Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (16 page)

“We’ll just play one bookshelf,” said Kyle.

“Because we’re a team now, right, bro?” said Miguel.

“Right. Plus, we don’t have all day.”

“Well,” said Akimi, “technically we do. In fact, we have the rest of today and tomorrow till noon.”

“We’ve got like nineteen hours left,” said Miguel.

“But Charles and the others,” said Sierra. “They could beat us.”

“Right,” said Kyle. “After all, he
is
a Chiltington. And according to Sir Charles, they never lose. Miguel, you’re the newest member of the team. You spin first.”

Miguel rubbed his hands together. Limbered up his fingers. Practiced flicking his index finger off his thumb. Made sure he had a good snap and follow-through.

“Would you hurry up and spin before my brain explodes?” pleaded Akimi.

“No problem.” Miguel flicked the plastic pointer. It whirled around the cardboard square decorated with a sunburst of ten colorful triangles.

“Boo-yah! The triple zeros. General Knowledge.”

“Um, that’s not so great,” said Kyle.

“How come?”

“You get to move zero spaces.”

“Oh. Bummer.”

Akimi shot up her hand.

“Yes?” said Kyle.

“Do we really have to spin and count spaces and all that junk? We have a deadline. Clocks everywhere are ticking against us.”

“Maybe we can just pull a pink card,” suggested Sierra.

“It’s really not how you play the game,” said Kyle.

“Um, we’re not really playing this game, Kyle,” said Akimi. “We’re playing the other one. The Big Game. The one with the ginormous prize.”

“I have to agree with Akimi,” said Miguel.

“Fine,” said Kyle. “It’s against the rules, but pull a pink card.”

“You sure, bro?”

“Just pull a pink!”

Miguel quickly sorted the new deck into ten stacks of different colors. He pulled the pink on the top of its pile.

“Hmmm. These are different from the regular cards.”

He turned it over and showed it to the group.

0 + 27 + 0.4 = ????

“Easy-peasy,” said Akimi. “The answer is twenty-seven-point-four, because the zero doesn’t change the sum.”

“Not in math,” said Miguel. “But this isn’t math. This is the Dewey decimal system and there’s always three numbers to the left of the decimal point.”

“We need to find a book with the call number 027.4,” added Sierra.

“Fine,” said Akimi. “But I guarantee you it isn’t a math book!”

The team made their way around the balcony circling the Dewey decimal doors.

“Here we go,” said Miguel. He slid his library card into a reader on a door labeled “000s.”

“Okay,” said Miguel, “in here we’re gonna find General Knowledge. Almanacs, encyclopedias, bibliographies, books about library science …”

“It’s a science?” said Akimi. “Where do they keep the chemicals?”

“In the library paste,” joked Sierra, who was loosening up. She hadn’t read one page of a book in hours.

“Found it,” said Miguel, reaching up to pull a book off a shelf. “027.4. Man, it’s old. Look how yellow the pages are.”

“So what’s the antique’s title?” asked Akimi.

“
Get to Know Your Local Library
by Amy Alessio and Erin Downey.”

Miguel held the book so everybody could see the cover. It was illustrated with a cartoony-looking detective in a checkered hat who was holding up a magnifying glass to examine books on a shelf.

“Looks like a library guide for kids,” said Miguel, opening the cover to read one of the inside pages. “First publication was way back in 1952.” He flipped through a few pages. “It explains the Dewey decimal system. Contains a glossary of library terms. A brief history of libraries …”

He reached the back of the book.

“Awesome.”

“What?” asked Kyle as he and the others moved closer to see what Miguel had found.

“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.”