The missing jewels, p.1
The Missing Jewels, page 1
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2022 by Sourcebooks
Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Maryn Arreguín/Sourcebooks
Internal design by Michelle Mayhall/Sourcebooks
Cover and internal illustrations by Alessia Trunfio
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Young Readers, an imprint of Sourcebooks Kids
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410
(630) 961-3900
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Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.
This product conforms to all applicable CPSC and CPSIA standards.
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
Back Cover
Dedicated to my sister Jules, who always has my back, no matter what happens.
Chapter One
Flashbulbs pop in my face. “Smile, Hayley!” a photographer cries. “Hold that pose! Just like that! Amazing!”
I squeeze in with my two best friends, Aubrey and Cody. The three of us are wearing itchy tweed Sherlock Holmes detective hats and jackets, and I’m holding a huge magnifying glass that’s the size of a cantaloupe. We’re dressed this way because of the show we star in, Sadie Solves It. I play Sadie, the lead, who is so into solving mysteries that her catchphrase is “I eat clues for breakfast.” That always makes me laugh. I can’t help but imagine the clues in an alphabet soup and Sadie slurping them up with a spoon.
My best friends play Kiki and Markus, Sadie’s mystery solving squad. Fangirl Magazine has come onto our set to photograph and interview us for a cover feature story. A cover! I’ve never been on the cover of a magazine, and neither have my friends, so we’re all really excited.
A fourth actor on our show, Amelia Hart, nudges her way into the photo too. “Can’t forget Pepper!”
“Oh, don’t worry.” I roll my eyes. “You make sure we never forget Pepper.” While Cody is twelve and Aubrey and I are thirteen, Amelia is only ten. She plays Sadie’s younger sister, Pepper, and she’s eager to be included. She even whined her way into being in this photo shoot.
Actually, I bet Amelia’s mom whined her daughter’s way into the photo shoot. Mrs. Hart takes the term Momager to the next level.
“That should do it,” says Bruce the photographer, a friendly guy with a bushy beard and wire-frame glasses. He checks the screen on the back of his digital camera. “These are great. I’ll turn you over to Imogen now.”
Imogen, Fangirl’s reporter, swoops over in her high heels and bright pink lipstick. We’ve met her a few times before. She visited our old set in Burbank, California, to talk to us during Sadie Solves It’s first season. Imogen is even nosier than Amelia, and that’s saying a lot. She’s always hunting for a good scoop, and she doesn’t care how she gets it.
“Hey team!” Imogen cries, fiddling with her audio recorder. “It’s been a while, huh? You need to fill me in on everything that’s changed!”
My friends and I exchange glances. Since our last interview, our show has been renewed, and we’ve moved to a new set, Silver Screen Studios, which is in Hollywood.
But it’s been rocky. Don’t get me wrong, I adore Hollywood—zany Hollywood Boulevard with its Batman impersonators and junk shops and the area’s rich history of moviemaking. The new set is also much closer to the supersecret tree house in my family’s backyard. But for a little while, none of us wanted to be at Silver Screen Studios at all.
“Give me the scoop,” Imogen whispers, settling down on a bench. We’re across the street from my trailer and the Sadie soundstage, where we shoot all of our interior scenes. (A soundstage is a big building that houses a whole bunch of inside sets. It’s usually three stories tall, and freezing, because the filmmakers have to use so much lighting to make the scenes look real.) “I heard you’ve had some excitement on the new set? Something about…a ghost?”
Amelia breathes in to answer. I’m afraid she’ll spill the beans about what happened, so I quickly say, “Oh, there were a few rumors going around. And as we all know, Hollywood has a history of being haunted! But we’re all good.”
Imogen widens her eyes. “I heard Amelia saw something pretty spooky. Can you tell us about it ?”
“Amelia thought she saw something,” Aubrey interrupts. Her tweed jacket has flecks of bright pink that looks great against her darker skin. Instead of changing into the loafers our wardrobe department suggested for this shoot, she insisted on wearing her slightly muddy soccer cleats. Somehow, Aubrey fits in a traveling soccer schedule along with filming the show and our many hours of private tutoring for school.
Imogen frowns. “Amelia can speak for herself.”
Amelia’s dark hair is in two braids. She’s sitting with posture so perfect, she could probably balance a flowerpot on her head. She glances at us, and for once—to my relief—takes our lead on how to answer.
“Oh, that,” she says with a serene smile. “It was nothing, really. Just a little mystery we solved.”
“Wasn’t it you who solved the mystery, Hayley?” Imogen asks. “Just like Sadie?”
“All I can say is that it was the four of us who solved the mystery,” I say, looking at my friends—and Amelia too, because even though she’s annoying, she had a role in tracking down some clues.
