The Mummy Mystery Read online

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Original title: Mumiemysteriet

  Text by Martin Widmark

  Original cover and illustrations by Helena Willis

  English language edition copyright © 2015 Penguin Group (USA) LLC. Original edition published by Bonnier Carlsen Bokförlag, Sweden, 2004. Text copyright © 2004 by Martin Widmark. Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Helena Willis. Published in 2015 by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) LLC. Manufactured in China.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-698-19754-1

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map of Pleasant Valley

  The Mummy Mystery

  CHAPTER 1 | The Mummy Awakes

  CHAPTER 2 | A Mysterious Disappearance

  CHAPTER 3 | A Gift from Egypt

  CHAPTER 4 | Everyone Has a Motive

  CHAPTER 5 | On Guard at Night

  CHAPTER 6 | “I Wanted to See Her Cry”

  CHAPTER 7 | Works of Art in the Garbage

  The Mummy Mystery

  The books in The Whodunit Detective Agency series are set in the charming little town of Pleasant Valley. It’s the kind of close-knit community where nearly everyone knows one another. The town and characters are all fictional, of course . . . or are they?

  The main characters, Jerry and Maya, are classmates and close friends who run a small detective agency together.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Mummy Awakes

  The summer sun shone down on the little town of Pleasant Valley. At a sidewalk café on Church Street, two young people sat eating ice cream. They were Jerry and Maya.

  The two were best friends and normally got along great, but today Maya was glaring moodily at Jerry.

  “Just think, Maya,” said Jerry, oblivious to Maya’s stare. “Yesterday was the last day of school, and now we have the whole summer ahead of us. Sunshine, swimming, and eating ice cream all day long! It’s going to be great!”

  Jerry leaned back in his chair and pulled his baseball cap over his eyes, while Maya scraped out the last of her ice cream from the cup. She sighed heavily and looked at Jerry. He was sitting there, blissfully enjoying life, while she felt restless and irritated.

  “You should be thinking about all the thieves and crooks instead,” said Maya. “They don’t take summer vacations. The world is full of criminals and their crimes, and here we are just sitting and eating ice cream! Nothing exciting has happened in months! And is there anything sadder than an unemployed detective? Maybe two unemployed detectives?”

  Jerry and Maya ran a detective agency together. They had an office in the basement of Maya’s house, where they kept everything they needed for their crime-solving work. In the dead of winter or whenever the weather was bad, they sat in their basement office and read about various crimes in thick detective books.

  But now it was summer, and the weather was beautiful. Jerry was enjoying the sunshine, but Maya felt anxious. She preferred it when they were solving a case.

  “I’m going to buy a paper from the newspaper stand,” she announced.

  Jerry muttered something under his breath. Maya crossed the quiet street to the newspaper stand, which was next to the church.

  A moment later, the calm was shattered. Maya rushed out of the newspaper stand and across the street, waving the local paper, the Pleasant Valley Gazette.

  The pigeons that had been pecking at crumbs underneath the tables flew up in a panic.

  “Look, Jerry! Something has happened at last,” Maya said breathlessly.

  Jerry sat up in his chair and looked as Maya spread the newspaper in front of him.

  PAINTING STOLEN FROM MUSEUM

  Is This the Mummy’s Revenge?

  Museum night watchman Chris Long told Pleasant Valley Gazette’s reporter how he saw, with his own eyes, the museum’s mummy leave its sarcophagus and wander around the museum. The police arrived on the scene to find the mummy back in its resting place, but they discovered that the museum’s most valuable painting had been stolen.

  The museum is offering a $2,000 reward to anyone who can help find the painting.

  Read more on page 10.

  “Chris Long!” exclaimed Maya. “He’s my dad’s golfing buddy. They play together some summer afternoons.”

  Maya and Jerry quickly turned to page ten. There, they read that the night watchman guarded the room that held the museum’s most valuable objects.

  The museum pieces were so important that Chris Long locked himself in the room every night.

  According to the paper, Chris Long reported for duty at eight the evening of the theft. It had been a quiet night. But just before nine the next morning, as he was about to go home, he saw the mummy move around the room.

  Understandably frightened, Mr. Long rushed to unlock the door and raced upstairs to the office of Barbara Palmer, the museum director. He called her from there, and then alerted the police.

  Apparently, the mummy had left behind a note, but the police would not reveal what it said.

  “When we went to the museum with our class,” said Jerry, “our teacher told us that the mummy, which had just arrived from Egypt, belonged to a royal family. Wrapped inside the cloth bindings is the cousin of the pharaoh Ramses. In ancient Egypt, a king was called a pharaoh.”

  “I know.” Maya groaned, rolling her eyes. “I was at the museum, too, remember?”

