Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library Page 11

  “It’s an old-fashioned book slip. From the Alexandriaville Public Library.”

  “The one they tore down?”

  “Yep. And this card, tucked into a sleeve glued to the back cover, comes from the olden days when they used to stamp the date the book was due on a grid and you had to fill in your name under ‘issued to.’ ”

  “And?”

  “Look who checked this book out on 26 May ’64!”

  Kyle and the others looked.

  “Luigi Lemoncello!”

  Down on the first floor, Charles used his library card to open the door to Community Meeting Room A.

  “Who is to have access to this room?” cooed a soothing voice from the ceiling.

  “Me and my teammates,” said Charles. “Andrew Peckleman and Haley Daley.”

  “Thank you. Please have ANDREW PECKLEMAN and HALEY DALEY swipe their cards through the reader now.”

  Both of them did.

  “Thank you. Entrance to Community Meeting Room A will be limited to those approved by the host, CHARLES CHILTINGTON. Have a good meeting.”

  Charles and his team entered the sleek, ultramodern, white-on-white conference room. There were twelve comfy chairs set up around a glass-topped table and a cabinet filled with top-of-the-line audiovisual equipment.

  “You can write on the walls,” said Andrew. “They’re like the Smart Boards at school.”

  “Excellent,” said Charles, clasping his hands behind his back and pacing around the room. “Now, when we find all twelve pictograms and lay them out according to their position in the Staff Picks display case, they will create a rebus for a phrase that, I am quite certain, will tell us exactly how to exit this library without triggering any alarms. Therefore, it is time for all of us to lay our cards on the table.”

  Haley nodded. And pulled two more silhouettes out of the back pocket of her jeans.

  “I found one of these in a cookbook,” she said. “The other was in juvenile fiction. Nancy Drew: The Mystery at Lilac Inn.”

  “There are blank note cards in this drawer,” announced Andrew. “We should use them as placeholders for the books we still need to find.”

  They laid out a three-by-four grid of cards on the tabletop:

  “What does it mean?” said Andrew.

  “Simple,” said Charles. “It means we need to find those other six books!”

  “So, does anybody have a clue as to why we were supposed to find this book?” asked Kyle.

  He and his teammates were back in the Young Adult Room staring at the cover of Get to Know Your Local Library.

  “Too early to tell,” said Miguel. “Let’s keep playing. This book will probably make more sense once we go into the other rooms and pick up more clues.”

  “Whose turn is it?” asked Akimi.

  “Yours,” said Kyle. “Flick the spinner.”

  Akimi finger-kicked the plastic pointer.

  “Purple!” she yelled when the arrow slid to a stop. “The eight hundreds.”

  “That means you move eight spaces,” mumbled Kyle.

  “Except today.” Akimi reached for the card on top of the purple stack. When she saw what was written on it, she frowned.

  “What’s the clue?” asked Kyle.

  “Something about Literature, Rhetoric, or Criticism?” asked Miguel.

  “Nope,” said Akimi. “It’s a wild card. With a riddle.”

  “Read it!” said Sierra.

  “ ‘I rhyme with dart and crackerjacks. Visit me and find a rhyme for Andy.’ ”

  “Peckleman?” said Kyle. “How’d he get his name on a game card?”

  “Bro,” said Miguel, “nobody calls Andrew Peckleman ‘Andy.’ Of course, it could mean Andrew Jackson. The seventh president of the United States.”

  “Or Andy Panda,” said Akimi.

  “Or Andrew Carnegie,” said Sierra. “He was a generous supporter of libraries.”

  “Okay,” said Kyle. “Let’s concentrate on the first part of the riddle. What rhymes with ‘dart and crackerjacks’?”

  “Smart and heart attacks?” suggested Miguel.

  “Art and bric-a-bracs?” said Sierra.

  “Art and Artifacts!” said Akimi, nailing it.

  They hurried over to the Art & Artifacts Room.

  “Everybody—check out the display cases,” said Kyle. “See if anything rhymes with the word ‘Andy.’ ”

  “Well, this model of the old bank building is certainly ‘grandy,’ ” said Miguel. “And the Pharaoh’s pyramid and sphinx would be sandy if they weren’t made out of Legos.”

