This time I wasn’t going to miss the chance to take a snapshot of Steve’s exhibit. As he held the paper up, I lifted my phone and snapped one. There had to be some paleontologist in the museum who could interpret it for me.
“Don’t be posting that on Instagram before the Times gets it up online at midnight,” Steve said, laughing at me, and pointing a finger at my phone. “Don’t you go scooping me, Ms. Quick.”
“No chance, Steve. I’m more of a Times Book Review fan than a science kid. But what is it exactly?”
“You saw the press conference on Thursday night, didn’t you?”
“We did,” I said. “My mom and I saw it.”
“This photograph is proof, Dev,” Steve said, waving the paper in his hand. “It’s proof that our team has identified a new species of dinosaur.”
“Your team?” I asked. “Or Ling Soo?”
“Ling’s part of my team,” he said, losing his toothy grin.
“Then where are the feathers? Isn’t this all about dinos with feathers?”
Steve turned the piece of paper facedown and placed it back on the table in front of him. “Check it out in the newspaper, Dev. You’ll see the feathers. You’ll see what makes this so special.”
“If it’s all about her discovery,” I said, “then why isn’t Ling here?”
Steve just glared at me, as a large shadow rose up and loomed over our heads. I could tell from the look on Booker’s face that something was wrong.
My head swiveled around. Chip Donner was standing in the doorway. I hadn’t heard him approach.
“Chip!” I sort of stammered his name a couple of times. “Good to see you. This—this is my friend, Booker Dibble.”
“Howdy,” Chip said, nodding his head at Booker, but also blocking my way out of the small lab room. “I heard you talking about Ling. She asked me to send you her regards, Dev.”
“Is she here?”
“I told you on Friday that she’s back at school,” Steve said.
“Oh, okay,” I said, taking a few steps toward the door. My knees were shaking a bit, but I didn’t want to show the two guys how nervous I was. “C’mon, Booker, we’ve got to go.”
Chip Donner stepped to the side.
Booker walked back around the table and past Chip into the hallway. I was about to follow him, but turned back to Steve.
“By the way, Steve,” I said. “I almost forgot the most important thing. I came by to pick up Katie’s bones—you know, those fossils she found the first day we were on the dig.”
Steve got up from the stool he’d been sitting on.
“I wish I could give them to you, Dev,” he said, shaking his head, “but I can’t release them to anyone except the rightful owner.”
I hoped Steve and Chip didn’t notice what deep breaths I was taking as I tried to face them down, at the same time that Booker was pulling on my shirttail.
“I’ll just call her up then,” I said. “Booker and I can wait for her to come over here, if you don’t think I have her permission to take them.”
“What I think,” Steve said, taking a step in my direction, “is that you two don’t even have permission to be up here in my laboratory. I’m sure security can help me escort you out. Chip, you want to call for a guard?”
“We’re going,” Booker said. “We’ll save you the trouble.”
“Besides, young lady, you don’t know the first thing about those fossils Katie found.”
“You’d be wrong about that, Steve,” I said, holding my phone up. “I’ve even got photographs of Katie’s bones.”
I wasn’t so much meaning to shake the phone at him as much as I couldn’t quite control the way my hand was trembling.
Steve Paulson glanced over at Chip. “You said no pictures—”
“She’s bluffing you, Steve,” Chip said, sneering at me while he answered Steve. “That Katie’s a good kid. She handed her three bones right over to me. Dev didn’t take any photographs. She didn’t have time, even if she’d wanted to.”
“That would be wrong, guys,” I said.
They were as much as acknowledging that the ones they had given back for Katie to sleep with that night in Montana had been substitutes. Neither one of them bothered to make the point that I could have taken snapshots then.
“I’ve got them right on this phone,” I said as Booker tugged at me harder.
Chip turned and reached for my arm, but I was faster than he was.
“It’s all backed up on my computer anyway, Steve,” I yelled as I ran after Booker toward the staircase. “If you stole something from my friend Katie Cion, you can be sure Booker and I will figure it out!”
30
I was totally out of breath. Booker and I had raced down five flights of stairs and out onto West Eighty-First Street.
“Keep running, Dev,” he said. “They may have sent security after us.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“By your mother’s standards, or just by yours?” Booker asked.
“In that case,” I said, reaching out to high-five his hand, “let’s jog on.”
We kept trotting across the broad avenue and into the cooler green coverage of Central Park. Clouds were forming overhead and the humidity was twizzling up the ends of my hair.
“We need to find Ling,” I said.
“She must be up to no good, Dev. It seems like she doesn’t want to be found.”
“Let’s make that our office for the next hour,” I said, pointing to a park bench in a shady spot. “All I know is that Steve sure doesn’t want us to connect with her.”
“Of course not, Dev. She’s in league with them.”
