The Case of the Piggy Bank Thief Read Online Free

intercept him. “You leave that poor kitty alone!”
    Pickles belongs to Ms. Ann Major, who is a deputy assistant associate in my mom’s press office. He andHooligan went to obedience school together, and now they have playdates sometimes.
    I was out of breath when I caught up to Pickles by a hedge halfway to the Rose Garden. The hedge must be where the cat had its hideout.
    â€œPickles,
come
,” I said, which caused him to look up and wag his tail before he went back to sniffing under the hedge. So much for obedience school.
    Meanwhile, I heard running footsteps behind me and turned around. There was Ms. Major, also out of breath. And right behind her were Nate, Zach and Dalton.
    â€œOh, that darned cat!” Ms. Major said, which didn’t seem exactly fair. I mean, the cat was just trying to survive. It was Pickles who was acting all bloodthirsty.
    But I like Ms. Major, and she helped Nate, Tessa and me solve a mystery once, so what I said was “I never saw that cat before.”
    â€œIt’s a stray, and it’s been hanging around for a few weeks,” Ms. Major said. “I think somebody’s feeding it, because it used to be pathetic and scrawny, but now it’s got a belly like a bowling ball.”
    â€œTessa’s been bugging Granny for a cat,” I said. “If she finds out about this one, she’ll never shut up.”
    â€œOh, I think she knows already,” Ms. Major said. “I saw her and Hooligan both out here yesterday afternoon.”
    By then, I guess, the cat had gotten away, because Pickles trotted over to us and sat down like an obedience school star student. Ms. Major sighed, then scratched him behind the ears. “You don’t fool me for one minute, you know.”
    â€œHow come you have to work on a Saturday, Ms. Major?” Nate asked.
    â€œI work most Saturdays, it seems like,” she said. “Today I have to do some prep for that ceremony coming up tomorrow. It’ll amount to ten seconds on TV if we’re lucky, but it still takes some work. I don’t generally bring the pooch in, but he’s got a therapy appointment across town.”
    â€œDog therapy?” I said.
    Ms. Major nodded and tapped her head. “The mental kind. He’s terrified of thunder, poor thing—goes absolutely crazy in a storm. The therapist is supposed to help him take control of his fear.”
    Nate said, “Really? Is it working?”
    Ms. Major shrugged. “Who knows? There hasn’t been a storm since he started.”
    Since Dalton and Zach hadn’t met Ms. Major, I introduced them. Then Ms. Major said, “It’s your dad giving the medal at the ceremony tomorrow, isn’t it? I hope I get to meet him afterward. I have questions about some old coins of mine . . . if he doesn’t mind, that is.”
    â€œHe won’t mind,” Zach said. “He’d talk about coins all day if he could.”
    I wanted to tell Ms. Major about the dig and the gold and the mysterious hole in the ground, but she had already scooped up Pickles. “I’d better get back to work,” she said. “We don’t want anything to go wrong tomorrow.”
    When Ms. Major was gone, we four kids headed back to the dig office. We wanted to tell Professor Mudd about the hole we’d found.
    The way it turned out, though, we weren’t the ones to break the news. As we approached, we saw Mike talking to him. “Hold on to your helmet, sir,” Mike said. “I’ve just had a look around the site, and it’s like Swiss cheese out there—seven unauthorized holes at least! What do you think? Could Wen Fei and Stephanie be right about the gold? Could someone be digging for buried treasure?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

    INSTEAD of answering Mike’s questions, Professor Mudd sat at his desk and scowled. Was he mad? Or just thinking? With his bushy eyebrows, it was hard to tell the difference.