The Haunted Lighthouse (4 page)

M
orning, sweetheart,” Mrs. Jones said as Cody entered the kitchen, dressed for school. Winter weather had come early to Berkeley and the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, stripping the trees of their colorful leaves and laying early morning frost on the lawns and rooftops. Cody had dressed in layers, because her teacher had warned her class that Alcatraz Island would be cold and windy. Cody
had never been to “the Rock,” so she made sure she was prepared, wearing her warmest jeans, two long-sleeved T-shirts, Ugg boots, her red hoodie, and a black muffler.

“Ready to go to prison?” Mrs. Jones asked, pouring some orange juice for Cody and Tana.

“You mean school?” Cody asked, grinning at her mom’s play on words. “They’re the same thing, right?”

Mrs. Jones shook her head at her daughter’s joke. “Very funny. You love school, and you know it.”

“I don’t
love
it,” Cody tried to argue. “I just don’t hate it.”

“That’s because you’re good at so many subjects. You inherited your brains from me, of course.” Mrs. Jones handed Cody a bag lunch and some money to buy souvenirs and to use in case of an emergency.

“I thought I got my
looks
from you,” Cody said,
stuffing the lunch and the money into her backpack.

“Oh, no, you can thank your dad for your adorable freckles and red hair.”

Even though her mother and father were divorced, they still got along, which was a relief. They’d just gone their separate ways, for reasons Cody didn’t fully understand. Her dad was an attorney—a public defender—and before the split, her parents had often argued about criminal justice matters. She figured that was probably the reason they no longer lived together. But her dad was almost as involved in Tana’s and her lives as her mother. Yet Cody didn’t enjoy spending every other weekend with her dad. Not that she didn’t love her time with him—they always did something fun, like go to the zoo, eat weird foods, or check out the animal skeletons at the University of California campus lab. But it was hard leaving her main home, her cozy bedroom, and her
neighborhood friends for her dad’s across-town condo.

Cody drank her juice and grabbed the bagel that was waiting for her, then headed for the front door with her backpack.

“Have fun on the Rock!” Mrs. Jones called. “And be good. I don’t want you to end up in solitary confinement.”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Cody called back from the front door. “I’ll escape. I’ve got a nail file and a compass in my backpack. I should be home by Christmas.”

“Don’t forget your wet suit. It’s a mile-and-a-half-long swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco in fifty-degree water.”

“I’ll add an inflatable—!” She was cut off by Tana’s running up and hugging her good-bye.

“I love you,” she signed.

“Me, too,” Cody signed back.

Cody closed the door behind her, still smiling at her mother’s good-bye. As a cop, Mrs. Jones was often serious and strict, but she loved to play games with Cody, especially word games like Bananagrams, Scrabble, and Wacky Words. Every day she’d find a word game that her mother had left in her lunch bag. She peeked in the bag and pulled out today’s puzzle—a Wacky Word. Inside a box was a rebus-type puzzle. Cody had to figure out how the words related to the box to figure out the answer.

Code Buster’s Solution found on
this page
.

Cody figured it out quickly, smiling at how the puzzle related to her field trip, then tucked it back in her lunch bag to share with the other Code Busters.

As was her habit, Cody stopped by the ash tree in her front yard to check the secret compartment—a hidden knothole the size of her fist. Each of the Code Busters had a secret hiding place where they could receive coded messages from one another. M.E.’s was in her flower box. Quinn’s was in his doghouse. And Luke found his messages under the front porch of the house where he lived with his
grand-mère
.

Today the knothole was empty. Cody felt a little disappointment that there wasn’t a secret note for her, but since they were all going on a field trip, she wasn’t surprised.

“Cody!” her mother called from the porch. “Did you drop this?” Her mother held up a scrap of paper. “I found it on the mat.”

Cody ran back and took the paper from her mom.

She unfolded it, revealing a message inside. She noticed the note had been torn—the right side and the bottom side had ragged edges. She looked over the letters on the remaining piece of paper, typed in a bold font.

“Is that another one of your Code Buster secret messages?” her mother asked.

“I guess so,” Cody said, although the Code Busters had never left notes on the porch before. She glanced around to see if she could spot any of her friends lurking nearby.

Maybe the note was from Matt the Brat. He was always snooping around the Code Busters, spying on them and trying to intercept their messages.
Maybe he had even sent the strange e-mail that Cody had received last night. He was always up to something.

She looked at the message again. Was this some kind of code? It sure looked like it. But why write a message, tear it up, and leave it on the porch? It made no sense.

“Cody!”

M.E. was walking toward her, wearing another one of her arty outfits. Today she had on bell-bottom jeans covered with purple-and-blue embroidered flowers, and a pink top with a rhinestone heart on the front. Purple striped socks and red Converse shoes covered her feet, the shoelaces crisscrossed backward so they tied at the toe. In spite of the winter chill, she’d wrapped her denim jacket around her waist instead of putting it on.

“Did you get a message, too?” M.E. asked when she reached Cody’s front yard.

Cody looked at her friend. “You got one?”

“Yeah, I found it on my front porch this morning. It was ripped in half. I couldn’t really read it.” M.E. dug the note out of her jeans pocket and showed it to her.

Cody took the note and tried to read it out loud, but like her own message, it didn’t make any sense. And it had been torn at the top and right-hand side. It said:

“What’s it supposed to mean?” Cody asked.

“I was hoping you’d know,” M.E. said, her face crestfallen with disappointment. “Isn’t it the same as yours?”

Cody shook her head. She held up her note to
M.E.’s message to compare.

“It
still
doesn’t make any sense,” M.E. said. “Look, yours is torn, too.”

Cody examined the two torn sides of both notes and tried to match the torn bottom of her note to the torn top of M.E.’s.

Bingo. A match.

“They obviously came from the same sheet of paper. See, they’ve been torn in half right here.” She pointed to the ragged right sides of both notes. “And whoever wrote it used the same font. But I still can’t make out the message.”

Cody and M.E. looked at each other.

“The boys!” Cody said.

“They probably have the other pieces of the message!” M.E. added.

“I’ll bet this is Quinn’s doing. He loves leaving messages for us to solve. He probably—”

“Dakota Jones!” Cody’s mother’s voice cut her off.

Cody spun around to see her mother standing at the doorway, one hand holding Tana’s hand, the other on her hip. “You’re going to be late for school! Get going!”

In all the excitement of finding the message, Cody had lost track of the time. “Sorry, Mom!” she said. She waved ’bye to Tana and finger-spelled,

Code Buster’s Key and Solution found on
this page
,
this page
.

Then Cody hurried down the street toward Berkeley Cooperative Middle School. M.E. had to jog along at Cody’s side to keep up with her long strides.

“We’ll talk to Quinn and Luke at recess and
find out what this is all about,” Cody said. “I’m sure Quinn is up to something.” Quinn often left cryptic notes for them, usually to arrange meetings at the clubhouse after school. No doubt this was another of his puzzles to solve, summoning the kids together.

“Wait a minute,” M.E. said. “We don’t have recess today. We’re going to Alcatraz!”

“Oh yeah, I forgot,” Cody said. “Well, we can talk to them on the bus ride over. Maybe the message has something to do with the field trip—like that e-mail I got last night.”