Claudia and the Mystery at the Museum Read online

  The club record book was Kristy’s idea, of course, and so was the club notebook. The club notebook is where we write up jobs that we’ve been on, so that the other members can read our notes and keep up-to-date on what’s happening with our clients — who’s suddenly afraid of the dark, who’s on a broccoli strike, and so on. All that writing and reading is a real pain sometimes, especially for a terrible speller like me, but I guess it pays off. Parents appreciate sitters who are well informed about their charges.

  One member of the BSC wasn’t in my room that afternoon, but I want to tell you about her anyway since she’s still very much a part of the club. Her name is Dawn Schafer, and she’s Mary Anne’s other best friend — and her stepsister. Remember I mentioned that Mary Anne’s father had loosened up a little? Well, we think it may have had something to do with the fact that he fell in love again with an old high school girlfriend, and then married her. That girlfriend was Dawn’s mom, Sharon. She grew up in Stoneybrook, but after high school she moved to California. She got married there, and that’s where Dawn and her younger brother Jeff were born. After the Schafers divorced, when Dawn was twelve, Sharon brought Dawn and Jeff back to Connecticut. Dawn adjusted to the move pretty easily, with the help of the BSC. But Jeff never got used to Connecticut, and he ended up moving back to California to live with his dad. Dawn missed him like crazy from the moment he left, so she finally decided to spend a few months with him and her dad, in California. She has promised to come back to Stoneybrook, though, and we all hope she makes it sooner rather than later. We miss her.

  When Dawn had to choose an animal, she didn’t hesitate. “A dolphin,” she said. “I’d be perfectly happy skimming through the water and playing in the waves.” I can see Dawn as a dolphin. She’s certainly at home in the ocean, since she practically grew up on the beach.

  Dawn was our alternate officer, which meant that she could take over for any other officer who had to miss a meeting. So far we haven’t filled her job, and so far that’s been okay. We’ve been attending meetings pretty regularly.

  Now, so far all the members I’ve told you about are thirteen and in the eighth grade, like me. But two members of the BSC are younger. They are Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike. They’re best friends, and they’re eleven and in the sixth grade. They are junior officers, which means that they take mostly afternoon jobs, since they aren’t allowed to sit at night except for their own families.

  We didn’t have to ask them which animal they’d choose. We knew they would both want to be horses. Jessi, who studies ballet seriously (and is very talented) said she’d be a Lipizzaner, which is a kind of stallion that is trained to dance in a special way. And Mallory, who loves to read and write (and wants to be an author someday), said she’d be a horse “just like Black Beauty in the book.”

  Jessi is African-American, with coal-dark eyes and long dancer’s legs. She has a little sister named Becca and a baby brother named John Philip (everybody calls him Squirt). Her Aunt Cecelia lives with the family, too.

  Mallory has red hair, freckles, glasses, and braces. She’s going to be very, very pretty someday, but right now she can’t see that. Mal comes from a gigantic family: she has seven brothers and sisters! She’s the oldest, and then there’re Adam, Byron, and Jordan (they’re triplets), Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, and Claire. What a handful! I think they have been wearing Mal out lately. She’s been feeling tired and run-down all the time.

  Last but not least, the BSC has two associate members who don’t always attend meetings. They help out when we’re overbooked and need extra sitters. One of them is Logan Bruno, Mary Anne’s boyfriend. He wasn’t at our sleepover, of course, but Mary Anne told him about the game, and he said he’d be a hawk, so he could fly. The other is Shannon Kilbourne, who lives in Kristy’s neighborhood. Lately Shannon’s been coming to meetings more often so we’re getting to know her better. She’s really nice. I liked her animal choice. She said she would be a cat, so she could lie in front of a roaring fire all day.

  So that’s the zoo we call the BSC! Imagine if we’d actually turned into the animals we’d chosen. My room would have sounded like a jungle. But in reality the noises were pretty normal — girls talking and laughing, the phone ringing, and lots of crunching sounds as we passed around the popcorn I’d made for the meeting.

