Nanny X Returns by Madelyn Rosenberg Page B

particularclue to myself, which was easy to do since Jake kept talking about the pitcher.
    â€œWas it really made by Paul Revere?” he asked the museum man.
    â€œYes,” said the man, looking a little sick.
    â€œDidn’t he make others?” he asked.
    â€œNot like this,” said the man, looking sicker.
    I wondered what would be next. My dad’s museum, where he worked when he wasn’t across the state taking care of my grandmother, was filled with natural treasures. My favorites were the rocks and minerals on the second floor—especially azurite and malachite, which looked like they were made of seawater. They reminded me of the geode Stinky had given me when we solved our last case. I hoped the rocks were safe. And what about the Hope Diamond? And my own art? It was on display back near the Smithsonian Castle. It wasn’t a national treasure, but it could be some day, if art turned out to be my true calling. And if The Angler didn’t get there first.

14. Jake
Nanny X Holds the Bag

    Stinky is in fifth grade, which means he’s always hungry. I guess Boris is used to that, because he had some granola bars in one of his pockets and he gave them to us. They weren’t even the store-bought kind; they were homemade. Stinky said there were lentils in there, because they’re Boris’s trademark, but I couldn’t taste them. Howard’s snack was another banana from Nanny X. It was a little squished from being in the diaper bag, but Howard didn’t mind.
    Boris volunteered to stay outside the museum with the animals and the stroller. “I want to help them search the van for clues,” he said. “You never know what they’ll miss.”
    The rest of us went through the museum doors.
    â€œI’m sorry, ma’am,” a guard said to Nanny X. “You’ll have to check that.” He pointed at the diaper bag. I don’t think he was worried about weapons like they were at the White House; he was just afraid she’d knock it into a pieceof artwork. I could see where just having a bunch of pockets was handier.
    Nanny X handed me a pacifier. “Don’t pull on it,” she said. She handed Ali a copy of
Hop, Sweet Bunny
, which I guess was the sequel to
Moo, Sweet Cow
. “Don’t open it,” she said.
    Then she took her bag to the coat-and-bag check. She came back with a ticket that said No. 27, which was easy to remember because that’s the number on the back of my baseball jersey.
    â€œThis way,” she said, walking at Nanny X speed down one of the hallways. I guess she knew exactly where the portrait of George Washington should have been hanging.
    As we walked, we played a speed version of our favorite art-museum game, where you try to name the art before you get close enough to see what it’s really called. It was more fun to guess than it was to look at the actual art. You could win if you kept guessing
Untitled
, but that was cheating. I wished The Angler had gone after a treasure from the Air and Space Museum; that would have been a better place to search.
    Finally we reached the room where Salvador Dali’s portrait of George Washington had been hanging. There was a gold frame on the wall. Inside the frame there was nothing at all.
    Some metal poles and police tape made a square fence around the area in front of the frame. Next to it was a small black plate that explained where the painting had been found, and that Salvador Dali was a surrealist, which, according to Nanny X, meant that George Washington had cherry blossoms growing out of his ears. Plus, his nose was melting.
    After we stared at the empty frame for a while, Ali looked down and did a little sucky thing with her breath.
    â€œWhat?” said Stinky.
    She looked like she couldn’t decide whether or not to tell us. But Nanny X nodded her head. “Go ahead, Alison,” she said, which made me think that Nanny X had noticed the thing,