The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg Read online

  “Chiana, I don’t want you getting involved in any more mysteries. Last time you worried me so much I ended up with a dozen new grey hairs.”

  “Muuum,” I began, hooking a second delta cream from the biscuit barrel then fixing her with my best imitation of a sensible grown-up daughter. “I’m not involved in anything! All I did was stand there and watch while a dinosaur egg disappeared through the ceiling.”

  I took a bite out of my biscuit and kept talking, my voice sounding a bit muffled. “Now, about me going with Sarah to her Aunt Kate’s while you and Ken go on your honeymoon…” I locked eyes with mum, pleadingly. “Why can’t I stay here? Please…”

  “Don’t be silly, Cha. I can’t leave you at home on your own.”

  “I wouldn’t be on my own. I’d have Leroy to protect me.”

  Sarah’s snort echoed around the kitchen like a trumpeting elephant. I sent a knife-edged glare in her direction before turning back to Mum.

  “Well, what about Mrs. Potter next door? If anything happened—and it won’t—I could always call her.”

  “Mrs. Potter is deaf, Chiana and she’s already looking after Cat.”

  “Mum, I’m not a baby anymore. I’m almost thirteen.”

  “Thirteen?” she scoffed. “When I was thirteen I still had to ask my parents’ permission to go to the corner shop.”

  “But that was back in the olden days when—”

  I caught sight of Mum’s bulldog scowl and decided not to continue.

  “I can’t leave you without adult supervision, Chiana. I’d be ringing home ten times a day. Think about it…Ken and I have been married for six months and only now are we going on our honeymoon. Naturally we want to relax and enjoy some quality time together. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Of course not, Mum.” I drew myself up to my full height of five foot one and seven-eighths. “You know I’m happy for you and Ken. It’s just that I’m not real keen on horses. And now there’s this new mystery with the egg to—”

  “That’s it!” Mum grabbed the kitchen knife and started chopping potatoes like they were a mob of cold-eyed, nasty-looking bad-guys—all intent on kidnapping and torturing me until I told them every one of the country’s classified secrets. “You haven’t been listening, Chiana. I said you’re not getting involved in another mystery.”

  Me and my big mouth.

  I took a quick step backwards as one very large potato hurled itself off the work bench in fright, just missing Mum’s knife as it crashed downwards.

  “Look what happened last time you decided to play the detective,” Mum continued, grabbing the errant potato and murdering it before throwing the evidence in the pot. “You and Sarah and your friends almost got killed. No, Chiana. There’s no way Ken and I could relax on the Gold Coast knowing you were putting your nose where it might get blown off. You’re going to Kate’s riding-school and that’s final.”

  “But Mum—”

  “But nothing! Tayla’s mother has kindly offered to drive the three of you to Treehaven Stables tomorrow morning so we can catch our plane at one. I want you packed and ready to leave when they come. Is that clear?”

  Mum must have seen the anxiety in my eyes because her voice softened. “Come on, Cha. Ken and I want to enjoy our holiday—not worry about you. If you’re at Kate’s while we’re away, we’ll know you’re safe.”

  “Safe?” My mother throws me to a pack of wild horses then says I’ll be safe.

  I stomped up the stairs, pausing outside my bedroom door to offer half a delta cream to my roly-poly bulldog who was sprawled legs in the air, tongue dangling.

  Just as his slobbering jaws opened to receive the treat, Mum’s voice crashed through the air and bounced off the walls.

  “And don’t feed Leroy your biscuit.”

  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

  “The vet put him on a diet,” she continued in a voice loud enough for the entire street to hear. “He said you could have killed him with all those chocolate Tim Tams. While we’re away he’s been booked into a boarding-kennel where they’ll make sure he stays on the diet.”

  Leroy curled both paws over his head and whined pitifully. Leaning down I rubbed his tummy.

  “Poor Leroy,” I commiserated. “I know exactly how you feel.”

  THREE

  The tires on Neil’s red Monaro hummed hypnotically as we followed the grey ribbon of road on the way to Treehaven Stables.

