Claudia and the Mystery at the Museum Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Claudia, what on earth are you doing?” asked my older sister Janine, when she saw me sprawled out on the living room floor, near the fireplace.

  “Reading the paper,” I said. “What does it look like I’m doing?” Janine is a genius (for real!), but sometimes she doesn’t seem very bright at all.

  “Not just the paper,” said Janine. “You’re reading The New York Times. The Sunday New York Times.”

  “I know that,” I said, with dignity.

  “But you never read the paper,” said Janine. “Except perhaps to check your horoscope or something.”

  Janine was right, I had to admit it. I don’t usually read our local newspaper, the Stoneybrook News, much less the Sunday New York Times. Normally, the tiny print and serious-looking columns of that huge, thick newspaper put me off. I’m not big on current events. Or history. Or politics.

  But there was something in the Times that Sunday that I was really interested in reading about. So I was wading through page after page of dense black type, trying to find a certain article.

  If you knew me the way my friends know me, you would be able to guess what that article was about. “Art,” you’d say, without thinking twice.

  And you’d be right. I may not be interested in geography or math or any of those other boring (to me) subjects, but I am very, very interested in art. I love to look at it. I love to read about it. And most of all, I like to make it. I like to draw and paint and sculpt. I like to make jewelry. I like to work with papier mâché. I’m never happier than when I’m creating something that’s totally me.

  “Totally me” means totally Claudia Kishi. And since I can’t show you a piece of my artwork, I guess I’ll just have to tell you about myself instead. I’m thirteen years old and I am in the eighth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. That’s in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, where I’ve lived all my life. It’s a small quiet town with lots of nice old houses. As for my looks, I have long, straight black hair and dark almond-shaped eyes. In case you haven’t guessed, I am Asian (Japanese-American), and so are both of my parents.

  My father is a partner in an investment firm in Stamford, which is the city nearest to our town. Don’t ask me what he does, exactly, because I’ve never really understood it. It has something to do with money and numbers, that’s all I know. My mother is the head librarian at the Stoneybrook Public Library. And my sister, as I told you before, is a genius.

  Janine has always been smart. For example, she taught herself to read before she went to kindergarten. And now, even though she’s only sixteen and a junior in high school, she takes classes at Stoneybrook University. Classes like physics and chemistry. And she gets all A’s.

  I get A’s, too. But not in classes like English or social studies. I get A’s in art. I’m not going to tell you my other grades, except to say that they’re not so hot. It’s not that I’m dumb. My teachers — and my parents — are always telling me that I have great “potential,” and that if I “applied myself” I could do better in school. But I’d rather “apply myself” to a painting in progress, or to a new sculpture technique.

  I mean, so what if I can’t spell too well, or tell you what happened in the year 1016? Did Van Gogh know how to calculate what x equals? Probably not, and it sure didn’t affect his painting. I’ve tried to get this point across to my parents, and I think they are beginning to understand. They are very supportive of my interest in art. Still, I know they wish I would do better in school.

  They also wish I would a) stop eating junk food and b) stop reading Nancy Drew books. They don’t like me to eat junk food because they say it’s bad for me, but I have to say I haven’t noticed any problems with my health. I can eat Cheetos and Milk Duds all day long, and I never gain weight or get pimples. I’m just lucky, I guess. As for the Nancy Drew books, my parents think I should be reading more “challenging” material. But I love mysteries, and that’s all there is to it. So I hide my chips and candy and books all over my room, and I figure what my parents don’t know won’t hurt them.

  Overall, I’d have to say that my family is pretty cool. Still, none of them understands me quite the way Mimi did. Mimi was my grandmother, and she lived with us until she died, which was not that long ago. She was always my favorite person. She had this peace around her, as if she just accepted the world and everyone in it. She always saw the best in people. I think of her every day, and I’ll never stop missing her.

  There’s one other thing you should know about me, which is that I am a pretty wild dresser. I guess it’s all part of my artistic nature. I love to put outrageous outfits together, and I hate looking like everyone else. I mean, I do wear trendy clothes, like leggings and big slouchy socks and Doc Marten boots, but I always add my own touches so that I stand out from the crowd. For instance, earrings I’ve made myself, or a big belt that I found in a thrift store. I also like to play around with my hair. One day I’ll wear it in a French braid, and the next day it’ll be in a ponytail on the top of my head.

  That Sunday, my hair was in a long braid hanging down one side of my head, with red ribbons threaded into it. I was wearing a red-and-white striped shirt that hung down almost to my knees, red leggings, and black high-top sneakers. Even though I wasn’t planning on going anywhere that afternoon, I had put some thought into my outfit. That’s just the way I am.

  I turned the pages of the Arts and Leisure section, hunting for the article I had heard about. My art teacher had mentioned it during class on Friday, and told us to look out for it.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Janine, who had settled into the couch with the Book Review section.

  “There’s supposed to be an article in here about the new museum,” I answered. “They’re having a special show next week.”

