by Ron Roy
“That’s what Nog, I mean Jack, was wearing!” Ruth Rose said.
Dink noticed a few black hairs on the inside of the box lid. He wet a finger, picked up one of the hairs, and slipped it into his pocket.
“Do you kids know Jack?” the man asked.
“Yes, we met him at the New England Children’s Museum!” Ruth Rose said. “He was wearing this, and he said he lived near Paul Revere’s house. We want to talk to him about…a mystery we’re trying to solve.”
The man nodded. “Jack rented this caveman outfit for his job at the museum,” he said. “I don’t know why he brought it back so soon. Maybe he got fired!”
Or if he stole the River Diamond, worth millions of dollars, maybe he quit! Dink thought. And that’s why he returned the costume!
“Can you tell us where he lives?” Ruth Rose asked.
The man walked over to the front window and pointed. “See that red-brick building?” he asked. “He’s in one of those apartments.”
The kids thanked him and left his store. They walked toward the brick apartment building. There was a small window on each side of the door.
Dink pulled the paper towel from his pocket. He placed the hair he’d taken from the costume box next to the other hairs. “I think it’s the same as the other three,” he said. “All from Nog’s costume.”
“And three of the four hairs were on that plank,” Ruth Rose added. “So—”
“So it must have been Nog who made the plank fall,” Josh interrupted. “Then he stuck the fake diamond under the plank, leaving the hairs behind. Nog is the thief!”
The three kids stared at the apartment building. The windows made Dink think of eyes, watching him. And Jack might be somewhere in that building. “Is anyone else scared?” Dink asked.
The kids climbed up the cement steps and looked at the name tags next to the door. “This one says Jack Rapp,” Ruth Rose said. “With the letter B after his name.”
A woman came up behind them with an armload of grocery bags. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“We’re looking for Jack,” Dink told her.
“Down those stairs,” she said, pointing with her chin because her hands were full of bags. “He’s in the basement apartment next to that lilac bush. Now, if I could just get my keys!”
“Can we hold your bags for you?” Ruth Rose asked.
“That would be lovely!” the woman said. She handed her grocery bags to the kids and fished in a pocket for her keys.
When the door was open, she took back the bags. “If Jack isn’t home, try looking in the backyard. He has a sort of studio there. He’s some kind of artist.”
“What does he make?” Dink asked.
“I’m not sure,” the woman said. “Jack is very private. I’ve never been inside his little shed.”
The kids went down the basement steps and rang the bell for Jack Rapp. They heard it ring inside, but no one came to the door.
“Guys, what do we say to him if he answers the door?” Ruth Rose asked.
Dink pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “I’ll ask him to take a selfie with us,” he said.
Josh giggled. “Why do you want a selfie of a man who pretends to be a caveman, who might be a diamond thief?” he asked.
“I’ll say it’s for our school mystery project,” Dink said. “Then we’ll have his fingerprints on my phone!”
But no one answered the door.
“Let’s try the studio,” Ruth Rose said. They walked to the sidewalk, then around the side of the building. Out back they found a yard with a lot of trees, some thick bushes, and one rusty lawn chair. Off to one side, a trash barrel stood in a circle of bare ground near a small garden where tiny green shoots were sprouting.
The studio was on the other side of the trees and bushes. It was just an old wooden shed. There were no windows, only a narrow door. The door was held open with a shovel propped under the knob. Inside, the kids saw boxes and bottles on a workbench. A lightbulb hung over the bench, shining on a row of tools hanging on the wall.
A man walked past the door. The kids couldn’t see his face, but he had short blond hair in a buzz cut.
“Is that him?” Dink whispered.
“I don’t know,” Ruth Rose said. The man wore jeans, a green sweatshirt, and leather sandals. “Wait, I think it is! He’s wearing the same sandals Nog had on yesterday!”
“Now what?” Josh whispered. They were standing in the trees, where they couldn’t be seen from the shed. “You still want that selfie, Dink?”
Just then the man they thought was Jack walked out into the yard, carrying a small box. He walked over to the trash barrel and tossed the box in.
The kids froze. If he looked up, he’d see them in the trees.
“Get down!” Dink whispered. They knelt behind the bushes and watched the man return to the shed. He stepped inside, pulled the string to shut off the light, then came back out.
The kids watched him lean the shovel against the shed wall and pull the door closed. He crossed the yard and disappeared down some stairs at the back of the apartment building.
Dink had been holding his breath, and he let it out.
“What do we do now?” Josh asked.
“We get inside,” Ruth Rose said. “Come on, guys!” She slipped through the trees, heading for the shed.
“Where are you going?” Josh yelped. “What if he looks out and sees us?”
Dink started after Ruth Rose, pulling Josh along with him. “I checked. There aren’t any windows at the back of the apartments,” he told Josh. “We can get in and out real fast.”
The kids crowded into the shed. Dink quickly closed the door behind them. “Don’t turn on the light,” he whispered.
“Don’t need it,” Ruth Rose said. She pulled her flashlight from her backpack and turned it on, aiming the beam at the workbench. They saw chunks of wood, stone, and plastic in different colors. They saw carving knives and other small tools. There were three buckets on the floor. One was half-filled with sand, one held gray powder, and the third contained water.
