by June Whyte
“Gotta go,” shouted Arty, dangling a pair of handcuffs out the window. “Got a score to settle. Come on, Gramps. Rounding this lot up should be more fun than a ride on the roller-coaster at Dreamworld.”
“Need any help?” asked Noah, his eyes even shinier than Jack’s.
Was this the same boy who’d hidden in the tree and let me take the rap for trespassing?
“Can we? Can we?” gabbled Jack, leaning forward on his horse’s neck. “Please…”
“You’ve done your share,” replied Arty. Then seeing the despondent look on the boys’ faces, he added, “You’ve got the important job of telling the police what happened and directing them to the dam. I wouldn’t want any of those scumbags to get away.”
With that, the professor’s ute backfired, did a couple of bunny-hops, then shot after one of the fleeing criminals.
We sat on our horses and watched. By the time the police cars pulled up beside us, Arty and the professor had already collected two of the runners, handcuffed them to a bar in the tray of the ute and were zeroing in on a third.
“Any left to catch?” asked a young constable leaning from the police car window.
Sarah pointed toward the dam. “One guy circled back and I think he’s hiding up that tree.”
I slipped off Noah’s horse and grinned at Sarah. “Shall we?” Without a word she leant down and pulled me up behind her. With me bumping on her horse’s rump we trotted over to the tree in question and stopped underneath.
“Can you smell something stinky?” I asked Sarah, screwing up my nose and pulling a face. “You know—like sweaty armpits?”
“Smells more like dog’s poop to me.”
I took another sniff. “You know, I reckon it smells like rotten maggoty meat that’s been left hanging in a tree too long.”
At the same time as Meathead let out a string of four-letter words that would curdle cream, the police car screamed up beside us.
“Okay, girls. We’ll take over now.”
The last we heard from Meathead was when the sergeant led him handcuffed to the police car. His squeaky oaths could still be heard as the police car took off, sirens wailing, heading for the police station.
NINETEEN
TREEHAVEN CROSS-COUNTRY—2012—SUPERHEROES.
I paused in the act of polishing the trophy on top of our television and grinned. It was a large silver trophy with a statue of a horse and rider leaping over water.
On Cross-Country day, our team—The Super-heroes—had been totally awesome. Jack and Sarah flew around the course like champs and even Tayla and I managed to jump everything without falling off once. Of course, after being chased by Meathead’s bikers, Kate’s Cross-Country course seemed like a baby event.
Six weeks had passed since wrapping up (that’s P.I. talk) the Big Egg mystery. Simpson and his buddies were in jail. Arty received a pat on the back and a promotion from his boss. And I’d finished writing my latest true-crime story, ‘Rebecca Turnbull P.I.: The Mystery of the Stolen Dinosaur Egg.’ It was published in Kidlit magazine on the internet.
Rebecca Turnbull, my fictional P.I. character was one cool babe. Instead of hiding in a cupboard like me, she’d kicked butt throughout the mystery. With the help of her lethal Doberman, Fang, she’d overpowered Fingers and Meathead in the time it would take me to brush my teeth. However, Rebecca had one huge advantage over me. She had no mother in her story. No mother to ground her. No mother to wildly chop potatoes under her nose. No mother to send her off to ride wild mustangs instead of solving a mystery.
“Will you take a look at these?” It was Mum, frowning into the oval mirror on our lounge room wall. “Six more grey hairs.” She turned to me. “And who do I have to thank for them?”
Ha. There was no way I was going to answer that question. Instead I went back to polishing the trophy.
“I guess it’s Chiana’s fault.” Sarah’s sugary sweet voice didn’t match the cat’s bum face she pulled at me.
Then, after putting her face back in order, she carefully adjusted her boob tube and arranged herself on the edge of the lounge chair. No lolling back and stretching her legs for Sarah—she might disturb the lines of her new leather skirt.
Mum’s frown deepened. She whipped around and glared at my step-sibling. “And what about you, Madam? Half of these grey hairs are due to you turning into one of Cha’s gung-ho side-kicks.”
Under cover of itching my nose, I poked my tongue out at Sarah and crossed my eyes until everything went blurry and out of shape.
So there!
Still smiling, I bent down and tickled Leroy’s tummy. His lips dribbled into an ecstatic loose grin. Actually, everything about poor Leroy was loose after two weeks of his draconian diet. Maybe I should buy him a packet of black jellybeans next time I went to the shop. Just for special occasions.
