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Authors: Penny Warner

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BOOK: The Haunted Lighthouse
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She suddenly felt a chill run down her spine. It could have been the cold, but she suspected it was something else.

What if the notes weren’t from Quinn or Luke?

C
ody pulled out the two messages and studied them in class, while Ms. Stadelhofer—Ms. Stad, as the kids called her—took roll.

Cody was usually good at solving codes and puzzles, but this one had her stumped—and frustrated. If it came from Quinn, he’d be pleased that she hadn’t been able to decipher the message.

But if it wasn’t from Quinn …

She looked it over again. Were some letters missing? Words missing? Why was the letter B capitalized one time but not the other time? Why were the letters
y
and
B
spaced by themselves?

Cody couldn’t wait to meet up with Quinn and Luke to see if they had other parts to the message.

“Class,” Ms. Stadelhofer said in her attention-getting voice. Her puffy brown hair framed her round face, and her blue eyes matched her themed vest—the San Francisco city skyline, complete
with an embroidered Alcatraz resting under the Golden Gate Bridge. “Do you all have your permission slips? Lunches? Money for souvenirs?”

Cody could tell everyone was excited about the field trip to Alcatraz. The prison had once been home to the infamous gangsters Al “Scarface” Capone, Alvin “Creepy” Carpis, and Diamond Dave. Cody loved the gangsters’ nicknames. They were kind of like the Code Busters’ code names—Kuel-Dude for Luke (Kuel was an anagram of his first name), Lock&Key for Quinn (his last name was Kee), Em-me for M.E., and CodeRed for Cody’s name and her red hair.

She’d once seen a movie on TV about Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” who had raised birds in his prison cell. While he had seemed like a gentle animal lover, he had also been a violent killer.
How could someone so evil be so kind to birds?
she’d wondered. When she asked her mother about him, not even Mrs. Jones could explain the Birdman’s
two-sided personality. That was a
real
mystery.

“Students,” Ms. Stad said, pulling Cody out of her thoughts. “Please say hello to the parents who have so kindly agreed to chaperone our trip to Alcatraz.” The teacher gestured toward the classroom door as four parents shuffled into the room—two women (one who looked familiar) and two men. Cody caught her breath when she saw the last parent enter.

“Dad!” she shrieked. Everyone in class turned to her. She blushed.

He waved at her. Her face turned even hotter, and she tried to shrink back into her desk.

What was he doing here? He hadn’t said a word about coming! A little warning would have been nice. Cody wasn’t sure she liked the idea of her father tagging along. What if she did something wrong and got in trouble, right in front of him?

Or worse, what if
he
did something to embarrass her, like tell one of his lame jokes or argue
with the teacher like he did in court? Although he was an attorney, her dad could be a goofball sometimes. And he had a tendency to hover when she needed some space.

Cody turned around and gave M.E. a wide-eyed look of desperation. M.E. got the message and pressed her lips together sympathetically. Oh, well. She’d just have to make the best of it. She only hoped he didn’t try to hold her hand when they crossed the street or use his pet nickname for her—“Punkin.”

After Ms. Stad introduced each parent, she told the students to put on their name tags and line up at the door. Once everyone was quiet, she led the single-file line to the bus. The parents brought up the rear. Halfway to the bus Cody stepped out of line to let the other students go by and waited until her dad caught up with her.

“Dad!” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“Hi, Punkin,” he said. He’d called her that ever since she was a baby, thanks to her red hair. Punkin was also the name she’d given a cat she’d rescued from Skeleton Man’s house, hoping her dad would stop calling her that. So far it hadn’t worked.

“Don’t call me that!” she said, glancing around to see whether anyone had heard him.

Mr. Jones grinned. “Sorry, I promise to behave. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, you did!” Cody’s green eyes flared.

“You know,” her dad said, “I took a trip to Alcatraz when I was a kid, many years ago. I thought it would be interesting to see the place again. Back then it was pretty spooky. It made me think about how awful it must have been for the prisoners—cold, damp, foggy, isolated. I had nightmares about solitary confinement after that trip. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why I became a public defender.”

Cody’s discomfort at having her dad along softened. She was proud of him—he’d kept a lot of
innocent people out of prison, while her mom had put a lot of criminals behind bars. She just wished he’d stop hovering over her and stop calling her “Punkin” in front of other people.