Dink put his finger into the powder, then took a close look. “I think it’s cement,” he said. “Alex told us he thought the fake diamond could be partly concrete. If you add sand, gravel, and water to cement, it dries as concrete.”
“How do you know that?” Josh asked.
“I helped my dad fix our basement steps,” Dink said. Then he grinned and added, “Plus, I’m smart, Art!”
“If Jack stole the River Diamond, maybe it’s hidden in here someplace,” Ruth Rose said.
They started opening boxes and peering inside the large bottles. Dink got on his knees and searched under the bench. All he found were spiderwebs and dust.
“This is making me pretty nervous,” Josh said. “What if Jack catches us and locks us in here? There must be spiders everywhere!”
“One more minute,” Dink said. He spied a sweatshirt hanging from a hook on the back of the door. A flyer was sticking out of the pouch pocket. The flyer looked familiar, so he pulled it out.
“Look, guys,” Dink said. It was a flyer for the museum sleepover. “I’ll bet Jack planned to steal the diamond when he knew there’d be a lot of people around. He must have figured one of the parents or chaperones would get blamed.”
Ruth Rose found a small knife on the bench. She wrapped it in a tissue and put it in her backpack. She shut off her flashlight. “Okay, let’s go,” she said.
“Peek out first,” Josh said. “He could be waiting!”
Dink opened the door a crack and looked into the yard. “Okay, let’s take off, and fast!”
The kids slipped through the door, and Dink pulled it shut. The yard was empty. He motioned for Josh and Ruth Rose to follow him.
“Wait,” Ruth Rose said. Dink looked back and
saw her crouching down. “Hey, guys, look at this!”
She pointed to the sharp edge of the shovel that was leaning against the shed. “That’s dirt on the shovel,” she said. She put a finger on the clump. “It’s still damp.”
“Maybe he was planting something in his garden,” Josh said.
“Or burying something in his garden,” Ruth Rose said.
Ruth Rose ran over to the garden. She crouched between two rows of tiny green sprouts. Dink and Josh followed her. “What are you looking for?” Dink asked.
“Checking out the dirt around these baby plants,” she said. She bent over and took a pinch of the soil. “See, it’s black, but the dirt stuck to the shovel is brown.”
“So where was he digging?” Josh asked.
They looked around the yard near the shed. Dink’s eyes fell on the trash barrel. “That part of the yard has brown dirt. Let’s check over there,” he said, starting toward the barrel.
The kids studied the ground, but it was hard and packed down. There were no signs of fresh digging.
“What are these marks from?” Josh asked. He was pointing to a big scrape mark in the dirt.
Dink looked at the scrape, then at the trash barrel standing a few feet away. The scrape mark ended at the side of the barrel. “If someone dragged the barrel across the ground, it would make a mark like that,” he said.
Dink leaned against the barrel. It was half-filled with stuff, and heavy. “Help me move this thing,” he said to Josh and Ruth Rose.
Josh looked at the barrel. “Why?” he asked.
“I have an idea!” Dink said. “Come on, help me!”
The three kids shoved the barrel aside. Underneath they saw brown earth that looked like it had been recently dug.
“It’s the same color as the dirt on the shovel!” Ruth Rose said.
Dink ran over to the shed and grabbed the shovel. He came back and used it to move some of the loose soil where the barrel had been standing. The second time Dink dug in, the shovel hit something hard. He and Josh got on their knees and dug with their hands.
Dink pulled out a white plastic bag. It was covering a round object. Dink quickly unwrapped the bag and looked inside. Then he grinned. “Guess what’s in—”
“HEY, WHAT ARE YOU KIDS DOING?” a voice yelled.
Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose looked up and saw Jack racing across the yard toward them.
“Run!” Dink yelled.
The kids tore around the side of the apartment building. Dink stuffed the white bag inside his shirt so he wouldn’t drop it.
Across the street, a bus stood in front of the Paul Revere House. About a dozen tourists were walking toward the house.
“Get on the bus!” Ruth Rose yelled. The three kids bolted across the street and leaped up the bus steps. They were out of breath.
“Sorry, kids,” the driver said. “I don’t leave for another thirty minutes.”
“There’s a man chasing us!” Josh croaked out.
“What man?” the driver asked.
“Him!” Ruth Rose said. She pointed out the window just as Jack charged across the street.
“Shut the door!” Dink said.
Jack reached the bus and was about to leap up the steps when the door closed in his face. He banged on the door, pointing at the kids. “They stole something of mine!” he screamed at the driver. “Open this door!”
“Don’t open it, please!” Ruth Rose said.
“Who is that guy?” the driver asked the kids.
“He’s a crazy caveman!” Josh croaked, throwing himself down into a seat.
“What’s going on here?” the driver asked. “Do I need to call the police?”
“No! Take us to the New England Children’s Museum!” Ruth Rose said.
Dink opened the bag and showed the River Diamond to the bus driver. “That guy stole this from the museum yesterday!” Dink said. “We found it buried in his yard!”