  Just before the meeting broke up, Mal said she had some news. She told us that her mom was going to be very busy for a while, putting in a lot of overtime with the temporary help agency she works for. She was going to be calling the BSC for plenty of sitters in the next few weeks. “Personally, I think she just wants to escape from the house,” she said, laughing. “Claire is driving us all nuts. She saw Annie on TV last week, and now she’s decided she wants to be a star. She’s been bugging my parents to let her take tap or ballet or theater classes. And she walks around in sunglasses all the time and practices signing her autograph.”

  We all cracked up, picturing five-year-old Claire as a budding starlet. Then, as the meeting was ending, I brought up Don Newman again, my favorite local celebrity, but before long I noticed everybody seemed to be in a hurry to leave. I guess they just don’t appreciate art the way I do.

  “Wow! Look at that!” Carolyn pulled on my left hand, guiding me toward a sign for an exhibit about the human body.

  “No! Over here!” said Marilyn, pulling on my right hand. She was looking at an African mask that hung near a display of drums.

  Corrie stood silently in the center of the main hall, gazing up at the large directory that told about the displays. Her eyes were sparkling as she read about the Discovery Room and the Science Room. “Can we see everything?” she asked, looking up at me.

  “That’s what we’re here for,” I answered. It was Thursday, and I had brought the three girls to the Stoneybrook Museum. I was as excited as they were, and not just because of the Don Newman exhibit. It turned out that the museum was a perfect place to bring kids. “Hold on,” I said to the twins, who were still trying to pull me in opposite directions. “Let’s take our time and look at everything.”

  The museum wasn’t huge, or fancy, but the people who had built it had certainly packed a lot into it. In fact, I wasn’t even sure we could see everything, not in one day. I knew I’d be coming back often, though. This museum was a special place.

  It didn’t look like your average museum. The floors were wood, instead of marble. There was no big echo-y hall, and there were no fancy paintings in gold frames. It was just a comfortable big building with white walls and lots of windows.

  Corrie tugged on my sleeve. (I had dressed up a little, in pink lace leggings and a long black sweater. My hair was tied back with a pink ribbon, and I was wearing pink ballet-type flats.) “Can we go to the Discovery Room?” she asked. Corrie is a pretty, timid girl, with a serious face. She has brownish-blonde hair that’s cut straight across her forehead in bangs, and long, dark eyelashes. She’s small for her age, and something about her just makes me want to hug her.

  “No!” cried Carolyn. “The Science Room! I want to shake hands with a skeleton.” Carolyn loves science.

  “I want to see the Music Center,” said Marilyn. She plays the piano, and she’s pretty good.

  The twins look almost exactly alike. Marilyn has a tiny mole under her right eye, and Carolyn has one under her left eye. That’s how I used to have to tell them apart. That was back when their mother used to dress them identically and treat them almost as one person. As they grew older, they became pretty tired of that, though, and now it’s easy to tell them apart. Marilyn wears her brown hair long, and Carolyn wears hers short. Marilyn dresses simply, but Carolyn likes trendy clothes. And, as you might have noticed, they have very different interests.

  I picked up a brochure with a museum map on it. “Let’s start with the Discovery Room,” I said. “It’s upstairs. After that, we can check out the Science Room and the Music Center. Then we’ll come back downstairs and see the sculptures. How does that sound?”

 
The girls nodded eagerly. The fact was that everything in the museum sounded interesting and fun, and we knew it didn’t really matter what order we saw the exhibits in.

  The Discovery Room was pretty cool. The first thing we saw when we walked in was a display on recycling, which included a giant robot the kids could hand soda cans to. There was a large supply of empty soda cans nearby. The robot would take the can and dump it into a box for recycling, and the kids were fascinated by watching the way it worked. I think they liked all the blinking lights on the robot.

  The Discovery Room included an area devoted to teaching kids what it feels like to live with different disabilities. They could ride in wheelchairs, and try out crutches. A display showed how Braille works, with sample labels that the kids could “read” with their fingers. Also, there were mystery boxes. Kids had to try to guess their contents using only touch. Corrie loved that activity. “I think it’s a bag of marbles,” she said, grinning at me as she felt around in one of the boxes.

