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Authors: Suzanna David/Natti Adler

Cam Jansen & Mystery of the Dinosaur Bon (2 page)

BOOK: Cam Jansen & Mystery of the Dinosaur Bon
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Cam had read about the Coelophysis. She wanted to remember exactly what the book said. She closed her eyes and said,
“Click.”
When Cam said,
“Click,”
the guide started to laugh. She covered her mouth with her hand.
“The Coelophysis,” Cam said with her eyes still closed, “was one of the first dinosaurs. It was about eight feet long, including its tail. It weighed no more than fifty pounds. It was a meat eater and . . .”
“Yes, thank you,” the guide said before Cam had a chance to finish. “What you may not know is that these bones were discovered by Dr. Kurt Daub, the scientist who started this museum.”
“Are people still finding dinosaur bones?” Eric asked.
“Yes,” Ms. Tyler answered. “I’ll be going on a dinosaur hunt in a few weeks, and I hope to find some myself.”
Someone else asked, “Are all those bones real?”
“No. Dr. Daub didn’t find a complete skeleton. Some of these bones were made from plaster of Paris.”
There were many other questions, but Cam stopped listening. She was busy studying the dinosaur’s tail.
“Something is wrong,” she whispered to Eric.
Cam closed her eyes and said,
“Click.”
She kept them closed for a while. Then she looked again at the dinosaur’s tail.
“I was right,” Cam said to Eric. “Something
is
wrong. Three of the dinosaur’s bones are missing.”
Chapter Three
Cam raised her hand and tried to get the museum guide’s attention. But Ms. Tyler looked past her.
The guide pointed to a boy wearing a suit and a bow tie. “You have a question.”
“I want to know why they are called dinosaurs.”
Ms. Tyler smiled. “The name ‘dinosaur’ comes from two words, ‘dino’ which means ‘terrible,’ and ‘saur’ which means ‘lizard.’ So when we call them dinosaurs, we are really calling them terrible lizards.”
“What did dinosaurs eat?” another boy asked.
“Some ate meat. Some ate plants, and some ate the eggs of other dinosaurs.”
Then the guide looked at Cam. She smiled. “It seems that the red-haired girl, the one who says,
”Click,‘
has a question.”
“What happened to the tail?” Cam asked. “The last time I was here, it had three more bones. They were right here.”
Cam pointed to the part of the tail near the hip. Farther down, there were bones that hung down from the tail like ribs. Where Cam pointed there weren’t any bones.
“There’s nothing missing on this dinosaur,” the guide said quickly. “Now, are there any other questions?”
“But there
are
some bones missing. I’ve been here before and—”
“I’m here every day, and this skeleton looks the same as it always does.”
The guide answered a few other questions. Then she told Ms. Benson that the tour was finished, and she walked away.
Ms. Benson was a short woman. She stood on her toes so the whole class could see her.
“It’s still early,” Ms. Benson said. “You have an hour to go through the museum by yourselves. At two-thirty all of you must be in the front lobby. If you don’t have a watch, please stay near someone who does.”
“Let’s go to the gift shop,” Eric said to Cam. “I want to buy presents for my twin sisters and my brother, Howie.”
In the gift shop there were shelves of books and racks of postcards. Kits to make airplane models and models of dinosaurs were piled on a table with toys and games.
“All I have is a dollar,” Eric said. “I hope I can find something.”
While Eric looked around, Cam opened a big book called
Dinosaurs.
There was a whole page on the Coelophysis, but there was no illustration of its skeleton. The book told about how the Coelophysis hunted for food and how it might have looked, but it did not say how many bones the Coelophysis had in its tail.
“Look what I bought for the twins,” Eric said a few minutes later. He reached into a bag and took out two small whistles, each in the shape of a Brachiosaurus. Cam took one of the whistles and blew into it. It was a dog whistle. It made a sound dogs could hear clearly, but Cam and Eric could hardly hear it.
“These whistles are for calling dogs,” Cam said. “Why did you buy them? Your family doesn’t have a dog.”
“I know, but these whistles are also toy dinosaurs, and they’re just twenty-nine cents each. Everything else costs too much.”
Eric reached into the bag again and took out two postcards. “Look at these,” he said. “This one is for Howie.” It was a picture of a hot-air balloon. “And this one is for me.” The second postcard had a picture of the Coelophysis skeleton.
“Let me see that,” Cam said.
Cam looked at the postcard carefully. Then she closed her eyes and said, “Click.”
“This is it!” she said, waving the postcard. “This is the way the skeleton looked when I saw it the last time I was here. Let’s go to the dinosaur room. You’ll see. Some bones are missing.”
Cam and Eric quickly walked through the museum.
“All right,” Cam said when they stood in front of the Coelophysis skeleton. “You count the bones hanging from the tail of the skeleton. I’ll count the ones on the postcard.”
Cam counted the bones on the postcard a few times. Then she said, “I counted thirty-four on the tail. How many did you count?”
“Thirty-one.”
Chapter Four
Cam looked at her watch. It was two-thirty.
“Come on, Eric,” she said. “It’s time to go.”
Eric put the postcards and whistles in his pocket, and they went to meet the class in the lobby. Ms. Benson asked the class to line up. Then she led them to the school bus.
On the bus Cam and Eric talked about the missing dinosaur bones.
“Why would anyone want them?” Eric asked.
“And how could anyone steal the bones?” Cam added. “The skeleton is wired together. In the time it would take to unhook a bone, I’m sure someone would walk by and see what they were doing.”
The bus stopped in the school parking lot. Ms. Benson stood up.
“It’s after three o‘clock,” she said. “So you may all go home.”
It was a warm spring day. Cam and Eric had ridden their bicycles to school that morning. They went to the rack behind the school to get their bicycles.
As Cam unlocked her bicycle, she said, “The bones can’t be taken when the museum is open. There are too many people around then, and too many guards. It must be done after the museum closes. Let’s go back there. Maybe we can find out what’s going on.”
“But the museum closes early today,” Eric said. “We won’t have any time to look around.”
Cam put rubber bands over the cuffs of her pants to keep them from getting caught in the bicycle as she rode.
“All we have to look for is a place to hide,” Cam said. “We don’t have to be home until six today. We can stay in the dinosaur room after the museum closes and watch to see what happens.”
Cam was already on her bicycle. She started to ride away before Eric could tell her that he didn’t want to hide in the museum.
Eric got on his bicycle. He pedaled hard, but he couldn’t catch up with Cam. By the time he locked his bicycle in front of the museum, Cam was halfway up the steps. He caught up with her in the dinosaur room.
A bell sounded.
“The museum closes in five minutes,” a guard called out.
“Let’s leave now,” Eric said, “or we’ll be locked inside.”
Cam crawled under a glass case filled with photographs. Eric followed her.
Cam whispered to Eric, “You can leave if you want to, but I’m staying.”
The bell sounded again.
From their hiding place Cam and Eric could see only the bottoms of the other ex hibit cases and the feet of the dinosaur skeletons. A few people walked past the glass case, but all Cam and Eric could see were their legs. Then it was quiet.
“We did it,” Cam said.
It was quiet for a while. But soon Cam and Eric heard footsteps. A man was walking from one case to the next. He stopped at Cam and Eric’s case. Then he bent down and looked straight at Cam and Eric.
BOOK: Cam Jansen & Mystery of the Dinosaur Bon
7.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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