One False Note - 39 Clues 02 (6 page)

"I don't care about music," countered Dan. "Did she contribute clues?" Amy shook her head. "There are no notes scribbled in the margins or anything like
that."

"There's a letter from her brother pasted in here," Nellie supplied, "but it seems like he's talking about the time he quit his job. He said he wanted to use his contract as toilet paper."

"Really?" Dan was suddenly interested. "Mozart said that? Show me!" "It's in German, dweeb," his sister told him. "They have a word for toilet paper, too." "Yeah, but I didn't think a fancy guy like Mozart would know it." "Hold it!" Amy's voice was full of alarm. She turned the next leaf, peering intently at the spine of the notebook. "There are pages missing here! At least two. Look!" The three examined the diary closely. Amy was right. The thief had been extra careful to disguise his crime -- the missing material had been cut out with a very sharp blade. The excision was almost unnoticeable. "Do you think Jonah did it?" Dan breathed.

"I doubt it," Amy replied. "Why would he bother to hide the diary in the chandelier if he'd already taken th
e important parts out of it?"

"To throw us off the trail of the real stuff?" Dan suggested.

"Maybe, but remember -- this book is over two hundred years old. Those pages could have been removed any time between then and now. For all we know, Nannerl cut them out herself because she spilled ink on them."

"No offense, you guys," Nellie put in, "but I've been around your family long enough to know this has Cahill written all over it. I've never seen such a bunch of backstabbers in my life."

"She's right," Dan said glumly. "Every time we think we're making progress on the thirty-nine clues, someone turns out to be a step ahead of us." "Calm down," Amy told him. "The real clue isn't the diary; it's the music. And we're the only ones who have that. Let's take it down to the lobby. I saw a piano there." They made a charming picture -- the American girl at the piano and her younger brother at her side. It would have been nit-picking to notice that the sheet music was written on the back of a Eurail napkin, and that the girl played falteringly. "Good old Aunt Beatrice," Amy murmured to Dan. "She cut off my piano lessons so she could pinch a few more pennies."

Aunt Beatrice was their grandmother's sister and their legal gu
ardian. It was thanks to Aunt

Beatrice that Amy and Dan were now fugitives from Social Services in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

"Play the new stuff," Dan suggested. "The part that isn't in the real song. Maybe a trapdoor will open, or we'll call up the Cahill genie or something." She tried it, a light, airy melody, very different from the heavier classical piece around it. Suddenly, there was a woman standing beside the piano, lifting her voice in song. The lyrics were German, but it was obvious that the tune was familiar and brought the lady pleasure.

"You know this song!" Amy exclaimed. "Is it by Mozart?"

"Nein
-- not Mozart. It is an old Austrian folk song called 'Der Ort, wo ich geboren war.'

This means in your language 'The Place Where I Was Born.' Thank you for playing it, my dear. I haven't heard it for many years."

Amy grabbed Dan and hauled him to the privacy of a small alcove with a fireplace.

"That's it! That's the clue!" "What? Some old song?"

"It was a message between Mozart and Ben Franklin!" Dan was bug-eyed. "Okay, but what does it say?"

"It says 'come to the place where I was born.' Mozart was born in the town of Salzburg, in the Austrian Alps. And that's where we have to go."

The rental car was an old Fiat that squeaked in every joint and didn't like going up Alps but didn't mind coasting down the other side of them. Part of this might have been Nellie's fault. She'd never driven a stick shift before. "That's just great for a trip into the mountains," Dan complained. "Hey -- you want to get behind the wheel?" Nellie demanded, insulted. And Dan said yes so readily that she was sorry she'd asked.

Saladin spent the entire three-hour drive carsick. But luckily, since the cat wasn't eating anything, he also had nothing to throw up.

The trip would have been roomier and much more pleasant on the train. But their encounter with the Holts on the ride from Paris had soured them on travel by rail. On a public train, they were too easy to spot. They could be more anonymous in a car. With the latest lead in their hands and theirs only, surely all the other teams would be gunning for them.

Despite the uneven ride, the scenery was spectacular. The autobahn wound through the Austrian Alps like a ribbon twisting among the feet of giants. Soon their necks ached from craning out the windows, gazing up at dizzying snowcapped peaks.

"Now this
is more like it," Nellie approved. "I came on this trip to see the world, not the inside of a Vienna police station."

Even Dan was impressed by the soaring mountains. "I'll bet if you roll a snowball off the top, by the time it gets to the bottom, it could knock out a whole town!" Shortly after two, they reached Salzburg -- a small city of gleaming spires, baroque architecture, and picturesque gardens nestled in green hills. "It's beautiful!" breathed Nellie.

"It's bigger than I expected," Amy put in ruefully. "We have no idea what we're looking for, or even where to start."

Nellie shrugged. "Seems pretty straightforward. The song is 'The Place Where I Was

Born.' We'll get a guidebook and find the actual house where Mozart grew up." The moaning from Dan was even louder and more pitiful than Saladin's constant complaining. "Oh, no you don't. You're not dragging me to another Mozart house. Not when I haven't even recovered from the last one!"

"Grow up," Amy said sharply. "We're not tourists. We go where the clues are."

"How come the clues are never in the local laser tag place?" Dan whined. He sat up suddenly.

"Look out!"

A
pedestrian rushed into the road right in front of the Fiat. Nellie stomped on the brake with all her might.

The wheels locked, and the car skidded to a halt mere inches from mowing down the elderly jaywalker.

Nellie was almost berserk. "Moron!" She brought her arm forward to deliver a blast on the horn.

Amy grabbed her wrist. "Don't!" she hissed, trying to duck behind the dash. "Look who

that is!"

CHAPTER 8

Three pairs of eyes focused on the tall, straight-backed Asian man hurrying across the

street, tapping along with his diamond-tipped walking stick.

