The Dinosaur Mystery (6 page)

“I hope the police and the security guards find the bones soon,” Violet said. “It would be terrible if the dinosaur wasn't all put together by next week.”

Working together, the girls quickly finished filing Dr. Pettibone's bills, letters, and receipts. When they were nearly done, Violet spotted an envelope marked: “Montana Fossil Conference — travel receipts.”

“I wonder if Dr. Pettibone wanted us to file these, too,” Jessie said. She opened the envelope and several pieces of paper fell out.

“What's the matter, Jessie?” Violet asked.

“Look at this. It's a hotel receipt from the Hotel Warwick right here in town. And this taxi slip shows that Dr. Pettibone took a taxi ride from the hotel to here Sunday night. I thought that was when he was in Montana at the fossil conference! There's no airline ticket receipt either.”

Henry and Violet rushed over to see what Jessie was reading.

“Didn't Pete say he just got back?” Henry asked in a quiet voice.

“According to this,” Jessie whispered, “Dr. Pettibone stayed at the hotel for three days and checked out Sunday evening.”

“What should we do with these receipts, Jessie?” Violet asked.

“Nothing,” Jessie answered. “I'll just leave this envelope here. I don't want Dr. Pettibone to think we were snooping. He won't let us work here anymore if we upset him.” She put the envelope back where she had found it, then knocked on the fossil lab door. “We're going to lunch, Dr. Pettibone,” she called.

The door opened, and Dr. Pettibone stepped out.

“Here are your messages.” Jessie handed Dr. Pettibone the list of phone calls she had answered. “And we did your filing, too.”

Dr. Pettibone looked pleased when he saw how much work the Aldens had finished. When he spotted the envelope of travel receipts, he walked over, picked it up, and stuffed it into his lab coat pocket.

“Good, good,” he said, smiling a little for the first time. He looked over Violet's neat list of fossil labels. “I couldn't have done this better myself. Maybe this afternoon you can help me put them on my specimens. Now off you go.”

The children were nearly out the door when Henry called out to Dr. Pettibone. “Could you use Benny and Soo Lee this afternoon, too? They're awfully good at sorting out things. Or whatever else you need.” Dr. Pettibone's smile disappeared. “No! They're much too young. Some of these fossil bones can shatter just by being touched.”

Soo Lee and Benny were eating lunch with Mr. Diggs when the older children arrived.

“What have you been up to?” Henry asked.

Benny took a big gulp of milk before he answered Henry. “We saw every kind of bug in the whole wide world.”

“Even bugs from Korea,” Soo Lee said proudly. “Butterflies, too.”

“And what have you folks been up to?” Mr. Diggs wanted to know. “Did Dr. Pettibone teach you a lot about fossils this morning?”

Henry shook his head. “I learned a lot about how to dump things in the construction Dumpster.”

Mr. Diggs looked at Jessie and Violet. “That's too bad. I'd hoped Titus would give you something more interesting to do.”

Violet shook her head. “I wrote fossil labels. Dr. Pettibone said maybe we could put my labels on some fossils this afternoon. I can't wait to see them.”

Mr. Diggs looked puzzled. “You mean you didn't see any fossils in the lab?”

“Why, no, not yet,” Violet answered. “We stayed in the outside office, not in the fossil lab.”

Jessie broke in. “Dr. Pettibone worked in there by himself with the door locked. Violet wrote up labels, and I filed and answered the phone.”

Now Mr. Diggs looked upset. “Goodness, that's not what Emma and I had in mind when we invited you for a visit. We thought you could work with some of the specimens and have some fun at the same time.”

Jessie shrugged. “We did give Dr. Pettibone a hand, but it's not exactly fun yet. Not that we mind. We like helping someone important like Dr. Pettibone.” Jessie stopped talking and took a deep breath. “I guess a lot of work piled up while he was in Montana at his fossil conference. Did he have a good time there?”

Mr. Diggs smiled. “I imagine he did, though there hasn't been a minute to discuss the conference with Titus what with all the excitement about the missing bones.”

Benny noticed Henry, Jessie, and Violet all looking at each other in an odd way. “What's the matter, Jessie? You've got a funny look on your face.”

“Nothing,” Jessie said. “I guess I'll have my sandwich now.”

“Me, too,” Violet said quietly.

“Me, three,” Henry added without looking directly at Benny or Soo Lee or Mr. Diggs.

An hour later, the older Aldens headed back to Dr. Pettibone's office.

“I couldn't bring myself to say anything about the hotel receipts we found,” Jessie said, “I didn't want to make trouble for Dr. Pettibone or upset Mr. Diggs. Now I'm not sure if we did the right thing.”

The children were just about to unlock the elevator doors with Mr. Diggs's key when the doors opened. Mrs. Diggs stepped out, carrying two bags of groceries.

“Hi, Mrs. Diggs,” Jessie said. “We're just on our way up to see Dr. Pettibone. He said maybe this afternoon he'll let us help him label some of his fossils for the opening.”

Mrs. Diggs stopped. “Well, I do hope you get a chance. Why, I was ten years old, Violet's exact age, when I started my fossil collection. My first one was a small snail shell fossil. I still have it.” Mrs. Diggs suddenly got an odd expression on her face, as if she was about to say something but wasn't sure whether she should.

“Is everything okay, Mrs. Diggs?” Henry asked. “Let us give you a hand with these groceries.”

