“Don’t get in the way of any of ’em that breathe fire, Dev.”
“Those would be dragons, Tapp, not dinos.”
I hung up with Tapp and texted my mother. “Going to museum. Can U meet us there? Someone has been bullying our friend, and we think we’ve found him there.”
I stashed the phone in my jeans pocket so I would feel it vibrate when she responded.
“Want to make a dash for it?” Booker asked. “We just have to run across Central Park West and up the steps of the museum.”
“Give me a couple of minutes to put this together,” I said.
“I think it’s as together as it’s going to get,” Booker said. “Those two guys, Steve and Chip, brought Ling into their project because she could translate all the documents from Chinese to English.”
“Yeah, but—”
“It was an old hoax, and those men were going to try to work it all over again, with newer technology and better techniques. But in order to do that, Steve was smart enough to want to study the original hoax, in Chinese, to learn the details of what had gone wrong.”
“So that photograph,” I said, “is actually a forged instrument.”
“Instrument?” Booker asked.
“That’s what it’s called in the Penal Law. My mom’s handled lots of forgeries.”
“So Ling is one of their victims,” he said. “The first one, but not the last. Even President Sutton will have to buy into the results if nobody steps up to challenge them before this goes public.”
I turned to look at Ling. “Both Steve and Chip are in this together?”
“I can’t be sure of that,” she said.
“Well, do you trust Chip?”
“I don’t trust many people at the moment. I told you that,” Ling said. “Mostly, he did whatever Steve asked him to do. I just assumed that they are partners in this.”
“It’s a good assumption,” I said.
“There’s one thing I need that will help me make my case to your immigration people, for my visa,” Ling said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I’m embarrassed to say it to you, because—well—Katie’s your friend.”
“You can tell Dev anything,” Booker said. “She’s a straight shooter. She doesn’t hold a grudge.”
“If I had those bones that Chip Donner took away from Katie, the first night of the dig, then maybe I can prove that I’m the one who doesn’t want to go through with this illegal plan.”
“They were tailbones, Ling, weren’t they?” I asked. “That’s what made them so special.”
“That’s right,” she said. “Steve wouldn’t have been able to carry out his plan until one of us found exactly the right fossil.”
“And Katie Cion did,” I said. “Because without a tailbone, the men could not have created the phony photograph that shows a new species. They absolutely needed a tailbone to work with. Even if they get caught later on, they might get away with faking it for now.”
“I should never have let Chip take those pieces away from her,” Ling said, putting her hands in her face. “I feel so badly about that. I knew what he was doing.”
I stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders. “It’s not your fault.”
“But now we’ll never be able to find them,” she said. “We’ll never get them back.”
I looked up, over her head, at Booker.
“Just last week,” she went on, “Chip told me they were in the care of a preparator, off-site of the museum. Chip said he couldn’t get them back right away, that he couldn’t put his hands on them for a while.”
“Oh, I bet I can put my hands on them,” Booker said, getting revved up for the task ahead.
“It’s the perpetrators, not the preparators, who’ve got the bones,” I said.
Ling looked up. “What do you mean?”
“The only thing standing between us and a colossal faked fossil scandal are a few raindrops,” I said, taking my bag back from Booker and putting it around my neck and over my shoulder. “What do you say the three of us take on those bullies?”
34
Booker led the way out of the cottage and up the path to Central Park West. When the traffic light turned, he shouted to both Ling and me to run across the broad avenue and power up the steps of the museum.
We were all pretty well soaked by the time we got inside. The rain was coming down in sheets and the thunder sounded like it was getting closer and closer to us.
I stopped just past the security desk and took out my phone to check for messages.
“Anything from your mom?” Booker asked.
“Not yet,” I said, speed-dialing another number.
“Then who are you calling?”
“Who do you think, Booker?” I said. “The rightful owner of the bones.”
Katie answered the phone on the third ring. She whispered my name when she answered.
“Why are you talking so softly?” I asked.
“Can you believe I’m in my room? I’m not supposed to be using my phone because I’m grounded for the rest of the day.”
“What for?”
“I said something stupid to my brother and he snitched on me.”
“You can’t be grounded today. Booker and I need you.”
“We’ll have to get together another afternoon,” she said.
“This is not a social invitation or a date,” I said as firmly as I could. “We’re at the Museum of Natural History with Ling. And we’re going to take possession of the first three fossils you found in Montana. You’re the only one who can claim them, Katie. The only one.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“That will be way too late. Let me talk to your mom.”
“She’s not here. She’s at the dentist right now. Too late for what?”
“I can’t explain right now, but you’ve got to get yourself to the museum.”
“My brother and his friends are between me and the front door. Do you expect me to just fly out the window?”
“Sorry! I don’t mean to make it any worse for you, that’s for sure,” I said. “And for what it’s worth, whatever you said to your brother, he probably deserved it. I’ll call you later.”