“Impressive, the way you all worked together,” Imogen says. “I’ve always heard that people on sets don’t get along. There’s always a bad apple that spoils the bunch.”
“Not here,” Aubrey jumps in. “We’re all besties. We have each other’s backs.”
“Totally,” Cody adds, giving us a meaningful smile. During the ghost problem, it seemed our show might get shut down, and Cody’s two moms were this close to pulling Cody out of LA and uniting the family back together in Texas. We were afraid we’d never see him again. But once the case was solved, Cody’s moms and his little brother moved here instead. Their new condo rocks.
“Fine. Don’t tell me.” Imogen sighs. “I guess I can write about how you’re all such best friends, then. But I have to say, that’s a little boring.”
“Boring is good,” I tell her. “I’d rather nothing weird happen on set ever again.”
“Same here!” Cody says.
“And we’re starting a new episode today!” Aubrey says. “It’s about a woman with a secret past who comes into town and needs Sadie to find her long-lost twin sister. She’s being played by Brooklyn Bates.”
“Uh huh,” Imogen mumbles, as if Brooklyn Bates is some random actor and not the star of a million superhero movies. But I know why Imogen’s disappointed. It doesn’t matter that things are going really, really well on Sadie Solves It. It doesn’t even matter that we’re no longer in danger of being canceled or that Cody gets to stay in LA or that I still get to see one of my friends every day.
Nope. Imogen wants gossip. Sorry, Imogen. Not today.
Imogen checks her watch. “Out of time.” She closes her notebook. “I’m sure I have enough to put together a cover article. Though if you want to add anything—anything about ghosts, maybe—you know where to find me.” She winks.
After Imogen and Bruce head to their car, I look at my friends. “That went pretty well.”
“Ugh, she’s so pushy,” Cody mutters, running a hand through his mop of white-blond curls. “It’s a wonder she didn’t go through our phones for random texts or something. Or through our backpacks for secret diary entries.”
“Our backpacks?” Amelia’s fingers fly nervously to a zippered pocket in the flowered backpack she carries everywhere.
Aubrey
“Sure.” Salmon is my black cat. The Sadie team is nice enough to let me bring him on set, mostly because everyone loves him and he totally fits with the spooky, mystery-solving vibe. Some people on set, like the makeup artist, Vee, even installed a cat door in her trailer so Salmon can come and go as he pleases.
We’re just about to my trailer when we hear a loud scream from inside the Sadie soundstage. Cody, Aubrey, and I exchange shocked looks. Lucinda, who works in the props department, sprints onto the pavement. Her frizzy hair is even taller and frizzier today, and she’s trembling.
Paul, our show’s creator, runs after her. A few writers, producers, and our director Monique follow. As soon as I see Paul’s face, my stomach plummets. Something is wrong. I also notice Imogen freeze by her car, eyeing the scene with interest.
“What is it?” I ask, rushing over to Lucinda. “What’s happened?”
“I can’t find a major piece of jewelry for this episode,” Lucinda cries. “It’s been stolen!”
Chapter Two
“Stolen?” Paul hurries to Lucinda’s side. “Are you sure?”
“I had it sitting on my desk, and now it’s gone.” Lucinda looks worried. “Those jewels were expensive!”
Paul looks like he’s going to say something else, but then he pauses, noticing Imogen the reporter creeping closer.
“Nothing to see here!” he shouts at her. “I’m sure it’ll turn up.” Then he ushers Lucinda back toward the soundstage and out of earshot.
Aubrey’s head swivels to watch Paul take Lucinda into the big set of buildings where the props department office is. “What do you think happened?” she whispers.
“I don’t know,” I murmur. “Want to find out?”
Cody looks worried. “What about our lines? I don’t have mine memorized yet.”
“And that’ll take you, what, five minutes?” Besides being a whiz with numbers and computer coding, Cody has a photographic memory. He learns his lines the first time he reads them.
“I’m in,” Aubrey says.
“Yeah, okay,” Cody agrees. “Let’s go see what’s up.”
I turn to Amelia, figuring she’ll want to tag along, but she’s gone.
We head into the office building and up the stairs toward the props room. We’re not spying, exactly, but Paul has ordered the three of us not to get involved in any more mysteries on the set. I know he’s grateful that we solved the ghost problem, but I think he wants us to concentrate on our jobs first and foremost.
Still, a robbery? This is juicy.
The door to the props room is half open, and we can hear rustling, clanging, and banging inside. Lucinda is overturning boxes of props, looking for whatever has gone missing. Paul helps too. The props are well organized, but for whatever reason, Paul is looking in a bin marked “Giovanni’s Pizza Shop.” He pulls out checkerboard tablecloths, plastic soda cups, paper menus, and a chef’s hat.