  “There’s a curse on the mummy,” continued Jerry. “Anyone who disturbs the mummy’s sleep is supposed to suffer.”

  “The stolen painting was probably worth at least two hundred thousand dollars,” said Maya. “But the mummy couldn’t have woken up, could it?”

  “Come on,” replied Jerry. “let’s go to the museum and see what we can find out.”

  CHAPTER 2

  A Mysterious Disappearance

  The front of the museum was crowded with reporters and other curious people. Maya and Jerry instantly recognized Barbara Palmer, the museum director, in the middle of the crowd. A few reporters were interviewing her for the news, and Jerry and Maya pushed closer to hear what she had to say.

  “No, nothing else has disappeared,” she said.

  “What does the mummy’s note say?” asked a reporter with a microphone.

  “I can’t tell you that right now,” replied the museum director.

  Barbara Palmer turned abruptly and walked up the steps toward the museum entrance.

  The reporters followed her, and as the crowd crushed in front of the doorway, Jerry and Maya managed to sneak inside.

  “What are you doing in here?” hissed the museum director once she spotted Maya and Jerry. “We are closed today, for obvious reasons. Go aw
ay!”

  “We can help you find the painting,” said Maya firmly.

  “Two children? Nonsense! Give me one reason why I should waste my valuable time on you!” snorted Barbara Palmer.

  She was pacing to and fro in the museum foyer and cracking her knuckles.

  “It’s clear the police have nothing to go on, since the museum has already offered a reward of two thousand dollars to anyone who can help find the painting,” said Jerry. “You must be desperate.”

  Barbara Palmer continued nervously walking from one side of the foyer to the other. Maya and Jerry could see that they needed to come up with something to catch the director’s attention.

  “Have you found the night watchman’s cell phone yet?” asked Jerry.

  Barbara Palmer stopped and turned. She looked quizzically at the two young detectives.

  “How did you know that Mr. Long’s phone had disappeared?” she asked.

  Jerry smiled. It seemed his lucky guess had brought them one step closer to gaining Barbara Palmer’s trust.

  “The night watchman had to rush up to your office and call from there. He would have used his cell phone if he had had one.”

  The museum director was silent for a moment and then said, “Well, all right! I can see that you are keen observers, and the police don’t seem to be getting anywhere, anyway. Maybe you can find something they’ve missed. Follow me!”

  Barbara Palmer turned on her heel and led them to an office trimmed with glass and steel. It was cold and harsh, not unlike the director.

  Maya remembered reading that Barbara Palmer wanted to change all the art in the museum. She wanted to turn it into a museum of modern art. Barbara Palmer thought people would come from all over the country to Pleasant Valley to see the modern art that she wanted to buy. Although some people liked the museum director’s big plans, most people in town were happy with the museum the way it was.

  Barbara Palmer pointed to two elegant leather armchairs. Jerry and Maya sat down and looked at the strange paintings. The director sat down behind her well-polished, handsome desk.

  She sighed and appeared to be talking to herself.

  “I had such big plans for this museum. I wanted to sell some of the old paintings to buy new modern art. And now, one of our most valuable paintings has disappeared.”

  Maya waited until Barbara had finished talking and then asked, “What does it say in the mysterious letter from the mummy?”

  “Oh, you want to know what the mummy said? The mummy wrote that the museum must pay one million dollars or else more paintings will disappear. ‘The mummy’s revenge is terrible but justified,’ it said in the letter.”

  Maya and Jerry could tell from the way she said it that Barbara Palmer didn’t really believe a mummy had written the letter. The museum director seemed to be a no-nonsense kind of person who probably didn’t believe in ghost stories.

  “Have there been any other strange occurrences in the last few days?” asked Jerry.

  “Nothing other than the fact that the night watchman lost his cell phone. He’s looked everywhere but hasn’t found it,” she said. “Of course, the museum will buy him a new one and deduct the cost from his pay.”

  “Speaking of valuables, how is the museum’s collection protected?” asked Jerry.

  “At night, we lock and alarm all the outer doors, of course. The night watchman sets the alarm when he comes in at eight in the evening,” explained Barbara Palmer. “I switch it off myself when I come in at nine in the morning.”

  Barbara continued, “So nobody can enter or exit the museum during that time. If someone did, the alarm would go off. On top of that, we keep the museum’s most valuable objects in a special room, which is locked from the inside. The night watchman locks it and then keeps watch inside that room all night.”

  “And yet a painting has disappeared from that very room,” said Jerry.

  “Yes,” said the director. “That is very unfortunate. I had big plans for that painting.”

  “Is the night watchman the only one who keeps track of the paintings?” asked Maya.

