The Secret of the Skeleton Key (4 page)

B
y the time the girls reached the clubhouse, they were out of breath and their hearts were racing like frightened cats.

“We made it!” M.E. wheezed.

Cody panted from the uphill run, nearly the length of two football fields. “No sign of the mountain lion,” she gasped, glancing behind her to make sure. “But something was in those bushes.”

The clubhouse stood hidden in the middle of a eucalyptus forest. Cody loved it here, where the city seemed miles away. This peaceful, wooded hillside reminded her of her home in the Gold Country. It smelled like the Vicks VapoRub that her mom used to spread on her chest when she had a cold. Eucalyptus.

The boys, Quinn and Luke, had begun building the clubhouse a year ago, using old billboard panels as walls, propped up and tied with rope between four trees. Quinn had designed the structure, while Luke, already muscular from doing extreme sports, did most of the heavy lifting. Piece by piece, they had added on to the clubhouse with materials they'd found discarded around town. They had covered the top with an old camo parachute and had painted the outside walls green and brown to blend in with the surroundings. To someone passing by the forest, it would be almost invisible. The dirt floor was covered with a piece of sheet metal they'd found abandoned at a construction site.

Once it was finished, they'd secured it with a chain and combination lock. After recruiting M.E., then Cody, they'd moved the Code Busters Club inside and loaded the place with secondhand spy supplies, secret notebooks, and packaged food for emergencies.

Quinn, a military fanatic, had brought some cool night-vision binoculars he'd found at a garage sale, plus a broken code breaking machine (missing three keys). Luke, influenced by his grandmother's crossword puzzle hobby, contributed several codebooks he'd discovered in her attic, including one that featured Civil War codes and one about the Navajo code talkers.

M.E. had made Code Bracelets for everyone, but only Cody and M.E. wore them. The boys kept them in their pockets. And Cody had brought four multipocketed vests she'd found. They had room to store secret messages, notebooks, and other confidential stuff. M.E. had decorated them with the club initials in sign language:
.

They kept their important collection—along with flashlights, compasses, sign language books, and other club valuables—stashed in a pit they'd dug in the ground and covered with the metal flooring.

Cody turned the combination lock to the first number, then froze. “Shhh!” she hissed at M.E. “I hear something!”

M.E. grabbed Cody's hand. “What is it?” she whispered.

Cody stared through the dense forest behind her. While the day was bright and cheery, the forest was always filled with dark shadows. “I think someone…or something…is out there.”

“You think Matt followed us?” M.E. asked, moving closer to Cody and gazing at the tall, fragrant trees.

Cody didn't answer. Instead, she finished turning the combination lock, removed it, and tried to push open the door. It wouldn't give. Someone had bolted it from the inside. She pounded on the clubhouse door, then abruptly stopped. She'd forgotten to give the secret knock, her initials in Morse code. Realizing this, she took a deep breath and tapped out the code:

One tap, a pause, two quick taps, a double pause, a quick tap, a tap, a pause, a tap, a pause, a tap.

Code Buster's Key and Solution found on pp. 202, 205.

Next she whispered the day's secret password through the eyehole in the plywood door:
“Yad-sendew.”

The password changed every day of the week, making it hard for spies to fake their way in. But it was easy for the Code Busters to remember. You just had to know the day of the week—and how to say it backward. Today was Wednesday, so the password was Wednesday, said backward:
yadsendew.

Cody heard the heavy metal bar scraping against the inside of the door as it was lifted. The door jerked open, revealing Quinn, wearing the sleek aviator sunglasses he'd found on eBay.

“Hurry!” M.E. squealed, pushing Cody forward. Meanwhile, Quinn grabbed Cody by the arm and pulled her through the narrow opening, then did the same to M.E.

“What's wrong? Were you followed?” Quinn asked, peeking outside.

“Shut the door!” M.E. said.

But before Quinn could close it, a voice called out from down the hill. “Dude, wait up!”

Cody breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness! It's only Luke.” She smiled, dropping to the floor and rubbing her tired legs as the fourth and final member of the Code Busters Club emerged from the shadows.

As Luke LaVeau reached the clubhouse, Quinn widened the door to let him inside. The tallest in the group, Luke had to duck to enter, knocking his New Orleans Saints cap off. He pulled the door shut behind him, set down the metal bar, then looked at Cody and smiled shyly.

Cody felt herself blush and hoped the others didn't notice. She'd never admit it to anyone, but she had a little crush on Luke, with his curly black hair, mocha skin, liquid brown eyes, and super-broad shoulders. She also liked that, although he seemed fearless, he acted a little shy around her. She loved the way he said certain words, like “Y'all” instead of “You guys,” and “N'awlins” instead of “New Orleans,” in his southern accent. He was born in Louisiana. But his parents had died in the flooding after Hurricane Katrina, and he and his grandmother, whom he called Grand-mère, ended up living in Berkeley together.