“Steve and Chip are too big for us to take on, but you’re almost as smart as Ling and I’m as tall as she is. She may not be their weakest link, but I’d say we have no choice except trying to divide her from them—”
“And conquer,” Booker said. “Divide and conquer, Dev. I like it.”
“I’ll make some calls,” I said, “if you scout up some lunch.”
“There’s a deli on Columbus. I’ll be right back. Yogurt and fruit good?”
I nodded. My mother would appreciate that I agreed with some of her ideas. Our lunch menu was no reason to create an issue.
I opened my phone and dialed information. “Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, please.”
When the robotic operator gave me the number, I pressed to call through. It took me four times to get to the Paleontology Department and into their library. I knew the administrative offices couldn’t give me official information about whether Ling was enrolled, but surely there was someone who had developed a relationship with such a smart student in a small unit of the university.
“Hello?”
A human voice actually answered. I sat up straight and hoped my most mature voice would emerge.
“Hello, madam? Are you a librarian?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Good afternoon. My name is Devlin Quick.”
I wanted to tell her how much I love librarians, how my Ditchley librarian made my life better every day of the school year by introducing me to good books and characters who would be my lifelong friends. But I thought it might be overkill. I needed to stick to my mission.
“I’m a student of paleontology,” I continued. Those were my temporary credentials, of course. “And I’m afraid I’m very confused at the moment.”
“About what? Are you a student here?” she asked.
“No, no. I’m in New York. And it’s not fossils I’m confused about, I’m just trying to find a colleague of mine who was a student at Yale,” I said. “I was on a dig with her just recently.”
“All right, then.”
“It’s just that I can’t find her, and I know your department has its own library,
and I’m hoping you can tell me if she’s been around lately.”
“I’m not an information system, Ms. Quick. What school do you attend?”
“Her name is Ling Soo,” I said, ignoring the question she asked. “I’m looking for Ling Soo.”
The librarian didn’t speak for several seconds.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Ms. Quick. I was very fond of Ling,” she said. “I thought she had a very bright future, but she isn’t enrolled here any longer.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Why not?”
“All I’ve been told is that she’s returning home to China.”
“So suddenly?”
“Yes,” the librarian said. “Quite abruptly. If you’d like to leave your name and number, I’ll be happy to pass it on if Ling gets in touch with me.”
“Yes, please do,” I said, spelling my name and leaving my cell number. “Thank you for the information.”
So that piece of the puzzle was true. Ling Soo had withdrawn from her graduate program at Yale, even though she had made a breakthrough discovery in the Badlands of Montana.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said to Booker, when he returned with our lunch. I devoured the cup of yogurt as though I hadn’t eaten in days. “What if I reach out to her?”
“How come you didn’t try that already?” Booker asked.
“I thought we’d run into her here at the museum,” I said, “and I was worried that she might be part of what Steve and Chip were doing, so I didn’t want to let them know we were onto them all.”
“But you have her number?”
“I do,” I said. “She gave it to Katie and me because she was supposed to be working here at the museum for a while after the dig.”
“So, worst case scenario now is that she’s back in China and you can’t reach her,” Booker said.
“Actually, the worst case scenario now,” I said, “is that she gets in touch with Steve and says I’m trying to find her.”
“He can’t dislike you much more than he does right now.”
“Good point. Should I call or text her?” I asked Booker.
“Text first.”
I looked up her contact information and wrote a few lines. “Hey, Ling. It’s Dev. Where R U? We need to talk.” I threw in a few smiley faces to encourage her.
She must have been sitting on her phone.
“Whoa, Booker,” I said as the balloon on my screen grew larger. “Ling’s answering me.”
“What about? Y?” she wrote.
“About the fossils you found.”
“I can’t,” she texted back to me. “Going home to China tomorrow.”
I gave up texting and dialed the number. “Ling? Ling, it’s me. Please don’t hang up.”
She didn’t say a word to me.
“The photograph of your big discovery is going to be online in the country’s biggest newspaper at midnight.”
“NO!”
“You didn’t even know that the photo of the bones that confirm a new dino species is going public later?” I asked her. “Steve didn’t tell you?”
“I am not talking to Steve,” Ling said, in a voice so soft I could barely hear her.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m afraid of him.”
“So am I, Ling! I’m afraid of him, too.”
I could hear her sniffling. She didn’t respond to me.
“Are you crying?” I asked. “You don’t have to be afraid of anyone, Ling. My mother’s the police commissioner of this city. She’ll make you safe.”
“Then why are you afraid, too?” she asked.
“Good question,” I said. “I just saw Steve half an hour ago. He’s been telling me to stay away from you since Friday, and now I’m getting scared. My mom can help both of us, I promise.”
“Ask her where she is,” Booker said.
“Where are you, Ling? Right now?”
Again, no answer.
“You can trust me,” I said. “You’ll have to trust someone.”
“I’m staying at my friend’s apartment, until I fly home tomorrow.”
