The Case of the Piggy Bank Thief (6 page)

Dalton shook his head. “Lame, Dad.”

“Dalton?”
said his mom.

But his dad kept his temper. “It's not lame, Dalton. First of all, coins are beautiful. Each one is a tiny work of sculpture.”

Dalton did not seem convinced.

“And second,” Dr. Maynard went on, “when you collect coins, it makes every day a little more exciting. After all, you can never tell when your pocket change will hold a treasure.”

Dalton didn't say anything to that. He just started examining the coins on the table. And so did I. I mean, who can't get behind treasure?

Meanwhile, Mr. August told us that after the United States declared its independence from Great Britain, it needed its own system of money. Coming up with one might sound like no big deal, but actually it's tough. Like if you're going to use coins, you need enough metal to make them. And if you're going to use paper, you need new designs that are super hard to copy. Most of all, you need something everybody can agree on.

“One way to accomplish that last part is to base the new system on something reliable and familiar,” Mr. August said. “That's why the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, picked the Spanish silver
dollar. Silver dollars had been used in the New World for almost three hundred years by then. Has anybody ever heard of pieces of eight?”

“Like in pirate movies?” Zach said.

“Exactly,” said Mr. August. “Spanish dollars were routinely divided into eighths, which are also called bits. So a piece of eight is an eighth of a dollar. If you look at the coins we use today”—Mr. August picked up a handful from the table—“most of them are in units of ten, right? Ten pennies to a dime, ten dimes to a dollar. But there's one holdover from history, from the old pieces of eight. Does anybody know what that is?”

Usually Nate is the star student, so it was a surprise to everyone—even me—when I answered, “The quarter.”

“Good, Cameron. How did you figure that out?” Mr. August asked.

“I know Granny sometimes calls a quarter two bits,” I admitted, “and you said a bit is the same as a piece of eight. Two eighths is a quarter, so . . .”

Nate grumped, “I can't believe I didn't figure that out.”

Mr. August said, “Excellent!” and I tried to look modest.

“The point,” Mr. August said, “is that the coins in your pocket are a direct link to history. And sometimes they're valuable, too. It's fun to take a look in case you have something old or unusual in your pocket. Now, does anybody want to see what's in the box?”

We all did.

Mr. August opened it to reveal . . . a lot of smaller
boxes, like the kind you keep earrings in. After he put on a pair of gloves like dentists wear, Mr. August took one of the small boxes and opened it. Inside was a shining gold coin about the size of a quarter. Soon we all had gloves on and were examining it with a magnifier called a loupe, which is pronounced the same as “loop.”

On the front of the gold coin was the head of a lady. She was wearing some funky kind of hat over her long hair. Above her it said
Liberty
, and below her,
1796
. The back had an eagle, and clouds and stars. It said
United States of America
.

With the magnifier, you could see tiny details and bumps in the gold. While we took turns looking, Dr. Maynard and Mr. August explained that the coin was minted in Philadelphia and called a quarter eagle because it was worth $2.50, one quarter the value of the $10 eagle coin from 1795 that he showed us next. That one had a scrawny-looking eagle on the back.

There were other coins, too, like a silver dollar from Peru and another one from the United States. They all came from the 1790s, and they all had pictures of ladies with long, curly hair.

“So is this dollar still worth a dollar?” Tessa wanted to know. “And the quarter eagle—is it worth two-fifty?”

Dalton laughed. “Duh, Tessa. Old coins are worth a lot more, right? So, like, that one”—he pointed at the quarter eagle—“is probably worth like twenty dollars by now, right?”

Mr. August smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact, that coin is one of the more valuable objects in the collection
because there's something unusual about it. Every other U.S. coin minted during this time had stars on the obverse—that's the front. Usually thirteen, to represent the first states. As you can see, this one doesn't.”

“So it's, like, worth more than twenty dollars?” Dalton asked.

“A bit more, yes,” said Mr. August. “In fact, the last one that sold at auction sold for well over a million dollars.”

I guess whatever was bothering Tessa's stomach earlier must have been catching, because after that, Dalton said he wasn't feeling so good, either, and we had to leave. Even though I hadn't been that excited about going to the museum, I was disappointed that we couldn't stay longer. It was cool to look at the coins. You couldn't help wondering what they had bought and who else had held them since they were made—more than two hundred years ago.

From now on, I decided, I'd pay more attention to the change in my pocket.

It was nine o'clock when we got back to the White House, and Tessa and I changed into pajamas. We were reading when Mom came in to say good night. She was still wearing her Madam President clothes. This time it was a pale blue dress with no sleeves and a full skirt. She had already taken off her shoes and her earrings.

“Mama!” Tessa held her arms out for a snuggle. “What a beautiful dress!”

Mom kissed Tessa, then looked down at herself and made a face. “Kind of snug at the moment. I probably shouldn't have had dessert. I know—what would you think if I asked the designers to start using elastic waistbands like the ones on my sweatpants?”

Tessa's terrible frown made Mom and me both laugh. Then Mom gave me a kiss and sat down on the edge of Tessa's bed.

“How's running the country going, Mom?” I asked her.

