by Ron Roy
“I’m Dink Duncan,” Dink said. “I’m here with my dad and two of my friends.” He unzipped his backpack and took out his toothbrush and toothpaste.
Trevor waved good-bye and left.
Dink stood in front of the mirror and began brushing his teeth. Rinsing his mouth, he noticed a dark hair on the sink where Trevor had been standing. He took a closer look. The hair looked the same as the straight black hairs Josh had pulled off his shirt last night.
Dink gently wrapped the new hair in a paper towel and stuck it in a pocket. Then he pulled a clean T-shirt from his backpack. As he tugged the one he’d been wearing over his head, he felt something stick his ear. He ran his fingers over the cloth and found a wood splinter.
Dink plucked out the sliver. It was pointy as a needle. When did I rub against something made of wood? he asked himself. Then he remembered shoving the plank off the River Diamond last night. He figured that the sliver must have stuck in his shirt while they were moving the plank.
Then he realized that the sliver was in the exact same place where the hairs had been on his shirt. Which meant that the hairs probably came from the plank, too. But how did the hairs get onto the plank?
Dink tugged on the clean T-shirt and combed his hair with his fingers. He decided that maybe one of the museum workers had rubbed his head against the plank, leaving behind the three hairs.
But the workers all wore hard hats, didn’t they?
Josh rushed into the bathroom. “Dude, they’ve got pancakes!” he said.
“Awesome. I’m starving,” Dink said.
“And scrambled eggs and sausage!”
Dink left the bathroom while Josh was brushing his teeth. The ladder that had fallen was now leaning against a wall. The plank was once again high up, making a bridge between two sturdy ladders.
“Morning, Spino,” Dink said as he walked past the skeleton. In the sleeping room, he dropped his backpack and hurried over to the breakfast table. Sylvia and the other chaperones were helping people fill up their plates. Ms. Walker was in line ahead of Dink. Dink noticed that her hair was light brown. Her two little kids were still in jammies. Their hair was blond.
Dink took a plate from the stack. “Eggs, Dink?” Sylvia asked. She was wearing the bracelet that Ruth Rose liked. The chunks of stone and metal clinked when she moved her arm.
“Yes, please, and a couple of pancakes, too,” Dink said. Sylvia spooned some eggs onto his plate, then added two pancakes.
He felt something poke his back. “This is a stickup!” a hoarse voice whispered. “Gimme your pancakes!”
Dink turned around and saw Josh’s grinning face. “I’m so hungry I could eat a dinosaur,” he said.
“Better than the other way around,” Ruth Rose said.
She liked to wear all one color. Yesterday, she’d worn all blue. Today, she had on orange pants and an orange sweatshirt and headband. Even her socks and sneakers were orange.
Dink laughed. He poured syrup over everything, grabbed an apple juice, and headed toward his sleeping bag. His father was sitting with Mr. Davis, so Dink joined them. A few minutes later, Josh and Ruth Rose carried their plates over.
“Where’s Alex?” Dink’s father asked Mr. Davis.
“Over there, behind an open book,” Mr. Davis said. He grinned. “The kid is always reading and making plans. He can’t decide if he wants to become a writer or a gemologist. Last week he wanted to be a detective.”
“What’s a gemologist?” Josh asked.
“Someone who studies gems,” Mr. Davis said. “Alex is nuts about rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. He made me bring him here to see the River Diamond.”
Just then Dr. Wurst and the museum workers came into the room. They all loaded up plates and sat in a group, eating.
After breakfast, everyone rolled up their sleeping bags and got their stuff together. Mr. Davis and Alex walked over to say good-bye.
“Let’s keep in touch,” Dink’s father said. He and Mr. Davis exchanged email addresses and phone numbers.
Mr. Davis handed Dink’s father his book of crossword puzzles. “I didn’t get to do any puzzles,” he said.
“Oh, I need to return your anagram book,” Dink’s father said. “Do you have it, Dink?”
“Yup,” Dink said. “In my backpack.”
