Sam laughed. “It worked for the Trojans and their big old horse!”
“Oh, Sam,” Paige said, her voice cracking. “When Jack started trashing our room, I freaked out. It was a stroke of genius to take the fossil with you. It wasn’t until after he showed me the phone numbers and we called Agent D, I mean Mr. Delgato, that I knew he wasn’t working with the professor. That’s when I told him you’d gone to the museum.”
Sam could have kicked herself. “Of course, the phone numbers! I knew they seemed familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why. Man, some super spy.”
Jackson continued, “You did some excellent deductive reasoning, Sam. I couldn’t tell you my early-morning meetings were with señor Delgato and my secrecy made me very suspicious. We were working together to set a trap for Professor Caine; then you dropped into the middle of our plan. When you kept snooping, I tried to head you off any way I could. I thought I’d convinced you to give up on the missing fossil. I have to say, you really had me believing your innocent routine. If you decide not to be a secret agent, you could think about an acting career.”
Sam looked from Jackson to señor Delgato, then back to Jackson. “I guess I sort of got in the middle of everyone’s plans. Why all the secret stuff? Why didn’t Agent D, I mean señor Delgato go to you and ask for the fossil when the shipment arrived?”
Jackson explained, “There was no hard proof Professor Caine was guilty. Señor Delgato had to wait and try to catch him in possession of the fossil. He wasn’t sure how the item would be smuggled in or how it would be marked. Finally, the piece showed up and then the darn thing immediately went missing before we could spring the trap. Professor Caine planned on letting things cool down, then he was going to retire from the bone business and leave the museum, taking the fossil with him. From that point on, arresting the professor with the bone became more difficult.”
At that moment, the paramedics and police officers arrived with Doctor Beech. Sam watched them enter the Obnoxious Lab, then escort Professor Caine out to the waiting ambulance.
As he was led away, the professor’s fierce gaze stabbed into Sam, and her blood froze. Hate radiated from him, and she was very glad Professor Caine was in the custody of the police.
Señor Delgato gave Sam a clipped bow. “Señorita, I am very sorry you were in such grave danger this evening.” His moustache twitched. “Although after the way you fixed my car in the parking lot, I wasn’t sure you would need help.”
Sam thought for a moment. “What about the money deposited in Jackson’s bank account, and all those hints about leaving?”
Jackson shook his head. “That’s the clever part. Professor Caine sent me to South America so I’d be the on the hook for the smuggling. When the Colombian shipment arrived, he took the piece, timing it so I was the probable culprit, and then he electronically deposited the money in my account to throw even more suspicion on me. I unknowingly added to the problem when I mentioned my leaving.”
Here he paused. “The reason I may be leaving, and incidentally, my clandestine weekends in Calgary, is that I’ve been offered a research assistant position at the university. I haven’t decided whether or not to take it. I have student loans that would choke a horse and need a boost in my income.”
“Have you decided now?” Sam asked.
“I have. Palaeontology is work I love doing and I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather do it than here. And I think Doctor Beech is going to need someone to help out on this exotic dino project.”
Sam turned to señor Delgato. “Would you mind answering a question?”
“Not at all, señorita.”
“If Professor Caine was your man, why were you following me?”
His brow furrowed. “After I heard a fossil was missing from the shipment, I knew Professor Caine had stolen it out from under our noses. When you detected me in the Cretaceous Garden, things became, how do you say, out of control. Then, when he pushed the crates over, I knew we had to get you out of danger and I sent Jackson to chase you off. We knew the fossil was still at the museum, but all our search efforts came up empty. We had no idea you had found it until tonight. “
Sam hefted the plaster-and-burlap-covered fossil. How could something so harmless be worth the trouble it had caused? “I don’t understand why anyone would kill for one small bone.”
Señor Delgato stepped forward. “If we could go to a work bench, I think I can answer your question, señorita Stellar.”
Jackson took them all into the preparation room.
“Watch out.” Sam indicated the large bone still suspended from the sling. “Handy things, these dino bones.” She patted the unwieldy weapon as they moved past.
Once at a workstation, señor Delgato gave her a chisel and hammer. “Please break the fossil out of its plaster jacket.”
Sam took the hammer and gently tapped the chisel against the jacket. The poorly made coating quickly split and fell away revealing a brownish vertebra like all the others Sam had seen. She picked the mystery bone up, holding victory in her palm. “Even when you kept saying it was only a chunk of junk plaster, I knew it was a real fossil, Jackson.”
Frowning, Sam hefted the vertebra. “Hey, wait a minute… This weighs hardly anything. This isn’t a real fossil at all. It’s a cast!” She picked up the hammer. “May I, señor Delgato?”
“By all means, señorita. You’ve earned it.”
Sam laid the cast of the bone on the table and smacked it with the hammer. The cast shattered into a thousand tiny shards.
Sam gasped, so did Paige and Rose. Jackson whistled, while señor Delgato watched knowingly.