  Instead of Tayla’s mum driving, it was her latest dreadlocked, vegetarian boyfriend who sat behind the wheel of the car, while she, dressed in black leather, curled up in the passenger’s seat beside him. Sarah, Tayla and I shared the back seat with riding boots, horse-magazines, suede chaps, riding helmets and anything else that wouldn’t fit into our cases.

  For the last half hour we’d played a dreary game of Sevens. Tayla was too wired to concentrate. Sarah was itching to start an argument. And I kept thinking about the missing dinosaur egg and kept playing the wrong card.

  Bored, and wishing I was at home, I yawned and flicked a casual glance through the open car window.

  My mouth still in mid-yawn…I froze in disbelief at the view.

  For there, pulling out of a rutted driveway onto the roadway, grey smoke billowing around it like a winter mist, was a battered grey utility. And it was heading straight for our car.

  “Look out!”

  My warning was lost in a screech of tires and the clatter of boots, cards and helmets as they sprayed into the air and onto the floor.

  Neil stamped on his brakes, wrenched the car sideways and let out a string of explosive four-letter words that left my eardrums ringing. The driver of the rusty grey ute with the words, Professor T. Goodenough, painted in heritage green on the passenger side door, also braked, then looked vaguely around, like a sheep separated from its flock.

  For a couple of seconds—time stood still.

  I could see this skinny old man hunched behind the wheel. He sat there, a dreamy look on his face. His white hair straggled onto his shoulders. His long beard, like tangled barbwire, rested in his lap. And then, without warning, he crunched the gears and his car leap-frogged forward again.

  Neil’s ear-splitting roar broke the spell. “You stupid imbecile!” Caught in the act of taking off, Neil slammed his foot on the brake again. “The man’s a moron!”

  Now tootling along in front of us, the ute stalled, coughed, spluttered, then hiccupped forward with a deafening bang.

  Once more Neil’s shiny red Monaro slithered and fishtailed across the road. My fingers, now in the shape of eagle’s talons, dug into the leather upholstery as though attempting to rip the driver’s seat from the floor.

  “What’s happening?” gasped Tayla her face the color of sour milk.

  As our car came to rest on the verge of the road, my step-sister, Sarah, rubbed at a red mark on her forehead, where she’d been crowned by a flying missile.

  “Ooowwch!” she whined, her bottom lip trembling. “That really hurt!”

  Confused, I stared at the property Professor Goodenough’s car had come from. Grass and weeds ran riot between the trees. And the driveway was full of ruts, so deep, cows could disappear into them and never be seen again.

  But what really caught my eye were the roughly painted signs. They were everywhere. Stuck in the ground—nailed to trees—wired onto fence posts. And all painted in this grisly shade of blood red.

  What was it with this guy?

  “Everyone okay back there?” Tayla’s mum peered over into the back seat. She must have been touching up her lipstick when the car braked because there was a vivid streak of red that ran up one side of her nose. Except for the ugly red slash, her face was whiter than her daughter’s.

  “I feel sick,” moaned Tayla.

  “Me too,” sniveled Sarah.

  “What about you, Cha?”

  My mind whirled as I studied the writing on the signs. ‘Do Not Enter’. ‘Danger’. ‘Vicious Bull—eats People’. ‘Trespassers Shot on S
ight’.

  “Cha?”

  I blinked at Tayla’s mum then nodded my head at the bewildering signs. “That old guy seems a bit unfriendly, doesn’t he?”

  “Bit crazy you mean,” Tayla grumped, winding down the window and taking great gulps of fresh air.

  “He’s stark raving bonkers!” Neil started the car again. He checked the rear-vision mirror before edging back onto the road and driving slowly in the direction of Treehaven Stable, which was only a hundred meters further up the road.

  Wiping the lipstick from her nose with a scrunched up tissue, Tayla’s mum said, “I want you girls to promise not to go anywhere near that horrible place while you’re staying here.”

  “Mum—are you for real?” Tayla gave an eye-roll and shook her head. “Nothing short of an earthquake would get me inside that mad-man’s front gate.”

  I didn’t answer.

