Free The Hidden Valley Mystery by Susan Ioannou

Lou’s fingers brushed his ankle. Three! The path turned sharply. Mike grabbed the birch trunk on his right and threw himself behind.
    Eyes closed, he heard Lou scream. Over the edge of Dead Man’s Cliff Lou pitched. Gravel and sand roared, as he slid away.
    Mike rolled onto his back. High above, a little white cloud shaped like a sheep puffed across a bright blue sky. Mike watched it float along, happy and free. No thunder grumbled in its ear. No lightning flashed at its tail. “Hi, little cloud,” Mike croaked. When the cloud saw Mike, it bobbed down and rubbed a cool nose on his forehead. “I didn’t fall off this time,” Mike mumbled. “I didn’t fall off.”
    “That’s good,” the cloud replied. “Are you O.K.? You look white as the moon.”
    Mike blinked open his eyes. That moon seemed familiar. But there wasn’t supposed to be a moon in the daytime. He looked around. The bright blue sky disappeared. He blinked. It was night, and the moon was Tuan’s worried face bending over him. “The man ...” Mike began.
    “Lou, your nice neighbour? Oh, he dove over the cliff-edge and slid all the way down.” Tuan chuckled. “Guess who was waiting to greet him at the bottom?”
    Mike shook his head to clear his thoughts. “The police?” he asked, easing himself up on one elbow.
    “You bet,” Tuan replied. “I saw the whole thing. After Gunnar piggybacked me to the golf course fence, I started this way to wait for you both. Far ahead in the moonlight, I saw you push through the hole in the wire. Right after, your nice neighbour lunged out of the woods. He knocked you down. I tried to catch up, to help. When I couldn’t, I signalled up the hill to Freddy and the police.”
    “Signalled?” Mike asked, “How?”
    “With the flashlight you dropped, sloppy,” Tuan giggled.
    Mike laughed. “You’re amazing, Tuan. But what’s happened to Gunnar?”
    Tuan shrugged. “After he dropped me over the fence, he ran back into the trees—to leave his ‘trademark’, he said. We’ll probably meet him soon. If you think you can walk, I know a trail that winds out near Gunnar’s backyard.”
    Mike nodded. “I’m O.K.” He was anxious to find Gunnar. “Just help me up.”
    CHAPTER 17 – The Mystery Solved
    Long past midnight, overlooking the valley below, Mike and Tuan sprawled on their stomachs in the cool grass of Gunnar’s backyard. Beneath them, some distance to the north, specks of light bobbed along the bottom of Dead Man’s Cliff. Between cricket songs, faint voices floated up. On the far side of the valley, a flashing red light—the third police cruiser—wound from the Parks and Rec centre down to the river bank. To Mike, it felt as if he and Tuan were watching fireflies dance between flames. Both hoped Gunnar and Freddy would show up soon.
    Mike rolled onto his side and looked at Tuan. “I still don’t understand,” he said. “How could Lou, Johnny, and Walt make that fake money? Those $100 bills Gunnar found were amazing. I thought they were real, until a little silver smudged off.”
    “Now, Mike, if you knew anything about computers, the answer would be easy,” Tuan laughed.
    “O.K., Mr. Genius, explain.” Mike nudged Tuan’s shoe.
    Tuan sat up. “Well, first you need a real $100 bill.”
    “To use as a model for the drawing, right?”
    “No,” Tuan corrected him, “More high-tech than that! Remember, you told me how your uncle wanted to do desktop publishing too.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So, he’d start with a scanner.”
    “Scanner?” Mike blinked. “ Theo Lazo did say something about wanting a scanner too.”
    “Listen.” Tuan raised a finger in the air. “You know a scanner can make a really exact picture.”
    Mike scratched his head. “But how do you get the picture onto a printing press?”
    “You don’t,” Tuan replied. “The scanner is plugged into a computer, connected to a colour laser printer.”
    Mike frowned. “But how can that make a picture good enough to be