A to Z Mysteries_Super Edition 10

by Ron Roy

  DINK, JOSH, AND RUTH ROSE AREN’T THE ONLY KID DETECTIVES!

  CAN YOU FIND THE HIDDEN MESSAGE INSIDE THIS BOOK?

  There are 26 illustrations in this book, not counting the one on the title page, the map at the beginning, and the picture of the dinosaur skull that repeats at the start of many of the chapters. In each of the 26 illustrations, there’s a hidden letter. If you can find all the letters, you will spell out a secret message!

  If you’re stumped, the answer is on the bottom of this page.

  This is dedicated to my young readers.

  You are my inspiration!

  —R.R.

  To Payton, Abigail, and Jolie

  —J.S.G.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Ron Roy

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Stephen Gilpin

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by John Steven Gurney

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon and A to Z Mysteries are registered trademarks and A Stepping Stone Book and the colophon and the A to Z Mysteries colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web!

  SteppingStonesBooks.com

  rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780399551987 (trade)—ISBN 9780399551994 (lib. bdg.)— ebook ISBN 9780399552007

  This book has been officially leveled by using the F&P Text Level Gradient™ Leveling System.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  “I can’t believe we’re sleeping in a museum tonight,” Josh said. “I saw a movie once where some kids stayed overnight in a museum, and no one ever saw them again!”

  Dink grinned at Josh. “What happened to them?” he asked.

  “A dinosaur ate them!”

  “If no one ever saw the kids again,” Dink asked, “how do you know a dinosaur got them?”

  “The police found bloody dinosaur tracks in the museum!” Josh said.

  Ruth Rose laughed. “This museum has dinosaurs,” she said, “but they’ve been dead for a long time. Nothing to worry about!”

  Dink, Josh, and Ruth Rose were in Boston, Massachusetts, with Dink’s father. He had a business meeting there and had brought the kids with him. They were in the Boston Public Garden, where they planned to visit the New England Children’s Museum. During the year, the museum invited kids for special sleepovers. Dink’s dad had signed them up a week ago.

  The kids wore backpacks and carried their rolled-up sleeping bags. As they hiked past a pond in the Public Garden, Dink watched people riding in boats that had giant carved swans at the back.

  “That looks like fun!” Ruth Rose said. “I’d like to try it.”

  “Do those boats ever tip over?” Josh asked.

  Mr. Duncan laughed. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But you’d be in shallow water, and you could walk right out onto the lawn.”

  “I see the museum!” Ruth Rose said, pointing straight ahead.

  In the shade of a giant pine tree stood a stone building with lots of windows. The museum was set in a lawn with shrubbery and hundreds of yellow daffodils moving in the breeze. A sign over the wide front door said NEW ENGLAND CHILDREN’S MUSEUM—A LEARNING PLACE.

  A crowd of kids and parents were standing near the museum entrance. Some of the kids were wearing costumes. One boy was all in black, with four extra arms sewn onto his black sweatshirt. “Look,” Dink said to Josh and Ruth Rose. “A giant spider!”

  Josh shuddered. “I’m glad he’s not real,” he said.

  “But there are real ones inside,” Ruth Rose teased. “There’s a spider exhibit, and I’m dying to see it!”

  Two younger kids were wearing green dinosaur costumes. They looked like twins. The boy’s T-shirt said I’M FRED. His sister’s said I’M RUBY. They each held a teddy bear under one arm. They carried sleeping bags, like everyone else.

  A small banner next to the door read COME INSIDE AND MEET OUR COLOSSAL FOSSIL!

  Just then a woman stepped out through the door. She wore a blue shirt with the museum’s initials, NECM, printed on the front; a baseball cap; and cargo pants.

  She knelt near a man who was sitting on the ground, leaning against the trunk of the pine tree.

  The man had on raggedy pants and a ripped winter jacket. A ski cap was pulled over his tangled gray hair. Next to him lay a brown dog. The dog’s tail wagged when the woman patted him on the head.

  She handed the man a small lunch bag. He looked inside the bag and pulled out a sandwich, then tore off the wrapping and took a big bite. The woman went back to the museum steps and smiled at the people waiting.

  “I’m Sylvia Slate,” she said. “I’m one of your chaperones for tonight. Come on in!”

  They all trooped through the doorway. A long table had been set up inside the lobby, where museum workers were checking off names. Then Sylvia and more chaperones in blue shirts led everyone into a small auditorium. “Please find a seat, folks!” Sylvia called out. She was standing on a stage. The kids and their parents filled in a few rows of seats.

  She introduced the other chaperones: “Say hi to Tyler, Sandy, Trish, and Otto!” The four chaperones waved, and the kids and parents clapped.

  Just then a man ran through the auditorium and leaped onto the stage. He had curly black hair and a black beard. He was wearing what looked like an animal skin covered with long black hair. He was carrying a club, and leather sandals were tied onto his feet. “What about me?” he said.

