“The plan’s this, Casey,” said Striker. “We three will go in a back entry to the Tyrrell. By the time we get there, all the guests will have arrived and had their invitations checked against the master list. Your job will be to pass among the guests with a plate of food or a tray of drinks; someone will be ready to hand you a full plate when yours gets low so you won’t have to go back to the kitchen.”
“If you see anyone suspicious,” Casey’s father took up the instructions, “report it to the nearest museum guard or to a Mountie. If only one man is spotted, he will be kept under close surveillance until the other one is found.”
It’s a good party, thought Casey as he wove through the crowd with his tray of hot hors d’oeuvres. As the champagne flowed, the decibels rose; the guests were enjoying themselves.
Who wouldn’t be happy with all this food! Casey had never seen such a buffet spread. He didn’t know every dish, but with his mother being such a fabulous cook, he recognized a lot of them. “Hope there’s some left for me when this business is over,” he muttered to himself.
“Here, take these around, now.” Someone took Casey’s plate and handed him a round tray of full champagne glasses. He thought he’d have trouble balancing it but found he needn’t have worried; in one minute flat, all the full glasses were gone and the tray held only empty ones.
Someone took his tray of empties and gave him another full one. Casey walked among the guests, looking intently into their faces and smiling as he passed them a new glass or took their empty one. People smiled back at him and one man pinched his bum as he passed.
I can’t believe that happened, he thought, and stopped smiling.
Casey looked at his watch. Two hours? He’d been walking round for two hours. “I’m tired and my feet hurt,” he said to himself. “I’ve just got to take off these shoes for a few minutes. Putting his tray of empties on the floor away from the crowd, Casey caught a glimpse of himself in a glass display case. His wig was crooked, his lipstick smeared, and his tights bunched around his ankles. He slipped out of his shoes, grabbed the seat of his tights and pulled hard. Too hard. He felt something give and looked down. “Oh no!” he said right out loud. Instead of wrinkles, he saw one of the legs of his tights separated completely from the top.
Casey rolled down the tights and pulled them off by the toes. He scrunched them into a stringy black mess and pushed it down the front of his uniform. He looked at his reflection.
“Looks like I’ve got a tumour.” He pushed the stockings first to one side and then to the other. “Won’t do,” he said looking around.
Tyrannosaurus rex towered majestically above, his gigantic feet among stones. “Stones,” said Casey, as he rolled up tights and tried to tuck them under some stones. The stones were cemented down. He looked toward the lobby and saw Trevor crossing from the Gift Shop.
“Trevor, come here,” he hissed, beckoning him over. Trevor stared at Casey, not recognizing him at first. Then the light came on as he walked over.
“What’s going down, Casey?”
Casey handed Trevor the bunched up tights. “Something big,” Casey said. “Stash these and I’ll tell you all about it later.”
Trevor looked down at the black tights now in his hands.
“Better be one good story.” he said as he walked back to the Gift Shop, stuffed the tights behind some cartons, and walked back to the lobby.
Casey forced his swollen feet back into the black flats and picked up his tray of empties. He found a spot where he could watch the assembled guests, now listening attentively to speeches of welcome and thanks. He studied each face. In the back row he saw a man, a man in a tuxedo as were all the other men, who looked somewhat like the one-legged crook. But this man was so much stouter. Casey looked along the rest of the back row. When he looked back to check the stout man once more, there was no sign of him — but there was a museum guard at the very back of the area.
I’ll tell him, thought Casey as someone took the tray of empties and handed him a tray of after-dinner chocolates shaped like different dinosaurs. Casey made his way along the wall to the back of the crowd. He got there just as the speeches ended. Several people turned to see what he was carrying. As one of them reached for a chocolate, he pushed Casey’s elbow and fifty small chocolate dinosaurs scattered on the floor.
Casey could feel the guard watching him as he picked up the candy. He could give me a hand, Casey thought. One dinosaur was right at the guard’s feet. Casey reached for it and froze. Then, picking up the last dinosaur, he put it on the tray with the others and threaded his way to the kitchen.
“Where’s my dad and the staff sergeant?” Casey asked Constable Jackson.
“In the chef’s office back there, Dr. Norman’s with them.” He pointed to a closed door halfway down the kitchen. Casey ran to the door and flung it open.
“One of them is the guard standing at the back of the crowd.”
“Show us,” said the staff sergeant, as he and Casey’s father hurried to open the kitchen door a crack.
“The one with the moustache,” said Casey.
“See him, Jackson?” said Striker. “You and Jeffries go round to the front door. Keep out of sight, but keep him in your sight. Harley, you watch him from here.”
“How about the other man, Casey? Any sign of him?” asked his father.
“I saw someone I thought might be him,” said Casey, “but he looked too fat to be the one-legged guy. When I looked back to check, he was gone.”
“Dr. Norman,” said Striker, “can you take us to where your most valuable portable artifacts are without going through the crowd out there?”
“Just follow me.”
Dr. Norman led the way through a maze of corridors. Casey had a hard time keeping up to the three long-legged men. Dr. Norman pointed to a door.
Sergeant Striker stopped in front of the door and said, “If our man is in there, will you” — he nodded to Casey’s father — “give us a hand apprehending him?”
“Sure,” Casey heard his father reply. Somehow, Casey figured, this was not an unfamiliar situation for his father.
Dr. Norman beckoned Casey to look as he silently opened the door to a long, narrow, shadow-filled room and walked up to a slim man who was holding a glass-cutter above a display case, a long black bag hung in front of him suspended from a cord around his neck. A museum guard was on the floor, a hypodermic needle sticking right through his uniform into his arm.
Dr. Norman closed the door again, opened his cellphone, pressed a number, and said, “Paramedics by the internal route to Display Room Number Four and an ambulance to the back entrance ASAP.”
He opened the door again and walked up to the thief. “Good evening. Is there something we can help you with?”
“It’s him,” Casey whispered, and Staff Sergeant Striker and Chief Superintendent Templeton walked up to the man, each taking one arm.
“Dr. Norman,” said the staff sergeant, “would you be nice enough to tell the officers watching the ‘guard’ in the foyer to take him into custody?”
“With the greatest of pleasure,” said Dr. Norman. “Come, Casey, you deserve to be in on the final chapter.”
Casey made a quick detour to the Gift Shop to get Trevor. After all, he was thinking, Trevor’s been in on the “watch” since it was first set up.
They circled the attentive crowd, getting to Dr. Norman’s office just as the guard Casey had identified from the back of the lobby was brought in in handcuffs. The thief with the glass-cutter was already there, also in handcuffs. His jaw dropped as Casey came in.
“Why, you little creep!” he shouted. “Somebody’s going to get you for this.”
“I think not,” Sergeant Striker said.