One False Note

by Gordon Korman

  be there."

  Dan made a face. "I thought you quit being a Jonah Wizard fan when he dissed you in Paris."

  "I'm helping you rob the guy, aren't I? What I'm saying is when he shows up down here, that means it's safe to get into his room."

  As if on cue, a white chauffeur-driven Bentley whispered up to the curb and sat there, awaiting its Very Important Passenger. There was a stir in the crowd of media people, and the star himself emerged from his hotel, his ever-present father a half step behind him. Camera flashes lit up the night. "Quick!" hissed Amy. "We can't let him see us!"

  They ducked behind a magazine kiosk and watched Jonah work the crowd.

  "Whassup, yo? ... Thanks for coming out ... 'Predate that... Word."

  Behind him, his father's thumbs were just a blur as he text messaged on his BlackBerry,

  Probably sharing his son's eloquence with the world.

  The media scrum began peppering the star with questions.

  "Jonah, can we expect any surprises on the European version of the DVD?"

  "Any truth to the rumor that you're dating Miley Cyrus?"

  "Have you heard that the kung fu grip on your action figure flunked safety inspection?" Jonah answered these in his usual style, somehow managing to sound urban hip and folksy at the same time.

  Amy didn't like him, but she couldn't help marveling at his ease and skill dealing with the paparazzi. It went beyond merely coming up with the right things to say. Jonah made the press love him.

  I'm the total opposite of that, she reflected. Just the thought of speaking to a large crowd terrified her.

  "Hey, Jonah," a reporter called. "You're on top of the world at fifteen. Do you worry that you've got nowhere to go but down?"

  The man of the hour grinned. "Chill out, yo. Who says I'm on top? I'm not even top banana in this hotel. Man, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg is staying right here. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty happening. But doesn't royalty beat having your own Pez dispenser?"

  "Let's go," muttered Nellie. "His modesty is turning my stomach."

  As Jonah continued to charm the crowd, the Cahills and Nellie stole around the corner and slipped into the hotel through a side entrance.

  They walked past a bank of ornate gold elevators and ducked through a door marked with a sign in German.

  "Employees only," Nellie translated in a whisper.

  "You speak German?" Amy hissed in surprise.

  "It's more like a working knowledge," she replied with a shrug. "Look -- the freight elevator."

  They rode down to the basement level, where they found a maze of corridors. Amy was fearful of being approached from around every corner and behind every door. Her dread chilled her from within, as if her spine had been infused with liquid nitrogen. The cellar was cold, but not enough to explain her shivering. "Why is it so empty?" she asked finally.

  "Most of the staff works the day shift," Nellie guessed. "Jackpot!" she added, leading them through a partition into what looked like a dressing room. She selected a chambermaid's uniform from a large rack, ducked behind a divider, and quickly changed into it.

  "Maybe we should lose the nose ring," Amy suggested timidly.

  "Nothing doing," Nellie replied. "The stuffed shirts in this place need a little livening up. Come on." She jammed her regular clothes, then both Amy and Dan,

  into a housekeeping cart. An armload of sheets and towels went on top to conceal her passengers.

  "How do we know what room he's in?" Dan whispered from the depths of the pile as Nellie rolled them back toward the elevator.

  "The royal suite, of course," Nellie murmured. "Would anything less be good enough for that stuck-up nitwit? And keep it down. Laundry doesn't talk." The elevator took them to the top floor, the seventeenth. Nellie pushed the cart down the hall, stopping in front of suite 1700, the one with the gilt crown prominently displayed over the door. Knowing that the Wizards were on their way to their party, she boldly plucked the key card out of its tray and inserted it into the reader. A beep, a green light, and they were inside.

  "Wow," the au pair breathed. "So this is Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." The room was palatial, with museum-quality furniture and decorative pieces -- sofas and lounges in the nineteenth-century style, soft and overstuffed and upholstered in plush velvet; delicate china lamps and vases; everything oozing opulent taste. She reached down and was in the process of pulling the Cahills out of their hiding place, when a heavily accented voice inquired, "Does a maid not knock at His Highness's door?"