  The old guy in the ute might look vague, almost dreamy, but there was something weird going on. What was he trying to hide? Why didn’t he want people on his property? I could feel my detective’s nose twitching and itching, preparing itself for a gargantuan sneeze—a sure sign of a mystery in the air. I couldn’t wait to dig out my notebook and write down the important points of this new case. In my mind I could even see the opening paragraph of the new Rebecca Turnbull P.I. mystery I’d write for Kidlit magazine…

  *

  Rebecca Turnbull slid her right hand into the deep pocket of her trench coat feeling for the cold hard metal of her trusty snub-nosed revolver.

  “Trespassers shot on sight? Vicious bull – eats people? Ha! Bring them on”, she growled.

  The private investigator business had slowed to a crawl lately and she and her slavering Doberman, Fang, were edgy. They couldn’t wait to take on a people-eating bull or a gun-toting psychopath—whichever came along first.

  *

  As Neil’s car pulled up in front of a large rambling old country house surrounded by tall trees and white fenced paddocks, I flipped my mind back to the present. Treehaven Stables looked okay—and would look better if they’d ship all their horses to the forests of Transylvania. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the helmet and riding boot off my lap and slowly opened the car door.

  Okay, I’d left one unsolved mystery behind at the museum—but with the hint of another mystery around the corner—perhaps these holidays weren’t going to be such a complete waste of time after all.

  FOUR

  Fat horses—skinny horses—wild, woolly horses that looked like they’d been crossed with prehistoric mammoths.

  Treehaven Stables had them all.

  There was even a dog-sized horse with a polka-dot bow tied to his mane running loose. The little monster tried to pinch my notebook while I carried my luggage from the car to the house.

  Big and rambling, with a verandah all around, and umpteen dozen windows, the house was surrounded by giant ghost gums. A flock of yellow-crested white cockatoos perched on the branches, arguing noisily.

  “Brilliant house,” said Tayla as we trudged up to a wire screened front door with a colorful wooden horse motif nailed on each side.

  “My Aunt Kate bought Treehaven about fifteen years ago,” Sarah informed us with a flick of her golden hair. “Before that it was a juvenile detention center for bad boys.”

  I soon found out that Sarah’s Aunt Kate continued to run the place like a detention center. Every excuse I came up with to avoid actually getting on a horse was shot down like tin ducks in sideshow alley. When I said I had a headache, she offered me a headache tablet. When I said I was going to chuck up, she raised one eyebrow and pointed to the passage leading to the bathroom. Talk about treating me like a naughty five-year-old trying to get out of eating her spinach.

  So…two hours later, still muttering and grumbling and making excuses, I dragged my boots, toes first, through the dirt, heading for the stable. Yeah. You guessed it. I’d been summoned to the torture chamber by Kick-ass Kate.

  The closer I came to the stables, the more rubbery my legs felt. Now I knew how those poor French aristocrats must have felt on their way to the guillotine. Of course Tayla had breezed through her first riding-lesson half an hour earlier and was so wired she was still gabbing away like a toy with a new battery. ‘Kate said this,’ and ‘Angel, my pony, did that,’ and ‘Can’t wait till I’m allowed to canter.’

  Suddenly, I had an idea. Perhaps if I tripped and broke my wrist I’d get out of riding over the holidays. Nah. Kate would probably laugh, strap my wrist up with fencing wire and throw me up on the horse anyway.

  I let out a long sigh.

  I could see Kate waiting, long whip at the ready, in the middle of a large sandy round-yard. She was dressed in knee-high leather riding boots, hip-hugging black and white check jodhpurs and a snowy white shirt. What with her china-doll face and long silky smug-looking hair, she could have been my step-sister Sarah in twenty or thirty years’ time.

  Beside her, tied to the fence, was an ancient horse that looked as though it had died a couple of weeks before and no-one had noticed. Its head drooped, its woolly off-white hair stood on end and its eyes were glued shut.

  “Ready, Chiana?” Kate Peterson, white teeth gleaming in the sunlight, smiled as she untied the horse from the rail and dragged its head up off the ground.

  “Hey, don’t bother waking him up,’ I said. ‘Let him sleep. I don’t mind if we give riding a miss for today.”

  “No, no. Shakespeare’s been retired for a number of years now but I’m sure he won’t mind. The horse you were assigned to has an abscess in its hoof—so Shakespeare’s filling in.”