“Pretty smoothly at the moment.” Mom knocked on the wooden headboard of my bed for good luck. “There hasn't been a serious crisis since yesterday, when we severed relations with a small, faraway country. And besides church, the only thing on my schedule tomorrow is that medal ceremony in the Rose Garden. What's the latest with you girls?”

“We went to the museum and Dalton got a tummyache,” Tessa said.

“The way he eats candy all the time, I'm not surprised,” Mom said.

“Aunt Jen told us if you eat too much candy you get fat and your teeth fall out,” Tessa said. “But Dalton's not fat and he's got plenty of teeth. Also, he got a hundred bags of jelly beans for Christmas.”

Mom yawned. “Interesting.”

“And he's still got some jelly beans left,” Tessa said.

“Unh-hunh,” Mom said.

Then I managed to get a word in. “Did you hear about the archeology dig?”

“I know you helped Professor Mudd,” Mom said.

“But did you hear about the holes and the missing gold?” I asked.

Tessa started to interrupt with something else about candy, but Mom asked me to tell her about the gold, and I did.

Tessa raised her hand. “I have a comment about that.”

Mom sighed. “Go ahead, muffin.”

“
I
think Wen Fei and Stephanie did it,” Tessa said. “They're the ones who found the gold first. I mean, if there is gold. Which probably there isn't, like Professor Mudd believes, anyway.”

Mom stood up. “I can see that this case is especially mysterious. In fact”—she yawned—“it's so mysterious I don't even know what you're talking about.”

“That's okay, Mama,” Tessa said. “We've got it under control. You just worry about running the country.”

Mom wiped pretend sweat from her forehead. “Phew. Now, good night, muffins. I'll see you for church in the morning.”

GRANNY thinks it's some kind of big privilege that she lets us sleep in till eight o'clock on Sunday. The way she says it, chickens never sleep in at all, and when she was little she had to get up at five every day to gather the eggs.

Mom says Granny is full of prunes, because Granny lived in downtown Los Angeles when she was little and probably never saw a live chicken till she was twenty-one.

Anyway, that Sunday, we didn't even make it till eight o'clock. A knock on the door woke me when it was still dark. What the heck?

I rolled over and saw that the clock said 7:15.

This was so totally unfair.

“It's Nate,” a voice called, “and Zach and Dalton, too. We're going detecting. Do you want to come?”

I got up, put on my bathrobe and opened the door. Zach and Nate were dressed, grinning and wide awake. Dalton was dressed, too, but otherwise he looked more the way I felt—grumpy and sleepy.

“I woke up early thinking about all that money,” Nate said, “so I knocked on Zach's door, and he was awake, too.”

“What money?”

“Oh, for gosh sakes, Cammie—keep up!” Nate said. “Stephanie said the gold out on the dig site might be a coin. And if it is—what if it's worth a million dollars like the quarter eagle we saw yesterday?”

“We're going out to the dig to look around,” Zach said.

Have I mentioned it was practically dark outside?

“You guys,” I said, “even if we find something, it's not like we're gonna get to keep it. It's on the White House grounds, so it's government property.”

Zach admitted I could be right. “But I bet there'll be, like, a big reward anyway. Are you guys coming or not?”

I said, “Five minutes,” and closed the door. No way was I letting Nate, Zach and Dalton go without me.

Tessa was hiding under the covers, but she had to be awake.

“Come on,” I said. “We're going detecting.”

Tessa said something that sounded like “muffle muffle” and didn't move.

I decided to use psychology. “Tessa, there might be witnesses out there, and if there are, we'll have to ask questions, and you're the only one who's good at that.”

There was a pause, the covers shifted and Tessa's face appeared. “Really, Cammie?”

Score one for psychology. “Get dressed, put on your detecting hat and let's go.”

On our way outside, we stopped by the family kitchen for supplies. Granny was there, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the paper. You should have seen the look on her face when all five of us walked in scrubbed and dressed and everything at seven-thirty on a Sunday morning! Hooligan was surprised, too. He had been napping under the kitchen table, but the second he heard us, he scrambled out and wagged his tail.

I think Granny liked our get-up-and-go. There were Secret Service people posted on the grounds like always, so she approved our expedition provided we agreed to come back in time to dress for church. Then she gave us each a cinnamon-raisin bagel and said good luck.

“Oh—and if you can keep him under control, you can take Hooligan.” She handed me his leash. “Mr. Ng won't be here to walk him till nine. But promise you'll hold on tight to his leash. We don't want any more trouble.”

I promised.

Outside, the sun was up, but it was still cool, and the dew on the grass soaked my sneakers.

“Are you feeling better today, Dalton?” I asked as we walked toward the dig site.

“Uh-huh,” he muttered, but he wasn't very convincing.

Hooligan, on the other hand, was feeling great. He tugged on his leash, and I tugged back. Then I tried using a command from Canine Class to see if he'd remember: “Hooligan,
heel
!”

First Hooligan looked at me like he couldn't believe
I was serious. Then, amazingly, he obeyed—slowed down and started trotting politely beside me. I told him he was a good dog, and he held his head a little higher.

As we approached the dig site, we saw it wasn't only the Secret Service and us who were up early.