“Keep it,” Mr. Davis said. “I have plenty more at home.”
Dink felt someone tug his shirt. It was Alex, holding one of his books. He pulled Dink a few yards away from the others.
Alex had on a baggy sweatshirt and jeans. His sneaker laces were untied, and his glasses were so smudged Dink didn’t know how the kid could read anything through them.
“What’s going on, Alex?” Dink asked.
“It’s fake!” Alex whispered.
Dink looked down into the kid’s anxious face. “What is?” he asked.
“The River Diamond,” Alex said. “It isn’t a diamond at all!”
“It’s not?” Dink said.
Alex’s head shook left and right. His hair was still messy from last night. He held up a book. “It’s a fake diamond, and I can prove it!”
Josh and Ruth Rose walked over.
“What’s happening?” Josh asked.
“Alex just told me the River Diamond isn’t real,” Dink said quietly.
“Oh yeah?” Josh said. “Well, then what is it?”
“It’s something else that’s hard, like concrete,” Alex said. “It might be mixed with mud. And the shiny parts could be chunks of black plastic.”
“How do you know, Alex?” Ruth Rose asked. “Dr. Wurst thinks it’s the River Diamond.”
Alex pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “When we got here yesterday, I looked at the River Diamond through my magnifying glass,” he said. “That one was a real diamond!”
“So how is this one a fake?” Josh asked, nodding his head toward the other room.
“There’s a scratch mark on one side of it, where the shiny black stuff shows through the mud,” Alex said. “A big scratch, and it wasn’t there before. Yesterday, I mean.”
“Well, that plank fell right on it,” Dink said. “That could have scratched the diamond, right?”
Alex shook his head. “Uh-uh.” He opened his book and pointed to a page. “It says right here, real diamonds are very hard. You can’t scratch them unless you do it with another diamond.”
The kids huddled and read the paragraph above Alex’s finger.
Dink turned around. The parents were busy saying good-bye to each other and to Sylvia and Dr. Wurst. “Can you show us the scratch?” he asked Alex.
“Sure,” Alex said. “Come on.”
Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose followed him into the Spino room. They walked past the colossal fossil and stopped at the River Diamond display dome.
Alex whipped his magnifying glass out of a pocket and handed it to Dink. “Look on that side, closest to Spino.”
Dink took the glass and leaned over the fence to get as close as he could.
“Don’t touch it, dude!” Josh said. “That alarm will go off again!”
“I’m not touching anything,” Dink said. He peered through Alex’s magnifying glass, making the diamond seem much bigger than its actual size. This made it easy for Dink to see a two-inch-long scratch along one edge.
He backed away and looked at Alex. “There is a scratch,” he said.
“I told you,” Alex said.
“But…I don’t get it,” Dink said. He handed the magnifying glass to Ruth Rose, who also studied the scratch mark. “If the board fell on the real diamond, it wouldn’t make a scratch, right, Alex?”
Alex nodded. “Wood couldn’t scratch a real diamond,” he said.
“Does that mean the diamond we found stuck under the board last night wasn’t the real Ri
ver Diamond?” Josh asked.
Dink nodded. “I guess so,” he said.
“But Sylvia picked it up, and they took it to Dr. Wurst’s office,” Ruth Rose said. “He must have thought it was the real River Diamond!”
“He didn’t get a good look at the diamond, though,” Dink said. “Remember, Sylvia just grabbed it, and they went right into his office. If Alex is right, the diamond Sylvia picked up was a fake. And now it’s here, inside the dome.”
“I have another idea,” Josh said. “What if the one we found under the plank last night was the real River Diamond? Sylvia carried the real diamond into Dr. Wurst’s office. Then, this morning, he put this fake one under the dome and kept the real one.”
“Why would he do that?” Dink asked.
Josh grinned. “Because it’s worth five million dollars!”
“What?” Dink said. “You think Dr. Wurst is trying to steal the River Diamond?”
Josh just looked at Dink and shrugged. “Maybe it was Dr. Wurst who made the plank crash into the dome so he could get the diamond,” he said. “That’s why he was so mad when he thought you almost got it first.”
