Nanny X Returns (8 page)

I noticed what looked like silver sawdust on the floor of the van near the crate. I decided to keep that particular
clue to myself, which was easy to do since Jake kept talking about the pitcher.

“Was it really made by Paul Revere?” he asked the museum man.

“Yes,” said the man, looking a little sick.

“Didn't he make others?” he asked.

“Not like this,” said the man, looking sicker.

I wondered what would be next. My dad's museum, where he worked when he wasn't across the state taking care of my grandmother, was filled with natural treasures. My favorites were the rocks and minerals on the second floor—especially azurite and malachite, which looked like they were made of seawater. They reminded me of the geode Stinky had given me when we solved our last case. I hoped the rocks were safe. And what about the Hope Diamond? And my own art? It was on display back near the Smithsonian Castle. It wasn't a national treasure, but it could be some day, if art turned out to be my true calling. And if The Angler didn't get there first.

Stinky is in fifth grade, which means he's always hungry. I guess Boris is used to that, because he had some granola bars in one of his pockets and he gave them to us. They weren't even the store-bought kind; they were homemade. Stinky said there were lentils in there, because they're Boris's trademark, but I couldn't taste them. Howard's snack was another banana from Nanny X. It was a little squished from being in the diaper bag, but Howard didn't mind.

Boris volunteered to stay outside the museum with the animals and the stroller. “I want to help them search the van for clues,” he said. “You never know what they'll miss.”

The rest of us went through the museum doors.

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” a guard said to Nanny X. “You'll have to check that.” He pointed at the diaper bag. I don't think he was worried about weapons like they were at the White House; he was just afraid she'd knock it into a piece
of artwork. I could see where just having a bunch of pockets was handier.

Nanny X handed me a pacifier. “Don't pull on it,” she said. She handed Ali a copy of
Hop, Sweet Bunny
, which I guess was the sequel to
Moo, Sweet Cow
. “Don't open it,” she said.

Then she took her bag to the coat-and-bag check. She came back with a ticket that said No. 27, which was easy to remember because that's the number on the back of my baseball jersey.

“This way,” she said, walking at Nanny X speed down one of the hallways. I guess she knew exactly where the portrait of George Washington should have been hanging.

As we walked, we played a speed version of our favorite art-museum game, where you try to name the art before you get close enough to see what it's really called. It was more fun to guess than it was to look at the actual art. You could win if you kept guessing
Untitled
, but that was cheating. I wished The Angler had gone after a treasure from the Air and Space Museum; that would have been a better place to search.

Finally we reached the room where Salvador Dali's portrait of George Washington had been hanging. There was a gold frame on the wall. Inside the frame there was nothing at all.

Some metal poles and police tape made a square fence around the area in front of the frame. Next to it was a small black plate that explained where the painting had been found, and that Salvador Dali was a surrealist, which, according to Nanny X, meant that George Washington had cherry blossoms growing out of his ears. Plus, his nose was melting.

After we stared at the empty frame for a while, Ali looked down and did a little sucky thing with her breath.

“What?” said Stinky.

She looked like she couldn't decide whether or not to tell us. But Nanny X nodded her head. “Go ahead, Alison,” she said, which made me think that Nanny X had noticed the thing, too.

Ali squatted on the floor to look more closely, so we all squatted down. “Well, it's sawdust,” she said. “Or maybe something-else dust. It was in the van, too, only in the van it was silver.”

My powers of observation needed more training, because I had missed that dust. I wished I had a magnifying glass, but all I had were my regular eyes. Still, I could see that the dust was not just brown or white, but lots of other colors. A little red. A little pink. A little green.

Eliza got down on her stomach. She didn't seem interested in Ali's sawdust, but she reached under the yellow tape and grabbed something with her fingers. I wasn't sure how she even saw it: a screw, like the kind my dad is always replacing in his glasses. Only this one was emerald-colored.

“Achy!” she said, which is her name for me. “Coo!” She sounded like a little bird—a little bird that was saying “clue.”

Nanny X put it in one of her evidence bags.

I looked around the floor of the gallery, but didn't see anything else. We walked back toward the exit in the East Building, and I kept looking down. That's why I saw a wadded-up piece of paper on the floor. I picked it up, hoping it wasn't somebody's old gum, and uncrumpled it. Inside was a poem, like the one we'd seen at the White House.

I started small

With Sal and Paul

But the next one's tall
.

Install my fish

Or you will wish

That you people had listened to me

when you got my first note
.

I showed it to Nanny X as we stood underneath the Calder mobile. I hoped it wouldn't fall on her, like Montauban's thumb.

While we were reading, Eliza pointed at the exit. I followed her finger to the dark squirrel that seemed to be looking into the museum from the outside. Ali came up behind me.

“No way,” she said.

“Way.”

“That rogue!” said Nanny X. She moved her arms in a karate pose—“
Kee-yah!
” she yelled—and charged toward the revolving doors. We followed her, but even though we exited, Nanny X kept revolving. She stopped when she got back inside the museum. I could see her waving her slip with the “27” on it in her karate-chop hand as she headed back to find the coat check.

