The Haunted Lighthouse (10 page)

“It’s Morse code!” Cody said.

“Translate it, and I’ll write it down,” M.E. said,
pulling out her notepad from her backpack.

Cody read it aloud.

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

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Luke said.

“Hey, kids! Do I have to come up there and get you?” the guard called again, sounding agitated.

“We’re coming! We’re coming!” Quinn called. He turned to the others. “Since there was a homemade compass there, maybe it refers to degrees.”

Quinn thought for a moment, then said, “Anyone bring a cell phone?”

Luke, M.E., and Cody all pulled out their phones.

“How come you all got to bring your phones and I didn’t?” Quinn grumbled.

“I only get to take it on special occasions, like this,” Cody said.

“Me, too,” M.E. said. Luke nodded.

“Not fair. Let me see your iPhone, Cody.” She handed it over. Quinn switched it on and tapped the compass app. He held it up. It pointed north.
“Here’s 110 degrees,” he said, then looked up and out the window of the lighthouse tower. “It’s pointing to the Campanile on the Berkeley campus. I can see it from here! Maybe we’re supposed to go to the Campanile to find our next clue.”

“When?” M.E. asked.

“Tomorrow is Saturday,” Quinn said. “We can meet there in the morning.”

“All right, I’m coming up there!” the guard shouted.

He didn’t sound happy. It was time to get out of the lighthouse.

C
ody was more than ready to leave the top of the icy-cold tower. With the wind whipping through the open slats, she was chilled to the bone and her teeth were chattering. She carefully followed Luke down, holding on to the twisting railing, tailed by M.E. and Quinn.

“You kids are going to get me fired,” Geoff the
guard said as they touched down on the cement floor. Cody and her friends stepped through the door and out of the lighthouse, followed by the guard, who shut the door behind him.

“So did you kids find anything up there?” he asked, twisting the key. “Any diamonds?”

“Nope,” Quinn said, shooting Cody a look. “Just a lot of graffiti.”

It was Code Buster policy to keep stuff like that to themselves.

“There’s a lot of that from when the American Indian Movement was here,” Geoff said. “But no sign of a message to Diamond Dave, eh?”

The kids forced a laugh. Cody felt herself blush. “Not that we saw,” Cody said.

“Okay, well, you kids run along now,” Geoff said. “And by the way, it wouldn’t be a good idea to mention this. Could get us all in trouble.”

The kids nodded and started down the hill. But Cody turned back and caught a last glimpse of the
guard standing by the lighthouse, watching them. When he spotted her looking at him, he ducked inside the door and closed it behind him. Cody thought she saw a note flapping on the outside of the door and quickly ran back to check, wondering if they had missed a clue.

When she reached the door, she saw the message written on the note. It was written in ABC code. The letters of the message were broken into groups, and each set of letters began with a sequential alphabet letter.

Code Buster’s Solution found on
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.

The door jerked open.

Geoff stepped out. “I thought you kids were gone.”

“I … I just saw this note on the door—” Cody started to say.

Geoff snatched the note off the back of the door.
“Oh, that’s nothing. Bunch of jibberish left by some kid. Go on, now.”

Cody nodded and followed the others down the hill to the gift shop, puzzled over the message she’d found. It had to be a message meant for the Code Busters, but the guard had snatched it out of her hands before she could read the rest.

She entered the store, hoping to find some souvenirs for her family. She especially wanted to buy one of the commemorative diamonds.

M.E. came up behind Cody as she looked at some key chains that featured pictures of the Rock.

“So do you think those coordinates actually point to the Campanile tower?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Quinn said, pulling up next to Cody. He wore a striped prison cap. Apparently, he’d overheard M.E. in spite of her whispering. “That plus the ABC code message have to be the clues. The Morse code was the only set of marks that wasn’t made by a permanent marker. I doubt the prisoners
had markers back in those days. If anyone wanted to leave a permanent message, he’d have to carve it. Besides, those numbers and marks didn’t fit with the other graffiti.”

“But why would someone randomly carve out Morse code and the coordinates for the UC tower?” Luke asked, standing behind them holding an
ESCAPED FROM ALCATRAZ PSYCH WARD
T-shirt.

“That’s just it,” Quinn answered. “It wasn’t random. I think it was one of Diamond Dave’s gang members. He probably came to visit Dave in prison, but he couldn’t just tell him where the diamonds were hidden in case someone overheard him. So he talked about the lighthouse or brought him a picture of it—and that was a clue. Remember how Dave kept drawing lighthouses? He seemed obsessed with them. He probably knew there was a message waiting for him there when he finally got out of prison.”

“We’ll just have to go to the Campanile bell tower to find out,” M.E. said, shrugging. “Maybe
the diamonds are hidden there.”

“Yeah,” Quinn agreed. “We have to check. You never know. And they might still be there after all these years.”