  The new museum is one that recently opened in Stoneybrook. I’ve been really busy lately, so I haven’t been there yet, but I’ve heard a lot about it. It isn’t a huge museum, like the Metropolitan Museum in New York, but there’s plenty to see, anyway. There are exhibits about science and history, and lots of special activities for kids. But a big part of the space is devoted to art. The museum doesn’t have any Picassos yet, or anything like that, but they do have some work by lesser-known artists, which I was looking forward to seeing. Also, they plan on sponsoring special exhibits every so often — the kinds of exhibits I would never have had a chance to see before, unless I went to New York. There are a couple of small galleries in Stoneybrook, but nothing like this new museum.

  I was pretty excited about it, but I got really excited when I finally found the article I’d been looking for in the Times. “Wow!” I said. “They’re going to have a big show of Don Newman’s stuff. A ret — retro —”

  “A retrospective?” asked Janine. “That’s when they show work that an artist has done over a long period of years.”

  “I knew that,” I said. “I just couldn’t pronounce the word right away. This is so amazing! I’ll be able to see his early work.”

  “Who is Don Newman?” asked Janine.

  “He’s a sculptor,” I answered.
“A pretty famous one. And it just so happens that he lives near here, at least part of the year. That’s why the Stoneybrook Museum gets to have the world premiere of this show.”

  “What kind of sculpture does he do?” asked Janine.

  “Mostly abstract,” I said. “I saw some of it in a museum in New York last year, and I loved it. He uses these big, rounded shapes, sort of like Henry Moore’s stuff. But he’s also influenced by Brancusi — these simple but radical forms. And some of his most recent stuff is a little bit like Noguchi’s huge architectural style. But I hear his early work is really different. It looks more like Giacometti’s long, thin human figures.”

  Janine stared at me. “You sound like an art critic,” she said. “How do you know all that?” She looked very impressed.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “I read about it, and look at books that have pictures of people’s work.” This didn’t seem like a big deal to me, but I guess not everyone knows a Brancusi from a Noguchi. Anyway, I was kind of enjoying watching Janine’s jaw drop. That’s not a sight I see too often.

  I went back to the article. “Oh, awesome,” I said. “This piece I saw in New York is going to be there. It’s called ‘Daphne’.”

  “Daphne?” repeated Janine. “That’s a name from the Roman myths. She was Apollo’s first love, but she didn’t love him back. In fact, she begged the gods to turn her into a tree so she could get away from him.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, thoughtfully. “The sculpture is abstract, but when I saw it, I thought of a woman — and a tree. It’s rounded, but there are these branches reaching up from it.”

  “Daphne became a laurel tree,” said Janine, “and from then on laurel was very important to the Romans. They made laurel branches into wreaths, and …”

  I had stopped listening. Janine has this habit of telling you more about certain subjects than you ever want to know. I’ve learned to tune her out. I had started thinking about something else, anyway. Here’s what it was: I was dying to go to that show, and I wanted to take someone with me, to share it.

  Right away I thought of some of the children I baby-sit for. I love to baby-sit. I do it a lot, and I’m even in a club that’s about baby-sitting. It’s called the BSC, for Baby-sitters Club, and my best friends are in it. I’ll tell you more about it later. Anyway, I was giving art lessons to some of the kids around the time that Mimi died. And even though I was incredibly sad about losing Mimi, I was able to get a lot of pleasure out of teaching the kids to love art the way I do. I knew they would like the Newman show, and from what I had heard, there would be plenty of other things for them to see and do at the museum, too.

  I headed for the phone. Janine was still droning on about Greek and Roman myths, but I ignored her. I made a few calls, and soon my plans were all set. I would go to the museum that Thursday, after school. And I would take three children with me: Corrie Addison, who had been one of my favorite art pupils, and the Arnold twins, Carolyn and Marilyn. I’m not sure who was looking forward to the trip more, me or the kids. Either way, I couldn’t wait until Thursday.

  On Monday, Mom brought a book home from the library. It was about contemporary American artists, and it included a few pages about Don Newman. I read every word and studied the pictures. Then, on Tuesday, the Stoneybrook News carried a long article about the exhibit at the museum. I saw a picture of Don Newman, and he looked really neat — like a big teddy bear, with a full beard and horn-rimmed glasses.

  As you can imagine, by Wednesday I was totally psyched for the show — and I still had to wait a day! That afternoon my friends came over to my house for a BSC meeting, and I think I almost drove them crazy raving about Don Newman’s work.

  “Enough, already, Claud,” said Kristy. “It’s time for the meeting to start, anyway.” She pointed to my digital clock, which had just clicked to 5:30. Kristy Thomas is the president of the BSC, and she’s very strict about meetings starting punctually.

  Maybe the best way to tell you about my friends in the BSC is to tell you about this game we once played at a sleepover: If you had to be an animal, what kind of animal would you be?

  Kristy said she would be a dog. That made sense — Kristy loves dogs. Her favorite hat has a picture of a collie on it, in memory of Louie, her first dog. Now her family has a Bernese Mountain dog puppy named Shannon. And Kristy is friendly and loyal and hardworking, so I guess she’d make a pretty good dog.