  Carolyn and Marilyn were testing themselves at an electronic quiz board, which had buzzers that sounded and lights that lit up when they pushed a button for the right answer. “I’m a Whiz Kid,” said Marilyn, pointing to the screen that showed her rating.

  “And I’m a Junior Einstein,” said Carolyn, proudly.

  Even though we hadn’t seen everything in the Discovery Room, we went on from there to the Science Room, by way of a “mole tunnel,” which was so dark you had to feel your way through. When we came out into the light, blinking like overgrown moles, Carolyn ran straight to a human skeleton that stood in the corner. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Bones,” she said, shaking its hand.

  Marilyn and Corrie refused to go near it. “Too scary,” said Marilyn. Corrie nodded in agreement. They headed for the collection of fossils, shark jaws, dinosaur bones, and birds’ nests, which were laid out so that kids could pick them up and hold them. “Please Touch,” said a big sign. I thought that was so cool. How many museums have you seen with a sign like that? Usually the exhibits are behind glass, or ropes, and you feel as if the guards will drag you off to jail if you even dare to breathe on anything.

  “Claudia, look at me!” Carolyn had left the skeleton and was standing near a big, round metal globe. She put her hand on it, and suddenly her hair was standing on end.

  “Carolyn!” I cried. “Are you all right?” I ran to her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, giggling. “It doesn’t hurt or anything. It’s a machine that makes static electricity. It’s called a Van de Graaff generator, and —”

  “It’s awesome,” I said, cutting her off. I could tell that she was about to pull a “Janine” on me, and tell me more than I wanted to know about Van de Graaff generators. I reached out my hand, touched it gingerly, and felt the strangest sensation — my hair standing on end. But Carolyn was right. It didn’t hurt.

  “Can we go to the Music Center now?” asked Marilyn.

  “But we haven’t seen everything yet,” said Carolyn. “What about the shadow wall, and the climb-in kaleidoscope? What about the video phone?”

  “We’ll come back soon,” I said as I herded the girls down the hall. I was beginning to realize how much there was to see at the museum, and I knew we wouldn’t reach the Newman exhibit if we didn’t move along. I was determined to see it that afternoon.

  The Music Center quickly became Marilyn’s favorite place. It included a player piano, an electric organ, and lots of smaller instruments, including wind chimes and xylophones. In one corner a microphone stood on a platform. Kids could talk or sing into it, and a video screen showed what the sound waves you were creating looked like. The girls ran from exhibit to exhibit, trying to take everything in.

  I almost felt bad about pulling them away, but I was sure they’d like Don Newman’s sculptures, too. And suddenly I couldn’t wait another minute. I had to see “Daphne.”

  “Let’s go, you guys,” I said. “The museum closes pretty soon, and I wanted to show you something special today.” We headed downstairs, to the art rooms. I asked a guard which way to go. He pointed me toward a yellow hallway and told me to follow a group of people headed down it.

  I led the girls down the hall. They were talking excitedly about everything they had seen upstairs.

  Suddenly, a piercing electronic shriek interrupted them. “Oh, my lord!” I said.

  “What is that?” cried Marilyn, over the sound.

  “I think it’s a fire alarm,” I said. “Come on!” I hurried the girls toward the EXIT sign I saw ahead.

  Just as we reached the door, the noise stopped. And then I heard another sound: breaking glass! After that, I heard a different type of alarm. This one was more like the bell between classes at my school, only ten times louder.

  “What’s that?” asked Carolyn.

  “It must be a burglar alarm,” I said as I watched two security guards rush past us. They ran into a nearby room, which was where the sound of breaking glass had come from. I had no idea what was going on, but I wasn’t about to take the time to find out. The most important thing was to get the girls out of the building. You don’t mess around when you hear a fire alarm.