  Sylvia laughed. “Oh yes, I forgot our caveman,” she said. “Say hi to Nog!”

  “Hi, Nog!” everyone called out.

  Nog bowed. “Hi right back at you!” he yelled in a deep voice.

  “Do you really live in a cave?” a kid yelled, and everyone laughed.

  Nog grinned. “Nope. I live in a nice apartment here in Boston, right across the street from Paul Revere’s house.”

  “Who’s Paul Revere?” the same kid asked.

  His father smiled and said, “I’ll tell you later, Brian.”

  “Nog is going to show you some of the museum exhibits,” Sylvia told the group. “Then we’ll split up into smaller groups, and you’ll get to choose one of us as your personal chaperone for the evening!”

  Nog waved his club in the air. “Make a long line and follow me!” he said.

  “Leave your sleepin
g bags and backpacks here,” Sylvia called out. “You’ll pick them up again later.”

  For the next half hour, Nog led the group around parts of the museum. They saw a Triceratops that Nog told them was twenty-three feet long. “This guy’s skeleton was found in South Dakota,” he said.

  The kids and adults stared up at the huge skeleton.

  “No touching!” Nog called out when little Fred put a finger on the skeleton’s leg. “He’s ticklish!”

  Nog took them past a room where small animals lived. Another room on the tour was filled with birds in cages. A few of the birds were sleeping, but most were cheeping and chirping.

  “Look, butterflies!” one kid yelled when Nog showed them a huge room filled with flowers and trees. Thousands of colorful butterflies flew about.

  They saw a room where you could study germs under microscopes. A sign on the window said WHAT MAKES YOU SICK? COME IN AND LEARN!

  “And here’s our spider room,” Nog said. He grinned through his thick beard. “I hope you don’t all have nightmares tonight!”

  They looked through a large window and saw a bunch of cages. In one cage, a big tarantula clung to the wire.

  “Can we go in?” Ruth Rose asked. “My friend Josh just loves spiders!”

  “You can do that later with your chaperone,” Nog said. “Now it’s time to get a snack. But before we do, I want you to come and meet Spino!”

  “I hope Spino isn’t another spider!” Josh whispered to Dink.

  “Spino is our colossal fossil!” Nog said. He led them to a tall room with windows near the ceiling.

  Dink felt a breeze. He thought he could smell the flowers outside the building.

  In one wall of the room were two doors, labeled OFFICE and LABORATORY in black letters. The laboratory door was partly open, and Dink saw a man inside, peering through a microscope.

  In the middle of the tall room was a roped-off area. Behind the ropes stood the partly constructed skeleton of a dinosaur. It had a long neck and tail. Plastic plants and painted cardboard rocks made the ground under the skeleton look like a riverbed. There was even artificial water, which Dink thought was probably plastic painted to look like a river.

  “This is Spino,” Nog told the group. “Real name, Spinosaurus. He was found by a farmer in Africa.”

  “Spino is awesome!” one of the kids said.

  Nog pointed his club at the skeleton. “He certainly is,” he said. “This colossal fossil walked on the earth millions of years before people did. So I never had to worry about getting eaten by a dinosaur!”

  They all gawked at the enormous dinosaur. “The museum scientists haven’t finished putting the skeleton together yet,” Nog went on. “The rest of the bones are still packed in those crates.” He pointed to several large wooden boxes. A few workers were pulling out bones and laying them on the floor. Two other workers stood on ladders, doing something to the dinosaur’s neck.

  “What are those steel poles for?” Dink asked.

  “The poles hold the skeleton up,” Nog answered. “Without them, it might fall over. When the workers are done, Spino will stand balanced on his hind legs and tail. Then some of the poles will be removed.”

  They watched a man climb a ladder. He stepped onto one of the wood planks that ran between two more ladders. The man stretched a tape measure along one of the dinosaur’s ribs, then wrote something in a notebook.

  “Why do you call him Spino?” a girl asked.

  “These dinosaurs had tall spines growing out of their backs, sort of like a sail,” Nog explained. He pointed to an artist’s drawing of Spinosaurus, the way it might have looked when it was alive. The drawing showed Spinosaurus standing at the edge of a river. The artist had painted other prehistoric animals into the scene, but Spino was the biggest.

  Next to the drawing, a small sign read MEET SPINO, A TRULY COLOSSAL FOSSIL!

  “How did you get the skeleton all the way from Africa to Boston?” Dink asked Nog.

  “The museum bought the bones from the farmer who discovered them on his land,” Nog explained. “Then our scientists joined their scientists to dig it all up, put it in special crates, and ship it here. The whole operation was very expensive!”

  “You paid money for old bones?” Josh asked.

  Nog smiled. “Yep,” he said. “A lot of money. That’s why our museum workers are being so careful as they put Spino together. This is a very valuable dinosaur!”