  “True,” said Kyle, sounding unconvinced about both.

  “Check it out, you guys,” cried Akimi, who was studying a row of Styrofoam heads sporting hats. “This plaid fedora from 1968 was worn by a guy named Leopold Loblolly.”

  “So?” said Kyle.

  “According to this plaque, Loblolly was ‘one of the notorious Dandy Bandits.’ ‘Dandy’ rhymes with ‘Andy.’ ”

  “That it does,” said Miguel. “However, ‘Loblolly’ does not.”

  “Neither does ‘Leopold,’ ” added Kyle.

  “ ‘Candy’ rhymes with ‘Andy’!” said Sierra. She was staring at the objects in a display case under a banner reading “Welcome to the Wonderful World of Willy Wonka.”

  “Awesome!” said Miguel, hurrying over to admire the collection of Everlasting Gobstoppers, Glumptious Globgobblers, Laffy Taffy, and Pixy Stix displayed under glass in a sea of purple velvet.

  “Mr. Lemoncello is a lot like Willy Wonka,” said Kyle.

  “You mean crazy?” said Akimi.

  “I prefer the term ‘eccentric’ ”

  “And Dr. Zinchenko is his Oompa-Loompa,” said Sierra.

  Everybody started giggling.

  “Nah,” Akimi joked, “she’s too tall.”

  “And not nearly orange enough,” added Miguel.

  “The Willy Wonka book was written by Roald Dahl,” said Sierra, who, Kyle figured, could name twelve other books the guy wrote, too. “In it, Mr. Wonka takes Charlie and Grandpa Joe home in a flying glass elevator that crashes through the roof of his chocolate factory.”

  Everybody thought about that for a second.

  “So now we have to find a glass elevator?” said Akimi. “Because there isn’t one on the floor plan.”

  “But Mr. Lemoncello is just wild enough to build one,” said Kyle. “And if he did, he probably wouldn’t put it on the floor plan.”

  “No way,” said Miguel. “Everybody would want to ride on it.”

  “I know I would,” said Sierra.

  “So we’re seriously searching for a secret glass elevator?” said Akimi.

  “Maybe,” said Kyle. “Maybe not. This is just another piece of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. We won’t see the whole picture until we collect all the pieces.”

  “Or someone shows us the box lid,” cracked Akimi.

  “Look, it’s only six p.m.,” said Kyle. “And we’re collecting a ton of good information.”

  “You mean a ton of random information,” said Akimi.

  “Well,” said Miguel, “once we have more clues, we can use Sherlock Holmes’s famous ‘deductive reasoning’ method to make logical connections between all the random junk.”

  “Works for me,” said Kyle. “But if we’re going to play Sherlock Holmes, we need to go spin that spinner and dig up more clues.”

  “The game’s afoot,” said Sierra.

  “Huh?” Kyle and Akimi said it together.

  “Sorry. It’s just something Sherlock says to Watson whenever he gets excited.”

  Sherlock Holmes. Kyle had just found another bunch of books to add to his reading list.

  “Okay, Sierra,” said Kyle, “your turn.”

  Sierra flicked the spinner. The pointy tip ended up in the yellow 200s zone, so she went ahead and pulled a yellow card.

  “It’s definitely for the two hundreds section,” she said, showing her clue to Miguel before revealing it to Kyl
e and Akimi.

  “Weird,” said Miguel.

  “What?” said Akimi before Kyle could.

  “Well, the two hundreds are where they keep books on world religions.”

  “But there are two numbers on this card,” said Sierra.

  “Maybe this time we need to find two books?” suggested Kyle.

  “I don’t know,” said Sierra, studying her card. “ ‘220.5203’ is obviously a call number.”

  “Obviously,” said Akimi.

  “But this other number isn’t in the proper format. ‘Two-twenty-fifteen.’ ”

  “February twentieth, 2015!” said Akimi. “Quick—what happened on that date?”

  “Um, nobody knows,” said Kyle. “Because it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Oh. Right. Okay—how about February twentieth, 1915?”

  “That was the opening day of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco,” said Sierra.

  Jaws dropped.