  CHAPTER 5

  Shocked, Nellie pushed her charges back down among the linen. "Uh -- I'm sorry," she managed. "I thought the suite was empty. I'm supposed to bring fresh towels to the Wizards' room."

  "My dear young lady, this is the suite of his Highness the Grand Duke of Luxembourg." The man's lip curled slightly. "The American television actor is in the suite below -- and a great fuss he made about that, I might add."

  Nellie began backing the cart toward the door. "Sorry, sir. I'll get out of your way." "A moment, if you please. Now that you are here, His Highness's bedchamber requires refreshing."

  Nellie continued backing away. "Well, I really should get down to the Wizards' ... " "Nonsense. It will take but a moment. And there are several other matters that require your attention. If you'll follow me to the bathroom ... "

  "Coming," she called after him. She leaned down into the linen bin, thrust the key card into the nearest hand, and whispered, "When you hear my voice in the next room, get out of here!"

  "What about you?" Amy squeaked.

  "I can handle myself. You get the diary. I'll meet you back at our hotel. Be careful!" And she was gone. A moment later, they could hear her announcing loudly, "This bathroom is bigger than my whole apartment!"

  The sheets began flying, and Amy and Dan scrambled from the cart and slipped through the door into the hallway. "Jonah's one floor down," Dan rasped. They ran for the stairs.

  The door of suite 1600 was identical to its upstairs counterpart, except there was no crown.

  "Poor Jonah," Amy said sarcastically as they let themselves in with the key card. "He's really slumming it."

  If the rooms were any less opulent than the Grand Duke's accomodations, Amy and Dan couldn't tell where corners had been cut. The suite was massive and elegantly decorated. The marble floor gleamed; the rich carpets were hand-woven and luxurious. Every vase and ashtray on every end table looked like it had been placed there by an artist.

  "Kind of makes our place in Boston seem like an outhouse," Dan observed.

  Amy sighed. "I don't care about the high life. But sometimes it bugs me just how rich

  the competition is."

  "Grace was rich." Dan's brow clouded as he remembered the fire that had destroyed their grandmother's mansion on the day of her funeral. "Anyway, I'd rather be poor and normal than a rich idiot like Jonah or the Cobras."

  "Yeah, but money is a big advantage in a contest like this," his sister argued bleakly. "It can open a lot of doors that we'll have to find another way around. We're really outclassed, Dan."

  "That's what cheating is for." He surveyed the expansive parlor. "Now, if I was a stuck-up idiot with my head on a Pez dispenser, where would I hide the diary I jacked?" Amy smiled in spite of herself. "We'd better search the whole place." They began to comb the huge suite, looking under sofa cushions, in drawers, behind drapes, and through closets.

  "Hey, check it out." Dan reached into a small carton and withdrew a six-inch-tall action figure, Jonah Wizard in plasticized Phat Farm jeans and warm-up jacket. "Not a very good likeness," he commented. "He's much uglier in real life." "Put that back!" hissed Amy, rifling through a drawer. "It's bad enough we broke into his room. We don't need to steal his dumb toys."

  "It's for my collection," Dan protested. "He's got a whole box of them. Hey -- this must

  be the one with the kung fu grip." He pressed the button and watched the tiny fist snap closed. "Whoa -- no wonder it's being r
ecalled! You could crack a walnut with this thing!"

  "Look!" Amy's eyes danced with excitement. She turned the toy around in Dan's hand. When the grip was activated, a sequence of red letters and numbers lit up on the back of the figure's headband. "GR63K1!" she read breathlessly. "It's some kind of secret code!"

  Dan snorted a laugh in her face. "For a straight-A student, you can be pretty dumb. Sure, it's a code -- to download a free Jonah Wizard screen saver from his website! The commercials are all over TV back home."

  His sister reddened. "I guess I'm not as much of a couch potato as you," she mumbled in embarrassment, and returned her attention to the search. Dan stuffed the figure in his pocket and joined her.

  The suite had five rooms -- the parlor, two bedrooms, a dressing chamber, and the kitchen. They went through every inch of the place, with no results. The master bedroom had a safe, but it was unlocked and empty. Even an examination of the kitchen and minibar revealed nothing.

