet of those paper towels,” Jessie asked. “I'm down to the last sheet.”
Benny scooted under the sink and stuck his head inside. But when he came out again, he wasn't holding paper towels. “Look what I found. Posters!”
“More Dino World posters!” Jessie cried. “Why are they under here? We could have used these when we were out this morning.”
Benny was the first to notice something strange about the posters. “I think these
are
the posters we put up this morning. Look, there's tape attached to some of them and thumbtack marks on some of the others.”
“I hate to say it because we don't know for sure,” Jessie began, “but I bet Dr. Skyler was the person the shopkeeper told Mrs. Diggs about. You know, the one who said she wanted the posters for a souvenir?”
“Some souvenir,” Henry said. “I bet Dr. Skyler
did
take them down. She just doesn't want people to come to Dino World and take visitors away from her planetarium.”
Jessie gathered up the posters. “We'd better show these to Mr. and Mrs. Diggs right away. They need to know what Dr. Skyler has been up to.”
Henry let the children out of the storage room and shut the door.
“Open the door again, Henry!” Jessie yelled. “The lights are out in the planetarium. It's dark as night out here except for the exit light. We need the light from that little window in the storage room.”
Henry reopened the door, but the light from the small window didn't do much. “Can you find your way to the exit door?” Henry yelled to his sister.
“Barely,” Jessie said, “but I'll try anyway.” Feeling her way along the aisle seats, she followed the dim exit light to the door. She pulled, and she pushed it, but the door didn't budge. “It's locked,” she shouted to the other children. She banged several times. “It's no use. It's way past closing time.”
“Can we call anyone?” Violet asked.
“The phone is in Dr. Skyler's office up there.” Henry pointed to the darkened office overlooking the planetarium. “But we can't get to it with the exit door locked.”
Henry checked the door again, “Looks like we're stuck here. Hey, wait a minute! Maybe we can signal for help over the remote camera.”
The children tried to make out where the remote camera was located. They finally spotted it on the ceiling. They jumped up and down and waved their arms. But they had no way of knowing whether the camera was working or even whether anyone was watching the screen at the other end.