  “Sorry. I’m a big world’s fair fan.”

  Everybody else just nodded.

  Finally, Miguel spoke up. “Look, let’s just go down to the two hundreds room and find 220.5203. We can figure out the second chunk later.”

  The team once again trooped down to the second floor and worked their way around the circular balcony.

  “You guys?” said Sierra, looking across the atrium at the statues. “Remember how they switched all the hologram authors when Bridgette Wadge did her Extreme Challenge?”

  “Yep,” said Kyle. “She was doing good till she got to the Russian dude.”

  “What Russian dude?” asked Miguel, who hadn’t witnessed Bridgette’s elimination.

  “Guy who wrote five or six books Sierra could tell you about.”

  “But look,” said Sierra. “Now all the author statues are the same ones they were last night.”

  “So,” said Kyle thoughtfully, “if they can switch ’em around …”

  “These must be clues for our game!” blurted Akimi. She pulled out a pen and her notepad. “I’ll write down their names.”

  “Start with the guy under the triple zeros wedge of the Wonder Dome,” suggested Kyle.

  “Right.”

  Akimi read the labeled pedestals and jotted down all the authors’ names:

  Thomas Wolfe, Booker T. Washington, Stephen Sondheim, George Orwell, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, Maya Angelou, Shel Silverstein, Pseudonymous Bosch, Todd Strasser.

  “So,” said Akimi when she’d finished writing, “do you think this game could get any more complicated?”

  “Maybe,” said Kyle. “It’s possible that Mr. Lemoncello left a couple different paths to the same solution.”

  “Well, personally, I can only take one path at a time,” said Akimi. “So let’s go find two-twenty-point-whatever.”

  “Should be in the next row of bookcases,” said Miguel. “Here we go. 220.5203. The King James Bible.”

  “Ach der lieber! An excellent choice,” said a man with a thick German accent.

  The four teammates spun around.

  And were face to face with a semi-transparent guy in medieval garb with a fur-trimmed cap and a beard that looked like two raccoon tails sewn together under his nose and chin.

  “I am Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg,” said the holographic image, who had ink stains all over his fingertips.

  “You created the Gutenberg Bibles on your printing press!” gushed Sierra.

  “Ja, ja, ja. Big bestseller. You need help with der Bible, I am at your service.” He bowed.

  “Oh-kay,” said Akimi, turning to Miguel. “Take it away, Miguel.”

  “Herr Gutenberg, sir, we’re looking for two-twenty-fifteen.”

  “Das ist einfach.”

  “Huh?”

  “That is easy. TWO, TWENTY, FIFTEEN is EXODUS, chapter TWENTY, verse FIFTEEN.”

  “Of course!” said Miguel. “Exodus is the second book of the Bible. Twenty and fifteen are the chapter and verse.” He flipped through some pages. “Here we go. Exodus, chapter twenty, verse fifteen. It’s one of the Ten Commandments: ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ ”

  “Let’s put the two new cards on the table,” said Charles.

  He and his so-called teammates, Andrew and Haley (Charles planned on dumping them both right before he made his glorious solo exit from the library), had scoured the library together for hours looking for more book cover matches.

  Peckleman wasn’t nearly as good with the Dewey decimal system as he had claimed to be. And Charles needed someone to do that sort of thing for him. His father always hired tutors or research assistants for him whenever Charles had to do a major paper or report.

  Finally, around six in, coincidentally, the 600s room, they scored twice, finding Tea for You and Me (641.3372) and Why Wait to Lose Weight? (613.2522).

  Now their picture puzzle had only four blanks remaining:

  “Okay,” said Andrew, “I think it’s pretty clear. ‘Woolly BLANK walk up the skinny BLANK BLANK house Indian and nineteen BLANK.’ ”

  Charles nodded and said, “Interesting,” even though he knew Peckleman was way off.

  “Uh, hello?” said Haley. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Sure it does,” said Andrew.

  “Uh, no it doesn’t.”

  In his head, Charles had decoded the clues so far as “Ewe (a female sheep) BLANK walk out the (t+h+e) way (weigh) BLANK BLANK Inn in passed (past) BLANK.”