“Where is the apartment?”
“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. I’m afraid of everything right now.”
“I’m with my best friend, Booker Dibble. He knows Katie, too,” I said. “We don’t have to come to you, if that’s your safe place, but maybe you can meet us and tell us what’s going on. We’ll get you to my mom if that’s what you need.”
“Where are you two?” she asked.
“Just inside Central Park, across from the museum.”
Ling was silent again for twenty seconds. Then she spoke softly. “I can’t go to the museum.”
“Understood.”
“But my friend’s apartment is very close by.”
I tried to calm myself down so that Ling would be reassured.
“Booker and I can come to you, like I said.”
Ling hesitated. “I’d rather come to you, if you don’t mind. The park is big, and there are a lot of people around.”
My mind was speeding. We needed a private place to talk within a huge public park.
“I’ve got it. If you come in from the West Side near West Seventy-Ninth Street, there’s a small cottage inside the park.”
“A cottage?”
“Yes,” I said. “It looks almost like a little schoolhouse. There are always lots of kids around it, because it’s where puppet shows are put on.”
“Kids. Okay. That sounds safe,” Ling said.
Booker and I needed to get to the bottom of all this, as fast as we could. Ling didn’t seem entirely ready to trust me at the moment, any more than I was sure that I trusted her.
31
“The Swedish Cottage?” Booker asked. “The Marionette Theatre? What made you think of that?”
“I remembered that your father took us there one day, back when we were really young,” I said. “It’s close to here, and it’s just got a friendly feel to it, that’s all. Not all those dead, stuffed things around you, like at the museum.”
It only took us six minutes to wind our way south to the small building. The first time I went there, when I was about eight years old, I thought it really looked like a tiny house in Sweden. Apparently it was brought here for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.
“There’s a show going on,” Booker said as we approached it.
People were milling about on the grass surrounding the brown wooden cottage.
“Let’s find out when it ends,” I said, opening the door.
The long benches were filled with little kids—four- and five- and six-year-olds captivated by the marionettes—stringed puppets being worked by folks above the curtain, out of sight to the audience.
“Guess what?” I said to Booker. “The show is Pinocchio.”
“That story is a good reminder for our talk with Ling,” he said. “Pinocchio’s nose grew longer every time he told a lie. We’ve got to get to the truth as fast as we can.”
“I’ll ask the questions and you can keep an eye on Ling’s nose,” I said.
“Deal.”
I poked my head in and it didn’t seem like there was long to go, so we hung out inside and watched until it was over. By the time the kids were applauding wildly at the finale, Ling was waiting for us outside the door of the cottage.
“Thanks for coming, Ling,” I said. I felt kind of awkward, not knowing what each of us had to deal with. “This is my friend, Booker Dibble.”
“Nice to meet you, Booker,” she said. But she couldn’t even force a smile.
Kids streamed past us, out of the tiny theater and onto the grass and walkway.
“There’s a little room inside, next to the stage, where the three of us can sit and talk,” I said.
/> Ling glanced around nervously, over her shoulder and along the paved paths, and then followed us inside.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She had been so confident when Katie and I first met her. But now she looked sad.
“In some ways, Dev, I don’t feel the same. I’m not looking forward to going home.”
“Are you leaving the United States because you’re afraid of Steve?” I asked.
Her arms were crossed over her chest and she was leaning forward on her chair.
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Ling said.
“That’s really strange,” I said. “I thought we were going to talk about him. Isn’t that basically why you came here?”
Ling paused before she spoke. “When we were in Montana, Katie told me about your sister. Your older sister.”
“My sister? Oh, you mean Natasha. What did Katie tell you?”
“That she was originally from Moldova and that your mother helped her get asylum here, isn’t that right?”
“Dev’s mom can do most anything you need,” Booker said.
“Do you know what a visa is?” Ling asked.
“I think so,” I said. “It’s kind of like a passport—a document that lets you into our country, but only for a limited period of time.”
Ling was rocking back and forth. “That’s it. I was lucky enough to get a student visa so that I could go to graduate school at Yale. But now that I had to drop out of school, I’m going to have to go back to China.”
“That’s why you’re leaving?” I asked.
“Yes, it won’t be legal for me to stay in the United States. That is, unless your mother can help me get to the authorities who can issue me a new visa,” Ling said. “There’s no one else I would know to ask.”
I needed to find out more about the situation before I could offer my mother’s help.
“Natasha was the victim of a terrible crime,” I said to Ling, who was staring at the floor. “That’s how my mother met her. Has Steve—or Chip—has either one of them done anything to hurt you?”
I wanted to know why Ling wanted to stay here, but left Yale. I was hoping she’d give us a sign as obvious as the growth of Pinocchio’s nose if I hit the right button. I really wanted to know if she was okay.
Digging For Trouble Page 17