It was like we were on one of those TV shows where everybody falls out of the closet at the same time. Jake, Stinky and I burst through the revolving door carrying Eliza. But the squirrel had disappeared again. I looked left and right and even up. Nothing. It felt like third grade when I'd kicked the ball in the wrong direction during a soccer game. I thought I was clear for my first goal, but it turned out I was just helping the other team. This time I wasn't helping anybody. Except maybe the squirrel.

“
Boris?
” Stinky yelled. I guess he thought it was okay to use our outside voices now that we were outside the museum. But everyone around us was still using their inside voices. They looked up when Stinky yelled, except for some lady who was staring at a video game. “Where are you? Boris? Boris!”

He came over with Howard, Yeti and the stroller.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“The squirrel,” Jake said. “But he got away. Did you see him?”

“I did not see your squirrel,” he said. “But I did find some mysterious dust.” Boris has lived in the U.S. since he was a little kid, but he was born in Jamaica so sometimes he has a leftover accent. Words like “mysterious” sound more musical when he says them.

“There was some under the missing picture in the museum,” I told him. “It was mysterious, too; not like regular sawdust.”

“Paper?” Boris asked. “Or perhaps canvas?”

We nodded.

“That means that painting did not disappear, like the headline said, eh?” said Boris.

“No,” Jake said. “It means it was destroyed.”

“And our No. 1 suspect?” he asked.

“Still Ursula,” I told him. “She's our only suspect. Unless you count the squirrel.”

“Because she sculpts fish and smeared salmon pâté on our reviewer friend.”

“He's not a friend,” Stinky reminded Boris.

“No,” Boris said. “Not of ours and not of Ursula's.”

That made me remember something. “Wait a minute. Mr. Huffleberger said he'd seen her work before, a long time ago, at a fair. They may not be friends, but they must have met. At least once.”

Boris nodded, slowly, and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He punched in the names “Ursula” and “Bartholomew Huffleberger.”

Two articles flashed onto the screen. One was the review we'd already seen in
Artsy Bartsy
. The other was a 1974 article from the
Calvert City Messenger
. The article said
that Ursula Marie Noodleman was the first-place winner in the county fair's painting category for ages twelve and under. She also took first place in the electronics competition, and she won third place for her goat in the juniors division. Mr. Huffleberger was only listed once, in the twelve-and-under painting category. “Honorable mention,” it said.

Mr. Huffleberger and Ursula had known each other a long time ago because Ursula
had beaten him
.

“I'll bet he couldn't wait for the chance to give her a bad review,” I said.

Jake nodded. “It was revenge.”

“And now,” said Stinky, picking up the story, “it's Ursula's turn to strike back.”

“That's what she's been doing all day,” I said. “That's what she's still doing.” We just needed to figure out where she'd strike next.

Yeti barked at a squirrel running across the sidewalk. It was light gray instead of dark brown like our squirrel, so Yeti was the only one who wanted to chase it. Then we heard Howard's “Eeee!”

He'd spotted a squirrel, too, with dark fur and sad eyes. And this time it
was
the squirrel we were looking for. That meant it wasn't just a coincidence that he was hanging out at the sculpture garden when Montauban lost his thumb, or that we'd seen him at the museum when something had eaten half of a pitcher by Paul Revere. That squirrel and Ursula were working together. Jake's
Freaky Facts
book was right: Squirrels could be trained for espionage. Or destruction.

“Let's go!” I said.

“But Nanny X is still in the museum unchecking her bag,” Jake said.

“She'll catch up,” Boris said, putting Eliza in the stroller. “She's very spry.”

So was the squirrel. Soon we were passing my dad's museum—Hooray, the squirrel had left it alone!—but we were heading for the Museum of American History, which was full of treasures, too. I didn't know if any of them counted as tall, like the treasure The Angler threatened to attack next. But they were all in danger.

I was still holding onto
Hop, Sweet Bunny
, the book Nanny X had given me. It was my only weapon. I pulled back the book's cover, which showed an angelic bunny dancing in a field of carrots. It screamed, twice as loud as
Moo, Sweet Cow
. It screamed like that bunny was being chased around the Beltway by a three-hundred-pound fox.

Everyone around us froze and covered their ears. Birds flew out of trees. A squirrel (not ours) dropped the french fry he was carrying.

But the squirrel we were chasing didn't stop or flinch. The squirrel we were chasing kept running.

Jake pulled out his stink-bomb pacifier. He squeezed the nib and threw it. Hard-boiled-egg smoke poured out. People's hands moved from their ears to their noses. But the stink bomb didn't stop the squirrel, either.

Jake and Stinky were huffing from running. So was Yeti.

One person was not huffing. And that was Nanny X. She'd put on her pink bunny slippers again, and now she was gliding past us with her elbows out, like she was practicing for the roller derby. She sailed through the stinky smoke just in time to see the squirrel ignore the No Animals sign and sneak through the museum door with a family of six.