The next morning when the Aldens got up, the apartment was empty.
“Gee, I wonder where Mr. and Mrs. Diggs went,” Henry said when he realized the Aldens were alone in the apartment. “Today’s the day for us to meet Dr. Pettibone.”
Jessie found a message on the kitchen counter and read it aloud.
Dear Aldens,
We’re sorry not to have breakfast with you. There’s juice in the refrigerator and coffee cake on the counter. Help yourselves. Titus Pettibone had an emergency this morning when he arrived from his trip, and we had to see him right away. Please meet us in the dinosaur hall.
Emma and Archie Diggs
“Wow, an emergency!” Benny cried.
In no time, the Aldens had eaten and were on their way to the museum, racing down the sidewalk as fast as they could. They showed their visitor passes at the museum entrance, then zoomed by the Viking boats and the whale without stopping. Outside the dinosaur hall a small, noisy crowd of people had formed. The children couldn’t get through.
“I can’t see,” Benny said. “There are too many people.”
“Where’s the dinosaur?” Soo Lee asked. “I can’t see either.”
Henry and Jessie, who were the tallest, stood on their tiptoes to see what was going on.
“The door’s roped off,” Henry explained to the younger children. “It looks like Mr. and Mrs. Diggs are talking to the police!”
Benny couldn’t stand the suspense. Being small, he squeezed himself through the crowd. “Excuse me. Excuse me,” he repeated until he reached the Diggs.
He stopped. His eyebrows shot up. “Hey, that’s the man with the white beard!” he cried.
But just then Emma Diggs spotted Benny and came over to get him. “Goodness, Benny. How did you make it through this mob? I was just about to call the apartment to have you take the freight elevator and get off right in back at the dinosaur hall. I’ll have Pete fetch the other children. He’s about to go off duty anyway. Pete? Pete?”
Pete was so busy walking around and around the dinosaur hall with Nosey that he didn’t hear Mrs. Diggs right away. Finally she went to get him.
“Hey, Benny,” Pete said when Mrs. Diggs finally brought him over. “I guess I was wrong last night about things being pretty dull around here.”
Benny couldn’t stand the suspense. “What happened, anyway?” he asked,
“Let’s get the other kids, and I’ll tell you everything we know,” Pete said. “Coming through! Make way! Coming through!”
When they saw Nosey pulling at the leash, people in the crowd moved aside so Pete and Benny could get by and rejoin Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Soo Lee.
Jessie leaned over to pet Nosey. “What’s going on, Pete? Mrs. Diggs said there was an emergency.”
Pete took off his guard hat and brushed back his hair. “You’re not kidding there’s an emergency — a missing bone emergency! When Titus Pettibone arrived this morning and checked the Tyrannosaurus skeleton, parts of the jawbone and tailbones were gone! Disappeared. This is the only museum with a complete skeleton — or was the only one.”
Benny hopped from one foot to the other and tried to get Pete’s attention. “But that’s the man I saw last night going down the hole in the street,” he said, pointing to the man with the white beard.
Pete gave Benny a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Oh that! Maybe your eyes were fooling you. That’s Dr. Pettibone! He just got back from the airport this morning and came straight here”
This didn’t stop Benny. “Wait — Soo Lee saw him, too. Come on Soo Lee, let’s go find the man.”
Soo Lee hadn’t been in the Alden family too long, but already she liked adventures and mysteries and emergencies just as much as her cousins. She followed right behind Benny. The two of them scooted through the crowd with Henry, Jessie, Violet, Pete, and Nosey trying to keep up.
When the crowd parted, Benny jumped up and down. “There’s the man who went down the hole!”
“Benny is such a good detective,” Jessie whispered to Violet, “but this time I wonder if he’s right. Dr. Pettibone does have a white beard, but he looks so important and so serious, I’m sure he wouldn’t be sneaking down a manhole.”
“That is the man we saw,” Soo Lee insisted when she overheard Jessie. “Do you think he forgot his key and couldn’t get in?”
Before Jessie could answer, Archie Diggs and the bearded man came over. The Aldens could see that the man was upset. He never once looked directly at the children.
“Titus, I would like you to meet James Alden’s grandchildren, Henry, Jessie, Violet, Benny, and Soo Lee, his grandniece,” Mr. Diggs began. “Children, this is our famous fossil expert, Dr. Pettibone.”
The children all said their hellos, but Dr. Pettibone was too busy trying to keep Nosey from jumping on him. “Young man,” he said to Pete, “get that dog out of here! It only adds to all this confusion.”