I hung up and started walking down the long corridors with Booker and Ling, weaving our way through dioramas filled with mammals of all shapes and sizes.
We climbed staircases and finally got to the velvet rope that separated the floors of exhibits from the labs and storage rooms on the fifth floor.
“How did you ever find the lab room?” Ling asked. “It’s not on any of the museum floor plans.”
“Booker’s great at making friends,” I said.
I rehooked the rope behind us and we made our way up to the turret. The rain was beating so hard against the windows I couldn’t see very far outside in any direction. There was a loud clap of thunder and then a streak of lightning that split through the fog like an arrow falling to the ground.
Ling was startled. Her hand flew to her chest.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re inside, and it’s just an electrical storm.”
“Are you afraid of seeing Steve?” Booker asked.
Ling hesitated. “Not as long as you two are with me.”
I took her hand and squeezed it hard. “Of course we will be.”
I glanced at my phone as we approached the lab door, willing my mother to give me a sign that she was on her way here with Sam. “Booker, how many bars do you have on your phone?”
He looked at it. “No signal.”
“That happens in lots of spots around the museum,” Ling said. “These thick, heavy old walls make it hard to get reception.”
“I vote we get started then,” I said. “Why don’t you knock on the door, Booker?”
“Ladies first,
Dev.”
I scowled at him, then made a fist and knocked.
“Enter.” It was a man’s voice, and it sounded muffled, probably because of the thick walls and oak panels of the door.
I motioned to Ling to stand off to the side, out of sight, and then I turned the handle.
“Well, well, well, Missy,” Chip Donner said. “Seems like you just can’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
“It’s not a very good answer, Chip. Besides, Booker and I are looking for Steve.”
“More nonsense about Katie Cion’s bones, is it?”
“In fact, Katie should be here any minute now to claim them herself,” I said.
“Good luck with that,” he said, turning back to the newspaper he was reading.
It was a fiblet, but a small one, in the name of justice. I mean, she should have been there, the way I figured it. That part of wishing for it was true.
“Why don’t you just scoot on out of here, Dev?”
“’Cause Booker and I are looking for Steve.”
“Steve Paulson’s the man of the hour, little lady,” Chip said. “He’s holding court down in the main conference room, giving all the bigwigs on the museum staff a preview of the Archaeoraptor bigtimberus.”
The man didn’t even have the courtesy to name the new species for Ling, after he’d used her in such a terrible way? I couldn’t believe it.
“You heard me, Dev. This is no place for amateurs.”
I took a deep breath and walked straight into the room to get right up alongside Chip Donner. I had to create a distraction to allow Booker to do his thing.
Booker followed my lead and walked around the other side of the table to the spot where he’d put Katie’s bones.
“What’s the part of ‘get out of here’ that you two don’t understand?” Chip asked, looking around at Booker.
I tapped Chip on the shoulder, pulling up the photo app on my phone, to get him to turn his attention back to me. “Want to see what I meant this morning, when I told you guys I had actually snapped a photograph?” I asked.
He did a double take as he grabbed the phone from my hand and stared at the picture.
“You didn’t photograph this on a hillside in Montana,” he said, raising his voice at me. “When did you get this shot?”
He was up from his stool and towering over me, making me back up toward the hallway.
“You’d better give that phone to me!” I said.
“Keep away from her, Mr. Donner,” Booker shouted, coming between the tall Montanan and me.
I was through the door, nearly tripping over my own feet. I was scared of Chip, now that his temper was flaring and he had taken control of my only way of reaching my mom.
“I’m going to have to get security up here to move the two of you out,” Chip said. “It’s easier to get rid of vermin than of you and Booker.”
“We’re going to leave on our own,” I said. “Just hand over my phone.”
He was holding the phone way over his head in his left arm. “Come pick it up tomorrow,” he said. “From the museum’s lost and found.”
“My mom won’t like that one bit,” I said. “She’s bound to come looking for it, Chip. She’s certain to come right up here to your office.”
“This time tomorrow, Dev, she can bring in her troops and look for us as long as she likes,” Chip said, getting ready to slam the door in our faces. “We’ll be on our way to the next dig.”
“But my phone, Chip! You’ve got to—”
“Oops!”
Chip Donner slammed my phone against the floor and shattered its screen. I watched it skid across the room till it crashed up against the back workbench. “I hear the newer model is even better than this one,” he said.
Then he kicked the door shut with his boot, banging it with a sound as loud as the thunder overhead.
35
“Follow me,” Booker said, running in the opposite direction from the turret through which we’d come up to the fifth floor. Ling ran along with us.
When we reached the far end, we ducked around the corner and I tried to catch my breath.
“Better to come this way—no security guards right downstairs,” he said.
“Did you snatch them back for us?” I asked. “Katie’s bones?”