There, in the middle of the broken cast, was a large, deep-green stone twinkling up at them. The light reflected from the heart of the crystal and the gem emitted a fiery glow.
“Emerald?” Sam whispered in awe.
“Emerald,” señor Delgato confirmed. “Colombia is known for her emeralds, and this,” he said, gesturing to the gemstone, “is the biggest and finest quality gem ever discovered in my country. It’s worth millions of dollars. Professor Caine and his conspirators stole it over a year ago, and I have been on their trail ever since.”
Sam grew thoughtful. “And the other museum thefts provided a perfect smokescreen in case the marked bone was inventoried before it went missing. The loss would have been chalked up to another in the ongoing series of unsolved thefts.” Sam shook her head. “Professor Caine is a very clever man.”
“Was a very clever man, Sam,” Jackson corrected. “His days as a mastermind for international jewel heists are over.”
Señor Delgato stood at attention. “On behalf of the Colombian government and myself, I want to thank you, señorita Sam Stellar. Without you, Professor Caine might very well have escaped.”
Sam suddenly felt shy. “It was nothing.”
“Nothing!” Paige yelped. “Don’t you realize what this means, Sam? It means you actually did some real, honest-to-goodness, secret agent work! All these years we’ve teased you about your fantasyland, crazy-lady dreams, and now you’ve gone and done it! James Bond couldn’t have solved it any better.”
A tingly feeling swept over Sam. Paige was right. She’d been true to her dream and now it was real. “Like Thoreau said – I kept marching to a different drummer. I hoped –” She corrected herself – “I knew one day I’d make it as an agent, only I didn’t expect it to be so soon.”
“I think we should celebrate.” Jackson ruffled Sam’s hair. “What do you say, Gopher? Are you up for a small party?”
“You bet! Bring on the marching band!” She turned to Rose. “How about you, Rosie? Do you think you could dig up an escort for our little shindig?”
Rose beamed. “I think I know a gentleman to ask the minute we get home.”
Jackson bowed to Paige. “Ms Carlson, would you consider being my date?”
Paige’s mouth dropped open in a way Sam would expect from a true Jackson Lunde fangirl.
Her hesitation lasted about
one millisecond. “Wow! My summer wish has come true. It would be so totally awesome and way cool!” Then, flustered and blushing, Paige added in her most mature voice, “I mean, that would be very nice, Jackson.” Everyone laughed and Paige’s blush deepened to a furious crimson.
Sam winked at her cousin, then casually scooped up the emerald and gave the precious stone to señor Delgato. “After you’ve secured this, perhaps you would join our celebration.”
“I’d be honoured, señorita.”
Sam held her arm straight out, then opened her hand in a mic-drop gesture. “I’d say this wraps up the Death by Dinosaur Caper.”
She started toward the employee entrance, then stopped and patted her pockets. “Does anyone have a security card? I seem to have dropped mine somewhere!”
If You Dig:
The Royal Tyrrell Museum
of Palaeontology
Location
The Royal Tyrrell Museum is located 6 kilometres from Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. It is situated in the middle of the fossil-bearing strata of the Late Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Formation. The specimens contained in the museum have been collected from around the world, but many are from the Alberta badlands, Dinosaur Provincial Park and the Devil’s Coulee Dinosaur Egg Site.
Royal Tyrrell Museum, 1500 N Dinosaur Trail, Drumheller, Alberta, Canada.
History
On August 12, 1884, Joseph Burr Tyrrell, a geologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, discovered a seventy-million-year-old carnivorous dinosaur skull near present-day Drumheller. This dinosaur was later named Albertosaurus sarcophagus which means Flesh-eating Lizard from Alberta.
On September 25, 1985, the museum opened to the public. In 1990, the museum was given Royal status.
Joseph Burr Tyrrell
About the Museum
The museum boasts more than 47,000 square feet of fascinating exhibits, displays and dioramas. It is home to more than 120,000 individual fossils.
The museum is a world-class research facility and is unique in that it is open to the public. Arranged by geologic era, the exhibits are grouped by age from oldest to newest, culminating in the Ice Age and the rise of mammals.
These exhibits are arranged in a series of chronological galleries spanning 3.9 billion years. The Dinosaur Hall has over forty mounted dinosaur skeletons, including specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex, Albertosaurus, Stegosaurus and Triceratops.
The museum boasts its own fossil of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull that was named Black Beauty.
Ornithomimus edmontonensis. The skull in the foreground is Black Beauty.
A new gallery, named “Grounds for Discovery,” showcases the recently unveiled Nodosaur, Borealopelta markmitchelli. There is much more info on this exciting new dinosaur (and gallery) online.
The “Devonian Reef” is a life-size model of a 375-million-year old reef and the “Cretaceous Garden” has representatives of the plants that lived in prehistoric Alberta.
In the “Age of Mammals” we learn about our very distant ancestors.