“But Dr. Wurst wasn’t even in the museum last night until after the alarm went off,” Ruth Rose said.
“Dink? Guys?” Dink’s father said from behind them. “We’re ready to go. I have to be at my meeting in a couple of hours. Say good-bye to Alex.”
Everyone dragged their backpacks and sleeping bags past Spino, through the museum, and out the door. Sylvia and the other chaperones thanked them for coming, and the kids all thanked them for a fun sleepover.
“The dino cookies were awesome!” Josh told Sylvia. “I ate four!”
Sylvia smiled. “Only four?” she said.
A lot of the people climbed into taxis. Some were picked up by cars. Mr. Davis and Alex headed for a subway station.
Dink, his father, Josh, and Ruth Rose walked to their hotel, a few blocks away.
“Well, did you kids have fun?” Dink’s father asked.
“It was a blast,” Josh said. “Lots of food, and I didn’t get eaten by a dinosaur!”
“Thank you, Mr. Duncan,” Ruth Rose said. “I never knew about Spinosaurus before we came here.”
“I liked everything,” Dink said. “Thanks, Dad!”
“You can explore some of Boston while I’m at my meeting,” Mr. Duncan said. “You could go ride on the Swan Boats. Or maybe go see Paul Revere’s house.”
“I have a guidebook,” Ruth Rose said. “It has a map that shows lots of stuff to do.”
“Good,” Mr. Duncan said. “My meeting will be out by four, and I’ll see you at the hotel around four-thirty.”
At the hotel, the kids dropped off their packs and sleeping bags. Dink’s father handed him some money. “Got your cell phone?” he asked.
Dink patted his pocket. “Yup.”
“Good! Now you guys go see Boston, and I’m headed for a hot shower!”
Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose walked out onto the street.
“We’ve got lots of time till four-thirty,” Dink said. “Know what I want to do?”
“Tell us,” Josh said.
“Find the River Diamond,” Dink answered. “The real one.”
Josh and Ruth Rose stared at him.
“I know it’s crazy,” Dink said. “But Alex convinced me that the diamond we saw yesterday was the real deal. So if the diamond under the dome is a fake, what happened to the one we saw yesterday?”
“I still think Dr. Wurst stole the real River Diamond,” Josh said. “Then he shoved the fake diamond under the plank so people would think the plank fell on it, and that’s what made the scratch.”
“But when could he have done it, Josh?” Ruth Rose insisted. “Dr. Wurst left the museum last night.”
Josh wiggled his eyebrows. “He could have snuck back in after we were all asleep,” he said.
The kids sat on a bench. A pigeon flew over and landed at their feet.
Dink said, “Well, someone made that plank crash into the diamond case to steal the diamond. Josh is right: whoever took the real diamond stuck that phony one under the plank.”
“And you think we can find the real one?” Ruth Rose asked. “How?”
Dink grinned. “I have a clue.”
He pulled the anagram book from his pocket and showed Ruth Rose and Josh the three black hairs.
“Remember these?” Dink asked.
“Sure, I found them on your shirt last night,” Josh said.
“Right,” Dink said, “and I think they got onto my shirt when we were trying to shove that plank off the diamond. I mean off the fake diamond. I think the hairs were on the plank before they were on my shirt.”
“Okay,” Josh said. “So?”
“So what if the hairs came from the person who made the plank fall onto the diamond case?” Dink said. He put the hairs and the book back in his pocket. “When the thief lifted the plank to wedge the fake diamond under it, he must have left these hairs behind. Then he ran out of the museum with the real River Diamond.”
“But it happened in the middle of the night,” Ruth Rose said. “It had to be someone who was in the museum with us, right?”
Dink nodded. “Right,” he said. “This morning I met a scientist in the bathroom. He works in the lab there. His name is Trevor. He has black hair.”
Dink showed Josh and Ruth Rose the hair he’d found on the bathroom sink. “I think this hair came from Trevor,” he said. “And it looks the same as the three that Josh found on my shirt.”