  "You don't think he's got it with him, do you?" Dan asked in alarm.

  His sister shook her head. "You don't bring a hot item like that to a place where every

  TV camera in Europe is pointed at you. It's here. We just have to find it."

  "Where do we look?" Dan was running out of patience. "It's too dark, anyway! What's

  up with these fancy hotels putting twenty layers of drapes over all the windows?" He flipped a light switch. A vast crystal chandelier blazed overhead.

  Amy and Dan gasped. At the center of this confection of light hung a basket formed by ropes of crystals. There, dark against the brilliance, was the unmistakable silhouette of a book.

  "The diary!" they chorused. Dan ran for a chair.

  "Not high enough!" his sister barked. "Come help me with the table."

  They took the heavy glass table and hauled it under the chandelier. Dan climbed atop

  it, but he was still too short. "Hand me the chair."

  Soon, Amy was perched on the table, steadying the chair and her brother, who stood on tiptoe atop two phone books on the seat.

  Straining to reach through the strings of crystals, Dan felt his hand close on the

  leather-bound cover. "Got it!"

  He drew out the diary of Maria Anna "Nannerl" Mozart.

  The job of au pair to the Cahill kids had brought Nellie experiences that she never could have anticipated. This was one of them -- crawling on her hands and knees in a marble bathroom, scrubbing a grand duke's toilet.

  No way there's mildew in here,

  she thought bitterly. But maybe royalty could detect stains regular people couldn't see, kind of like "The Princess and the Pea."

  "The Grand Duke and the Bowl." Catchy title.

  One thing was certain. Amy and Dan owed her big for this. She wondered if they had managed to find the diary yet. If only there were some way of knowing that the mission had been accomplished. Then she could conk the Grand Duke's assistant with the toilet brush and get out of this five-star freak show.

  Her brow clouded as the vision grew darker -- Amy and Dan, caught, arrested, or worse. Who knew what dangers were lurking out there in this winner-take-all game? Hotel security was scary enough, but those crazy Cahill cousins were capable of anything! The winner of this contest might literally rule the world. A lot of nut jobs had done some terrible things with that kind of power as a prize. What chance did two young kids have?

  Her uneasy thoughts popped like a soap bubble when an unfriendly voice over her shoulder announced, "You do not work for us, Fraulein.

  What are you doing in this suite?"

  Heart sinking, Nellie turned around. Next to the Grand Duke's man was a uniformed guard.

  She tried to bluff it through. "Of course I work here. Do you think I sneak into hotels

  for the pleasure of scrubbing strangers' toilets?"

  "You do not work here," the man repeated humorlessly.

  "You know every single employee?" she challenged.

  "No," he admitted. "You have the earring in the nose. It is against hotel policy. You will come with me."

  Nellie thought hard. She wasn't sure how much trouble she was in. She was a foreigner in this country. If she ended up deported, what would happen to Amy and Dan?

  "All right, you caught me. I'm here by mistake. I was trying to get into Jonah Wizard's suite. I'm his biggest fan. I just have to meet him! But I picked the wrong room."

  The man's eyes probed hers. "And you are doing this crime alone? No one is with you?" "I'm totally alone," she said, perhaps too quickly. "And it's not a crime to love Jonah Wizard. He's just the coolest -- "

  From directly below, an enormous crash shook the building. The security man looked daggers at Nellie. "The Wizard suite! - Fraulein, you had better hope that this disturbance has nothing to do with you, or you will be enjoying a great deal more of our Austrian hospitality."

  "Dan, are you all right?"

  Dan lay on the floor of the suite, in the wreckage of the chair, in the wreckage of the table.

  He groaned and sat up, the diary clutched in his arms like a football. "What happened?" "I'm not sure," Amy replied, none too steady herself. She hauled him to his feet and scanned him for cuts. "Either the chair broke and dropped us through the table, or the table broke first, and that's what broke the chair. It doesn't matter. We've got to get out of here -- half the hotel must have heard that crash!"

  They ran out of suite 1600 just as a uniformed security officer burst from the stairwell, pulling none other than Nellie with him.