They climbed aboard the big yellow bus. Ms. Stad told them to sit wherever they wanted for the ride over, rather than assigning them seats. “After all,” she said, “this is supposed to be fun as well as educational, so as long as you behave, you may sit with your friends. Otherwise, it’s back to alphabetical order.”

M.E. had saved Cody a seat, right in front of Luke and Quinn, whose teacher was Mr. de Lannoy. Cody couldn’t wait to show them the messages she and M.E. had received. As soon as the bus left the school parking lot, she pulled out the notes and turned to show them to the boys.

“Look what we found on our front porches,” Cody said softly so the other kids sitting nearby wouldn’t hear. Luckily, Matt the Brat had taken
a seat at the front of the bus and was currently annoying the bus driver. “Did you do this, Quinn?” She passed the notes over to him so he could have a closer look.

Quinn’s eyes widened as he glanced over the messages. He rustled through his backpack until he found what he was looking for—another folded note. Excited, Cody looked it over. It, too, was torn, this time at the top and left side.

“ ‘Lock B? Tween two seats?’ ” Cody said.

“Yeah, I know,” Quinn said. “It makes about as much sense as yours.”

Luke pulled a piece of paper from a pocket in his oversized skater shorts and smoothed it open.
“I got one, too. But it’s even more confusing than yours.” He showed it to the others. This one was torn on the left side like Quinn’s, but at the bottom instead of the top.

“Sound like anything to you?” Luke asked.

“Look,” Cody said, pointing to the papers. “All four notes have two torn sides. Obviously, these are part of the same note. Let’s piece them together.”

Quinn got out a notebook to use as a flat surface and placed his piece of paper on it. He set Cody’s note next to it and tried to match the two torn sides. No match. He moved his piece next to M.E.’s.

“They go together!” M.E. squealed.

“Shh!” Quinn said. He took Luke’s piece and lined it up next to Cody’s. Another match.

Luke read it aloud, running some of the separated letters together to form words:

“On the Rock, B ware

When you get 2 cell block B

Look B tween 2 seats”

“Hey,” M.E. said, “it’s like a haiku—that type of
poetry that comes from Japan. Each line uses a specific number of syllables—five in the first line, seven in the second, and then five again.”

“So what does it mean?” Quinn asked.

“And why are there so many capital
B
s, like B ware, cell block B, and B tween?” Luke asked.

“You really sure you didn’t write this, Quinn, as some sort of game?” Cody eyed him suspiciously.

“No, I swear. I found it on my porch.”

Satisfied, Cody copied the message into her Code Busters notebook so she could study it more. She twisted back in her seat and read over the lines again, trying to decode the meaning.


On the Rock
 …” Did that refer to Alcatraz, also known as the Rock?

“B ware”
was obviously “beware.” But why the capital
B
?

“When you get 2 cell block B …”
That had to mean Alcatraz.

“Look B tween 2 seats
 …” Between two seats?
What kind of seats? Did it have something to do with the electric chair? Did the prison even have an electric chair? Cody shivered at the thought. That was not something Cody was eager to see on this field trip. It was just too gruesome.

Before she could work on the message some more, the bus pulled to a stop. Cody had been so absorbed in trying to decipher the note, she’d lost track of time and was surprised to see they had arrived at the parking lot of the ferry service to Alcatraz. She could smell the bay—it smelled fishy—and scrunched up her nose. Looking through the grimy school-bus window, she spotted one of the ferries that would take them to the fog-covered island. Those boats were the only way to—and from—Alcatraz prison.

“Attention, students,” Ms. Stad called out. “As you leave the bus, I’ll give you a puzzle to solve about some of the prisoners who lived on the Rock. They’re cryptograms, which means each
letter has been substituted by another letter in the alphabet. Once you figure out a couple of the letters, you should be able to crack the code and read the names of the convicts, because the letter substitutes stay the same throughout the puzzle. But there’s a catch. One of these guys did not spend time on Alcatraz. So after you crack the code, figure out which one doesn’t belong, then give me your answer for extra credit.”

BOOK: The Haunted Lighthouse
3.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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