Mrs. Diggs shook her head. “No. I just have some lightweight things in the bags. I was just wondering about something. I've been out in the neighborhood running a lot of errands. And do you know, I didn't see a single Dino World poster, not even on the public events bulletin board right outside the museum?”

“What?” the three Aldens said at the same time.

“We put up dozens of posters all over,” Jessie explained. “On poles, on the grocery store bulletin board, in store windows — every space we could find.”

“Well, I looked but didn't see a single one,” Mrs. Diggs said. “It's just the oddest thing. The grocery store manager, then the woman who runs the laundromat, both told me a woman came in and said she wanted the poster as a souvenir. I didn't have time to look anyplace else since I didn't know exactly where you had put up the posters.”

“That's awful,” Jessie said. “Here's another strange thing. All those posters Mr. Diggs left in the planetarium for us wound up in a trash can.”

“A trash can!” Mrs. Diggs cried.

“Luckily I spotted them before they went into the Dumpster,” Henry explained. “Nobody seemed to know how they got mixed up in the trash.”

Mrs. Diggs picked up the groceries. “Everything is so topsy-turvy, I must say. I'll be so glad when we find those bones and when Dino World finally opens. Usually the Pickering Museum is as quiet as the library.”

“Whoa!” Henry suddenly cried out when he felt the elevator doors move when he was leaning against one of them. “Somebody must be getting off.”

When Henry stepped away, the doors slid open. There was Dr. Pettibone, huddled over a large wooden crate. With his back to the doors, he was trying to pull the heavy crate out of the elevator with one hand while holding down the “Open” door button with the other.

“Titus!” Mrs. Diggs cried.

Dr. Pettibone turned around to face Mrs. Diggs and the Aldens. Before he could answer Mrs. Diggs, the elevator shut. The next thing everyone saw was the elevator arrow change from “Down” to “Up.”

Dr. Pettibone and his crate were gone.

CHAPTER 8

Dig Those Bones

T
he children pressed the elevator button over and over, but nothing happened.

“Of all times for this elevator to act up,” Mrs. Diggs said. “What on earth was Titus doing with that big crate anyway?”

After about five minutes, everyone gave up on the elevator.

Mrs. Diggs turned to the Aldens. “Perhaps I will have you carry these bags up after all.”

The Aldens walked Mrs. Diggs down the passageway and up the back stairs.

“Thanks so much,” Mrs. Diggs said as she put her groceries down on the counter. “Here, bring this lunch bag to Titus.”

The children raced down the stairs and out to the street.

“I want to see what Dr. Pettibone is up to, don't you?” Henry said as he and his sisters rushed along.

“I couldn't tell if the elevator doors closed by accident or if he wanted them to close on purpose when he saw us,” Jessie said.

By the time the children made their way up to Dr. Pettibone's office, they were completely out of breath. Again, they saw a light under the door of the fossil lab.

“Dr. Pettibone? Dr. Pettibone?” Violet called out. “We came back to help you.”

Dr. Pettibone stepped out of the lab. He greeted the children as if he had not seen them by the elevator just minutes before. “Did you have a good lunch?”

“Yes, we did,” Violet answered. She handed him a lunch bag. “Mr. and Mrs. Diggs sent you a lunch, too.”

Dr. Pettibone took the bag and smiled at the children nervously. “Well, thank you … uh … thank you very much for bringing this. Now step inside the lab here, and I'll show you how to label some of my fossils for display.”

The children looked at each other, surprised to be invited right into the lab. Several workbenches were lined up in the middle of the room. On one of them were trays of small tools — picks, drills, small hammers, chisels, and magnifying glasses.

“Our dentist has some tools just like those,” Violet observed.

Dr. Pettibone picked up a small drill. “That's exactly right, Violet. Watch how we use one of these.”

Dr. Pettibone walked over to one of the other workbenches where several chunks of rocks were arranged. He picked up one of them and began to drill.

“Ouch!” Henry said. “I hate that noise. It reminds me of getting a cavity filled.”

Dr. Pettibone laughed. “Well, this is a similar process. I'm drilling the rock away to expose something inside.”

“What's in there anyway?” Violet asked.

“A dinosaur joint,” Dr. Pettibone answered over the sound of the small drill. “One of my field assistants spotted part of a fossil sticking out of the ground at one of our sites out in Wisconsin a few months ago. She dug it but left plenty of rock — which we call the matrix — around it. Then she wrapped the whole thing in a plaster cast much the way you'd put a broken bone in a cast to protect it. These pieces already have the plaster removed and most of the matrix. You'll see the rest of the fossil in just a bit.”

Henry and Violet were so fascinated by what Dr. Pettibone was doing, they didn't mention anything at all about seeing him in the elevator. Only Jessie couldn't stop wondering about where the big crate was. Had Dr. Pettibone brought it back to the office? While she followed what he was doing, she also glanced around the room. There was no crate to be seen.

The drilling stopped, and Dr. Pettibone held up a thick object and put it under a bright light. “There's still some rock matrix next to the bone that will have to be chipped off very carefully. The drill might damage it at this point. Only someone with steady and delicate hands can do the next step.”

Henry looked at Violet, then he looked at Dr. Pettibone. “Did our grandfather or Mr. and Mrs. Diggs ever tell you that Violet plays the violin and is an artist? She has very good hands for delicate things.”

“So I'm told,” Dr. Pettibone said. “That's why I picked this out for her.” He turned to Violet. “Would you like to begin work on this joint by chipping away some of the rock? Not all the way, mind you, but some of the outer layer.”