“Sylvia has black hair, too,” Josh said.
“Sylvia?” Ruth Rose said. “Could she push that plank off those ladders? It took the three of us to move it!”
“She wouldn’t have to,” Dink said. “Remember, last night one of the guards told us the ladder fell first. The ladder landed on the plank, making it fall. All Sylvia had to do was shove the ladder.”
“But if Sylvia didn’t touch the plank,” Ruth Rose asked, “how could her hair be on it?”
“Her hair could have gotten on the plank when she put the fake diamond under it,” Dink said. “After it fell.”
“What about this Trevor guy?” asked Josh. “Was he in the museum last night?”
Dink shrugged. “Maybe. He could have hidden in the lab all night,” he said. “All Trevor would have to do is sneak out real late and make the crash, setting off the alarm. Then he could grab the actual River Diamond when it rolled onto the floor, and leave the fake one under the plank.”
“So you think the thief is either Sylvia or Trevor?” Ruth Rose asked.
Dink shrugged. “They both have black hair, and they both could have done it during the night,” he said.
“Or it could have been Dr. Wurst,” Josh added. “Maybe he came back and hid somewhere until we were sleeping.”
“I guess he could have,” Ruth Rose agreed.
“Wait a minute!” Josh said. “What if all three of them are in on it? Dr. Wurst, Trevor, and Sylvia could have pulled it off together!”
Dink looked at Josh. “How would they do it?” he asked.
Josh closed his eyes for a few seconds. “Okay, here’s how. Sylvia waits till we’re all asleep, and then she sneaks out of the room and meets Trevor. She has the fake diamond in one of the pockets in her cargo pants.
“She or Trevor shoves the ladder into the plank, and the plank falls. It smashes into the River Diamond dome, and the alarm goes off.
“The River Diamond falls onto the floor, and Trevor grabs it. He sticks the fake diamond under the plank and takes off with the real one. Some of his hair catches on the plank, but he doesn’t know it.
“As soon as Trevor is out the door, Sylvia comes in and tells us there was an accident.”
“But what abou
t Dr. Wurst?” Ruth Rose asked. “He came a few minutes later, and he looked like he’d just gotten out of bed.”
“That was part of their plan!” Josh said.
“But Sylvia grabbed the diamond and took it to Dr. Wurst’s office,” Dink said. “Dr. Wurst thought it was the real one.”
“No,” Josh said, grinning. “He only pretended to think she picked up the real one. If he was partners with Sylvia and Trevor, he knew they already had the real diamond. He knew she was grabbing the fake. Then, this morning, he put the fake one under the dome.”
Dink and Ruth Rose just stared at Josh.
“The three of them would wait awhile,” Josh continued, “then sell the River Diamond and split the five million bucks!”
“If you’re right, that was brilliant,” Ruth Rose said.
“Yup, they get rich, and poor Mr. Alanis gets a hunk of cement and mud,” he said.
Dink stood up. “That’s why we’re going to find the real diamond for him!” he said.
“How?” Josh asked.
“I have an idea,” Dink said. “But we have to go back to the museum.”
They started walking. “How would anyone be able to make a fake diamond so it looked just like the real River Diamond?” Josh asked.
“Sylvia could probably do it,” Ruth Rose said. “She told me she makes jewelry, and she made that bracelet she always wears.”
“The real one looked like a dirty hunk of black coal,” Dink reminded them. “So the fake one had to look exactly the same.”
“Her bracelet has chunks of stone, metal, and plastic in it,” Ruth Rose went on.
“Great! Let’s go arrest her!” Josh said.
“Slow down, Josh,” Dink said. “We have no proof that she did anything, and the same for Trevor and Dr. Wurst.”
Josh shook his head. “You’re right,” he said. “So how do we get proof?”
“I’ve been thinking about this since I woke up,” Dink said. “What if we go see Trevor? I’ll show him the hairs we found on my shirt and ask if they’re from a man or woman. See what he says.”