  I pushed open the door, and we stepped into a little courtyard that was already full of frightened-looking people. Nobody seemed to know what was happening. “I think we better go home,” I said to the girls, “and come back another day.”

  They were clustered around me, and all three of them looked scared. “I want my mommy,” said Corrie.

  I knew how she felt. I kind of wanted my mommy, too! But instead of my mom, a guard showed up. “We’ll have to ask you folks not to leave. Please stay in the area,” he said. “There’s been a burglary. Some extremely valuable ancient coins have been stolen, and each of you will have to be searched before you can leave.”

  The girls gasped. So did I. I heard a lot of people around me gasp, too. A whole Brownie troop was standing nearby, their two leaders looking nervous. I also noticed a custodian with his mop and pail, and a nicely dressed man who had one blue eye and one green eye. My Nancy Drew books have taught me to notice things like that — especially when a crime has taken place. It’s important to pay attention to all the possible suspects. I looked around and checked out everybody else in the courtyard as the guard began escorting us back into the museum, but nobody looked especially suspicious.

  As the guard led us down the hall, I noticed that he was passing the room where I’d heard glass breaking. I hung back and peered inside it as I walked slowly by. There, in plain sight, was a big display case that had once had a glass front. Now the glass was in shards all over the inside of the case, and the case was empty. Someone must have tripped the fire alarm as a distraction, smashed the front of the case, grabbed a handful of coins, and run off. I could almost picture it happening.

  “Come along, miss,” said the guard, ushering the girls and me into a small room, where a female guard was waiting.

  “Don’t worry,” she said to us. “This won’t take long.” She searched us quickly, smiling as if she knew we couldn’t possibly be the criminals.

  As we left the museum, the girls talked about what had happened. I was silent. I was trying to remember every detail, so I could think about the incident later on. I cared about the museum, and I hated the idea that somebody had robbed it. I wanted to help solve this mystery, whatever it took.

  I opened my closet door and threw in an armload of clothes and shoes. Then I shoved a pile of books under the bed. I pushed a stack of art supplies (construction paper and pastel crayons) to the side of my desk, smoothed out the bedspread over my unmade bed, and tucked a batch of makeup behind my dressing-table mirror. Finally, I stood in the center of my room, with my hands on my hips. It looked better than it had three minutes before, when I’d realized it needed a little tidying. Nobody would ever mistake me for a “clean freak,” but once in a while even I’m embarrassed by how messy my room can be. My friends would be arriving any minute for a BSC meeting, and for on
ce I wanted my room to look presentable.

  Kristy was, as usual, the first to arrive. I waited for her to comment on how neat my room looked, but she didn’t seem to notice. Neither did Stacey, when she came in, nor Mary Anne. Jessi and Mal weren’t impressed, either. They just walked in and took their usual places on the floor near the bed. Shannon was the last to arrive, and I was sure she would say something. But she didn’t. Instead, she just accepted the bag of Doritos I passed to her, fished out a handful, and passed the bag on to Mary Anne.

  I guess the reason that nobody commented on my room was that they were too excited about the robbery at the museum. I had called them the night before and told them a little about what had happened, but they were dying to hear the details.

  I was disappointed that my friends hadn’t noticed my clean room, but I forgot about that when we started to talk about the robbery. As soon as she had called the meeting to order, Kristy held up the afternoon edition of the Stoneybrook News. “Did you guys see this?” she asked. “There’s a whole big article about what happened yesterday.”

  My friends and I clustered around her and read over her shoulder. “New Museum Robbed” said the headline. We saw a picture of the outside of the museum, with police cars parked in front of it. “Police are investigating yesterday’s robbery of precious coins from the Stoneybrook Museum,” said the article. It went on to say that the coins were “irreplaceable,” and that there were, so far, no solid clues as to their whereabouts. There were quotes from the museum curator and from outraged citizens. Everyone was shocked that the museum had been robbed — and so soon after its grand opening.

  “I can’t believe you were right there when it happened,” Kristy said to me. “Tell us everything you saw and heard. Were you anywhere near the room where the coins were?”