  But out loud, he said, “I think we just need to tweak Andrew’s translation a little.”

  “Fine. Go ahead. I don’t care.” Andrew slumped down in his seat to sulk.

  “How about ‘She BLANK walks out the skinny BLANK BLANK house five hundred and past BLANK.’ ”

  “Where’d you get ‘she’?” asked Haley.

  “From ‘sheep.’ The card you gave us.”

  “Actually, I think the sheep is supposed to represent ‘you.’ Because a ewe is a female sheep.”

  “Fascinating,” said Charles. “I didn’t figure that out.”

  What he did figure out was that Haley Daley was much smarter than he had assumed. She could be a serious threat. And no way was Charles sharing his prize with anybody, especially her.

  “And how did you get ‘five hundred’ from Indiana?” she asked.

  “Simple. Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, is home to a race known as the Indy 500.”

  “Okay. So how about ‘You BLANK walk out the skinny BLANK BLANK in’—because the Nancy Drew book was about an inn—‘five hundred pass, or past, BLANK.’ ”

  Now Peckleman piped up. “That makes more sense than what you said, Charles.”

  “Indeed,” said Charles, sounding magnanimous. “Perhaps the clues are telling us to locate a secret skinny passageway five hundred paces past some landmark here in the library.”

  Andrew was excited. “This is like the pirate map from Treasure Island!”

  “Or,” said Haley, “maybe these clues are telling us we need to go out and find the four books we haven’t found yet. We should split up. I’ll go back to the four hundreds room.”

  “We’ve already been there,” said Andrew.

  “Well, you guys might’ve missed something.”

  “Good idea,” said Charles. He figured if Haley Daley wasted time retracing steps he and Andrew had already taken, she would find nothing new and become less of a threat. “Let’s meet back here at, say, seven.”

  “Fine.”

  Haley left the meeting room.

  Charles went to the door and closed it.

  “You know what we really need?” he said to Andrew.

  “Chocolate milk and maybe some cookies?”

  Charles shook his head. “No, Andrew. We need whatever clues Kyle Keeley and his team have found. Especially if they have our missing cards.”

  Veering left the instant she reached the second floor, Haley made her way toward the 400s room.

  She figured that Charles and Andrew had prob
ably missed something important in the foreign languages room because they’d spent too much time talking to “these awesome mannequins” that told them all about their “American heritage.”

  As she rounded the bend, Haley saw Kyle Keeley and his crew tumble out of the 200s room.

  It looked like Miguel was carrying a Bible.

  But a Bible wasn’t one of the books on display in the Staff Picks case.

  We’re following separate paths to the same goal, Haley thought. And somewhere, those two paths are going to collide.

  Haley slid her card key down the reader slot in the 400s door. The lock clicked and she pushed the door open.

  The room was dimly lit.

  “Bienvenida! Bienvenue! Witamy! Kuwakaribisha! Welcome!” boomed a voice from the ceiling speakers.

  “Sorry,” said Haley, blindly feeling her way forward and bumping into something hard and lumpy.

  “This is the four hundreds room, home of foreign languages. Here, HALEY, you can learn all about your American heritage.”

  A bank of spotlights thumped on.

  Haley was basically hugging a department store mannequin.

  An overhead projector beamed a movie onto the dummy to her left, turning it into a perky woman who looked like Haley would probably look a couple of years after she graduated from college.

  “Hello, HALEY. Welcome to your American heritage. Let’s begin your voyage!”

  “That’s okay, I don’t have time right now. I’m Haley Daley. My ancestors were Irish, okay? So can we skip the history lesson and …”

  Suddenly, the two mannequins at the far end of the row turned into sepia-toned versions of her great-great-great-grandmother and great-great-great-grandfather. Haley knew it was them because her dad had a bunch of old photos hanging in their family room. The two dummies looked exactly like Patrick and Oona Daley did in their wedding portrait.

  “No man ever wore a scarf as warm as his daughter’s arm around his neck,” said Patrick in his thick Irish brogue. “Yer da is proud of you, Haley.”

  “Thanks. But I really need to win this competition.”

  “Watch out for sneaky rascals,” said Oona. “Them that would steal the sugar out of your punch.”