  There was no chance of feigning cluelessness. The door was still open behind them, the wreckage clearly visible from the hall.

  The Cahills fled, sprinting around the nearest corner and out of view. The guard moved to give chase, but Nellie grabbed his arm and pulled him back with a heave that almost dislocated his shoulder.

  "You can't leave! What if Jonah is lying in there, bleeding?" The security man was in a towering rage. "Stupid girl! Your hero is not even in the building!" He took a walkie-talkie from his belt and began speaking in rapid-fire German.

  Nellie swallowed the lump in her throat. He was placing a guard at the elevators and at the bottom of all building stairwells. Amy and Dan were trapped.

  CHAPTER 6

  When the elevator door rolled open, both Cahills were running so hard that they almost blasted straight past it. Amy put the brakes on first, grabbed her brother, and hauled him aboard. She pressed L. They stood, chests heaving, as the car descended. Their anxious eyes followed the readout as the numbers counted down from sixteen. Suddenly, Dan's hand snaked out and pressed 2. "They could be waiting for us in the lobby," he explained tensely.

  "But that's where the exit is!" Amy shrilled. "You can't leave from the second floor!" "Sure you can." The doors opened, and Dan pulled her out onto 2, amid ballrooms and meeting facilities. She was nearly hysterical. "How?" "By jumping."

  Amy stared at him. "Have you lost your -- "

  They snaked around a bend in the corridor, and the hotel's front drive appeared before

  them through floor-to-ceiling glass.

  Dan pushed open the French doors, and the two stepped out onto a narrow stone balcony.

  "No way, Dan! I'm not jumping! We'll break our legs!" "Look down!" he commanded.

  Six feet below stretched a canvas awning that ran across the front entrance.

  He swung a leg over the stone railing. "Piece of cake," he said, trying to sound more

  certain than he felt. "A shorter drop than the high diving board."

  "But no water!"

  He dropped. Amy watched in horror, expecting him to tear through the fabric and be

  dashed to pieces on the concrete. Instead, the awning held.

  Grinning up at her, he crawled to the edge of the canvas, found a steel support, and

  shinnied to the sidewalk. He waved at her with Nannerl's diary.

  Never had Amy experienced fear on so many different levels all at the same time -- fear

 
; of capture; fear for Nellie; fear for her crazy brother, who was too stupid to know what

  couldn't be done; and a very real fear of stepping off a second-story balcony onto a

  fragile piece of cloth.

  "Hurry up!" came an impatient call from below.

  I can't do it... I just can't...

  The flood of shame was almost as overwhelming as her terror. Some Cahill she turned out to be! The future of the entire world was at stake, and she couldn't cajole herself into a six-foot drop -- not even after seeing her eleven-year-old brother do it. She might as well let Jonah have the diary. Or the Holts or the Kabras. Her grandmother had been wrong about her. She didn't have what it took.

  Sorry, Grace...

  It was this thought that jolted Amy into sudden explosive action. She was already falling through the air before she'd actually come to the decision to do it. She hit the fabric like an errant trapeze artist into a safety net. Seconds later, Dan was hauling her down to the street.

  They were in a taxi and blocks away before either of them dared to speak. "Nellie -- " Dan began. "I know ... "

  Their little room at the Hotel Franz Josef seemed dingy and even smaller after the accommodations at the Royal Hapsburg. The greeting they received from Saladin didn't help their general mood. The Egyptian Mau still refused cat food, and, in fact, had spread his dinner all over the carpet. A fishy smell hung in the air. In addition, the

  scratching had gotten worse than ever and was beginning to wear away the fur around his collar.

  Both Cahills were exhausted, but neither thought of sleep. Nellie was all that was important now. They'd been so focused on the 39 Clues that they hadn't considered how much their au pair was giving up to stick with them and their quest. She had put her life on hold, traveled thousands of miles from home, and even charged many of their expenses on her personal credit card. Sure, they planned to pay her back. Amy and Dan had jewelry from Grace that was probably worth a lot of money. But jewelry could be lost or stolen, and there was no guarantee that they would win the contest. There was no guarantee that they would even survive it.