“It’s worth five million bucks!” Josh said.
“We have to get it back to the museum!” Ruth Rose said.
The driver glanced out at Jack, standing on the sidewalk with a red face and angry, bulging eyes. “Okay, sit down and buckle up!”
Dink and Ruth Rose fell into seats next to Josh and clicked their seat belts. “I’m never going to another museum in my life!” Josh moaned.
The bus driver pulled away from the Paul Revere House. Through the bus windows, the kids watched Jack become smaller and smaller.
* * *
—
Ten minutes later Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose ran up the museum steps, through the lobby, and into the room with the colossal fossil. Sylvia was showing some people the Spinosaurus skeleton. Her eyes went wide when she saw the kids running toward her.
They stopped at the diamond display case. The dome was empty. “Oh no!” Dink said. He motioned for Sylvia to come over.
She excused herself from her group and joined the kids. “What’s going on?” she asked. “You three look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“Can we talk to Dr. Wurst?” Dink whispered. “It’s real important!”
“Sorry, he’s busy,” Sylvia said. “He’s returning the River Diamond to Mr. Alanis today. They’re taking pictures for the newspaper! Can I help you with something?”
“He can’t do that!” Dink cried. “The River Diamond is a fake!”
He held open the white bag, and Sylvia looked inside. “What is that?” she asked. “It looks like the River Diamond!”
“It is the River Diamond!” Dink said. “The real one. The one that was under the dome this morning is fake!”
“Nog, I mean Jack, stole the real one last night,” Josh said. “We found where he hid it, and we’re bringing it back!”
“What? I don’t understand,” Sylvia said. “We found the River Diamond on the floor after the alarm went off, right over there!”
“Jack made that plank fall last night,” Dink explained. “He did it to crack open the display. Then he took the River Diamond—this one—and left a fake one where you would find it and think that was the real one!”
Sylvia reached into the bag and gently picked up what was inside. She held the real River Diamond close. “Remarkable,” she said.
“We saw Jack’s studio, where he made the fake diamond!” Josh said.
Sylvia looked at the kids. “I think I’d better disturb them,” she said. She placed the River Diamond back in the white bag, took the bag from Dink, and walked toward the office.
* * *
—
A minute later they were all in Dr. Wurst’s office. The two “diamonds” sat side by side on his desk. He and Mr. Alanis were staring at the two objects. A newspaper photographer was taking pictures of the scene.
“Well, you sure could have fooled me,” Mr. Alanis said. “The two are very much alike. But seeing them next to each other, I can tell that one is carefully handmade from concrete, mud, and other things. It was made to look old and muddy, like the real one.”
“I was totally fooled, too,” Sylvia said. “I walked past the fake one at least fifty times today, thinking it was the real River Diamond.”
“I’m afraid the thief got this past all of us,” Dr. Wurst said. He smiled at the kids. “How did you know?”
“I’m pretty sure Jack Rapp shoved the ladder into the plank last night so it would crash into the River Diamond,” Dink said. “Then he stole the real diamond and left this fake one.”
The kids showed them the scratch that Alex had noticed on the fake River Diamond. They explained how they thought the heavy plank had made the scratch mark. And how Josh had found hairs from Jack’s fake fur costume on Dink’s shirt. They told him about their trip to Jack’s house and what they found there.
Dr. Wurst shook his head. “Amazi
ng,” he said. “But how did you know Jack had hidden the River Diamond in his yard?”
“He was sneaky!” Josh said. “He buried it under his trash barrel!”
Ruth Rose told Dr. Wurst how she’d noticed the soil on the shovel. “It was a different color from the dirt in his garden,” she said.
Sylvia smiled at Ruth Rose. “Let me know if you ever want a job in my brother’s lab,” she said.
“Can we have Jack arrested?” Mr. Alanis asked.
“I’m not sure I can ask the police to pick him up without proof,” Dr. Wurst said. “He could deny everything and tell us he had no idea how that bag got under his trash barrel.”
“I know how to prove he took it,” Ruth Rose said. She opened her backpack and pulled out the knife she’d taken from Jack’s workbench, wrapped in the tissue. “I took this from his shed,” she said. “It will have Jack’s fingerprints on it. His prints might also be on the ladder!”
“Perhaps we’ll find his prints on this plastic bag, too,” Dr. Wurst said.
He picked up his cell phone and tapped a few keys. “Trevor,” he said into his phone, “can you please come to my office?”
Trevor was easily able to find Jack’s prints on the shiny knife handle. Using special tape, he was able to lift the prints, then get more prints from the smooth parts of the fake diamond.
“Hmmm,” Trevor said. “I see three different people’s prints here.”
“Some will be Sylvia’s and mine,” Dr. Wurst said. “Remember, we brought the fake diamond here to my office last night. I put it in my safe, thinking it was the real one!”
The other prints matched the ones from Jack’s knife.
“Then there’s no question,” Dr. Wurst said. “Jack Rapp is our thief.” He took out his cell phone again and called the police.
Mr. Alanis picked up the fake diamond. “To think I was going to take this to a jeweler,” he said. “I might have ended up in jail!”