“Let’s go.” Ken, dressed in his best navy suit and sky blue shirt, bustled into the room, picked up the car keys from the coffee-table and swung them around on one finger.
“Come on, Marg. Stop worrying about your hair. It’s perfect,” he said. “Professor Goodenough is officially returning the stolen dinosaur egg to the museum at two o’clock. We don’t want to be late.”
An hour later, standing in front of the Addyman Plesiosaur, I watched the professor shuffle up to the microphone. His beard and hair had been detangled, shampooed and trimmed and although he wore a coat that swirled around his ankles, on the scale of scruffy it only hit a five. While the professor adjusted the height of the microphone, I caught a glimpse of a little black nose and two bright button eyes as Pedro peeped out from one of the coat’s many pockets.
“Today, I am returning my father’s fossilized Therizinosaur to the museum,” the professor began, pushing Pedro’s head down out of sight. “But first, I would like to thank my grandson, P.C. Arthur Goodenough, for his courage, and Chiana Ryan and her friends for saving my egg. And now, Chiana, would you like to come up and give a little speech then perform the official duty of placing the Therizinosaur back in its rightful place?”
Me? Geez. I’d rather face Barnaby without a carrot than go up to the microphone and speak. If only the one hundred and twenty million year old dinosaur standing behind me wasn’t so bony, I’d sneak in behind him and hide.
Sarah dug me in the ribs and whispered. “I told you to wear your purple top and lime-green nail polish. But no—you never listen to me.”
I ignored Sarah. After all, I was wearing my new jeans. The jeans Mum insisted I wear—even though they made me feel like I had two planks of wood strapped to my legs. You know, the sort of jeans that needed a week or two buried in a muddy puddle of water to make them wearable.
I could see Jack, Noah and Tayla grinning wildly as they clapped and whistled, urging me on. Suddenly a lump jammed my throat and I had to swallow hard to work it free. I was so totally proud of my assistants. Even sucky Sarah. Without them, the dinosaur egg wouldn’t be with the professor today.
Jack and Noah gave me the thumbs-up sign as I walked up to the microphone, while Arty, dressed in his police uniform, winked at me. The cuts and bruises on his face had healed. His hair, now clean, shiny and thick made him look like a movie star.
I took the box containing the Therizinosaur from the professor’s hands and stood on tiptoe to speak.
“This little guy says thanks to Arty for rescuing him,” I said, holding up the box. “And the credit for keeping him safe from the bad guys goes to my best friends Jack and Tayla, my new friend, Noah, and my sister Sarah. Thank you.”
With that, I clumped toward the empty stand with ‘Fossilized Dinosaur Egg discovered by Professor Cyril Goodenough on 8th September 1934’, engraved on the bottom. I carefully opened the box and then gaped in confusion. There was no fossilized egg inside. Instead there were egg shells and what looked like a newly hatched baby echidna. Had the professor become so absent-minded he didn’t know the difference between a real egg and a fossilized one?
I glanced up, my mi
nd whirling. A smile lit the professor’s face as he caught my eye.
“She’s called Chiana—and she’s yours. It’s my way of saying thank you.”
“Mine?”
I looked across at Mum, my heart in my eyes. Mum’s face had that shocked bloodless look. You know, the sort of look traumatized cyclone victims have when their house blows away. I got the feeling Mum didn’t think a pet echidna was a good idea.
“Of course echidnas are a protected species,” went on the professor. “Which means little Chiana will have to stay at the sanctuary with me. But you’re welcome to visit your namesake in the Chiana Ryan Enclosure whenever you feel like it.”
“Wow! The Chiana Ryan Enclosure!”
Arty gave his grandfather a nudge.
“The echidna-enclosure also has newly hatched babies called Jack, Noah, Sarah and Tayla,” added the professor.
“What about Leroy?” I asked.
“Leroy?”
“My other assistant.”
The professor’s expression remained puzzled.
“Her dog,” supplied Mum, rolling her eyes heavenwards.
“Whatever.” The professor, smirking at his weird teenage-talk, dug a hand into one of his many pockets and pulled out the real grey fossilized egg. “Now, would you like to continue with the ceremony?”
Taking a step forward, I gently settled the mega-million-year-old dinosaur egg on top of the empty stand.
And then I let out a deep contented sigh.
The museum smelled of dust. Of old dead things. Of dry stuffed animals with blank staring eyes.
And the little Therizinosaur had returned home.