  “He’s so big!” Ruth Rose said.

  “Yes, even larger than the T. rex,” Nog said. “See his skull? Looks sort of like a crocodile’s, doesn’t it? His long jaws and sharp teeth helped Spino catch fish and other small creatures he liked to eat.”

  “Small creatures like you,” Dink whispered into Josh’s ear.

  Just then two men stepped out of the office and approached the group. One man had gray hair, wore a suit, and carried a briefcase. The man with him was much younger. His hair was red, and it was tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

  The older man smiled at Nog.

  “This is Dr. Wurst,” Nog told the group. “He’s the museum director.”

  Dr. Wurst nodded at the kids and adults. “Welcome to the museum and our spring sleepover,” he said. “I know that Nog and our other staff will make every effort to show you a good time!”

  The man with the red ponytail smiled. “I hope you get a chance to see my River Diamond,” he said. Then he and Dr. Wurst hurried away.

  “What’s the River Diamond?” a boy with thick glasses asked.

  “Follow me!” Nog said. He pointed his club toward a small fenced-in area a few yards from the end of Spino’s tail. Inside the black fencing stood a wooden pedestal with a clear dome on top. A light on the ceiling shone down on the dome. Inside, on a red cloth, was an object a little bigger than a tennis ball. It was covered with dark brown dirt, with shiny black parts showing through the dirt.

  “This is the River Diamond!” Nog said. “The man you just saw with Dr. Wurst is Edward Alanis. He owns the diamond, and he lent it to the museum.”

  Everyone peered at the thing under the dome. “I thought diamonds were supposed to be shiny,” Ruby said. “This is all dirty.”

  “It looks like the hunks of coal my grandparents had in their basement,” her mom said.

  Nog laughed. “You would be lucky to find this in your basement!” he said. “The River Diamond looks the way it did when Mr. Alanis pulled it from the mud a few months ago. We left it just the way he found it, but under that goop is a very rare black diamond. When the diamond is returned to Mr. Alanis, he’ll have a jeweler clean the mud away. Then the jeweler will polish the black diamond and cut it up into many smaller pieces. Each new diamond will be worth a lot of money.”

  “How much?” the boy with the glasses asked.

  “Just as you see it here, the uncut diamond is worth at least five million dollars,” Nog said. “Much more after it’s been cleaned and cut up.”

  “Five million dollars?” Josh yelped. “Is that why there’s a fence around it?”

  “Yes,” Nog answered. “If anyone touches the dome, a very sensitive alarm will go off.”

  The boy wearing glasses pulled a magnifying glass out of his pocket. He leaned over the fence and peered at the diamond.

  “Not too close, please,” Nog said. “We wouldn’t want to set off that alarm!” Nog gently led the boy away from the diamond. “Now, let’s go meet your chaperones and see where you’re going to sleep tonight.”

  Everyone followed Nog past Spino’s long tail bones to the other end of the big room. In the corner were two bathrooms, “His” and “Hers.” Five feet from the bathrooms was a wide door opening into another space. This room had a blue carpet on the floor. Fans in two of the corners made a soft whirring sound. A cloth-covered table s
tood against one wall. Platters were arranged on the table, next to dishes, bottles of water, and silverware.

  Dink noticed a movie projector and screen in another corner.

  The chaperone named Sylvia walked over to the group. “How was your tour?” she asked.

  “Cool!” Josh said. “Except for the spiders!”

  “Why don’t you all sit down?” Sylvia said. “Now is when you get to pick your personal chaperones. Then you can get your sleeping bags and bring them back here.”

  Everyone sat on the carpet. The other four chaperones stood in front of them. Nog left the group and walked back to the Spino exhibit. Dink could see the skeleton through the open door.

  One chaperone raised his hand. “Hi, I’m Tyler. I love butterflies, and I’ll show them to you later. Who wants to be in my group?”

  A bunch of hands went up.

  “Great, then follow me!” Tyler said. Some kids and their parents went with Tyler to a corner of the room.

  Sandy raised her hand next. “My name is Sandy, and I can teach you about electricity. Stand up if you want to be in my group!”

  About ten kids and adults followed Sandy to another corner.

  After Trish and Otto were chosen by more kids, Sylvia was left. “Okay, I guess the rest of you are stuck with me!” she said.

  “No, we wanted you!” Ruth Rose said. She, Dink, Josh, and Dink’s father would be part of her group.

  “Me too!” a boy called out. He was the one with the thick eyeglasses. He had been looking through his magnifying glass at the River Diamond in the other room.

  The boy was with his father. “I’m Greg Davis,” the tall man said, “and this is my son, Alex Davis.”

  “And I’m Leanna Walker,” the twins’ mom said. “These little dinosaurs are Fred and Ruby, as you can see by their T-shirts.”