Alistair Oh, their Korean cousin, yet another competitor in the contest.

"So much for us being ahead of the other teams," Dan observed.

"He's probably not here for the clear mountain air," Nellie agreed.

They watched as Uncle Alistair loped across the street and boarded a bus parked at the

opposite curb.

"Follow him," Amy said suddenly. "Let's see where he's going."

Nellie made a highly illegal right turn from the left lane and fell into line behind the bus.

She waved gaily at the Salzburg drivers who were cursing and honking.

"You know," mused Dan, "if we want to find out where he's going, why can't we just

ask the guy? Don't we still have an alliance with him from Paris?"

"Remember what Mr. McIntyre said," Amy countered. "Trust no one." "Maybe so. But Uncle Alistair sure saved our butts in the Catacombs." Amy was unimpressed. "Only because he had to help us to stop the Kabras. If there's one thing we ought to know by now, it's that Cahills have been fighting each other for
centuries. He'd do anything to distract us from the thirty-nine clues."

They followed the bus as it rattled over the Staatsbrucke -- the bridge at the center of

town. Passengers got on, but no one got off. The streets were crowded with cars and

taxis, and throngs of sightseers were everywhere. A high school group stepped out in

front of the Fiat, and the bus roared around a corner and out of view.

"Don't lose them," Dan said urgently.

At last, the road cleared, and the Fiat lurched off, Nellie shifting awkwardly. They jounced down a few narrow streets, but there was no sign of the bus. Amy pointed. "There!"

The bus had left the grid of downtown streets and was roaring around the side of a hill. In a screech of gears, they set off in pursuit, picking up speed as the Fiat rounded the bend. They were so focused on the chase that they raced right past the stopped bus, which was disgorging passengers at an ancient stone gate.

Amy peered at the collection of very old buildings topped with steeples and crosses. "A church?"

Dan looked miserable. "Like Mozart wasn't boring enough."

"The last church we were in wasn't boring," Amy reminded him. "We both nearly got

killed."

Nellie made a U-turn and pulled up a discreet distance behind the bus. "St. Peter's Archabbey," she translated, squinting at the wrought-iron sign. They could see Alistair's tall figure starting up the sloped path through the gate. Nellie frowned. "Do you think your clue could be in there?"

"Alistair thinks it is," Amy decided. "We can't leave until we know one way or the other. Why don't you find a hotel and give Saladin a chance to recover from the trip?" The au pair looked reluctant. Dan spoke up. "The place is full of tourists. How dangerous can it be?"

"All right," Nellie said finally. "I'll be back here in an hour. Try not to get yourselves

killed." She drove off.

They entered through the gate, and Amy chose an English brochure from the rack. "Wow," she breathed. "This place is more than thirteen hundred years old. The monastery was founded in 696, but they think the Romans were here even before

that."

"Romans?" Dan showed a stirring of interest. "Those Roman legions had some super-sweet fighting skills."

"That's why you find Roman artifacts all over Europe," Amy explained. "Their armies

were so powerful that they conquered most of the known world."

"Unstoppable," Dan agreed. He frowned. "So why the church?"

"That was built later, in the twelfth century -- long after the Romans had gone. The

oldest graves in the cemetery date back to around that time."

"Cemetery?" Dan beamed. "This place is starting to grow on me!"

They lay low until Uncle Alistair's tour group had filed into the main cathedral and then

ducked through the arch that led to the graveyard. It was like no cemetery Dan had ever seen -- overgrown with brush, the markers barely visible through the foliage. Instead of tombstones, the plots were represented by wrought-iron signposts with fancy old-fashioned script.

"Reminds me of Aunt Beatrice's souvenir spoon collection," Dan mumbled to Amy. Her nose was still immersed in the brochure. All at once, she grabbed his wrist and squeezed hard enough to splinter bone. "Dan -- it says the last remains of Nannerl Mozart are right here!"

Dan's eyes widened. "We're going to dig up a dead body? Awesome!"

"Shhh! Of course not!"

"But what if Mozart planted a clue on his sister?"

Amy shook her head. "Mozart died before
Nannerl. Now, we're looking for a communal tomb. That's where the guidebook says she's buried."

"What's that?" Dan asked. "L
ike a condo for dead people?"

"Show some respect. One of the others in her crypt is Michael Haydn, the famous
composer, and one of Mozart's biggest supporters."

He couldn't resist. "What's he doing now -- decomposing?"

"Don't be gross. Come on."

It took a few minutes of wandering for them to find the mausoleum. Compared to some of the opulent and elaborate burial chambers at St. Peter's, it was a simple stone structure bearing the names of the dead with biblical passages engraved on the walls. There was no sign of anything that could be considered a clue. "You're not forgotten, Nannerl," Amy whispered somberly. "People are starting to appreciate you as a genius in your own right."

"What's the big fascination with Nannerl Mozart?" Dan asked. "So she was as good as her brother. So what?"

"Don't you see how unfair that is?" Amy demanded. "She never got the credit just because she was a girl."

"I agree," said Dan. "She got a raw deal. But now that she's been in this crypt for a couple hundred years, what difference does it make to her?"

"It makes a difference to
me,"
she argued. "What if we were the Mozart siblings? How do you think I'd feel if you were considered this whiz kid prodigy and I was nobody when we were equally good at the same thing?"

Her brother was unperturbed. "That could never happen to us. We're not good at any

of the same things. Hey, what's that?"

He was peering quizzically out the crypt entrance. The abbey abutted a sheer rock face. Fifty feet off the ground, the rough outline of a building had been carved into the mountain. "Who puts a house halfway up a cliff?"

On closer inspection, they found a crude staircase hewn directly into the stone, leading to the cavelike portal.