  “No, a security camera on the wall also videos the paintings when the museum is closed. If anything moves in front of the paintings, it is automatically recorded.”

  “Could anyone sneak in if, for instance, the night watchman left the room?” wondered Maya.

  “Mr. Long has everything he needs in the room and has strict orders from me to never leave during his shift. The room has a small TV and a restroom, so there is no reason for him to leave. Now, follow me and I’ll show you where the painting was hanging.”

  CHAPTER 3

  A Gift from Egypt

  Barbara Palmer clattered down the stairs and wound her way through the museum’s many rooms as Jerry and Maya followed. Finally, they reached the room that held the museum’s most valuable items. This was where the painting had hung. The door was open, and Maya and Jerry peered inside. They immediately spotted the empty frame on the wall.

  “An empty frame?” asked Maya.

  “The thief cut the painting out of it,” the museum director explained. “But how did he or she get into the room, and how did the painting get out of here?” Barbara Palmer started pacing again.

  Jerry and Maya looked around the windowless room. There was only one door, and it had been locked the entire night until just before nine in the morning, when the night watchman ran out, terrified.

  By the time the police arrived, the painting was gone. The whole thing was very strange.

  Jerry walked up to the mummy; it stood in its sarcophagus, which was leaning against the wall. He shivered as he considered what the night watchman claimed to have seen in this room that morning.

  Was it really true that the mummy came to life? Then suddenly, something caught Jerry’s eye. He took a step closer to the mummy. Something here was not quite right. He took out his notebook from his back pocket and wrote a few things down.

  “When and, more importantly, why did the mummy come to Pleasant Valley?” Maya asked.

  Barbara Palmer sighed, and she relaxed a little as she started her story.

  “Not too long ago, I met Dr. Al-Hakim in Egypt on a night cruise along the Nile. I was there for a conference. He is a very successful museum director. Why, he’s the head of the history museum in Cairo. Such an important job!

  “We have a lot in common. I promised to help him with a museum project, and, in return, he promised me something very special for my museum.”

  Something very special, thought Maya. A corpse over three thousand years old!

  “He kept his word, and, two months ago, the mummy arrived in Pleasant Valley,” explained Barbara Palmer. “When I first opened the sarcophagus, I found a letter. And in the letter, Dr. Al-Hakim told the story of the mummy.

  “As you no doubt know, inside all those strips of cloth is the cousin of the pharaoh Ramses,” said the museum director as she pointed to the mummy. Maya and Jerry nodded.

  Barbara Palmer looked proudly at the mysterious mummy and continued. “The man from ancient Egypt was known as Maiherperi when he was alive, which means ‘the lion of the battlefield,’ and he was the captain of the guards who protected the pharaoh Ramses’s treasure.

  “Maiherperi was a rich man who ruled over many people. His power was great.”

  No wonder Barbara likes this mummy, thought Maya. He had power!

  Jerry and Maya remembered what their teacher had told them:

  In ancient Egypt, people believed that human beings continued to live after they died. That is why they prepared the bodies of the dead to remain on earth for thousands of years.

  The bodies were washed and rubbed with oils and herbs, then wrapped in strips of cloth. Their graves were filled with gold, food, and furniture—everything the dead might need in their new lives.

&n
bsp; When the burial ritual was finished, the priests closed the burial chamber and placed a curse on the sarcophagus to protect the mummy from grave robbers.

  If anyone managed to break into the grave and disturb the dead, that person would suffer terrible diseases and misfortunes.

  “Who else works here in the museum?” asked Jerry with a shiver, trying to shake off the uncomfortable feeling that the mummy cast over the room.

  CHAPTER 4

  Everyone Has a Motive

  “There are four people who work here,” replied Barbara Palmer.

  Maya took out her notepad.

  “Penelope Green is our receptionist. She works at the front desk, answering questions and selling tickets to the museum,” explained the director. “She starts at nine thirty when the museum opens in the morning, and she finishes when we close at five o’clock.”

  “How long has she worked at the museum?” Maya asked.

  “She started working here in the summer four years ago. She was studying ancient art at the time, and she stayed on to earn money while in college. Penelope said she needed the extra income. And that’s true, for sure! She has extravagant tastes!”

  Jerry and Maya were surprised when the director suddenly became so animated.

  “She wears a different outfit every day and lives in a big expensive apartment in the middle of town. I’m not sure how she can afford all this on her museum salary. On top of that, she’s far too nice to all the museum visitors. She speaks to them as if they understand art! Her job is to sell tickets, not talk about art.”

  The director snorted.

  Maya and Jerry could tell that the museum director didn’t like Penelope Green.

  Could the receptionist be involved in the theft of the painting? Was she asking visitors about art to learn the best paintings to steal?