Molly Moon & the Morphing Mystery

live in South America?”

Micky shrugged. “I think we’ve nailed it, Moll. Come on. Let’s go up there and see whether there’s anything else that can help us.”

Quickly the twins hurried back up the staircase to the bookshelves and found an atlas. They turned its pages to find its index. They searched for the word Coca. There was only one entry.

“The Coca River!” Molly read. Micky flicked back through the atlas’s pages while Molly held the flashlight.

“Page thirty-three, two C.” His fingers found the page. “This is extreme,” he announced. “It’s in northwest Ecuador.”

He pointed on the map to an area that was colored gray. “See all that? That area is the Andes Mountains. And see that? That’s a volcano. Look, there’s the Coca River. There’s where it starts. And you can bet that it’s all cloud forests in the high mountains there. So that’s where the Logan Stones are! In a cloud forest place, high in the Andes Mountains, near the spring of the Coca River.”

“Crikey,” Molly said. She looked outside at the terrible weather. “How are we going to get there?” The light outside again broke the darkness and showed the strange coded map on the wall.

“It’s amazing,” said Micky. “Somehow Hunroe worked out the clue to here. Then she must have found all of this”—he pointed to the wall—“and got so excited that she made the natural history museum her headquarters.”

“And our great-great-grandfather Dr. Logan,” Molly added, “must have hidden the clue there in the window glass in the first place.”

Just then, Petula began to growl. She smelled chocolate cookies, and the lavender smell was getting stronger. She poked her nose out from under the sofa and began to sniff. There was a noise from beyond the library door. Someone was making their way along the central aisle of the filing-cabinet room. They were carrying an umbrella or a walking stick, for their footsteps were accompanied by the tap tap tapping of something else that hit the floor as they walked.

“Quick!” Micky said.

“Petula!” Molly whispered.

Molly and Micky scurried down the balcony stairs and whipped across the downstairs room to the door. If they could slip behind it, they could just sneak out as soon as whoever it was out there entered. But there wasn’t time. The door opened. The light came on. They ducked behind the sofa.

The room was suddenly lit with the warm glow of its orange lights. Molly stared at Micky and put her hand on Petula. In only a matter of seconds, the person would see the smashed picture frame. They listened to the person putting something down on the far table. They breathed heavily as they moved.

“Miss Suzette?” Micky mouthed the name to Molly and puffed his cheeks out. “Fat!” Molly smelled lavender in the air and nodded. She hoped so. Miss Suzette was small enough to handle. Molly imagined Miss Suzette eyeing the room and discovering the mess, then seeing the disturbed bookcase upstairs. She hoped Miss Suzette would climb the balcony stairs to inspect. Once she was up there, they could escape. But as she was imagining this, a horrible thing happened.

Miss Suzette’s large, fat face peered over the top of the sofa. “YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!” she bellowed.

Like birds set to flight, Molly and Micky moved up and away. Dodging Miss Suzette’s pink-fingernailed grasp, and the swishing of her mother-of-pearl walking stick, they ran.

“Come on, Petula,” Molly cried as she dashed over the broken frame, the wood crunching under her feet. Micky jumped on the coffee table, smashing a flower-filled porcelain vase and slipping on a pile of magazines. He hurdled the other sofa. It was Petula who got stuck. Miss Suzette reached out and seized her around the waist. She lifted Petula up, tipping her at a very uncomfortable angle, pinching her skin with her pincerlike grip. With a furious bark, Petula sank her teeth through the old woman’s lacy dress sleeves and into her forearm.

Miss Suzette shrieked like a banshee, “Aaaaah! You ghastly dog!” and dropped her.

Petula leaped onto the sofa and ran along it to the other end, where Molly caught her. Micky picked up Miss Suzette’s sopping-wet raincoat, bunched it into a ball, and threw it at her so that it hit her in the face like a slop of seaweed.

“Hah!” Micky laughed. Miss Suzette tottered backward and fell in a heap on the floor, her petticoats puffing up to reveal huge lacy knickers. “Hope that makes you think twice before you hurt an animal again!”

And not wanting to hang around any longer in case Miss Suzette decided to morph into any of them, Molly, Micky, and Petula were away. They sped down the archive room and raced to the upstairs passageway. They skidded over the polished floors, Petula’s claws skittering as they went. They long-jumped down the main stairs. And then they sprinted down the stuffed-bird corridor that connected the museum to its other side.

“Hope there aren’t any more of Hunroe’s friends here,” Molly said, panting and breathless, eyeing a stuffed owl.

The twins and Petula arrived at the side entrance. Behind them, they could hear the far-off echoing sound of Miss Suzette’s clipped footsteps as she puffed her way down the museum stairs after them.

Molly paused by the night watchman, who stood like a soldier awaiting orders.

“Thank you!” she said. “After we’re gone, you will no longer remember any of Miss Hunroe’s hypnotic instructions to you. No one will ever be able to hypnotize you again. And you will forget us, and you will be hypnotized no more by me, except you will do something for us. When Miss Suzette, the woman who’s chasing us, arrives, you will stop her from leaving the building. Thanks.” Molly turned to leave, then stopped. “And I seal all of this in with the password…”

“Frilly Knickers?” Micky suggested.

“Yes, with the password ‘Frilly Knickers.’”

With that Molly, Micky, and Petula burst out of the building into the wet night. Rain drenched them so that they climbed into Black’s car dripping.

“Got what we need?” Black asked.

As the car screeched away, Molly looked back at the museum’s side door.

Through the football-sized porthole there, she could just make out the puffy figure of Miss Suzette and the night watchman blocking her path. He had her wrists in his hands and was shaking his head solemnly while she was struggling and shouting as though a demon possessed her.

Nineteen

“Had a nice little trip, did you?” Lily had finally emerged from her bedroom and stood on its threshold with her arms crossed. She was wearing a red silk bathrobe and red furry slippers. Her pajamas had pictures of roses on them. Her eyes darted angrily to the rattling French window and the balcony outside, where rain smacked down hard.

“Oh, Lily, we did ask you if you wanted to come too, so please stop being grumpy,” said Black. “Come and hear what Molly and Micky found out.” He gestured to the sofa.

“Come on,” Molly said. Lily shrugged and came over.

While Molly told Lily everything that had happened, Malcolm fiddled with the TV controls. Finally he got a signal, and a serious-faced presenter, standing in a studio in front of a large weather map of Europe, appeared. The screen flickered, and her voice crackled.

“Our satellite pictures show heavy storms over the North Sea,” she said. “And what looks alarmingly like the beginnings of a tornado have been detected in Northern Europe, near the southern coast of Sweden. It’s anyone’s guess how this tornado will grow and where it will go, as the winds are proving unpredictable, but the National Weather Agency’s advice to everyone tonight is stay at home and batten down the hatches. Don’t make trips out unless they are absolutely necessary. And keep watching news and weather reports to see how this storm and tornado are progressing.” The woman gave a stern nod and