“Sorry I'm late,” Luke said, setting down his battered, decal-decorated skateboard and retrieving his cap. “I heard something in the bushes and went to check it out. Thought it might be that mountain lion the principal told us about. But I didn't see anything.”

“You didn't actually go
looking
for the mountain lion, did you?” Cody asked. “That's just plain crazy. What if it really had been the lion?”

Luke and the others joined Cody, sitting cross-legged on the metal floor. There was just enough room in the cozy clubhouse to fit them all comfortably.

“I was careful,” Luke said, shrugging.

Cody shook her head.

“So what's up, Quinn?” M.E. asked, pulling out the note she'd received from him that morning. “Your message was Code Orange.”

Quinn took off his sunglasses and looked at each of them before speaking, as if building up the suspense. He took a deep breath and began. “Okay. You know the fire at Skeleton Man's house?”

“Yeah,” M.E. said. Luke and Cody nodded.

“Last night,” Quinn continued, “before the fire, Cody and I saw these two weird people at his house.” He told the story of the mysterious activities he and Cody had witnessed the previous night—the drawings on the window, the face behind the curtain, the two strangers talking on the porch, the rescue of Skeleton Man, and the sudden disappearance of the man and woman after the fire.

“Weird,” M.E. said, rubbing the goose bumps on her arm. “Skeleton Man totally creeps me out— and now he's got two creepy friends?”

“He creeps me out, too,” Quinn said. “And I live next door to him. One time when I was in the backyard, he started shouting at me from his window. I couldn't understand a word he said. He's always spying on us.”

“Plus I heard his house is haunted,” M.E. added. “And this kid I know said he buries his cats in his yard when they die. He's got, like, fifty of them.”

Cody shook her head at the silly rumors. “I don't believe in haunted houses or cat graveyards or ghosts. Besides, he takes good care of his animals. I've watched him feed his cats and work on his lawn sculptures. He's just old. I feel sorry for him.”

“I don't know anything about his house being haunted,” Quinn continued, “but I think those two weirdos were up to something. Cody and I overheard them talking about a treasure.”

“Treasure?” Luke looked up from studying his athletic shoes. His dark eyes gleamed.

Quinn shrugged. “Yeah, but then the house suddenly caught on fire and—”

“You think those two people started it?” M.E. interrupted, her eyes wide.

“No clue,” Quinn said. “But they were definitely snooping around. Maybe they were looking for that treasure. I heard Skeleton Man used to be a gold prospector.”

“Wow!” Luke said. “You think there's gold hidden on his property?”

“And dead cats?” M.E. added.

Quinn shrugged. “Very funny, M.E.” He looked at the others, one eyebrow raised.

“Maybe we should go find out,” Cody offered.

Before anyone could say anything more, a loud boom shook one wall of the clubhouse.

“Mountain lion!” M.E. screamed, grabbing Cody and hugging her tightly.

Luke leaped up and peered through the eyehole in the door, while the others sat frozen to their spots. Cody could hear her heartbeat through her T-shirt and wondered if everyone else could hear it, too.

After a few tense seconds, Luke whispered, “I don't see anything.”

“Well, something hit the wall!” M.E. said. “Either that or the clubhouse is haunted, too.”

Luke unbolted the door and cracked it open a foot. He stuck his head out, looked around, then took a step outside, searching for any sign of movement.

Cody thought,
He's so brave
. She rose and followed him to the door, but remained inside.

Moving around to the side, Luke called out, “I think I see something…. ”

He was quiet for so long, Cody finally said, “Is it the mountain lion?”

“I don't think so. Unless it's wearing a T-shirt. Whoever it was, he's disappeared behind the trees.”

Probably Matt the Brat
, Cody thought, stepping outside. Quinn rose, put on his sunglasses, and followed her. Then came a reluctant M.E.

“Let's get out of here!” M.E.'s voice quavered. Cody could see that her friend was terrified.

“You're safer inside the clubhouse,” Quinn said. “Stay here. I'll go check it out with Luke.” Cody and M.E. huddled in the doorway.

Luke had disappeared from sight behind the clubhouse. Cody waited, barely breathing, squeezing M.E.'s hand. Seconds later she heard Luke call out from the back of the clubhouse, “You can come out now.”

Cody and M.E. followed Quinn's route around to the back of the clubhouse, where they found Luke holding a rounded stone the size of a softball.

“Well, that was no mountain lion. Unless mountain lions can throw rocks.”

Cody looked at the clubhouse wall and spotted a dent in the siding.

Luke held up the stone for the others to see. It was wrapped in a piece of paper secured with a rubber band.

He removed the rubber band and unwrapped the paper. Letters of various sizes cut from a magazine or newspapers had been glued to the paper. Luke read the note aloud.