Through a viewing window, visitors can watch technicians in the “Preparation Lab” prepare fossils for research and exhibition.
Devonian Reef
Cretaceous Garden
Preparation Lab
The Science Hall has interactive stations that introduce visitors to palaeontological concepts, simulated fossil digs, and fossil casting (shown below). It’s hands on for the whole family.
There are also guided and self-guided tours of the badlands to enhance the experience for those who really dig dinosaurs.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum is dedicated to collecting and presenting the palaeontological history of these long gone plants, animals and eco-systems with special attention to Alberta’s incredible fossil history.
Seven Wonders of the Badlands Tour
Photographs of the museum exhibits and activities are courtesy The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.
If You Dig: Emeralds
What is an Emerald?
Raw emerald crystals
Cut and polished emerald
Emeralds are gemstones that are green in colour. They belong to the Beryl family and are dug from underground mines. They have a hexagonal shape and a hardness of eight out of ten on the Mohs scale. A diamond, the hardest mineral, has a rating of ten on the Mohs scale which means an emerald is nearly as hard as a diamond. Emeralds are found in several places in the world including Colombia, Zambia and Brazil. The best quality emeralds come from Colombia. Emeralds have also been found in the far north of Canada. The value of the stone depends on its size, colour, purity, and brilliance. The darker the green of the emerald, the more valuable the stone. Emeralds are twenty times rarer than diamonds and are prized for their extraordinary beauty. Scientists have been able to create synthetic emeralds in a laboratory.
Where in the World is Colombia?
Most Colombian emeralds are mined in the eastern portion of the Andes, between the Boyacá and Cundinamarca provinces. There are three major mines in Colombia: Muzo, Coscuez and Chivor which supply most of the countries emeralds.
Colombia, South America
Colombia world map view
History of the Emerald
Emeralds have figured prominently throughout history. The word ‘emerald’ comes from the ancient Persian word for green gem.
Cleopatra was an Egyptian queen who loved emeralds, and the Roman emperor Nero would watch the gladiator games wearing glasses with emerald lenses.
In the novel The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, the all-powerful and all-knowing wizard lived in Emerald City, which was made of emeralds.
When the Incas and Aztecs discovered emeralds in Colombia, they became highly valued to these people. The Spanish conquistadors came in the sixteenth century, and when they saw the beauty of this gemstone, they fought for the emerald mines. When the conquistadors returned to Spain, they took the emeralds with them and introduced Europeans to this beautiful gemstone.
The most famous Colombian emeralds are the Devonshire Emerald, the Patricia Emerald and the Crown of the Andes which contains 443 emeralds including the Atahualpa Emerald, named for the last Incan emperor.
Mythology Surrounding the Emerald
There is a Colombian legend that tells of the god Ares who created two immortal beings, a man called Tena and a woman called Fura. Ares told the couple that to remain young and immortal, they must be faithful to each other. When Fura broke this promise, she and Tena became old and died. This saddened Ares and the god took pity on them. Ares changed them into two stone mountains which allowed them to be immortal once again. It is said that Fura cried for all she had lost and her tears became the emeralds found today.
Emeralds are believed to heal the eyes, and one myth states that by looking at them, a person with poor eyesight would have his vision restored. Ancient Egyptians believed emeralds were associated with rebirth and fertility. Many mummies were entombed with emerald necklaces in the hope of bringing eternal youth to the person who had passed away.
It is also believed that emeralds provide protection when traveling and have healing powers. It is said that those who possess emeralds will have good fortune, a better memory, and increased intelligence. This mysterious green gem was also believed to enable the owner to predict the future.
Birthstones, the Zodiac and Celebrations
Emeralds are the birthstone for the month of May and are the gem for the astrological sign of Cancer, June 22 – July 22.
Emeralds are the gift to give for twentieth and thirty-fifth wedding anniversaries.
Photographs in this section are courtesy Wikimedia Commons as follows:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AElDoradoEmerald.JPG
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEmeraude_Musso.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AColombia_Mapa_Oficial.svg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AColombia_on_the_globe_(Colombia_centered).svg
Acknowled
gements
It takes a village to write a book, and for this one, I have many to thank:
Mary Blakeslee – friend and support when this all started
Family editors and all round sounding boards – for always being there
John Agnew – publisher for taking a chance
MacKenzie Hamon – for tirelessly working in the background
Maria Alejandra Fleischer – Famous Spanish translator – ole!
Carrie Lunde – Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology marketing wizard
Amy Kowalchuk – Palaeontology technician extraordinaire
Kathryn Cole – Editor par excellence
Susan Buck – Unstoppable production team
Plus a host of others too numerous to list. To all of you, my sincere and heartfelt thanks.
Author’s Note
Death by Dinosaur – A Sam Stellar Mystery, was inspired by my first visit to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. This murder mystery is a blend of real science and a good old-fashioned who-dunnit.
Death by Dinosaur: A Sam Stellar Mystery Page 13
