The Stolen Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Then
     we’ll put you to work as well.”
    “We’re ready,” I said.
    “First let me show you our great find.” He walked over to one
     of the blue tarps. Grayson was standing next to it, taking a drink from his water
     bottle. Abby sat on the ground nearby, cross-legged, eyes closed. It took me a moment to
     realize that the soft humming sound I heard was coming from her.
    Kyle removed a couple of the rocks to free the tarp. He pulled it back
     with a flourish like a magician. “And here we have—”
    He broke off with a gasp. “Oh, no!”

4
Damaged
    I glanced from his astonished face to where he was staring. The ground was torn up, where someone had obviously been digging around a two-foot-square mound of gray rock. I couldn’t see anything obviously wrong, but the other volunteers were gathering around with cries of dismay. Even Abby had opened her eyes and stood, peering over Grayson’s shoulder.
    Kyle knelt next to the pile of rocks and muttered under his breath.
    I crouched next to him. “What’s wrong?”
    “Someone or something has been at the fossil!”
    I frowned at the pile, trying to make sense of it. I thought I could see the end of a few bones. But the bones were dark gray like the rest of the rock, andthe whole thing was one solid block. You could never pull out a single bone.
    Kyle ran his hand over one end of the rock, where a few chisel marks showed a fresh break. “We had a beautiful jawbone right here. You could see the teeth. And now it’s gone.”
    “You mean stolen?” I asked.
    Kyle sat back on his heels and looked around at the volunteers. They stared back at him.
    “Could an animal have done it?” Bess asked.
    Tom moved closer to her and said softly, “Those bones are millions of years old. There’s no meat on them, nothing an animal would want. They’re just rock.”
    I thought of the missing fossils last night and looked around at the faces, wondering if one of them could be the thief. They all seemed like nice people, but who else would be out here?
    Kyle stood up. “All right. Let’s get to work. We need to get this fossil jacketed.” He strode away, scowling.
    George, Bess, and I exchanged glances. We joined Kyle by the equipment pile.
    “Kyle?” I said. “Can we help somehow?”
    He managed a smile. “I’m sorry, Nancy. I guess it seems like a lot of fuss. But that’s the most important fossil here. It’s the reason we came back this year. We found it on our last day last summer. We couldn’t stayany extra days to get it out, so we covered it up. I’ve been looking forward to getting it all year.”
    “What’s so special about it?” George asked.
    “It’s a Coelophysis, a small predatory dinosaur. It’s rare to find more than a few bones. Usually after a dinosaur died, its bones were scattered—maybe scavengers carried off pieces, or a river washed some bones away. But this set looked fairly complete, from what we could see. It would have been a real treasure for the museum.”
    “Or anyone else,” I said. I was thinking of Jimmy and Erlinda.
    Kyle sighed. “Look, I want you guys to have a good time. Don’t worry about this.”
    “Solving crimes is our idea of a good time,” George said. “Nancy is an amateur detective.”
    Kyle’s eyebrows went up. “Really?” He glanced around at the other volunteers. They were all hard at work, but he lowered his voice anyway. “I don’t know what you could do, except maybe keep your eyes open. You may not realize it, but fossils are worth a lot of money on the black market.”
    “Last night you said something about a rash of thefts around here,” I said.
    “I’d guess that hundreds of fossils get stolen every year,” Kyle said. “Most we never even know about. Sometimes you see them for sale on the Internet.People claim they came from private land, but you have to wonder. Then in the last year, I’ve heard reports of thefts from digs and storage facilities in the Four Corners area—New Mexico,