  Kristy is the one who thought up the idea for the BSC. She realized how convenient it would be for parents to be able to dial one phone number and reach a whole bunch of experienced sitters, instead of having to make a zillion calls every time they needed someone to watch their kids. Like most of Kristy’s ideas, this one was very simple, but it worked perfectly. The BSC has always had plenty of business. At first we advertised, with fliers and newspaper ads, but now we hardly ever need to do that. Satisfied parents are the only adertising we need.

  Anyway, back to Kristy. She has long brown hair and brown eyes, and she’s kind of short. She’s not interested in fashion or makeup at all; she dresses in jeans and a turtleneck shirt just about every day. She says she’s too busy to bother with dressing up, and I guess she is. She runs the BSC, coaches a softball team for little kids, and gets involved with all kinds of projects. Also, she has a huge family, so sometimes her house is chaotic. Kristy has two older brothers, Charlie and Sam, and one younger one, David Michael. That’s the family she grew up with: her brothers and her mother. Her dad cut out on the family way back when David Michael was a baby.

  But Kristy’s family has changed — and grown — a lot in the last year or so. It all started when Kristy’s mom fell in love with a man named Watson Brewer, who happens to be mega-rich. When they got married, Kristy and her brothers moved across town to live in Watson’s mansion. (They used to live across the street from me.) Watson has two children from his first marriage, Karen and Andrew, who live with him part-time. And soon after their marriage, Watson and Kristy’s mom decided to adopt a baby, so Emily Michelle came to live with them, too. She’s an incredibly cute two-and-a-half-year-old Vietnamese girl. Soon after she arrived, Kristy’s grandmother (everybody calls her Nannie) moved in to help out with everything. Full house, right? And that’s not even counting the pets — Shannon, Boo-Boo the cat, and the goldfish.

  I don’t have any pets, but when the game got around to me, I decided I’d be a wildly colored jungle parrot. I envision plumes of red, gold, green, and blue. Purple tail feathers. A bright yellow beak. The flashiest, coolest bird in the jungle, that’s me.

  I’m vice-president of the club. I don’t have many official duties, although I do make sure to have plenty of snacks on hand for meetings. The reason I’m vice-president is that I am the only one in the club with my own phone and a private line, so we don’t tie up anyone else’s phone with all the calls we get. That’s important. We meet in my room three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from five-thirty to six. That’s a lot of phone time.

  Our club treasurer is Stacey McGill, my best friend. The animal she picked was a big jungle cat, like a lion or a panther. I think that’s perfect. Stacey has blonde hair, and huge eyes with dark, dark lashes, so she looks like one of those big, tawny cats. Plus, she has a certain elegance, as if she knows she’s queen of the jungle.

  Like me, Stacey likes clothes and fashion and experimenting with hairstyles and makeup. But while I’m a wild dresser, Stacey is more trendy and sophisticated. I think that’s because she grew up in New York City. And she still visits there a lot, because her father lives there. Stacey’s parents got divorced not that long ago, and Stacey (luckily for me!) decided to live in Stoneybrook with her mom.

  Stacey may look like a queen, but she has down-to-earth problems, just like anybody else. The divorce was hard on her, for one thing. Also, she has diabetes, which is a disease that keeps your body from handling sugar the way it should. (No doubt Janine could give you the full scientific explanation, b
ut I sure can’t.) What that means for Stacey is that she has to keep track of every single thing she eats, and she has to be really careful about avoiding sweets. She can’t eat Ring Dings or candy bars, no matter how hungry she is. Also, she has to check her blood sugar all the time and give herself shots of this stuff called insulin, every day. It sounds gruesome, but Stacey makes it seem like no big deal. We all admire her for that.

  As treasurer, Stacey keeps track of how much money we each earn. That’s easy for her, since she’s great at math. She also collects the club dues every Monday. We hate to pay up, but she makes us cough up the money. We use some of the treasury funds to pay Kristy’s brother to drive her to meetings. Some of the money goes for materials for our Kid-Kits, which are boxes full of games and books (mostly used) and stickers and crayons (those are new) that we sometimes bring with us on jobs. (Kid-Kits are another of Kristy’s great ideas, by the way.) And once in a while we break into the treasury to splurge on a pizza party.

  The club secretary is Mary Anne Spier. I’ll tell you what she’s like, and you can try to guess what animal she said she’d be. She’s small, like Kristy (who happens to be her best friend), and she has brown hair and brown eyes. She recently got a great new haircut, and she looks terrific. She used to dress very conservatively, but that was only because her father insisted on it. He brought her up, since her mother died long ago, and he thought he had to be strict to be a good parent. He’s finally loosened up a little, though, and now Mary Anne has some pretty cool clothes.

  Mary Anne is very shy, but also very caring and sensitive. She has a romantic nature, which is probably why she’s the only one of us who has a steady boyfriend. His name is Logan Bruno, and we all like him.

  So, have you guessed? Mary Anne would like to be a koala. She said she would spend most of her time hiding in the trees, but she would also let herself be hugged by children, if they needed her.

  Our koala makes a great secretary. Mary Anne is in charge of the club’s record book, which includes information about our clients as well as the schedules of each sitter. At a glance, Mary Anne can tell you which of us is available for a job.