“You set up a good cover, Dev, even if it did cost you your phone,” Booker said, removing the small pouch from his jeans pocket. “Here they are.”
Ling’s mouth dropped open. “You actually have the vertebrae that Katie picked up from the hillside? How did you find them?”
“That’s a story for another time,” I said. “It was a very Sherlockian deduction.”
Booker handed the fossils to me and I tucked them carefully into my bag.
“What’s in this for Steve and for Chip?” I asked Ling. “Besides fame.”
“Make no mistake,” she said, “if no one can call their bluff by doing a CT scan of the bones in that faked photograph, then Steve Paulson will be on the way to restoring his reputation and he can blame me for faking this. Someone might discover the hoax eventually, but not before tonight’s announcement. And by then it might already be too late.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What about his reputation?”
“Then you don’t know what happened in Patagonia, do you?” she asked. “About his work on the Titanosaur?”
“No!” I said. “I mean, we found a reference to the fact that Steve was terminated from that dig site, but not even my friend, Liza, who lives in Argentina, could find out why.”
“The correct meaning of ‘terminated’ in this case would be ‘fired,’” Ling said. “Steve was trying to poach some dinosaur bones in the same region as the dig.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “What happened?”
“The authorities caught him, but they agreed to drop the charges and not publicize the story in exchange for the return of the stolen fossils.”
“Why would they do that?” Booker asked.
“I only heard the story recently,” Ling said. “One of my friends in Argentina said the government was anxious to discourage poachers, because the Patagonian region is so rich in fossil deposits.”
“So they just let Steve go,” Booker said, “instead of publicizing the incident to call attention to how easy it can be to poach things there.”
“Exactly,” Ling said. “Same as they usually do in China.”
I shook my head. “Okay, so he can’t go back to Argentina to dig, and we’re going to make sure he can’t ever show his face in Montana again,” I said, ticking off places on my fingers. “Where’s he off to at this point?”
Ling thought for a moment. “I think he’s planning to head to China, which is really the best badlands for fossil finds right now. Steve can make a fortune there, between poaching bones in the poorest regions of the country, and faking all kinds of finds like he’s trying to do here tonight.”
I leaned back against the cold marble wall of the quiet corridor. “What a bad guy he is, Ling. Wow! He might have stopped you from getting your degree here.”
There was a huge bang that jolted me out of my thoughts. I stood at the intersection of the two corridors and peeked around the corner.
I pulled back immediately and whispered to Booker and Ling. “It’s Chip. He came out, slammed the lab door behind him, and now he’s locking it.”
“It hasn’t been locked this whole time,” Booker said.
“No one ever locks these doors,” Ling said. “The museum is a community of scholars, and trust is at the core of it all. The president wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “We basically have what we need to prove Ling’s point.”
“What if he’s looking for me?” Ling asked, panicked at that idea. “I mean, not for the bones, but for me,
personally?”
“Take it easy,” I said. “He doesn’t even know you’re with us. Besides, he’s walked off the other way.”
“Chip must be going to tell Steve about the photographs he found on Dev’s phone,” Booker said, “and warn him that we were up here.”
“What about my mother?” I asked, suddenly fearing that I wouldn’t know if she texted back that she was on her way to help us. “She must be trying to reach me. Are you getting any bars on this side of the hallway?”
Booker and Ling both pulled out their phones. “Nothing,” Booker said. “Maybe it’s the storm.”
The thunder booms sounded closer together now, as though the worst of the action was centered right over the museum.
“How about I go downstairs and call your mom from there?” Booker asked. “I’ll find out how close she is.”
“Thanks, Booker. I owe you big time.”
“I’ll go downstairs with you, if you don’t mind,” Ling said.
I tensed up, even though I knew Chip had left the floor. “You’re safe here with me, Ling.”
“It just makes me feel—well—I don’t want to be up here, near Steve’s office.”
“You feel safer with Booker, too,” I said. “I get it.”
“You can come, too,” Booker said. “We can all go together. Chip did lock the door.”
“I think I need to keep an eye on the lab,” I said, gritting my teeth. “It’s the center of Steve’s entire operation. And he must have a key, also. Whatever kind of feathers he pasted to Katie’s fossil are probably hidden inside there, too.”
“You’re not going to try to get in there again?” Booker asked.
“No way. I’m not anxious to get caught in the middle of Steve Paulson and Chip Donner,” I said. “I just want to watch it, in case either one of them comes back. They can’t get away with any of the faked fossils. You’re only going downstairs to make a phone call, aren’t you?”
“Or coming right back up with your mom,” Booker said. “She might be here at the museum already, for all we know.”
That was a calming thought.
“Okay,” I said.
I sat down on the floor, out of the line of sight of the lab door. It was so still up here that I’d be able to hear anyone who came along.
Digging For Trouble Page 19