The kids spent the rest of their free time deciding what to buy. Quinn bought himself a tin cup that was painted with black and white stripes and had the word
ALCATRAZ
stenciled on the side. Luke got the T-shirt he was holding, and another one in a larger size for his
grand-mère
. Naturally M.E. picked out some striped Alcatraz knee-high socks to wear to school, claiming, “They go with everything!” Cody finally found a duplicate prison-cell key for her dad, an Alcatraz guard badge for her mother, an Alcatraz bookmark for her sister, Tana, and a fake diamond about the size of a walnut for herself.

On the way out of the shop, Cody spotted her dad. He stood on the dock a few feet away, talking to the same woman she had seen him with earlier. She went up to him with her bag of gifts and
pulled out his key, ignoring the woman.

“I got you this,” Cody said to her dad, handing him the key. It was the size of a cell phone and weighed about the same. “You can use it as a paperweight to keep on your desk and remind you to get all those innocent people out of jail.”

Cody’s dad glanced at the woman next to him as he took the key. “Thank you, Dakota, but you interrupted Ms. Webster and me. We were talking.”

Cody blushed. She’d meant to interrupt him but didn’t think he’d notice. Now she felt embarrassed.

“Cody, do you know Ms. Webster?” her dad asked.

The blonde woman reached out her hand. “Hi, Dakota. I’m Matthew’s mom. We met some time ago. I don’t know if you remember.”

Cody’s blood went cold. Matt the Brat’s mom! Cody knew she’d recognized her when the chaperones had entered the classroom earlier, but she hadn’t paid attention to the introductions once she’d spotted her dad. Besides, the one time she’d
seen Matt’s mom, the woman had had short brown hair and looked a lot heavier. This couldn’t be the same woman—with blonde, shoulder-length hair and a slim figure. She didn’t even have the same last name as Matt.

“You’re Matt the— Matt’s mom?” Cody asked, catching herself before the word
Brat
came flying out. “But his last name is Jeffreys …”

The woman nodded. “I changed my last name back to my maiden name when Matt’s father and I divorced a few months ago.”

Great. Her dad had been flirting with none other than Matt the Brat’s mother, and the woman was now blonde, thin, and available. Cody had to break up this little friendship quickly, before she became Matt the Brat’s stepsister!

“Dad, could I talk to you? Privately?” Cody stared at her dad, trying to will him to agree.

“Sure, Punkin.” Mr. Jones glanced at Matt’s mom and said, “Will you excuse us?”

The woman nodded.

“Hey, sweetheart. Are you having a good time?”

“Yeah, Dad, this place is totally cool. I just got some souvenirs for you and Mom and Tana.”

“Great … uh …” her father stammered, then said, “Did anything unusual happen while you were here?”

Cody thought about the lighthouse side trip and the message found there, but said nothing. That was one of the rules of the Code Busters Club—coded messages were kept secret.

“Nope,” she said, not looking her dad in the eye.

“Not even when you kids wandered off during the cafeteria talk?”

“Oh, that. Sorry. We were just curious about the benches and wanted to check them out.”

Her dad patted her back.

“Well, be careful. And let me know if you need any help with anything.”

Why would I need help with anything?
Cody
wondered. “Thanks, Dad,” she said.

She headed back to her friends, wondering if she should have told her dad about the message in the lighthouse. No, she decided. Nothing had happened. They hadn’t been in any danger. And she wanted to follow this Diamond Dave mystery as far as it went.

On the ride home, Ms. Stad made sure Cody and M.E. were seated separately from Quinn and Luke—no doubt as punishment for their sneaking off together in the cell block during the ranger’s talk.
No biggie
, Cody thought. The Code Busters had ways of communicating, even from a distance.

Sure enough, a few minutes later a folded note arrived in Cody’s hands. She glanced behind her to see Quinn give a brief wave, letting her know the note was from him. She’d already guessed it was, because the paper was intricately folded—origami was something Quinn liked to do with his secret messages. This one looked like a square,
but when Cody pulled out the tucked corners, the paper unfolded into a large sheet of paper. Inside, Quinn had written a code.

Cody recognized it immediately as the zigzag code, because at the very end was the letter
V
, which stood for “zigzag.” At first glance she saw a string of random letters.

Since this was a zigzag code, she knew to divide the letters in half and write the second half underneath the first, after moving it one space to the right.

Once she’d done that, she added the zigzag lines to connect the top and bottom letters, beginning with the letter
M
.

Code Buster’s Solution found on
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.

Cody shared the note with M.E. Tomorrow would be Saturday—her day to be with her dad—but she’d think of some reason she needed to meet with her friends. They’d have plenty of time to explore the Campanile tower on the Berkeley campus and see if they could find more clues to the hidden diamonds—or the diamonds themselves. The girls finger-spelled
OK
to Quinn and Luke.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cody saw a hand trying to imitate her message.

Matt. He’d caught her signal.

Uh-oh. Now that he knew the Code Busters were up to something, he’d be all up in their faces, asking questions and trying to trick them into spilling their plans.