Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (18 page)

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.”

Haley had to smile. It sounded like her ancestor had met Charles Chiltington.

“And always remember, Haley,” said her great-great-great-grandfather, “every woman’s mind is her kingdom. Rule it wisely, lassie.”

“I’m trying!”

“This library can help,” said her great-great-great-grandmother with a wink.

And when she did, a secret panel in the wall slid open.

“What’s going on?” said Haley.

“You’re our third visitor!” boomed the jolly announcer in the ceiling.

“So?”

“According to
The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
—available in our reference department, by the way—‘the third time is a charm’! Therefore, as our third visitor, you have won this charming bonus.”

Two bonuses in one day?

She was right! Mr. Lemoncello definitely wanted Haley Daley to win this game, because clearly he knew she’d be the perfect, best-looking spokesmodel for his holiday commercials.

“Don’t worry, sir!” Haley said to the nearest TV camera. “I won’t let you down.”

She hurried through the open wall panel and into the 300s room on the other side.

Ta-da!

The first thing she saw was one of the books they’d been searching for all day long:
True Crime Ohio: The Buckeye State’s Most Notorious Brigands, Burglars, and Bandits
by Clare Taylor-Winters.

She quickly opened the cover and found the hidden four-by-four card. It took her two seconds to decipher the clue:

“Bandits.”

Haley remembered another bit of Irish wisdom, something her dad said all the time: “Never bolt your door with a boiled carrot!”

She decided to keep this new clue secret and secure. She wouldn’t share it with Charles or Andrew.

Haley took off her left sneaker, folded the card in half, and slid the clue into her shoe for safekeeping. When her sneak was laced up tight again, she took the
True Crime Ohio
book off its display stand and tucked it into the
bookshelf, making sure it was in the proper position: right between 364.1091 and 364.1093. That way, she’d know where to find it if, for whatever reason, she needed the book again.

Haley looked up at the nearest camera and flashed it her brightest toothpaste-commercial smile.

“Goooo, Le-moncell-ooooo! That’s a cheer I just made up. We can use it in one of the commercials—after I win!”

“Entrance to Community Meeting Room B will only be granted to KYLE KEELEY, SIERRA RUSSELL, AKIMI HUGHES, and MIGUEL FERNANDEZ,” said the soothing female voice in the ceiling after the four teammates had swiped their cards through the meeting room door’s reader slot.

“This makes sense,” said Akimi. “We needed a place to organize all this material, put it on the walls, and draw a chart like the FBI always does on TV when they’re tailing the mob.”

“Stole the meeting room idea from me, eh, Keeley?”

Charles Chiltington was standing in the doorway to Meeting Room A on the far side of the rotunda.

“No,” said Kyle. “We just needed someplace to throw our victory party after we win.”

“Not going to happen,” Charles said smugly. “Must
I remind you? I’m a Chiltington. We never lose.” And he disappeared back into Meeting Room A.

After Charles was gone, Kyle led his team into Meeting Room B.

Miguel posted the bank blueprints he had found up on the walls while Sierra set up the Bibliomania game board on the conference table.

“I’m glad this room won’t let anybody else in,” said Kyle.

“And by ‘anybody’ you mean Charles Chiltington, right?” said Akimi.

“Totally.”

Akimi grabbed a marker and wrote a neat outline on the dry-erase walls:

“Wow,” said Akimi, stepping back to study the walls. “What an incredible mess.”

“Yeah,” said Kyle. “Okay, guys—there are eight more book rooms to explore and who knows how many more wild cards. Whose turn is it?”

“Yours,” said Sierra.

Kyle flicked the spinner. “Green. The five hundreds. Science.”

He pulled the first green card from the deck.

“ ‘Four and twenty were once in a pie. 598.367 might tell you why.’ ”

“Blackbirds?” said Miguel.

“I guess.”

“Well,” sighed Akimi, “let’s go check out
another
book. There’s still like an inch or two left on our whiteboard.”

The 500s room was like a miniature museum of natural history.

In addition to towering walls of books, there was a whole planetarium of stars and constellations projected on the ceiling. Models of planets whirled in their orbits. Sparkle-tailed comets shot around the corners of bookshelves.

Kyle and his teammates made their way back to the 590s—Zoology.

Shelving units were arranged in a square around an open area, maybe twenty feet by twenty feet wide. When
the team entered the empty space, the lights dimmed and a guy with long wavy hair who looked like an artistic Daniel Boone faded into view. He was wearing some kind of bear-fur coat and toting a musket.

“Bonjour,”
said the hologram.

“It’s John James Audubon,” said Sierra. “The famous ornithologist.”

“He gives people braces?” said Kyle.

“No,” Sierra said with a laugh. “He studied and painted birds.”

A blackbird with a yellow beak flew into the open area and roosted on a tree branch. The bird and the tree were both holograms, too.

“This beautiful blackbird from Alexandriaville, Ohio,” said the semi-transparent Audubon image, “can mimic in song the sounds it has heard.”

And the bird started wailing.

“Wow,” said Akimi. “That sounds exactly like a police siren!”

“Yo,” said Miguel. “Freaky.”

“To learn more,” said Audubon, “be sure to read
Bird Songs, Warbles, and Whistles
written by Dr. Diana Victoria Garcia, with classic illustrations by
moi
.”

With that, Audubon sat down on a campstool. An easel appeared, the blackbird struck a pose, and the outdoorsy artist started painting the bird’s portrait, while humming “Blackbird” by the Beatles.

“Okay,” said Kyle. “This is the strangest clue yet.”

“Well, here’s the book at least,” said Sierra, who had found 598.367 on the shelf.

“So what do a blackbird’s wails and warbles have to do with finding our way out of the library?” said Akimi.

Just then, they heard a very different sound.

Behind one of the bookcases, something growled, then roared.

“Did you guys hear that?” said Sierra.

“Yeah,” said Akimi. “I don’t think it’s a robin redbreast.”

A very rare white Bengal tiger, with icy-blue eyeballs, crept out from behind a wall of bookshelves and stalked into the open area where Audubon sat painting his bird portrait.

“Uh, is that another hologram?” asked Miguel.

ROAR!

No one stuck around to find out.

Down on the first floor, Charles and Andrew were working their way around the semicircle of three-story-tall floor-to-dome bookcases filled with fiction.

It was nearly eight p.m.

“We need to find that blasted book,” said Charles, craning his neck to study the shelves.

“I’m getting kind of hungry,” mumbled Andrew.

“You had a snack this afternoon,” snapped Charles.

“Well, now it’s time for dinner.”

“No. We need to find
Anne of Green Gables
first.”

The classic by Lucy Maud Montgomery was the middle book on the top shelf in the Staff Picks display case. So far, Charles, Haley, and Andrew had not been able to find it anywhere in the library.