“So which piece was it?” Paul murmurs.
“The diamond tiara the princess wears in those early scenes, when she comes back into town,” Lucinda says.
I exchange a look with my friends. The mysterious woman in this episode is a princess? I didn’t read that in the script.
“Diamonds?” Paul asks. “How much is it worth?”
Lucinda shuts a drawer I usually love going through—it’s filled with keys of all shapes and sizes. We need a lot of spooky keys in Sadie Solves It. “It’s just paste, but still,” she says.
Paste is a type of jewelry that’s made out of a special glass that looks like real gemstones. It’s been around for centuries, and some of it is really beautiful, and I have no doubt Lucinda found an amazing piece for the princess’s tiara. Last season, Sadie wore a necklace that was also paste—she’d gotten it as a gift from a wealthy woman who lived in a haunted house after Sadie figured out that she wasn’t being visited by a ghost but by a noisy family of raccoons. For a while, I wore the necklace on the show, but we figured out that the necklace jangled too much and messed with the sound in some of the scenes. Now, Sadie wears a special ring as her signature piece. I spin it around my finger now, admiring the authentic-looking sapphire set on the band. This piece is paste too.
Paul slams a drawer and groans. “This’ll set us back. We shot some of Brooklyn’s scenes last week because it was the only time she could fit it in her schedule. Now that the crown is gone, we’ll have to reshoot. Or maybe try and edit around it?” He starts to vigorously rub his earlobes. Uh-oh. When Paul massages his ears, it means he’s really worried.
Then, Cody lets out a sneeze. It sounds like an elephant even though he’s covered his mouth. He freezes, his eyes wide.
Paul’s head shoots up, and he frowns at the door. “Who’s there?”
My friends and I exchange an uh-oh look. Quickly and quietly, we tiptoe away. Only when we get to the stairwell do we bolt to the ground level. On the way, we come upon Vee walking up as we’re sprinting down.
“Whoa!” Vee cries, pressing her body against the stairwell wall to let us pass. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“Hi, Vee!” I say in a rush. “And…bye, Vee!”
Vee looks at us in confusion as we scamper away.
My heart pounds hard as we tumble back onto the pavement. We all lean over our legs to catch our breath.
“Way to blow our cover, Cody,” Aubrey grumbles.
Cody holds up his hands. “There’s lots of dust in the props room. I’m sensitive!”
Then Aubrey looks at me. “So, is this case number two for the Silver Screen Sleuthios?”
“The who?” I ask.
Aubrey grins. “It’s our name! I just made it up. Silver Screen Studios, Silver Screen Sleuthios!”
I laugh half-heartedly, but I’m more focused on Aubrey’s question. Is this a new mystery? I enjoyed solving the case of the ghost, but maybe Paul’s right—we should keep our heads down and concentrate on the show.
On the other hand, what if there really is a jewel thief? I stare down at my Sadie ring. I wouldn’t want it to go missing. And I hate the idea of more trouble on the set.
“Maybe,” I decide. “Under one condition. We have to change our name.”
Chapter Three
The rest of that morning, my friends and I shoot our first scene of the new episode. It’s a school scene—Sadie, Kiki, and Markus are in geometry when grumpy Principal Stein, played by an even grumpier woman named Wendy Bongiovanni, appears in the doorway and says Sadie and her friends need to come to her office. A video message has arrived for them from a woman named Princess Stella. She says she’s heard Sadie and her friends are good at solving mysteries, and she needs their help. Sadie and her friends are to meet her at the gates of her country’s embassy the following day at 3:00 p.m.
The crew is tense. This scene is at the beginning of the episode, so this will be the first time the audience meets Princess Stella. And what’s the best way to tell an audience that a princess is a princess? A crown. Brooklyn Bates shot some later scenes already—and she was wearing the crown that’s gone missing. But she hasn’t yet recorded this video message to Sadie and her crew. That’s not so unusual—TV shows are shot out of order all the time. Brooklyn is scheduled to come back tomorrow and shoot this particular scene, but we’re going to need to find her crown by then to make everything match up.
“Maybe we can get another crown?” Paul whispers to Lucinda after our scenes wrap. “Or they can create a replica?”
“The crown is one of a kind,” Lucinda says miserably.
“Maybe the princess owns more than one crown?” Paul wonders aloud.
“That seems a little complicated,” Lucinda says.
“Guess they haven’t found the crown, then,” I murmur to Aubrey.
I must say this a little loudly, because Paul turns. “Ladies. Not your concern.” Then he snaps his fingers like he has a great idea. “Hey! How would you like to watch Animals Extraordinaire?”
“That show about animals doing incredible things?” Cody seems confused. “I thought they hadn’t started shooting yet.”