  “Shakespeare?”

  That figured. The horse looked old enough to have taken part in the original Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  Reluctantly I took the hard white riding helmet Tayla handed me, shoved it on over my untamable copper-colored hair and fastened the safety strap under my chin.

  “Now, Cha, before we begin the lesson, I want you to give your horse a good strong pat on the neck. Let him know who’s boss.”

  Not likely. If he finds out who’s boss—I’m dead meat!

  “Chiana, pat your horse.”

  “Whatever.”

  Expecting to lose at least one finger, I inched my hand nervously toward Shakespeare and tickled him behind his left ear. The hair felt soft, his ears warm. Instead of chomping my hand off at the elbow, his eyes shut fast again and I swear he purred like a cat.

  “Are you sure this horse won’t collapse if I sit on him?”

  “Don’t worry about Shakespeare—he’s stronger than he looks. Now, up you go. It’s time to enjoy the thrill of riding. There’s nothing like it to get the adrenalin pumping.”

  Kate grabbed hold of my left leg in a grip that proved pushing a dirty great wheelbarrow full of horse-manure was a much better muscle-building exercise than working out at a gym. She threw me high in the air.

  High in the air—over the top of the saddle—and down the other side.

  Aaaaaaaaaaargh!

  It was like some slapstick comedy routine from a dumb black and white television re-run. Only this was for real. Sprawled on the ground, one arm elbow-deep in a squashy pile of fresh, warm, oozing horse-manure, I could definitely vouch for how real it was.

  With a furtive glance to check that no-one other than Tayla was watching, I looked straight into the grinning face of Noah Peterson, horse-rider extraordinaire. Noah had won the Junior Show jumping Championship at last year’s Royal Adelaide Show. And being Kate’s son, everyone at Treehaven treated him like he could walk on water.

  Everyone but me.

  “One word, Noah Peterson, and you’re snail-bait,” I snarled from the corner of my mouth.

  His answering grin almost broke his face in two. Of all the people to witness my red-faced embarrassment—why did it have to be Noah?

  Face on fire, I hurled a full-on, force-ten, mega-mean scowl in the enemy’s direction. Instead of scuttling back to his hole like he was suppose
d to, Noah swung himself up onto the round-yard fence. Then, still grinning, he settled down, legs swinging, sunglasses perched on his nose—all the better to watch the circus.

  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

  “Come on Chiana, stop playing games, and wipe that muck off your arm,” Kate ordered, handing me an old sack that smelt like it had been used to wipe down a family of wet dogs. “I’m not here to give you flying lessons, you know. Next time, grab the saddle or the horse’s mane and pull yourself on.”

  Now she tells me…

  On the second try, I grabbed at handfuls of Shakespeare’s stringy moth-eaten mane, praying the hair wouldn’t come out in my hands. With a final weight-lifter’s push from Kate, I heaved myself into the saddle and held on so tightly every knuckle went white, pink, blue and then back to white again.

  “Off you go.” Kate clipped a lunge line onto Shakespeare’s bridle and walked to the middle of the ring. “A couple of circles at a trot will do to start with.”

  A couple of circles of ‘staying on’ would do to start with.

  I glanced first at Tayla, who gave me the thumbs-up sign, then at Noah who sat talking into his mobile phone. Probably discussing children’s rights with the Prime Minister of Australia.

  Okay—this was it. Time to ‘face my fears’, as Tayla’s self-help books would say. I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth so hard it’s a wonder they didn’t develop hairline cracks and slowly crumble. Then, letting my deep breath out in a whoosh, I patted the hairy neck in front of me and politely asked Shakespeare to go.

  Nothing happened.

  In fact, I’d known rocks that were more active than the Ghost of Christmas Past who was snoring beneath me.

  “No, that’s not how you do it,” growled Kate, flicking her long black lunging whip in the direction of the horse’s rear end. “Garn, get up you lazy old fox.”

  With a grumpy glare and a half-hearted kick in Kate’s direction, Shakespeare set off around the sandy ring at a ragged trot.

  A trot that jarred every bone in my body.

  A trot that made my teeth rattle like jellybeans in a jar.