The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt Read Free Book Online Page B

Lucas’s lie. I always think it’s good to tell the truth to your parents whenever you can. For one thing, it’s usually easier.
    â€œYou are going to use the mummies, aren’t you?” Lucas asked. She was talking about what Mom had said about trying to decide what to feature in her story about the British Museum. They have Egyptian mummies there that Lucas and I really like.
    I suppose now is as good a time as any to explain exactly what Mom kept doing in the British Museum. If you read The Scene, you’ve probably seen some of my mom’s stories about museums. She did the very first one the other time we went to London. It was about the costumes at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and I guess a lot of kids read it. So since then she’s done two more, one on the big Louvre museum in Paris, and one on a museum in Florence, Italy.
    Mom talked the people at The Scene into letting her do four museum stories a year. She’s always telling me she’s so tired of articles on supermodels that she could just throw up, and if the magazine doesn’t try to do something for the 999 girls out of a thousand who could never be models, she doesn’t think they’re being very responsible. So she tries to get them to run articles that help get girls interested in things besides just their looks and boys.
    Anyway, it was time for The Scene to run another museum story. This one was going to be about the British Museum. So that’s mostly what she had to do in London this time, besides another “London Looks.” All the time we’d been in London, she’d been trying to find a theme for her article and decide what to have the photographer take pictures of.
    Lucas’s question about the mummies had been just the right thing to get Mom started.
    â€œYeah, I’m definitely going to include them. I figure if you’re that interested in them, other kids will be, too. In fact, maybe—” She broke off. “Oh, duh. Good grief. Why didn’t I think of it before? How about, ‘The British Museum: A Teenager’s Guide’?”
    â€œSounds like a good theme to me,” I said, though I actually thought it seemed pretty basic.
    â€œOf course! That’s it!” Mom said. “I’ll take you two around to the galleries tomorrow and we’ll take pictures of whatever you’re the most interested in.”
    I saw Lucas’s face fall, and even I felt disappointed. So much for our plans to come back and keep an eye on Gallery Guy.
    Mom was too excited with her idea to notice. “I’ve been racking my brain for almost a week. You’d think I’d have thought of something so obvious at least four days ago. Terrific! I suddenly feel all energized.”
    I looked at Lucas. It was obvious she didn’t feel all energized, and neither did I.

11
    Blessings Upon Thee, O Camellia
    We were going to eat at Robert’s restaurant that night. The restaurant isn’t as far away from central London as Robert’s house, but it still takes a long time to get there on a double-decker bus. When we got on, Lucas and I went to find a place to sit upstairs. We never got tired of sitting upstairs on double-decker buses and noticing how weird it felt to drive on the left side of the road.
    â€œWe’ve got to figure out something so we can get back to the National Gallery tomorrow,” Lucas said the minute we were away from Mom.
    â€œWell, the only thing I can think of that would keep us out of the British Museum completely would be a bomb scare,” I said, “and I think that might be going a little bit far.”
    â€œYeah, probably a bit,” Lucas said with a sigh, as if she was sad to give up the idea. “But let’s at least make out a list tonight of our favorite things in the British Museum. We’ll show them to your mom as fast as we can tomorrow morning, and maybe by the time we’ve had lunch, we’ll be