“As I started to say, Titus, these are James Alden’s …” Mrs. Diggs began until she noticed how upset Dr. Pettibone was, “Are you all right, Titus?” she asked. “I know you’ve had a great shock. I’ll go get you some water. Maybe there’s some way these children can help out. James Alden has told me many times how helpful they’ve been in emergencies. If nothing else, they can do some small things that need doing so you can focus on those missing bones.”
“Missing bones?” Dr. Pettibone said, as if he didn’t know anything about them. “Ah, yes. The missing bones.”
Just then, two police officers stepped through the crowd. Mrs. Diggs turned to the children after Titus Pettibone and Archie Diggs went off to speak to the police. “You children will have to forgive Titus’s manners today. He’s simply beside himself. He can’t seem to figure out what to do, poor man. This dinosaur is his whole life. Why, he went and called the newspapers before he called the police. Imagine!”
The children leaned their heads back to get a better look at the Tyrannosaurus skeleton. While it wasn’t as scary during the day, the dinosaur was still plenty huge and plenty frightening, even without part of its big jawbone and some of its tailbones.
“Who would want a dinosaur bone anyway?” Henry asked.
“I sure would!” Benny answered before he realized what he’d said. “I mean if I found one or they sold them in the museum shop.”
This made Mrs. Diggs smile. “Don’t worry, Benny. You don’t look like a bone thief, if there was a thief, that is. The police wondered if perhaps somebody on the staff or work crew somehow disturbed the skeleton without meaning to and possibly broke the bones. Of course, no one’s been in here since Titus was gone, so I’m probably wrong.”
“We were here,” Soo Lee announced. “The other night.”
Jessie looked embarrassed. “It’s true, Mrs. Diggs. Remember we told you we thought we saw someone — or Benny thought he did — so we came right in. The door wasn’t even locked.”
A police officer came up to Jessie. “Did I hear you say the dinosaur hall was unlocked the other night? You children were actually in here?”
“Yes, we were,” Jessie confessed. “I mean, we didn’t know we shouldn’t come here. We heard a noise and thought we saw something, so we came to check.”
The police officer looked very serious. “I see,” she said. “Well, I’d like to take a statement from you. Now, please tell me how long you were here, how you got here, and so forth.”
When Mrs. Diggs saw how upset Jessie looked, she spoke to the officer herself. “Lieutenant, all these children are friends of our family. They’re here for a visit. If they were in the dinosaur hall the other night, it’s because someone, perhaps a work person, left the door open. The children wouldn’t touch a thing. They’ve been staying with us and wouldn’t so much as use a spoon without asking for permission!”
This didn’t stop the police officer. “That’s very well and good, Mrs. Diggs, but this isn’t an apartment, and there are valuable fossils missing, not a spoon. I must do my job. Anyone who was in or near this dinosaur hall in the last few days has to make a statement. That includes these children. I’m sorry.”
“We don’t mind,” Violet said firmly. “We came in here because we thought we were chasing someone.”
“Chasing someone?” the police officer asked. “Who were you chasing?”
“A shadow Benny saw,” Soo Lee answered.
When she heard this, the police officer lost interest. “Oh, a shadow. Well, small children are always seeing shadows. My six-year-old nephew thinks the shadow of the tree branch outside his bedroom is a big snake.”
This upset Benny so much, he couldn’t be quiet. “It wasn’t a snake I saw or a tree branch shaped like a snake. It was a real shadow that belonged to a real person. I chased it with my brother Henry, but it disappeared when we got inside here.”
Soo Lee tilted her head back and looked up at the giant dinosaur skeleton. “Then we saw this skeleton all over the ceiling, all black and pointy with big teeth, from Pete’s flashlight.”
The officer took another look at Soo Lee. “You mean the night guard over there?” she said, pointing at Pete. “He was in here with you?”
Soo Lee nodded. “Not the whole time. First we were in here by ourselves. I was scared. Then Pete came.”
“I see, I see,” the police officer said. “I have to talk to that fellow again. People keep telling me he’s often in places where he shouldn’t be. And despite several work orders, he never did arrange to get the remote security camera fixed in here.”
“Dear, dear,” Mrs. Diggs said after the officer went off to question Pete. “I’m afraid poor Pete is in for it.” With that, Mrs. Diggs went off to join Mr. Diggs.
“Did I do okay, Jessie? Did I?” Soo Lee asked.
Jessie smoothed the little girl’s shiny, black bangs. “Of course you did. We all told the truth, and that’s always okay. The police have to interview everyone.”
Violet came over to Jessie and spoke in a low voice. “One thing I’m not sure about is where Pete was when we were in here. Was he already inside or did he follow us in?”
The Aldens looked at each another. No one had an answer to that. |