Judy Moody, Girl Detective - Megan Mcdonald [20]
“You mean — all that spooky stuff was just a big fat fake-out?”
“I got the idea to spook you from reading The Hidden Staircase. So I asked my brother to jump on his bed to make the chandelier swing, play creepy music, and hide up in the attic with his gorilla mask. Judy Moody, you cracked the case!”
“RARE!” said Judy. “But — there’s still the Mystery of the Missing Mood Ring.”
Judy and Alyssa crawled on hands and knees across the attic floor, searching for her mood ring. “I’m sure you just dropped it,” said Alyssa. But where was it?
“I guess my mood ring is not in the mood to be found,” said Judy. All of a sudden, her hand pressed down on a loose floorboard. The board popped up. Under the loose board was . . . a way-cool secret compartment!
“My ring!” shouted Judy, sliding it onto her finger. “I guess it flew off yesterday when I saw your brother the gorilla, and it fell though a crack.”
Alyssa peered into the dark hole. “Hey, what’s this?” She picked something up and blew on it. A cloud of dust cleared. A note! The note was in a secret code.
OLLP RM GSV IZUGVIH.
Signed,
Nancy Drew’s biggest fan,
Alice Sutherland
December 29, 1930
“Alice in Wonderland left us a secret code from 1930?” Judy screeched.
“No, silly. Alice Sutherland. She must have lived in this house a way long time ago! She read Nancy Drew, too. How cool is that? Just think: she left this note for us to find someday. It’s like an eighty-year-old mystery.”
“That’s older than my grandma Lou!”
Judy stared at the secret code. “It’s a classic reverse alphabet code. You know, where the letter A equals Z?” The girls got a pencil and worked out the code.
LOOK IN THE RAFTERS.
Judy and Alyssa searched the attic up and down. “I think I see something blue back here!” Alyssa shouted, reaching up into the rafters. She pulled down a musty, dusty old book. “Nancy Drew book number two. The Hidden Staircase! It’s like the one I got from the library, only way old.”
Holy macaroni! Judy barely dared to breathe.
“I bet this is one of the first Nancy Drew books ever. It must be worth a bazillion dollars!” Alyssa cracked open the book. “Look! She wrote something in fancy handwriting.”
Judy peered over Alyssa’s shoulder, reading the inscription.
Dear Girl in the Future,
If you are holding this book, you have solved my Mystery in the Attic Rafters.
You are just like Nancy Drew!
A. S.
“Same-same!” said Judy, grinning at Alyssa.