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he’s Greek, no question,” I said. “And he’ll either be mad at me, or—”
    Geneva interrupted. “Or answer. If he’s innocent. Maybe he’ll say: ‘I didn’t want to tell anybody, but you remember how I confessed that I hated to leave my puppy. She’s here. In the bag.’ And she’ll be—”
    â€œI don’t think so,” I said.
    But right then I knew something. I didn’t want him to be able to read it. I didn’t want him to be Greek. I didn’t want him to be innocent. I didn’t want to lose my big mystery adventure. But just think how scary it would be if he wasn’t Greek. If he was something else! Having a mystery also meant having a terrorist aboard. And a bomb. Criminy! What did I want?
    I folded the paper, wrote “Charles Stavros” across it, and slipped it in the bookstore bag with my dictionary. “I’m glad I didn’t take the dictionary back,” I told Geneva. “It was really useful after all.”
    â€œWhen are you going to give him the letter?”
    â€œAt dinner,” I said, and I felt my legs begin to tremble. What had Geneva said about the dangers of confronting Stavros? Maybe I shouldn’t give it to him at all. Maybe this was too direct.
    We were pulling up in front of the big Jackson Lake Lodge.
    â€œOkay, everyone. Don’t worry about your luggage,” Declan called. “It will be brought to your rooms. And I have your keys right here.” He jangled them above his head.
    I craned forward. Stavros’s room was 145.
    As usual, Geneva and I were the last off. It was slow moving as people picked up their keys from Declan and checked the labels and asked all kinds of questions, like how formally they should dress tonight and if their rooms had a view of the lake. I slid the map into the bag with the dictionary and the letter. I’d work on it some more in my room.
    As we inched forward, I was standing next to the seat where Charles Stavros had sat. What if he’d left the red bag behind and I could look in it myself?
    Not a chance! I stood biting my lips. The onlything he’d left was the map in the mesh pocket. My heart pounded.
    Was anyone watching?
    No.
    Quick as a flick I leaned forward and slid his map out of the pocket by the two top corners.
    At the very least, if the cops needed his fingerprints, now I had them!

CHAPTER 6
    G randma and I had adjoining rooms on the ground floor. My window looked out on Jackson Lake and the Grand Tetons behind it. The mountains were so awesome that I got this little catch in my throat that seems to happen when I see something beautiful. I get the same feeling when there’s a great California sunset, the sun dipping red into Santa Monica Bay. Things like that.
    But I had no time to stand here admiring.
    I unfolded Stavros’s map.
    Nothing.
    I took it over to the bedside table, switched on the lamp, and held the map directly beneath it.
    Nothing.
    But wait! I moved the map back and forth. There were some grooves that might have come from a pencil point, and when I looked closer I saw three small black crumbs. I closed my eyes and imagined Stavros writing, erasing, brushing the rubber crumbs away with the side of his hand. I’d done that myself a gazillion times. What had he written and then erased? If only I had a magnifying glass! But even then I might not be able—Suddenly my heart jumped with excitement. There was a detective trick I’d read about. If it would just work in real life the way it did in that book!
    I spread the map flat under the light, fished a pencil from the bottom of my bag, and began to rub the lead point lightly over the grooves. As if by magic a wide circle came up that took in just about all the places we were going to visit on the rest of our trip. Inside its boundaries were Yellowstone, Cody, Mount Rushmore, Rapid City. Now my heart was galloping like a runaway horse. Was he going