Free The Hidden Valley Mystery by Susan Ioannou Page A

a fake bill?”
    Tuan replied, “You need a special software program that cleans up any spots or blurry parts, and makes the colour near perfect. It can even add a phony watermark to make the bill look genuine.”
    Mike sat up. He slapped his forehead. “Now I get it. In the mansion, that’s what all those different machines were for. Scanners, computers, laser printers.”
    “Right,” Tuan patted Mike’s shoulder. “The image the scanner makes will be a perfect copy of the dollar bill. That’s the easy part. The trick is finding paper. It has to feel like real money, yet work in the laser printer too.”
    Mike sat back on his heels. “So maybe that’s why the men broke into Theo Lazo’s shop—for paper. And they made such a mess, so we wouldn’t notice stuff like that was missing. I mean, who counts a few boxes of paper, especially when it’s busy? We all thought they were hunting for the safe or a fire-box full of cash.”
    “Don’t forget,” Tuan added. “They also could use the boxes to hide fake bills under the stationery.”
    “There’s one more thing.” Mike frowned. “What about the shiny metal strips on dollar bills?”
    Tuan thought for a moment. “I know! Maybe the counterfeiters used a metallic spray paint. You can buy the aerosol cans in any hardware store.”
    “Hey!” Mike cried and bounced to his knees. “That’s why the bill Gunnar found was a throw-away. The silver rubbed off on our fingers.”
    “Give yourself an ‘A’, Mike.” Tuan rolled onto his side and laughed.
    Mike shook his head. He gazed down over the dark valley. A few last small lights bobbed away from the river banks. Only minutes before, the last flashing red cruiser had wound up the Parks and Rec service road on the valley’s far side and disappeared. “I guess the excitement’s over,” Tuan said.
    “Yup,” Mike agreed. He plopped down and leaned over his folded arms. “I wonder what’s happened to Gunnar. Still no sign of him coming up the path.” An hour had passed since Tuan helped Mike hobble away from Dead Man’s Cliff. Surely nothing bad could have happened when Gunnar left Tuan and ran back in the woods—or could it? Mike’s worst fears he couldn’t say out loud.
    “Oh-ooo-ooh,” Mike heard a moan. “I am the ghost of Gunnar, eaten by a vicious black dog in the woods.”
    Mike twisted around. Tuan sat up. Across the dark grass, Gunnar and Freddy strode toward them. By the gate from the driveway, silhouetted in flashing red light, waited a tall policeman.
    “Where did you guys come from?” Tuan cried, jumping up.
    Freddy nodded toward the red light. “A police cruiser brought us,” he said. “Officer Powchuk wants us all down to the station to answer some questions.”
    Mike scrambled to his feet and followed his friends down the driveway to the cruiser at the curb. On the porch, another policeman stood talking with Mr. and Mrs. Lindstrom, Gunnar’s parents.
    Mike, Freddy, and Tuan crawled into the cruiser’s back seat. Because of his long legs, Gunnar climbed into the front. He slid around to face them and knocked on the wire mesh separating front from back. “Hi, jailbirds,” he joked.
    Mike leaned forward. “So tell us what happened, Gunnar.”
    “Yeah,” Tuan spread his fingers across the mesh, “where did you go after you dropped me over the fence? What did you mean by a ‘trademark’?”
    Freddy laughed. He sprawled back in the thick seat. “Johnny could tell you. He’ll be itching and scratching tomorrow.”
    Mike looked at him. “You mean the poison ivy?” He remembered Johnny’s bare legs, stretched out when he tilted back on the wooden chair in the basement.
    “I wanted to give Tuan more time to escape,” Gunnar explained, “and Johnny was hot on our heels. I couldn’t outrun his dog for long. So, before I climbed a tree, good and high, I circled several times through the poison ivy.”
    Freddy slapped his knee. “It was really comical,” he added. “When